Regenesis

He typed: NOT A CLUE.

The answer came back, under Ari’s household ID, no further name telling who he was talking to: SENIOR LECTURER WITH A SPECIALITY IN BIONANISTICS. THERE IS NO APPARENT CONNECTION WITH JORDAN. WHAT IS YOUR THEORY?

His heart began a series of labored beats, old familiar fear, of a flavor he’d known for all the bad years, the twenty years when the Nyes had run Reseune. He typed: IS THIS FLORIAN?

–CATLIN, SER. MY QUESTION?

–I HAVE NO IDEA WHY HE WOULD GIVE ME THAT NUMBER. I DON’T KNOW THIS WOMAN. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH HER FIELD. HER FIELD HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MY FATHER’S, EITHER, AS I’M SURE YOU’RE WELL AWARE.

Grant had gotten out of his chair, and leaned over to see the screen. Set a hand on his shoulder. His heart beat harder and harder, the old instincts awake and alert.

–WE DON’T KNOW THE REASON OF THIS CONTACT, SER, OR OF HIS GIVING IT TO YOU. BUT THE RESTRICTED MILITARY NATURE OF THE PROFESSOR’S RESEARCH URGES CAUTION.

Bionanistics. God. Manufacturing? Genetic machines? Experimental, self‑replicating life? Military secrecy?

–I HAVE NO IDEA,he typed. HE’S NEVER MENTIONED ANY SUCH CONTACT TO ME.

–WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE WITH THE NOTE IF YOU WERE WELL‑DISPOSED TO OBEY YOUR FATHER AT THE TIME?

Thump. Thump‑thump. I SUPPOSE I WOULD HAVE LOOKED UP THE NUMBER. MAYBE I’D HAVE CALLED THIS PERSON IN NOVGOROD IF I WERE A TOTAL FOOL AND WANTED TO KNOW WHAT IT MEANT OR WHERE IT LED. I’M NOT A FOOL. AND I’D HOPE MY FATHER KNOWS I’M NOT. I’M NOT INTERESTED IN HIS OLD BUSINESS, WHATEVER IT IS, AND I THINK HE KNOWS THAT, TOO.He added that last sentence and felt like a traitor, for reasons not entirely well‑defined. He manipulated azi minds for a living–and his own motivations eluded him. There damned sure wasn’t any connection of experience with Jordan left for him, nothing but an identical biology. CATLIN, I’M ENTIRELY UPSET BY THIS SITUATION.

–UNDERSTANDABLE,came the answer. SO YOU HAVE NO INCLINATION TO PURSUE THE INFORMATION.

–NONE WHATSOEVER,he answered back.

–BE AWARE THAT INFORMATION OR DEVICES INVOLVING DR. PATIL COULD PASS IN FORMS VERY DIFFICULT TO DETECT. TAKE PRECAUTIONS IN ANY FUTURE DEALINGS WITH YOUR FATHER, WITH THIS IN MIND.

–I TAKE THE WARNING. THANK YOU.

Catlin signed off. He did. He felt sick. He didn’t move. He felt the pressure of Grant’s fingers, and finally got up from the chair, knowing, damn them all, that everything he said was being recorded, watched, parsed, combed through.

“Security’s upset. I can’t blame them. Nanistics. They don’t want the experimental stuff on a planet…particularly the one we happen to live on. Particularly the one the radicals have wanted to terraform for the last century or so. Damn. Damn. Damn it, Grant. I don’t want any part of this. What is he doing to me? What does he think he’s doing?”

Grant shook his head slowly, helplessly. “Logic tells me he wants you involved with him in his situation. Beyond that–”

It hit like a hammer blow. He could have said it himself ten times, even thought it himself, and not heard it quite the same way, but from Grant, in that calm, reasoned way Grant struggled to navigate CIT emotional insanity, it made utter, reasonable sense. Jordan wasn’t azi. Neither he nor Jordan had, as Grant liked to put it, their logic‑set at the foundation of their reasoning. No. They were born‑men, and born‑men grew up by chance, not by tape‑study. Emotions ruled their actions, foundational, and inescapable. Flux‑thinking at its finest.

Jordan had created him out of his own geneset and Jordan had lost him. Lost him to Ari, who had done things to Jordan’s work that Jordan couldn’t counter, and the new Ari was co‑opting him out of Jordan’s reach.

“The government didn’t kill him for killing Ari,” he said aloud, to Grant’s worried look. “they could only exile him. So he figures whatever he does, exile’s the worst that will ever happen to him. He created me. He wants me back. He’s making his best play.”

“To get you on the outs with Yanni.”

“To get us allsent to Planys, where he ranhis own little world.” Things clicked, just clicked, all of a sudden. “It might have been a prison, but he ran it, inside, and Ari ripped him out of it and brought him here to put him under what he sees as close house arrest. He’s not grateful for it, not once he got here and saw the way things are: he’s damned pissed. He wants me to break with Ari. He wants to create a situation. I don’t know who this Patil is, or how Jordan got that number, but Patil isn’t really the game…”

BOOK ONE Section 2 Chapter vi

APRIL 26, 2424

1659H

“…it’s him. Maybe he hates Patil. Or maybe there’s something actually going on, and he doesn’t give a damn about it, because they’re trying to use him–the old radicals–hell, I don’t know how they could have gotten to him, but he won’t play anybody else’s game. Just his own, always his own, the hell with anybody else.”

Interesting observation, Ari thought, sitting beside Catlin at the eon‑sole. The audio clip ran to its conclusion:

“Will you go to Yanni?”Grant had asked.

And Justin: “I’m going to give Catlin another phone call. I’m not taking this. I’m not taking this from him. He wants us back under suspicion, he wants us arrested, he wants me upset, he’ll make himself the martyr, so we both get sent to Planys, back to his private kingdom, and he has years to work on us… Damn it. Grant, you’re right.”

“ Didhe call you?” Ari asked, when the clip ended.

“Yes,” Catlin said, with a nod. “He did. He said–” She keyed another clip, listened, then made it audible.

“…he doesn’t give a damn about this Dr. Patil. He’s after me. He wants to get me at odds with admin and better yet, get us all sent back to Planys, where he has a base.”

“ Why would he pick Dr. Patil?” recorded‑Catlin asked.

“ I’ve no idea. An outside and problematic contact he once had. Somebody he didn’t really know and doesn’t care about. Maybe somebody he hates. I just don’t know.”

Catlin stopped the clip.

“Jordan Warrick is a very interesting person,” Ari said. “And now Justin’s quite angry at him. Jordan’s supposed to be good at Working. Very good. I wonder if he intended all he got from Justin.”

“Warrick Senior’s behavior seems self‑destructive,” Catlin said.

“Not only self‑destructive,” Ari said. “He’d gladly take us with him. He seems to want things back the way they were before I was born, and he’s bound to be frustrated with me.”

“There is a solution to this,” Catlin said.

Kill him, Catlin meant. It wasn’t legal to do, but that certainly wouldn’t stop Catlin and Florian, if she ordered it. And very likely Yanni wouldn’t let her or them take the consequences for it. There was far too much invested in her. So she could even get away with it, under the law.

But not in Justin’s eyes, and the likelihood that Justin would find out sooner or later–oddly enough that was the first Stop the thought ran into. Not the Law. Justin.

Jordan was just very, very interesting–someone from the first Ari’s time, a piece of the puzzle of the first Ari’s life and death that had been missing all these. Everyone had said Jordan was a problem.

He certainly was. A very high‑powered problem. He was attempting to Work his son, whatever else this was about, and Justin possibly had it figured out entirely accurately.

It was also clear Jordan Warrick still had secrets. The first Ari had wanted him for a partner: they’d worked together productively for a while, before their personalities clashed. Politics had been part of it–the Centrist Party with their program of stopping further explorations, concentrating Union into a tight, strong knot, so that their longtime rivals over at Pell’s Star–the Alliance–had to concentrate there, too. So no one would be expanding. If mankind went on exploring and expanding and trying to out‑race each other to likely stars, expanding so fast they had to use birthlabs to multiply fast enough to keep economies going, the Centrists feared that so much use of birthlabs was going to change mankind–

And that was quite true. It was changing the balance in the genome. It had, already, in much more than just the genome. There were differences between them and Alliance and Earth far other than genetic balance.

But psychosociology wasn’t the reason why Jordan had aligned with the Centrists. Oh, no. His reason for taking their side was that the first Ari and most of Reseune was Expansionist. The first Ari’s whole life’s work was Expansionist.

And, not too strange to say, Jordan had taken up corresponding with the Centrists and their more radical branch at about the time the partnership between himself and Ari had broken up…so figure that Jordan didn’t really believe in the Centrist Party or give a damn about their fears for the future. He’d just used them.

Interesting.

Interesting, interesting.

“We’re going to watch him,” Ari said. “Yanni’s managing this so far. I’m sure you’ll tell him there was some sort of a leak, when you think it’s right to do.”

“Hicks has given us agents to be totally at our disposal,” Catlin said. “Thirty, with clericals.”

This was news. “Because of Jordan Warrick?”

“Perhaps. Ser Warrick, Dr. Patil, Dr. Thieu, and events unforeseen. We laid down conditions to our working with this staff. Florian is over at the barracks going through their records, analyzing the abilities of what we’ve been given.”

“A permanent gift? From Hicks?”

“Permanent, yes, sera. Much like the protection the first Ari had, high‑level ReseuneSec, with accesses, only Florian said we wouldn’t take them except if you hold the Contracts, sera.”

“The first Ari’s guard. They were Contracted to Reseune itself?”

“Not our predecessors. But yes, the others were. Your predecessor never internalized the staff ReseuneSec lent her–she rather used all of ReseuneSec; but we think that may have been a problem, that her security staff wasn’twholly hers. We’re taking care of that. You need to hold those Contracts.”

“To be inside the apartment?” She was a little appalled. “We need domestic staff.”

“Those are coming, sera. But we were offered the others. They can have a barracks here, in the wing, an adjunct office with computer ties to ReseuneSec. We’re moving out the rest of the records storage and taking over the guest apartment on the first floor. We can cancel everything if it’s not a good idea. But there’s room for them on the first floor, down by the old lab, and they won’t be in the apartment–we wouldn’t let them in, until we’re very comfortable with them; though I’m sure, when they are Contracted, that they’d like you to be there, sera. If it’s all right.”

That was a natural thing, an emotional thing. And it would cement the Contract, in that sense. She’d be their Supervisor, the CIT they’d come to in distress or in need–to be remote from them was unacceptable. And she’d told Florian to see to staff. He certainly had. She’d turned them loose to see to things, and they’d done it without making a ripple in her own schedule…maybe a bit widely, but–all the same–they had the chance to gain loyal personnel. That wasn’t a bad idea.

“Of course,” she said. “Of course I will. When are they coming in?”

“Soon. A few days. The domestic staff should get here first. Florian’s checking on their progress while he’s down the hill.”

“You’ve been very quiet to be so busy.”

“These are things we can do. I hope we’ve done them well enough.”

She’d been completely lost in her work, her deepstudy and her own tracking of problems down in Novgorod, out of touch with domestic issues, so long as her clothes appeared clean and her breakfast and supper arrived mostly on time. She walked about with her head stuffed with population equations and spent her days in the first Ari’s population dynamics designs–she’d reached a point, a strange point in such study, when whole disciplines had begun to come into focus, as if the brain had started assembling all the scattered bits of what had been her predecessor’s operations two decades ago, and put it all together. She was at that critical point, dammit, on the verge of overload, and she just went there on any stray thought, far, far from the needs of domestic staff. Her head ached–literally ached–from the effort it was to jump between the real world and Ari’s world, and back again–to try to grasp the underlying reasons for the ethics her predecessor had installed to patch what had already been done at Novgorod–laying down the commandment to work, and the necessity for recreation, and above all the mantra “We are different as our world is different, and our different world is a valuable resource…”

Hell, that was dangerous. It was sweeping, it had no exceptions, it was potentially troublesome, and the first Ari had dared embed that in the tape, high and wide, which was the way she worked. Half a million Novgoroders kept voting against terraforming, and, azi‑originated as they were, and doggedly devoted to work for validation–they had deep suspicions about CIT‑descended Centrists and about proposals for terraforming, and were increasingly inclined in the last ten years to favor red‑brown architecture, one might note–the color of Cyteen’s outback.

Was that significant?

Was that going to produce a problem integrating into Union ethic as a whole–where her predecessor had done other interesting tweaks in local mindsets?

“Sera?” Catlin asked, and she blinked. That was how she was lately. That was the territory where her own thoughts wandered, and the choice of protective and service staff–essential to her safety–became just part of the overload.

“I think it’s likely very fine what you’ve done.” She brought herself to short‑focus on it, and try to integrate it into her concept of her household, and how it was all going to work, and Catlin was right to persist in getting an answer out of her. You couldn’t make mistakes with azi. You couldn’t just Contract them and throw them away.

And it was scary, thinking of all the changes racketing around her.

She had two people in all the world–Florian and Catlin–that she trusted to be competent and devoted to her–an array of people like Sam and Yanni, that she trusted for other fields, but when it came down to it, it was Florian and Catlin who would keep her alive and give her time to pursue those abstracts she chased through the maze of records.

They reported to her. They made choices–in this case, they’d made one that affected the household around her.

And more security. Her life, certainly–maybe Union’s survival–depended on her bodyguards’ judgement.

“I have no doubt of you,” she said briskly to Catlin, totally focused for the moment on the here and now, and Catlin’s fair demand for her to back them or not. “Do what you see fit to do. Did Justin stay in the Wing today?”

“Working in his office, since a late breakfast, sera. So is Grant. Perfectly cooperative. Jordan called him; Justin left the office and went to breakfast. There was, however, no contact between them beyond that. Justin and his companion spoke only to the waiters at the restaurant and to each other. And he of course communicated with me. Jordan staved in his new office with Paul and rearranged things. He found two bugs. It wasn’t all.”

Ari gave a perfunctory laugh, not whole‑hearted, more wistful. “It would be so much nicer if Jordan weren’t an enemy. Does Justin like his life, I wonder? Is he mad at me, do you think?”

“Grant is content,” Catlin said. The azi, she could judge quite well. The born‑man, she didn’t attempt.

And that was, of course, a correct answer.

“I wish I could turn things around with Jordan,” she said. “I wish I could figure how to Work him. But he’s stubborn. And he knows all the tricks.” She gave a sigh and got up from the console. Paused, then, looking directly at Catlin, a second time sharply focused on the present, and on Catlin’s and Florian’s problems. “Sending Jordan back to Planys wouldn’t be good, would it, if he has a network there? I’d planned on Strassenburg. But he’ll Work the azi there and try to change them, and they’re all foundational to that city, and thatwould be a big problem. I could build an ethic around him in that population, but once he’s dead, what will that do? He’d be a rock in the stream. Everything would bend around him. Forever.”

Catlin shook her head. “I’m sure I don’t know any answer, sera.”

“Unfortunately I don’t, either,” she said, and went to her bedroom, and her private bath, and took a headache remedy before she took another deepstudy pill and went back to her bed, leaving everything to them, going back to what she had to do.

There’d been a garden once in legend, a perfect garden. But there’d been a snake in it. The woman hadn’t known what to do about him. And every problem of humankind had started from that. The snake had done a Working, about knowledge, and pride, and the woman had gone off her path and taken all her descendants with her.

She had her own snake under close watch. And she couldn’t let concern about Jordan disrupt her concentration, not when things were starting to gel, not when her essential job for the next few months was absorbing the sum of several sciences, dosing down with kat so often she could almost go deep‑state the way Catlin or Florian could learn, just by thinking hard, and become only the thing she was absorbing, without objection, without question, just wide open to unquestioned knowledge.

You had to trust the tapes, you had to really trust them to dose down that far, or to go that open. You had no resistence when you did that. You had no way to say no. You had no extraneous thoughts. You just recorded, embedded the knowledge as fast as possible, burning it into the brain’s pathways, strong, strong, strongpathways.

There was only one source of tapes she’d trust like that: the first Ari’s tapes, stored in Base One, tapes recording Ari I’s thoughts, her opinions on technical questions, her data, her projects, her working life.

If there was any personal prejudice embedded in those records, any Working her predecessor had designed for her beyond the obvious, it was going into her head, too.

If she’d had the choice, if she’d had the leisure, if the world hadn’t been as high‑pressure as it was, and if the legislature wasn’t boiling with important decisions Yanni was trying to handle–if all those things were so, and the world were safer, she’d have taken less of the deepteach drug, she’d have taken longer in her learning, she’d have stayed near enough to the surface to let a little of her conscious mind work on the problems, and see more critically what she personally thought.

But in Denys Nye’s fall, Union had gone quietly into crisis, and civilization could make some serious missteps while she lazed her way through, learning at an ordinary pace.

So she took the dose she did, on her off days, and gave up critiquing her predecessor. She wasn’t giving up her conscious mind in the long run–she banked on that. She was strong‑willed, she was psychologically knowledgeable, she knew the tricks a person used in Working another, and she had a good memory for where and when she’d learned something, right down to the session. If she ran up against an ethical problem, she’d do her own thinking–eventually. She had tags on all of it.

Was it her own thinking, for instance, that had let her matter‑of‑factly consider Catlin’s matter‑of‑fact offer simply to kill Jordan Warrick? She might have been shocked a few months ago. But maybe not. Denys had been trying to kill her. Ultimately they’d killed him. That was a lesson life had given her.

Was it her own thinking, still, that said doing away with Jordan might still be the better, safer answer, that said there might be a way to do the deed quietly, and that Justin might not stay too long in mourning if she did it very cleverly?

She said no. Shesaid no. That was the one mentality in the transaction she could entirely identify. That was her, saying no, and not clearly knowing whether it was the first Ari’s pragmatic sense or her own soft‑hearted inexperience behind that answer.

It was scary. Two days ago she’d taken Poo‑thing out of his drawer and set him on the dresser, so she could see him from this bed. She’d been too old for him. Now she was old enough to want contact with childhood years he represented. Poor’ battered bear. He’d been through a lot. Denys, in the main. But never discount her predecessor’s intentions, battering her mind into a pattern she was supposed to follow for all her life.

Was rebellion stupidity? Or was it just her genetics snuggling around the first Ari’s precepts, hardheadedness and arrogance trying to find a convenient shape to settle into?

She wanted Florian tonight. She really wanted Florian. But she, and he, had so much work to do…so very much work to do…things about the household, which kept them all fed, and safe…in a Reseune that didn’t all want them to stay alive.

The dose began to take hold. Critical thinking ebbed. The machine started up, a gentle repetitive tone, warning the tape was about to start. She had to press a button to get it to go on. She had that much volition left.

Beginning. The Novgorod designs, the overall structure.

Maybe nobody should examine their own world that closely. She’d been out in the world, however briefly She’d seen the world from the air, seen it from the ground, gone through its corridors and met its violence.

Now she was working directly with the ethics that drove it, examining the ethics set into the azi who had been the foundational citizens. Did she intend to tweak that mix? She could. She could subtly, by sending in other azi into key positions, shift the whole Cyteen electorate.

She could set others at work at Fargone, where Ollie ruled. She knew Ollie’s ethical structure. She had a copy of Ollie’s personal manual, down to the day he left. She could skim it at high speed, and recognize ordinary structures from special ones. She could design azi to fit around Ollie, no question, the foundations of something special, around one that she’d loved, when she was little. She could make all Fargone Station into Ollie’s image.

Ethics were the stop‑marks, and the directional choices, in a psych‑map. And she knew set after set of the classic ones, the ones from before the first Ari’s time, the ones designed by committee.

She knew the ones that had the first Ari’s peculiar stamp on them. Like those key sets in Novgorod, and at Gehenna–the people that would rise to the top and become important, the leaders, the movers.

She could replicate that at Strassenburg. She could do something else. Yes, she could.

And something else was her choice in building that place.

Surveillance of past projects like Gehenna was her job, the key thing that the first Ari had created her to do. Be the watchdog. Steer the directed populations in a good direction. Understand. Change at need. Know the program, and know how to change it.

Strassenburg would always be closely tied to Reseune, and it would be hers. Herchosen genesets, her chosen CITs, her designed psychsets, never part of Novgorod or any of the rest of Cyteen: something new under the sun. The thetas she was about to manage for sheer practice would be the foundation of a site where herprograms ran, not her predecessor’s. Every problem case in Reseune was currently worried that the new facility might serve as a gulag for her opposition–and in fact she hadthought of creating a little secure lab there, for the likes of Jordan Warrick.

But there was a problem with secure labs, and the Patil incident had demonstrated that, hadn’t it, abundantly? Secure labs were full of very bright people, who could be very devious if they wanted to be.

And getting a Special like Jordan involved there would jeopardize the far more important reason for Strassenberg, that the whole town was itself a lab, a control for herself, and for her successor. She wanted to see what herdesigns grew into, isolated from those at Novgorod.

She intended nothing antithetical to Novgorod, unless intolerance for other ideas was a timebomb developing in the first Ari’s design.

Within decades, Novgorod would meet something on its beloved planet that wasn’t Novgorod, when it had been the only true city in the world for all the world’s existence. Novgorod had had some experience in tolerance, tolerating Reseune itself, Reseune’s autocracy–even needingan Ariane Emory, and voting for her programs.

But would they tolerate diversity when it wasn’t theirbrand of diversity?

For the good of the planet, they would have to. Or their idiosyncrasy became a problem that she would have to handle with subsequent population surges.

And what she did carried through generations. That was the point of everything: ultimately it was peopleyou were dealing with, people whose psychsets might have been planned like a jigsaw puzzle, groups of the one psychset clicking into place with other groups of another, and tending to bond and procreate with individuals of like psychset, so there was a certain persistence of type– thatwas setted‑in, too. All part of integrations.

No apparent problems in Novgorod. So far. Even the Abolitionists might be healthy. At least people disagreed with the majority.

So let Novgorod meet something Else. In her time, in her successor’s time, let two separate psycharcologies learn each other. That would deliver a poke to the urban organism downriver, to see how it wiggled.

It might also guarantee that her successor would need to exist.

Azi felt a certain pride in the continuance of their type. It was part of their sets. But was it wired into what was basically human?

Curious, curious. She was able to compare herself only against the first Ari. Her successor would at least have a broader field of inquiry in that department.

And perhaps her successor would found yet another colony, just to check things out. She thought if she were that Ari, that thought would certainly occur to her.

But that would complicate the situation long‑term, when populations merged and met, as they would when the world grew. Too many variables spoiled the soup, to mix a metaphor.

Forgetting that they were dealing with living, self‑willed people spoiled it, too. Too much deepstudy, too much immersion in the theoretical, the give and take only of electrons, not the behavior of whole organisms. The world was more complicated than theory ever yet predicted: that was why she was important. It was her job to see things coming, and figure how to shift the demographics without conflicts. A machine didn’t work, mixing in yet one more metaphor, if it was all one homogenous piece. Neither did a city, or a species.

Finding the glitches was her job. Her problem. Man started out analyzing his environment, graduated into understanding his own psyche, graduated, again, into analyzing the behavior of the human species en masse.

That guaranteed employment for several of her kind, didn’t it?

BOOK ONE Section 2 Chapter vii

APRIL 27, 2424

0117H

Florian was back from down the hill–late. Exhausted. He fell into bed in the dark, and Catlin rolled over and asked, face to face, brow to brow with him: “So. What’s the story? Do we accept these people?”

“I didn’t find anyone to object to. I’ve interviewed them. I’ve ordered them into a single barracks, two days of special tape. They’ll be firmly under our orders and initially operational by, I’d think, the fifteenth of next month.”

“Good.” She eased an arm around him. She was tired, herself, from hour after hour at the screens, and running up and downstairs seeing to the move. He was tired from a day with Hicks and trekking from one end of Reseune to the other, down to the labs and the barracks, back to the offices, meeting upon meeting with prospective help.

“Has sera asked after me?”

“She knows where you’ve been all day. She’s very busy in her studies, but she approves of what we’ve done.”

“Good.” He pulled her close, bestowed a weary kiss on the forehead. She wasn’t thattired, that that didn’t get a reaction. But she stayed tracked, business first. “There was an interesting development on my side today.”

“Oh?”

“Justin called me. Called us. He wanted to know what was on the card. He wanted to distance himself from that inquiry. But he also wanted to know.”

The penalty of interesting information. Florian pushed her back enough to look at her eye to eye. “Curious about the card, is he?”

“Curious and worried. He’s conflicted. He wants to know and he doesn’t want to know. On my own judgment, I told him about the Novgorod doctor to see what his reaction would be, and also to warn him about the nature of the danger. He didn’t know her, not even by name. I ran the clip of his call for sera to hear it.”

“Interesting,” Florian murmured. “And what did she say?”

“Much the same. She found it interesting.”

Hands moved. And stopped. “Do you think sera’s going to call me tonight?”

“Definitely she won’t,” Catlin said. “She skipped supper again and went straight into deepstudy.”

“She shouldn’t do that.”

“I said so, too. She said she’d have a big breakfast in the morning.”

“She’s pushing herself again. It’s not good.”

“It’s not good,” Catlin agreed. “I think she feels we’re in danger. I think she suspects something she can’t identify, the same as us.”

“What’s Unusual?” Florian said. It was the old game, the childhood game. Find the change. Find the anomaly. Find the problem.

“Jordan,” she answered. “Jordan being in Justin’s old office.”

“The card.” He tossed the list of Unusuals back. “Yanni. This Dr. Patil. The new colony. The new wing. The new township. Am I missing anything?”

“I think,” Catlin said, “that the card fits Jordan. Jordan wanting Justin to get caught. Justin giving us the card and being angry at Jordan. Justin calling me this afternoon.”

“Sera studying late,” Florian said, “night after night. She doesn’t feel she’s ready. Or she’s looking for something.”

“Yanni coming to dinner, right after his trip to Novgorod. Talking about Eversnow. Which Patil is going to run. Connection.”

“Hicks suddenly giving us all this staff. Which he was prepared to do before I walked in. Which meant he could have prepared to do it before the card ever came up–or only afterhe knew about the card he didn’t have–yet–until I gave it to him. Does the card show him some specific danger? Or is he trying to plant a spy on us, by giving us this staff?”

“Sera pulling Justin into the Wing,” Catlin said. “She didn’t even exit the Wing to talk to Yanni. Yanni came here to talk to her–so she’s still regarding our warnings–but she pulled Justin inside our perimeters.”

“She may be going out of the Wing more often than the last couple of months, if we have this new security staff,” Florian said. “That exposes her to danger. Would Hicks want that?”

“We’re about to have domestic staff down in prep,” Catlin said. “That’s an exposure.”

“Hicks seemed to relax once he had the card. He seemed more friendly. That’s an emotional assessment. He’s a born‑man. He has authority, despite what we hear about the office. And he is cooperating.”

“So what do we conclude?” Catlin asked. “That something’s moving, one. Jordan’s stirred up, Justin is, ReseuneSec is, that’s two. And we still don’t know what Eversnow and Patil have to do with anybody.”

“Something’s moving,” Florian agreed, “and once we have more staff, sooner or later sera’s going to be going outside the perimeter we’ve established.”

“We’ve just got to watch out for her. It’s all we can do.”

“And follow up on Justin and this card.”

“Sera won’t like it,” Catlin said. “But we have to.”

“Justin Warrick is the one piece we canmove. We have to. Or we have to ask Yanni about Patil and the card, and I don’t think he’ll tell us the truth.”

“Do you think Hicks will tell us the truth, once he has an answer about the card?”

“Emotional assessment. No. Not for free. So I don’t want to ask, officially, not while we don’t know who talked to Jordan, and why he gave Justin that card.”

Catlin heaved a sigh and put her arms around him. He put his around her. They had sex, purely a tension‑reliever, mutual release, mutual pleasure. Afterward Catlin said, side by side on the same pillow:

“At least we’ll have help on staff.”

“We’ll have more to do for a while, watching the watchers. Being sure Hicks isn’t our problem.”

“Good news, if he is being honest. And if his staff is. And we know there’s danger outside. But we’ve been shut in the Wing so long there’s risk of sera losing touch with outside. Isolating herself from Reseune–from Novgorod–she can’t afford that. She has to go outside sooner or later. That’s coming. We just have to be sure of our own staff. That’s basic.”

“True.” He shut his eyes and relaxed with his partner, a long sigh flowing out of him. They could rest, the few hours of someone else’s watch–Marco and Wes took the night shift in the Wing One office. Those two, they could trust.

They did know at least Justin Warrick was safer than he had been, thanks to them getting him into a new office.

The question was whether they might have opened another window for an attack on sera, by letting Justin in–and yet another by accepting Hicks’s offer. There were very many, very skilled people they were letting into the wing.

Catlin objected to things. Catlin was always suspicious, and Catlin had agreed with him in this. He wished she’d seen a major problem up front…because the transition to outside made him very, very uneasy.

BOOK ONE Section 3 Chapter i

MAY 1, 2424

2000H

Eleven weeks, and Giraud, and Abban AB, and Seely AS would each one easily fit in the circle of an adult’s thumb and forefinger, and that was after the latest growth spurt. They didn’t weigh as much as a lab mouse. But their bones were forming, and their teeth were starting. They had the beginnings of a breathing apparatus, that floor of the rib cage, the diaphragm, which prepared them to draw breath. They were transparent, full of blood vessels, paths for the blood which had definite structure. Their fingers and toes were starting to grow in length. Legs grew longer. And they moved their whole bodies. They stretched, widely, and often, asserting their presence in the world.

BOOK ONE Section 3 Chapter ii

MAY 1, 2424

2123H

I’m different than the first Ari, young Ari, so far as I can figure, in one very major way: it was her Maman who drove her so hard, not Denys Nye, and she never loved her mother. I had Jane Strassen to take care of me, and I loved her very much. I expected to love people. The first Ari didn’t. The first Ari was very much solo throughout her life, but I have my friends, and I even liked Giraud Nye at the last–and he protected me, though I don’t think I’ll ever forgive Denys–my Denys, remember. Don’t let my feelings prejudice yours. Maybe your Denys will turn out nicer. Until I meet him, I won’t know.

So there are differences. Sometimes I worry about that. I don’t know if I’ve turned out as bright as the first Ari. She was really good with computers and her Florian was, and I’m still not, though I suppose I’ll learn, and I know Florian’s studying, and he’s getting into programming as fast as he has time for. So I’m working very hard to absorb what she knew on a whole lot of fronts at once. I’m studying how Admin works and who’s responsible to whom. The thing the first Ari was incredibly good with, psychsets, I study really hard–I’ve dropped five kilos just from the study this last month, and I can’t eat enough to keep up with the weight loss. But the harder I study, the more I just keep seeing a maze of possibilities, when it comes to fixing a psychset onto a geneset–and I’m starting to do that job for real. I’m confident operating at the gamma level, but I know I’m not ready to mess with an alpha’s sets. And she was capable of that, at my age, which just amazes me.

Understand, I’ve mostly met the alphas she setted later in her career–the early ones, the older ones, are either dead or assigned out, admin jobs, that sort of thing–except Ollie, who was with Maman. There was Ollie, and he was pretty remarkable–still is: he’s running Fargone Station. Maybe she was just that good, that early. Who knows? Maybe I would be, if Yanni let me have a try at alphas. But I just don’t want to mess one up, so I’m not arguing with Yanni on that point. I’m starting my work with simpler sets.

I do worry that being overall happier might have taken something vital off my potential. That’s yet to prove. If you never hear this, well, I’m not the model someone wants you to follow. But I think I’m intellectually close to the first Ari, despite some detours, and despite the fact I play off a bit. I’m very close to being up with my studies, at the benchmarks she set for me, so I guess it’s all right; and if I think about it I’m exceeding some of them. I did start study early. I tend to forget I’m younger than I’m supposed to be by a few years. And I’m close to being able to make my own decisions in the labs, and I know I’m going to be capable of Admin, though I just haven’t got the time even to consider actually taking that on, and I really don’t want to. I’m so glad Yanni is running things and I don’t have to. And anything that suggests there’s any problem with Yanni scares me. There’s something right now, just a question about the way he’s handling Jordan Warrick, and I want to trust him, but I’d be a fool to say I’m not thinking about it, thinking hard. If I had to step in and control Reseune, it would be a major setback for my studies. And I don’t want that, and most of all I don’t want to lose Yanni, because, so much he does is good. And he could even be right.

It’s natural he should keep secrets from me. I haven’t let him see all I can do. And maybe I should just call him here and ask him outright what he’s done or what he thinks he’s doing, but I’m just reluctant to do it while Florian and Catlin are investigating things. I could make everything blow up. And that’s no good.

For now, Yanni limits what I do, and that’s good. He gets the results of my tests, and he’s my outside checkup. He says he wants me to keep focused on study precisely so I don’t appear in public and disturb people–especially people down in Novgorod–but I think, too, so I don’t scattershot my studies. I can do so many things and I’m interested in so many things I sometimes think I could just fly apart. Strassenburg’s a toy, in one sense. In another, it’s important for me to set that up early, and you’ll see why, if you think about it two seconds. And now I have to think about Reseune itself, and find out who’s doing what, and how the lines of power run.

I’ve been far too happy in the last couple of months to be entirely safe. Isn’t that a paradox? And I’m frustrated because there are things I can already see skewing off Ari’s plan, and I can’t fix them without taking authority over things and potentially making things worse–because I’m not as good yet as she was when she set up the parameters of what I think might be going wrong.

Is being able to see trouble coming normal for an eighteen‑year‑old? It’s not normal for an eighteen‑year‑old to have the power to do what I can do, that’s for sure–and just in the rules that govern Reseune, I can do anything right now but make an unchecked decision in the labs. I know I could remove Jordan Warrick. I could have him killed and no one would find out. Is that normal for an eighteen‑year‑old? It’s not supposed to be normal for a civilized being. But I just have to worry if it’s normal for me. I keep thinking–if I got rid of him I could save Yanni, if Yanni’s involved in anything he shouldn’t be.

And the choice not to do it may be a mistake on my part, but I see real problems down the years if I do remove him.

Jordan Warrick’s existence may even be important for me. He’s my enemy. And I need one. I need a good, strong enemy to gather up the people who wish I didn’t exist, so I can keep an eye on the lot. I just can’t get distracted from the possibility he’s not my only enemy.

He wants Justin in his control. He’ll fight me for Justin. That makes me mad every time I think about it.

But Mad doesn’t think straight. Mad may be honest, but it doesn’t plan well at all.

So I won’t give way to Mad.

And I won’t kill him. Or replace Yanni. I really don’t want to do things like that. I wonder who put that reluctance into my psychset. I’m not sure it was ever in the first Ari’s. But I watch impulses like that. I’m telling myself there’s a logical reason I’m reluctant to take extreme measures, as Florian would call it, but I have to be sure it’s a logic structure, and not air castles. Do you know that expression, air castles? I found it in a book. It’s a city without any foundations, a perfect dream without any feet on the ground. And you don’t see the fact there’s no connection between it and solid thinking, because you’re looking at how pretty the towers are, instead of the fact there’s no logic supporting them.

Pretty is good. But survivable is important, when real people are depending for their lives on your logic. And people do depend on me. I depend on me. I want to live a long time.

Soon I will have a security unit that will report directly to Catlin and Florian, and they’ll be able to know if there’s any undercurrent anywhere in the world that I need to know about. I can trust them to come to me if there’s anything peculiar going on, anything out of parameters…even in high places.

They’re going to be very busy for the next while. Soon they’ll be getting a whole lot of files on all our current problems. And maybe I’ll learn things I don’t want to hear once they do start reporting on people I know–I wish I could omit that, but I’ll have to deal with it when it happens. This was Hicks’s idea, Florian tells me. He’s the director of ReseuneSec, the post Giraud used to have. And in my worry about people’s loyalty, Hicks is one I’ve wanted to keep an eye on. Now he sends us a gift. Florian says all the people he’s sending are clean, so far as he can tell by the manuals. But I’m going to go over the manuals myself that’s going to be instructive. I have to be sure there’s nothing in them I can’t rely on, once their Contracts are engaged. Yanni won’t let me work above gamma, but these people are higher than that, mostly, and if I make a mistake it could be very bad.

That means, among other things, if we find these people are reliable, I can actually get out of this wing and go places on a regular basis–for the first time since Denys died, with minor exceptions. I’ll be able to go wherever I want in Reseune, whenever I want, and I’ll be so glad of that. I haven’t ridden Horse for months: his trainer is taking care of him. I haven’t been out to the pond to see the goldfish. I haven’t seen the new construction, just the virtuals. Note maybe I can do all those things. I feel as if I haven’t been able to breathe for weeks, and now I almost think I might–and yet I have all these worries about Yanni, and Hicks, and the very people who are supposed to be helping Florian and Catlin–not to mention new staff coming into the apartment…those are all delayed while we look through their records and check through the tape they’ve had.

One thing I’m certainly going to do, so when you accede to power, you won’t have to go through what I have, and risk what I’ve risked. My security office may not outlive me–but I’m going to see to it that a security staff inside ReseuneSec is automatically offered to your Florian and your Catlin when you reach your majority, and that you don’t have to fight for it or ask for it or wait until someone offers. I very much suspect Denys ordered Giraud to take the first Ari’s security apparatus apart when she died, under the excuse it was dangerous to his power. I don’t know what circumstances may apply when you’re hearing this. But by the time you’re making your first steps into being an adult in charge, you have to have information and a secure perimeter, and you have to have it fast. I was very lucky to have had Yanni, and not somebody much worse than Denys stepping into control of Reseune, or I might not have survived.

So as soon as Florian and I can manage Base One the way we need to do, I’ll be making the re‑constitution automatic, embedding various provisions that won’t look like they’re working together, the pre‑training of certain Contracts, with an instruction that will trigger retraining for personnel on a certain date to be set by your circumstances–meaning they’ll turn up in your life when the time is right, and assemble themselves, because I’m going to have a direct hand in the tape they get. It’s not going to be apparent even to the directors out at the azi facilities that these people and these programs have any connection with each other. On a given trigger, they’ll assemble, and they’ll know what to do.

And your Florian and your Catlin will run that office, so that’s the explanation of one mystery for you, which you may have already seen in operation. I hope it’s a peaceful transition.

I was lucky to survive my teens, and I don’t count on luck even once, let alone twice. Thank me for your safety, which will at least be greater than mine, granted I live long enough. And do the same for your successor, and leave notes for her time. Learn how to program Base One, how to really handle it, and get your Florian to. We’re running behind on that. I’m able to do the links that surround the segments I’m recording for you, quite honestly because I’m copying what’s there on the files she gave me; and I’m making notes; but it’s not integrated, yet. It won’t run yet the way Ari I and her Florian made it run because I haven’t linked the whole structure in yet, just made a chain of unerasable files, to make sure you get my thoughts appropriate to the age I am now, and that I can’t edit them, and I really hope you aren’t having to excavate those files the hard way.

My office hasn’t gotten anything solid for me yet on the ongoing puzzles we’re Working. The questions are all still questions. But at least I’m about to refuse to be confined to the Wing and I intend to start asking questions of my own.

BOOK ONE Section 3 Chapter iii

MAY 2, 2424

1342H

Florian opened the office door, and Ari slipped into the space where two men, one extravagantly red‑haired, one common brown, were busy earning a living.

Or at least–they’d been trying to.

“Hello!” she said in her brightest tone, and Grant half‑turned and raised an eyebrow. Justin swiveled his chair around, leaned back against its auto‑adjust, and crossed a foot over his knee.

“Well,” he said. “Is it trouble?”

“Oh, never.” There wasn’t another chair. It wasn’t her scheduled day to be here, and she hadn’t been in this office ever, though Justin and Grant had moved in nearly a week ago. These two didn’t do patient‑consultations, and they no longer had staff, nor any room for them, so there was no available chair for a visitor. She had to stand, and simply leaned back against the wall, until Grant, seeing the situation, surrendered his with a small flourish. “You’re so sweet,” she said, and patted Grant on the arm. “We’ve got to get other chairs in here. At least one more.”

“I’ll arrange that,” Grant said, and as Florian rotated past the door frame and out into the corridor, Grant left, too, leaving the two of them alone to talk, herself and Justin.

“I so love the idea of your being in the Wing,” she said to him.

“It seems safer,” Justin said. “So I take it we’re not on the current arrest list.”

“Don’t joke like that. I’m not Denys. I won’t beDenys.”

“I know you’re not. Are we revising the schedule for lessons today, or–”

“We’re keeping to schedule. I’m sorry I haven’t been here this week. I’ve been studying.”

“I thought we agreed you were going to get some rest.”

“Well, it’s important. I’m onto something.”

“What?”

“What we were talking about. The integrations. But I’ll talk about that later. Monday.”

“Sure. Good.” Justin made a gesture toward the other counter. “Coffee?”

“I wouldn’t mind that, thank you.” She watched as he got up and poured a cup. Her stomach suddenly said empty. “You wouldn’t have a biscuit, would you?”

“As a matter of fact, we do,” Justin said, as he opened a packet and laid a tea‑biscuit on a paper saucer. And another for good measure. He gave her that saucer with the coffee. “The place came stocked.”

“I really hope you like the office.”

“I’m getting used to it.”

She regarded Justin’s first office with deep nostalgia. She remembered slipping by and giving him a gift of guppies. They hadn’t lived.

Those days had seemed so much safer. She’d been out and about, un‑watched, or she’d had the illusion she’d been unwatched–and never likely was. And he wasn’t there anymore.

She washed down a biscuit in two bites and a sip and tried to put the past out of her mind. “Mmm. I had breakfast. But I’ve been studying a lot and I know I’m getting skinny, and you’re right, and I’m reforming. I’m taking on real work this week, just a couple of projects. I’ve told Labs to let me run checks and I’ll actually do a theta design. I’m sure they’re going to have someone go over it. But I don’t think they’ll find mistakes.”

“I doubt they will.”

A second biscuit went down. That freed a hand to reach into her jacket pocket. “Here.” She handed him the data stick she’d brought “I’ve looked at it. I want you to.”

“What?” Justin looked amused. “You can do that. I’ve no doubt you can do it.”

“Not the theta stuff. These are staff. All sorts of staff. They’ll be mine. I want you to look them over and make sure there aren’t any bombs.”

His face went sober, thoughtful as he picked up the stick. He gave her a look, like he wanted to ask a question, and maybe thought it wasn’t wise to ask it at all.

“I trust you,” she said. It wouldn’t make him easier in his mind. She read him that well. He’d been through too much with Denys. He’d just had the row with his father and he knew Admin was upset. He was in a state of disturbance and flux, unable to settle, either physically or mentally, and he probably wasn’t getting a lot of work done. “I need it really soon.”

He nodded somberly and laid the data stick atop the books on his desk. “I’ll put it at the top of my list.”

“I know about the card,” she said, and saw his face suddenly go cold and wary. He wasn’t looking at her. Wasn’t looking at anything in particular. “I’m sorry you got into it,” she said, and he still didn’t look at her. “What do youthink your father’s up to?”

“I haven’t a clue.” He did look her way, and the hard face gave way to the old Justin, the very worried Justin, who had stood off Uncle Denys–confronting her, now, as the prevailing threat in his life, andhis hope of tranquility. “I really haven’t.”

“You know he’s under surveillance. He knows he is. He’s mad about it. I’m really sorry, Justin. I’m sorry he did that.”

He was upset. And the look was a little less protected, a little more the real Justin, worried, and on his guard. “Do you know what it’s about?” he asked her flat out…maybe a little ashamed to be asking. She read that. Ashamed of the situation with his father. Ashamed of havingto ask an outsider to the relationship.

“My staff is trying to find out,” she said quietly. “I don’t really know what it’s about. He’s not that easy to read. But I’d say he didn’t expect you to keep that card a secret.”

“I’m sure of that much,” he said.

She wanted to ask–what do youwant me to do with Jordan? But that wouldn’t be fair to ask, and the hurt would outlast the good it would do. Justin would never forgive himself, not inside, if he asked her to send Jordan away. In a technical way, neither of them had had real parents. In an emotional way, they’d both lost the single parent they’d been most attached to. They were alike, on that one emotional sore point. Something had happened, when Jordan handed Justin that card, and they had to patch it up, and try to bring back the even tenor of the lessons, the conferences, the work together. It wasn’t going to happen automatically. Jordan had already had that effect–Jordan, and the twitch of security, proving it was still alive.

“I’m trying to protect him from himself,” she said. “He’s certainly not making it easy.”

Score. She saw it in his expression, just the little dilation of the iris. “I appreciate that.”

“This Dr. Patil,” she said. “I can tell you something about that. We’re going to send her to Fargone. She’s the authority in her field–she’s certainly got the credentials. But we’re digging into her associations, all the way back. Just so you know what that was about.”

“I’m not sure I want to know more than that.”

“Justin, I’m not in charge of Reseune. I won’t be, for awhile. But you know I direct some decisions. Yanni listens to me.”

“I’m sure he does.”

“ Don’tbe like that. I’m not your enemy.”

“I don’t want you to be,” he said plainly. “I hope you won’t be.”

“ Jordanwants me to be your enemy.”

And his eyes averted, his whole body posture changing, as if he had to re‑balance his thinking.

“Doesn’t he?” she asked flatly. “Or what do youthink his motive is?”

Justin didn’t say anything for a moment. His hand found the datastick atop the books, picked it up, turned it over. And over. And set it down, not looking at her. “I don’t know why you ask my opinion on this,” he said, and let a long breath go. “I don’t know why you need it.”

“I need it,” she said. “I do need it.”

“No, you don’t. You’re good. The hell you’re working routine theta sets, you’re good.”

“So are you,” she said. “You’re toogood to go along with something even he didn’t plan to have work. You know what he’s really up to.”

“Then I wish you’dtell mewhat that is!”

“I just did.”

“God.” He did turn his face toward her, upset. “Dammit, Ari.”

“I’m being honest. Iwant you to be all right. I really do. I don’t mind you getting along with Jordan. But he certainly minds your getting along with me. That’s what it’s about, isn’t it? Am I wrong? His battles are all old history. The Centrists lost a lot of their power when we passed the anti‑terraforming bills and saved Cyteen’s native life. They lost this world to develop. So some not‑very‑bright people in that party thought they were going to get their way when Ari died. But Giraud didn’t let them repeal those laws. Giraud was friendly with Defense and that blocked them. And now there’s Yanni, telling them they’ve got just a little time to make deals before I come in. Eversnow is a poor second choice, but it’s what the pro‑terraformers have got.”

“Eversnow.”

“It’s a planet out beyond Fargone–”

“I know that.”

“Well, Patil’s in charge of terraforming it, and that’s a secret, so don’t tell it. If certain people think they can bring that snowball to life without wrecking it, well, they might, mightn’t they, but then, that’s not a very Centrist position for Corain’s people to be stuck in, a dozen light years from anything civilized, and no longer in the center of anything. It’s not their kind of territory. They want cities. They want Earth remade in a temperate world that’s central to everything, with all of Union clustered around it, and they want it fast. Well, fast won’t happen there. It’s going to take a long time, and we’ll be changing the Centrists, right along with Eversnow. People that go out there will belong there. Or their children will. That’s the way things work.”

“You’re losing me. Eversnow. Not Fargone.”

“Fargone’s just a cover.”

“I’m not sure I want to know these things. I’m not sure Yanni would be happy with my knowing these things.”

“Oh, pretty soon more people inside Reseune are going to know it. We’re just not putting it on the news until it launches. That’s why security’s all stirred up about this card.”

“You think Jordan could have had any contact with a secret some professor in Novgorod is up to? I thought you monitored his phone calls.”

“Not any current contact, no, he doesn’t have. But then he never cared whether it was Centrists or Expansionists he was supporting, so long as it gave his Ari grief, do you think? She was all his focus. Whatever she wanted, he was against, once that partnership split up. And the fight between them wasn’t ever really about Cyteen, or Eversnow, or Alpha or Beta or Fargone or terraforming or any station in the whole universe, for that matter. Reseune was everything. He wanted to leave it, but he didn’t, not in his head. And now he’s back, but Reseune after Denys isn’t the place he remembers. So it’s not a happy situation, and he’s not dealing well with the changes he finds here. That’s what I think.”

“That, I’ll entirely agree with.”

“I can’t make him happy. You can’t.”

Justin heaved a long sigh. “You’re right about that.” And then looked at her: “You just gave me that information on Patil to track whether or not I’d let it leak.”

“I know you won’t. You’re good on other things I’ve told you.”

A small, sorrowful laugh. “No, I’m not likely to. Lack of opportunity, maybe. I’m not in anyone’s social circles. So I take it you’re wondering if I’ll be crazy and take it to Jordan.”

“Florian was right in what he did: you needed to be out of Jordan’s reach unless youinitiate the contact.”

Justin muttered something under his breath, and pushed the data stick in a circle, where it lay. “I won’t ask you for favors. I know your security requirements. I know they’re justified. I won’t become a problem to you.”

“I couldn’t replace you,” she said. “I really couldn’t.”

He gave a short laugh. “Seems that’s what we do here, isn’t it?”

“Not in my lifetime. I’d miss you terribly. I really would. I’ve lost a lot of people I relied on.”

“Giraud. Denys.” That was a gibe. Giraud hadn’t been one of his favorite people. Denys wasn’t one of hers.

“My mother.” she said, matching dark for dark.

Lips tightened, and he didn’t look at her when he said, bitterly: “My father.”

“Right now,” she said soberly, “one of my worst problems is that I can’t be absolutely sure that Denys didn’t install some feature in the systems that just hasn’t gone off yet. Right now security has me completely walled in, same as you, because they can’t figure what else to do with me. Same as you. But that’s going to change, starting with my getting a security presence that’s mine, no one else’s. I’ll have a much longer reach and a way of knowing what’s going on that I don’t have now. I’ll be able to protect myself if I can trust it. And maybe if I’m safer, it can change things for your father–if he calms down. If you can talk him toward common sense. He took my gift and got off the plane looking for a fight, with Yanni, with me…”

“With everyone. No question of that.” A small silence, Justin looking hallward, in Grant’s general direction, then back. “I’ll talk to him, best I can. Whenwe talk. I’m not meeting with him until he calms down.”

“Tranquilizer in his coffee might be a good idea.”

He laughed, shortly. “Coming from someone who could actually do it.”

“It wouldn’t be real peace.” She got up. “You’ve got work to do, and I’m bothering you. Let me know what you think of those sets as soon as you can. It’s a priority. I’ll be back for a lesson Monday afternoon.”

“Will do,” he said, and she walked outside, where Grant and Florian waited, not in conversation.

“I think I’m going to have a small dinner party tonight,” she said to Grant, “just Justin and you, Jordan and Paul. What do you think?”

“You may have to send security to bring Jordan.”

“Maybe not,” she said. Jordan was rather like a bomb with a motion switch: thus far, she’d hesitated to jostle him. If you were going to Work someone you needed a good hook, and a theory had begun to gel. Jordan wanted dominance, wasn’t well socialized, had to be the center of attention, but didn’t like to be talked at by fools, because there wasn’t an ounce of tolerance in him. He couldn’t tolerate, say, a cocktail party, or someone who bored him for a minute. But his curiosity suffered in that isolation of his, the engine of that curiosity being a very keen intellect. She’d gotten that much long‑distance–that and the fact he was Justin’s twin as well as his father… Justin had been very much his twin until the first Ari ran an intervention and set a broad streak of insecurity into Justin’s pattern: insecurity, a strong sex drive, and self‑doubt.

The first two, Jordan certainly had. Self‑doubt was the big difference, self‑doubt in Justin that constantly put out feelers toward other people, constantly checked the environment and analyzed it, all with a high emotional charge. It hadn’t made Justin more brilliant than Jordan, but it had made him much, much more social, much more reachable.

She had the entire record of that encounter. It was hard to deal with. It told her what the first Ari could do. It told her what she could turn into. It told her the Ari who’d fought with Jordan had had some of Jordan’s characteristics–and tolerance of a rival hadn’t been high in the first Ari’s own list of qualities. The first Ari had actually tried…she’d tried very hard to work with Jordan. But he’d wanted to dominate their partnership and she absolutelyhad wanted to run things, as natural as breathing. What kept bringing the first Ari back, she suspected, what might even have sexually fascinated her, was the fact that she hadn’t been able to Work him: that would have kept her mentally engaged with him. The fact she hadn’t been about to work withhim–that was the thorn in the arrangement. The same terrible boredom had afflicted the first Ari: the first Ari had shared that trait of impatience with Jordan, but, unlike Jordan, the first Ari would at times tolerate fools–would analyze them, and use them, sometimes ruthlessly. Challengeset her off, challenge that would rouse her out of her boredom–so even that thorn in the arrangement might have been just one more attraction. She met challenge: she provoked it, enjoyed it until it potentially threatened her, and then she absolutely crushed it.

There was an extreme watch‑it in that mix, wasn’t there?

A very extreme watch‑it, for Jordan and for herself…because that challengething stirred something so visceral in her. It did, and she tried to keep the anger in it down. She could tolerate parties. She had friends–Sam, and Amy and Maddy, that she didn’t see nearly often enough these days. She valued people like Justin, who’d disagree with her. She valued him extremely She defined challengeas a threat to people she loved. And that was different than the first Ari, wasn’t it? She didn’t let a challenge to her as what she was…become personal. Anger was the bad part of it, and she kept that way back, bottled, stoppered, and far back on the shelf.

She walked on her way, saying nothing to Florian at first, knowing Catlin had heard the exchange with Grant, too, and both her bodyguards knew that what she wanted was ultimately what would happen, even if her staff didn’t like it. Scary notion, a supper with Justin and Jordan, in her hitherto off‑limits premises. Deliciously, excitingly scary. Maybe stupid. But she wasn’t sure it wasn’t smart.

She’d been patient, she’d been so good, but she was close to freedom, was what, and, out in the wide world, things were all of a sudden happening that she didn’t like. With that gift of security personnel from ReseuneSec, if they passed Justin’s scrutiny as well as hers and Florian’s, she established a presence inside Reseune Security. And once she had that, she’d know things; she’d know when it was safe to go somewhere, and she’d know when she needed to deal with a situation. She’d be much less reliant on others filtering what got to her attention…like secret meetings in Novgorod.

Interesting, what she felt. Aggression was part of her motives: she recognized that when it reared its head, and it was potent. The challenge impulse. Curiosity. Much more than Justin was Jordan, she wasthe first Ari. It felt good to go on the attack in this long waiting. It felt very good.

That was a suspect emotion, too. She was having strong reactions to this news about more freedom; she was having emotional reactions to the business with the card and someone having told Jordan about Patil, and at least part of what Patil was up to.

Endocrine thinking, she said to herself. The first Ari consistently warned her about that, told her do something to get rid of it. Sex could work, if it was a passing urge. But that just touched off more flux‑thinking, and sometimes complicated things worse than before. Rational thought was the long‑term cure for problems.

That was what the first Ari had said, out of Base One. Steady down. Think.

Florian asked quietly, as they walked: “What are we to expect tonight, sera?”

“I don’t quite know,” she said, still wondering if she’d just done something very unwise. But something to break the stalemate between Justin and Jordan once and for all–was that unwise? “Something interesting, at least.”

BOOK ONE Section 3 Chapter iv

MAY 2, 2424

1528H

Maybe, she still thought, she should have been a little less aggressive, and a little more cautious. Justin wouldn’t turn down her invitation, if his father was going. She was relatively sure of that: he’d be there partly out of unbearable curiosity, partly to be there to fling himself between his father and a bullet, so to speak–or literally. Jordan would be there out of pure curiosity, and because he wanted to hear what calumnies his son would say about him–she’d bet on that, even more than she’d bet on Justin.

So she sent an invitation to Jordan that said dinner at 1800h. And one to Justin that said 1830. Justin would turn up five minutes early because he worried about being late. Jordan was guaranteed to be at least a quarter of an hour late, just to prove he could be. She bet on that, too.

Her staff was not happy with the arrangement. Wes and Marco were taking the security station, Florian and Catlin were dining early, to be actually on duty in the dining room. Gianni, their pro tem cook, was in a state, and dented one of their pots. The unprecedented clang set off house alarms and scrambled her security to alert.

But she dressed in silvery satin, her current favorite gown, and her hairdresser did her hair in a modern way, nothing at all like the first Ari in the portraits. It was her coming‑out, like in the old stories, though not for a ballroom full of people–just two. She wore her hair upswept, wore a single diamond, a modest one, and her rings, several, and had the servers light the candles the very instant Jordan turned up in the hall–no way could he look at a quarter of an hour’s candle‑melt and feel smug in being late.

Marco showed her first guests into the hall and took their coats…precisely at 1816h. Ari met him just outside the dining room.

“Jordan Warrick,” she said in her nicest, warmest tone, and offered her hand. “I’m so glad you’ve come. Paul.” That for the quiet, handsome man who shadowed him.

“Ariane.” Jordan took her hand, a chilly and unenthusiastic grip, and what he was seeing, or remembering in that moment, there was no telling: certain things weren’t in the first Ari’s records, lost, lost except for this man’s memory. “Is my son here?”

“Soon, I’m sure. Would you like a drink?” Service staff was hovering just inside. And Catlin moved in, very deftly, to cut Paul off with conversation and steer him aside.

“You always made a good Vodka Collins.”

“ Idon’t.” She flashed her brightest grin, and signaled staff. “I haven’t the least idea how. A Collins, Callie. Paul?” She glanced over her shoulder. “What will you have?”

“Wine, sera, white.”

“Wine for me, too. I had my juvie fling with hard liquor. It does my head no favors. I’m so glad you came, Jordan.”

What are you up to? was likely the question he burned to ask her. He didn’t. “Invitations are rare. I’m a little out of the social circuit these days.”

“Well, there hasn’t been much social circuit lately, not since Denys died. It’s all been too grim here. Guards everywhere. Locked doors. Minders on high alert. But that’s changing. I’ll imagine a lot of things have changed.”

“Some have. Some haven’t.”

“Oh, Catlin, do entertain Paul. I’m aching to talk to Jordan a moment. Jordan, do come into the dining room. Please.” She snagged his arm, moved him, solo, the two further steps through that doorway. “I’m so curious about you,” she said brightly. He was warm, and smelled like Justin. “There aren’t many people in my acquaintance who really remember from way back, way back when everything was starting up in Reseune.”

An eyebrow lifted as she let go his arm. He looked at her, just like Justin. “I’m not that old.”

“But you did actually meet my sort‑of grandmother.”

“I did.”

“Was she really the bitch everybody says she was?”

That got a little flare of the pupils, and an immediately suspicious shutdown, no laughter at all. “I never knew her personally. But she was reputed to be that. Andpassed the trait on.”

She took that with a silent laugh. And just then Callie showed up with the drinks, damn her timing, but she took hers and let Jordan take his own. “I know about your feud with the first Ari. Two very bright people trying to work together. Two people who each hadto run things.”

That didn’t sit totally well. “You could say so.”

“She valued you, though, as the most brilliant designer in Reseune, right along with her. She couldn’t get along with you, you weren’t in the same field, exactly, but she did respect you.”

“The hell.”

“I have her notes. She also warned me you were pigheaded.” Sip of wine. Jordan hadn’t touched his Collins. “Is it all right?”

“What?”

“The drink. Did Callie do it right?”

Jordan just looked at her.

“You surely,” she said, “can’t think I’d pull something as silly as that.”

“You did on my son.”

Wide eyes. “ Whatdid I do?”

“You know what your predecessor did.”

Lowered lashes, a nod to the correction. “I know what she did. I’m sorry for that.”

“Of course you are.”

“I don’t like what she did, understand. I don’t like what happened to you, either. Let me tell you the truth. Uncle Denys thought he was going to make me into his own model. But he didn’t. I came out something else, and not liking him much at all, especially for what he did to Justin. And the way you couldn’t work with the first Ari, I canwork with Justin. I don’t ever want it otherwise. I just wish you could be part of that arrangement.”

A sardonic smile. “Is that so?”

She drew in a breath. “You’re going to see it doesn’t work, aren’t you?”

“That’s your conclusion? You have us bugged, you have my office bugged, you have our apartment bugged, including the bedroom. And that’s the best guess you can manage? I’d have thought you understood us inside out.”

“Who’s Dr. Patil to you?”

Ah. He didn’t control that look, not well at all. She’d got him mad, and she got a reaction.

“Friend of a friend. Someone I’d like my son to know, outside the cloistered halls of Reseune. Is that a crime?”

Florian walked into the dining room. That was the arranged cue: Justin was arriving.

She smiled. “Denys would have thought it was a crime. Hewas your enemy. Heset you up. Heblamed you and made your son’s years here–and mine–more difficult than you know. I doubt Justin’s told you the half of it. You should ask him.”

The front door opened, a hall away.

“When,” Jordan asked, “am I going to get that chance?”

“Not over tonight’s dinner, I hope.” She put on her warm smile again. “Let’s make peace, just for the hour. I can’t offer you explanations on everything, but I’d like to see things work themselves out. I’d like to know the things you know about my grandmother. I can’t call the first Ari my mother, really not the way Justin can call you his father. It wasn’t, obviously, that kind of relationship.”

“Being posthumous, you mean? Have it straight: she had it coming. I didn’t kill her, but I’d like to have.”

Oh, good shot. Just as Justin and Grant showed up at the dining room door. She smiled at Jordan and laid a hand on his arm.

“You areeverything I expected. Hello there, Justin, Grant. Delighted you could make it. Would you like a drink?”

“Vodka on ice,” Justin said with a worried glance at Jordan. “H’lo, Dad.”

“You’re late,” Jordan said.

“Am I?” It was a question whether Justin would come out with his version of the time he’d been told to arrive; but he was a survivor of the secretive Nye years, and he simply said, “I guess so.”

“Grant?”

“The same, thank you, sera,” Grant said. “Ser. Paul.” Paul had come into the room with Catlin. “Good evening.”

“Good evening,” Jordan said darkly.

“Why don’t we sit down?” Ari suggested with a wave at the table. There were flowers, and the lit candles. Staff had done their best on very short notice. She took the host’s seat at the end, and let her guests sort things out–Grant and Paul would settle farthest away. There was no endmost seat, just the service cart for the drinks, and that left Justin and Jordan one on a side–Florian and Catlin stayed standing, and Callie, who was being bartender, offered the requested cocktails, and prepared a bottle of wine and another of water, while staff hurried around in the hall beyond–a little unpracticed in formal service, but doing their best.

“How do you like your office?” Jordan asked Justin.

“More convenient to the apartment,” Justin answered, stepping neatly around that one.

“And how are you liking being back in your office?” Ari asked, as if she were completely oblivious to the undercurrent. “It won’t have changed much, will it?”

“A little barren,” Jordan said. “But I’m sure the walls are well‑populated.”

“Jordan,” Justin said under his breath.

“I really don’t blame your father for missing you,” Ari said. “But it’s regulations, Jordan. Justin’s on restricted projects. No one’s objecting to his being; there, or you, but it’s the stuff he works with. I don’t know if he felt clear to explain that, but that’s a fact. You couldapply for a security clearance.”

“There’s a waste of time,” Jordan muttered. He was at the bottom of his Collins, nursing the last out of the ice. “Let’s go back to honesty. There’s not going to be a clearance granted. There’s already an investigation going on. –You gave her that card, didn’t you?”

The last sailed across the table, at Justin, as Callie set the requested vodka down by his hand.

“It was a little obvious, Dad. I don’t know what else you expected.”

Ari smiled tightly. “Of course it was. And I’m sure it’s an inconvenience to Dr. Patil, whoever she is. I’m sure you know that.”

“And I’msure,” Jordan said, “you know damned well who she is.”

“I’m learning,” Ari said. “She must have really annoyed you.”

Jordan rotated his empty glass, frowning at Justin.

“And why do you assume,” Ari asked, “that you’re not going to get your clearance back? Don’t you want it back? Or is your whole aim to assure you don’t? There could certainly be several reasons for that.”

“And we aren’t even to the first course yet,” Justin said. “Can we save this for dessert?”

“It’s not my choice,” Jordan said.

“Many things are,” Ari said, and smiled, and signaled the servers. “But Justin’s right. Let’s enjoy dinner.”

“We may not need dessert,” Justin said, as the salad course went down. “Nice.”

“Let’s love each other for at least three courses,” Ari said, smiling at Jordan. “How is your work going, Jordan? I think you and I are about at the same stage–deepstudy until our eyes cross. I’m trying to get started and you’re trying to span the gap.”

“It’s not that big a gap,” Jordan said defensively, and had a bite of salad, while service poured the first wine.

“Of course there’s a lot I have to learn. Justin’s going to cross‑check me on my theta sets. Would youlike to, just to get back in the game?”

Jordan frowned, probably looking for a stinger somewhere in that offer. “Might be interesting.”

Curiosity, curiosity. He couldn’t turn down actual information, and seeing how she worked, compared to her predecessor, was a question. “Delighted,” she said. “I’ll be interested in any criticism.”

“I’ll imagine you’re quite precocious.”

“I’ve been told so from the start. I’m really trying to make peace, here. And I really am interested in your input.”

“I’ll bet you are.”

“Dad…”

“Oh, I know she is. She still can learn some things. I’m sure she’s no more omniscient than the first model. She hasn’t gotten as argumentative yet, by half. But that will come, I’m sure.”

“It might come earlier if she has to deal with too many disagreeable dinner guests.”

“Oh,” Jordan said, “are we taking sides now?”

“Neighbors,” Ari said with a smile. “Thank you, Justin. But don’t worry. Good minds make interesting conversation. And I think Jordan is very interesting.”

They made it through the salad, even into the main course, which was pasta and imported sausage, with marinara and real cheese.

“Must say the food’s better here than Planys,” Jordan said.

“I’ll relay the compliment,” Ari said. “Thank you. –Were you able to get out of the labs there, Jordan? Did you see anything of the countryside at all?”

“Damn barren,” Jordan said in his conversation‑stopping way. “No, we weren’t offered tours. There weren’t even views. One window in the main office, for the secretaries. None for the rest of your favored guests.”

“There’s no reason for that,” Ari said. “There ought to be views. I don’t know why there weren’t.”

“Maybe they thought giving us a view of the landscape would guide us when we made a break for it.”

Across desert where there weren’t even precip stations. Where the waste of the labs and residences had to be carefully processed, every iota of foreign life eradicated, so it wouldn’t destroy the native micro‑fauna, and contaminate the other continent. When planes flew between the main continent and Planys, they decontaminated the landing gear and the hulls and sprayed down the inside…because they had a world where, unlike old Earth, unlike Pell, there were two distinct ecologies, two landmasses that hadn’t drifted close enough to mix for eons, where there were two circulating currents either side of a high oceanic ridge, and where the only thing that flew was vegetative, most of which wouldn’t survive in the opposing environment–what floated or swam could get there, but that was all. Massive ankyloderms cruised the subsurface, occasionally making a nuisance of themselves; over here it was the other kind of subsurface creature, the platythere, and both of them turned their feeding‑grounds to desert.

“So you never did see an anklyoderm,” she said, ignoring the barb.

“Never did,” he said.

“I’d like to,” she said.

“They don’t surface as often as the platytheres,” Jordan said. “So I understand. In great detail. The ankyloderm guy there is a complete spacecase. You should have to listen to him on the topic. And we did, interminably. They had a guest lecture program. We were all supposed to get to understand each other. All damn useless.”

“Who didyou associate with?” Ari asked.

The habitual frown went a shade deeper. “You want other targets for your people to investigate?”

“Dr. Thieu?”

“Thieu’s a murderer.”

“That’s how you got Patil’s card, isn’t it? Is that the friend you referenced?”

Jordan went as hard as deep ice.

“They corresponded,” Paul said, out of the quiet.

“You with Patil?”

“Thieu with Patil,” Jordan snapped. “And I’m sure security knows it. Why is everyone in such a flap?”

“Security just hates it when their compartments leak,” Ari said. “Especially where it threatens the biosphere. Especially when it’d be so easy for some lunatic to contaminate, say, the Planys reserve. Nanisms could run riot–if they were tailored for it. The Centrists would get their way completely…no reason, then, to stop their pet project.”

“Not my field,” Jordan said with a shrug. “Ask Thieu. Nanisms have nothing to do with me.”

“Except the card.”

“I thought we were waiting for dessert.”

“I think we’re ready for dessert,” Ari said, laying her fork down. “Are you?”

“I think I’ve had enough.”

“Dad.”

“Damn it,” Jordan said, banging his fork down and looking straight at Justin. “Pick your side and stay with it.”

“Politics doesn’t mean a thing to you,” Justin said. “You used to say it was all nonsense. Pick your side, you said, and use it for all the use it can be to you.”

“Thank you,” Jordan said, “for that reminder of basic principles.”

“Dessert,” Ari said cheerfully, and waved a signal at service. Florian and Catlin hadn’t moved from where they stood, facing her, a perfect, black‑clad and elegant set, Florian the dark one, Catlin the bright, and neither face ever showing an expression. Dessert came through the door between them, a confection of light pastry and egg cream.

“Looks good,” Grant said, as cheerfully–and doubtless wishing he could get himself away from the argument. Things hadn’t been said, outright. Yet.

“Coffee, ser?” Callie was back, bearing a silver pot, making the rounds. It was a good, rich coffee, not synthetic, which complimented the egg cream–real egg cream, too. They got the best from the AG unit. Chickens, the one bird allowed onworld, were a definite plus, bred for centuries to be plump, nonseasonal, and flightless.

“Nice,” Justin said, after a bite.

“So did that card come from outside,” Ari asked, “or was it printed from transmission?”

“Transmission, far as I know,” Jordan said. “But I could be wrong. Thieu gave it to me and said contact the woman, give her his regards, old colleagues and all–I told you he’s a dodderer. His rejuv is going. He’s sometimes on, sometimes not.”

Transmission suggested no physical card had gotten to Planys…or broken quarantine. Hence nothing more sinister had gotten to Planys, either, or had gotten from Planys to the larger continent. It indicated that Jordan had done what he’d done solely as a means of agitating security andhis son. She was sure Justin could add that equation. The remaining question was whether the reassuring story was the truth at all.

“I knew damned well I’d make trouble for Patil if I called her,” Jordan said, after a bite. “Or if I mentioned her name while I was sure we were bugged. So I just handed the card on to my thoughtful son, who created a hell of a lot of trouble.”

“Bugged and watched, Dad. We always are. For our protection, our legalprotection as well as physical.”

“It wasn’t that way in my time here. But you’ve gotten used to it. Adapted, clearly. Nice dessert.”

“Thank you,” Ari said, taking another, delicate spoonful. So they at least had a story to explain the card, true or half‑true or no relation to the truth at all–and truthers were running. They had the card, physically, which had either come, illegally, from Planys, or which had gone, illegally, from Novgorod toPlanys before coming to them. Contaminants of the sort Patil worked on could use a small, small vector. Protecting the eco‑sphere was, very unfortunately for the ecosphere, still a political debate. Centrists might not like the idea of wholesale adaptation of the human psyche to other worlds, but they still wanted to obliterate all native life on this one, and being human, wouldn’t ultimately stop with one world, no matter what they argued, if they turned out to need something just out of current reach. It wasn’t just a debating difference. It was a profoundly different future in that debate.

And Jordan had said to Justin, once in the long ago, choose the side that’s useful…while the first Ari had said, in her tapes–watch out for Jordan.

“So you don’t take any side but your own,” Ari said to Jordan. “When everybody else has a theory about what humanity should be, you’re completely without opinion.”

“I’m not God,” Jordan shot back. “And I don’t theorize from that vantage. Let events and biology decide.”

“That’s sort of a Centrist opinion.”

A bite. “This week, it is,” Jordan said. “Stand by. It’ll change.”

“You’re interesting,” Ari said.

“I’m so flattered.”

Justin just gave an exasperated sigh and stabbed the pastry.

“I think we should do this from time to time,” Ari said. “You’re sort of family, you know.”

“In what possible sense?” Jordan shot back. “Family, in the sense you’ve gone to bed with my son?”

“No,” Justin said shortly. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

“Denys was my family after he exiled Maman,” she said. “Yanni sort of is, now. But I don’t know what to do without a disagreeable uncle. So I pick you. You can succeed Denys.”

“I’m not honored,” Jordan said, and ate the last bite of his dessert.

“You don’t have to be likeDenys, you know.”

That got a dark, naked stare, all the way to the bottom. “You little devil,” Jordan said. “You little devil.”

Got to him. Found a button.

“I’m not,” she said. “I’m just Ari. The new model. You were almost partners, you and the first Ari. Justin and I already are, at least as much as you two ever were. You’re my disagreeable uncle, whether or not you’re Denys.”

“Denys killed her.”

“I’m pretty sure he did,” she said. “And he as good as killed you. The question is whether you can recover from that. Maybe you can. We’ll see.”

“The devil,” he said, and drank the last of his coffee. “I think we’ve had the discussion. I trust I can leave this place.”

“Of course you can.” she said. “Paul. I’m glad you came.” She pushed back from the table. Justin and Grant did. She wondered if they would leave the apartment with Jordan and Paul and walk them to the doors of Wing One, or make a maneuver so as notto leave in that company.

“Thank you, sera,” Paul said, pro forma. Trust azi manners to try to force a calm over the situation.

“Thank you for the evening,” Jordan said with a small, tight smile. “It was very informative.”

“It was, very,” she said, and offered her hand. “I’m so glad you could come.”

“Nothing much better to do.” He took her hand briefly, as chill a grip as before, nothing like Justin’s. “Good night.” And to Justin, a look shot past her to the other door: “I suppose you’re staying.”

“No,” Justin said, “but good night, Jordan.”

Letting Jordan walk out with Paul and the door shut, Justin put on his coat very slowly, while Grant waited.

“I needed to know,” she said in that artificial pause. Toward Justin and Grant, she felt an impulse of remorse. “I’m terribly sorry. I hoped, not too rationally, that it might go better than this.”

“You gave us different arrival times,” Justin said. “You set the tone.”

“I tried to set it better than it turned out,” she said.

“I don’t think anything was ever out of control,” Justin said darkly, implying, she read it, that things had gone just the way she wanted. She shook her head to that.

“Remember he’s somebody the first Ari couldn’t Work,” she said. “She couldn’t handle him, or everything would have gone better than it did. She really did want him to work with her. But he wouldn’t share, and she couldn’t change him.”

That got a thoughtful look, a long and thoughtful look. “I wasn’t so hard a target.”

“For her? No. You were young. You were as young as I am now.”

“I don’t think you’ve had the chance to be,” he said, “not that young. Not that stupid. I was, once. At an absolutely emotional pitch, caught between her and him. I don’t like that territory. I don’t intend to go there again.”

“I don’t want you to,” she said, and kept her hand off his arm, much as the urge was there to touch, to plead, even, for a kinder look. “Justin, I asked you here because I didn’t want to meet him and have any question in your mind what we said.”

“And because he’d have exploded if I wasn’t here. A whole complex of reasons. I get them.”

“I hope you get all of them,” she said, “because they add up to my doing this because I’d like to stop this upset, and I don’t want you ever having to do things like give Florian that card.”

He looked at her a long moment. “I’d be as glad not to have to. I’d be as glad to live under a regime where that’s not an issue.”

“I’m trying. I’m honestly trying. Those sets you’re going over–a lot of those aremy security. Or they’re going to be.”

“I had an idea they were, from the skill‑sets involved.”

“Don’t give me anybody I can’t rely on. Help me set this up right this time.”

“As if you can’t read them yourself.”

“I do. I have. But I wanta partner. I want backup. A double‑check. I do.” This time she did touch him, gently, briefly. “Justin, I need you. Maybe the first Ari didn’t need your father as much: she didn’t need people. But I do. I want people. I like people. I don’t even mind people who argue with me. Jordan’s all right, Justin. He really is, or he would be, if he could just stop short of trying to take over.”

Justin’s expression grew very somber. “You said it. The first Ari couldn’t work with him. Are you better than she was?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I know I’m not, yet.”

“Good night,” he said firmly, cutting off any hope of longer conversation. “Good night, Ari.”

He was upset with her and with Jordan. She was sorry for that. But she’d had the truthers running, the while, and she had a load of data for Florian and Catlin to sift, before they gave any instructions to the new people.

Questions remained. Doubts didn’t. Justin had firmly stepped to her side. He just had to reconnoiter a bit, and settle his stomach about it. He was upset. But he stayed hers.

Jordan–Jordan was still Jordan. That hadn’t changed. But she knew him better because of this evening. And that was also very useful.

BOOK ONE Section 3 Chapter v

MAY 3, 2424

1003H

It was more home than it had been, the new office, with the quasi‑window showing a rainy day and blue flowers brightening up the corner. The color‑sorted cabinet still grated on the nerves, but the annoyance was fading.

Mostly the phone stayed quiet this morning. And for that, Justin found himself very grateful, considering the scene last night.

But it worried him. Jordan had more than one way to work on his nerves.

“Coffee?” Grant asked. Grant rose from his own desk to pour a cup. Justin held his out mutely, swivelled his chair around, and received it back when Grant had poured it.

“No phone call,” he said.

“Enjoy it,” Grant said.

“She’s trying to make peace with him. It’s not going to work.”

“It won’t, likely. But that’s his choice, isn’t it?”

“They’ve been fair with him,” Justin said. “Sometimes I just want to shake sense into him.”

“I’m only content he doesn’t try his version of that with you,” Grant said, and sat down with his own cup. He leaned back, crossed long legs in front of him. “Young sera, however, trusts you. And this, frankly, is a better thing. This is, mind you, a logical judgement. Or I believe it is.”

“Believe it is.”

“Convincing Jordan of her isn’t likely,” Grant said. “Young sera remains somewhat flexible.”

“No matter if she deviates from what she was born, she can’t deviate from what she was born to. She’s going to bewhat Jordan flatly won’t accept, that’s the bitter truth. Anydirector of Reseune is in his way, I’m afraid that’s the sum of it, and that’s what she’s going to be. So it’s a chimera we’re chasing, peace with Jordan. Doesn’t exist.” He thought of the monitoring and looked at the ceiling. Grant’s eyes traveled the same direction, and met his, and he shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I said it last night. I said it all last night.”

“We live in a glass box,” Grant said with a shrug of his own. “But it’s quieter for it.”

“If I have any guilt in the world,” Justin said soberly, “it’s on your account. All the things you could do, and you spend far too much time worrying about my family, my future, my problems.”

Grants brow, generally azi‑like, innocent of frowns, acquired one. “If I were burdened with choices, I’d still choose to be where I am. I’m relatively sure of it, given the requisite information.”

“What? If someone told you you’d be linked up with the clone of an egotistical problem case in a lifelong feud with a dead woman, you’d jump at the chance?”

“I’d at least find it an interesting proposal,” Grant said. “A source of unique experiences.”

“God.”

“Not all pleasant experiences, true, but I’ve found no need to run tape at all, not in this whole year. Which indicates I’m perfectly adjusted.” Grant gave a violent twitch of his shoulder. “Mostly.”

He had to laugh, in spite of it all. “I wish there were tape that could cure me of worrying about the damned son of a bitch.”

“Oh, I know there is for me, but there you are, the disadvantages of being a born‑man. Just shut down, go peacefully null–”

“You can’t do it so well yourself nowadays, you know.”

“Curiosity is a plague. Contagious. I can’t help it. I want to know.”

“You’re right it’s contagious. Jordan’s a carrier. God, I wish he’d use good sense. Just–calm down and let it all flow past him. But no. He’s got to be in the dead center of the flow, going upstream while he’s at it. In some ways I can admire him–” Momentarily he’d all but forgotten about the bugs, twice in five minutes, and consciously, wearily amended it: “–and in others I know he’s a lunatic.”

“There’s nothing wrong with his sanity,” Grant said.

“No. There isn’t. Everything’s perfectly reasonable if you realize he wants to manage Reseune and he thinks second prize doesn’t matter. Whyhe wants to–” He tried to make it make sense and simply shrugged. “He doesn’t like to be inconvenienced. And anybodyelse’s orders are an inconvenience.”

Grant laughed softly. “That’s one way to look at it.”

“God, I want to love him. But he doesn’t give a damn. That’s the bottom line. I stopped being his project, and he washed his hands of me. Second prize again–isn’t good enough for him. Things are perfect or they’re garbage. Thank God for you, Grant, or I’d be–God knows what I’d be. Not as good as I am, for damn certain.”

“Nor would I,” Grant said with a nod of his head, “be anything worthwhile, in that household. I escaped, along with you, and I have just enough born‑man ego to be glad of that fact.”

“Nothing wrong with your ego,” Justin shot back. “Perfectly well‑exercised.”

“Oh, now–”

A knock at the door–which opened.

Florian.

Face of an angel and inevitably the bearer of bad news. Grant sat still. Justin nodded a welcome.

“I don’t suppose you dropped by for coffee.”

“No, ser, thank you,” Florian said. “I came to ask your help.”

“My help.”

Florian let the door shut, reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a small card, and handed it to him. It had a number hand‑written. “This is Dr. Patil’s number.”

“I gave it to you. I don’t want it back.”

“We understand that. But, purely in an investigative way, we’d like you to call it and simply find out what the reaction is. Are you willing to do that?”

His heart began a thoroughly familiar acceleration of beats. He saw, out of the corner of his eye, Grant set his cup down, as if he was considering entering into the conversation.

“And say what?” he asked, forestalling that, and straightway protested, though he marginally thought he was believed on this point: “I’ve told you I don’t know this woman.”

Florian reached in his pocket, drew out a folded piece of paper, and gave it to him.

The printout said: Your father gave you the number, and you assumed he wanted you to convey his good wishes and Dr. Thieu’s. Possibly you became curious.

You wish to warn Dr. Patil that there is some concern here because of her relationship with your father. You feel that you can be of use in that matter because of your connections with me.

“This comes from Ari,” Justin surmised. “ Memeans Ari.”

“You understand that this entire thread of conversation is classified.” Florian said. “Sera suggests this line of conversation as an assistance.”

“Florian, I can’t lie. I’m terrible at lying.” Begging off, abjectly, and in front of Grant–was undignified. Embarrassing. But survival, Grant’s safety, everything was suddenly at issue. “I can’t do this.”

“You’re a certified Supervisor, ser,” Florian said smoothly. “You’re not lying if you make these representations to this woman. You’re temporarily adjusting her reality, just as you might maneuver one of us for good reasons, to reach a point. If, out of her own reality, she chooses to believe certain things about your motives, that’s hardly your fault.”

“God, Florian, it’s not the same situation. You know it’s not.”

“I’m sure sera will understand if you refuse. But she urges me to say you could do a great deal for Dr. Patil, should she be innocent of any suspicious action–and for Reseune, since Dr. Patil is scheduled for a very sensitive appointment. On my own judgement, let me inform you of one other matter: Yanni Schwartz, on his return from Novgorod, discussed the resurrection of the Eversnow project with sera; within the same hour, Jordan left his apartment on his way to dinner at Jamaica, carrying in his pocket the business card of the woman meant to be in charge of the Eversnow project. Jordan gave you that card in full view of surveillance. Does that make sense to you?”

His heart reached max. He looked at Florian and froze inside.

But he had to ask it. Cold and clear. “What’s my father up to? Do you know?”

“We don’t. We do want to know why that peculiar juxtaposition of events.”

Florian was leveling with him: Justin had that sense. That was a situation both reassuring for his own future and as precarious for Jordan’s as he could conceive. He didn’t know what he’d been dragged into.

“I’m sureyou want to know,” he said to Florian, and picked up his coffee and had a sip to steady his nerves, looking, meanwhile, at Ari’s script for a phone call to a woman who might either be, like him, a target, or someone he wished his father had never heard of.

Nanistics, for God’s sake. Jordan had nothing to do with nanistics. Jordan had had nothing to do with Abolitionists, either, but had once had phone numbers of people who themselves had ties in such dark places, twenty years ago. Jordan’s political contacts had nearly cost him Grant that night. And since that time he had taken nothing at face value, where it regarded Jordan’s correspondents.

Grant sat over at his desk, silent, impassive–he glanced in Grant’s direction and met Grant’s eyes. Expression touched Grant’s face, a nod, support for whatever he opted to do…when Grant would assuredly suffer right along with him if he made the wrong choice or the wrong move.

Grant was an alpha, and there was a limit to how much information anybody could make him unlearn…if anything untoward should happen to his CIT Supervisor. He couldn’t forget that.

“Maybe you should take a break,” he said to Grant.

Grant shook his head slightly. “I don’t think so. You’re going to do it, are you?”

“I don’t want trouble,” he said, “but I don’t want trouble from my father, either. Damn him, Grant. Damn him.” He had another sip of coffee, a larger one. “Florian, I’ll try it. Let me wrap my mind around this note of Ari’s.”

“Sera trusts you more than any other CIT in Reseune,” Florian said quietly. “Her staff willprotect you, ser. Those are our orders. That’s why, of all CITs outside ReseuneSec, you are the only individual wehave informed of the connection Director Schwartz has with this set of circumstances; and you’re the only person we’ve told what connection the Eversnow project has with this woman in Novgorod. We trust you understand how important it is that this goes no further and how closely we are tracking vectors of information. Sera hopes Yanni is conducting his own investigation, that it might involve Jordan, and that this could explain the coincidence of your father’s possession of this card. Her security assumes no such thing. Be very clear that you hold highly restricted information on several matters. You should deal with it very carefully.”

“No question,” Justin said. He had compartments in his head, for things that couldn’t get out, mustn’t get out. He’d developed those containments, oh, years ago. Grant had the same ability. He’d meet Yanni; he’d not let on. He didn’t remotely believe ill of Yanni–but he wouldn’t let on.

He read and reread the script, fixing the sequence in his head–trying to concentrate past a rising sense of panic. No side thoughts. Deep‑think. Internalize the message.

He glanced at Florian, then picked up the phone and input the number, with the script laid out in front of him.

God, he hoped the woman wasn’t in at the moment. He’d just leave a message. He’d say–coherently–

A recording answered. “This is Dr. Sandi Patil’s residence. Input your code.”He cast a troubled glance at Florian, but then the message continued. “Or record your message and state your business.”

It beeped. He was in the clear. She wasn’t in. Thank God. He could get her to call him back, and ask what he wanted, which created a far easier information flow. He could envision that. He knew how he’d handle it.

“This is Justin Warrick, Jordan Warrick’s son. I–”

Someone picked up mid‑word. “Patil here.”

It disconcerted him. He scrambled for a recovery. “Justin Warrick, Dr. Patil. My father is Jordan Warrick, in Reseune. He gave me your number, suggested I call you–he’s busy going through the lab certifications right now–” Lie. Complete lie. “But he gave me your business card, and I assume he wanted me to call you and pay my respects.” He saw Florian nod approval of the tack he was taking. “I’m sure he’d want to convey his own.”

“I’d heard Jordan Warrick was back.”Dead silence then. He was supposed to say something inventive. Fast. Possibly you became curious,the script said.

“I’m sure he’d want to express the same from Dr. Thieu, out at Planys,” he said, and decided against the curiosity gambit. “I understand you’re a friend of his.”

“Former student. Colleague.”

“So I understand.” The script said: You wish to warn Dr. Patil that there is some concern here because of her relationship with your father.And his effort wasn’t going well. There was chill, clipped response from Patil–interspersed with equally chill silence. “Look. Let me level with you. My father’s a bit of a hothead. I’m sure you know that. He’s picked a fight with Reseune Admin. Admin’s cut off his contacts for the next couple of weeks. You understand? I had this number, last thing he gave me before he picked a fight that’s got me worried. I don’t know what your relationship was with him, or is, but I know your reputation is impeccable, and I know he’s prone to pick fights that sometimes have fallout.”

“If you’d come to the point, ser.”

“I thought I should call, and apologize if my father’s caused you any inconvenience. I hope he hasn’t.”

“I don’t know your father. I know of him, in common with most people who remember the last administration. I’m aware he was at Planys. Dr. Thieu mentioned him as an acquaintance, that’s all. Thank you for your concern, but it’s misplaced.”

“I’m afraid you don’t understand.”

“I understand that I’m a very busy woman with no possible connection to your father’s problems. I don’t know how he came by my card or why he gave it to you, but–”

She was going to hang up. He grabbed for the strongest word he could think of. “Murder, sera. Murder of Ariane Emory.” And improvised. “He didn’t do it. They sent him to Planys for something he didn’t do. I know that for a fact. He wants the matter reopened, which isn’t–isn’t exactly what Reseune would like to see, for various reasons. So I’m pretty sure they’ll be asking Dr. Thieu, probably you–”

“Look. I have absolutely no knowledge of your father or his case.”

“I’m sure Dr. Thieu has put you current with it, at least.”

“Not a thing.”

“Dr. Patil,” You feel that you can be of use in that matter because of your connections with me.“Forgive me, but he gave me this card with your number right before he put himself at odds with Admin, and I’m sorry if I’ve been forward in calling you, but I felt I owed you a warning.”

“And I tell you I don’t know him.”

Time to back off. “I understand.” As if, finally, he could take a hint. “I apologize for the inconvenience. I feel I need to bring this matter up with Admin, to be on the level with them–I know young Emory. I know her quite well. Her influence isn’t to discount–should you find yourself crosswise of any investigation. She’s mentioned your name. She doesn’t want you inconvenienced.”

“Where are you calling from?”Sharp tone. Very sharp tone.

“From Reseune. From my office. Which is also my personal number.”

A small silence. Then, more quietly: “I appreciate the advisement. My respects to your connections. Good day, ser.”

Contact abruptly broken. He drew a long, shaky breath, and looked at Grant, and looked at Florian.

“Well‑handled, ser,” Florian said. “Very well handled.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned Ari’s name.”

“Sera authorized it in her note,” Florian said. “The call is recorded, as I’m sure you know. It will go no further than sera’s security.”

“I appreciate that,” he said, feeling his stomach upset. He didn’t know who he’d just betrayed. He was sure, at least, it wasn’t Ari. That part made him–and Grant–personally safe, as long as he was in Ari’s wing.

Outside was another matter.

“Sera’s thanks,” Florian said, and held out his hand. For a moment Justin had no notion what he wanted. Then he realized the paper with Ari’s instructions was on the desk, and he gave it back. Florian folded it and tucked it away.

“The card, ser.”

He’d forgotten that. He handed that over, glad not to have it in his possession. Florian pocketed that, too, bowed, with a “Good day, ser, Grant.”

And left.

Damn, Justin thought as the door shut. And said it. “Damn, Grant. What did I just do?”

“Assuredly what pleases Ari,” Grant said softly. “Which is probably a good idea.”

“I’m sure it is,” he said, which was a lie: he wasn’t sure of anything in the universe at the moment. “I think I just upset Dr. Patil.”

“I don’t think we’re responsible for Dr. Patil,” Grant said. “We don’t know who she is, or what your father wanted.”

“Or what Yanni wants,” he said. “Damn it, Grant, Yanni, of all people. He can’t be moving on his own. I can’t imagine him doing that.”

“In a wide universe,” Grant said, “it’s extraordinary that this woman’s card arrived on that very evening.”

“It’s extraordinary,” he agreed, staring off into memory, that evening, the foyer at Jamaica, that card going into his pocket. Florian, in the dark, by the pond. Grant walking back to hand it over, because he’d known then that his father had handed him trouble, and challenged him to do something besides coexist with Admin.

Now he’d done something, and not on Jordan’s side. Not against him, necessarily, but not on Jordan’s side. His father had challenged him. And he’d picked a side. Committed himself, with a phone call.

Committed himself, when he’d given Grant that card to turn over to Florian that night. He was sure of that. He was one step further into the quagmire, and now a second one.

And Florian emphasized– sera’ssecurity, not ReseuneSec. Why that distinction, he wondered? Was there actually a distinction? Or was there about to be? A schism, in the relations between Ari and the current directorship of Reseune?

“We’re Ari’s,” he said to Grant, still staring into memory, that night, the cold wind. Bright light, and Ari, perched in that chair in his office. And he had to consider where that office was. In it, neck deep, they were–living, now working, in her wing, doing work on, and for, her security. “I suppose we’re Ari’s. If there was ever any doubt of it in my father’s mind, he’s forced me–and we are.”

BOOK ONE Section 3 Chapter vi

MAY 3, 2424

1121H

Major headache, right between the eyes. Deepstudy did that sometimes–especially on too little food, especially when it was tape‑study on population dynamics, which wasn’t a commercial tape, wasn’t paced to be, was just raw notes and data and conclusions dumped into one’s head under the deepteach drug, so the habitual mind wanted to add it up and make it make sense and the critical faculties just weren’t answering the phone.

But the too‑little‑food part was another very good reason for the headache, which was why Ari had scheduled herself to come out of it at 1115h. She still was on the edge of the drug–when she was coming out, she’d told domestic staff just not to talk to her or ask her anything or tell her anything. She was apt to have what they said running around in her head all day, otherwise, and there was already too much running around in her head, psychsets, genesets, this population burst, the other burst added to the Novgorod sets, all of it classified, most all of it done during the War, with the Defense Bureau nagging her predecessor to do this, do that, psych‑design by committee and with no understanding what they were asking. So the first Ari had done what she wanted to do because nobody in the Defense Bureau had the skill to check on what she did.

Her predecessor had, for example, prepped a cadre of azi to survive if some Alliance ship had taken out Cyteen Station and dropped a rock on Reseune itself. They were to get to the weathermaker controls and the precip towers, hold them if they could, otherwise go for the safety domes, take over by armed action, and run things, never mind any plan Defense had laid down. There were some alphas seeded into Novgorod, just for leaven in the loaf. They’d have children by now. Children would have CIT numbers, ultimately indistinguishable from the CITs whose ancestors had come down to earth from the station. If the average held true, the children were probably not geniuses. But she could track them down. A little computer work, carefully shielded, would be interesting–if she had the time to do that research. She didn’t. Her schedule said she was supposed to be doing math tape this afternoon. And she sat, muzzy‑headed, wishing she could take a day off from everything on her schedule.

The door to her study opened, quietly She took a sip of coffee and looked up at Florian.

“Sera,” he said. “He was willing. He did very well. Are you able to hear the report?”

That was a mental shift. A serious mental shift. Florian meant Justin. Willing meant Justin had done what they had talked about last night, she and Florian and Catlin. And she’d told him to report as soon as she was awake. She was intensely curious–too wide‑focused at the moment, but curious.

“Did it work?” she asked, shoving population dynamics and all the equations to the rear. What concerned Justin worried her, on a personal basis, and she didn’t like involving him in operations. “Did you learn anything?”

“Patil claimed not to know Jordan Warrick except by reputation. But she accepted the younger Warrick’s advisement that he has influence with you. I have the transcript. –Is this too early, yet, sera?”

She had a second sip of coffee, blinked at the headache between her eyes, and shook her head. “No. I’ll go over it. I want to. What are the details? How do you read it?”

“He invoked an investigation into your predecessor’s death, as if Jordan was seeking a new inquiry to be opened into that matter–his innocence established.”

She didn’t know why. She didn’t quite like the sound of that, granted Justin had had to improvise. Was it because that issuewas riding Justin’s subconscious, and that was what had surfaced in his mind? She was a little surprised, a little off put. But there was Jordan’smotive to question. He was a son of a bitch. But was he tryingto get Admin’s attention?

“Ser Warrick suggested that she and Thieu might be subjects of investigation because of the card and the connection to the elder Warrick.”

Which was even the plain truth, just a large enough dose of it to make it credible.

But the other matter hit her skull and rattled around unpleasantly before heading through her nerves, just an unsettling, undefined malaise. The question of Jordan’s innocence. Justin–the cause cйlиbre in suspicion falling on Jordan…a political firestorm if that case got raked over again in the media, taking public attention away from her before she’d had time to settle the image she wanted in public attention.

Deepstudy drug. Damn it.

“I ama little muzzy yet. I think I need to cut back the doses. Shouldn’t be lasting like this.”

“Forgive me, sera. You said–”

“I said tell me when I waked. And I ought to be awake. I amawake. I’m just a little disturbed by the direction he went.”

“Dr. Patil was about to end the conversation. He used that matter as a wedge.”

“What did she say then?”

“That she had no connection with Warrick Senior. And they concluded politely.”

“Someone provided her address to Jordan. Either he handed on a card the full significance of which he didn’t know, a total coincidence, or he did know.”

“In our opinion, the elder Warrick knew whose number that card was, and that she is currently important.”

“Do you think that is possibly his motive, that he wants vindication? Florian, whoactually sent Jordan to Planys?”

“Our indications are it was Yanni.”

“That’s what my own search turned up. Yanni held the keys. Always. During Denys’s tenure. Yanni held the keys to Jordan’s sentence. And it was primarily Yanni who protected Justin, when Giraud would have taken a harder line. All these things are true?”

“Our indications are that, yes. But, sera–”

She waited.

“If you’re not prepared to talk, sera…”

“I’m thinking quite clearly at the moment.” What the drug did, besides diminish the ability to reject a fact, was to lower the bars on partitioned information–make cross‑connections easier, if there was a shred of connection possible. It was like momentarily seeing the world from a plane window, disconnected from the land, but seeing all of it, every wrinkle, every canyon, every change of strata, how it all, all, all connected, even if it was too wide to remember once one was back on the ground. “I’m thinking quite clearly at the moment, Florian, thank you. I’m just a little deepstate. I’m sure you understand.”

“I do, sera.”

“I need to do something.” She was aware she was staring straight ahead, her eyes wide open. She knew the look: black centered, unfocused, focused everywhere, and nowhere in the real world. “I like him, Florian. I like Yanni. I really do. But I can’t have him running operations he doesn’t tell me about.”

“Should I take orders from you at this point?”

She was perfectly collected. She slowly moved her head from side to side. “No. You should not. I need about fifteen more minutes to get my head clear, Florian. I need a cold drink. Would you mind going and getting that? That’s a request, not an order.”

“Are you safe to leave alone, sera?”

“Perfectly safe. I’ll sit here and think. I’d like that drink, thank you. Something sugary.”

“Fifteen minutes, sera.”

She wasn’t surprised when, hardly a moment behind Florian’s leaving, Catlin quietly opened the door and came in.

“Sit down,” Ari said, still not focusing on anything but infinity. “I’m thinking a moment, Catlin. I know you’re there.”

Catlin subsided into a chair without a word. And Ari stared off into her thoughts.

Yanni. Yanni was a resource, and a problem. What he had done said nothing about his motives in doing it. Yanni had intervened in the past to prevent further assassinations, of the Warricks, in specific.

Yanni said he had concerns about Jordan in her bringing him back, and was searching for involvement in leaks in Planys, which had gotten to Corain and possibly to others, possibly by the same conduit. One man was relieved of his position. That didn’t mean there wasn’t another.

And possibly Yanni had put challenges in front of Jordan before this to find out how he might react. Possibly he was testing Patil herself, who had at least some connections to Jordan, through Thieu. He talked about putting the woman in charge of a world in its transformation, in the most Centrist‑friendly decision Reseune had taken in years: the woman had Centrist backing, a lot of Centrist backing, the same party that had taken up the cause of the Warricks’ plight as a case of political persecution–and called it a power grab by the Nyes.

True. It had been exactly that.

But the Centrists had, after Giraud’s death, attempted a brief but cuddly relationship with Denys Nye, seeing that Denys was not, after all, going to push the Expansionist agenda Giraud had espoused–not because Denys was Centrist, but because Denys Nye was on his own agenda and wouldn’t spend a cred on Ariane Emory’s projects.

Denys Nye was going to continue the one Project, the cloning of Ariane Emory herself, but he was going to keep it, and her juvenile self, under his thumb for at least a decade…the Centrists hadn’t minded.

Meanwhile Denys focused entirely on post‑War economics, on the complexities of Earth‑Alliance‑Union trade, and on those agreements, which pleased the Centrists no end. They might not have gotten their terraforming bill passed, but they hadgotten an administrator of Reseune who was pushing most of their agenda and precious little of Ariane Emory’s–just the Project, which guaranteed, so long as Denys Nye had physical guardianship of the Project, that it wasn’t going to threaten him…in its lifetime.

Yanni’d done the day‑to‑day administrative part through all of both Nyes’ terms, running Personnel, which, in Reseune, was a key post. Denys had been the genius behind the programs; Giraud had kept the lid on dissent and quietly smoothed the bumps in the very short, very defined road Reseune had traveled in the post‑War years.

But Giraud and Denys had each been seduced–Giraud by devotion to Denys, and Denys by the one thing that Denys coveted for himself–immortality. Denys and death hadn’t liked each other. If the Child succeeded, it proved the psychogenesis process was possible. Denys wantedthe Project to succeed, at least until he knew the result.

And meanwhile Denys was busy storing all his own data, and Giraud’s, out in that archive. It was very likely that Denys had double dealt Ariane Emory’s plans by killing her; had double dealt the Centrists by continuing the Project; Denys had double dealt absolutely everybody, all to keep Denys Nye alive for another lifespan…solipsistic bastard. He’d attempted to kill her only when she’d succeeded and he had his result–unfortunately for him, she’d succeeded too well, too fast, and consequently he’d been the one to die, else he’d just have blamed her assassination on another Warrick and started all over again. That would have gained him another twenty years, during which he could bring up his own successor, another Giraud, who would be duty‑bound to bring up him, the all‑important center of his universe.

And Yanni? Yanni had kept his hold on power through both administrations, letting the Nyes run things, mopping up, keeping the Nyes from doing too much damage, while the Project ran, and she grew…

So which side was he on?

Florian came back into the room with the requested glass of orange and put it in her hand. She drank it, absorbing the sugar hit, still staring elsewhere.

“Yanni’s not necessarily pernicious,” she said. “He is bent on his own agenda, and he’s been very clear about that. Getting the Eversnow project going…that’s major. He had Thieu in safekeeping at Planys. But Thieu’s gotten too old; he’s on his way to the grave. So now Yanni needs Patil. He’s saved the Eversnow project. He’s gotten it passed. He’s saved the Warricks, kept Justin sane. I’m not so sure he wanted Jordan out, but he’s got him. He probably wants Justin for his ally. He can’t have Justin. Justin is mine.”

Blink. The thoughts were trying to shred and go away in different directions. She held onto the central problem: Eversnow. “Yanni kept all the first Ari’s projects alive, and he preserved the Warricks, especially Justin. Yanni’s still on her program. Not Denys’. Hers. And that’s not necessarily mine. He’s courting the Centrists. He’s trying to move them onto his agenda, and they’re buying it, seeing him as Denys’ backup, in the years before Itake over. If I did take over sooner, it would disturb them a lot. The Paxers would have a fit. They’ll go back to the underground, blowing things up again. But they’ll do that, whenever I take over.”

Florian and Catlin waited, both seated, neither saying a thing to interrupt her.

Blink. More shreds. Tatters. But the structure stayed. “I still like Yanni. I don’t want him to die. I just don’t want him to do what he’s doing. Eversnow is something I wouldn’t have done and the more I think about it, the more uneasy I get. Yanni sees the job crisis and a new trade route as important–more so than I do. It takes us further from Alliance, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing for humanity at this point.” She thought: Ari set me to watch her projects. Her projects, and this was one. But keeping Union together–keeping humankind from fragmenting: there were already more variables than she could handle–or she wouldn’t have created me. It was already afield‑too‑large problem, just with what we’ve already created, Novgorod, and Gehenna, and the military azi, and Alliance, and Earth. Then pile Eversnow on top of that, as odd as people could get, learning to survive on a snowball. It’s a planet, not just one more star station. Gravity wells breed difference. They don’t communicate with the outside.

There might have been a reason besides elder Ari’s health that she let Eversnow drop.

It was hard not to plunge back into deepstate, following that thread. But Florian and Catlin didn’t go away. They waited for something more concrete than her worries. “I’m not sure yet,” she said. “Who, do you think, does Hicks belong to?”

“Possibly to Yanni,” Florian said. “He was Yanni’s appointee in the current office. Giraud Nye’s second‑in‑command when Giraud was alive.”

“Both, then. But he didn’t protect Denys. He just protected Yanni. And he didn’t resist me ousting Denys. Possibly Yanni protected me from Hicks.”

“Likely,” Catlin said. “Hicks and Yanni together would have been a difficult opposition. We met none, once Abban died.”

She nodded slowly. “I have to take over,” she said, half‑numb, and with that wide focus that blanked out the whole room, except them. “I have to take charge. I don’t want to, but Hicks’s gift isn’t enough. I can’t let Yanni go on in the direction he’s going. I like him, understand. I don’t want him hurt. But Eversnow is much too dangerous. Yanni doesn’t see things the way I do. He belongs to the first Ari. And he wouldn’t like it if I started steering from over his shoulder. He’d rather go back to his labs. He should, now.”

“Wait,” Florian said, “wait, sera, until we have Hicks’ people passed through Justin Warrick’s opinion, and installed, and tested. We’re not enough to secure your safety, as is.”

Sobering thought. Honest thought. People like Yanni had beenhonest, at least honest enough not to make an attempt on her life. On her freedom, however–she’d been advised into seclusion. By Yanni. By the agreement of her own security. Now Hicks offered her either spies–or real power, in the presence of some unnamed threat–or in the progress of something Yanni was up to.

Did Hicks himself have an opinion? A loyalty? Unlike with azi, they couldn’t find it in a manual.

“We can wait,” she said, “so long as we don’t alert anyone to our intentions. I don’t want anyone to be killed if we can help it. I want Justin safe. Can we do that?”

“Are you going to tell Sam and Amy?” Catlin asked. “And Maddy?”

The other members of the junior cabal. Her friends, her allies, the kids who’d grown up to take jobs in the real world. She was the only one who hadn’t. Who’d had real power, and laid it down for a time. She was still studying, still growing up. There was so, so much yet to grasp, so much to understand.

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “I may not tell anyone my opinion. Or I may tell them.” She looked at them, finding the blood moving away from her brain. She felt a little lightheaded, but collected, all the same. “I have a headache, still. I’ll be in my room. Go see about these things. Lay plans. Come back to me with a report before you implement anything. Let me know where we are and what we need to do.”

“Yes, sera,” Florian said. He and Catlin got up and opened the door. They left, and she got up, and walked out of her office and down the short hall to her bedroom, in her section, her own safe section of the safe apartment in the sacrosanctity of Wing One, where–theoretically–she controlled her own security. But ReseuneSec guarded the doors of Wing One. ReseuneSec was in the halls. The old lab was dead. Dead as the first Ari. Equipment mostly removed. The place had become a little shabby–she’d laid other plans, a grandiose plan, a notion of gathering what was hers where it was indisputably safe. That was what that construction was, between Wing One and the cliffs. She intended to live there. With people she loved. Yanni had been part of it.

She shut her bedroom door behind her. Locked it. She felt a Mad coming on, though she wasn’t sure yet at what. Maybe at Yanni: she couldn’t trust him enough. Maybe at the people outside Reseune, who didn’t have the sense to know enough to make themselves safe, and the stupid Paxers who were going to make bombs and kill people because they didn’t have any better plan.

She ought to have ReseuneSec track every one of the Paxer leadership before the news got out that she was taking over.

She could have them killed. Every one. She’d have the power to do that. The first Ari had had it. And hadn’t done it, when the first Ari had done so much that was just–things she didn’t want to think about.

She stood in the middle of her own room and looked around her at a place that was safe. She looked at herthings, that, if she owned the whole world, still mattered, her chair, her bed, her dresser, and what was in it, things she shouldn’t keep.

She walked over to the dresser, picked up Poo‑thing, poor, ignored Poo‑thing. She smoothed the fur around his button eyes, and rubbed his nose into shape. His sweater was all wrinkled. His fat tummy was still fat, and she straightened his feet a bit, and laid him back in the drawer, making room for him. He went on staring. Poo‑thing had no way to blink when she shut the drawer on him and cut out the light.

Shoved it hard the last couple of inches and sat down in her chair and cried. Sobbed, with her face in her hands, trying not to make any sound to bring Florian and Catlin back, or staff, or anybody.

I wanted a childhood,she said to herself over and over. I really wanted a childhood, just a little one, just a year, is that too much to ask? I only wanted a year, and it’s not fair, not fair, not fair! I didn’t ask to be born! I didn’t ask everybody to hate me! I didn’t ask to be anything–I don’t want to be, I want to ride Horse when I want, anywhere in town, and not have to worry about people shooting me or trying to run off with me, and I want to have my friends around me and I don’t want to lose them, I don’t want to get them killed, either, and I don’t want Florian and Catlin to have to kill anybody, ever again, but they will.

I want my Uncle Yanni back. I want Maman not to be dead and Ollie to write me he’s coming back, and Valery, and everybody, I want it back the way it was before I grew up…

But it’s not going to be, is it? It’s never going to be. Ollie, maybe. Maybe Valery. They might come, if I can get them all back, all of them.

But they can’t find a teary, stupid girl when they do, can they? I can’t be stupid, or I’ll be dead, and I’ll get other people killed.

She blotted her eyes, one after the other, with the back of her hand. Sniffed. Got up and examined a reddened, unlovely face in the mirror, and got a tissue from the bath, all with a raw, unhappy feeling inside.

She didn’t quite know the girl that looked back at her, red‑eyed, red‑nosed, just human. It was the first Ari’s girl‑face, but it wasn’t the face of the portraits.

Second try with the tissue. Her makeup was a mess. She blew her nose, blowing away the evil spirits, Maman had used to say that. Maman would take a cold washcloth and wash her face and tell her cold water and a clear head would made a good start on any problem.

She did that for herself, washed her face, fixed her makeup. Sharp pain had gone to leaden hurt, just a weight remaining where the pain had been. And that was stupid. Selfish. She’d had her childhood just now, all ten minutes of it; and maybe she should take a chance and have just a little freedom before the whole load came down on her, go do those relatively safe things she could get away with doing, just because she could, before it was forevermore too late.

BOOK

TWO

BOOK TWO Section 1 Chapter i

MAY 8, 2424

Giraud Nye and his companions were steadily putting on weight. At twelve weeks, having doubled in size in the last seven days, Giraud massed 28 grams, somewhat less than a generous shot of the whiskey he’d one day love.

He had gotten fists, and fingerprints, and his general body shape was a little more human. He’d been drinking in the tank’s biosynthetic amniotic fluid, and routinely pissed it out again–proving his kidneys were starting to work, a process that would never stop, in spite of his future abuses to his body, until he did.

His intestines were growing, and began to fill his abdomen. His nerve cells were proliferating, synapses getting organized enough to react to stimuli, but unaware at any higher level–the nerves had no myelin sheath as yet, and that limited their function considerably. Consciousness was nowhere in the picture. His cells all had other jobs to do, mostly that of dividing like mad, according to the map in their nuclei. If it said cooperate, they cooperated. If it said make skin, they made skin, in its varied layers and detail. If it said make nerves, they made more nerves. There was no higher authority.

BOOK TWO Section 1 Chapter ii

MAY 5, 2424

The clothes that hung at the front of the closet, ready for wear, were appropriate for the house–not a construction site–and Ari delved deeper, on her own quest.

She was going outside. On her own. She was ducking lessons today. She’d warned Justin she would. She hadn’t forewarned anybody in ReseuneSec, however, except Florian and Catlin–hadn’t sent word to Hicks, pointedly so. They hadn’t yet gotten the new Security team–they were still taking tape, but most of all Justin and Grant were still reviewing files, and she didn’t have to worry about trusting them yet, so she wouldn’t.

Just Florian and Catlin, and a fast move, that nobody would be expecting, well, except Sam Whitely.

It was still a scary venture–the first time to be really out in open country It was the very first time since they’d shot their way into Wing One that she’d really gone outside.

The makeup was scant, and the clothes she’d picked out had once served for riding–when she’d been able to get to Horse. The weight she’d lost since Denys died meant she could put her fingers in the waist of the once nicely fitting denims. The seat was a little less than fitted, now, but Sam wouldn’t care, out on the behind‑the‑building construction site, out under the cliffs that ringed Reseune. The sweater, at least, was meant to be loose.

Comfortable, and part of her life when Denys had been her protection, and Denys had fussed over her and worried about her breaking her neck–she’d almost believed the old miser had cared, from time to time. On a day like this, she could almost believe something had just occasionally stirred in Denys’s wizened little heart.

He’d say, if he were here, Don’t be a fool. Stay in.

He’d really say something if he knew the information Florian and Catlin were gathering up, and the net they were beginning to weave through the Wing, and around people whose whereabouts they needed to know, constantly.

But today she was going out on her own, not because it was policy, but because it was her chance to do it and she could do it and she would do it.

She was really going outside the safe bounds. A risk, and worth every minute of it. And she was going to scare hell out of Hicks’ office, and probably Yanni was going to blow up and yell, but she was going to do it anyway…just flexing the constraints, just making sure what her freedom of movement was like. She’d make ReseuneSec twitch, and she’d do it again, and someday, on the day she chose, it wouldn’t be a lark.

It wasn’t as if the new construction wasn’t constantly available to Base One in virtuality: she’d seen the new wing grow, day by day. But this, she’d decided, was theday. The whole site had, for the first month, been an ugly brown flat of disturbed earth, aswarm with bots twenty‑four/ seven, following their preprogrammed dig plan, tearing up the landscape and installing lines and conduits–a secret communion between them and the design specs, with rarely a human involved, except to watch it happen. Yanni had given his agreement– Yanniknew what it was, but if Yanni had kept his word, nobody but Yanni knew, not even ReseuneSec.

In the second month, human workers had moved in, installing, with robot assistance, a flat barrenness of ground‑forms, while still more bots scrambled this way and that on spider‑legs, measuring and installing connectors.

Last week, the vertical forms had arrived from upriver, fresh from their use up at Strassenberg, and the site had sudden risen up and up into a confusion of those huge prefab pour‑forms and their requisite braces, everything fitted together with a system of bolts and clamps into a configuration that had nothing to do with Strassenberg: the forms were capable of that.

The main pour had been three days ago. This morning the forms had come down at the apex of the wing, and the featureless new walls stood clear and white in the camera‑view.

Which was no longer enough for her satisfaction, or Sam’s. She hadn’t seen her friends in forever. She’d wanted to call Amy and Maddy out–but that was just too much noise.

“Sera.” Catlin arrived in the bedroom. “Florian is on his way back with the runabout. We can meet him at the curb.”

“Excellent.” Enthusiasm tingled through her. She escaped the bedroom, walked briskly, with Catlin just in the lead, down the hall, through the living room, to the front hall, and out the door to the general corridor.

Escape, for sure. She’d dreamed initially, mere cloud‑castles, of taking Horse out of pasture, bringing him up to Wing One where he’d never been, and simply riding around the end of the building alone and unexpected, but the runabout Florian quickly suggested in Horse’s stead was the practical thing. The safe thing. The thing that wouldn’t bring Yanni storming down on Hicks, and Hicks down on the venture midway with a flock of ReseuneSec agents. A car–that was fairly ordinary. Nobody would think a car was a break for a few hours’ freedom.

Downstairs. Down another corridor, and toward the glass doors that led to the outside. Florian pulled the runabout into view at the curb just as they passed the inner glass doors of Wing One. Door security in the section, ReseuneSec, caught by surprise, jumped to attention, properly opened the outer doors for them as they arrived, and one of the two guards, doubtless in communication with Florian, went outside quickly to open the passenger‑side doors of the runabout, probably thinking they were going down to the labs.

Catlin opted for the front seat, beside Florian–there was a heavy rifle waiting there, and she shifted it to sit down, burdened with her own armament. Ari, carrying not so much as a pocketbook, simply tucked up comfortably in the rear seat, and the instant she had settled and the doors had shut, Florian took off with a snap and an immediate jolt.

Right over the curb near the flower bed and onto the lawn just beyond the building edge–a track not meant to be taken. Florian clearly enjoyed himself in taking them at breakneck speed downslope across the neat grass of the lawn, and, by a sharp right, onto the construction road between Wing One and the river. The landscape bounced crazily. Ari grabbed onto the seat and laughed, wondering what ReseuneSec thought of the maneuver. But no one gave immediate chase, Catlin talked to someone, answering questions, and Ari watched the moving scenery–lazy brown river on the left, the robot‑mowed grasses on the right, where the riverside lawn still remained sacrosanct from the passage of the big earthmovers–

Terran, that lawn. Nothing from Cyteen’s native life got onto Reseune’s territory, except what drifted ashore via the river, and that only‑touched the shore–and died. Such seeds and fragments of woolwood and other deadly things that somehow got past diversion gates in the river itself met a determined last line of defense down there. Dedicated robot sweepers zapped intrusion to cinder, sniffer‑pigs found anything that took root, and a coffer dam and a high‑tech filtration system kept the river water on one side and routed their own runoff back to their own use. All that effort prevented Terran life from getting out any more than they could help nowadays, and most of all it kept low‑level Cyteen life from getting in.

They passed the dim arc of the coffer dam in the river, and swung around the long side of Wing One. Their course still ran well within the safe perimeter of the precip towers that sat up on the cliffs above their little valley, and on matching cliffs across the wide Novaya Volga. There wasn’t any real fear of a perimeter collapse, in these days of triple redundancy in Reseune’s atmospheric bubble; but the runabout, designed for the outback, with its six tires and a pressure seal on its doors, was nevertheless well‑equipped for that eventuality, with breathing tanks and emergency suits right under the seats: a small yellow sticker advised of that resource, should the sirens sound.

Emergency supplies that might serve in the event of a back country wreck might be just a little redundant for an overset on the construction road, which was their most immediate peril. Florian took evident delight in crossing over the ruts of the big earthmovers’ tracks. Ari braced herself between seat and window and craned for a bouncing view as they swung another right turn around the far end of Wing One, near her current apartment, which presented blind walls to the riverside.

The newest part of the construction came into view through the front glass, walls still shrouded in forms. The new wing butted right up against the back wall of Wing One. Eventually there would be a subterranean access at that contact point, somewhere in that mess of gray pour‑forms. Right now that connection with Wing One was a maze, a jigsaw of shapes and bolts and supports. And Wing One would be open for revision, renovation, after all the chaos since Denys. There would be shops again, and restaurants, maybe even a new Wing One Lab, convenient for her use. Someday.

Suddenly, with a veer over rough ground, new foam‑construction hove into view, off‑white walls, brilliant and plain. The new wing as a whole formed a large, two‑storied U, which would join not only Wing One, but attach to Admin on the other side, giving the new construction direct access all the way from Wing One to Admin, and incidentally creating considerable interior space for roofed gardens.

That last part was her idea. Why have a U and not take advantage of that inner space? Why confine all the flowers to the distant Botany Wing? They could bring them where people could enjoy them without a trek way down to the botany labs. Incorporate them into a roofed‑over section of this wing–

Or why not small nooks of allthe wings in Reseune, while they were at it?

Economically extravagant, Yanni had called that notion, and nixed it, while letting her have her flowers in the new wing. But she thought increased productivity would pay for it over time, particularly when it increased the productivity of the best psychtechs, operators, supervisors and designers in the known universe–which was what Reseune was.

And she’d said so, and Yanni had said, “When it’s on your watch.” And that day, she’d decided, was coming. She had to think of it calmly, in terms of what she’d do, once she could–and thanks to the sudden need to use Reseune funds to keep projects working–all her plans had to be tempered with thoughts of how to pay for things.

Yanni didn’t wholly approve what she was doing. She’d put it down to the fact he was old‑way, in so many areas, including his support of the first Ari’s policies: if it was old, it was good enough until it fell apart–that was what she’d thought was a simple truth, until she’d found out he had an agenda that needed a budget…a huge budget, cannibalizing hers.

It was true–even Yanni admitted Reseune needed attention, because there was a lot falling apart. Reseune had started complete bare‑bones and in a hurry, when humans first set up a permanent habitat down here–Reseune had come first, even before Novgorod, in any operational sense. So the buildings had all grown in the same white‑walled, all‑survival style of the early colony, right through her grandmother’s time, and the first Ari’s. Yanni’s generation, previous generations–that architecture was what they knew, and it was getting old, hammered by the storms and repainted and refoamed time after time to patch things.

There hadonce been different ways of building. Elsewhere, Earth existed, as baroque as anyone could wish. Distant Pell Station was growing a forest inside its heart.

So why shouldn’tReseune have flowers? A sociological plus, flowers. Not one more huge population‑burst to factor in, dug in on an iceball and getting less and less like Reseune, or Gehenna, or the star stations.

A chance to contemplate something fractal, something to take the tension off…wasn’t a stupid idea, even if it didn’t make money in any visible way. Novgorodcould use some parks, some gardens. It wasn’t the frontier any longer. It was the place people lived, and they were getting changed, sociologically, by the walls, and the dynamic of the buildings they’d been living in, and how they fitted together. Gardens focused people into a different mode.

And the inner garden to go in thiswing was altogether her design. She’d sketched a plan or two for her someday castle, her place with flowers, even before Denys had died. She’d talked about it with Sam Whitely and Maddy Strassen and Amy Carnath in those days– those days–as if it wasn’t just last year. Just daydreaming, she’d called it.

But on the day she knew she needed urgently to set up in newer, safer spaces, she’d called on Sam, for what he knew–she’d entrusted the whole project to Sam, who was eighteen, the same as she was–Sam, backed by the resources and computer software of two major construction companies and Sam’s own gift of getting along with most everybody. He’d stood up for her through Yanni’s misgivings, and then Yanni’s assigning senior design to the project. Sam hadn’t been off‑put, and he’d doggedly stuck to their design.

Sam was, depend on it, properly respectful of older engineers, but he’d run the designs through the computers himself, and she’d gotten her tall tower with the slanted walls that the older engineers said weren’t cost‑effective. He’d had the company architects, he’d assured Yanni, cross‑check and criticize structural soundness with their specialized software, new materials said it would stand, safe and strong; and she’d personally bet the architects Sam consulted had found very little fault in what Sam put together. ReseuneSec’s labs, their only recourse for the specialized kind of construction that provided systems, had provided some black box areas, just the dimensions and access requirements for electronics that would go in under senior Admin’s direction. Those werealready in: Yanni had had technicians out here on that job before he’d left for Novgorod, all the while keeping the nature of the construction out of public gossip. The virtuals didn’t show up on regular vid channels, nobody saw what was going on back here, and it had been going on for months.

Even while the tech designers were still fussing over the details, Sam, with herorders behind him, had had the earthmovers running on the basic footprint. Starting with the basic Reseune design had helped Sam speed things along…but at the top of the U was her design, Sam’s design, inside that footprint. Maddy had gotten a word or two in about the interiors. Amy had contributed her usual cold water bath of cost and common sense, then finally thrown up her hands and said that if Yanni ever agreed to that much expense, she’d be very surprised.

But Sam had gotten his budget, andhis security‑class installers–Yanni had given him the go‑ahead for just one spectacular variation on the old theme, at the top of the U–her apartment. And then Yanni, maybe knowing she was going to be mad as hell about what he meant to do in Novgorod, and wanting to give her a toy to distract her, had approved it all and let the companies call in the resources. So their little club, their childhood clique, had found themselves building for real.

Herself, Amy and Sam, Maddy, Florian and Catlin: when they were kids, they’d gotten anywhere and been responsible for all sorts of mischief–outright sabotage of Denys’ intention to watch her, for starters. And sometimes they’d just done things for revenge, on a kid’s scale, some of them pretty vile.

And today? Today Amy was Admin, born and bred–it was Amy who’d had a good deal to do with cajoling Yanni–it was Amy who’d found justification in the figures she laid on Yanni’s desk. Maddy ran an exclusive dress shop, and you’d never think shewas worth anything in a construction project; but the dress shop was a front. Maddy collected gossip–she knewthe female elite of Reseune, knew their tastes, their habits, their liaisons, and their figure flaws; and besides that, Maddy had an eye for decor, and design–and understood the use of the gossip she collected: you wanted something out of someone, you wanted a favor, the name of a contact? Maddy had the key.

And Sam–well, Sam built things. Bigger and bigger things were in the future she planned.

So their juvenile fantasy wouldcome true. They’d be together again–here, in this wing, when this place they’d all planned was done. Not for the reason they’d all planned–never thinking it was for their safety, just one grand continuation of what they’d dreamed of building for the sheer beauty of it.

When they came in, they’d bring their liaisons, their families, their staffs, everything they needed…

And damn it, she’d keep them safe, forever safe, everyone she wanted to protect and nothave vulnerable to plots and gossip and schemes and outright sabotage once she took the reins. The Centrists and the Paxers and the Abolitionists wouldn’t get to the people she loved.

The first Ari–that Ari hadn’t had personal weak spots: she’d kept very much alone through her life: Ari Senior hadn’t trusted anyone but her Florian and her Catlin. But she’dlearned how to use allies the way her predecessor never had. She’d confounded Denys, frustrated Denys–finally gotten the better of Denys.

Now she had the better of Yanni and Hicks of ReseuneSec, who actually knew what this place really was…

Inside or outside this new wing, for Yanni?

That all depended. Maybe. Maybe not, depending on how Yanni took it. And how Hicks did. And what this team he was sending her turned out to be.

“Come see,” Sam’s message yesterday had said. “We’d love it if you could come.”

So here they were, driving along beside the white walls, and the whole project becoming more and more real the closer they got, right down to the feathery pour‑marks on the new walls, where they’d freed the finished wall from the molds.

All the conduits had gone into the forms before the pour, so she’d learned. The new place had a new sensor system, a new computer installation from the basic wiring up. It had new walls without ten thousand ghosty little lucifilaments running in places that were a real archaeological problem to trace…making a security headache for Wing One and most everywhere in Reseune. Systems as arcane as Base One–which had lurked within the lab computers until the day (event‑driven, calendar‑driven, it was never clear) it assembled itself and made contact–just could not surprise her in the new wing. Base One itself would get in, intact, through a prescribed gateway, and settle itself in, while other Bases would have to stop at that gateway and announce their presence to Base One before touching System inside. She trusted Base One absolutely. She was pretty sure it would do what she asked it to do. She no longer trusted, however, the systems where she lived–she hadn’t, from before Denys died. Florian and Catlin had long worried there might be a worm in the works, where Denys and his people had done all the arranging for years. Giraudmight certainly have done things within Reseune’s systems that could spring on them without warning. They’d gotten through the first months post‑Denys without disaster–but who knew what event might trigger something untoward? Giraud’s rebirth? Denys’s rebeginning?

Her own claim on power, when she did make it? She wanted to be in here when she made her move…safe, isolated, in control. Yanni ran Base Two at the moment: nobody but an Ari Emory and those she permitted had ever run Base One. But Base Two had been in Denys’s hands before that. And having some buried section of Base Two wake up and start actively spying–if Yanni didn’t already run those functions–that wouldn’t be good, no.

They would be in their new, secure apartment before summer ended: Sam promised it, and she had every confidence that would happen on schedule.

And the building had taken a big stride this morning: the gray, confusing forms that had stood at the end of the U had given way to a section of white angled planes rising stark and beautiful against the sheer natural rock of the cliffs. Florian turned the little car into the rutted and dusty area of what a sign proclaimed as Parking A, among the giant earthmovers, and Sam was waiting for them there, wearing a hard hat and orange overalls no different from any of the azi who worked with him. Sam’s square face split with a grin as they got out and walked onto the hard, rutted surface that was his particular domain.

“I hoped the pour would finally draw you out here,” Sam said, waving an expansive gesture at the walls. “There you are, people! Home sweet home!”

It was different than anything ever built at Reseune, an extravagant three‑story crown at the apex of the new‑born Alpha Wing. Her heart beat faster in excitement.

“We’ll be done ahead of schedule,” Sam said. “No bubbles in the pour. Went like a dream.”

That was good to hear. Bubbles in a foam wall were definitely a bad thing, and Sam meant they’d gotten all this foamwork set and hardened without sawing areas out, setting up forms again, and foaming in twice, and no problems with the design. Sam was decidedly happy with his job.

But she wanted to see. She wanted to walk inside, and make it real, not just a virtual image she could get on the computer.

“Can we get in there?” she asked.

“Right this way!” Sam led them all toward a gap in the pour, a broad area with rough notched edges. “This is just a workman’s door–you won’t be able to walk through this wall when you live here: we’ll foam it so it’s just wall, ever after.”

Reseune was like a fortress of sorts, against environmental hazards as much as for any other reason, the only lookout on this exterior side of the building once it was finished would be cameras, no doors or openings of any kind. Her apartment, at the top of the U, jutted out farthest toward the wild and the cliffs, and farthest upward, in its reinforced light‑channels. The rest of the U’s ground floor would be offices, a few shops, while the upstairs was all going to be very restricted residences: her apartment would have its main door on the third floor, the way things were in Wing One second floor. But, unlike Wing One’s, herapartment and only her apartment would have an upstairs section above the third floor–that was the height of the crown, up among the angles of the walls. That would be her room, her office, her personal safe place, with Florian and Catlin by her, and their rooms, and all the things they needed, up above the world, almost even with the cliffs.

Right now, the word given out among the CIT workers was that all this construction was new labs. By the time rumor got out that it was going to be a restricted residential area, and hers in particular, the security installations would all be in, and that time was getting very close. By the time Alpha Wing System went on line (and perished immediately as Base One moved in and took over) well, it wouldn’t matter any longer, at that point, what anyone knew. They’d be defended. Everyone she loved would be defended, once System came up and Base One ruled Alpha Wing.

Sam led the way inside, over dusty concrete floors littered with foam‑construction crumbles and plaster spatters. Sunlight fell in unlikely rectangles and bars from somewhere above–where not all the construction was finished, Ari supposed. Where they walked, first floor, was going to be offices and residences for wing security personnel other than her personal bodyguard, and they all would have immaculate security clearance.

Her new apartment, over their heads at the moment, would more than protect her–it would innovate. It would be all angles, and surprises like light, and living things. It would inspire her, and inspire her visitors, with things that had never existed in Reseune. Denys’ old apartment, where she had grown up, was a boxy put‑together of the ubiquitous Reseune cream‑colored walls and recessed lights, just boring, boring, boring–with the same color walls in every room. Oh, it had real imported wood, yes, and all sorts of luxuries like hand‑knotted carpet, and bric‑a‑brac and china. She’d sent the whole lot to storage so that Denys Two, if he one day existed, could have it all intact when he grew up–but, God, that some mentor had to teach a little boy to like that stuffy decor!

And Ari Senior’s apartment, where she lived now, had luxury, a lot of it, and it had its graces, but it was all linear, archway into archway, brown travertine and polished floors that would skid with you if you didn’t watch the rugs, and it had sat vacant for nearly a decade and a half with Base One gone dormant, an interregnum in which someone very, very clever and skilled–like Abban, like Seely–could have gotten into the place or at the place in some clever way they had never detected, with things as small as a human hair. Illicit surveillance might not have waked up yet, because Yanni might not have full use of Base Two–which might have plunged into partial dormancy itself, awaiting some event to bring it live…some event like a young Abban logging onto System.

That wasn’t going to disturb her life. Not in Alpha Wing.

“This way” Sam said, and they followed Sam onto a construction lift. It lurched into action and lifted them up and up a narrow dim shaft to the highest level of the building. “This is your front door,” Sam said, lifting the safety bar to let them out, and waving them toward a single gap in the white, angled walls around them. Light beyond that door was getting in from somewhere up here. It had to be her design, her sun‑shaft somewhere aloft, bouncing light from panel to panel.

Herapartment, this apartment, was going to be a lot of glass, and lights, and living things. Herhome was going to have fish, a whole wall that was a real tank, not just a projection of virtual fish. They were going to get them all the way from Earth’s tropics–well, via the public aquarium at Pell, which was shipping them to Cyteen, which would immediately ship them down to her.

So when you sat in the living room, there would be that living wall to watch on one side, and when you were in the entry hall, there was going to be a waterfall, with real rock going down to a stone floor, with a clever trick, an air wall, Sam’s idea, to prevent the spray from getting beyond the rim of the pool.

And upstairs in her office, which was going to be right next to her bedroom, there would be living plants behind glass…she’d wanted real birds. She’d had to reconsider that, because anything you imported down to the planet that was ever capable of reproducing had to be clean, with a natural barrier between it and freedom on Cyteen, and had to be considered for the ecology they’d started to restore. The water and the sea were already a mess, that was one thing, and for another, if the tanks ever breached, the fish couldn’t walk across the lawn to get to the river. So they were all right.

So no birds. Just fish. But she could do real science with what she kept. She could do so many things…she could breed fish and get them to a public aquarium in Novgorod, where people could come and enjoy them, and know something about Earth in the process, and something about living next to an ocean.

And instantly, as they walked beyond the second wall, just short of where the security installation would be, she recognized the recess for the water‑pool, just the way she’d drawn it, and saw the straight, bare form for the rock, slanting away and up and up on the left.

Everything was white and dusty from the pour. But a glance all the way up showed a series of white planes, and the sun‑shafts and pressurized windows she’d asked for must already be in here, too: real daylight came into the area. There was a balcony above that overlooked it all. There were recesses here and there for the electric lighting that would brighten with a vocal command, once System was in. Beyond, in the open plan dining room, was the section of arched roof for the projection that would show the real sky, just the way it was outside–so when it rained, it would cloud over, and when it was night, there would be stars. She wanted all the contact with the planet she could possibly get, living under the umbrella of the weathermakers and precip towers as they did, and being forbidden windows that really looked out on the world.

It would feelopen. If it worked, they were going to do the same sky‑dome in the big hall of the general public residencies. She was going to fix Reseune. It was going to be a place people wanted to be, before she was done with it. It wouldn’t be the same old utilitarian box‑shape and domes, not after her.

It was all Sam again. Sam had taken her rough sketches of years and years ago and played with them in his own computer for years. Sam had lately run it all through the big computers and ended up with real measurements that were going to meet regulations and make design sense, and Sam said he was working with architects who were with him and excited about what he was doing. She’d pulled strings with Yanni to get Sam time on systems at night, and Sam had pulled shift and shift. Give him shapes and he could figure the real building down to the joins and conduits. Give him charge of the logistics, and he had a fine grasp of what had to be scheduled when, right down to dealing with the bot programmers and giving clear orders to the azi workers andthe CITs.

More, Reseune Construction wantedhim when he was done. They told him he was already official on staff, never mind the regs and his lack of a degree and his age–he’d done his time in tape‑study that hadn’t been recorded, but they wanted him. The head of architectural design in RC, the same architect she’d aimed at Strassenberg itself, she’d hired to do the job here, too, and asked him to mentor Sam; but within the first month, RC’s chief architect had just de facto turned Sam and two of his best people loose to handle everything on‑site here while he concentrated on the more esoteric technicalities of the precip towers at Strassenberg.

Fitz Fitzpatrick was the man’s name. Florian and Catlin had investigated him top to bottom, the only CIT besides Yanni to be trusted with the knowledge of what was going on here. He was actually an uncle of Amy’s; and the relationship between Fitz Fitzpatrick and Sam was absolutely the happiest of all the string‑pulling she’d ever done.

And here was the result of it. The planes of the walls evolved one into another as they all walked through. “That’s my fish wall!” she exclaimed, spotting the deep recess, delighted, and Sam beamed and blushed a bit.

“The glass is here. That was big. The build for the tank will be among the last. I’ll be looking to experts’ specs on that.”

“I’ve got the data you want,” she said. She was seeing a tank filled with water, where now there was only white. “I want to learn it myself, but I’m going to be Contracting a specialist in salt aquaculture to actually do the running long‑term. He’ll help you set it up. His name’s Chris BCN‑3. He was supposed to be on the Beta Station production tanks. He’s seventeen, still taking tape, but he’s getting info on Earth exotics and he’s through enough already to help you, this week if you need him: he’s going to be supering all the watery technicals–with a couple of assistants if he turns out to need them.”

“Wouldn’t hurt at all. I’m anxious to get the pumps arranged. Any of your other staff you’ll want to tour through, or consult during the build, you let me know. The kitchens might be an issue.”

“Florian and Catlin are on it. They’ll get you a list of people we might have come here to walk around at certain stages. Security. Operations. Kitchen, in particular. We’re getting staff. They aren’t cleared into the house yet.”

“A few here might be helpful,” Florian said, behind them. “Not many though. We won’t inundate you with advice.”

A laser must be running. A burned stench wafted through. Something metal fell, distant, and the impact of something the size of the runabout echoed off the walls.

Sam tapped his hardhat. “Must’ve dropped a wrench out there. This area’s safe. Down the main corridor, they’re doing some light work in the ceiling today.”

“The supers are all on our list,” Catlin said. It was a question, regarding the CITs onsite.

“Always,” Sam said, unruffled. “Security never lapses. They don’t even take an inside lunch break: the azi crew is deepset against discussing their work off‑duty, so damned enthusiastic I have to make them take breaks– theyall know what they’re doing is unique, and they’re excited. So are the rest of us, to tell the truth. Want to see the latest?” He walked them to a serpentine line marked on the floor, which ran to the edge of the living room. “I want to S‑curve a meter‑deep channel through the flooring. A water channel, clear top, lighted underneath, with rock.”

“I love it!” Ari exclaimed. “A river.”

“Well, a stream. It’ll share its water source with the waterfall, not the tank. Fresh water. Complete loop. There’s a submersible pig to clean it and zap the algae.”

“Pig.” She envisioned the ones that sniffed native life that got onto the grounds.

Sam’s eyes danced. They were brown, unpretentious as the rest of him. He so loved knowing something technical that she didn’t. “A machine‑pig. A cleaner bot. Same as they use for regular water‑systems, standard piece of equipment, actually. That’s what they call it. It ought to work.”

“Pig.” She liked that word. It conjured the working pigs that patrolled the grounds and kept them safe. “Do it, if you think it’ll work. I like your river, Sam. I love it!”

“It just came to me when I was walking through here. We can have a pump at the top of the loop, right where the waterfall is, keep the water really moving.”

“Oh, don’t tell me everything! I just want to be astonished when I see it!”

They toured the downstairs bathroom, a modern installation that played a little off the waterfall concept, with sealed stone, but the fixtures were all modern. And there was a second scissor‑lift to take them up to the second floor–a scary little step across vacant space, and onto solid foamcrete.

At one end of that hall, beside the as yet rail‑less balcony, was Florian and Catlin’s suite, which was going to have a gym, and a workshop, and a library of its own. Other staff quarters would be right below it.

“Much more convenient,” was Florian’s only comment. But their eyes were bright. They were happy and easy with Sam. They always had been.

And then her room, her huge bedroom, with a cozy nook for a bed, and a living‑sky ceiling, and a glassed‑in area for the divider from her office, where her terrarium would be, and her wardrobe, and herbath, which had an in‑floor tub, and a mister, and its own little salon, plus a little exercise room of her own…it was everything, all in one. It was all her imagination wrapped up in a design of white plaster at the moment, and she went out onto the unrailed balcony–Florian and Catlin were there in a heartbeat–but not too far toward the edge, just looking down at all of the living and dining area below.

She might have to take over Reseune early. She might not have the years she wanted.

But she was going to have all her friends, all the people she most wanted. Yanni, too, if she could answer the questions she had. She’d been pent in, feeling like a prisoner in the slow ruin of Wing One. When they finished this, they could start repairs, where the search for bugs had literally ripped walls out–repairs much, much beyond a fresh coat of plaster.

Maybe it was dangerous to think of directing Reseune and still hoping to be as happy as she wanted to be in this castle in the air; but this place was all light and optimism. It cost. But it was where she could keep safe what her existence threatened, make an iron‑hard core that wouldn’t be vulnerable to threat.

Maybe it was the stupidest, most dangerous thing in the world, to surround herself with the people she was fondest of. The first Ari would have warned her it was, that it was setting herself up to get them killed, or to get herself hurt.

Weak is dead. The first Ari had said that, too.

And the first Ari hadn’t hadanybody she was that fond of, except Florian, except Catlin. The first Ari had told her her own nightmares of guilt…the discovery she’d enjoyed inflicting pain, and yet did it, when she did it, purely for a reason. The first Ari had warned her, as best she rationally knew how, that the path she was on went further and further into solitude, and into the dark.

She’d had hormones shot into her deliberately to make her mad and had moan things done to make her miserable, all because she was supposed to live the first Ari’s life, the way Ari’s life, under her own mother, had been one long lab‑test, intimately recorded, and full of Ari’s mother’s orders.

It was just everything, everycruel thing justified for the Project, until Denys died and the Project stood on her own two feet.

Well, she wason her own two feet, with her own walls rising around her. And she’d always been smart. All it took for her to learn something was for her to get her head in the right mode, and she’d been quick enough to take in what they wanted–once they’d gotten her scattershot mind both mad and focused…because Mad was always part of it. She could still be the genius her geneset could make her, without her being as cold as the first Ari–couldn’t she? Controlling the Mad was the important thing.

It was what this place was for.

She could love people. Now that she knew the whole scheme, she could try to set things right. Yanni would be here. Most of what Yanni wanted was to get back to his work, his real work. He didn’t ever want to run Reseune. He didn’t really want to fight her for his big project out on the fringe of space. He’d understand, if she just got his hands off the controls and gave him back his labs.

Sam would live here in the wing, Sam, the one in their group who’d just been so reliable, so sensible, in their growing up, that if Sam hadn’t existed, they might have all gone at each other’s throats and nothing would ever have worked. Though, when he got through with her wing, Fitzpatrick wanted him up at Strassenberg, which was a big thing for Sam, the height of his childhood ambitions. It would be hard to have him gone that long, but Sam would be her eyes and ears on that site–Sam and the high‑level security team Florian and Catlin would pick out to keep him safe. So Sam’s apartment would be vacant for a while. Maybe a couple of years.

Maddy and Amy, at least, would be living in the wing with her, right from the start.

And when Sam got back from Strassenberg, all the old gang would be here, all of them. She was going to have Justin, too, though he was twice their age. She had a place for him and Grant, a beautiful apartment, where nobody would ever threaten him again.

There’d been her playmate, Valery. In her mind he was still a little, little boy with a mop of dark hair. He was out at Fargone, like Ollie. Early on she’d sent a letter, inviting them all back this summer, all the exiles, when Alpha Wing was finished. It took six months to get an answer, even; but she had started it, on the last day she’d held absolute control of Reseune, before she’d turned the directorship over to Yanni. She couldn’t get Maman back: but Maman’s companion Ollie was still alive. He’d had the CIT tape, and he’d become Director out there. She’d asked Ollie to come home, too, but she’d added, as she hadn’t in Valery’s letter– only if you want to. There’s a place for you here. But if you’re happy there, then stay. I remember you and Maman every day. But you do what you most feel you should do, for Maman’s sake.He was azi, or he had been; and nothingcould shake him from that loyalty and have him be happy, and she knew that.

There was Julia, and Gloria Strassen, who never had liked her when she was little, but she could patch that up. She’d been a baby when Denys had sent them away.

She could set some of Denys’ injustices right. And she could use the power she had to protect what her existence jeopardized.

It was scary to think how dead set the first Ari had been against trusting people.

The ones you trust most, the first Ari had said, watch most.

And the ones who’d had their lives torn apart because she was born? They were dangerous because they had a real reason to be mad at her.

But she could try to fix it.

And the first Ari hadn’t lived in a prison, not half so much as she did. The first Ari had been absolutely free to run around the halls and go where she wanted and do what she wanted. The first Ari hadn’t been afraid of anything. But everybody but Giraud had hated that Ari. She’d begun to realize that, and it was a hard truth to live with.

She was different than that Ari. Some people hated her. But a lot of people loved her. And a lot more people knew they needed her. They’d all protected her so much, so devotedly, they’d made her afraid of people. Most of all, afraid of people.

And that made her mad. And Mad always made her think.

And she wasn’t like Yanni’s beetle, a creature in a bottle, forever going in the same circle, forever the same Ari.

“So sober, Ari,” Sam said.

“Thinking,” she said, and then thought that she’d used too harsh a tone, too much out of the dark depths of her heart. She set a hand on his shoulder and walked back to safety, Florian and Catlin attending.

Sam led them all back to the scissor‑lift, the someday lift shaft, and sent it back down into what would be the central hallway of the whole complex–right where Sam’s river would run.

“So?” Sam asked.

“Perfect! It’s just perfect!”

He grinned, then. Sam was happy. That was all it took. And Sam’s pleasure lightened her heart. It always did.

“So,” he said, “do you want to pick out colors?”

“Blue,” she said. “A blue couch. Just so it’s comfortable.”

“Cooler white walls, then, for blue.”

“Violet and cool white walls. Maybe some quiet blue‑greens. Pastel stuff. I want color.”

“That should be pretty,” he said. “Should be real pretty. Are you moving any of her stuff in?”

She gave a little twitch of the shoulders, thoughtless flinch. There was what she lived with. There was some in storage. Historic. Some really nice pieces, imports from Earth. Human history.

But human history had started over again on Cyteen. In cities founded, like Novgorod, mostly by azi, and going on into generations of freedmen–what did old Earth mean to them? What could it mean? Human history this lot of humans hadn’t replicated, had largely forgotten.

She didn’t have as many blank walls in the new place. Not as much room for paintings and sculptures.

And ought she to take those old paintings off her walls and lend them to a museum, or to the University down in Novgorod, and let people study them for what they were and try to figure out what it meant to lay paint on canvas, instead of commands into a computer?

Maybe the old things were important things to know. Maybe somebody should learn how to do it again.

“You’re thinking again,” Sam said. “Is something the matter?”

“No,” she said, and laughed, and laid a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “No. I was just wondering whether we ought to teach azi to paint.”

“To paint.” Sam laughed.

“Pictures. To paint pictures, like the old paintings. I think it might be good for them. Maybe it’s good for people. I think maybe I ought to let some of those paintings out, and see what they think.”

“They are pretty,” Sam said. “I always admired them.”

“They’re pretty. They’re alien as they can be. I can’t imagine trees that thick. That’s just strange. I think people would be looking at that, the green color, and not at the paint.”

“I think you’re actually supposed to,” Sam said, then. “You’re supposed to believe in them, and not the paint.”

“That’s a point.”

“What did you say about my little river? ‘I want to be amazed?’ I think the paintings are like that.”

He never ceased to surprise her. “So what do you think? Should I get into storage? Bring them out?”

He nodded. “I’ve seen them. Some aren’t that pretty. Some are spooky. But you feel something when you look at them.”

“Maybe I shouldlook at more of them,” she said, and found she’d gathered her arms around herself as if she’d met a chill in the air. It wasn’t just paintings. It was the first Ari’s mind. It was the images the first Ari had seen, lived with, picked out to surround herself with, out of everything she could have had. What even the first Ari might have flinched at, and hidden away.

And instead of building, the first Ari had surrounded herself with things out of old Earth. Priceless things…spooky things. Things that weren’t Cyteen.

Trust Sam to have looked at them, when he was about to build this place. With a heart that had no guilt, no preconceptions, he’d looked at them, when probing that deep into the first Ari’s stored artwork was something she’d zealously avoided. She hadn’t wanted to meet them. Hadn’t wanted to be surrounded by the first Ari’s mind, swallowed up, drowned in the first Ari’s acquisitions. She wanted some of her own.

But you felt something, Sam said. And Sam was always in favor of feeling things.

“Hang them all,” she said suddenly. “Hang the ones you like wherever you think they ought to be, in my apartment, in the corridors where people walk.”

“Hey, I’m the builder, not the decorator.”

“You know them, though. You’ve seen them. Hang the really spooky ones in the guest apartments.”

He laughed. “Wicked, Ari.”

She laughed, too. Laughing took the haunt out of her predecessor’s furnishings and made her think–maybe I ought to use more of them. I’m saving Denys’ stuff, and Giraud’s, to bend their successors’ brains into the old mold.

Maybe–it was a sobering thought–maybe I should meet her…finally. She’s the voice of Base One. I’ve always trusted her voice…

So what’s to be afraid of, in seeing what she saw, what she troubled to bring here out of old Earth?

“About the furniture, Sam, herstuff. Don’t strip her old apartment, the one I’m in. We’ll just lock it up, leave it as it was, just like Giraud’s, just like Denys’. With all the pictures that hang there.” In case they didn’t replicate her, but the first Ari, but she didn’t say that to Sam. “But with what’s in storage, if you can use it, never mind my colors–do it.”

“Her taste was a lot of brown and green.”

That was true. Along with occasional greens and golds in the paintings, alien greens, yellowy Earth greens like the lawn outside, like the plants in the vivarium, when every green growing thing native to the planet was tinged with blue and gray, and the ground was red. “Maybe I should do green and brown in this room, her green, water green. Old Earth brown. Oh, just make it fit, Sam.”

“I told you, I’m no decorator. I’m really not.”

“But you knew how to look at the paintings in the warehouse. You’ll know what to do with them. Surprise me.”

“That’s too many surprises, Ari.”

“No such thing,” she said suddenly, and remembered the first Ari saying, out of Base One, “ There are people who aren’t surprised because they don’t notice what’s surprising in the world and they just never wonder. And there are, much rarer, people who aren’t surprised because they always see what’s coming. When you’re a child, you’re surprised by most things. It gets rarer as the years pass. Surprises keep us sane. They set us into new territory. They give us something to think about, when same old things have been the rule. You can go to sleep for years with the same old things. Sleep can eat away at your life. And sleep can be dangerous.”

Not always good things, but maybe–maybe it was good for her to meet some things she hadn’t planned.

And paint was cheap…until it made a thousand‑year‑old painting.

“No such thing, Sam. You’re king of surprises. You do it all. You pick.”

“You’re going to hate it!”

“I’ve never hated anything you’ve ever done. Don’t hold back. Give me the best place you can, with whatever of her stuff fits, and bring all the hidden stuff out where people can see it.”

“All right.” Sam said, and together they walked out of her apartment and on down the corridor, past scaffolding and into the vicinity of a good deal of cutting and banging–past doors that would belong to people she’d grown up with, and then downstairs by yet another scissor‑lift.

There was space for shops, besides the security quarters and wing admin–little hole‑in‑the wall shops where she and all the people who had a right to be here, and their staffs, could do something she didn’t ever get to do in the tight security Reseune had now, and just go shopping–well, at least they could order something to be in one of these shops and go down and look at it before they bought it off catalog: that was almostlike shopping.

There’d be a nice little snack shop and breakfast place, which would turn into a nice evening restaurant. It would cater, too, with special attention to security. That was all planned.

There’d be a men’s shop, for Yanni and Frank, and Justin and Grant, and Sam and Pavel, when they got back from Strassenberg, and Amy’s Quentin, what time Quentin wasn’t, like Florian and Catlin, in uniform. And there’d be a few conference and gathering rooms for anybody that needed them.

They could use one of those conference rooms for displays–for art, she thought suddenly.