“Promise to call Barb.”

“I will notpromise to call Barb. I’ve got to go now.”

“Bren, call her.”

“Mother, go home. Good night. I love you.”

He hung up. He was aware of Jago in the doorway of the security station, aware of the fact some words were in her understanding and Banichi’s, at least of his side of the conversation.

“Barb’s had an accident,” he said. “A bus hit her. My mother fell down and hurt herself. Barb’s in the hospital. There’s nothing I can do from here.” They didn’t understand love, they didn’t understand the intricate details of failed human relationships, but they knew attachment persisted. Most of all they knew loyalty, and the urge to go to the scene of trouble. “There’s nothing I can do.”

Banichi said solemnly. “The aiji can request action of the President of Mospheira, and Shawn-nandi. Shall we do that?”

Tabini could do so much; and so damned little. “Not for this. Toby’s not home yet. Patch me through to his house, Banichi-ji. I’ll leave a message.”

Banichi pushed buttons. The communications interface was a great deal easier than it had been, with security codes that automatically engaged when the messages crossed the straits. Even at this hour, the Mospheiran system produced an operator, better than in prior days, and the call went on its way to the north coast, where Toby’s answering system cut in.

Bren was in some part relieved. It was easier to unburden the matter to a machine. He was sure their mother had put one of those nerve-jarring Call me’son Toby’s system, and he hoped his message might at least advise Toby what the matter was, if their mother fell out of contact before Toby ran off into the night trying to hire a plane.

“Mother seems fine” he began his message, experienced in years of long-distance crises. “Scrapes and bruises, as I gather. Barb’s in the hospital, Mother’s with her. A pretty bad accident with a bus, and Mother saw it, might have been in front of it. She wants some comfort. Toby, I know you just got home, I hate like hell to drop this on you, but I’m behind a security wall at the moment and I absolutely can’t get back there. I don’t think you need to fly back, just give Mother a call at…” Professional coolness wavered. “I don’t know what hospital.” Their mother was probably one of the few people outside the government who didn’t have forwarding on their calls: security precaution. And she was one of the very few, inside or out, who wasn’t completely aware of all the security arrangements that surrounded them. He couldn’t call her security and ask where she was. He hoped to God they knew and that his mother and Barb hadn’t gotten whisked away out of security’s sight. “She didn’t tell me what hospital.” He covered the microphone. “Banichi-ji. Get the origination on that call from my mother.”

Banichi pushed buttons, wrote on a slip of paper, handed it to him.

“It’s Central City,” he said into the phone. He was relieved. He knew the number by heart. “Look, just give her a call through the hospital system, and if she’s not there, call the apartment. It’s possible Barb pushed Mother out of the way of a bus. She’s really shaken. Barb’s critical. God, I’m sorry, Toby, I’m really sorry. I wish to God I didn’t have to put this on your shoulders.”

Toby, however, wasn’t there to assure him it was all right, or that some disaster hadn’t delayed Toby and his family. There were watchers around Toby, too, all the same. Agents followed the kids to school. It was what the government had to do… what he thanked God they did, because the whole question of atevi/human relations provoked every borderline crazy in existence, on Mospheira and on the mainland. Even someone the random lunatics thought might be connected to him, like his former secretaries, had to have constant protection on the island… it went against Mospheiran law to round up the lunatics until they’d actually done something.

“You take care,” he said, hearing the vast, cold silence. “Thanks, Toby. Hope we get that fishing trip one of these months.”

He hung up.

No, he couldn’t come back. And he couldn’t let out, even on a shielded line, that he was going up to the station, not before launch. The aiji would announce it when the aiji chose.

The paidhi’s personal crises didn’t figure in the plans. He thought he should call Shawn… but if the other delegation had, or should, call the island, there were issues… a lot of issues.

A hand rested lightly on his shoulder, Jago’s, calling him back to rational thought, reminding him he wasn’t, after all, alone.

“Barb just stepped in front of a bus,” he said. He felt distant from that information, as if it were some line in an entirely unpleasant, grotesque joke. But it wasn’t. He didn’t want to think what kind of damage she’d taken, “Possibly she moved to protect my mother. Likely it was my mother’s inattention to traffic. It’s quite heavy, where they were.”

“One only asks,” Banichi said, who, like Jago, had likely understood a great deal of it… more, because they both knew his mother and knew Toby. “Did you not advise your mother to go home and did you not say to Toby call the hospital?”

“My mother won’t go home,” Bren said. “Nothing we can do, any of us, from here. I have to trust Shawn will do something. That Toby will.”

There were frowns, confusion on their part as to what the proprieties were. As for him, he could scarcely think.

“Nadi,” Jago said, not nandi— my lord—but the common sir. She wanted him to leave the matter. She wanted to take him out of the security station, away from the questions.

She was right; he rose, but he cast a look at Banichi, who’d be in charge, who wasin charge of whatever came through these communication and surveillance boards, and who took his safety and his family’s safety very seriously.

“It was an accident,” Bren said. “It couldn’t be otherwise. The buses are public. They move quickly, even recklessly. It’s notorious.”

“Sometimes there are accidents” Banichi said.

“Sometimes there are,” he said.

He left the security center then, walked back in the halls, to the bedroom that was his, in a place quiet now. The servants had retreated to their own rooms, likely, hoping for sleep; or still working.

Jago followed him, stood a moment while he stared at the wall.

“Stay,” he roused himself to say.

She shut the door behind her. He slid off the robe and went to bed, and Jago put out the main lights.

She came and eased into bed beside him, around him, not a word said.

I don’t love Barb, he wished to say to her, but there wasn’t a word for love, and it didn’t matter to Jago; from her view, since he insisted Barb was still with his mother, Barb was still within his association, marginalized somewhat, but still there.

But if lovewasn’t in the atevi hard-wiring, sexual jealousy wasn’t, he suspected, quite that remote. He couldn’t trust his own human feelings to interpret hers, further than that, and his thinking wasn’t outstandingly clear; neither was his feeling, his emotion… his heart, whatever one wanted to call it.

Was it that way for Jago, too?

He didn’t relax. Couldn’t.

“Shall I turn on the television?” Jago asked him.

“It might be good,” he said. He didn’t want sleeping pills. Couldn’t bring himself to make love on news like that. They put a machimi on… a part of the culture close to religious, but not, having everything to do with the atevi heart, and nothing at all to do with gods.

In the play before them, he guessed the woman would learn her lord had interests conflicting with her sexual partner’s. The uninitiated human, seeing the drama, might expect quite the opposite as would happen, but atevi had no doubt. One only waited for disaster.

He’d send Toby the funds. He had that. He always had that, and Toby knew it. In his absence from crises he could always contribute money for the airfare.