Foreigner

“The rail system.”

“Pish. We invented the rail. You improved it.”

That was true, though atevi trains and steamships had been only the most rudimentary design, and boilers had burst with frightening regularity.

“So what more, paidhi? Rockets to the moons? Travel amongst the stars?”

A far more dangerous topic. “I’d like, yes, to see atevi at least reach that threshold in my lifetime. Nai-ji, so much is possible from there. So much you could do then. But we aren’t sure of the changes that would make, and I want to understand what would result. I want to give good advice. That’s my job, nai-ji.” He had never himself seen it so clearly, until now. “We’re at the edge of space. And so much changes once you can look down on the world.”

“What changes?”

One more dangerous question, this one cultural and philosophical. He looked outward, at the lake, the whole world seeming to lie below the path they rode.

“Height changes your perspective, nai-ji. We see three provinces from here. But my eye can’t see the treaty-boundaries.”

“Mine can. That mountain ridge. The river. They’re quite evident.”

“But were this mountain as high as the great moon, nai-ji, and if were you born on this very high mountain, would you see the lines? Or, if you saw them, would they mean to you what they mean to people born on the plain, these distant, invisible lines?”

“ Man’chiis man’chi. Man’chiis important. And to a dweller on the border—what meaning, these lines aijiin agree on? Man’chiis never visible.”

It was gratifying to expect the answer one got, the same that Tabini inevitably gave. It was gratifying to think one did accurately forecast atevi sentiments. It was useful to know about Ilisidi.

“So that wouldn’t change,” he said. “Even if you stood on the highest mountain.”

“ Man’chiwould never change,” Ilisidi said.

“Even if you left the sight of the world for years and years.”

“In hell and on earth, man’chiwould not change. But you don’t understand this, you humans.” Babs struck a slight rise, and for a moment walked solitary, until Nokhada caught up. Ilisidi dowager said, “Or you never tell your enemies, if you do change.”

That, too, was in the machimi plays. The catastrophic event, the overturning of a life’s understandings. But always toward the truth, as he saw it. Always toward what man’chishould have been.

Ilisidi offered no explanation of her remark. Perhaps he was supposed to have asked something wise. But imagination failed him.

“We truthfully didn’t understand your view of things, nai-ji, when we first arrived. We didn’t understand atevi. You didn’t understand us. That’s one of the great and unfortunate reasons of the War.”

“The unfortunate reason of the War was humans taking Mospheira, to which they had no right. It was hundreds of thousands of atevi dislodged from their homes. It was man’chibroken, because we couldn’t deal with your weapons, nand’ paidhi.” The dowager’s voice wasn’t angry, only severe, and emphatic. “And slowly you raise us up to have technology, and more technology. Does this not seem a foolish thing to do?”

Not the first time he’d met that question, either. Atevi asked it among themselves, when they thought the paidhi would hear no report of their discussion. Thwarted councillors shouted it at the paidhi in council. Not even to Tabini could he give the untranslatable, the true answer: We thought we could make you our friends.

So he gave the official, the carefully worked out, translatable reply: “We saw association possible. We saw advantage to us in your good will in this region where fortune had cast us.”

“You tell us whether we shall have roads, or rail. You deny us what pleases you to deny. You promise us wonders. But the great wonders, as I hear, are on Mospheira, for the enjoyment of humans, who have paved roads.”

‘’A very few. Fewer than you have.“

“On a continent a thousand times the size of Mospheira. Be honest, nand’ paidhi.”

“With vehicles that don’t use internal combustion. Which will come, nai-ji, which will come to atevi.”

“In your lifetime… or in mine?”

“Perhaps in thirty years. Perhaps less. Depending on whether we have the necessary industry. Depending on finding resources. Depending on the associations and the provinces finding it politic to cooperate in producing scarce items, in depending on computers. Depending on man’chi, and who’s willing and not willing to work together, and how successful the first programs are… but I needn’t tell that to the aiji-dowager, who knows the obstinacy of vested interests.”

He had made the dowager laugh, if briefly and darkly. The sun cast Ilisidi’s black profile in shadow against the hazy distances of the sky and the lake. They rode a while in silence, there on the crest of the mountain, with the wind picking up the mecheiti’s manes and himself rocking, child-sized, on the back of a creature bred to carry atevi into their infrequent and terrible wars.

“There’s the airport,” Ilisidi said, pointing ahead of them.