“An atevi life.”
“We’ve taken it in defense of yours, nand’ paidhi. It’s our man’chi to have done so. But not everyone would agree with that choice.”
He had to ask. “Do you, nadi?”
Jago delayed her answer a moment. She folded the letter. “For Tabini’s sake I certainly would agree. May I keep this in file, nadi?”
“Yes,” he said, and shoved the affront out of his mind. What did you expect? he asked himself, and asked himself what was he to do without consultation, what might they ask and what dared he say?
Jago simply took the letter and left, through his bedroom, without answering his question.
An honest woman, Jago was, and she’d given him no grounds at all to question her protection. It wasn’t precisely what he’d questioned—but she doubtless didn’t see it that way.
He’d alienated Banichi and now he’d offended Jago. He wasn’t doing well at all today.
“Jago,” he called after her. “Are you going down to the airport?”
Atevi manners didn’t approve yelling at people, either. Jago walked all the way back to answer him.
“If you wish. But what I read in the letter gives me little grounds on which to delay these people, nand’ paidhi. I can only advise Banichi of your feelings. I don’t see how I could do otherwise.”
He was at the end of his resources. He made a small, weary bow. “About what I said. I’m tired, nadi, I didn’t express myself well.”
“I take no offense, Bren-ji. The opinion of these people is uninformed. Shall I attempt to reach Banichi?”
“No,” he said in despair. “No. I’ll deal with them. Only suggest to Tabini on my behalf that he’s put me in a position which may cost me my job.”
“I’ll certainly convey that,” Jago said. And if Jago said it that way, he did believe it.
“Thank you, nadi,” he said, and Jago bowed and went on through the bedroom.
He followed, with a vacation advertisement and a crafts catalog, which he figured for bathtub reading.
Goodbye to the hour-long bath. He rang for Djinana to advise him of the change in plans, he shed the coat in the bedroom, limped down the hall into the bathroom and shed dusty, spit-stained clothes in the hamper on the way to the waiting tub.
The water was hot, frothed with herbs, and he would have cheerfully spent half the day in it, if Djinana would only keep pouring in warm water. He drowned the crafts catalog, falling asleep in mid-scan—just dropped his hand and soaked it: he found himself that tired and that little in possession of his faculties.
But of course Tano came in to say a van had pulled up in the portico, and it was television people, with Banichi, and they were going to set up downstairs. Would the paidhi care to dress?
The paidhi would care to drown, rather than put on court formality and that damned tailored coat, but Tabini had other plans.
He’d not brought his notes on the transportation problems. He thought he should have. It went to question after question, until at least numbness had set in where he met the chair and where an empty stomach protested the lack of lunch.
“What,” the interviewer asked then, “determines the rate of turnover of information? Isn’t it true that all these systems exist on Mospheira?”
“Many do.”
“What wouldn’t?”
“We don’t use as much rail. Local air is easier. The interior elevations make air more practical for us.”
“But you didn’t present that as an option to the aiji two hundred years ago.”
“We frankly worried that we’d be attacked.”
“So there are other considerations than the environment.”
Sharp interviewer. And empowered by someone to ask questions that might not make the broadcast, but—might, still. Tabini had confidence in this man, and sent him.
“There’s also the risk,” he said, “of creating problems among atevi. You had rail—you almost had rail at the time of the Landing. If we’d thrown air travel into Shejidan immediately, it might have provoked disturbances among the outlying Associations. Not everyone believed Barjida-aiji would share the technology. And better steam trains were a lot less threatening. We could have turned over rockets. We could have said, in the very first negotiations—here’s the formula for dynamite. And maybe irresponsible people would have decided to drop explosives on each other’s cities. We’d just been through a war. It was hard enough to get it stopped. We didn’t want to provide new weapons for another one. We could have dropped explosives from planes, when we built them. But we didn’t want to do that.”