Foreigner

“ Thisis scheduled, nadi,” Jago said, laying a hand on his knee. “Everything as arranged.”

“ What’sarranged?” He was short of temper. He divided his attention nervously between the oncoming fence and Jago’s placid face, then paid it all to the fence, as collision seemed imminent.

But the driver swung toward a gate, which opened automatically in front of them. And Jago hadn’t answered him. “Where are we going?”

“Be calm,” Banichi said quietly. “Please take my assurances, nand’ paidhi, everything is quite in order.”

“Aren’t we taking the rail?”

“There’s no rail to Malguri,” Banichi said. “One goes by car.”

One wasn’t supposed to go by car. There wasn’t supposed to be a car link between an airport and any end destination, no matter how rich one was: the nearest rail link was supposed to be the rule… and was there no rail at all between Malguri and the airport?

The designation on the van, written in large letters right above the driver, was, Maidingi Air… and did an airline vehicle regularly serve private destinations? They weren’t licensed to be a ground transport.

Maybe it was a special authorization security had. But was it that dire an emergency?

“Are we afraid to hire a bus?” he asked, and indicated, right in front of them, and clear to be read, Maidingi Air.

“There’s no bus to Malguri.”

“It’s the law. There’s supposed to be a hired bus…”

The van caught an abrupt turn and threw him against Jago’s arm.

Jago patted his leg, and he folded his arms and sank back to reassemble the pieces of his dignity and his self-possession, while the thunder rumbled.

There were places where the local tech hadn’t caught up to the regulations. There were places with economic exceptions.

But the aiji’s own holding damned sure wasn’t one. Tabini couldn’t hire a bus? Or the bus to Maidingi Township didn’t serve Malguri, when it was right next door? The aiji was supposed to set an example of environmental compliance. Kabiu. Good precedent. Correct behavior. Appearances.

Where in hell was the estate, that the town bus couldn’t get them there?

Gravel scattered under the tires, and the van jolted onto a road in which gray void was on one side and a mountain on the other. The road ceased to be Improved in any sort, and one recalled the vetoes of one’s predecessor, overriding the access highway bill from the high villages—and one’s own assertion to the aiji, mildly tipsy, that such would ‘undermine the rail priority,’ that the appeal from the mountain villages was a smoke screen—the aiji had taken to that expression with delight, once he understood it—covering provincial ambitions and leading provincial aijiin to sedition.

It was the identical argument his predecessors had used—he had been queasy about the paranoid logic it encouraged in Tabini, from an ethical standpoint—but Tabini had seemed to accept it as perfectly reasonable atevi logic, and the paidhi didn’t vary from his predecessors’ arguments for mere human reasons: the paidhi adhered to what had worked with past administrations, argued by atevi logic, unless he had very carefully worked out a change and passed it by council.

And this road was evidently the by-product of that logic, founded on his predecessor’s vetoes over the highway system, and sustained on his own.

No bus. No pavement.

He skiied, on his vacations. He was a passionate skiier. He had been on interesting roads, up Mt. Allan Thomas, on Mospheira.

Paved roads. Thank you. Going down a mountain on skis was one thing.

This…

… vehicle was not designed to climb. It slipped on the turns.

He clutched his computer to keep it from sliding to the rear of the van. He thought he might change his recommendation on the non-township roads proposal.

The van ground its way for what felt like well over an hour up rainwashed gravel, whined and slipped and struggled around an uphill serpentine curve with a spit of gravel from beneath the wheels at the last. Gray space and driving rain filled the windows on every side but one. The van lurched upward into void, tilted, and Bren held to the seat white-knuckled with his free hand, Jago swaying into him, with what might be Lake Maidingi or empty air beside and below and in front of him—he didn’t want to look. He didn’t want to imagine.

How long would it take searchers to find them if a tire slipped off the rain-washed edge, and they plunged off into the lake?

Another jolt—a slip. “God!”

The driver gave him a startled look in the rearview mirror that took his attention from the wheel. Bren clamped his mouth shut after that. But Banichi and the driver started a conversation—during which the driver kept looking to the back seat to make his points.

“Please, nadi!” Bren said.

Gravel went over the edge. Their right tires bridged a washout and narrowly missed the rim. He was certain of it.