It at least threw it into the abstract realm, that perception of luck in charge of the universe, which somewhat passed for a god in Ragi thinking.
“Midei,” Jago declared in seeming surprise. It was a word he’d not heard before, and there weren’t many, in ordinary usage, that he hadn’t. “Dahemidei. You’re midedeni.”
That was three in a row. He was too tired to take notes and the damned computer was down. “What does that mean?”
“Midedeni believe luck and favor reside in people. It was a heresy, of course.”
Of course it was. “So it was a long time ago.”
“Oh, half of Adjaiwaio still believes something like that, in the country, anyway—that you’re supposed to Associate with everybody you meet.”
An entire remote Association where people liked other people? He both wanted to go there and feared there were other essential, perhaps Treaty-threatening, differences.
“You really believe in that?” Jago pursued the matter. And it was indeed dangerous, how scattered and longing his thoughts instantly grew down that track, how difficult it was to structure logical arguments against the notion, the very seductive notion that atevi could understand affection. “The lords of technology truly think this is the case?”
Jago clearly thought intelligent people weren’t expected to think so.
Which made him question himself, in the paidhi’s internal habit, whether humans were somehow blind to the primitive character of such attachments.
Then the dislocation jerked him the other direction, back into belief humans were right. “Something like that,” he said. The experts said atevi couldn’t think outside hierarchical structure. And Jago said they could? His heart was pounding. His common sense said hold back, don’t believe it, there’s a contradiction here. “So you can feel attachment to one you don’t have man’chi for.”
“Nadi Bren,—are you making a sexual proposition to me?”
The bottom dropped out of his stomach. “I—No, Jago-ji.”
“I wondered.”
“Forgive my impropriety.”
“Forgive my mistaken notion. What were you asking?”
“I—” Recovering objectivity was impossible. Or it had never existed. “I’d only like to read about midedeni, if you could find a book for me.”
“Certainly. But I doubt there’d be one here. Malguri’s library is mostly local history. The midedeni were all eastern.”
“I’d like a book to keep, if I could.”
“I’m sure. I have one, if nothing else, but it’s in Shejidan.”
He’d made a thorough mess. And left a person who was probably reporting directly to Tabini with the impression humans belonged to some dead heresy they probably didn’t even remotely match.
“It probably isn’t applicable,” he said, trying to patch matters. “Exact correspondence is just too unlikely.” Jago had a brain. A very quick one; and he risked something he ordinarily would have said only to Tabini. “It’s the apparent correspondences that can be the most deceptive. We want to believe them.”
“At very least, we’re polite in Shejidan. We don’t shoot people over philosophical differences. I wouldn’t take such a contract.”
God help him. He thought that was a joke out of Jago. The second for the evening. “I wouldn’t think so.”
“I hope I don’t offend you, nadi.”
“I like you, too.”
In atevi, it was very funny. It won Jago’s rare grin, a duck of the head, a flash of that eerie mirror-luminance of her eyes, quite, quite sober.
“I haven’t understood,” she said. “It eludes me, nadi.”
The best will in the world couldn’t bridge the gap. He looked at her in a sense of isolation he hadn’t felt since his first week on the mainland, his first unintended mistake with atevi.
“But you try, Jago-ji. Banichi tries, too. It makes me less—” There was no word for lonely. “Less single.”
“We share a man’chi,” Jago said, as if she had understood something he was saying. “To Tabini’s house. Don’t doubt us, paidhi-ji. We won’t desert you.”
Off the meaning again. There was nothing there, nothing to make the leap of logic. He stared at her, asking himself how someone so fundamentally honest, and kind, granted the license she had—could be so absolutely void of what it might take to make that leap of emotional need. It just didn’t click into place. And it was a mistake to pin anything on the Adjaiwaio and any dead philosophy.