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 accuracyc 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, or anything but terrible. He thought it ought to have changed him—but it was mostly just not there in his thinking.

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 onc 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 hopec 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 knewc 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.