Inheritor by C. J. Cherryh Page B

he was sure Tano had, Tano quietly rang for attention.
    The lift opened again. Their luggage was catching up. The door in front of them opened, the deadly devices deactivated, one sincerely trusted, which would have been the delay, and a servant let them in, as a half dozen other servants (they were all female in this household, which had been lady Damiri's before she scandalized the whole Atageini clan by moving next door and residing openly with Tabini) converged to take custody of the paidhi and his coat and his luggage.
    "Nand' paidhi." Saidin, major domo of the lady Damiri, came from the inner halls to meet them in the foyer. She was a genteel and gentle household administrator who took her human guest's comfort and safety very seriously — and who probably rendered reports to lady Damiri on a regular basis. "One is very glad to see you safely arrived, nand' paidhi."
    "Thank you." He'd bet any amount of his uncollectible wages that Saidin was well-briefed on the reason for the just slightly early arrival, maybe even on the ATC incident; and he knew by experience that everything he could possibly need would appear like magic.
    "Bath and dinner, do we correctly apprehend your wishes?"
    "Nand' Saidin, very correctly."
    He was hungry, and in no mood to deal with the message bowl which sat on the small ornate table by the entryway, but he could see there a number of waiting cylinders. The only such that reached his apartment nowadays were messages his clerical staff couldn't handle without advice. And there was a fair collection of them, about twenty, most in metal message cases; but one — one was a caseless vellum scroll characteristic of a telegram from the wire service. It could be from some department across the country, some place he'd visited. The rest could wait. He picked that one up, cracked the seal with his thumbnail, scanned the content, because there was the remotest chance it
might
be from Barb, who had sent him a couple of messages on island gossip since her marriage; or it might be from his mother; or even from official channels in Foreign Affairs.
    It was from his brother. From Toby. Dated two days ago.
    Mother's been in the hospital. I've asked her to come and stay with me. If you can bring any influence to bear, it might help. She says her doctor's there and she won't leave the city. I'll write you a longer letter later. Don't worry about it, but I think we need to bring some pressure to bear to get her to move. I want your backing in this.
    Damn, he thought.
Just
what their mother needed. Pressure.
    Damn, again.
    He supposed he'd stopped quite still, when in standard procedure he ought to have left the foyer and let his staff get to work on his behalf. They were all standing there. The door was shut. There came a rap from outside.
    "That will be the luggage, nadi," Tano said, and took a look outside to be absolutely sure before he opened the door.
    Bren pocketed the message.
Write you a letter later
. Hell and double hell. He didn't think Toby had anything pleasant to say in his next message. Toby never had made the obvious complaint to him: Give me some help, get home, brother, do something to reason with the government — it's not fair what you're doing to us. It's not fair what you're doing to Mother.
    He couldn't go home and fix things for his younger brother. There wasn't a way in hell.
    And their mother had been headed for this crisis for some time. Maybe her doctors would finally sit on her this time and make her take her medication and watch her diet.
    Phone calls at three in the morning didn't help. Knowing her grandchildren were being followed on their way to school didn't help. He wasn't sure it would be better for her to move to the north shore, where the police and the phone company seemed to ignore Toby's complaints for what
he
feared were political reasons.
    Damn, damn, damn, and
damn
. He'd been in a good mood until he met that, which wasn't the first time their mother's health had been