Visitor: A Foreigner Novel by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online Page A

sure she understood.
    “Yes,” he said. “Yes. At least tonight. Maybe tomorrow night. You are
my
guest, now. Mani will not let anything happen to you. Lord Geigi will protect everybody else. You will not have to go back to the Reunioner sections and you will not have to go back to your mother. Nand’ Bren will say so, to the ship-aijiin and to everybody. You will not have to go back to her.”
    • • •
    It was a temptation, Bren thought, a sore temptation, once he was safely in the lift, within the atevi half of the station—to head back to the apartment and go back to bed for at least two more hours. He wished to do nothing thereafter but eat, sleep, stare at the ceiling and assemble the vocabulary and the connections and clues he had from the last meeting with the kyo . . . until it came time to use them. He wanted no more distractions.
    But there was information he needed. He had potential sources. The Reunioners he had at hand—the parents of Cajeiri’s young associates—were not the ones apt to have that information. But there were others—people he was not anxious to deal with, but had no intention of turning over to the ship-folk. Or to Gin. Not yet.
    He could ask Jase to interview them, but he couldn’t be satisfied with secondhand information. He’d think of questionsJase might not think to ask, questions that might well need asking at the right moment, not after the fact.
    There was no getting around it. He had to talk to Braddock.
    Sleep first. Just two hours. That was all he needed.
    He had already understood from his aishid, who kept abreast of details with other staff, that there had been a change in one of the situations he was tracking. Irene, and only Irene, had gone home with Cajeiri last night. Whatever had happened to suggest that relocation was a worry, but he thought he understood, and it was a sad business, a kid whose situation was not a happy reunion, and who might have been realizing it all too well. Geigi’s staff would allow whatever the young gentleman wanted unless the dowager countermanded it . . . and the dowager had been asleep when that move had happened.
    He was sure that situation was already handled, however. The dowager’s staff would never permit an impropriety on the dowager’s premises, so he was confident that things involving the dowager’s premises had been done as properly as need be. He was also sure the dowager would have
not
brought down the weight of her displeasure on a guest this morning, when she did find out. She had
probably
found out by now.
    No, the dowager would definitely not reprimand the girl, though what the dowager’s real opinion was, Cajeiri would surely find out privately. And so would he, Bren was quite sure. He was prepared to go smooth that over if need be. He should do that, at least, before he settled into his own apartment and took hold of their more threatening problems.
    “How has the dowager received the guest?” he asked, while the lift went through its changes.
    There was a delay, while Banichi consulted via pocket com. That was usual. The length of the delay, however, suggested more to the answer, and more to the answer—
    Was not good.
    It was not necessarily good when Banichi made a second callfor information, and
that
conversation involved, he gathered from the name referenced, Lord Geigi’s staff.
    “Nadi?” he asked, in the not unlikely case Banichi was reluctant to distract him with another problem.
    “The young gentleman has brought Irene back to nand’ Geigi’s staff. And there is some trouble which the staff does not understand. Gene and Artur have been translating, prior to this, and there is not an active disturbance, but there is distress of some sort.”
    “I should go there.” If Irene was upset, if parents were upset, or if adjustments of some sort needed to be made in her situation, he needed to be involved. Geigi had offered to solve the human situation by lending his large guest quarters.