He reached shelter. Jago arrived, close behind him, flung herself into the seat, rain glistening on her black skin, as the van driver got out to close the van door and stopped to stare, wide-eyed, while the cold mist gusted in. Evidently no one had told the driver a human was in the party.
“Shut the door!” Banichi said, and the drenched driver slammed it and made haste to climb in his seat in front.
“Algini and Tano,” Bren protested, leaning to glance back at the plane, through a rain-spotted window, as the driver’s door shut.
“They’ll bring the baggage,” Jago said. “In another car.”
In case of bombs, Bren supposed glumly, as the driver took off the brake, threw the van into gear and launched into what must be the standard verbal courtesies, gamely wishing them Welcome to Maidingi, Jewel of the Mountains, a practiced patter that went on into the felicitous positioning of the mountains, cosmically harmonious and fortunate, and the ‘grateful influences’ of the mountain springs above the Lake, the Mirror of Heaven.
The Mirror of Heaven reflected nothing, at the moment. Rain shattered the images of drowned buildings and gray void beyond the glass as the car sped along—Bren had expected them to pull up at the terminal and catch a train to Malguri, but the van had whisked them right past the terminal entrances, one and the next and the next, as they headed for the wire fence and the lake.
“Where are we going?” Bren asked, casting anxious glances at Banichi—surely, he thought, Banichi would protest this strange detour; possibly they were all in danger and he should keep his mouth shut.
“This is scheduled, nadi,” Jago said, laying a hand on his knee. “Everything as arranged.”
“What’s arranged?” He was short of temper. He divided his attention nervously between the oncoming fence and Jago’s placid face, then paid it all to the fence, as collision seemed imminent.
But the driver swung toward a gate, which opened automatically in front of them. And Jago hadn’t answered him. “Where are we going?”
“Be calm,” Banichi said quietly. “Please take my assurances, nand’ paidhi, everything is quite in order.”
“Aren’t we taking the rail?”
“There’s no rail to Malguri,” Banichi said. “One goes by car.”
One wasn’t supposed to go by car. There wasn’t supposed to be a car link between an airport and any end destination, no matter how rich one was: the nearest rail link was supposed to be the rule… and was there no rail at all between Malguri and the airport?
The designation on the van, written in large letters right above the driver, was, Maidingi Air… and did an airline vehicle regularly serve private destinations? They weren’t licensed to be a ground transport.
Maybe it was a special authorization security had. But was it that dire an emergency?
“Are we afraid to hire a bus?” he asked, and indicated, right in front of them, and clear to be read, Maidingi Air.
“There’s no bus to Malguri.”
“It’s the law. There’s supposed to be a hired bus…”
The van caught an abrupt turn and threw him against Jago’s arm.
Jago patted his leg, and he folded his arms and sank back to reassemble the pieces of his dignity and his self-possession, while the thunder rumbled.
There were places where the local tech hadn’t caught up to the regulations. There were places with economic exceptions.
But the aiji’s own holding damned sure wasn’t one. Tabini couldn’t hire a bus? Or the bus to Maidingi Township didn’t serve Malguri, when it was right next door? The aiji was supposed to set an example of environmental compliance. Kabiu. Good precedent. Correct behavior. Appearances.
Where in hell was the estate, that the town bus couldn’t get them there?
Gravel scattered under the tires, and the van jolted onto a road in which gray void was on one side and a mountain on the other. The road ceased to be Improved in any sort, and one recalled the vetoes of one’s predecessor, overriding the access highway bill from the high villages—and one’s own assertion to the aiji, mildly tipsy, that such would ‘undermine the rail priority,’ that the appeal from the mountain villages was a smoke screen—the aiji had taken to that expression with delight, once he understood it—covering provincial ambitions and leading provincial aijiin to sedition.