Protector

My associates are coming down here. I have to be good until then. I have to follow all the rules and do my homework and be so good even my mother will be happy.

And once my guests get here, then there has to be something to show them when they come. They have never seen the ocean. They have never seen trees and grass. They have never seen a sunrise. I had to describe it all for them.

I have to show them everything. I have to show them the best things, so we have something to talk about, and they will want to come back.

I would like them to come back. I would like them to be here when I grow up. I would like to have people like nand’ Bren, who have no clan, and owe nothing to anybody else. Just to me.

8

Morning brought mail and a last cup of tea to follow the paidhi-aiji’s solitary breakfast. The apartment was very quiet now—not that Geigi had ever made a lot of noise as a houseguest, but the sense of lordly presence in the place was gone.

So was Geigi’s company at breakfast, the distraction of his cheerful conversation on completely idle but interesting topics. That part had been pleasant.

The shuttle was well on its way, safely clear of the atmosphere. Geigi was headed home, and the complex affairs and troubles of the space station had become just a little less intimately connected to the problems of the continent.

That was, over all, a good thing.

So was the quiet, in which he could, at last, think without interruption. They were not necessarily pleasant thoughts, regarding the problem of the Ajuri, and the imminent legislative session with its necessary committee meetings, and committee politics. And there was going to be a question of what he was going to do with guests whose parents had an agenda—

But those were questions he could sidestep. The parentsweren’t coming. Wouldn’t be allowed to come. Just deal with the children as children, don’t let anyone get hurt, and translate for them—Cajeiri’s ship-speak had to be a little rusty after a year—and he was sure he’d be drawn in for all the tours and the festivities, to be surethe guests had a good time.

Of all jobs he had ahead of him—that one might actually have some real enjoyment in it.

Give or take a boy who’d already been arrested by station security.

But that was, he said to himself, possibly Cajeiri’s influence.

He could handle it. Absolutely.

And Geigi by now, thank goodness, understood their earthbound worries, andthe security issues his bodyguard would have explained by now. The paidhi-aiji’s security could protect the kids; the parents were Geigi’s problem.

He had his own share of loose ends to tie up.

The tribal bill. The cell phone bill. He had to arrange meetings, formal and informal, talk to the right people, have his arguments in order, and get done what had to be done before the next shuttle landed and brought him kids who might, on first seeing a flat horizon, heave up their breakfasts.

The cell phone bill was certain to raise eyebrows. Explaining whyhe’d pulled his support from it, and would in fact vetoit—technically, Tabini still granted him that ability, where it regarded human tech—that was going to be the problem with that one. He didn’t want to dust off the veto power. He reallydidn’t. He wanted the atevi to vote it down.

The tribal bill was far from a sure thing, and potentially could blow up. Problems regarding the status of the tribal peoples had hung fire since the War of the Landing, which had displaced the Edi and Gan peoples from the island of Mospheira, and settled them in two separate coastal areas. They—quite reasonably, in his opinion—wanted full membership in the aishidi’tat, and even with the favorable report of the two Associations nearest the tribal lands, they still had some old prejudices to deal with. The most bitterly opposed, the Marid, was going to vote forthe measure: Ilisidihad accomplished that miracle. The southwest coast, Geigi’s district, was going to vote for it; the northern Coastal Association, where the Gan lived, had Dur’s backing, and thatvote was assured.