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Authors: C. J. Cherryh
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beneficent smile. He was curious about the interior himself, but dignity insisted he wait, and he simply stood and looked at it, and awaited his staff’s prior assessment of its fitness.
“It is very fine, nandi,” Ramaso reported to him. “The seats are gray leather, and the carpeting is gray.”
Not quite in harmony with local dust and mud, he thought. He hadn’t expressed a preference on color. He’d left that to staff and chance, willing to take any color that happened to be ready to roll onto a train car, roll off at Najida Station, and provide him and his staff with some transport that was not the sniper opportunity of an open truckbed. Red. Hardly inconspicuous, either.
“Stock it for a proper reception of our arriving guest,” he said to Ramaso. “Fruit juice, at this hour. The traditional things. And the bar. The space station’s time is not our time, so one has no idea what our guest will desire. One understands there will be a call advising us when Lord Geigi’s plane is about to land, not before then.”
That arrangement was for security’s sake. Geigi, they now knew, was coming in at Najida’s airport, which was hardly more than a grass strip and a wind sock—and from what prior landing they had had no information, for just the same reason of security. Separti Township, which had a much larger, round-the-clock airport, was not a thoroughly safe place, and one thought it just possible Geigi was coming in direct, taking a prop plane clear from Shejidan Airport. One was sure that if he did land at Separti, it would be with the aiji’s security in place to assure the safety of any plane he boarded there . . . but one had still had no word where exactly Geigi was, even yet.
Such grim thoughts kept the paidhi-aiji from quite enjoying the novelty of his big new bus. And upon Ramaso’s report, and without so much as a personal look inside, in proper lordly form, he retreated to his office to deal with the invoice that came with the bus, a thick bundle of papers which a servant brought him on a silver tray. The invoice, in six figures, debited his personal finances, not the estate—the bill would have upset the annual budget considerably, right when they wanted the books to look their best, in any upcoming legislative scrutiny of the Edi region.
At that point, Banichi and Jago traded off their duty with Tano and Algini—the latter reporting, as they arrived in the office, that the security office had finished the move to the library, and were set up there.
So he did the accounts and filed the papers while staff loaded the bus with necessary things. At a very small side table, Tano and Algini settled down to a quiet card game—a variant of poker had made its way to the mainland a decade ago, and atevi were quite good at it. Superstitious atevi put far too much ominous freight on its nuances, but atevi who weren’t at all superstitious about numbers were frighteningly adept. When those two played, it was a spectator sport.
And just a little distracting from the far more important numbers he was dealing with.
But he had ample business to occupy him: the finances regarding the bus were one account. Plus the estate needed to order in a delivery of fuel, what with all the recent coming and going . . . and that delivery was, under current circumstances, a high security risk. The fueling station for the whole peninsula was in the village, a supply the village truck and the fishing boats and the estate bus all used. He wrote out orders for the fuel purchases, too, to be billed to his personal account. And he made a note to staff to consult security all the way on that delivery and to have several of the dowager’s staff overseeing it from the depot in Separti all the way to Najida.
He was not in the habit of spending money in such massive amounts. He generally let his finances accumulate, had let them ride for the last number of years, and was shocked to find the bus did not put a cautionary dent in
“It is very fine, nandi,” Ramaso reported to him. “The seats are gray leather, and the carpeting is gray.”
Not quite in harmony with local dust and mud, he thought. He hadn’t expressed a preference on color. He’d left that to staff and chance, willing to take any color that happened to be ready to roll onto a train car, roll off at Najida Station, and provide him and his staff with some transport that was not the sniper opportunity of an open truckbed. Red. Hardly inconspicuous, either.
“Stock it for a proper reception of our arriving guest,” he said to Ramaso. “Fruit juice, at this hour. The traditional things. And the bar. The space station’s time is not our time, so one has no idea what our guest will desire. One understands there will be a call advising us when Lord Geigi’s plane is about to land, not before then.”
That arrangement was for security’s sake. Geigi, they now knew, was coming in at Najida’s airport, which was hardly more than a grass strip and a wind sock—and from what prior landing they had had no information, for just the same reason of security. Separti Township, which had a much larger, round-the-clock airport, was not a thoroughly safe place, and one thought it just possible Geigi was coming in direct, taking a prop plane clear from Shejidan Airport. One was sure that if he did land at Separti, it would be with the aiji’s security in place to assure the safety of any plane he boarded there . . . but one had still had no word where exactly Geigi was, even yet.
Such grim thoughts kept the paidhi-aiji from quite enjoying the novelty of his big new bus. And upon Ramaso’s report, and without so much as a personal look inside, in proper lordly form, he retreated to his office to deal with the invoice that came with the bus, a thick bundle of papers which a servant brought him on a silver tray. The invoice, in six figures, debited his personal finances, not the estate—the bill would have upset the annual budget considerably, right when they wanted the books to look their best, in any upcoming legislative scrutiny of the Edi region.
At that point, Banichi and Jago traded off their duty with Tano and Algini—the latter reporting, as they arrived in the office, that the security office had finished the move to the library, and were set up there.
So he did the accounts and filed the papers while staff loaded the bus with necessary things. At a very small side table, Tano and Algini settled down to a quiet card game—a variant of poker had made its way to the mainland a decade ago, and atevi were quite good at it. Superstitious atevi put far too much ominous freight on its nuances, but atevi who weren’t at all superstitious about numbers were frighteningly adept. When those two played, it was a spectator sport.
And just a little distracting from the far more important numbers he was dealing with.
But he had ample business to occupy him: the finances regarding the bus were one account. Plus the estate needed to order in a delivery of fuel, what with all the recent coming and going . . . and that delivery was, under current circumstances, a high security risk. The fueling station for the whole peninsula was in the village, a supply the village truck and the fishing boats and the estate bus all used. He wrote out orders for the fuel purchases, too, to be billed to his personal account. And he made a note to staff to consult security all the way on that delivery and to have several of the dowager’s staff overseeing it from the depot in Separti all the way to Najida.
He was not in the habit of spending money in such massive amounts. He generally let his finances accumulate, had let them ride for the last number of years, and was shocked to find the bus did not put a cautionary dent in
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