Foreigner

He took a step toward the balcony. Atevi hands moved to stop him, and held his arms, but it wasn’t flinging himself off the side of Malguri that he had in mind, it was insulation from the very faint light still reaching them from the farther rooms. He still couldn’t resolve it. His brain kept trying to make sense out of the configuration.

“Eight days ago,” Ilisidi said, “this—appeared and joined the station.”

Appeared.

Joinedthe station,

Oh, my God, my God—

XI

«^»

Transmissions between Mospheira and the station have been frequent,” Ilisidi said. “An explanation, nand’paidhi. What do you see?”

“It’s the ship. Our ship—at least, someship—”

He was speaking his own language. His legs were numb. He couldn’t trust himself to walk—it was a good thing the guards caught his arms and steered him back to safety at the table.

But they didn’t let him sit. They faced him toward Ilisidi, and held him there.

“Some call it treachery, nand’ paidhi. What do youcall it?”

Eight days ago. The emergency return, bringing him and Tabini back from Taiben. The cut-off of his mail. Banichi and Jago with him constantly.

“Nand’ paidhi? Tellme what you see.”

“A ship,” he managed to say in their language—he was bone-cold, incapable of standing, except for the atevi hands holding him. He was almost incapable of speaking, the breath was so short in his chest. “It’s the ship that left us here, aiji-mai, that’s all I can think.”

“Many of us think many more things,” Ilisidi said, “nand’ paidhi. What do you suppose they’re saying… this supposed ship… and your people across the strait? Do you suppose we figure in these conversations at all?”

He shivered and looked at the sky again, thinking, It’s impossible—

And looked at Ilisidi, a darkness in the dawn, except only the silver in her hair and the liquid anger in her eyes.

“Aiji-mai, I don’tunderstand. I didn’t know this was happening. No one expected it. No one told me.”

“Oh, this is a little incredible, paidhi-ji, that no one knew, that this appearance in our skies is so totally, utterly a surprise to you.”

“Please.” His legs were going. The blood was cut off to his hands. For what he knew, the dowager would have the guards pitch him off the edge from here, a gesture of atevi defiance, in a war the world couldn’t win, a war the paidhiin were supposed to prevent. “Nand’ dowager, I’m telling you the truth. I didn’t expect this. But I know why they’re here. I know the things you want to know.”

“Do you, now. And the paidhiin are only interpreters.”

“And human, aiji-mai. I know what’s going on up there, the way I know what humans did in the past and what they want for the future—nothing in their plans is to your detriment.”

“As the station wasn’t. As your coming here wasn’t. As your interference in our affairs wasn’t, and your domination of our trade, our invention, our governance of ourselves wasn’t. You led us to the technology youwanted, you lent us the industry youneeded, you perverted our needs to your programs, you pushed us into a future of television and computers and satellites, all of which we grow to love, oh, to rely on—and forget every aspect of our own past, our own laws, our own course that wewould have followed to use our own resources. We are notso stupid, nand’ paidhi, notso stupid as to have destroyed ourselves as you kept counseling us we would do without your lordly help, we are notso stupid as to believe we weren’t supplying you with materials for which you had your own uses, in an agenda we hadn’t set. Tabini placed great confidence in you—too damned muchconfidence in you. When he knew what had happened he sent you to me, as someone with her wits still about her, someone who hasn’t spent her life in Shejidan watching television and growing complacent. So tell meyour truth, nand’ paidhi! Give meyour assurances! Tell me why all the other lies are justified and why the truth in our skies this morning is good for us!”

The blasts of wind came no colder than Ilisidi’s anger. It was the truth, all of it, all justified, he knew that the way he’d known the unspoken truth of his dealings with atevi—that the paidhiin were doing the best they could do in a bad bargain, keeping a peace that wasn’t viable between ordinary people of their two species, saving what they’d almost entirely destroyed, things like this reality around him, the ancient stones, the lake, the order of life in an atevi fortress, remote from the sky and the stars he couldn’t reach from here. He looked up at that truth and the lights blurred in his eyes. The wind gave him no direction, whether up or down, whether he was falling into the sky or standing on stones he couldn’t feel. He was afraid—terrified as atevi must be of that human presence up there—and didn’t comprehend why.