"Tabini-ma. The woman is a —"

"— fool?"

"Naive," he said faintly.

"Lord Geigi, as you know, is a Determinist. With immense oil reserves. Is she insulting his beliefs? Or promising him revenue — what do you say — under the table?"

"One could, if one were Geigi, be very confused."

"Especially since Geigi is heavily in debt. Notfor public release. The man is desperate."

"God," he breathed, and a shaky, perilous vision opened in front of him — the Association tottering on uncertain communications, disaffection of the lords, numerology confounded. Faster-than-light was now a fact in certain atevi minds, God knew how far the rumor had spread. The Determinist numerologists would have heard about it: ultimately the astronomers and the space scientists were going to hear the transmissions from the ship. The seed, as the atevi proverb had it, would see the sun.

Then unless there was some clever face-saving device on which the Determinists might explain their embarrassing paradox, all hell was going to break loose. Important people would be called liars, respected authorities and culturally important systems would be overthrown by incontrovertible fact — possibly even taken down in bloodshed, since flesh and bone supported these glass structures of belief.

"I'll deal with Hanks."

"Faster-than-light." Tabini reached aside to let Eidi pour a cup of tea. "And do we, after all, deal with death rays next?"

"I trust not," he breathed, while his mind was searching wildly for justification, for rationalization with Departmental policy, for somethingthat could let him tell Tabini the thoughts that hit a fevered human brain with sudden, rare, atevi-language clarity. He couldn't count on recovering the moment tomorrow, not the approach to both Tabini and the situation.

"Aiji-ma, here's the fact that occurs to me: atevi assume weapons. But weapons weren't the real threat in the War."

"Ask the dead."

"No, but they weren't decisive. We had the weapons — which did us no good. What hurt atevi — the very threat that hangs over Mospheira andatevi — is the mere shock of them being here. The numbers they deal with. Their bringing new things into the world faster than atevi can adjust. The same mistakes we made — and destabilized the society, the economy. Everything." The shoulder was giving him sudden, particular pain at the angle he'd chosen in the chair, and the threads of logic tried to escape him, but he hung on. "Worse, aiji-ma, we're not dealing with a slow information flow among atevi this time. Now it's instant information, instant crisis, instant reaction, as fast as television can throw it at the world. And if change comes at people so fast the electorate doesn't understand it, aiji-ma, if people can't plan for their own personal futures, if the businesses can't adjust to it — fast enough —"

" Baji-naji," Tabini said, and shrugged — which was to say, proverbially, that the random devil lurked in every design, and the numbers could inevitably forecast, but not infallibly predict. "We survived it once. We even, as you recall, won the resultant war."

"That, I swear to you, I swearto you without hearing them — isn't their intent. We don't want a war."

"War shouldn't have happened the last time. But how will we avoid it? Don't just tell me we're wiser. Or that you are. Tell me who Hanks is representing."

He drew a slow breath, only to win time to think. He'd led Tabini around to hisargument; now, in a turnabout which confused a weary brain, he was back where Tabini had led him — feeling the dull ache spread from the newly fused bone, and sensing Tabini's belief in him, Tabini's expectations of him, riding on a knife's edge of attention.

"I don't know, but I'll find out, aiji-ma. Certainly she's not representing that ship. Or the Foreign Office, at this point. They sent meback. And I will notlet everything we've worked for go down, aiji-ma."

"So. The paidhi will mediate. Is that what you say? The paidhi will convince the Mospheiran authorities, the Foreign Office and the internal authorities of this ship, and speak my arguments and myrequirements?"

Tabini was pushing a sick man and Tabini damned well knew it. Tabini had his own job to do, for his people, and Tabini wanted information out of the best and readiest source he had.

Tabini also believed in truth under duress. Tabini would push in such sessions until he got something of substance from the paidhi and felt that sufficient truth was on the table. You couldn't put him off, not unless you were prepared to see Tabini pull far, far back.

The paidhi damned well knew that trait. And knew when to gamble.

"All right, aiji-ma, you want to know what course humans on Mospheira can possibly take. One — fall in line behind these people and end up negotiating with them for the ability of their young, their talented, and their ablest people to go up to the station and live, because — and I gather Hanks has raised the issue — neither you nor we have the industrial base to build a launch system. If we take their transport, we become passengers — on somebody else's space program. Or —"

Pain was coming in waves. He had to shift back in the chair and risk mistaken interpretation of body language. "I'm sorry, aiji-ma, a twinge."

"Or," Tabini said.

Primary rule: neverleave an explanation for an ateva to fill in the blanks.

"Or, aiji-ma, the world can try, as I think Hanks is legitimately suggesting, aside from her oil industry estimates, to build the requisite industrial base under our own regulation, as fast as the world can deal with it, and refuse to go faster. Ordinary folk aren't going to give up their homes or their plans. The aiji in Shejidan can't trample on the opinions of a Wingin brickinason, no more than the President of Mospheira can tell some North Shore fisherman in my brother's town that he's going to go up into space and work on some orbiting fish farm. They'd have to come and get him. The same as your atevi mason."

"Ah, but what when these celestial visitors offer you cures for disease? Instant technology? Instant answers? It strikes me that Mospheira is in the same position we were in when you came floating down out of our sky. These people can offer you your dearest ambitions. These people can make you lords."

"Aiji-ma, these people should approach Mospheira and Shejidan both with greattrepidation. You're absolutely right about the bait they'll use, consciously or unconsciously. But we can't take it. The Treaty is our collective safety, aiji-ma. You and I haveinternal differences, emotionally, logically, culturally, that these strangers don't know about. You have natural allies in humans who want to stay on this planet. We have to make Mospheira listen, and we have to make the snip crew listen to us."

"They might simply decide our objections were irrelevant."

"Unfortunately they don't need to do a damned thing — excuse me, aiji-ma — but rebuild the station and sit up there to preempt atevi everachieving the future they might have had."

"So? Would this not benefit you — even your fisherman — in the long run?"

"Aiji-ma, we came down to build factories and make roads and transgress the lines of atevi associations with no sense of the damage we were doing. But that ship up there — that's not a chemical rocket. Believe me that it's just as disruptive of my world."

"Not your world."

"Then we've nowhereto belong, Tabini-ma." They'd gone past what he intended and he'd said far more than he meant to. He wasn't sure now what impression he'd created that he couldn't undo. His head was throbbing. He felt a wave of dizziness and nausea. He picked up the teacup, controlled action, trying to control the information he passed. "I wantto go into space, understand, Tabini-ma. I want that — personally, for me, I want so much to go up there I can't explain it. But I won't sell atevi interests to get that ticket, and I won't sell Mospheira."