Deliverer by C. J. Cherryh
His guard liked the informal ways of Taiben. He, on the other hand, was accustomed to servants at his elbow, oh, indeed he was. He had grown up first with his mother and father, in the most servant-ridden place in the world, and then with great-uncle Tatiseigi, who was a stickler for propriety, and finally with Great-grandmother, traveling in space with nand’ Bren, in a vast ship far too small to hide him from proper manners. It was first from Uncle Tatiseigi and then from Great-grandmother he had learned his courtesies: they were very old-fashioned, and insisted on the forms even if they secretly didn’t believe in the superstitions. He had been locked up in Great-grandmother’s apartment for two years on the ship, and she had made sure he would be fit to come back as his father’s son and her great-grandson—his left ear had gotten positively tender from all the thwacking.
He had left the world when he was six. He was now in that awkward year before nine, that year so infelicitous one could not name it, let alone celebrate its birthday in any happy way. That was very bad fortune, since it was the only birthday he had had a chance to have with his new associates on shipboard—Great-grandmother had finally agreed he might have a small celebration, and then he had not even gotten that much, because of the crisis—because they had plunged right down to earth on the shuttle, leaving all his shipboard associates behind and spending the next number of days getting shot at…
Well, except he had gotten to ride in the engine of a train. That had been exciting.
He was very precocious in his behavior and in his schooling: nand’ Bren said so, so he was already as good as nine, was he not?
He could speak Bren’s native Mosphei’, as well as ship-speak. He could speak kyo, for that matter, which only a handful of atevi or humans could do. He had learned to ride and shoot before he went into space—well, he could ride, at least: he had learned to shoot on the ship; and Great-grandmother had taught him how to write a formal hand in all the good forms and made him memorize all the lords of the Association and their rights and duties…and proper addresses…
So he was really not too uncivilized to be at their table, was he?
He was not yet fluent enough in adult Ragi to dance across the nuances, as Great-grandmother called it. Using it could still get him into embarrassing trouble. And it was ever so hard just to sit and listen when really interesting questions were bubbling up into his head.
But he could at least parse everything that was proper at that table. Bren, a Stability of One, he most-times referred to very properly as Bren-nandi. Bren’s guards were, together, Bren-aishini, not just aishi, the association of Bren-paidhi, and his guards were aishishi, meaning the protective surrounds.1 So, there! He could handle the basic forms of the adult language and remember to put in the compensatory numbers—that was at least sure, and people did use the easy forms, well, at least they did informally, or when they were pretending to be informal, which was a layer of pretending which he understood, but he was not supposed to use it with adults or he was being insolent…
How could one learn the whole nuance of adult Ragi if no one would ever talk with him?
How could he be i-ron-ic if people only took him for a baby who used the wrong form because he had not a clue?
He wanted company other than Great-grandmother’s staff. He wanted people he could surprise and make laugh.
He missed Gene and Artur, his ship-aishi (one could not call them aishini, or at least one had certainly better not do it in Great-grandmother’s hearing.) He had gotten more used to young humans than he was to atevi over the last two years, and still found it strange to look across his own informal table and see two dark, golden-eyed atevi faces, so earnest, so—
That was the heart of his domestic problem. Antaro and Jegari felt man’chi toward him, a sense of duty and devotion so passionate it had drawn them away from all their kin to live in a city they hardly understood. It had brought them to risk their lives for him on a dangerous journey, with people shooting at them, and he knew he should feel a pure, deep emotion toward them in turn—great-grandmother had said on the ship that he was in real danger of never developing proper feelings, which would be a very unhealthy thing; and that once he was back in the world, proper feelings would come to him, and that what he felt toward his aishini would be ever so much stronger than anything he had ever possibly felt toward Gene and Artur, because that feeling would be returned…in ways Gene and Artur could never return what he needed.
But on that point everything broke down and hurt, it just outright hurt, because Gene and Artur did care about him, in their human way, and he knew they still cared—in their human way. He knew they had been hurt when he left—they must have hurt the same way as he hurt, and no one would acknowledge it.
Aishimuta. Breach of association. Losing someone you never thought of losing.
Losing someone you could never even explain to anyone, someone that no one else thought you could care about…there ought to be a word for that, too, even worse than aishimuta. He had never thought he would lose Gene and Artur. He had been so confident he could just bring them home with him when he had to go down to the world, and that sensible grown-ups would, with no problem at all, agree to the idea of their living with him.
That had been juvenile thinking, had it not?
And once their coming down to earth had fallen seamlessly into place, so his plans had run, of course he would bring Gene and Artur to his father and his mother and tell his parents what wonderful associates they were, and how clever, and unusual, and all those things, and the whole world would understand it was a wonderful arrangement. He would have Gene and Artur with him forever, the way his father had nand’ Bren to advise him about humans, and everything would be perfect and happy.
He had been a fool. Great-grandmother had not quite said that word, but he was sure she had disparaged his plans in private and spared him her opinion, only advancing that argument that there would be someone who would appeal to him when he reached home, and that he would know that person, or those people, in a situation that felt right. According to her, there would be no question what he felt…all the things everyone told him he would feel…
And for one moment, he had almost had it. When Antaro and Jegari had declared for him that day in the forest, with so many dangers around him, he had accepted it—he had been surprised by their gesture, for one thing, and he had believed that something special would flash down from the heavens or something—he didn’t know exactly what. But he was open to it. He had tried.
But he still waited to feel it take hold of him.
Now he felt uneasy in his connection with Antaro and Jegari, who had done so much for him. It was true they were comfortable companions and he felt at ease with them. He knew what their expressions meant as if he had known them all his life, and he could guess what they were thinking with fair accuracy…that was something. They were faces like his own, black, golden-eyed, and naturally subtle around strangers. They were not at all like aboard the ship, where no one stood on ceremony—where he could all but hear Gene shout down the hall in that reckless, wonderful, irreverent way, “Hey! Jeri!”
He was Jeri. He had been delighted to know it was a proper human name, too, the way it was a proper atevi one.
And oh, he missed that voice, and that irreverence, and that sense of fun. And he felt so guilty and ashamed of himself for it. Antaro and Jegari were a steady warmth, not a spark and a flash. They never offered a really wicked glance, the way Gene would look at him to let him know some adventure was brewing and they were about to risk trouble. Jegari and Antaro would ask, cautiously and solemnly, “Do you think your great-grandmother would approve, nandi?”
And that was the way his life was supposed to be. Solemn. Cautious.
Well, he supposed he had had adventures enough for one year at least, riding on mecheiti and buses and trains and being shot at—he had shot a man himself, because he had to, to save their lives, but he had no wish to remember that part, which was not glorious, or an adventure,
Certainly a lot of people had died. That had been horrible, too. And he knew that just the journey had changed things around him—more, that it had changed him in ways he was still figuring out.
But the thing that really hit hardest was how close he had come to losing everyone he really knew and relied on…the last remaining: Great-grandmother, and nand’ Bren, and their aishini. All his associations in the whole universe were, if not broken, at least stretched painfully thin, and people wanted to shove others at him, fast, while he was alone and desperate. That was a nasty thing to do. A few meant well—Great-grandmother, and nand’ Bren. But lords were all but battering at the door to introduce him to their own children, and he just would not see them: Great-grandmother at least supported him in that.
He had learned that not everything was that sure in his life: that was the second lesson he had gotten on this voyage. Having lost the heavens, he had come within a breath of losing everything that was ever going to matter on earth, too, and right now he was stranded with no chance ever to get back to the heavens, because the shuttles were not flying, and might never, if certain people had had their way. It had been close, on that score, but great-grandmother and Lord Bren had taken precautions, and the shuttles were being protected—for which he was very grateful.
In recent days he had been alone, and scared of being alone, and of dying alone, although dying was something he still could not quite figure out—how it was, or how it worked. And he had met Jegari and Antaro, who had some promise, if they weren’t so rule-following.
And they were going to get the shuttles flying again, so there was still hope….
But he was not supposed to think about Gene and Artur coming down here, and worse, he had to face the possibility they might not ever be able to. Now he understood how very politically difficult it was going to be, to bring humans anywhere near him, and how people would be watching him and suspecting him. He saw how people all over the world had blamed nand’ Bren for everything that had gone wrong, which was just unfair, but that was how people had wanted to think, because it was easier to blame humans for everything that was the matter, and now for people to blame any association he had ever had with humans for any peculiarity he would ever have or any bad thing he ever did—that was just wrong. It was wrong, and he could not go for years being good. It just made him so mad he could just—
But one could not. One had to be calm, and act like an adult to get one’s way. And most people were coming to a different opinion about nand’ Bren, now, so maybe the trouble would die down.
But it could take years.
Great-grandmother had told Uncle Tatiseigi that he had had enough association-separation in his young life so far; and great-uncle Tatiseigi had argued he had come out of it perfectly fine for a boy in an unfortunate year of his life. Uncle Tatiseigi had told Great-grandmother he was not unbalanced in his head: that much was nice of Great-uncle. But then uncle Tatiseigi had added that he certainly would have been unbalanced if he had stayed in space much longer, that there were clear signs of improper thoughts, and it was a damned good thing he had come down here among real people.
That had made him mad, too, but that was Great-uncle.
And at least he knew his elders worried about him, and great-uncle did sincerely worry that he had grown up under questionable influences. The problem was, Great-uncle had very firm opinions about what was right for him, and unluckily for him, Great-grandmother and Great-uncle were not that far apart in their arguments. Uncle Tatiseigi would like him never to mention humans again. Great-grandmother wanted him to give up even thinking about Gene and Artur, and she was hoping, too, that he would forget about them coming down to earth, ever.
And years and years could pass, and they might quiet down about bad influences, but that would be long after he had grown up sane and normal and Gene and Artur had turned into human adults he would never even recognize if he saw them.
That hurt. That thought already wore a deep sore where it lodged and was not going to heal, because he never intended to let it. It made him resolve one thing, that the moment he did get any power, he was going to bring anybody he wanted down to the earth and keep them there.
Ripping him away from every association he knew…was that not damage to his psyche, too?
And if it did hurt him, and everybody knew it, why did familial-adults he trusted keep doing this to him? Why did they think it was for his own good?
Because he had to rule the aishidi’tat when he grew up, that was what, and there had been a war, a stupid, long-ago war, and that was why he could never be too close to humans. That was why everything bad had happened.
And something in him wanted to explode whenever he thought about it, but he could never let his upset show, because that would absolutely assure he never got power.
He would not have chosen differently for his life than Great-grandmother had done for him this far: he never would have missed the voyage with Bren and Great-grandmother, he never would choose to miss knowing Gene and Artur—
And he was absolutely sure that the adults who had combined to make his life miserable in his homecoming did not really have him particularly in mind when they did it—that was what Great-grandmother would say: she had said, word for word: No one is thinking too much about you, young gentleman. There are larger things at issue. If my distressing you were at all personal, you would have no confusion at all about the fact.
That was the truth. He was quite sure of it. And he was disabused—Great-grandmother’s word—of any notion that the world was going to change its ways to accommodate him. He had imagined being his father’s son would mean being rich, and happy and getting just about anything he wanted.
His father, it turned out, had to make compromises, and the world was complicated, and no, he could not even ask his father for what he most wanted.
All his rank thus far had done for him was to see everyone he attached to had to leave him alone for his own good, because they weren’t perfect enough, in the opinion of his great-grandmother or his great-uncle, or even, in Bren’s case and his uncle’s and his grandmother’s, because they were important and busy and had no time to bring up a boy. His father had welcomed him, hugged him close, looked him in the eyes, and straightway gone off to talk to people about an assassination in the south; his mother had hugged him, remarked how he had grown, patted his cheek, and gone off to talk to Uncle Tatiseigi and the lord of the Ajuri about where they were staying and how they were going to deal with Lord Bren’s apartment.
He knew, because Great-grandmother had told him, that being aiji was necessarily a lonely job. He already knew that ruling the aishidi’tat meant owing no aiji-respect, only collecting it from others—he had made a start with Antaro and Jegari—and if one was born to be aiji, one had different sorts of emotions from the rest of the world. One was just peculiar, compared to other people. He would be sitting someday at the top of a pyramid of man’chi, and getting it all, but needing to dispense, well, very little, in an obligatory way, though Great-grandmother told him that a wise aiji was as good as he knew how to be or people left him in short order, the way they had left Murini.
So he could have a few people close to him, but mostly he had to deal with everybody equally and impartially…because that was good, and it kept everyone happy. Favoring certain people was a bad thing. If one was aiji.
Was he that peculiar-minded? He had no idea. Loneliness sounded—well, boring as well as painful. He had no way to tell if it meant something else to other people.
On the ship he had been amazingly safe, and comfortable, and could do almost anything he liked when he was off with Gene and their other associates—and was that not having power, even when he had to worry about getting caught? It was never serious. Nobody died. Nobody even got hurt—well, much…
Here he had to slip about to do the least little thing, and i
Now he had won the place he was supposed to have…and everything had changed for the worse. He was bored and irritated most of the time he was just with Jegari and Antaro, bored and lonely when he was by himself. Great-grandmother no longer gave him his daily lessons. She forgot he existed.
He was a prisoner, was all, not even invited to breakfast on the balcony.
He pushed his plate back. “Nadiin-ji,” he said to his young bodyguards, “I have no appetite. But one has no wish to worry Cook. Will you make it disappear?”
“May we ask, nandi?” Taro asked, the sister of the pair.
A deep sigh. And two devout faces stared at him, concerned and with their own world out of sorts, because he frowned at them and said he was out of sorts.
He saw how the atmosphere was of his own making. He decided it was time for a supreme effort, and that he was going to break several rules at once.
“I shall talk about Gene and Artur,” he said solemnly. “About the ship. About how we lived aboard.”
“We will be glad to hear,” Jegari said earnestly, as if Jegari really were glad, even relieved. Antaro’s face brightened, too.
“I might have an egg or two,” Cajeiri said. Having made up his mind to talk, and having met actual enthusiasm for a change, he found something of an appetite to go with it.
He had shared tea with a kyo, a being neither Taro nor Jegari could imagine, even having seen pictures of that event. He could tell them about that association.
He had done so very much in his young life, and to have Great-grandmother telling him—but not directly ordering him—to drop all his former associations…