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impression they were a large species.
    "The deck crew couldn't decide whether they wanted the beast in the water or in the locker. He escaped through the rail and probably to this day laughs at us as he swims past. I think he would have been a record. But I wasn't measuring, nand' paidhi, I assure you."
    "Oh, you do tempt me." It had been an eight-day series of cities and plants and labs. He hadn't rested in Guild-sanctioned hotels anywhere as well as he'd slept last night, not even on the luxury-equipped plane. And possibly Tabini could spare him a day. Possibly, too, it wasn't a peninsular plot to fling him overboard. Possibly he could convince Tano and Algini that their protection of him during a day's actual vacation was much easier if he was surrounded by all that wonderful blue water.
    But most probably he should fly back to the capital this afternoon, and work on the plane while he did so. He had a towering lot of notes to enter, some export lists to glance over and approve, and a handful of quality control questions which had to be translated for the lab technicians in the last two facilities.
    "Yellowtail," lord Geigi said wickedly, "cooked over the coals. Nothing finer."
    "Lord Geigi, if you go on you will surely corrupt me, and I
have
to be back in the capital tomorrow. If I don't get my work done the stack of paper may reach orbital height before our ship does. I so wish I could accept."
    He took a chance — he hadn't even realized he'd taken it. It was absolutely against Departmental policy to make a joke with strangers of rank, the language was that chancy even for him. But he did it with his guards and he did it routinely with Tabini, of all people: the aiji of Shejidan, whose displeasure was far more to fear.
    Still, a lord in his province, touchy about his dignity, facing a human representative of the aiji of Shejidan, who had status of very indeterminate sort, was worthy of fear, too.
    Geigi was amused. Geigi seemed mollified at the turn-down, even seemed pleased at the paidhi's assumption of intimacy.
    So he had done exactly correctly when Geigi had made his rather stunning overture of a local and rustic pleasure to a human guest and a guest of state at that. It was yet one more of those small moments of triumph that the paidhi treasured unto himself, as part of his job — and a part he couldn't report nowadays, to a State Department convinced he was a fool as well as a turncoat.
    And he couldn't explain to anyone else in the world, not even the man from the ship who shared his quarters, why it pleased him. Except it was the real job he'd signed on to do, and it was occasionally nice to have those little operational checks to prove to himself that yes, the larger civilization-threatening decisions he was taking routinely on himself were possibly founded on a more microscopic-level understanding of the people.
    "Well, well," Geigi said, "the sun waits not even for the aiji, so I suppose it won't wait for us. We should be on our way."
    That signaled that the breakfast was done. Security and servants moved in about their separate business. As Geigi rose from the table, Bren did, and accepted the formal, many-buttoned coat from the junior security (his own) who had had custody of it. He allowed the young woman to hold it for him to put on, and let her deftly adjust his braid to the outside of the fashionable stiff collar as he did so. He hadn't realized he'd been chilled through the shirt, but it was the case. Spring had offered the chance to sit on the balcony, had offered sea air and that marvelous view, and he'd said yes in an instant, never thinking that atevi called brisk what humans called bitter.
    He bowed, Geigi inclined his head. Everyone was relaxed and polite. He had to visit his room on the way out and gather up his papers, in the custody of yet another junior security agent, also of the Guild. The luggage would make its way separately to the plane and be waiting for him.
    But in all maneuvers of