Foreigner

“The damned railroad?” The emphasis of the interview bewildered him. Jago was all but a shadow to him, expressionless, unreachable. He made a frustrated dismissal with his hand and walked away toward the sitting room, only to gain a space to think, to sit down and read and take his mind off the day’s bizarre turn, maybe before supper, which she might share, if no one poisoned the cook.

But he stopped again, fearing he might insult her. “If someday,” he said, “this television business ever works out to bring news crews onto Mospheira, I’ll ask for you and Banichi to come visit my family, I’d like you to see what we are. I’d like you to know us, nadi-ji.”

“I’d be most honored,” Jago said solemnly.

So perhaps he’d patched things. He walked away into the sitting room and threw another piece of wood onto the fire, while thunder echoed off the walls. Jago had followed him in, evidently conceiving that as what he wanted, but she said nothing, only took up looking through the sitting room library shelves instead.

There was no interfering with Jago’s notions of duty, or what she might conceive as being sociable. He took up his book, began to sit down.

The lights came on again.

He looked up, frustrated, at the ceiling fixtures.

“It must have been a fuse,” Jago said, from across the room. “That’s good.”

He recalled dusty old wires running beside bare natural gas pipes, along the hall ceiling, and envisioned the whole apartment going up in an electrical disaster. “Malguri needs a new electrical system,” he muttered. “Where do they have that gas tank?”

“What gas?”

“Methane.”

“In the cellar,” Jago said.

“Under the building. It’s a damned bomb, nadi. The place needselectric furnaces. If they’ve installed electric lights, surely electric furnaces can’t hurt.”

“Funding,” Jago said.

“While they’re looking for assassins—do they watch that tank?”

“Every access to this building,” Jago said, “is under surveillance.”

“Except when the power’s out.”

Jago made a small shrug.

“Those windows,” he said, “aren’t watched. I found that out last night, when the power came back on.”

Jago frowned, went close to the window, and ran a finger around the edge of the casement, looked up and around—at what, he couldn’t see.

“How did you find out, Bren-ji?”

“I opened a window to look out. The power came back on. The alarm went off. I take it that’s an old system.”

“It certainly is,” Jago said. “Did you report this?”

“It woke the whole staff.”

Jago didn’t look happier, but what she saw, examining the window, he couldn’t tell.

“Except Banichi,” he said.

“Except Banichi.”

“I don’t know where he was. I told you. We had an argument. He went off somewhere.” He had an entirely unwelcome thought but kept his mouth shut on it, watched while Jago walked to the door, pulled it half-shut, and looked at the wall behind it, still frowning. Security didn’ttalk about security. He doubted an explanation was forthcoming.

“Nadi Jago,” he said. “Banichi wasn’t here. Do you have any notion where he was last night?”

He might have remarked it was raining outside. Jago’s expression never varied. She opened the door again to its ordinary position, walked out and into the reception room.

The lights went out again. He looked up in frustration, then followed her into the other room to protest the silence and the confusion of his security. She was at the window. She unlatched the side panel, opened it and shut it again, without an alarm.

“What in hell’s going on, Jago?”

Jago took out her pocket-com and thumbed it on, rattled off a string of code he didn’t understand.

Banichi answered. He was relatively certain it was Banichi’s voice. And Jago’s stance showed some small reassurance. She answered, and cut the com off, and put it away.

“It did register,” she said. “ Oursystem registered.”

“Yours and Banichi’s?” he asked—but the com beeped and Jago thumbed it on again and answered it, frowning.

Banichi’s voice replied. Jago’s frown deepened. She answered Banichi shortly, a sign-off, clipped the corn to her belt and headed for the door.

“What was that?” he asked. “What’s happening? Jago?”

She crossed back in two strides, seized his shoulders and looked down at him. “Bren-ji. I’ve never betrayed you. I will not, Bren-ji.”

After which she was out the hall door at the same pace. She shut it. Hard.

Jago? he thought. His shoulders still felt the force of her fingers. And her footsteps were fading at a rapid pace down the hall outside, while he stood there asking himself where Banichi had been last night when he’d set the alarm off.

If there wasanother system—Banichi had known about him opening that window, if Banichi had been monitoring it. And for whatever reason—Banichi hadn’t come back when the general alarm went.

Maybe because Banichi had already discounted it as a threat. But that wasn’tthe Banichi he knew, to take something like that for granted.