She said nothing for a space. It left him, riding beside her in the windy silence, to think anxiously whether anything he had said or done or supported in the various councils could be controversial, or as the dowager hinted, interfere in atevi affairs, or push technology too fast.
“Please, aiji-ji. Be blunt. Am I opposing or advancing a position with which you disagree?”
“What a strange question,” Ilisidi said. “Why should I tell you that?”
“Because I would try to find out your reasons, nai-ji, not to oppose your interests, not to preempt your resources—but to avoid areas of your extreme interest. Let me recall to you, we don’t use assassins, nai-ji. That’s not even a resource for us.”
“But they are, for atevi who may support you in your positions.”
He’d heard that argument before. He could get around it with Tabini. He longed after Tabini’s company, he longed only to ask him, forthrightly to learn things… that no one else was telling him lately.
And as now and again in the hours since he’d come to Malguri, he suffered another of those moments of dislocation—at one instant convinced that things were all right, and then, with no particular reason, doubting that, and recalling how completely he was isolated, more isolated than the paidhi had ever been from his resources.
“Forgive my question,” he said to Ilisidi. “But the paidhi isn’t always wise enough to understand his position in your affairs. I hope for your good opinion, nai-ji.”
“What do you hope to accomplish in your tenure?”
He hadn’t expected that question. But he’d answered it, repeatedly, in councils. “An advancement for atevi and humans, nai-ji. An advancement, a step toward technological equality, at a pace which won’t do harm.”
“That’s a given, isn’t it? By the Treaty, a dull and tedious given. Be less modest. Name the specific, wondrous thing you’d have done before you die… the gift you wish most, in your great wisdom, to bestow on us.”
He didn’t think it a harmless question. He could name certain things. He honestly didn’t have a clear answer.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“What, the paidhi without a notion what he wishes to do?”
“A step at a time, nai-ji. I don’t know what may be possible. And telling you… would in itself violate the principles…”
“The most ambitious thing you’ve ever advanced.”
“The rail system.”
“Pish. We invented the rail. You improved it.”
That was true, though atevi trains and steamships had been only the most rudimentary design, and boilers had burst with frightening regularity.
“So what more, paidhi? Rockets to the moons? Travel amongst the stars?”
A far more dangerous topic. “I’d like, yes, to see atevi at least reach that threshold in my lifetime. Nai-ji, so much is possible from there. So much you could do then. But we aren’t sure of the changes that would make, and I want to understand what would result. I want to give good advice. That’s my job, nai-ji.” He had never himself seen it so clearly, until now. “We’re at the edge of space. And so much changes once you can look down on the world.”
“What changes?”
One more dangerous question, this one cultural and philosophical. He looked outward, at the lake, the whole world seeming to lie below the path they rode.
“Height changes your perspective, nai-ji. We see three provinces from here. But my eye can’t see the treaty-boundaries.”
“Mine can. That mountain ridge. The river. They’re quite evident.”
“But were this mountain as high as the great moon, nai-ji, and if were you born on this very high mountain, would you see the lines? Or, if you saw them, would they mean to you what they mean to people born on the plain, these distant, invisible lines?”
“Man’chi is man’chi. Man’chi is important. And to a dweller on the border—what meaning, these lines aijiin agree on? Man’chi is never visible.”
It was gratifying to expect the answer one got, the same that Tabini inevitably gave. It was gratifying to think one did accurately forecast atevi sentiments. It was useful to know about Ilisidi.
“So that wouldn’t change,” he said. “Even if you stood on the highest mountain.”