Wasn’t sure where he was for a moment. He didn’t hurt as much. Couldn’t see that conveniently out of the hole he’d found, just weeds in front of his face. His heart beat so heavily it jarred the bones of his chest. He’d never felt it do that. Didn’t hurt, exactly, nothing did, more than the rest of him. Cold on one side, not on the other, thanks to the rain-cloak.
He’d found cover. He didn’t have to move from here. He could shut his eyes.
He didn’t have to think, either, just rest, let the aches go numb.
He wished he’d done better than he’d done.
Didn’t know how he could have. He was alive and they hadn’t found him. Better than some of the professionals had scored. Better luck than poor Giri, who’d been a decent man.
Better luck than the man who’d dragged him to cover before he died—the man hadn’t thought about it, he supposed; he’d just done, just moved. He supposed it made most difference what a man was primed to do. Call it love. Call it duty. Call it—whatever mecheiti did, when the bombs fell around them and they still followed the mecheit’-aiji.
Man’chi. Didn’t mean duty. That was the translation on the books. But what had made the man grab him with the last thought he had—that was man’chi, too. The compulsion. The drive that held the company together.
They said Ilisidi hadn’t any. That aijiin didn’t. Cosmic loneliness. Absolute freedom. Babs. Ilisidi. Tabini.
I send you a man, ’Sidi-ji…
Wasn’t anything Tabini wouldn’t do, wasn’t anything or anyone Tabini wouldn’t spend. Human-wise, he still liked the bastard.
He still liked Banichi.
If anybody was alive, Banichi was. And Banichi would have done what that man had done with the last breath in him—but Banichi wouldn’t make dying his first choice: the bastards would pay for Banichi’s life, and Jago’s.
Damn well bet they were free. They were Tabini’s, and Tabini wasn’t here to worry about.
Just him.
They’d have found him if they could.
Tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. One ran down and puddled on the side of his nose. One ran down his cheek to drip off into the weeds. Atevi didn’t cry. One more cosmic indignity nature spared the atevi.
But, over all, decent folk, like the old couple with the grandkids, impulses that didn’t add up to love, but they felt something profound that humans couldn’t feel, either. Something maybe he’d come closer to than any paidhi before him had come—
Don’t wait for the atevi to feel love. The paidhi trained himself to bridge the gap. Give up on words. Try feeling man’chi.
Try feeling why Cenedi’d knocked hell out of him for going after Banichi on that shell-riddled road, try feeling what Cenedi had thought, plain as shouting it: identical man’chi, options pre-chosen. The old question, the burning house, what a man would save…
Tabini’s people, with their own man’chi, together, in Ilisidi’s company.
Jago, violate man’chi?
Not Banichi’s partner.
I won’t betray you, Bren-ji…
Shut up, nadi Bren.
Believe in Jago, even when you didn’t understand her. Feel the warm feeling, call it whatever you wanted; she was on your side, same as Banichi.
Warm feeling. That was all.
There was early daylight bouncing off the pavings. And someone running. Someone shouting. Bren tried to move—his neck was stiff. He couldn’t move his left arm from under him, and his right arm and his legs and his back were their own kind of misery. He’d slept, didn’t remember picking the position, and he couldn’t damned move.
“Hold it!” came from somewhere outside.
He reached out and cautiously flattened the weeds in front of his nose, with the vast shadow of the tank over his head and the wall cramping his ankle and his knee at an angle.
Couldn’t see anything but a succession of buildings along the runway. Modern buildings. He didn’t know how he’d gotten from ruins to here last night. But it was cheap modern, concrete prefab—two buildings, a windsock. Electric power for the landing lights, he guessed; maybe a waiting area or a machine shop. The wall next to the tank above him was modern, he discovered, sinking down again to ease the strain on his back.