Protector

Thatwas the scariest thing anyone had said yet. Great-uncle was going to take them on a tour of his basement, for a surprise. But if some Kadagidi assassin was hiding down there in the dark—

“Maybe you should tell them to search the basement, nadiin-ji,” Cajeiri said.

“One is sure they aresearching it,” Lucasi said. “But we will mention it.”

Meanwhile, Cajeiri thought, he just had to take deep breaths and think of things to do so his guests had a good time and did not get bored. And he hoped the basement was better than it sounded. Mani had thought so.

Meanwhile—meanwhile, of all things, Artur had come up with a pocket full of rocks, and provided his own entertainment, laying his treasures out for everybody to see.

“Where did you find those?” Cajeiri asked. On a day when they were all pent in with a security alert, he knewwhere his guests had been, and surprises were not a good thing, today.

“The stables. Where we walked.”

Artur had been hindmost, going out the door, and Cajeiri recalled indeed, it was a gravel walk—a lot of places had gravel, or flagstones. And Tirnamardi had gravel all along by the stables.

There was a sandstone, a quartz, and a basalt one—“That one I got at the train station,” Artur said. “This one in the front of the house.” That was the pink quartz.

“You can almost see through it,” Irene said, admiring it against the light. “Those are so great!”

Artur had been collecting them all along. None of his guests were used to walking on rocks, or dirt. And trust Artur to do something unusual.

So now that Artur tallied up his collection, all very small ones, he used what he had learned from his tutor to tell everybody what they were, and how they had formed, and even where they came from. They were river-rounded. And it was very likely they had been under a glacier once.

Everybody was impressed with what he knew. And he did not have his big map, but he drew one for them in Irene’s notebook, a map of the Padi Valley, and he showed them where they were, and the river where probably the rocks had come from—he had never been there, himself, but he knew about it.

And the idea that water and wind could smooth them into eggs, and how mountains formed and wore away, and how volcanoes happened, down near the Marid, and down in the islands in the Great Southern Ocean—all of that was wonderful to them. They knew about magnetic fields, and about dustball asteroids, and interesting things up in space. They said Maudit had volcanoes, a lot of them, but not much water.

“If we have to live there,” Irene said, “we’ll really live in another space station, in orbit, but it won’t be very nice as the station here is. Nothing will be.” Irene frowned and rested her chin on her hand. “I don’t want to live on Maudit Station. I don’t.” She wiped her eyes. “I’m not supposed to get upset. Sorry.”

He did not want Irene to live on Maudit Station either. Not any of them. And he did not want to think about anything else sad or upsetting today, he truly did not. He was very glad Irene was getting the better of her upset. Everybodyhad gone quiet.

“Right,” Irene said in a moment, and picked up the smoothest of Artur’s collection. “It’s like a little world, isn’t it? In space, rocks can’t smooth out and be round until they’re huge. And here’s this little round rock that spent hundreds of years in running water, and it’s just lying there on the ground this morning for Artur to find it. That’s something.”

“I can bring this back with me,” Artur said, then explained. “No animals, no biologicals, like seeds or anything. Everything has to be processed. They’re not going to argue about rocks. But there’s so much, like almost everything we touch. Everywhere I look—there’s things that are just—random. Shaped however they want to be.”

“Most things,” Cajeiri said. He remembered, how everything about the ship was made by machines, smooth, shiny, or plastic. He thought of his own room, where he had gathered living plants, and pictures and weaving, and carvings of animals on every chair and table . . . he knew what Artur meant by random. It was a good word. He had been on the ship two years and found himself wanting windows, wanting the open sky and the smell of plants and curves on everything his eyes touched. And he had told his associates how the world was and promised them they would see it. They had fourteen days. That was all they had, until—until—he had no idea. He had not mentioned his nextbirthday yet, and they were talking about being sent to Maudit, which none of them wanted to happen.

And now some stupid Kadagidi had gotten into the house and Boji was gone . . .

He was not going to give up on Boji. And the guards were going to catch that Kadagidi who had pulled that nasty trick with the black powder.