Foreigner

“Numbers. Like space. The size of the numbers. One hopes that computers will find more general acceptance among atevi. One needscomputers, nadi, adept as you are in mathematics—you still need them. I confess I can’t follow everything you do in your heads, but you have to have the computers for space science, for record-keeping, and for genetics as we practice it.”

“The number-counters don’t believe that. Some say computers are inauspicious and misleading.”

“Some also do admit a fascination with them. I’ve heard some numerologists are writing software… and criticizing our hardware. They’re quite right. Our scientists are very interested in their opinions.”

“In atevi invention.”

“Very much so.”

“What can we possibly invent? Humans have done it all.”

“Oh, no, no, nadi, far from all. It’s a wide universe. And our ship did once break down.”

“Wide enough, this universe?”

He almost said—beyond calculation. But that was heresy. “At least beyond what I know, nadi. Beyond any limit we’ve found with our ships.”

“Is it? But what use is it?”

Occasionally he met a new atevi attitude—inevitably astonishing. “What use is the earth, nadi? What use is the whole world except that we’re in it? It’s where we are, nadi. Its use is that we exist. There may be more important positions in the universe, but from where we stand, it’s all that isimportant.”

“You believe that some things are uncountable?”

The heresy pit again. He reached for an irrefutable answer, knowing that, if the wrong thing went down on tape—the extremists had him. “If one had the vision to see them, I’m sure one could count them.”

“Does anyone have universal vision?”

Another atevi sect, for all he knew. “I wouldn’t know, nadi. I’m certainly not that person.”

Damned if Cenedi believed the numerologists. But what Cenedi might want for political reasons, he had no way to guess. He wanted out of this line of questioning.

“More tea?” Cenedi asked him.

“Nadi, thank you, I have some left.”

“Do you suspect me personally as an enemy?”

“I don’t know. I certainly hope not. I’ve found your company pleasant and I hope it to continue.”

“There is nothing personal in my position, nand’ paidhi.”

“I trust so. I don’t know how I could have offended you. Certainly not by intent.”

“Heresy is not the charge here, understand. I find all the number-counting complete, primitive foolishness.”

“But tapes can be edited.”

“So can television,” Cenedi said. “You provided Tabini-aiji with abundant material today.”

The television? He’d put it from his mind, in the shock of reading Tabini’s letter. But now that Cenedi said it, he factored it in with that letter—all the personal, easy questions, about himself, his life, his associations.

Double-cross, by the only ateva he absolutely trusted with his life, double-cross by the aiji who held all the agreements with human civilization.

Tabini had armed him against assassins—and in the light of that letter he couldn’t prove the assassins weren’t Tabini’s. Tabini gave him a gun that could be found and traced by the markings on its bullets.

But when he’d used it, and drawn blood, Banichi had given him another. He didn’t understand that.

Although perhaps Banichi hadn’t understood then, either, and done the loyal thing, not being in on the plot. All his reckonings ran in circles—and now Banichi’s gun was gone from under his mattress, when they could photograph anything, plant any piece of evidence, and fill in the serial numbers later… he knew at least some of the tricks they could use. He’d studied them. The administration had madehim study them until his head rattled with them, and he hadn’t wanted to believe he’d ever need to know.

Not with Tabini, no.

Not with a man who confided in him, who told him official secrets he didn’t, out of respect for this man, convey to Mospheira… “How many people live on Mospheira?” Cenedi asked.

“You asked that, nadi. About four million. Four million three hundred thousand.”

“We’ll repeat questions from time to time, just to be sure.—Does that count children?”

Question after question, then, about support for the rail system, about the vetoes his predecessor had cast, about power plants, about dams and highways and the ecological studies, on Mospheira and on the mainland.

About the air link between the island and the mainland, and the road system in Mospheira’s highland north and center. Nothing at any point that was classified. Nothing they couldn’t find out from the catalogs and from his private mail, wherever that was going.

Probably they hadfound it out from his mail, long before the satellites. They might have, out of the vacation catalogs, assembled a mosaic of Mospheira’s roads, cities, streets, might have photographed the coastal cities, where regular cargo flights came in from Shejidan and flew out with human-manufactured electronics, textiles, seafood and pharmaceuticals.

“Do you have many associates on Mospheira, nadi? What are their names?”