The confusion piled up around him.
“Where’s Banichi? And Jago? Do they know about this? Do they know where I am?”
“They know. I say that denial of responsibility would be a lie. But I will also own that we are embarrassed by the actions of an associate who called on a licensed professional for a disgraceful action. The Guild has been embarrassed by the actions of a single individual acting for personal conviction. I personally—embarrassed myself, in the incident of the tea. More, you accepted my apology, which makes my duty at this moment no easier, nand’ paidhi. I assure you there is nothing personal in this confrontation. But I will do whatever I feel sufficient to find the truth in this situation.”
“What situation?”
“Nand’ paidhi. Do you ever mislead us? Do you ever tell us less—or more—than the truth?”
His hazard didn’t warrant rushing to judgment headlong—or dealing in on-the-spot absolutes, with a man the extent of whose information or misinformation he didn’t know. He tried to think. He tried to be absolutely careful.
“Nadi, there are times I may know… some small technical detail, a circuit, a mode of operation—sometimes a whole technological field—that I haven’t brought to the appropriate committee; or that I haven’t put forward to the aiji. But it’s not that I don’t intend to bring it forward, no more than other paidhiin have ever withheld what they know. There is no technology we have that I intend to withhold—ever.”
“Have you ever, in collaboration with Tabini, rendered additional numbers into the transmissions from Mospheira to the station?”
God.
“Ask the aiji.”
“Have those numbers been supplied to you by the aiji?”
“Ask him.”
Cenedi looked through papers, and looked up again, his dark face absolutely impassive. “I’m asking you, nand’ paidhi. Have those numbers been supplied to you by the aiji?”
“That’s Tabini’s business. Not mine.” His hands were cold. He worked his fingers and tried to pretend to himself that the debate was no more serious than a council meeting, at which, very rarely, the questions grew hot and quick. “If Tabini-aiji sends to Mospheira, I render what he says accurately. That’s my job. I wouldn’t misrepresent him, or Mospheira. That is my integrity, nadi Cenedi. I don’t lie to either party.”
Another silence, long and tense, in which the thunder of an outside storm rumbled through the stones.
“Have you always told the truth, nadi?”
“In such transactions? Yes. To both sides.”
“I have questions for you, in the name of the aiji-dowager. Will you answer them?”
The walls of the trap closed. It was the nightmare every paidhi had feared and no one had yet met, until, God help him, he had walked right into it, trusting atevi even though he couldn’t translate the concept of trust to them, persisting in trusting them when his own advisors said no, standing so doggedly by his belief in Tabini’s personal attachment to him that he hadn’t called his office when he’d received every possible warning things were going wrong.
If Cenedi wanted to use force now… he had no help. If Cenedi wanted him to swear that there was a human plot against atevi… he had no idea whether he could hold out against saying whatever Cenedi wanted.
He gave a slight, atevi shrug, a move of one hand. “As best I can,” he said, ‘I’ll answer, as best I personally know the answers.”
“Mospheira has… how many people?”
“About four million.”
“No atevi.”
“No atevi.”
“Have atevi ever come there, since the Treaty?”
“No, nadi. There haven’t. Except the airline crews.”
“What do you think of the concept of a paidhi-atevi?”
“Early on, we wanted it. We tried to get it into the Treaty as a condition of the cease fire, because we wanted to understand atevi better than we did. We knew we’d misunderstood. We knew we were partially responsible for the War. But atevi refused. If atevi were willing, now, absolutely I’d support the idea.”
“You’ve nothing to hide, you as a people? It wouldn’t provoke resentment, to have an ateva resident on Mospheira, admitted to your councils?”
“I think it would be very useful for atevi to learn our customs. I’d sponsor it. I’d argue passionately in favor of it.”