There were a handful of less formal cases: atevi disputes or atevi advisements. The messages were from departments, two, by appearance, even from common workers: certain mediations with humans might properly come directly to the paidhi-aiji, a right guaranteed by centuries-old law.

And a handful of human language printouts. His staff had rolled them into the traditional form—and he feared one of those mightbe a letter from his relatives, who any hour now might hear via the news services he had been in Shejidan and hadn’tcalled—he’d catch hell for that, when his mother knew.

And at the bottom, an accident of shape, not priority, rested a couple of flat, sealed disks that were with equal certainty from various station departments—data he’d requested.

Besides those, still more letters would come flowing into the mail system from the planet, following the memorial service. He could forecast that as he could forecast a storm from the smell in the air. From down there, adding to the mail he’d brought up with him, would come letters ranging from the thoughtful, well-dispositioned observations of lords he did deal with on legitimate business, to less useful suggestions from the amateur but well-meaning, and so on down to the truly unbalanced, be they harmless or otherwise—rather more of those than the real proportion, actually. He had a very large staff on the planet whose job was to filter the mail—but they did pass through the choicest crackpot letters. Such missives, however amusing, gave him a useful sense of the fringe element—and the things sane atevi might actually feel, but would not express or admit. The fears of shuttles puncturing the atmosphere and letting all the air out had diminished significantly, for instance: those were easy. The alien threat was not, and now second-class machimi had a whole new subject matter: alien invasions which came down on sails of flame, destroying cities, frightening children into nightmares. There was an ongoing machimi involving an atevi starship crew fighting off aliens that remarkably looked like other atevi dressed like humans.

He truly didn’t approve of those, but that failed to stop them.

Well, but he was glad to have matters underway with Geigi… and could scarcely wait to inform Geigi about the robots, which really was Ginny’s triumph to reveal first, to Ramirez and the ship council… but Geigi was more his territory, and discreet with the other two camps.

So he could be sure Geigi’s business wasn’t the robots. The urgency was more likely Geigi’s precious fish tanks—not the decorative ones in Geigi’s office, rather the big ones that were meant to feed the space-based population. That was the project Geigi was determined to build as soon as they could spare the labor and machinery from the refueling effort. After three years, priorities were being reset, and he just bet that Geigi was intent on getting his own project to the top of the heap—especially hoping he’d come back from the planet with some new sense of the aiji’s next priorities.

He wasn’t averse to Geigi’s program. In fact he was in favor of it. But he wondered, on his way to the bedroom, whether he could get a reciprocal concession out of Geigi. They were close associates, but that never meant one couldn’t look for advantage in a situation. It was simply the way negotiations happened in court.

A younger manservant appeared in the hallway to inform him, a formality, that his bath was waiting… never mind the shower was always available: it was the form, the welcome home. He went in, shed the clothes into the manservant’s waiting hands, stepped into the shower and vigorously scrubbed away the residue of candle-smoke and incense that had come with him from the memorial.

Simply shutting his eyes reconstructed that vault, and the world, and the mourners all eyeing one another up and down the rows like predator and prey.

Poor Cajeiri. His first public ceremonial, and he’d embarrassed the house, and his present and past guardians.

But the diplomatic relations of the aiji with the East weren’t his problem. The East-West problem all belonged to Tabini and Ilisidi now, and there was no one in the world—literally—better at handling those stresses and strains on the social fabric. The aishidi’tat stood firm. Tabini ran it; he intended it to survive, and its welfare, however habituated the thought, was just not the paidhi’s problem any longer.

Neither was the heir to the aishidi’tat the paidhi’s concern.

He neededto sift through the mail. He needed to solve the pressing problems up here in the heavens.

Not least among them the matter of a fish tank and the prioritization of Ginny’s new robots.

He let the water course over him and laid his strategy for a visit to Geigi.

And for a phone call down to the planet, to give a hello to Toby, who’d want a reasonable answer as to whyhis brother hadn’t phoned when he was in easy range of a visit. That had to be a very, very carefully given excuse.

He felt guilty about that choice. He really did. But the schedule hadbeen rushed. He was tired from the trip as it was. Sandwiching a flying trip to the island into his other business…

Honestly, no, that wasn’t it. Toby’s letters were full of troubles he couldn’t solve and his phone calls were harder still. No, I can’tgrew thinner and thinner as the years passed, particularly when he was in range, and pleasewas so implicit in every conversation he had with Toby. Please come down here, please don’t be out of touch, please tell me what to do with Mother.

Hell if he knew. There wasn’ta good answer, not outside of their mother deciding to do something different than she’d done for the last forty years. Mospheirans didn’t change easily. Their mother didn’t change, period.

Most of all, hardest for him to deal with Toby’s queries on his marital crises: What do I do about Jill? How do I keep her?

Say no to Motherwas the only answer he knew. Don’t try to stand in where I know damn well neither of us should be. Get out of there. Don’t go when Mother calls.

You think after all these years I’m going to have a better answer? Me, the unmarried one?

He scrubbed his face and his hair, hard, not even wanting to think about that next communication with Toby. He couldn’t play part-time marriage counselor, or psychologist, not atop everything else. He had—

God, he had Sandra Johnson’s plants in his baggage. And uninvited as they were, she’d gone to a great deal of trouble to give him that gift. He didn’t want to account for their accidental demise in the letter he was bound to get.

He put his head out of the shower and spied Bindanda.

“Danda-ji, there are some plant slips with my carry-on baggage. Would you kindly find out how to pot them?”

In an orbiting apartment with no pots, no soil and no fertilizer. But his staff necessarily specialized in miracles, and he could do Bindanda the greatest possible favor not to drip on the floor when he made the request.

“Yes, nadi-ji.”

Toby, on the other hand… Toby’s problem… wasn’t something Bindanda could make go away.

Well, he had to call Toby. He had to. He’d probably better call his mother.

He’d do it tomorrow.

The shower beeped: even the paidhi had a water-limit… one he’d insisted on having, and there it was, a one-minute warning, just time enough to get the soap off in decent order.

He rinsed, cut the water off and stepped out. The junior servant was right at hand to help him into his warmed, soft robe and equally warmed slippers.

After that, he sat on a bench, had his hair dried and braided in formal order, and afterward got up and dressed for dinner, not in the full court attire, this time, but atevi-style, all the same, for a dinner at home, among intimates: the lace-cuffed shirt, close-fitting trousers, a white ribbon for his braid. When he asked himself, he didn’t know why he didn’t call for human-style clothing for a dinner with Jase: certainly it would have been appropriate, maybe more appropriate, and in most regards more comfortable. But somewhere in the hindbrain he was still on the world.