Cyteen

i

"This bell has to ring once when you push the left-hand button and twice when you push the right-hand button," the Super said, and Florian listened as the problem clicked off against the things he knew. So far it was easy to wire. "But—" Here came the real problem, Florian knew. "But you have to fix it so that if you push the left-hand button first it won't work at all and if you push the right-hand button twice it won't work until you push the left-hand button. Speed does matter. So does neatness. Go."

Parts and tools were all over the table. Florian collected what he needed. It was not particularly hard.

The next job was somebody else's project. And you had to look at the board and tell the instructor what it would do.

His fingers were very fast. He could beat the clock. Easy. The next thing was harder. The third thing was always to make up one for somebody else. He had fifteen minutes to do that.

He told the Instructor what it was.

"Show me how you'd build that," the Instructor said. So he did.

And the Instructor looked very serious and nodded finally and said: "Florian, you're going to double up on tape."

He was disappointed. "I'm sorry. It won't work?"

"Of course it'll work," the Instructor said, and smiled at him. "But I can't give that to anybody on this level. You'll do double-study on the basics and we'll see how you do with the next. All right?"

"Yes," he said. Of course it was yes. But he was worried. He was working with Olders a lot. It was hard, and took a lot of time, and they kept insisting he take his Rec time, when he had rather be at his job.

He was already late a lot, and Andy frowned at him, and helped him more than he wanted.

He thought he ought to talk to the Super about all of it. But he made them happy when he worked hard. He could still do it, even if he was tired, even if he fell into his bunk at night and couldn't even remember doing it.

The Instructor said he could go and he was late again. Andy told him the pigs didn't understand his schedule and Andy had had to feed them.

"I'll do the water," he said, and did it for Andy's too. That was fair. It made Andy happy.

It made Andy so happy Andy let him curry the Horse with him, and go with him to the special barn where they had the baby, which was a she, protected against everything and fed with a bucket you had to hold. He wasn't big enough to do that yet. You had to shower and change your clothes and be very careful, because they were giving the baby treatments they got from the Horse. But she wasn't sick. She played dodge with them and then she would smell of their fingers and play dodge again.

He had been terribly relieved when Andy told him that the horses were not for food. "What are they for?" he had asked then, afraid that there might be other bad answers.

"They're Experimentals," Andy had said. "I'm not sure. But they say they're working animals."

Pigs were sometimes working animals. Pigs were so good at smelling out native weeds that drifted in and rooted and they were so smart at not eating the stuff that there were azi who did nothing but walk them around, every day going over the pens and the fields with the pigs that nobody would ever make into bacon, and zapping whatever had sneaked inside the fences. The machine-sniffers were good, but Andy said the pigs were better in some ways.

That was what they meant in the tapes, Florian thought, when they said one of the first Rules of all Rules was to find ways to be useful.

ii

Ari read the problem, thought into her tape-knowing, and asked maman: "Does it matter how many are boys and how many are girls?"

Maman thought a moment. "Actually it does. But you can work it as if it doesn't."

"Why?"

"Because, and this is important to know, certain things are less important in certain problems; and when you're just learning how to work the problem, leaving out the things that don't matter as much helps you to remember what things are the most important in figuring it. Everything in the world is important in that problem—boys and girls, the weather, whether or not they can get enough food, whether there are things that eat them—but right now just tile genes are going to matter. When you can work all those problems, then they'll tell you how to work in all the other things. One other thing. They'd hate to tell you you knew everything. There might be something else no one thought of. And if you thought they'd told you everything, that could trick you. So they start out simple and then start adding in whether they're boys and girls. All right?"

"It does matter," Ari said doggedly, "because the boy fish fight each other. But there's going to be twenty-four blue ones if nobody gets eaten. But they will, because blue ones are easy to see, and they can't hide. And if you put them with big fish there won't be any blue fish at all."

"Do you know whether a fish sees colors?"

"Do they?"

"Let's leave that for a moment. What if the females like blue males better?"

"Why should they?"

"Just figure it. Carry it another generation."

"How much better?"

"Twenty-five percent."

"All those blue ones are just going to make the big fish fatter and they'll have lots of babies. This is getting complicated."

Maman got this funny look like she was going to sneeze or laugh or get mad. And then she got a very funny look that was not funny at all. And gathered her up against her and hugged her.

Maman did that a lot lately. Ari thought that she ought to feel happier than she was. She had never had maman spend so much time with her. Ollie too.

But there was a danger-feeling. Maman wasn't happy. Ollie wasn't. Ollie was being azi as hard as he could, and maman and Ollie didn't shout at each other anymore. Maman didn't shout at anybody. Nelly just looked confused a lot of the time. Phaedra went around being azi too.

Ari was scared and she wanted to ask maman why, but she was afraid maman would cry. Maman always had that look lately. And it hurt when maman cried.

She just held on to maman.

Next morning she went to playschool. She was big enough to go by herself now. Maman hugged her at the door. Ollie came and hugged her too. He had not done that in a long time.

She looked back and the door was shut. She thought that was funny. But she went on to school.

iii

RESEUNE ONE left the runway and Jane clenched her hands on the leather arms of the seat. And did not look out the window. She did not want to see Reseune dwindle away. She bit her lips and shut her eyes and felt the leakage down her face while the gentle acceleration pressed her into the seat.

She turned her face toward Ollie when they reached cruising altitude. "Ollie, get me a drink. A double."

"Yes, sera," Ollie said, and unbelted and went to see to it.

Phaedra, sitting in front of them, had turned her chair around to face her across the little table. "Can I do something for you, sera?"

God, she needs to, doesn't she? Phaedra's scared. "I want you to make out a shopping list. Things you think we'll need on-ship. You'll have to place some orders when we make station. There's an orientation booklet in the outside pocket. It'll review you on procedures."

"Yes, sera."

That put a patch on Phaedra's problems. Ollie was walking wounded. He had asked her for tape. He—had asked her for tape, azi to Supervisor; and she had refused him.

"Ollie," she had said. "You're too much a CIT. I need you to be. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Yes," he had said. And held up better than she had.

"One for yourself too," she yelled at him, over the engine noise; and he looked around and nodded understanding. "And Phaedra!"

Peggy came up to Ollie's side at the bar, wobbled as the plane hit a little chop and then ducked down and took out a pair of glasses.

For Julia. Back in the back. Julia and Gloria.

"You've mined my life!" Julia had screamed at her in the terminal. Right in front of Denys, the azi, and the Family that had come to see them off. While poor Gloria stood there with her chin quivering and her eyes running over. Not a bad kid. A kid who had had too much of most things, too little of what mattered, and who stared at the grandmother she had hardly ever seen and probably looked for signs of ultimate evil about her person. Gloria had no idea in the world what she was going to. No idea in the world what ship discipline meant, or the closed steel world of a working station.

"Hello, Gloria," she had said, nerving herself, trying not—God, not ever—to compare the kid against Ari—against Ari, who might hear a plane take off and might look up and realize it was RESEUNE ONE. Nothing more than that.

Gloria had run over to her mother. Who was about to hyperventilate. Who managed, atop it all, to impart a sense of the ridiculous to their departure. It was probably just as well they were traveling with Reseune Security. There was no trusting Julia not to bolt and run in Novgorod.

Irrationally afraid of the shuttle, the void, the jumps, all the things that involved a physics Julia had never troubled herself to learn and now decided she could not personally rely on.

Too bad, kid. I wish I could make a bubble for you where things work the way you want. I'm sorry it all overwhelms you.

It did from the moment you were born. Sorry, daughter. I'm really sorry about that.

Sorry you're going with me.

Ollie brought back the drinks. He was pale, but he was doing quite well, considering. She managed to smile at him when he handed her hers, and he looked at her again when he sat down with his own drink in hand.

She had taken half of hers down without noticing it. "I'll be all right," she said, and lifted the glass. "Skoal, Ollie. Back where I came from. Going home, finally."

And on her second double: "It feels like I was twenty again, Ollie, like nothing of Reseune ever happened."

Or she had gotten that pan of her numb for a while.

iv

Phaedra was not at the playschool. Nelly was. Nelly was easy to get around. Sam could push her in the swing really high. Nelly worried, but Nelly wasn't going to stop them, because she would be mad at Nelly and Nelly didn't like that.

So Sam pushed her and she pushed Sam. And they climbed on the puzzle-bars.

Finally Jan came after Sam and Nelly was walking her home when uncle Denys met them in the hall.

"Nelly," Denys said, "Security wants to talk to you."

"Why?" Ari asked. Of a sudden she was afraid again. Security and Nelly were as far apart as you could think of. It was like everything else recently. It was a thing that didn't belong.

"Nelly," Denys said. "Do what I say."

"Yes, ser," Nelly said.

And Denys, big as he was, got down on one knee and took Ari's hands while Nelly was going. "Ari," he said, "something serious has happened. Your maman has to go take care of it. She's had to leave."

"Where's she going?"

"Very far away, Ari. I don't know that she can come back. You're going to come home with me. You and Nelly. Nelly's going to stay with you, but she's got to go take some tape that will make her feel better about it."

"Maman can too come back!"

"I don't think so, Ari. Your maman is an important woman. She has something to do. She's going—well, far as a ship can take her. She knew you'd be upset. She didn't want to worry you. So she said I should tell you goodbye for her. She said you should come home with me now and live in my apartment."

"No!" Goodbye. Goodbye was nothing maman would ever say. Everything was wrong. She pulled away from Denys' hands and ran, ran as hard as she could, down the halls, through the doors, into their own hall. Denys couldn't catch her. No one could. She ran until she got to her door, her place; and she undipped her keycard from her blouse and she put it in the slot.

The door opened.

"Maman! Ollie!"

She ran through the rooms. She hunted everywhere, but she knew maman and Ollie would never hide from her.

Maman and Ollie would never leave her either. Something bad had happened to them. Something terrible had happened to them and uncle Denys was lying to her.

Maman's and Ollie's things were all off the dresser and the clothes from the closet.

Her toys were all gone. Even Poo-thing and Valery's star. She was breathing hard. She felt like there was not enough air. She heard the door open again and ran for the living room. "Maman! Ollie!"

But it was a Security woman who had come in; she was tall and she wore black and she had got in and she shouldn't have.

Ari just stood there and stared at her. The woman stared back. The uniformed woman, in her living room, who wasn't going to leave.

"Minder," Ari said, trying to be brave and grown-up, "call maman's office."

The Minder did not answer.

"Minder? It's Ari. Call maman's office!"

"The Minder is disconnected," the Security woman said. And it was true. The Minder hadn't said a thing when she had come in. Everything was wrong.

"Where's my mother?" she asked.

"Dr. Strassen has left. Your guardian is Dr. Nye. Please be calm, young sera. Dr. Nye is on his way."

"I don't want him!"

But the door opened and uncle Denys was there, out of breath and white-faced. In maman's apartment.

"It's all right," Denys panted. "Ari. Please."

"Get out!" she yelled at uncle Denys. "Get out, get out, get out!"

"Ari. Ari, I'm sorry. I'm terribly sorry. Listen to me."

"No, you're not sorry! I want maman! I want Ollie! Where are they?"

Denys came and tried to take hold of her. She ran for the kitchen. There were knives there. But the Security woman dived around the couch and caught her, and picked her up while she kicked and screamed.

"Careful with her!" Denys said. "Be careful. Put her down."

The woman set her feet back on the floor. Denys came and took her from the woman and held her against his shoulder.

"Cry, Ari. It's all right. Get your breath and cry."

She gasped and gasped and finally she could breathe.

"I'm going to take you home now," Denys said gently, and patted her face and her shoulders. "Are you all right, Ari? I can't carry you. Do you want the officer to? She won't hurt you. No one's going to hurt you. Or I can call the meds. Do you feel like you want me to do that?"

Take you home was not her home anymore. Something had happened to everyone.

Denys took her hand and she walked. She was too tired to do anything else. She was hardly able to do that.

Uncle Denys took her all the way to his apartment, and he set her down on his couch and he had his azi Seely get her a soft drink.

She drank it and she could hardly hold the glass without spilling it, she was shaking so.

"Nelly is staying here," uncle Denys said to her, sitting down on the other side of the table. "Nelly will be your very own."

"Where's Ollie?" she asked, clenching the glass in her lap.

"With your maman. She needed him."

Ari gulped air. It was a good thing, she thought, if maman had to go somewhere, maman and Ollie ought to be together.

"Phaedra's gone with them," Denys said.

"I don't care about Phaedra!"

"You want Nelly, don't you? Maman left you Nelly. She wanted Nelly to go on taking care of you."

She nodded. There was a large knot in her throat. Her heart was ten times too big for her chest. Her eyes stung.

"Ari, I don't know much about taking care of a little girl. Neither does Seely. But your maman sent all your things here. You'll have your very own suite, you and Nelly, right in there, do you want to go see where your room is?"

She shook her head; and tried not to cry. She tried to get a good mad. Like maman.

"We won't talk about it now. Nelly's going to be here tonight. She'll be a little upset. You know she can't take much upset. Promise me you'll be good to her, Ari. She's your azi and you have to be kind to her, because she really ought to stay in the hospital, but she's so worried about you, and I know you need her. Nelly's going to come home every night between her sessions—they're going to give her tape, you know, they have to, because she's terribly upset; but she loves you and she wants to come take care of you. I'm afraid it's you who'll have to take care of her. You understand me? You can hurt her very, very badly."

"I know," Ari said, because she did.

"There you are. You're a brave little girl. You aren't a baby at all. It's very hard, very hard. —Thank you, Seely."

Seely had brought her a glass of water and a pill, and expected her to take it. Seely was a nobody. He wasn't like Ollie. He wasn't nice, he wasn't mean, he wasn't anything but azi all the time. And he took her glass and put it on his tray and offered her the water.

"I don't want any tape!" she said.

"It's not that kind of pill," uncle Denys said. "It'll make your head stop hurting. It'll make you feel better."

She didn't remember telling him her head hurt. Maman always said don't take other people's pills. Never, never take azi-pills. But maman was not here to tell her what this one was.

Like Valery. Like sera Schwartz. Like all the Disappeareds. Maman and Ollie had gotten caught too.

Maybe I can Disappear next. And find them.

"Sera," Seely said. "Please."

She took the pill off the tray. She put it in her mouth and drank it down with the water.

"Thank you," Seely said. He was so smooth he wasn't there. He took the glass away. You would never notice Seely.

Uncle Denys sat there so fat he made the whole chair go down, with his arms on his knees and his round face upset and worried. "You won't have to go to playschool for a few days. Until you want to. You don't think you can feel better. I know. But you will. You'll feel better even tomorrow. You'll miss your maman. Of course you will. But you won't hurt as much. Every day will be a little better."

She didn't want it to be better. She didn't know who made people Disappear. But it wasn't maman. They could offer her whatever they wanted. It wouldn't make her believe what they said.

Maman and Ollie had known there was trouble. They had been terribly upset and kept hiding it from her. Maybe they thought they could take care of it and they couldn't. She had felt it coming and hadn't understood.

Perhaps there was a place people went to. Perhaps it was like being dead. You got in trouble and you got Disappeared somewhere in some way even maman couldn't stop it happening.

So she knew she couldn't either. She had to push and push, that was what, and get in trouble until there wasn't anybody. Maybe it was her fault. She had always thought so. But when they ran out of people to Disappear she had to find out what was going on.

Then maybe she could go.

She was Wrong, of a sudden. She couldn't feel her hands or her feet, and she felt a burning in her stomach.

She was having trouble. But Seely picked her up in his arms and the whole room swung and became the hall and became the bedroom. Seely laid her gently on the bed and took her shoes off, and put a blanket over her.

Poo-thing was beside her on the bedspread. She put out her hand and touched him. She could not remember where she had gotten Poo-thing. He had always been there. Now he was here. That was all. Now Poo-thing was all there was.

v

"Poor kid," Justin said, and poured more wine into the glass. "Poor little kid, dammit to hell, couldn't they let her come down to the airport?"

Grant just shook his head. And drank his own wine. He made a tiny handsign that warned of eavesdroppers.

Justin wiped his eyes. He never forgot that. Sometimes he found it hard to care.

"Not our problem," Grant said. "Not yours."

"I know it."

That for the listeners. That they never knew, one way or the other, whether they were there. They thought of ways to confound Security, even thought of devising a language without cognates, with erratic grammar, and using tape to memorize it. But they were afraid of the suspicion their using it might raise. So they went the simplest route: the tablet. He reached for it and scrawled: Sometimes I'd like to run off to Novgorod and get a job in a factory. We design tape to make normal people. We build in trust and confidence and make them love each other. But the designers are all crazy.

Grant wrote: I have profound faith in my creators and my Supervisor. I find comfort in that.

"You're sick," Justin said aloud.

Grant laughed. And Grant went serious again, and leaned over and took hold of Justin's knee, the two of them sitting cross-legged on the couch. "I don't understand good and evil. I've decided that. An azi has no business tossing words like that around, in the cosmic sense. But to me you're everything good."

He was touched by that. And the damned tape-flashes still bothered him. Even after this many years, like an old, old pain. With Grant it never mattered. That, as much as anything, gave him a sense of comfort. He laid his hand on Grant's, pressed it slightly, because he could not say anything.

"I mean it," Grant said. "You hold a difficult place. You do as much good as you can. Sometimes too much. Even I can rest. You should."

"What can I do when Yanni loads me down with—"

"No." Grant shook at his knee. "You can say no. You can quit working these hours. You can work on the things you want to work on. You've said yourself—you know what he's doing. Don't let them give you this other thing. Refuse it. You don't need it."

There was a baby in process on Fargone, replicate of one Benjamin Ru-bin, who lived in the enclave on the other side of an uncrossable wall, and worked in a lab Reseune had provided.

It provided something visible for Defense to hover over. And Jane Strassen, when she arrived, would find herself mother to another of the project's children.

He knew. They gave him Rubin's interviews. They let him do the tape-structures. He had no illusions they would run them without checks.

Not, at least, these. And that was a relief, after running without them for a year.

"It's a degree of trust, isn't it?" His voice came out hoarse, showing the strain he had not wanted to show.

"It puts another kind of load on you, a load you don't need."

"Maybe it's my chance to do something worthwhile. It's a major project.

Isn't it? It's the best thing that's happened in a long time. Maybe I can make Rubin's life—better or something." He leaned forward to pour more wine. Grant moved and did it for him. "At least Rubin had some compassion in his life. His mother lives on-station, he sees her, he's got something to hold on to."

Give or take the guards that attended a Special. Justin knew all these things. A confused, remote intellectual whose early health problems had been extreme, whose attachment to his mother was excessive and desperate; whose frail body had made health a preoccupation for him; whose various preoccupations had excluded adolescent passions, except for his work. But nothing—nothing of what had shaped Ari Emory.

Thank God.

"I can do something with it," he said. "I'm going to take some work in citizen psych. Do me some good. It's a different methodology."

Grant frowned at him. They could talk work at home, without worrying about monitors. But their line of conversation had gotten dangerous, maybe already gone over the line. He was not sure anymore. He was exhausted. Study, he thought, would take him off real-time work. Study was all he wanted. Grant was right, he was never cut out for trouble-shooting real-time situations. He cared too damn much.

Yanni had yelled at him: "Empathy is fine in an interview. It's got no place in the solution! Get it straight in your head who you're treating!"

Which made sense to him. He was not cut out for clinical psych. Because he never could get it straight, when he felt the pain himself.

By Yanni's lights, even, he thought, by Denys'—because there was no way this could have come to him without Denys working at Giraud—it was the most generous thing they could have done for him, putting him back in work that took a security clearance, re-establish his career in a slightly different field, in work very like Jordan's, let him work on a project where he could gain some reputation—CIT work was something the military would notice without actually giving the military an excuse to move on him, and it might clear him and do some good for Jordan. That was at least a possibility.

It was a kind of ultimatum, he thought, a kindness that could go entirely the other way if he tried to avoid the honor. That was always what he had to think about. Even when they were doing him favors.

vi

Ari woke with someone close to her, and remembered waking halfway through the night when someone got into bed with her, and took her in her arms and said in Nelly's voice, "I'm here, young sera. Nelly's here."

Nelly was by her in the morning, and maman was not, the bedroom was strange, it was uncle Denys' place, and Ari wanted to scream or to cry or to run again, run and run, until no one could find her.

But she lay still, because she knew maman was truly gone. And uncle Denys was right, she was better than she was, she was thinking about breakfast in between thinking how much she hurt and how she wished Nelly was somewhere else and maman was there instead.

It was still something, to have Nelly. She patted Nelly's face hard, until Nelly woke up, and Nelly hugged her and stroked her hair and said:

"Nelly's here. Nelly's here." And burst into tears.

Ari held her. And felt cheated because she wanted to cry, but Nelly was azi and crying upset her. So she was sensible like maman said, and told Nelly to behave.

Nelly did. Nelly stopped snuffling and sniveling and got up and got dressed; and gave Ari her bath and washed her hair and dressed her in her clean blue pants and a sweater. And combed and combed her hair till it crackled.

"We're supposed to go to breakfast with ser Nye," Nelly said.

That was all right. And it was a good breakfast, at uncle Denys' table, with everything in the world to eat. Ari did eat. Uncle Denys had seconds of everything and told her she and Nelly could spend the day in the apartment, until Nelly had to go to hospital, and then Seely would come and take care of her.

"Yes, ser," Ari said. Anything was all right. Nothing was. After yesterday she didn't care who was here. She wanted to ask Denys where maman was, and where maman was going. But she didn't, because everything was all right for a while and she was so tired.

And if Denys told her she wouldn't know the name of that place. She only knew Reseune.

So she sat and let Nelly read her stories. Sometimes she cried for no reason. Sometimes she slept. When she woke up it was Nelly telling her it would be Seely with her.

Seely would get her as many soft drinks as she wanted. And put on the vid for her. And do anything she asked.

She asked Seely could they go for a walk and feed the fish. They did that. They came back and Seely got her more soft drinks, and she wished she could hear maman telling her they weren't good for her. So she stopped on her own, and asked Seely for paper and sat and drew things.

Till uncle Denys came back and it was time for supper, and uncle Denys talked to her about what she would do tomorrow and how he would buy her anything she wanted.

She thought of several things. She wanted a spaceship with lights. She wanted a new coat. If uncle Denys was going to offer, she could think of things. She could think of really expensive things that maman never would get

But none of them could make her happy. Not even Nelly. Just when they were going to give you things, you took them, that was all, and you asked them for lots and lots to make it hard for them, and make them think that was important to you and you were happier with them, —but you didn't forget your mad. Ever.

vii

Grant sweated, waiting in Yanni Schwartz's outer office, with no appointment and only Marge's good offices to get him through the door. He heard Yanni shouting at Marge. He could not hear what he said. He imagined it had to do with interruptions and Justin Warrick.

And for a very little he would have gotten up and left, then, fast, because from moment to moment he knew he could bring trouble down on Justin by coming here. He was not sure that Yanni would not shake him badly enough to make him say something he ought not. Yanni was the kind of born-man he did not like to deal with, emotional and loud and radiating threat in every move he made. The men who had taken him to the shack in the hills had been like that. Giraud had been like that when he had questioned him. Grant sat there waiting and not panicking only by blanking himself and not thinking it through again until Marge came back and said: "He'll see you."

He got up and made a little bow. "Thank you, Marge." And walked into the inner office and up to the big desk and said: "Ser, I want to talk to you about my CIT."

Azi-like. Justin said Yanni could be decent enough to his patients. So he took the manner and stood very quietly. "I'm not in consultation," Yanni said.

Yanni gave him no favors, then. Grant dropped the dumb-annie pose, pulled up the available chair and sat down. "I still want to talk to you, ser. Justin's taking the favor you're doing him and I think it's a bad mistake."

"A mistake."

"You're not going to let him have anything but the first-draft work, are you? And where does that leave him after twenty years? Nowhere. With no more than he had before."

"Training. Which he badly needs. Which you should know. Do we have to discuss your partner? You know his problems. I don't have to haul them out for you."

"Tell me what you think they are."

Yanni had been relaxed, mostly. The jaw clamped, the chin jutted, the whole pose shifted to aggression as he leaned on his desk. "Maybe you'd better have your CIT come talk to me. Did he send you? Or is this your own idea?"

"My own, ser." He was reacting, dammit. His palms were sweating. He hated that. The trick was to make the CIT calm down instead. "I'm scared of you. I don't want to do this. But Justin won't talk to you, at least he won't tell you the truth."

"Why not?"

The man had no quiet-mode. "Because, ser, —" Grant took a breath and tried not to pay attention to what was going on in his gut. "You're the only teacher he has. If you discard him, there's no one else good enough to teach him. You're like his Super. He has to rely on you and you're abusing him. That's very hard for me to watch."

"We're not talking azi psych, Grant. You don't understand what's going on, not on an operational level, and you're on dangerous personal ground—it's your own mindset I'm talking about. Don't identify. You know better. If you don't, —"

"Yes, ser, you can recommend I take tape. I know what you can do. But I want you to listen to me. Listen! I don't know what land of man you are. But I've seen what you've done. I think you may be trying to help Justin. In some ways I think it has helped. But he can't go on working the way he is."

Yanni gave a growl like an engine dying and slowly leaned back on the arm of his chair, looking at him from under his brows. "Because he's not suited to real-time work. I know it. You know it. Justin knows it. I thought maybe he'd calm down, but he hasn't got the temperament for it, he can't get the perspective. He hasn't got the patience for standard design work, repetition drives him crazy. He's creative, so we put him in on the Rubin project. Denys got him that. I seconded it. It's the best damn thing we can do for him—put him where he can do theoretical work, but not that damn out-there project of his, and he won't concentrate on anything else, I know damn well he won't! He's worse than Jordan with an idea in his head, he won't turn it loose till it stinks. Have you got an answer? Because it's either the Rubin project or it's rot away in standard design, and I haven't got time on my staff to let one of my people take three weeks doing a project that should have been booted out the door in three days, you understand me?"

He had thought down till then that Yanni was the Enemy. But of a sudden he felt easier with Yanni. He saw a decent man who was not good at listening. Who was listening for the moment.

"Ser. Please. Justin's not Jordan. He doesn't work like Jordan. But if you give him a chance he is working. Listen to me. Please. You don't agree with him, but he's learning from you. You know that an azi designer has an edge in Applications. I'm an Alpha. I can take a design and internalize it and tell a hell of a lot about it. I've worked with him on his own designs, and I can tell you—I can tell you I believe in what he's trying to do."

"God, that's all I need."

"Ser, I know what his designs feel like, in a way no CIT can. I have the logic system."

"I'm not talking about his ability. He's fixed his rat-on-a-treadmill problems. He's got that covered. I'm talking about what happens when his sets integrate into CIT psych. Second and third and fourth generation. We don't want a work-crazy population. We don't want gray little people that go crazy when they're not on the assembly line. We don't want a suicide rate through the overhead when there's job failure or a dip in the economy. We're talking CIT psych, and that's exactly the field he's weakest in and exactly what I think he ought to go study for ten or twenty years before he does some real harm. You know what it feels like. Let me tell you I know something about CIT psych from the inside, plus sixty years in this field, and I trust a junior designer can appreciate that fact."

"I respect that, ser. I earnestly assure you. So does he. But his designs put—put joy into a psychset. Not just efficiency. The designs you say will cause trouble are their own reward tape. Isn't it true, ser, that when an azi has a CIT child, and he teaches that child as a CIT, he teaches interpretively what he understands out of his pyschset. And an azi with one of Justin's small routines somewhere in his sets, even if he was never as lucky as I am, to be socialized as I am, to be Alpha and have one lifelong partner, would get so much sense of purpose out of that, so much sense of purpose, he would think about his job and get better at it. And have pride in that, ser. Maybe there are still problems in it. But it's the emotional level he reaches. It's the key to the logic sets themselves. It's a self-programming interaction. That's what no one is taking into account."

"Which create a whole complex of basic structural problems in synthetic psychsets. Let's talk theory here. You're a competent designer. Let's be real blunt. They tried this eighty years ago."

"I'm familiar with that."

"And they hung a few embellishments onto the psychsets and they ended up with neuroses. Obsessive behaviors."

"You say yourself he's avoided that."

"And it's self-programming, do you hear yourself talking?"

"Worm," Grant said. "But a benign one."

"That's just about where that kind of theory belongs. Worm. God! If it is self-programming, you have created a worm of sorts, and you're playing with people's lives. If it isn't, you've got a delayed-action problem that's going to crop up in the second or third generation. Another kind of worm, if you want to put it that way. Hell if I want to give research time to it. I've got a budget. You two are on my departmental budget and you're a hell of an expense with no damned return that justifies it."

"We have justified it this last year."

"Which is killing Warrick. Isn't that your complaint? He can't go on outputting at that level. He can't take it. Psychologically he can't take it. So what are you going to do? Carry it by yourself, while Justin lives in the clouds somewhere designing sets that won't work, that I'm damned well not going to let him install in some poor sod of a Tester. No!"

"I'll do the work. Give him the freedom. Lighten the load. A little. Ser, give him the chance. He has to rely on you. No one else can help him. He is good. You know he is."

"And he's damned well wasting himself."

"What were you doing at the start? Teaching him, while you took his designs apart. Do that for him. Lighten the load a little. The work will get done. You just can't pressure him like that, because he'll do it if he thinks someone is suffering, he just won't stop, he's like that. Give us things we can handle and we'll handle them. Justin has a talent at integration that can get more out of a genotype than anyone ever did, because he does get into the emotional level. Maybe his ideas won't work, but, for God's sake, he's still studying. You don't know what he can be. Give him a chance."

Yanni looked at him a long time, upset, unhappy, with his face red and his teeth working at his lip. "You're quite a salesman, son. You know what's the matter with him on this? Ari got hold of a vulnerable kid with an idea that was real advanced for a seventeen-year-old, she flattered hell out of him, she fed him full of this crap, and psyched him right into her bed. You're aware of that?"

"Yes, ser. I'm well aware of it."

"She did a real job on him. He thinks he was brilliant. He thinks there was more there than there was, and you don't do him any service by feeding that. He's bright, he's not brilliant. He'd be damn good on the Rubin project. I've seen what he can do, and there is a lot in him. I respect hell out of that. I don't like to feed a delusion. I spend my life trying to make normal people and you're asking me to humor him in the biggest delusion of his poor fucked-up life. I hate that like hell, Grant. I can't tell you how much I hate it."

"I'm talking to a man who's the nearest thing to a Supervisor Justin's got; the man Justin fought to get to help him; who's going to take a talent that's been fucked-up and kill it because it's a drain on the teacher. What kind of man is that?"

"Dammit."

"Yes, ser. Damn me all you like. It's Justin I'm talking about. He trusts you and he doesn't trust many people. Are you going to damn him because he's trying to do something you think will fail?"

Yanni chewed on his lip. "You're one of Ari's, aren't you?"

"You know I am, ser."

"Damn, she did good work. You remind me what she was. After all that's happened."

"Yes, ser." It stung. He thought that it was meant to.

But Yanni gave a great sigh and shook his head. "I'll do this. I'll put him on the project. I'll keep the work light. Which means, dammit, that you're going to carry some of it."

"Yes, ser."

"And if he does his damn designs I'll rip them apart. And teach him what I can. Everything I can. Has he got his problem with tape solved?"

"He has no problem with tape, ser."

"If you're in the room with him. That's what Petros says."

"That's so, ser. Can you blame him?"

"No. No, I can't. —I'll tell you, Grant, I respect what you're doing. I'd like to have a dozen of you. Unfortunately—you're not a production item."

"No, ser. Justin as much as Ari and Jordan—had a hand in my psychsets. But you're welcome to analyze them."

"Stable as hell. Good. Good for you." Yanni got up and came around the desk as Grant got up in confusion. And Yanni put his hand on his shoulder and took his hand. "Grant, come back to me if you think he can't handle things."

That affected him, when before, he doubted everything about this man's goodwill. "Yes, ser," he said, thinking that if Yanni was telling the truth, and if there was anything of himself he could give that Yanni could not have out of library and lab, he would give it. Freely.

"Out," Yanni said brusquely. "Go."

Azi-like, simple, equal to equal. When he knew that Yanni was upset about Strassen, and about everything that was going on, and it had been the worst of times to go to him.

He went, with a simplicity of courtesies he had not felt with anyone but Justin and Jordan, since he was very young.

And with an anguish over what he might have done in his presumption, adding stress to what he knew was a delicate tolerance for Justin in the House, at a delicate time and a delicate balance in Justin's own mind. He had not known, from the time he determined to go to Yanni, whether Justin would forgive him—or whether he would deserve forgiveness.

So that was where he had to go first.

"You did what?" Justin cried, from the gut; and felt a double blow, because Grant reacted as if he had hit him, flinched and turned his face and turned it back again, to look at him helplessly, without any of Grant's accustomed defenses.

That took the wind out of him. There was no way to shout at Grant. Grant had acted because Grant had been forced into a caretaker role by his behavior, that was what his knowledge of azi told him; and he had misread that, an Alpha Supervisor's worst mistake, and leaned on Grant for years in ways that, God help him, he had needed.

Grant going azi on him—was his fault. No one else's.

He reached out and patted Grant's shoulder and calmed himself down as much as he could, while he was shocked full of adrenaline and he could hardly breathe, as much from what he had done to Grant as from the fact that Grant might well have damned him.

So. That was not Grant's fault. Everything would be all right, if Grant had not exposed himself to Giraud's attention again. Just go back to Yanni and try to recover things without the emotionalism that would finish the job in Yanni's eyes.

He just wanted to sit down a moment. But he could not even do that without letting Grant know how badly he was upset.

"Yanni wasn't mad," Grant pleaded with him. "Justin, he wasn't mad. It wasn't like that. He just said he would lighten up."

He gave Grant a second pat on the arm. "Look, I'm sure it's all right. If it isn't, I'll fix it. Don't worry about it."

"Justin?"

There was pain in Grant's voice. His making. Just like the crisis.

"Yanni's going to have my guts for shoving you in there," Justin said. "He ought to. Grant, you don't have to go around me. I'm all right. Don't worry."

"Stop it, dammit." Grant grabbed him and spun him around, hard, face to face with him. "Don't go Supervisor on me. I knew what I was doing."

He just stared in shock.

"I'm not some dumb-annie, Justin. You can hit me, if you like. Just don't pull that calm-down routine on me." Anger. Outright anger. It shocked hell out of him. It was rescue when he thought there was none. He was shaking when Grant let go his arm and put his hand on the side of his face. "God, Justin, what do you think?"

"I put too much on you."

"No. They put too much on you. And I told Yanni that. I'm not plastic. I know what I'm doing. What have you been doing all these years? I used to be your partner. What do you think I've gotten to be? One of the psych-cases you deal with? Or what do you think I am?"

Azi, was the obvious answer. Grant challenged him to it. And he froze up inside.

"Dumb-annie, huh?"

"Cut it, Grant."

"Well?"

"Maybe—" He got his breath and turned away. "Maybe it's pride. Maybe I've been taught all my life to think I'm the stronger one. And I know I've been fractured for years. And leaning on you. Hell if I don't feel guilty about that."

"Different kind of pressure," Grant said. "Mine can't come from anywhere but you. Don't you know that, born-man?"

"Well, I sure as hell pushed you into Yanni's office."

"Give me a chance, friend. I'm not a damn robot. Maybe my feelings are plastic, but they're sure as hell real. You want to yell at me, yell. Don't pull that Supervisor crap."

"Then don't act like a damn azi!"

He could not believe he had said that. He stood there in shock. So did Grant for a moment. With that hanging in the air between them.

"Well, I am," Grant said then, with a little shrug. "But I'm not guilty about it. How about you?"

"I'm sorry."

"No, go ahead. Damn-azi all you like. I'd rather that than watch you bottle it up. You work till you're dropping, you're eating your gut out, and one more aberrant azi psychset is going to push you over the edge. So damn-azi all you like. I'm glad you've gotten self-protective. It's about time."

"God, don't psychoanalyze me."

"Sorry, can't help that. Thank God I only have one born-man to worry about. Two would drive me into the wards. So damn born-men too. They cause a hell of a lot of trouble. You were right about Yanni. He's quite reasonable with azi. It's other born-men he pours it out on, everything he stores up. Question is whether he was telling me the truth. But if you'll calm down and listen to me, nothing about the fact you can't handle real-time is news to him. I only pointed out you were wasted in the Rubin project, and that if he wanted motivated work, he'd do well to put up with your doing design in your spare time. Which you're damn well due. I don't think I was at all unreasonable." Eavesdroppers, Justin thought with a jolt, and sorted back wildly to remember what they had said. He signed Grant to be careful, and Grant nodded.

"I'm sorry," Justin said then, calmer. And wishing he could find a dark place to hide him. But Grant was doing all right. Grant was holding up fine, with a dignity he could not manage. "Grant, I—just react to things. Flux-thinking. You've got to understand."

"Hey," Grant said. "I don't understand. I marvel at it. The number of levels you can react on is really amazing. The number of things you can believe at one time is incredible. I don't understand it. I'm going to spend days figuring that reaction and I'll probably still miss nuances."

"Real simple. I'm scared as hell. I thought I knew where things were and all of a sudden even you went sideways on me. So everything shifted to polar-opposite values. Born-men are real logical."

"God. Life would be so dull if there weren't born-men. Now I wonder which pole Yanni was at while I was talking to him. That's enough to worry hell out of you."

"Was he calm?"

"Very."

"Then you got the main set, didn't you?"

"We just have to learn not to agitate you people. I think they ought to put that in the beginning tape-sets. 'Excited born-men go to alternate programming sets. Every born-man is schiz. And he hates his alter ego.' That's the whole key to CIT behavior."

"You're not far wrong."

"Hell. I've been endocrine-learning for years. I'm really amazed. I went right over to it. Dual and triple opinions, the whole thing. I must say I prefer my natural psychset. My natural psychset, thank you. A lot easier on the stomach. Do you want to go to lunch?"

He looked at Grant, at Grant with the shields up again, with that slight, mocking smile that was Grant's way of defying fate, the universe, and Reseune Administration. For a moment he felt both fortunate and terrified.

As if for the first time everything that had been going away from him had stopped and trembled on the edge of reversing itself.

"Sure," he said. "Sure." He caught Grant's arm and steered him out the door. "If you could make headway with Yanni Schwartz you could hire out by the hour. Probably everybody in the Wing could use your services."

"Un-unh. No. I'm in regular employment, thanks." People were staring. He dropped Grant's arm. And realized half the Wing must have heard him shouting at Grant. And was looking for signs of damage.

They were a source of gossip for a whole host of reasons. And now there was a new one.

That would get back to Yanni too.

viii

There were new tilings all the time. Nelly took Ari to the store in the North Wing, and they came back with packages. That was fun. She bought Nelly things too, and Nelly was so happy it made her feel good, to see Nelly with a new suit and looking pretty and so proud.

But Nelly was not maman. She liked it at first when Nelly put her arms around her, but Nelly always was Nelly, that was all, and all at once one night she felt so empty when Nelly did that. She didn't tell Nelly, because Nelly was telling her a story. But after that it was harder and harder to put up with Nelly holding her, when maman was gone. So she fidgeted down and sat on the floor for her stories, which Nelly seemed to think was all right.

Seely was just nobody. She teased Seely sometimes, but Seely never laughed. And that felt awful. So she left Seely alone, except when she asked him for a soft drink or a cookie. Which she got more of than maman would like. So she tried to be good and not to ask, and to eat vegetables and not have so much sugar. It's not good for you, maman would say. And anything maman said was something she tried to remember and keep doing, because everything of maman's she forgot was like forgetting maman. So she ate the damn vegetables and got a lump in her throat because some of them tasted awful, all messed up with white creamy stuff. Ugh. They made her want to throw up. But she did it because of maman and it made her so sad and so mad at the same time she felt like crying.

But if she did cry she went to her room and shut the door, and wiped her eyes and washed her face before she came out again, because she was not going to snivel.

She wanted somebody to play with but she didn't want it to be Sam. Sam knew her too well. Sam would know about her maman. And she would beat his face in, because she couldn't stand him looking at her with his face that never showed anything.

So when Nelly asked did she want to go back to playschool she said all right if Sam wasn't there.

"I don't know who there is, then," Nelly said.

"Then I'll go by myself," she said. "Let's go do the gym. All right?"

So Nelly took her. And they fed the fish and she played in the sandbox, but the sandbox was no fun by herself; and Nelly was not good at making buildings. So they just fed the fish and took walks and played on the playground and in the gym.

There was tapestudy. And a lot of the grown-ups did lessons with her. She learned a lot of things. She lay there in her bed at night with her head so full of new things she had trouble thinking of maman and Ollie.

Uncle Denys was right. It hurt less, day by day. That was the thing that scared her. Because if it didn't hurt the mad was harder to keep. So she bit her lip till it hurt and tried to keep it that way.

There was a children's party. She saw Amy there. Amy ran and got behind sera Peterson and acted like a baby. She remembered why she had wanted to hit Amy. The rest of the kids just stared at her a lot and sera Peterson told them they had to play with her.

They weren't happy about it. She could tell. There was Kate and Tommy and a kid named Pat, and Amy, who cried and snuffled over in the corner. Sam was there too. Sam came out from the others and said Hello, Ari. Sam was the only friendly one. So she said Hello, Sam. And wished she could go home, but Nelly had gone in the kitchen to have tea with sera Peterson's azi, and Nelly was having a good time.

So she went over and sat down and played their game, which was a dice game, and you moved around a board, which was Union space. You got money. All right. She played it, and everybody got to arguing and laughing and teasing each other again. Except Amy. Except they teased each other and not her. But that was all right. She learned their game. She started getting money. Sam was the luckiest one with the dice, but Sam was too careful with his money and Tommy was too reckless. "I'll sell you a station," she said. And Amy bought it for most of what Amy had. So Amy charged a lot and Ari just charged less. And what Amy had bought was off at the edge anyway. So Ari got more money and Amy got mad. And nobody wanted to trade for Amy's station, but Ari offered to buy it back, not for what Amy wanted for it.

So Amy took it and bought ships. And Ari raised her prices a little.

Amy sniveled. And pretty soon she was in trouble again, because Ari kept beating her by using her money to buy up cargoes and keeping a surplus of the only things Amy could get because stupid Amy kept coming to her stations instead of sticking to Tommy's. Amy wanted a fight. Amy got a fight. But she didn't want Amy to lose real soon and rum the game, so she told Amy what she ought to do.

Amy got real mad then. And sniveled some more.

She didn't take the advice either.

So Ari got her in trouble and took all but one of her ships. Then the last one. By that time she had a way to win. But everybody else was looking unhappy and nobody was teasing anybody, except Amy left the table crying.

Nobody said anything. They all looked at Amy. They all looked at her like they wanted not to be there.

She was going to win. Except Sam didn't know it. So she said, "Sam, you can have my pieces."

And she went and got Nelly in the kitchen and said she wanted to go home. Nelly looked worried, then, and stopped having fun with Corrie, and they went home.

She moped around the rest of the day, being lonely. And mad. Which was fine. She thought of maman then. And missed Ollie. Even Phaedra.

And thought if Valery had been there he would not have been so stupid.

"What's the matter?" uncle Denys asked that evening. He was very kind about it. "Ari, dear, what happened at the party? What did they do?"

She could Disappear them all if she said they had a fight. Maybe they would anyway. She wasn't sure. At least Amy and Kate were still around, even if they were stupid.

"Uncle Denys, where did Valery go?"

"Valery Schwartz? His maman got transferred. They moved, that's all. You still remember Valery?"

"Can he come back?"

"I don't know, dear. I don't think so. His maman has a job to do. What happened at the party?"

"I just got bored. They're not much fun. Where did maman and Ollie go? What station?"

"To Fargone."

"I'm going to send maman and Ollie a letter." She had seen mail in maman's office. She had never thought of doing that. But she thought that would get to maman's office at the other place. At Fargone.

"All right. I'm sure they'd like that."

Sometimes she thought maman and Ollie weren't really anywhere. But uncle Denys talked like they were, and they were all right. That made her feel better, but it made her wonder why maman never even called on the phone.

"Can you call Fargone?"

"No," uncle Denys said. "It's faster for a ship to go. A letter gets there much faster than a phone call. In months, not years."

"Why?"

"You say hello, and it takes twenty years to get there; and they say hello and it takes twenty years to get here. And then you say your first sentence and they don't hear it for years. You could take hundreds of years having a conversation. That's why letters are faster and a whole lot cheaper, and they don't use phones and radios between any two stars. Ships carry everything, because ships go faster than light. There are more complications to the question, but that's more than you really want to know to get a message to your maman. It's just a long way. And a letter is the way you do things."

She had never understood how far far could be. Not when they were jumping ships around the board. She felt cold and lonely then. And she went to her room and wrote the letter.

She kept tearing it up because she didn't want to make maman worry about her being miserable. She didn't want to say: maman, the kids don't like me and I'm lonely all the time.

She said: I miss you a lot. I miss Ollie. I'm not mad at Phaedra anymore. I want you and Ollie to come back. Phaedra too. I'll be good. Uncle Denys gives me too many cookies, but I remember what you said and I don't eat too much. I don't want to be fat. I don't want to be hyper, either. Nelly is very good to me. Uncle Denys gives me his credit card and I buy Nelly lots of things. I bought a spaceship and a car and puzzles and story tapes. And a red and white blouse and red boots. I wanted a black one but Nelly says that's for azi until I'm older. Little girls don't wear black, Nelly says. I could too, but sometimes I do what Nelly says. I mind everybody. I saw Amy Carnath today and I didn't hit her. She still snivels. I study a lot of tapes. I can do math and I can do chemistry. I can do geography and astrog-raphy and I'm going to study about Fargone because you're there. I want to go to Fargone if you can't come here. Are there any kids there? Have you got a nice place?

Tell uncle Denys I can come. Or you come home. I'll be very good. I love you. I love Ollie I am going to give this to uncle Denys to send to you. He says it takes a long time to get there and your letter will take a long time to get to me so please write to me as soon as you can. I think it will be almost a year. By then I will be eight. If you tell Denys to let me come real soon I guess I will be almost nine. Tell him I can bring Nelly too. She'll be scared but I'll tell her it's all right. I'm not afraid of jumps. I'm not afraid to come by myself. I do a lot of things by myself now. Uncle Denys doesn't care. I know he would let me come if you said yes. I love you.

ix

Florian was late again. There was a shortcut along between 240 and 241 and he took it, dodging out between two groups of Olders and skipping backward to nod a courtesy and murmur: "Excuse me, please," before he turned and sprinted across the road and up to Security.

"I'm very sorry," he said, arriving at the desk inside Square One. He was trying not to pant as he handed his chit to the azi at the desk. The man looked at the chit and put it in his machine.

"Blue to white to brown," the man said. "Change in brown. Instructions there."

"Yes," he said, and looked where the man pointed. Blue started with that door and he went, not running, but going in a great hurry.

He knew he was still late when he got to brown. The azi in charge was waiting for him. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm Florian AF-9979."

The man looked him over and said: "Size 6M, cabinets on the wall, go change. Hurry."

"Yes," he said, and went into the changing room, hunted quickly for 6M, pulled out the plastic packet and threw it onto the bench while he peeled out of his clothes. He put the black uniform on, sat down quick to pull on the socks and put on the slippers, then hung his AG uniform on the pegs beside uniforms of all sizes and colors. He was so nervous he almost forgot his new keycard, but he got it off his other coveralls and clipped it to the black ones, then raked a hand through his hair and hurried outside again.

"Down the hall," the azi with the clipboard said. "Brown to green.

Run!"

He ran. And followed the halls till he found a door marked with green-in-brown. Inside, then, into a gym. He came bursting in where there was a man with a clipboard, and another Younger, who was dressed like him, in black coveralls. Who was a girl. He felt a shock, but gut-level, reacted to the Super and made a little bow. "Sorry I'm late, ser."

The Super looked at him just long enough to keep him worried, and he did not dare look back at the girl who was, he was sure now, here just like he was, to find her partner for this Assignment.

Then the Super made a mark on his board and said: "Florian, this is Catlin. Catlin is your partner."

Florian looked at the girl again, his heart beating hard. It was a mistake. It must be. He was late. He got a girl partner. He was supposed to change bunks and he had thought he was supposed to bunk with his partner. Wrong, then. He did not know where he was going to sleep.

He wanted his classes back. He had been upset about the new Assignment even if his old Super told him he could still have AG on his Rec hours. He wanted—

But the girl bothered him. She looked—

She was blonde, blue-eyed, a scab on her chin. She was taller than he was, but that was nothing unusual. She had a thin, very serious face. He thought he had seen her before. She stared at him, the way you weren't supposed to stare. Then he realized he was doing it too.

"Catlin," the Super said, "you know the way from here. Take Florian over to Staging, talk to the Super there."

"Yes, ser," she said, and Florian almost asked the Super to look and check if there was some mistake, but he was late, he had gotten a bad start with this man, and he did not know why he was as upset as he was, but he was panicked. Catlin was already going. He caught up with her as she walked toward another door behind the hanging buffer-mats at the end of the gym. She used her keycard, held the door for him, and led the way into another long cement hallway.

Down stairs then. And another cement hall.

"I'm supposed to have a bunk assignment?" he said finally, behind her.

She looked back on the stairs and he caught up with her in the long concrete hall at the bottom.

"22. Like me," she said. "We're going in with Olders. Partners room together, two and two."

He was shocked. But she seemed to know what was right, and she was not upset. So he just walked behind her, wondering if somehow the Computers had glitched up and he was supposed to have gotten tape to explain all this and help him not make mistakes. He had, he thought, to talk to the Super where they were going.

They got to the other place. Catlin keyed in, and there was a Super sitting at a desk. "Ser," Catlin said. "Catlin and Florian, ser."

"Late," the Super said.

"Yes, ser," Catlin said.

"My fault," Florian said. "Ser, —"

"Excuses don't matter. You're Assigned to Security. You go into Staging, you pick out what you think you might need. And both of you will be right. All right. Fifteen minutes to get your equipment. You do mess, you've got this evening to plan it out, you'll do a Room tomorrow morning. It's a one-hour course, you can talk about it. You're supposed to. Go."

"I—" he said. "Ser, I have to feed the pigs. I– Am I supposed to have gotten tape about this? I haven't."

The Super looked straight at him. "Florian, you'll do AG when you aren't doing Security. This is your Assignment. You can go to AG in your Rec time. Four hours Rec time for every good pass through the Room. There isn't any tape for this. It's up at 0500, drill at 0530, breakfast at 0630, then tape, Room, or Rec, whatever the schedule calls for; noon mess as you can catch it, follow your schedule; evening mess at 2000, follow your schedule, in bunks at 2300 most nights. If you've got any problems you talk to your Instructor. Catlin knows. Ask her."

"Yes, ser," Florian breathed, thinking: What about Andy? What about the pigs? They said I could go to AG. And because the Super had answered and he was terribly afraid this was the right Assignment, he caught up with Catlin.

It was a Staging-room, like in the Game he knew. His old Super had said it was an Assignment, there would be Rooms, all of this he knew: it would be like Rooms he had done before and he would be more out of Security than AG after this.

But it was not right. He was supposed to bunk with a girl. He was put into a place she knew and he didn't. He was going to make more mistakes. They always said a Super would never refuse to talk to you, but the one back there made him afraid he was already making mistakes.

Like being late to start with.

He came into the Staging-room behind Catlin; he knew it was going to be a Security kind of Room, and he was not terribly shocked to find guns and knives on the table with the tools, but he didn't even want to touch them, and there was a queasy feeling in his stomach when Catlin picked up a gun. He grabbed pliers and a circuit-tester; Catlin took a length of fine cord and he started through the components tray, grabbing things and stuffing them into his pockets by categories.

"Electronics?" she asked.

"Yes. Military?"

"Security. You know weapons?"

"No."

"Better not have one, then. What kind are your Rooms?"

"Traps. Alarms."

Catlin's pale brows went up. She nodded, looking more friendly. "Ambushes. There's usually an Enemy. He'll kill you."

"So will traps."

"Are you good?"

He nodded. "I think so."

And he was staring again. Her face had been bothering him all along. It was like he knew her. He knew her the way you knew things from tape. Maybe she was remembering him too just then, the way she was staring. He was not completely surprised, except that it had happened at all: tape never surprised him. He knew it was not a mistake if he knew her from tape. She was supposed to be important to him, if that was the case, the way his studies were important, and he had never thought that was supposed to happen until he was Contracted to somebody.

But she was azi. Like him.

And she knew all about her Assignment and he was new and full of mistakes.

"I think I'm supposed to know you," he said, worried.

"Same," she said.

No one had ever paid that much attention to him. Not even Andy. And he felt shaky, to know he had run into someone tape meant for him.

"Why are we partners?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said. Then: "But electronics is useful. And you know a different Room. Come on. Tell me what you know."

"You go in," he said, trying to pull up everything, fast and all of it, the way he would do for a Super. "There's a door. There can be all kinds of traps. If you make one go off you lose. Sometimes there's noise. Sometimes the lights go out. Sometimes there's someone after you and you have to get through and rig traps. Sometimes there's an AI lock. Sometimes there's water and that's real dangerous if there's a line loose. But it's pretend, you don't really get electrocuted."

"Dead is dead," she said. "They shoot at you and they trap the doors and if you don't blow them up they'll blow you up; and sometimes all the things you said. Sometimes gas. Sometimes Ambushes. Sometimes it's outside and sometimes it's a building. Some people get killed for real. I saw one. He broke his neck."

He was shocked. And then he thought it could be him. And he thought about door traps. He took a battery and a coil of wire and a penlight, and Catlin gave him a black scarf—for your face, she said. She took a lot of other things, like face-black and cord and some things that might be weapons, but he didn't know.

"If they have gas masks in Staging it's a good idea to have one," Catlin said, "but there aren't. So they probably won't do gas, but you don't know. They aren't fair."

A bell rang.

Time was up.

"Come on," Catlin said, and the door opened and let them out with what they had.

Down a hall and through more doors. And upstairs again, until they came out in another concrete hall.

With a lot of doors.

"We're looking for 22," Catlin said.

That was two more. Catlin opened the door and let them into a plain little room with a double bunk.

"Top or bottom?" Catlin asked.

"I don't care," he said. He had never thought about a room all his own. Or even half his. There was a table and two chairs. There was a door.

"Where does that go?"

"Bathroom," Catlin said. "We share with the room next door. They're Olders. You knock before you go in. That's their Rule. If they're Olders you take their Rules."

"I'm lost," he said.

"That's all right," Catlin said, emptying her pockets onto the table. "I've been here five days. I know a lot of the Rules. The Olders are pretty patient. They tell you. But you better remember or they'll tell the Instructor and you're in trouble."

"I'll remember." He looked at her emptying her pockets and thought how his stuff was right where he wanted it. "Do we have to change clothes for the Room?"

"In the morning, always."

He emptied his pockets, but he put everything together the way he wanted it. Catlin looked at what he was doing.

"That's smart," she said. "You always know where all that stuff is."

He looked at her. She was serious. "Of course," he said.

"You're all right," she said.

"I think you must be pretty good," he said.

"They don't Get me often," she said. And pulled back the chair and sat down with her arms on the table while he was emptying his pockets. "Do they you?"

"No," he said.

She looked quite happy in her sober way. And picked up the gun and flipped up the panel on the grip and snapped it shut again. "The gun's real," she said. "But the charges aren't. You still have to check, though. Rounds can get mixed up. Once somebody's did. You always think about that. The Enemy could have mixed-up rounds. And blow you to bits. The practice rounds have a big black band. The real ones don't. But these can still kill you if you get hit close up. You have to be careful when you're working partners. More people get killed with practice rounds than anything else in training."

Catlin knew more stories about how people got killed than he had ever heard in his life. He felt his stomach upset.

But Catlin wanted to know all about the traps, all about the things he had seen. She was full of questions and with everything he said he saw her strange eyes concentrate in the way people would if they were smart and they were going to remember. So he asked about Ambushes, and she told him a lot of things she had seen.

She was smart, he thought. She sounded like she could do the things she said. He had never planned to be in Security. He had never planned to have a girl for a partner and he never imagined anyone like Catlin. She did sort of smile. It lit up her eyes, but her mouth hardly moved. She made him so nervous he was gladder when she did that than when most people smiled wide open. A smile out of Catlin was hard to get. You had to really tell her something that impressed her. And when you got one you wanted another one because in between there was just nothing.

They went to mess, which was what they called the dining hall here. They all had to stand and wait till they could sit, and they were years younger than anyone. Most were boys, very tall, a few were girls, all of them were in their teens and everybody was on strict manners. He would have been terribly nervous if Catlin had not known when to stand and when to sit and tugged at his sleeve to cue him. But it was very good food, and as much as you wanted, and when the near-grown boys around them talked they were polite and didn't act annoyed that they were there. Who's your partner? one asked Catlin, and she said: Florian AF, ser. Like talking to a Super.

Welcome in, that boy said. And they made him stand up so people could see him. He was nervous. But the boy stood up beside him and introduced him as Florian AF, Catlin's partner, a tech. He wasn't sure he was, but it was something like; and they all looked at him a moment, then they gave a land of Welcome In and he could sit down. It was not too different from a dorm, except there they never made you stand up at table, because your dining hall was a whole lot of dorms. Green Barracks had its own kitchen, and there were seconds and thirds if you wanted them, you didn't have to have a med's order.

The Instructor said they had two hours for Rec then and then they had to have lights out by 2300.

But Catlin thought they ought to go back to their quarters—that was what they called it in Green Barracks—and figure out about the Room, because the Instructor said they could do that; and they asked each other questions about the Room until just before their lights-out.

He was anxious about undressing. He had never undressed around girls, just the meds and the techs, and they had always been careful to give him something to put on and to turn their backs or leave the room till he had. Catlin said it was all right if they were roommates, everybody else did; so she took off her shirt and pants, he took off his, and she went to take a shower first. She came back in her clean underwear and threw the duty clothes in the hamper.

She was like he thought she would be under her clothes, all bones and skinny muscle that would have made him think they didn't feed you much in Security, except he had just had one of their meals. She was shaped different, all right, thinner around the chest—her ribs showed—and flat where boys weren't. He had never seen a girl in her underwear. It was thin and didn't hide much, and he tried not to stare or to think about her staring at him. He wasn't sure why it was bad, it still didn't feel right. But that was the way it had to be, because sleeping in their clothes would make them a mess.

So they had to be polite with each other and get along with the situation.

He took his shower fast, like Catlin said, because the Olders would want it soon; and he put on his clean underwear and came and got in the bottom bunk, because Catlin had the top. He got in fast, because she was under her covers and he was out there all alone in his underwear.

"Last one," Catlin said from up above, "has to turn the lights out. It's my Rule. All right?"

He looked for the switch from where he was lying. He had never been in a place where the lights didn't just go out at the right time. He had never slept anywhere but a barracks with fifty or so boys in the same room. He slithered out of the covers again and dived over and hit the switch and dived back again, remembering the straight line to the bunk, so hard it made the bed shake.

He realized he had shaken up Catlin too. "Sorry," he said, and tried to be quieter getting under the covers again. He was very conscious he was with a stranger, who might be a seven, but they were different from each other, she was Security and Security was very stiff and cold. He didn't want to do wrong or make her annoyed with him. He lay there in the dark in a place with only one person in it, worse than being in a new dorm, very much worse. He felt cold and it was only partly because the sheets were. All the sounds were gone, except one of the Olders starting up the shower.

He wondered where Catlin had lived before this. She didn't seem nervous. Somebody had told her everything that would happen. Or she was just able to do everything. Having a boy for a partner didn't bother her. She was glad about him being good at traps. He hoped he was as good as she expected. He would be terribly embarrassed if he got them Blown Up in the first doorway.

And he was terribly afraid he was going to have to do Traps in the dark, which was the hardest, and that meant he was going to need the penlight. Catlin said he could hide that with his coat, they usually let you have one. Because working against the light he was a target for sure.

Don't make noise, she had said. I'll watch your back; you just work; but noise is going to help the Enemy. We can try to Get one that way, but that depends on how much time we have. Or whether it's a speed run or a kill run. They'll tell us that.

What's a kill run? he had asked.

Where you get most of your points for Getting the Enemy.

Like where you have to set the Traps, he had said, relieved he understood. Sometimes we do it both ways—you have to take one apart and leave one for the Enemy following you. You get extra points if he misses it. Sometimes they make you go back through right away, and you don't know whether it's your Trap or his or whether he got stopped. The blow-ups show, but you can't trust those either, because he could touch it off and set another one.

That's sneaky, she had said, her eyes lighting the way they could. That's good.

He wanted to go blank so that he could go to sleep: there was a Room to do in the morning; and he knew he had to rest, but that was hard to do, his mind was so full of things without answers.

The Room did not make him half so anxious as this place did.

Why are they doing this? he wondered. And thinking of the gun on the table and about the too-quiet mess hall and all of Catlin's stories about people shooting each other in the Game: Are they sure I belong here?

It's not a Game, Catlin had said sternly when he had called it that. A game is what you do on the computers in Rec. This is real, and they cheat.

He really wanted to go back to AG. He wanted to see the Horse. He wanted to feed the baby in the morning.

But you had to survive the Room to do that for just four hours.

From now on.

He really tried to go blank. He tried hard.

Why don't they give me tape? Why don't they make it so I know what to do?

Why don't they make it so I feel better about this?

Has the Computer forgotten about me?

x

Ari thought every night how her letter was on its way now and she figured out where it had to be if it took so many months. Maman and Ollie would be at Fargone now. She felt a lot better to know where they were. She looked at pictures of Fargone and she could imagine them being there. Uncle Denys brought her a publicity booklet for RESEUNESPACE that had maman's name in it. And pictures of where maman would be working. She kept it in her desk drawer and she liked to look at it and imagine herself going there. She wrote another letter every few days, and she told maman how she was doing. Uncle Denys said he would have to save up a packet of her letters and send them in a bundle because it was awfully expensive and maman wouldn't care if she got them all at once, all in one envelope. She wanted to address it to maman and Ollie, but uncle Denys said that would confuse the postal people, and if she was going to write to Ollie, maman would give it to him: the law said an azi couldn't receive any mail except through his Supervisor, which was silly for Ollie, nothing could upset him; but it was the law. So the address had to be:

Dr. Jane Strassen

Director

RESEUNESPACE

Fargone Station

And her return address was:

Dr. Denys Nye

Administrator

Reseune Administrative Territory

Postal District 3

Cyteen Station

She wanted to put her own name on the letter, but uncle Denys said she would have to wait until she was grown up and had her own address. Besides, he said, if it was from the Administrator of Reseune to the Director of RESEUNESPACE it looked like business and it would get right to maman's desk without anybody waiting.

She was in favor of that.

She asked why their address was Cyteen Station when they lived on Cyteen, and he said mail didn't go to planets without going through stations; and if you wanted to write to somebody on Earth the address was always Sol Station, but because there was Mars and the Moon you had to put Earth, then the name of the country.

Uncle Denys tried to explain what a country was and how they started.

That was why he got her the History of Earth tape. She wanted to do that one again. It had a lot of really strange pictures. Some were scary. But she knew it was just tape.

She went to tapestudy. She studied biology and botany, and penmanship and history and civics this week. She got Excellent on her exams and uncle Denys gave her a nice holo that was a Terran bird. You turned it and the bird flapped his wings and flew. It came all the way from Earth. Uncle Giraud had got it in Novgorod.

But there was only Nelly for playschool. And it was boring doing the swings and the puzzlebars with just Nelly. So she didn't go every day anymore. She got tired of going everywhere with Nelly, because Nelly worried about everything and Nelly was always worrying about her. So she told uncle Denys she could go to tapestudy by herself, and she could go to library by herself, because people knew her, and she was all right.

She took a lot of time getting back from tapestudy. Sometimes she stopped and fed the fish, because there was a Security guard right at the door and uncle Denys had said she could do that. Today she went down the tunnel because there had been a storm last night and you had to stay indoors for a few days.

So she got to thinking how she and maman had come this way once when she went to see ser Peterson. You took the elevator. Dr. Peterson was boring as Seely was; but that hall was where Justin's office was.

Justin would be interesting, she thought. Maybe he would at least say hello. And so many people had Disappeared that she liked to check now and again to see if people were still there. It always made her feel safer when she found they were. So if she got a chance to see an old place, she liked to.

She took the lift up to the upstairs hall, and she walked the metal strips she remembered: that was nice too, like once upon a time, when maman had been down the hall in that very office; but it made her sad, too, and she stopped it and walked the center of the hall.

Justin's office door was open. It was messy as the last time. And she was happy of a sudden, because Justin and Grant were both there.

"Hello," she said.

They both looked at her. It was good to see someone she knew. She really hoped they would be glad to see her. There weren't many people who would talk to her that weren't uncle Denys's.

But they didn't say hello. Justin got up and looked unfriendly.

She felt lonely all of a sudden. She felt awfully lonely. "How are you?" she asked, because that was what you were supposed to say.

"Where's your nurse?"

"Nelly's home." She could say that now about uncle Denys's place without it hurting. "Can I come in?"

"We're working, Ari. Grant and I have business to do."

"Everybody's working," she complained. "Hello, Grant."

"Hello, Ari," Grant said.

"Maman went to Fargone," she said. In case they hadn't heard.

"I'm sorry," Justin said.

"I'm going to go there and live with her."

Justin got a funny look. A real funny look. Grant looked at her. And she was scared because they were upset, but she didn't know why. She sat there looking up and wishing she knew what was wrong. Of a sudden she was real scared.

"Ari," Justin said, "you know you're not supposed to be here."

"I can be here if I want. Uncle Denys doesn't mind."

"Did uncle Denys say that?"

"Justin," Grant said. And gently: "Ari, who brought you here?"

"Nobody. I brought myself." She pointed. "I came from tapestudy. I'm taking a shortcut."

"That's nice," Justin said. "Look, Ari. I'll bet you're supposed to go straight home."

She shook her head. "No. I don't have to. Uncle Denys is always late and Nelly won't tell him." She kept getting this upset-feeling, no matter how she tried to be cheerful. It was not them being bad to her. It was not a mad either. She tried to figure out what it was, but Grant was worried about Justin and Justin was worried about her being there.

Hell with Them, maman would say. Meaning the Them that kept tilings messed up.

"I'm going," she said.

But she did it again the next day, sneaked up and popped sideways around the doorframe and said: "Hello."

That scared them good. She laughed. And came out and was nice then. "Hello."

"Ari, for God's sake, go home!"

She liked that better. Justin was mad like maman's mad. She liked that a lot better. He wasn't being mean. Neither was Grant. She had got them and they were going to yell at her.

"I did Computers today," she said. "I can write a program."

"That's nice, Ari. Go home!"

She laughed. And tucked her hands behind her and rocked and remembered not to. "Uncle Denys got me a fish tank. I've got guppies. One of them is pregnant."

"That's awfully nice, Ari. Go home."

"I could bring you some of the babies."

"Ari, just go home."

"I have a hologram. It's a bird. It flies." She pulled it out of her pocket and showed how it turned, and came inside to do it. "See?"

"That's fascinating. Please. Go home."

"I'll bet you haven't got one."

"I know I don't. Please, Ari, —"

"Why don't you want me here?"

"Because your uncle is going to get mad."

"He won't. He never knows."

"Ari," Grant said. She looked at him.

"You don't want us to call your uncle, do you?" She didn't. It wasn't very nice. She frowned at Grant. "Please," Justin said. "Ari."

He was halfway nice. And she was out of tricks. So she went outside, and looked back and smiled at him.

He was sort of a friend. He was her secret friend. She wasn't going to make him mad. Or Grant. She would come by just a second every day. But they were gone the next day: the door was shut and locked. That worried her. She figured they had either figured out she was coming at the same time every day or they were truly Disappeared.

So she sneaked over on her way to tape the next morning and caught them. "Hello!" she said. And scared them.

She saw they were mad, so she didn't laugh at them too much. And she just waved them goodbye and went on.

She caught them now and again. When her guppy had babies she brought them some in a jar she had. Justin looked like that made him feel better about her. He said he would take care of them.

But when she took the lid off they were dead. She felt awful. "I guess they were in there too long," she said. "I guess they were," Justin said. He smelled nice when she leaned on the desk near him. A lot like Ollie. "I'm sorry, Ari."

That was nice anyway. It was the first time he had really been just Justin with her. Grant came and looked and he was sorry too.

Grant took the jar away. And Justin said, well, sometimes things died.

"I'll bring you more," she said. She liked coming by the office. She thought about it a lot. She was leaning up by Justin's desk now and he had stopped having that bad feeling. He was just Justin. And he patted her on the shoulder and said she had better go.

He had never been that nice since a long, long time ago. So she was winning. She thought he would be awfully nice to talk to, but she wasn't going to push and make everything go wrong. Not with him and not with Grant. He was her friend. And when maman sent for her she would ask him and Grant if they wanted to go with her and Nelly.

Then she would have all the special people and she would be all right on the ship, because Justin was a CIT and he was grown-up and he would know how to do everything you had to do to get to Fargone.

She had a birthday coming. She had not even wanted a kids' party. Just the presents, thank you.

Even that hadn't made her happy. Until now.

She skipped down the hall, playing step-on-the-metal-line. And got Nelly's keycard out of her pocket and used it on the lift. Because she knew how Security worked.

xi

"You damn fool," Yanni yelled, and threw the papers at him. And Justin stood there, paralyzed in shock as the sheets of his last personal project settled on the carpet around them. "You damned fool! What are you trying to do? We give you a chance, we do everything we fucking can to get you a chance, I sweat my ass off on my own fucking time working up critiques on this shit you dream up to prove to a hardheaded juvenile-fixated fool that his brilliant junior study project was just that, a fucking junior study project that Ari Emory would have dismissed with a Thanks, kid, but we tried that, if she hadn't been interested in getting her hands on your juvenile body and fucking over your father, son, which you've just done all by yourself, you damned fool! Get this shit out of here! Get yourself back to your office, and you keep that kid out, you hear me?"

It hit him in the gut, and paralyzed him between wanting to kill Yanni and believing for a terrible moment that it was over, that a little girl's spite had ruined him, and Jordan, and Grant.

But then he heard it all the way to the end and realized it was not entirely that, it was not doomsday.

It might as well be.

"What did she say?" he asked. "What did she say about it? The kid brought me a damn jar of fish, Yanni, what am I going to do, throw her out of the office? I tried!"

"Get out of here!"

"What did she say?"

"She asked her uncle Denys to invite you to her fucking birthday party. That's all. That's all. You've got yourself a situation, son. You've got yourself a real situation. Seems she's been coming by the office a lot. Seems she's been dodging Security through the upstairs, seems she's been using her azi's keycard to get up and down the lift, seems she's just real attracted to you, son. What in hell do you think you're doing?"

"Is this a psych? Is that it? Denys asked you to run a psych and see what falls out?"

"Why didn't you report it?"

"Well, hell, I have a few reasons, don't you think?" He got his breath back. He got his balance back and stared at Yanni hard and straight. "It's your security she outflanked. How am I to know Reseune Security can't track a seven-year-old kid? I'm not going to be rude to her. No, thanks. I don't want any part of it. I don't want to be the one to ring up Denys Nye and tell him he's lost track of his ward. You want a kid to get determined about something, you just tell her I'm forbidden territory. No, thanks. Denys said be polite, make nothing of it, avoid her where I can—hell, I started shutting my office when I knew she was due back from tape, what else can I do?"

"You could report it!"

"And get in the middle of it again? Get myself yanked in for another inquisition? I followed orders. I figured you were bugging my office. I figured Security knew where she was. I figured you knew exactly what I said, which was nothing. Nothing, Yanni, except Go home, Ari. Go home, Ari. Go home, Ari. And I got her out. It's a juvenile behavior. She's found an adult to tease. She's being an ordinary brat kid. For God's sake, you make something out of this, you'll fix it, Yanni, does a damned juvenile-fixated fool have to tell you calm down with this kid and just let her pull her little prank? She can read you. She can read the tension you're pouring on her, I know damned well she can, because I have to fight like hell to keep her from reading me in the two or three minutes she comes past and says hello, and you and Denys must be doing real well, the way you're coming through to me. Get off her! Just let the whole thing alone, for God's sake, or what in hell are you trying to do, push her at me till it takes?" A second pause for breath, while Yanni just stood there and stared at him in a way that raised the hair on his neck. "Is that what you're trying to do? Is that what's behind this? Are you helping her do this?"

"You're paranoid."

"Damned right. Damned right, Yanni. What are you trying to do to me?"

"Get out of here! Get the fuck out of here! I got you off. I got you off with Administration. I spent the fucking morning on you, Petros wasted a day covering your ass, and you're damn right this is a psych and you just flunked it, son, you just flunked it! I don't trust you. I don't trust you further than I can see where you are. You walk a tight line, a damned tight line. If she shows up again you get her out of there and you phone Denys before her steps are cool!"

"What about Jordan?"

"Now you want favors."

"What about Jordan?"

"I don't hear anything about them cutting the phone calls. But you're playing with it, son. You're really playing with it. Don't push. Don't push any further."

"What are you putting in that report?"

"That you're not real casual around that kid. That you've got yourself some real hostilities about that kid."

"Not about that kid! About the lousy things you're doing to her, Yanni, about your whole damned program, your whole damned project! You're going to drive her crazy, shooting her full of stuff and jerking everything human away from her, Yanni. You're not a human being any longer!"

"And you've lost your perspective, boy, you've damned well lost your professional perspective! You're feeding your own damn insecurities into the situation. You're interpreting, son, you're not observing, you're not functioning, you've lost your objectivity, and you're off the project, son, you're off the project until you come back here with your head back together. Now get out of here! And don't bother me with these damn play-time projects of yours until you get your problem fixed. Get out!"

"I don't know what I could have said."

He was shaking. He was shaking all over again when Grant came over to the couch and handed him a glass. The ice rattled. He drank a gulp, and Grant settled down beside him with the tablet.

Give it a few days. Yanni explodes. He calms down.

He shook his head. Made a helpless gesture with the glass and rested his eyes against his hand a moment while the whiskey hit his bloodstream and the cold hit his stomach. "Maybe," he said finally, "maybe Yanni's right. Maybe I'm what he said, an assembly-line designer making an ass out of myself."

"That's not so."

"Yanni ripped me to shreds the last two designs. He was right, dammit, the whole thing would have blown up, they'd have had suicides."

Grant grabbed the tablet next to him, and wrote:

Don't give up. And went on writing: Denys said once Ari didn't fake your Aptitudes. You've taken it as an article of faith that she did. You've always thought you belonged in Education. You do. But Ari wanted you in Design. I wonder why.

His gut went queasy when he read that.

Grant wrote: Ari did a hell of a lot to you. But she never refused to look at your work.

"I'm off the project," he said. Because that was no news to Security and their eavesdroppers. "He says I hate the kid. It's not true, Grant. It's not true. It's not true."

Grant gripped his shoulder. "I know it. I know it, they know it, Yanni knows it, it's what he does—he was psyching you. He was getting you on tape."

"He said I flunked, didn't he?"

"For God's sake, that's part of it, that's part of the psych-out, don't you understand it? You know what he was doing. The test wasn't over yet. He wanted a reaction, and you gave it to him."

"I'm still pulling up what I said." He took a second drink, still shaking. "I can remember what I meant. I don't know if I can figure Yanni well enough to know what he heard."

"Yanni's good. Remember that. Remember that."

He tried to. He wrote: The question is, whose side is he on?

xii

Horse dipped his head and took grain from Florian's palm. "See," he said to Catlin, "see, he's friendly. He just worries when it's strangers. You want to touch him?"

Catlin did, very carefully. Horse shied back.

Catlin outright grinned as she jerked her hand back. "He's smart." The pigs and chickens had not impressed Catlin at all. She had just looked at the chicks in disgust when they piled up against the wall, and retreated from the piglets in some alarm when they rushed up to get the food. Then she had said they were stupid, and when he explained how smart they were about what they ate, she said they wouldn't be bacon if they were smarter about where they got what they ate.

The cows she said looked strong, but she was not very interested.

But Horse got the first real grin Florian had ever seen from Catlin, and she climbed up on the rail and watched while Horse played games with them and snorted and threw his head.

"We aren't going to eat Horse's babies," Florian said, climbing up beside her. "He's a working animal. That means they're not for food."

Catlin took that in the way she took a lot of things, with no comment, but he saw the nod of her head, which was Catlin agreeing with something.

He liked Catlin. That took a lot of deciding, because Catlin was hard to get hold of, but they had been through the Room a lot of times, and only once had he been Got and that was because they had Got Catlin first, and there had just been a whole lot of the Enemy, all Olders. Catlin had been Got twice in all, but the second time she had yelled Go! and given him time to blow a door and get through, which was his fault: he had been slower than he ought; so she Got all the Enemy but the one that Got her, and he Got that one, because he had a grenade, and the Enemy didn't expect him to have because he was a tech with his hands full. Catlin had been real proud of him for that.

He was just glad it was a game, and he told the Instructor it was his fault, not Catlin's. But the Instructor said they were a team, and it didn't matter.

He gave them half their Rec time.

Which was enough time to come over here. And this time he talked Catlin into coming with him and meeting Andy and seeing all the animals.

He was not sure Andy and Catlin got along. But Catlin said Horse was special.

So he got Andy to show Catlin the baby.

"She's all right," Catlin said, when she saw the girl Horse, and it played dodge with them, her tail going in a circle and her hooves kicking up the dust of the barn. "Look at her! Look at her move!"

"Your partner's all right, too," Andy said, with a nod of his head toward Catlin.

Which was something, coming from Andy. Florian felt happy, really happy, because all things he liked fell into place that way, Catlin and Andy and everything.

He remembered then, though, that they had to get back before curfew, which meant they had to hurry.

"Time," he said, and to Andy: "I'll be back as soon as I can."

"Goodbye," Andy said. "Goodbye," Florian said with a little bow, and: "Goodbye," Catlin said, which was very unusual, Catlin usually letting him do the talking when they dealt with anybody but Security.

They had to walk fast. He had showed Catlin the shortcuts on the way and she knew all of them on the way back, which was the way with Catlin.

She was also longer-legged than he was, and she could pick him up. He had thought boys were supposed to be taller and stronger. The Instructor said not when you were seven.

So he felt a little better about it. And he walked fast keeping up with Catlin, breathing harder than she was when they got to Green Barracks.

But when they checked in there was a stop on both of them at the desk. The azi there looked at his machine and said:

"Report to the Super, White section."

That was clear across the Town. That was Hospital. That meant tape. Instead of going to their quarters. "Yes," Catlin said, taking her card back and clipping it to her shirt. He took his back.

"Same instruction," the azi said.

"I wonder why," he said when they went back out onto the walk, headed for White.

"No good wondering," Catlin said. But she was worried, and she walked fast. He kept up with little extra efforts now and again.

The sun had gone behind the Cliffs a long time ago. The sky was going pink now and the lights were going to be on before they could get back. The walks and the roads were mostly deserted because most everyone was at supper. It was a strange time to be going to take tape. He felt uneasy.

When they got to the Hospital the clerk took their cards and read them; and told them each where to go.

He looked at Catlin when she went off her own way. He felt afraid then, and didn't know what of, or why, except he felt like he was in danger and she was. If you took tape you went to Hospital in the daytime. Not when you were supposed to be having dinner. His stomach was empty and he had thought maybe it was going to be a surprise exercise: they did that to the Olders, hauled them out of bed and you could hear them heading down the hall in the middle of the night, fast as they could run.

But it was not a Room when they got there, it was truly Hospital. You couldn't do anything except what you were told, and you didn't think in Hospital, you just took your shirt off and hung it up, then you climbed up on the table and sat there trying not to shiver until the Super got there to answer your questions.

It was a Super he had never had before. It was a man, who turned on the tape equipment before he even looked at him; and then said:

"Hello, Florian. How are you?"

"I'm scared, ser. Why are we getting tape now?"

"The tape will tell you. Don't be scared." He picked up a hypo and took Florian's arm and shot him with it. Florian jerked. He had gotten nervous about noises like that. The Super patted his shoulder and laid the hypo down. And held on to him because that was a strong one: Florian could feel it working very fast.

"Good boy," the Super said, and his hands were gentle even if he didn't talk as nice as some Supers. He never let him go, and swung him around and helped him get his legs up on the table, and his hand was always there, under his shoulders, on his shoulder or his forehead. "This is going to be a deep one. You aren't afraid now."

"No," he said, feeling the fear go away, but not the sense of being open.

"Deeper still. Deep as you can go, Florian. Go to the center and wait for me there. ..."

xiii

"I don't want a party," Ari said, slouching in the chair when uncle Denys was talking to her. "I don't want any nasty party, I don't like any of the kids, I don't want to have to be nice to them."

She was already in bad with uncle Denys for borrowing Nelly's keycard, because Nelly, being Nelly, had told uncle Denys and uncle Giraud the whole thing when uncle Denys asked her. Nelly didn't want to get her in trouble. They had caught her anyway. Nelly had been awfully upset. And uncle Denys had had a severe Talk with her and with Nelly about security and safety in the building and going where she was supposed to.

Most of all he had said he was mad at Justin and Grant for not calling him and telling him that she was where she wasn't supposed to be, and they were in trouble too. Uncle Denys had sent them an angry message; and now they were supposed to report her if she came by there instead of the halls she was supposed to be in.

Ari was real mad at uncle Denys.

"You don't want the other kids," uncle Denys said, like a question.

"They're stupid."

"Well, what about a grown-up party? You can have punch and cake. And all of that. And have your presents. I wasn't thinking of having the whole Family. What about Dr. Ivanov and Giraud—"

"I don't like Giraud."

"Ari, that's not nice. He's my brother. He's your uncle. And he's been very nice to you."

"I don't care. You won't let me invite who I want."

"Ari, —"

"It's not Justin's fault I took Nelly's keycard."

Uncle Denys sighed. "Ari, —"

"I don't want an old party."

"Look, Ari, I don't know if Justin can come."

"I want Justin and I want Grant and I want Mary."

"Who's Mary?"

"Mary's the tech down in the labs."

"Mary's azi, Ari, and she'd feel dreadfully uncomfortable. But if you really want to, I'll see about Justin. I don't promise, mind. He's awfully busy. I'll have to ask him. But you can send him an invitation."

That was better. She sat up a little and leaned her elbows on the chair arms. And gave uncle Denys a lot nicer look.

"Nelly isn't going to have to go to hospital, either," she said.

"Ari, dear, Nelly has to go to hospital, because you made Nelly awfully upset. It's not my fault. You put Nelly in a hard place and if Nelly has to go to rest a while, I'm sure I don't blame her."

"That's nasty, uncle Denys."

"Well, so is stealing Nelly's card. Nelly will be back tomorrow morning, Nelly will be just fine. I'll call Justin and I'll tell Mary you thought about her. She'll be very pleased. But I don't promise anything. You be good and we'll see. All right?"

"All right," she said.

She was still mad about having to stay in the downstairs hall on her way back and forth to tape; and she tried and tried to think how she could get around that, but she hadn't figured it out yet.

So they were not going to have a party in the big dining room downstairs this year because uncle Denys said there was so much work lately anyway that a lot of people couldn't come. So they were going to have just a little one, in the apartment, but the kitchen was going to do the food and bring it up; and there would be just a few grown-ups, and they would have a nice dinner and have punch and cake and open her presents. She would get to plan the dinner with Nelly and sit at the head of the table and have anything she wanted. And Justin and Grant might be able to come, Denys said.

So they did.

Justin and Grant came to the door and Justin shook uncle Denys's hand.

Then the scared feeling shot clear across the room. Justin was scared when he came in. Grant too. And everyone in the room was stiff and nasty and trying not to be.

It was her party, dammit. Ari got up with the upset going straight to her stomach, and ran over and was as friendly as she could be. You didn't get anywhere by telling people to be nice. You just got their attention and shook them up until they fixed on you instead of what they had fixed on, and then you could do things with them. She didn't have time to work out who was doing what—she just went for Justin: he was the key to it and she knew that right away.

Uncle Giraud was there, and Giraud's azi Abban; and Dr. Ivanov and a very pretty azi named Ule, who was his. And Dr. Peterson and his azi Ramey; and her favorite instructor Dr. Edwards and his azi Gale, who was older than he was, but nice: Dr. Edwards was one of her invites. Dr. Edwards was a biochemist, but he knew about all sorts of things, and he worked a lot with her after her tape. And there was uncle Denys, of course, who was talking to Justin.

"Hello!" she said, getting in the way.

"Hello," Grant said, and gave her their present. She shook it. It wasn't heavy. It didn't rattle. "What is it?" she asked. She knew they wouldn't tell her. Mostly she wanted to get hold of them. And they were looking mostly at her.

"You have to wait to open it, don't you?" Justin said. "That's why it's wrapped."

She bounced over and gave it to Nelly to put with all the others that were stacked around the chair in the corner. It was like the whole room took a breath. She let it go a minute to see what the grown-ups were going to do now that they knew for sure that Justin and Grant were her invites.

The grown-ups had drinks and got to talking, and everyone was being nice. It was going to be nice. She would make it nice even if uncle Denys was getting over a mad with Justin. It was her party and her say-so, and she intended to have it, and to have a good time. No one was going to spoil it; or she would get them good.

Giraud was the nasty one. She was watching him real close, and she caught his eye when no one else was looking, and gave him a real straight look, so he knew that. Then she bounced back over and took Justin's hand and had him look at all her pile of presents, and introduced him and Grant to Nelly, which embarrassed Nelly, but at least you knew Nelly was going to be nice and not make things blow up.

She went into her suite and brought out some of her nicest and most curious things to show everyone. She got everyone fixed on her. Pretty soon everybody was being a lot nicer, and people started talking and having a good time, having a before-dinner drink. But she didn't. She didn't want to spoil dinner.

It was different than parties she had had before, with the kids. She had a blue blouse with sparkles. A hairdresser had come in the afternoon and done her hair up with braids. She was very careful of it, and careful of her clothes when she sat on the floor. She was very pretty and she felt very grown-up and important, and she smiled at everybody now that they were being nice. When Seely said it was time to eat and the kitchen staff was going to be bringing the food in, she had Justin sit by her on one side at the table and Dr. Ivanov sat down next to him on the other, with Dr. Edwards across from him, so he was safe from Giraud, especially since Dr. Peterson sat down next to Dr. Edwards. Which left uncle Denys and uncle Giraud farthest away. You weren't supposed to have an odd number at table. But they did. She had wanted Grant to be there, but uncle Denys said Grant would enjoy the party more with the other azi, and even Nelly said, while she was helping her get dressed, that Grant would be embarrassed if he had to be the only azi at the table where the CITs ate. So since Nelly said it too, she decided uncle Denys knew what he was talking about.

She got to sit at the head of the table; and she got to talk to adults, who talked about the labs and about things she didn't know, but she always learned something when she listened, and she didn't mind it at all when the adults quit asking her questions about her studies and her fish and began talking to each other.

It was a lot better, she was sure now, than kid-parties, where everybody was nasty and stupid.

When Justin and Grant had come in everyone had acted just exactly the way the other kids acted when she came near them. She hated that. She didn't know why they did it. She had thought grown-ups were more grown-up than that. It was depressing to learn they weren't.

At least adults covered it up better. And she figured it was easier to deal with if you weren't the target of it. So she started figuring out where the problems were.

Uncle Giraud was the worst. He always was. Uncle Giraud was minding his manners, but he was still sulking about something, and talking about business to uncle Denys, who didn't want him to.

Justin wasn't saying anything. He didn't want to. Dr. Peterson was just kind of dull, and he was talking to Dr. Ivanov, who was bored and mostly trying to listen to what Dr. Edwards was saying about the problems with the algae project. Uncle Denys was watching everybody and being nice, and trying to get Giraud, who was next to him, to stop talking.

She knew about the algae. Dr. Edwards had told her. He showed her all these sealed bottles with different kinds of algae and told her what Earth's oceans had in them and what the difference was on Cyteen.

So she was trying to listen to that and she answered Dr. Peterson sometimes when he tried to talk to her instead of Dr. Ivanov.

It was still better than playing with Amy Carnath. And nobody was being nasty.

So when they got past cake and punch, and it was time for the adults to drink their drinks, she grabbed Justin by the hand and sat him in the circle of chairs right on the end next to uncle Denys. And, oh! that made Justin really nervous.

That was all right. That was because Justin was smart and knew if uncle Denys got mad at him everything was going to blow up. But she was too smart for that to happen. She opened uncle Denys' present first. It was a watch that could do most everything. A real watch. She was delighted, but even if she hadn't been she would have said she was, because she wanted uncle Denys happy. She went and she kissed uncle Denys on the cheek and was just as nice as she could be.

She opened uncle Giraud's present next, just to make uncle Denys real happy, and it was an awfully nice holo of the whole planet of Cyteen. You moved it and the clouds went round. Everybody was real impressed with it, especially Dr. Edwards, and uncle Giraud explained it was a special kind of holo and brand new. So uncle Giraud was a surprise: he had really tried hard to find her a nice gift and he really liked it himself. She had never known uncle Giraud liked things like that, but of course, he was the one who had given her the bird in the cube, too. So she understood something about Giraud that was different than him being nasty all the time. She gave him a big kiss and skipped off to open Dr. Ivanov's present, which was a puzzle box.

And Dr. Edwards', then, which was a piece of gold plastic until you put your fingers on it or laid something like a pencil on it, and then it made the shadow in different colors according to how warm it was, and you could make designs with it that stayed a while. It was real nice. She had known whatever he gave her would be. But she didn't make any more fuss over it than over Dr. Ivanov's puzzle and Dr. Peterson's book about computers, and certainly not more than over uncle Denys's watch or uncle Giraud's holo.

It was working, too. They were having a good time. She opened Nelly's present, which was underwear—oh, that was like Nelly—and then she opened Justin's; which was a ball in a ball in a ball, all carved. It was beautiful. It was the kind of thing maman would have had and said: Ari, don't touch that! And it was hers. But she mustn't fuss over it. No matter how much she liked it. She said thank you and got right into the huge pile of other things from people who hadn't come to her party.

There were things from the kids. Even nasty Amy sent her a scarf. And Sam gave her a robot bug that would really crawl and find its way around the apartment. It was expensive, she knew, she had seen it in the store; and it was awfully nice of Sam.

There were a lot of books and tapes and some paints and a lot of clothes: she thought uncle Denys probably told people the sizes because everybody knew. And there was clay to work and a lot of games and several bracelets and a couple of cars and even a roll-the-ball maze puzzle from Mary the azi, down in the labs. That was awfully nice. She made a note to send Mary a thank-you. And Sam too.

Presents were good for making everybody feel happy. The grown-ups drank wine and uncle Denys even let her have a quarter of a glass. It was suspicious-tasting, like it was spoiled or something. All the adults laughed when she said that; even Justin smiled; but uncle Denys said it certainly wasn't, it was supposed to taste like that, and she couldn't have any more or she would feel funny and get sleepy.

So she didn't. She worked her puzzle-box and got it open while the grown-ups drank a lot and laughed with each other and while uncle Denys finally got her watch set with the right date. It was not a bad party at all. She yawned and everybody said it was time to go. And they called the azi and wished her happy birthday while she stood at the door with uncle Denys the way maman would have and said goodbye and thank you for coming. Everybody was noisy and happy like a long time ago. Denys was really smiling at Dr. Edwards and shook his hand and told Dr. Edwards he was really happy he came. Which made Dr. Edwards happy, because uncle Denys was the Administrator, and she wanted to get uncle Denys to like Dr. Edwards. And uncle Denys even was nice to Justin, and was really smiling at him and Grant when they left. So all of her invites worked.

Everyone left, even uncle Giraud; and it was time to clean up the presents and all. But Ari figured it was not too late to get another point with uncle Denys, so she went and hugged him.

"Thank you," she said. "That was a nice party. I love the watch. Thank you."

"Thank you, Ari. That was nice."

And he smiled at her in a funny way. Like he was really happy for a lot of reasons.

He kissed her on the forehead and told her go to bed.

But she was feeling so good she decided to help Nelly and Seely pick up the presents, and she gave Nelly special instructions to be careful with her favorites.

She turned on Sam's bug and let it run around real fast. "What's that?" Nelly cried, and uncle Denys came out again to see what the commotion was.

So she clapped her hands and stopped it, and snatched it up and took it to her room.

Real fast. Because she was really trying to be good.

xiv