Foreigner

“I’m sorry,” he said at once, “I’m not used to cameras. I’m afraid I wasn’t very coherent at all.”

“You speak very well, nand’ paidhi, muchbetter than some of our assignments, I assure you. We’re very pleased you found the time for us.” The interviewer stood up, he stood up, Banichi stood up, from the shadowed fringes, where the lights had obscured his presence. Everyone bowed. The interviewer offered a hand to shake. Someone must have told him that.

“You’ve been informed on our customs,” he ventured to say, and the interviewer was pleased and bowed, shaking hands with a crushing grip.

There was the commercial plane returning at sunset. The news crew had another assignment in Maidingi, on the electrical outage. Thank God. The crew was packing up lights, disconnecting cable run like an infestation of red and black vines across the ancient carpets, from the remote hallways. Maigi went to retrieve the far end somewhere near the kitchens, where, Bren was sure, the staff was not eager to admit strangers. Everything folded away into boxes, The glass-eyed animals stared back from the walls, as amazed and dazed as the paidhi.

What have I done? he asked himself, asked himself if he could justify everything he’d said, when he wrote his report to Mospheira, but they’d kept off sensitive topics—he’d accomplished that much, give or take his mental lapse on the highway question.

“We’d like to do more such interviews,” the man said—he could notrecall the name: Daigani or something like it. “We’d be delighted to tape one, nand’paidhi, actually in Mospheira. Perhaps reciprocal arrangements with your television, but one of our crews actually on site—interviews with ordinary people, that sort of thing.”

“Certainly if something of the sort could be worked out,” he answered. It was the answer to any unlikely proposal. He couldn’t have it go to Mospheira as something he’d agreed to. “I could contact the appropriate people—” It was a deliberate, Give me a phone, challenge to Banichi and Jago andTabini. A dozen uneasy thoughts slithered through the back of his mind. The news services had to know that someone had tried to kill him, and no one had mentioned that fact. Hehadn’t. The Bu-javid’s conspiratorial attitude about security seeped into the blood and bone of those who lived there—one didn’ttalk to the press without authorization, one didn’t carry gossip, one left it to the departments with authority to state official policy.

But he couldn’t tell the news that a man had died here yesterday? Or they knew and didn’t ask?

He didn’t know what had gone out on the news in the last week. He didn’t know what wascommon knowledge and what wasn’t, and the policy of his office said keep quiet when you didn’t know.

So he made polite expressions and bowed and sweated, still, in spite of the cooling of the air. A front was moving in. The crew hoped their flight would beat it out. They’d ridden through the front this morning, a choppy, bumpy flight, what Jago called ‘long,’ and the news crew called ‘uncomfortable,’

But the front doors were open now, with the wind blowing through, and the light coming in, brighter than the electric bulbs in this hall, which only managed a wan, golden glow. The crew carried out their lights, the interviewer lingered for small talk, and Tano and Algini had their heads together over by the door, watching the crew carry the equipment—Algini had come up with them. So had Banichi, Jago was… somewhere, probably resting; and meanwhile the thoughts about what he’d said and what he’d thought kept jostling one another at the back of his mind, clamoring for attention and further analysis.

Banichi carefully disengaged the interviewer, then, and walked him as far as the door, where one last round of bows was obligatory.

Bren made his own courtesies, and, with the last of the crew outside, leaned his shoulders against the shadowed back of the door and sighed in relief.

“Tano and Aligini will see them down to the airport,” Banichi said, turning up as a shadow out of the sunlight. “They may stay down, for supper. I discovered a good restaurant.”

“That’s fine,” he said, and didn’t ask Why don’t we all go? because most patrons didn’t like assassinations during the salad course. He realized he’d been nervous as hell about the interview, not alone because of the questions that might turn up, but because he didn’t trust the crew with all those boxes of equipment, and because he didn’t know these people.

He’d become, he decided, thoroughly paranoid. Afraid, And he didn’tthink a crew from the national news network was going to produce explosive devices.

It was stupid.

“You did very well, nand’ paidhi.”

“I couldn’t get my thoughts together. I could have done better.”

“Tabini thinks there should be more of these interviews,” Banichi said. “He thinks it’s time the paidhi became more public. More in touch with the people.”