Cyteen

i

The lenses crowded close on each other, a solid phalanx of cameras bristling with directional mikes like ancient spears. Behind that, the army of reporters with their Scribers and their individual and zealously securitied com-links.

Behind her, Florian and Catlin, and a miscellaneous assortment of what might be uncle Giraud's aides and staff; but eight of them were Reseune Security, and armed, under the expensive tailoring.

She had chosen a blue suit, recollecting the public image of the little girl with the cast, the little girl who had lost her mother and caught the sympathy of people the length and breadth of Union. She had thought about sweeping her hair up into Ari senior's trademark chignon; but she only parted it in the middle, the way it wanted to fall anyway, and swept it up on the sides and let it fall behind, with combs sprigged with tiny white quartz flowers to hold it. A minimum of makeup . . . just enough for the cameras: her face had lengthened, acquired cheekbones; acquired a maturity that she had consciously to lighten with a little smile at favorite reporters, a little deliberate flicker of recognition as her eyes found them—an intimation of special fondness.

So they might hold back some of the worst questions. People liked to have special importance, and those she favored were the ones who favored her; and old Yevi Hart, who had a hard-nosed reputation and who, in the year after she lost her mother, had turned halfway nice. She had been Working on him for years, a little special look, a little disappointment when he would ask the rough questions. This time she looked at him with a secret between-them glance, knowing he had the first question. All right, Yevi, go, we both know you re just doing a job: you're still an old dear.

He looked at her and seemed to lose the thread of his question a split second. His dour face looked worried. He took another breath, wadded up his question-slip and shoved his hand in his coat pocket. "Young sera – "

"I'm still Ari, Yevi." A tilt of her head, a little sad smile. "I'm sorry. Go

Third breath. "Ari, you're applying for majority. The Centrists are suing the Science Bureau to prevent the grant. How do you answer their charge that you've been deep-taught and primed to perform by Reseune staff, that you were created specifically as a legal device to give Reseune and your relatives control of Emory's property?"

She outright laughed. She was amused. "One: I've never had deep-tape at all; I learn like any CIT. Two: if—"

"Follow-up."

"Let me get just through these things, Yevi, and then the follow-up. Can

A grim nod.

"Two," she said, holding up fingers, and smiled. "I think they must have meant I was primed for the specific answers to reporters' questions, because if we had tape that could teach me my courses just like that, it would be wonderful—we could sell it all over Union and that would give my relatives a tor of money; but the Centrists have to know that's not so, so they must mean primed for the questions, and that means you're letting Reseune see the questions at least a day in advance. That's not the case, is it?"

"Absolutely not." Yevi looked a little cornered. "But if—"

"Three." Another finger. A chorus of blurted questions. "Just a second. 1 don't want to skip a question. Ser Corain says my relatives created me as a puppet to let them control my predecessor's estate; they say I shouldn't have my majority because it's just a trick to maintain a cover-up about Emory's involvement in Gehenna. That's really two questions. A, if I get my majority I own the rights, my relatives don't, and that means they actually lose their control of them, legally; they will go on advising me, but any businessperson gets advice in technical things like investments and research, and that doesn't mean the advisers own him. There's more than my relatives at Reseune—there are thousands and thousands of people I need to listen to—the way my predecessor did even when she was sitting in Council. B, —"

Ari, —

"Just let me get the other part of the question. Then the follow-up. I want to do all of them. B, that getting me my majority is a trick to cover Emory's involvement in Gehenna. I have access to the Gehenna notes, and I'm perfectly willing to testify to the Council as soon as I have my majority. Until then I'm a minor and I can't. So it seems to me that the Centrists' suit is covering up things, because if they really want to know what I know, why are they trying to keep me from being able to go under oath? Those files are under my voice-lock, and not even computer techs could get them out without messing things up and maybe losing real important pieces of it, just gone, for good. Not even my relatives have read the Gehenna files. I'm the only one who has them, and ser Corain is filing suit to keep me from being able to testify."

The reporters all started yelling. She pointed at Yevi. "Yevi still has his follow-up."

Yevi said: "What would be the reason?" Which was not his original follow-up, and some of the other reporters objected.

"I wish I could ask ser Corain," she said. "Maybe there's something in there."

"Follow-up."

"Yevi, I have to get to this m'sera, she's been waiting."

"What keeps your uncles from reading the files?"

Ouch. Good question. "Me. I have a special program my predecessor left for me. My voice is a lot like hers, and my geneset is hers, so when I was old enough to identify myself to the computer, it opened up these areas; but it's got a lot of security arrangements, and it won't let me access if there's anybody else going to hear; and it can tell."

"Follow-up!" the woman yelled over the shouting. "Can't you record it with a tape or something?"

Another good question. Remember this woman and be careful. "I could if I was going to allow it, but I'm not going to. My predecessor went to a lot of trouble about security and she warned me right in the program that I had to take that very seriously, even about people I might trust. I did, even if I didn't understand, and nobody at Reseune tried to get me to tell what was there either. Now I think it was a good idea, because it seems to be something real important, and I think the Council ought to be the ones to decide who gets to hear it, not any fifteen-year-old kid and not just any one part of the government either, because there's too much fighting going on about it and I don't know how to decide who to tell. The Council is supposed to decide things like that. That's the way I understand it. —Ser Ibanez."

"Can you tell us if there's anything in the files that you think would damage the reputation of your predecessor?"

"I can tell you this, because if anything happened to me it's terribly important people should know if. Gehenna has to stay quarantined. My predecessor was under Defense Bureau orders, but it scared her; and that was why she left things sealed for me. —Ser Hannah."

Chaos broke out. Everyone was shouting.

"Wasn't that irresponsible of your predecessor—if it was that important?

Why did she keep it secret?"

"It was a Defense secret and it was quarantined. She did tell some people. But a lot of them are dead, and some of them probably don't understand what she did. I don't know it all yet. That's the bad thing: you have to be as smart as she was before you can work with the problem. She's dead and nobody else understands what she understood. That's why they made me. I'm not a Bok-clone situation. I cm a Special, and someday I'm going to be able to understand what happened there. Right now nobody does. But she did leave instructions, and I'm not giving them to anybody until Council asks me under oath, because I'm not going to muddy up the waters by talking until I can swear to what I'm saying and the whole universe knows I'm an adult and I'm not lying. If I did it any other way, people could question whether I was telling the truth or whether I knew what I was doing."

They shouted and pushed and shoved each other. She felt Florian and Catlin move up on either side, anxious.

But she Had them. She was sure of it. She had gotten out exactly what she wanted to say.

ii

"Release the damn broadcast!" Corain yelled into the securitied phone, at Khalid's chief of staff, who swore Khalid was not available. "God! I don't care if he's in hell, get hold of him and get that release, you damn fool, it's gotten to my office, and thirty-five top reporters sent it downline—what do you mean security hold?"

"This is Khalid," the Councillor cut in, displacing the aide. "Councillor Corain, in light of the content of the interview we've requested a security delay of thirty minutes for the child's own protection. We seem to have a major problem."

"We have a major problem. The longer that hold stays on, the more that hold is going to become news, Councillor, and the longer it stays, the more they're going to ask why. We can't stop that broadcast."

"Assuredly we can't. There were too many news-feeds. I told you not to allow the interview. A minor child is making irresponsible charges on extremely sensitive matters, with international implications. I suggest we answer this with a categorical denial."

"It would have been foolhardy not to allow it. You can't keep the newsservices away from the kid, and you saw what she can do with innuendo."

"She's obviously well-instructed."

"Instructed, hell, Khalid. Take that damned hold off!"

There was long silence on the other end. "The hold will go off in fifteen minutes. I strongly suggest you use the time to prepare an official statement."

"On what? We have nothing to do with these charges."

Again a silence. "Neither have we, Councillor. I think this will require investigation."

It was a securitied line. Any communication could be penetrated if one could get access to the installers; or to the other end of the transmission.

"I think it will, Admiral. There will be a Centrist caucus in one hour. I hope you will be prepared to explain your position."

"It's completely without substantiation," Khalid said to the cameras, on the office vid, while Corain rested his chin on his hand, glancing between the image on the screen and the news-feed that an aide slipped under his view: NP: DEFENSE BUREAU SPOKESMAN DECLINES COMMENT ON ACTION and CP: KHALID CALLS CHARGES FABRICATION.

"... nothing in those files to substantiate any continued quarantine order. It's exactly what I say: Giraud Nye has come up with a piece of fiction, an absolute piece of fiction, and tape-fed it to a minor child who is in no wise fit or competent to understand the potential international repercussions. This is a reprehensible tactic which seeks to use the free press to its own advantage—utterly, utterly fabricated. I ask you, consider whether we will ever see documentation of the child's representations—files which a fifteen-year-old girl maintains she alone has seen, which she cannot—I say cannot produce—unless others produce these putative files for her—files which an impressionable fifteen-year-old child maintains were left for her by her predecessor. I will tell you, seri, I have grave suspicions that no such secret files ever were made by Ariane Emory, that no such program was ever created by Ariane Emory to give ghostly guidance to her successor. I suspect that any such program was written much closer to hand, that the child has been programmed, indeed, programmed—a process in which Reseune is absolutely expert, and in which Councillor Nye himself is an acknowledged authority—in fact a Special who gained his status as a result of his expertise in that very field. The child is a pawn created by Reseune to place legal and emotional obstacles in the way of matters of paramount national interest, and callously used and manipulated to maintain the privilege of a moneyed few whose machiavellian tactics now bid fair to jeopardize the peace. ..."

Reporters were waiting at the hotel. "Are you aware," someone shouted, "of Khalid's accusations, Councillor Nye?"

"We heard them on the way over," uncle Giraud said, while Security maintained them a little clear space in the foyer, while cameramen jostled each other.

" I have an answer," Ari said, ignoring Florian's arm as he tried, with other Security, to get her and uncle Giraud on through the doors. "I want to answer him, can we set up in a conference room?"

"... Thank you," the girl said, made a very young-girl move with both hands getting her hair back behind her shoulders, and then grimaced and shaded her eyes as a light hit her face. "Ow. Could you shine that down? Please?" Then she leaned forward with her arms on the conference table, suddenly businesslike and so like Emory senior that Corain's gut tightened. "What's your question?"

"What do you think about Khalid's allegations?" some reporter yelled out over the others.

Chaos. Absolute chaos. The light swung back into the girl's face and she winced. "Cut it off," someone yelled, "we don't need it."

"Thanks." As the light went off. "You want me to tell what I think about what the admiral says? I think he knows better. He used to be head of Intelligence. He sure ought to. It's not real smart either, to say I'm programmed. I can write psych designs. He's trying to run a psych on everybody, and I can tell you where, do you want me to count it off for you?"

"Go ahead," voices yelled out.

The girl held up one finger. "One: he says there's nothing in the files about a quarantine. He says he doesn't know what's in the files in Reseune: that's what he's complaining about. Whichever way it is, he's either trying to trick you or he's lying about what's in the files.

"Two: he says my uncle tape-fed me the stuff. He doesn't know any such thing. And in fact it's not true.

"Three: he says I don't understand what it could mean in international politics. Unless he knows what's in those files, he doesn't know as much as I do what it could mean.

"Four: he makes fun of the idea my predecessor left a program for me. That's a psych. Funny stuff breaks your concentration and makes you not think real hard about what he's really saying, which is that it's impossible. It's certainly possible. It's a simple branching program with a voice-recognition and a few other security things I don't want to talk about on vid, and I could write it, except for the scrambling, and that's something my own security understands—he's fifteen too. I'm sure Councillor Khalid does, if he was in Intelligence, so it's a pure psych.

"Five: he says my uncles write all the stuff. That's a psych like the first one, because he can just say that and then everybody wonders. I can give you one just exactly like it if I said Khalid won the election because he made up the rumor Gorodin was against the military retirement bill, and because of the way news goes out to the ships in space, and it being right before the vote, the vote was already coming back and being registered by the time Gorodin's saying it wasn't true even got to a lot of places. I heard that on the news. But I guess people forget who it is that makes up lies."

"Oh, my God. . . ." Corain murmured, and rested his head against his hands.

"I think that's done it," Dellarosa said. "I'd advise, ser, we hold a caucus without Defense. I think we need to draw up a position on this."

Corain raked his hand through his hair.

"Dammit, he can't even sue her for libel. She's a minor. And that went out live."

"I think the facts are, ser, the military may have had real practical reasons for preferring Khalid in spite of the rumor. But I think he's taken major damage. Major damage. I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see a challenge from Gorodin. We need to distance ourselves from this. We need a position statement on these supposed secret files. We need it while this broadside barrage is still going on."

"We need—" Corain said, "we need to call for a Science Bureau select committee to look into this, past Giraud Nye, to rule on the girl's competency. But, dammit, you saw that performance. The girl got Khalid, extemp. He played a dirty little in-Bureau game he'd have gotten away with because no one could pin it on him or his staff—but no one's going to forget it in that context."

"Nye told her."

"Don't make that mistake. Khalid just did. And he's dead. Politically, he's dead. He can't counter this one."

"She could charge anyone with being in those damn files!"

"She could have charged Khalid. But she didn't. Which probably means they exist and she's going to produce them. Or she's keeping her story clean . . . that she's waiting on Council. I'll tell you the other problem, friend. Khalid's going to be a liability in that office."

"Khalid's got to resign."

"He won't! Not that one. He'll fight to the bloody end."

"Then I suggest, ser, before we even consider Gorodin, who's stuck with the two-year rule, we explore who else might be viable for us inside that Bureau. How long do you think this is going to go? One bit of garbage floats to the surface—and other people start talking to the press. One more—and it becomes a race to the cameras."

"Dammit."

He had insisted Khalid take the hold off the news releases.

And there was no practical way to answer the charges, except to stall with the Bureau hearings. Which Nye could rush through at lightning speed. More exposure of the girl to the news-services.

No way. Withdraw opposition.

Then the girl got herself a full Council hearing.

And the repercussions of revelations on Gehenna went to the ambassadors from Alliance and from Earth.

The girl was not bluffing.

"One thing," he said as Dellarosa was leaving, "one thing she absolutely beat him on. Find somebody in Defense who makes speeches people can understand, for God's sake."

iii

Justin watched and watched, every nuance, every shift in the replay. He had missed the whole afternoon, buried in the sociology lab; and he watched it now, once and twice, because the keyword response in the vid recorder had gotten all the references to the hearings, to Ari, to all the principals.

He shook his head, hands under chin, elbows on knees.

"Remarkably accurate retention," Grant said, beside him on the couch. "For a CIT. She hit every point she wanted to make, certainly. And confused them about the rest."

The tape reached Khalid's second refutation, the cold, passionless statement that Ari had been prompted with that accusation by Giraud Nye, that Giraud used her as his voice because it was otherwise actionable.

Justin shook his head again. "He may have given it to her. But the kid's sense of timing is impeccable."

"Khalid mistook his opponent," Grant said. "He thought that it was Giraud all along."

"Vid off," Justin said, and there was silence in the room.

Grant reached across and shook at his knee. "Do you think Khalid—is capable of harming her?"

"I think that man is capable of anything. I don't know. He won't move on—won't move on her. She's too hard a target. I'm going to call Denys."

"Why?"

"CIT craziness. Politics. She's too hard a target. Jordan works for Defense."

Grant's face went expressionless. Then showed shock.

"I don't think we should put that through the Minder. We should go to him."

"How in hell do we get an interview with Denys at this hour? There's no way he'll open the door to us."

"Security," Grant said after a moment. "We ask him to meet us in Security."

"I appreciate your concern," Denys said, the other side of the desk from them, themselves in two hard chairs, Seely standing by the wall, in the interview room.

Justin remembered the place—too well. "Ser, I—don't call it an irrational fear. Order him not to answer any calls from the base."

"We don't need any moves against Defense on record," Denys said. "That in itself—could call unwelcome attention to your father. Possibly you're being alarmist ..."

"Khalid has reason to want an incident, ser. And my father is sitting there without protection. They can tell him damned well anything. Can't they?"

Denys frowned, thick fingers steepled, then interlocking. "Seely. Move on it. Now."

"Yes," Seely said, and left.

Grant rose from his chair, following Seely with his eyes. Then the thought came; and Justin stood up, suddenly facing two armed guards in the doorway.

"What is he going to do?" Justin asked, looking at Denys. "That wasn't an instruction. What is he going to do?"

"Relax," Denys said. "Relax, son. Sit down. Both of you. There are contingency plans. You're not the first one to think of these eventualities. Seely understands my meanings perfectly well."

"What contingencies?"

"Dear God, we certainly don't intend any harm to your father. Sit down. Please. You have a very active imagination tonight."

"What is he going to do?"

"He's simply going to go to the front desk and they'll transmit a code, which you don't need to know, which simply advises Planys lab to go on extreme alert. That means Reseune Security trusts no one who is not Reseune Security. And no one comes in or goes out who's not Reseune Security. We simply claim a laboratory incident. Very simple. Since Jordan has the highest-level Security flag at Planys—rest assured, he's not available to any calls, except from us. Sit down."

Justin sat, and Grant did.

"There," Denys sighed. "Thank you. I appreciate your level of paranoia, Justin. It's finely honed, God knows. I never undervalue a good set of nerves. Storm-sense. Seely—never needs the weather warnings. Isn't that an odd thing—in a mind so rational? —What did you think of her?"

Off the flank and unforeseen. Justin bunked, instantly wary—and that in itself was a reaction he did not want. "Of Ari? Ari was brilliant. What else could she be?"

"I have a little pride invested in her," Denys said. "You know she brought up her psych scores six points in less than a month, when the rascal got the notion she had to. I told the committee exactly that. And they wouldn't believe she was laying back. Forgive me. I'm also extremely nervous until we get her back here safe, inside our perimeters."

"So am I. Honestly."

"I believe that. I truly do. I must tell you—our concern with your father has been in an entirely different context during this trip. I told you I would tell you—when Ari became aware of her predecessor's—death."

"You've told her, then."

Denys bit his lip and studied his hands. "Not all of it. Not yet." He looked up. "On the other hand—I sweated through that first interview. At one point I was sure Ari was going to say—in response to why the first Ari didn't make better provision for passing on the information—that Ari was murdered. And then the reporter would have keyed right onto the relationship of the murder to that information—no valid connection, of course. But I felt for a split second that was exactly where it was going—and then Ari changed course. Thank God. I really don't want her to hear the words 'the Warrick case' for the first time—in front of the cameras. Or in the hearings. She's flying home tonight. Totally unscheduled departure, Science Bureau chase planes with full radar coverage. You see we're likewise very paranoid. Giraud is, I think, going to break the news to her on the way. So I've warned you."

iv

"Ari," Giraud said, settling into the seat Florian had vacated for him, across from her, while RESEUNE ONE flew through the dark and there was nothing but stars out the windows—stars and the running lights of the planes Giraud said were flying with them.

Because they had to worry about electronic interference and all sorts of things that even Florian and Catlin frowned over. Because they had challenged a very dangerous, very desperate man who had all kinds of contacts, and because the world had crazy people in it who might try something and try to blame it on Defense.

She would be very glad, she thought, when she felt them touch down at Reseune. Enemies didn't much bother her, except the kind who might aim another plane at you or take out your navigation or who might be Defense trying to blame it on extremists or extremists trying to blame it on Defense.

"We're doing fine," uncle Giraud said. "Radar's perfectly clear. Our escort is enough to keep them honest. I imagine you're anxious for your own bed tonight."

Oh, damn, we've got the Minder checkout to go through when we get back to the apartment, and Florian and Catlin are tired as I am. I just want to go to bed. And I can't sleep.

"I did worry today," Giraud said, "about one thing I was afraid they were going to throw at you. That—we really haven't wanted to go into. But I think—and Denys thinks—I've talked with him on the Bureau system—that you need to know."

God, get to it!

"You know your predecessor was murdered. And that it was somebody in Reseune."

"Who?"

"A man named Jordan Warrick."

She blinked and felt the sting of exhaustion in her eyes. There was only one Warrick at Reseune she had ever met. "Who's Jordan Warrick?"

"A Special. The absolute authority in educational design. Justin Warrick's father."

She rubbed her eyes and slid up a little in her seat, looking at Giraud.

"I didn't want you to find that out in front of the cameras. I certainly don't want you to find it out from Council next week. Jordan and Ari had personal and professional difficulties; and political ones. He accused Ari of tampering with his work and taking credit from him—as he saw it. They quarreled– Do you want to hear this in detail?"

She nodded.

"Most likely, and he claims this was the case, it wasn't premeditated. They fought—a physical fight—and she hit her head—at which point he panicked and tried to cover up what had happened. It happened in the cold lab down in Wing One basement. The section is very old, the cryogenics conduits are completely uncovered; he created a break, blew the line, shut the door—it still swings, it has to do with the way the building settled, and the door is unfixable; but we've disabled the lock. In short, Ari froze to death in a release of liquid nitrogen from a pipe rupture. It was relatively painless; she was unconscious from the blow. Jordan Warrick—being a Special—had a Council hearing. It was an absolutely unprecedented case—Specials don't commit murder. And his mind—whatever his faults—is protected by law. He did agree to accept a transfer out of Reseune. He lives at Planys. Justin does visit him now and again."

"Did he know about it?"

"Justin didn't have any idea what was going to happen. He was only seventeen. He'd attempted—using resources of his father's—to smuggle Grant out of Reseune and into Novgorod—Jordan wanted to get the directorate at RESEUNESPACE, and Grant's status as an X-number meant it might have been hard to get him to go with them. But it went wrong, the contacts Justin used—friends of his father—happened to have ties to the Abolitionists, who attempted a very misguided intervention with Grant. I've always entertained a private suspicion that Grant figured in the argument Jordan had with Ari. Grant had to be rescued; he was in hospital that night, in very precarious shape—and Justin was visiting him about the time the murder happened, so there's no question about Justin's whereabouts. He had no idea his father was going to see Ari. He certainly had no notion what his father would do."

She felt a little sick at her stomach. "He's my friend."

"He was seventeen when all this happened. Just two years older than you are. None of it was his fault. He lives at Reseune—his father lives at Planys under a kind of perpetual arrest. You understand, I think, why we've been very anxious about your contacts with him. But he's never initiated them; he's been very careful to follow the rules that let him live at Reseune. He was able to finish his education; he's made a home at Reseune, he causes no one any trouble, and it didn't seem fair to punish him for something which absolutely was none of his doing, or to send him where he wouldn't have the facilities to pursue his work. He's very bright. He's a very troubled man, a very confused one, sometimes, but I hope he'll work out his own answers. Most of all we've worried about the chance he would do something or say something to hurt you—but he never has. Has he?"

"No." Remember the source, Ari senior would say, had said, advising her how to deal with deceptions. Remember the source. "Why didn't he go to Fargone? Valery did. Valery was only four years old and he never hurt anybody."

"Frankly we wanted Justin where we could see him," Giraud said, going right past the matter of Valery. Of course. "And we didn't want him in prolonged contact with any ship crew or within reach of outside communications. His father's friends—are Rocher and that crowd, the Abolitionists—who are one of the reasons we have that escort flying off our wings."

"I understand." She needed to think about it for a while. She had no desire to talk about it with uncle Giraud, not right now.

"We knew it would upset you," Giraud said, trying for a reaction out of her.

She looked at him and let the situation flow right through her, bland as could be, the night, the planes outside, the news about Justin, Giraud's evading the Valery question. So they could get blown up. So the whole world was crazy. But she had figured it was dangerous when she made up her mind she was going to mention the Gehenna things—when she had warned uncle Denys and uncle Giraud what she was going to do, and they had been nervous about it. But one thing about Giraud—once things went inertial he had a cool head and he came across with the right things at the right time: if she had to pick somebody to be with her in Novgorod she figured Giraud was one of the best. And what he was saying had to be true: it was too easy to check out.

She sighed. "It does upset me," she said, "but I'm glad I know. I need to think about it, uncle Giraud."

He looked at her a moment, then fished in his pocket, and pulled out a little packet, reached and laid it on her side of the table.

"What's that?"

Giraud shrugged. "No shopping this trip," he said. "But I did remember this little thing in a certain shop. I had Security pick it up. They hadn't sold it."

She was bewildered. She picked it up, unwrapped the paper and opened the box. There was a pin with topazes of every shade, set in gold. "Oh," she said. "Oh!"

"So much jewelry came with Ari's estate," Giraud said, and got up to go back to his own seat at the back. "I thought you should have something that was only yours."

"Thank you, uncle Giraud." She was entirely off her balance.

And more so when she looked up at him. The way the light came down on him from the overhead in that second made his skin look papery and old; he walked by and put his hand on her arm and his hand showed deep creases. Old. Of course he was.

Something that was only yours. That rattled around in her head and found such a central place to light that she turned the thought over as often as she did the pin, turning all the facets to the light—whether Giraud had just Worked her or whether it was just that her uncle had this thing about young girls or maybe—maybe a single soft spot that had started back when she was little had just grown along with her, until he finally really had thoughts like that. After all the rotten things he had done.

He had Got her good, that was sure.

One thing that was truly hers. So very few things were.

"What is it, sera?" Florian asked, and: "It's pretty," he said.

"Nice," Catlin said, coming to take the seat beside her, and reached out a hand to touch it.

Of course they were hers. Ari and Ari blurred together and came separate and blurred together again, with very little discomfort nowadays. Ari senior had collected real trouble in her lifetime, but that was all right, she didn't like Ari's Enemies either. They had murdered Ari and now she had Security with her everywhere and planes flying beside just to be sure she got home, to Ari's bed and Ari's comforts and Ari's Reseune, in all—

She didn't mind being Ari, she decided. It was not a bad thing to be. It was a little strange. It was a little lonely a lot of the time, but that was all right, there were enough people to keep it from being too lonely. There was a lot to keep up with, but it was never boring. She would not be Maddy or 'Stasi, or even Amy—Amy, closest, maybe, but she had rather be Ari, all the same, and travel to Novgorod and have Catlin and Florian with her—not forgetting that: Amy had no company. Just her maman and her maman's staff, who were no fun.

Being Jane would have been all right. She thought about Ollie, suddenly, hurt because he never wrote; but Ollie wouldn't, Ollie was so correct when he had to be.

He might not even be alive anymore. People could die at Fargone and it took so long to find it out.

She put the pin back in the box. "Put that in my carry, will you?" she said to Florian. "I don't want anything to happen to it." When there was a chance she would wear it where Giraud could see it. He would like that.

"Are you tired, sera?" Catlin asked. "Do you want us to put out the lights?"

"No. I'm fine." But she felt after the lap robe, and tucked it up around her, listening to the drone of the engines.

She could write to Fargone. But it was not wise right now. Anything she did would make her Enemies nervous and maybe put other people in danger, like hanging a sign out over them saying: This is a friend of mine.

Her friends didn't have Security to protect them, if they came outside Reseune and Reseune's other holdings. She had to think about things like that now.

From now on.

v

Ari, this is Ari senior.

You've gained your majority. You are 15 chronological years. This program deals with you as 17. Your accesses have widened.

You may now access all working notes to the year of my death and all history up to 2362, which is the year I resigned as Reseune Administrator to take up the Council Seat for Science.

When I was 17, in 2300, Union declared itself a nation and the Company Wars began.

When I was 35, in 2318,1 sat as Proxy Councillor for Science during the illness of Lila Goldstein, of Cyteen Station, who subsequently died.

When I was 37, in 2320, 1 yielded the seat to Jurgen Fielding, of Cyteen. The Special Status bill passed and I was one of 5 persons accorded that privilege.

When I was 48, in 2331, I became Director of Wing One at Reseune, on the death of Amelie Strassen; I went on rejuv in that year.

When I was 62, in 2345, I became Administrator of Reseune, on the death of my uncle Geoffrey Carnath. The Company Fleet in those years had succeeded in interdicting Union warships from all stations Earthward of Mariner, and attempted to blockade merchanters from dealing with Cyteen and Fargone and to destroy any merchanter registered to Cyteen. Heavy losses of ships and the need for workers and trained military personnel had brought Reseune into the war effort: from the years 2340 to 2354, Reseune increased in size over 400%.

Actions which I took during those years: franchising of production centers; automation of many processes; building of mills to relieve dependency on scarce transport; expansion of agriculture; establishment of Moreyville as a shipping center; establishment of RESEUNEAIR as a commercial carrier for the Volga area; establishment of Reseune's legal rights over franchised production centers; establishment of Reseune as legal guardian of all azi, no matter where produced; establishment of Reseune as sole producer of all tape above skill-level.

I consider the latter measures, which make it possible for Reseune to guide and oversee all azi throughout Union, to be among the most important things I have ever done—for the obvious reasons of the power it conveys, for moral reasons of the azi's welfare, and for two reasons less apparent. . . 1. that it gives us the leverage to terminate the production of azi at some future date, to prevent the establishment of a permanent institution of servitude in Union or elsewhere; 2. See file under keyword: Sociogenesis.

When I was 69, in 2352, Union launched its last major offensive of the war; and came to me with the outline of the Gehenna project. See file under keyword: Gehenna, keyword: private file. When I was 71, in 2354, the Company Wars ended with the Treaty of Pell. When I was 72, in 2355, the Gehenna Colony was dispatched, as a contingency measure. My advice to the contrary was overruled by Adm. Azov, Councillor of Defense.

When I was 77, in 2360, I challenged Jurgen Fielding for the Science seat. When I was 79, in 2362, final vote tabulations gave me the seat, which I hold at the time I am writing these notes.

It's one thing, young Ari, to study older people as a fact in psychology; its quite another thing to be aware of the psychology of old age in yourself—because you do get old inside, even if rejuv holds your physical age more or less constant. The difference rejuv has made in human psychology is a very profound difference: consider . . . without rejuv, the body begins to change by age 50 and specific deteriorations begin and grow acute enough within the next 20 to 30 years to cause disability. That is the natural aging process, which would lead to natural death between the ages of 60 and 110 at the outside, varying according to genetics and environment.

In individuals without rejuv, the 20-to-30-year period of decline in functions, followed by a period of diminished function and degenerative disease, works a considerable psychological change. In eras when no rejuv was possible, or in places such as Gehenna, where no rejuv is available, there are sociological accommodations to having a large portion of the population undergoing this slow diminution of physical and in a few cases mental capacity. There may be institutions and customs which provide support to this segment of the population, although, historically, such provisions were not always optimum or satisfactory to the individual faced with the psychological certainty that the process had begun. With rejuv, we contemplate natural death at, considering mere percentages, a little greater lifespan, ranging in my time between 100 and 140 ... bearing in mind that rejuv is still a tolerably new phenomenon, and the figure may increase. But rejuv was a discovery on Cyteen, was available for the first time during my mother's generation, and the sociological adjustments were still extremely rapid during my early years: keyword: Aging, keyword: Olga Emory: keyword: thesis.

At the time I write these notes, the major change has not been so much length of life, although that has had profound effect on family structures and law, due to the fact most people now live near their parents for a century or more, and frequently enter into financial partnership in their estates, so that inheritance, as you have done with my estate, is quite rare: estates usually progress rather than leap from one individual to the other nowadays.

The major change has been the combination of advanced experience with good health and vitality. The period of decline is usually brief, often under 2 years, and frequently there is no apparent decline. Death has become much more of a sudden event; and one enters one's 140's with the expectation one will die, but faces it, not in the depressive effects of degenerative illness, but as an approaching time limit, a fearful catastrophe, or, quite commonly, with the I'm-immune attitude which used to characterize much younger individuals.

I digress with a purpose. I cannot predict for your time and your age what old age may be. I do know this, that the sense of limitations sets in early at Reseune, because of the very nature of our work, which is so slow, and involves human lifespans. By my 70's, I saw an experiment launched which I knew I might not see the end of. And you may not. But that knowledge is something foreign to you, at your age.

Remember this, when you read beyond 2345.

Changes happen. Therefore I have made access to certain keyword areas of my diary slower to access beyond the year 2362, based on a series of examinations this program will administer. I have fears for your psychological health if you attempt to deceive this program in this regard: expert as you may become at analyzing tests and guessing which answers are key to obtaining more information, I ask you to trust my mature judgment in this, remembering that I write this with the perspective of a woman who knows you in ways no one else does—even if you know how to trick the program, answer it with absolute honesty. If an emergency arises and you must get that information, your skill should enable you to lie to the test and get what you need; but bear in mind two things: first, as I once told you, this program is capable of protecting Reseune from abuse, and certain attitudes, even if they are pretended, may cause it to take defensive actions; of course this means if you are a scoundrel, you can perhaps lie in the other direction, but your psych profile does not presently indicate you are one, or you would not be getting this information right now. Second, I will withhold no part of my working notes, and there will be nothing in those hidden portions that you will need for anything but personal reasons.

Last of all I remind you of this: I am safely dead and incapable of shock. The program will draw a firm line between your fantasies and your real actions as observed through House records. Treat the program with absolute honesty. You will occasionally see a new question surface, as your actions within the House or your chronological age activates a new aspect of the test. Never lie, even if you suspect the truth may cause the program to react. It is designed to detect lies, deceptions, evasions, and various other contingencies, but then, I knew I would be dealing with a very clever individual—with my impulses, if I am correct.

I will tell you that I have caused deaths and hurt others in my life. I will tell you something terrible: I have a certain sadistic bent I try to control. Self-analysis is a trap and I have had to do more of it to write this program than I have liked to do. I will tell you that my sexual encounters with CITs have been unsatisfactory from my adolescence onward; that they have inevitably ended in professional antagonism and ended a few valuable friendships; that the events of my childhood, lurid as some of them were, contributed more to my sense of independence and my sense of responsibility toward others. That my uncle was cruel to me and my household taught me compassion.

But that my compassion made me vulnerable to others, all CITs, whose egos did not take well to my independence and my intellect, caused me great pain; in plain language, I fell in love about as often as any normal human being. I gave everything I had to give. And I got back resentment. Genuine hatred. I tried, God knows, not to trample on egos. But my mere existence challenges people, and I challenged everyone past their endurance. Nothing I could do was right. Everything I did fractured their pride. My azi could deal with me, as yours can with you. But I felt an essential isolation from my own kind, a sense that there was an area of humanity I would never adequately reach or understand—on a personal level, no matter my brilliance or my abilities. That is a painful understanding to reach—at nineteen.

That pain created anger; and that anger of mine helped me survive and create. It drove me into that other aspect of myself, my studies of human thought and emotion—challenging all my ability, in short, which in turn fed back into the other situation and exacerbated it with lovers yet to come. I think that that cycle of sexual energy and anger are interlocked in me to such an extent that I cannot control it except by abstinence, and as you are no doubt aware, abstinence is not an easy course for me.

I hesitate even to warn you, because that frustration had an important, even a beneficial effect on my work. I reached a point in my 70's when I had surpassed every mind around me. Jane Strassen, Yanni Schwartz, Denys and Giraud Nye, and of course Florian and Catlin, were among the friends who still challenged me. But I passed even them. I went more and more inward, and found myself more and more solitary in the personal sense. Then I confess to you that I was extremely happy in my professional work, and I was able to confine my sexual energies to a mere physical release, on a very frequent basis, which, with the satisfactions of my work and the company of a few reliable friends, kept me busy. In some ways I was very lonely, but in the main I was happy. It was a very productive period for me.

But now, above a century, I know that I am launched on projects none of which I will finish, that I am doing things that may save humankind or damn it, and I will never know the outcome.

Most of all that anger drives me now, impatience with the oncoming wall, impatience with time and the limits of those around me; there is no chance to stop and breathe, or rest. I can no longer travel freely, no longer fly, the dream I had of seeing space is something I have no right to indulge in, because security is so difficult and finishing this work is so important. Sex used to relieve the tensions; now it interlocks with them, because the anger is linked with it and with everything I do.

The most terrible thing—I have hurt Florian. I have never done that in my life. Worse than that—I enjoyed it. Can a child understand how much that hurt? Worst of all—Florian understands me; and forgives me. Whatever you do, young Ari, use the anger, don't let it use you.

Because the anger will come, the pain will come, because you are not like everyone else, no more than I could be.

You are not my life's work. I hope that does not touch you in your vanity, and that you will understand why I reactivated my psychogenesis study and devoted so much of my time to creating you. My life's work is not psychogenesis, but sociogenesis, and no one but you has ever heard that word in any serious context. I have shifted the entire course of humanity by the things I have done. Your own unique perspective as a psychogenetic replicate can tell you something of the damage that might be done to Union if people became aware of what I have done. It had to be done, by everything that I saw.

But I worked increasingly alone, without checks, and without consultation with anyone, because there was no one who understood what I understand.

I can tell you in capsule form, young Ari, as I have told the press and told the Council repeatedly: but few seem to understand the basics of what I am saying, because it runs counter to short-term goals and perceptions of well-being. I have not been able to model simply enough the complex of equations that we deal with; and I fear demagogues. Most of all I fear short-term thinkers.

The human diaspora, the human scattering, is the problem, but Centrism is not the answer. The rate of growth that sustains the technological capacity that makes civilization possible is now exceeding the rate of cultural adaptation, and distance is exceeding our communications. The end will become more and more like the beginning, scattered tribes of humans across an endless plain, in pointless conflict—or isolate stagnation—unless we can condense experience, encapsulate it, replicate it deliberately in CIT deep-sets—unless psychogenesis can work on a massive scale, unless it can become sociogenesis and exceed itself as I hope you will exceed me. Human technology as an adaptive response of our species has passed beyond manipulation of the environment; beyond the manipulation of our material selves; beyond the manipulation of mind and thought; now, having brought us out of the cradle it must modify our responses to the universe at large. Human experience is generating dataflow at a rate greater than individuals can comprehend or handle; and the rate is still increasing. We must begin compression: we must compress experience in the same way human history compresses itself into briefer and briefer instruction—and events on which all history depended rate only a line in passing mention.

Ultimately only the wisdom is important, not the event which produced it. But one must know accurately what those things are.

One must pass the right things on. Experience is a brutal and an imprecise teacher at best.

And the time at which all humanity will be within reach, accessible to us—is so very brief.

You will see more than I could, young Ari. You may well be the only mind of your day able to grapple with the problem: I hope that events have handed you my power undiminished; but no matter, if I have fitted you to hold on to it I have also fitted you to acquire it. Most of all, govern your own self. If you survive to reach the power I have had, you will walk a narrow boundary between megalomania and divinity. Or you will let that anger reach humankind; or you will abdicate in cowardice.

If I have failed with you, I have failed in everything, and I may have created nothing worse than presently exists; or I may have doomed at least half of humanity to wars or to stifling tyranny.

If I have succeeded, there is still work to be done, to keep the hand on the helm. Situations change.

If I had done nothing at all, I foresaw a war that the human species might not survive: too much of it resides only on two planets and depends on too few production centers. We are too young in space; our support systems are still too fragile, and our value systems still contain elements of the stone ax and the spear.

That conviction is the only moral assurance I will ever have.

Study the Company Wars. Study the history of Earth. Learn what we are capable of.

Study Gehenna. This program has ascertained re-contact has been made. People have survived there. Its generations are shorter than ours. Gehenna is the alarm system.

Your Security clearance is now active in the Science Bureau with rank of: Department head, Reseune Administrative Territory.

Further explanation is filed in Reseune Security: access via Security 10, keyword: clearance.

vi

"No, ser," Ari said, hands folded on the table. The microphones picked up her voice and carried it, making it huge, a caricature of a young girl's voice. She sat by herself at a table facing the Nine. Uncle Giraud sat in the Science seat; there were Nasir Harad, and Nguyen Tien; Ludmilla deFranco; Jenner Harogo; Mikhail Corain; Mahmud Chavez; and Vladislaw Khalid—whose looks toward her were absolute hostility. Corain had asked the question.

"No, ser, I won't give you a transcript. I've said why. It wouldn't be all of it. And that's worse than nothing. I'm telling you the important things. Adm. Azov sent the colony even when Ari told him not; she didn't want it because it was top dangerous. And he went ahead.

"This is the important thing—let me say this—" she said, when Corain interrupted her. "Please."

"I doubt you would forget," Corain said dryly.

Harad's gavel came down. "Go on, young sera."

"This is important," Ari said. "This is the most important part. Adm. Azov came to my predecessor wanting a colony planted on that world because it was an Earthlike planet and it was right next to Pell. Defense wanted to make sure if Alliance got there in fifty years or a hundred they were going to find a planet full of Union people, or an ecological disaster that could contaminate the planet with human-compatible diseases ..."

It disturbed the Council. Heads leaned together and the gavel banged down again.

"Let the girl finish."

"That was in the notes. They wanted Reseune to build those too. They wanted Ari to design tape so the azi they sent would always be Union, no matter what, and they would cause trouble and work from inside Alliance once Alliance picked them up off the world. Ari tried to tell them they were crazy. But they wouldn't listen.

"So Ari listened to everything they wanted, and she ordered some immunological stuff, I don't know what, but my uncle is going to talk about those. What they essentially did was use viruses to transfer material, and that was all done pretty much like we use for genetic treatment—and they picked some things they hoped would just help the colonists' immune systems; but there was another contractor Ari didn't trust and she didn't know what they might dump onto Gehenna that Reseune didn't know about."

"Do you know the name of that contractor?" Corain asked.

"It was Fletcher Labs. It was May of 2352. That's all she knew."

That made the Councillors nervous. An aide came up and talked to Khalid. Several others took the chance.

"But she was in charge of actually organizing the colony," Corain said then, when things settled down. "Describe what she did."

"She was in charge of picking the azi and training them; and she did the main instructional tape. They wanted her to do all this stuff you can't do. Like all these buried instructions. What she did, she made the primary instruction deep-tape; and she axed the azi's contracts in a way that meant if there weren't any CITs they were contracted to the world itself."

"She disregarded the Defense Bureau's instructions. That's what you're saying."

"If she'd done what the military wanted the whole colony would likely have died out; or if they lived past the diseases the third or fourth generation would be really dangerous—psychsets interact with environment. They didn't want to hear that."

"Time," Chairman Harad said. "Councillor Chavez of Finance."

"You consider you're qualified to pronounce on that," Chavez said, following up.

"Ser, that's a real basic."

"I don't care if it's a basic," Chavez said, "you're consistently reading in motives or you're attributing them to people only one of whom you know anything about, and you're not making it clear where you're quoting and where you're interpreting. I'm talking about your predecessor, young sera, who is the one whose notes you're supposed to be testifying to. Not your own interpretations of those notes."

"Yes, ser." Ari drew a long breath, and restrained her temper behind a very bland look. "I won't explain, then."

"I suggest you respect this body, young sera. You attained your majority last week; it means, young sera, that you are obliged to act as an adult."

She looked at Councillor Chavez, folded her hands again and sat there.

"Go on, young sera," Harad said.

"Thank you, ser Chairman. I'm sorry; I'll explain only if you ask. Ari wasn't technical about it: she said: quote: Defense insisted. I explained the hazards of environmental interactions in considerable detail. Their own psychologists tried to make them understand what I was saying; unfortunately the admirals had already made up their minds: the system of advancements in the military makes it damn near impossible for a Defense Bureau bureaucrat to back off a position. Even if—"

"Young sera," Chavez said. "The Council has limited time. Could we omit the late Councillor's profane observations?"

"Yes, ser."

"Go on."

"That was the answer."

"You didn't answer. Let me pose the question again. What, specifically, was Emory's argument to Defense?"

"I can't answer without explaining."

"What did Emory say?"

"She said they shouldn't do it because the environment would affect the psychsets and the tape couldn't be re-adjusted for the situation. And Defense couldn't tell her enough about the environment. That was the first reason she said they were crazy."

"She knew that when she made the original design. Why did she do it in the first place?"

"Because she did it during the War. If humanity had wiped itself out of space and gotten the planets too, it was one more place humanity might survive. It was real dangerous, but it wouldn't matter if they were the only ones."

"What was the danger?"

"You're going to get upset if I tell you again."

'Tell me."

"Letting a psychset run in an environment you don't know anything about. Do you want me to explain technically why that's dangerous?"

The Expansionists all laughed behind their hands. Even Tien, who was Centrist.

"Explain," Chavez said with a surprising lot of patience. She decided she liked him after all. He was not stupid. And he could back up when he got caught.

"Deep-tape is real simple and real general: it has to be. If you make aggression part of the set, and they're in an environment that threatens them, they'll expand the aggression all over everything, and it'll proliferate through the rest of the sets all the way to the surface; or if you put in a block against aggression, it could proliferate the same way, and they couldn't take care of themselves. Deep-tape gets all the way down to which way you jump when something scares you. It hits the foundation of the logic sets. And it almost has to be slightly illogical, because on pure logic, you don't move till you understand it. The deep-sets are a bias toward fight or flight. Things like that. And the Defense Bureau didn't give Ari senior any chance to design real deep-sets that might be a whole lot better for Gehenna. They came in and wanted her to program adult military-setted azi to colonize, and they wanted it in one year. She said that was garbage. She argued them into taking a mix of soldiers and farmers. So she composed a genepool of types that might have all the skills and the deep-sets she figured might hold some right answers to the environment, whatever it was."

"In other words she lied to the Bureau."

"She had to. They were going to go throw their own azi onto the world without her help, and they were telling their own psychology branch to break the law and try to run a deep-set intervention on them. Their own psych people said that was stupid, and some of them were threatening to talk to the Council, but Adm. Azov told one of them he could end up on Gehenna himself if he kept objecting. That's what that man told Ari. Then she thought about bringing it to Council, but she thought about the chance of the whole human race getting wiped out, and that was when she made up her mind to go along with it, but to do it safer than Defense was going to do it.

"She couldn't just go back and mindwipe all those azi and start over. That was another crazy suggestion the military had. Reseune didn't have enough facilities. And you don't recover from mindwipe that well that they could just dump them off on another planet and leave them there with no psych help. So she couldn't work with the deep-sets. She just studied all the deep-sets and worked up something real simple: she told the azi it was their planet and they had to take care of it and survive and teach their children what was important, that was all. As positive as she could. Because she didn't know how long Gehenna would be lost, and how much that would change.

"And that's the danger in it. Their generations are real short. There's already been a lot of change. Alliance is scared of them because they're afraid there's something on the planet like a secret base, that's the way I understand it; but if there's anything like that, it's not in the notes. Mostly I hear it's the azi that did survive, and there's not much left of CIT culture. That means the program did take.

"There's too many people to mindwipe—thousands and thousands. They'd have to mindwipe them all the way down, and that's a lot of psych work, and they haven't got a Reseune. Councillor Nye can tell you what it would take—"

"It would take a facility the size of Reseune," Giraud said, "doing nothing else, for at least ten years; and the re-integration of that many mindwiped individuals into ordinary society would tax anything any of us have. We're talking about thirty thousand individuals. Or more. They're still trying to estimate. No one has a place to disperse those people—they'd still cluster. Cluster means community; community means cultural identity. Alliance hasn't got the population base to absorb them. We don't. Don't even mention turning them loose on Earth."

"They probably can't find all of them," Ari said. "Anyway. So they can't get them off. They'll always be different; and they'll always be a problem. They're an azi population. They're not like CITs. They're just going to be crazy according to CIT thinking. Teaching their kids is part of their mindset; and if you bring them into the 25th century that's another environment that's going to hit that program and proliferate changes. That's Emory's word on it. If it's second generation, you could integrate them back, but there's even fourths now. Once it hits fourth, she said, you're into something real different. And they don't have rejuv. The Olders die off before they're a hundred. I've heard it's more like forty or fifty. That doesn't give them time to live with their kids or teach them much about being grown up. They're already more different from us than we are from Earth. That's Emory talking."

"I'm out of questions," Chavez said.

"We're going to recess for lunch," Harad said. "And take ser Tien's questions after—are you holding up to this, young sera?"

"I'm doing all right," she said. "After lunch is fine. Thank you, ser."

"It vastly disturbs me, sera," Tien said, from the dais where the Nine sat. He spoke very quietly, very politely, which was the way the man talked. "I have to tell you I'm concerned with the security clearance the Science Bureau has given you—not, understand, that I think you're not an exceedingly mature young woman. But we're dealing with things that could mean war or peace, and things that have been thrust on you very prematurely. Do you ever talk to your friends about these things?"

"No, ser, absolutely not." It was a fair question. All along, Tien had been fair.

"Do you understand the importance of not talking to reporters about this?"

"Yes, ser. I do. The only people I've discussed this with are Denys Nye, Giraud Nye, and the Council, exactly; and my azi, but they're not in the room when I work with the System on this either, and they don't know everything. Certainly they don't talk: they're Reseune Security, and their psychset is against discussing anything about me, even little things."

"We understand that. Can you estimate how much of the data you're not telling us?"

Oh. Very good question. "My predecessor had some theories about what would happen on Gehenna." Try to answer without answering. "But they're complicated, and I can't report on those because they're all in design-structure, and they're something that's going to take me a long while to sort through. Science Bureau is going to provide us the Gehenna data as it comes in—"

"To you?"

"Ser, to whoever's working on this project, but likely to me, yes, since I'm the one with my predecessor's notes."

"Time," Harad said. "Adm. Khalid."

"Let's keep to the question of the notes," Khalid said. "And why those notes, if they exist, haven't been turned over to a competent researcher."

"She is technically rated as a Wing supervisor," Giraud said. "And she is competent."

"She has no business with the notes," Khalid said. "Or do we believe that Reseune is being steered by a fifteen-year-old and a dead woman? That raises more questions about the competency of Reseune's administration than it does about hers. I have no quarrel with the child. I do have with Reseune. I find evidence of gross mismanagement. Gross mismanagement. I think we have more than enough evidence to extend this investigation into Reseune's actions in creating this situation."

"You can do that," Giraud said, "but it won't get you those notes."

The gavel came down. Repeatedly.

"Young sera," Khalid said. "You can be held in contempt of a Council order. So can your Administrator and the other people who are prompting you."

Ari took a drink of water. When it was quiet she said: "You can arrest people, but what you want to know is science and you have to ask scientists, and we're it. Bucherlabs hasn't got anybody who can read it. Neither does Defense. I'm already telling you what's in the notes and what you'll find if you go to all that trouble. If you don't think I'm telling the truth now, are you going to believe me then?"

The gavel banged again. "Councillor. Sera. If you please. Councillor Khalid."

"We're dealing with an immature child," Khalid said, "who's being pushed into this position by Reseune Administration. I repeat, we need to widen this probe until we get at individuals who are responsible. This is a question of national security. The Military Secrets Act—"

"The Councillor is out of order," Giraud said.

"—requires an investigation of any mishandling of classified information. The mishandling that allowed a fifteen-year-old child to go in front of news cameras to leak information that never should have become public—"

Again the gavel. "Councillor, we operate under rules, let me remind you. This is not a debate."

"A diplomatic crisis is at issue. Our enemies have a pretext to break treaties, including the arms treaty, which is not to our advantage. They're talking about plots, seri, completely ignorant of what azi are and what they're capable of. This is the result of practicing diplomacy in the press."

"The Councillor is out of order," Giraud said.

"Admiral," Harad said, "your time is running. Have you a question for the witness?"

"I have. Under oath, young sera, and bearing in mind you can be prosecuted for perjury, how long have you known about these files?"

"About the Gehenna files? They surfaced when I used the keywords."

"When?"

"The day after you won the election."

"Where did you get the keywords?"

"Denys Nye suggested them." That was a bad thing to have to admit. "But—"

"Meaning they didn't exist until then. Thank you, young sera. That explains a great deal."

"That's a psych, ser. It doesn't prove anything. I had to know. My clearance—"

"Thank you, we've had your answer."

"No, you've made up one."

"The Council will not take disrespect, sera."

"Yes, ser. But I don't have to take being called a liar. You threatened us; I applied for my majority; that triggered—"

"It's not you who's lying, sweet. You've been deceived right along with the Council. Your uncle made those files. He's made them from the beginning. There's no secret, protected system. There are simply records Reseune doesn't want to release, for very clear reasons, and Reseune created you to stand between the Council and Reseune's mismanagement."

"No, ser, I'm under oath. I am and you're not. My getting my majority triggered the notes. So when you withdrew your suit, that did it. That's the truth. And I'm under oath."

There was a little shifting in seats. A snort from Catherine Lao.

"Your uncle made the files and prepped you for this whole business."

The gavel banged. "That's enough, Councillor. Next question."

"I don't think we're listening to anything in this diplomatic fiasco," Khalid said, "but Denys Nye's constructions. Reseune is playing politics as usual, and it's held too much power too long."

"Do we mention the power in the Defense Bureau?" Giraud said.

"We have a clear case of conflict of interest on the Council. And we have embassies from Pell and Earth asking questions we had rather not answer."

"We have a clear conflict of interest as regards Defense," Giraud said. "Since your Bureau ordered this Gehenna mess over the protests of Science. As the witness has testified."

"Time," Harad said, and brought the gavel down.

"I'm due time to respond to that," Khalid said.

"Your time is up."

"I'd hate to accuse the Chairman of partisan politics."

Bang! "You are out of order, Councillor!"

Ari took another sip of water and waited while the Chair wrangled it out. Corain was making notes. So were Lao and a lot of the aides. Corain might have put Khalid up to it, making him the villain, since Khalid already had trouble. There was a challenge to Khalid's seat shaping up—already, a man named Simon Jacques. Much less flamboyant. Reseune had preferred Lu, but Lu's age was against him; and there was under-the-table stuff going on:

Corain had talked very secretly with Giraud and Jacques was a compromise they both could swallow, to get rid of Khalid. But that didn't mean Corain wouldn't let Khalid go after Reseune. It just meant that, under that table, Corain didn't want Reseune swallowed up by Defense any more than he wanted it to exist at all.

Meanwhile Khalid had broken off negotiations on a big Defense contract with Reseune. It was a fair-sized threat, but Khalid certainly wasn't doing any more than stalling, because there wasn't anywhere else to get tape from.

And the law that protected azi wound a civil rights issue right into Reseune's right of exclusivity on tape-production, because Reseune was the legal guardian of all azi, everywhere—Reseune could terminate all azi contracts with Defense—which they wouldn't do, of course, but, Giraud said, Defense had been fighting for years to get access to the birth-to-eighteen tapes for its soldiers, and Reseune would never give them up. That was why Khalid wanted to nationalize Reseune. Khalid said there had been mismanagement at RESEUNESPACE—meaning Jenna Schwartz; but he made it sound like it was present management, meaning Ollie, and that made her damned mad; Defense also said it was worried about something being buried in the training tapes; and Khalid was threatening to bring a bill to break Reseune's monopoly on tape and licensing—

Fine, Giraud said: Khalid didn't have the votes; Khalid's position was already unpopular with his own party—who didn't want more azi labs, they wanted fewer; so the whole Gehenna thing was a lever all sorts of interests were using. Corain would have liked to have used it much more, except Corain was worried about Khalid.

It was all very crazy. The stock markets were going up and down on rumors, Chavez, of Finance, was furious and sent a shut-down order on the wave of the rumors, so no ship could leave port for a few days, because they didn't want that market-dive information packet going off at trans-light across Union and clear to Pell and Earth, they wanted to get the market stable again before they let any ship leave; and that had the Trade Bureau upset and Information howling about trade censorship. It was a real mess. In fact everybody was getting anxious.

Council won't take this kind of stuff, Giraud had said. And grimly: this is getting very serious, Ari. Very serious.

There was, Giraud had said, a hard-line faction in the military that had been building up for years—a lot of them the old guard who blamed Gorodin and Lu for spending too much on the Fargone project and not getting the programs they wanted; they backed Khalid in the election, and they wanted more shipbuilding and more defense systems Sunward; but that was also along the Alliance corridors, and that made the Centrists nervous.

While everybody thought Jacques was a front for Gorodin and might resign and appoint Gorodin proxy if he got elected; and Lu's friends were mad about the double cross.

Crazy.

"We have this entire crisis," Khalid was saying, arguing with Harad, "because Reseune can sit in perfect immunity and level charges contained in documents only the Science Bureau can vouch for. Of course the Science Bureau is pure of Reseune influences!"

Giraud was right. Khalid was a disaster with the press, but he was fast on his feet and he was smart. You couldn't discount him.

But Harad brought down the gavel again. "Councillor Lao."

"The question is . . ." Thank God it was Lao's turn next. Uncle Giraud was put, because of conflict of interest. Harad of State was out because he was presiding. ". . . very simply, why a quarantine?"

"They're unpredictable, Councillor. That's the whole thing. We have huge computers that run sociology projections, when we work with psych-sets: we try to balance populations so they end up with wide enough genepools and we check out the psychsets we use to make sure that we haven't put something together that's going to turn up social problems when everybody becomes CIT. This thing—this whole planet—is completely wild and it's all artificial, it's got no relation at all to Terran history—it's just Gehennan. We don't know what it is. That's what made Ari nervous. These azi-sets could have been under God-knows-what interventions while they still had kat and they knew they were in trouble; God knows what their Supervisors decided to tell them; or even if there were Supervisors at the last—" Tell them that, get them off the question about predictive sociology. "Take these people into the Alliance or into Union and they're there from now on, and they're different. Ari didn't say you should never do it. She said there's a period after which it's a lot better to let Gehenna alone and let it grow up, so you can see what it's going to do when it comes into the mainstream culture. Maybe it never will get along with us. Maybe it'll be something very good. We just don't know at this point."

"How will you know? Didn't she run those checks?"

"It changes with every generation. It relates to all those psychsets. It relates to the whole mix. Our sociology programs are always improving. Ari ran it every ten years or so until she died. But her data was all just the initial stuff; she was just testing it against the new Sociology programs. We've got to set up to run with the new data. We have to do all the sets with the master-program and then we have to integrate them—that's Sociology does that. Reseune is transferring data over right now to run it. But it's huge; it takes a lot of computer time. And we need up-to-date stats. We can tell Council a lot. But we can't do it overnight and there's nothing, sera, absolutely nothing that laymen can do with that kind of stuff, either, the only computers that can run it are ours. So the best thing, the thing Reseune wants, is to keep that planet exactly the way Alliance wants to—just as little contact as possible while we do the data-collecting. It's like trying to get a good level measure with somebody bouncing the instruments, if people keep meddling there. We have to input all the influences—because just the discovery team landing there had to have done something."

"This is not," Khalid said, "a playground for the Science Bureau."

"Nor for Defense, ser," Lao said sharply. The gavel came down.

She lay flat on the bed in the hotel, limp, while Florian and Catlin rubbed the kinks out, and she went to sleep that way, unexpectedly, just out, pop,

She woke up under the covers and Florian and Catlin had the light down very low, Catlin was stretched out on the other bed, and Florian was sitting in the chair in the corner.

"God," she said, which woke Catlin instantly. "Get to sleep. There's battalions of Security in the hall, aren't there?"

"Yes, sera," Florian said. Catlin said: "There are twenty-seven on duty."

"Well, go to sleep."

Which was short, for people who loved her enough to stay awake after a day like this one, but she was still falling-over tired, and she did, just grabbed the pillow with her arm, tucked her head down and burrowed until she had a dark place.

Florian turned out the lights anyway; and she heard him cross the room and sit down on the other bed and start undressing.

She headed out again, then, a slow drift. Tomorrow morning was uncle Giraud's turn to testify. Then Secretary Lynch, of Science; Secretary Vinelli of Defense; Adm. Khalid—O God, Khalid, then her again, as soon as they got through. She hoped Giraud and Lynch did all right. But when Vinelli got up there, and Khalid, Giraud could cross-examine like everybody else.

Not saying, of course, that Khalid wouldn't go over uncle Giraud and Secretary Lynch the way he had headed at her.

It was going to be a long week.

Or two. We're going to win about the quarantine, Giraud had predicted at the outset. There's no way Union can do anything like move in on Gehenna without bringing in warships, and there's no way we're going to go to war with the Alliance to get access to Gehenna. What we can lose is what position Union takes about those people on Gehenna—whether they regard them as Union citizens and use that as a lever with the Alliance; or whether they negotiate a joint protectorate with the Alliance; and the hawks have a real stake in that: it's Khalid's political clout that's at issue here—

The Centrist and the Expansionist coalitions were exactly that: coalitions. The hawks were trying to pull something different together by breaking oft bits of both, that was what had surfaced in Khalid's rise. They were too high-up in the government to call them eetee-fringes. They were real, the whole thing that Ari senior had been worried about had come true, the old Earth territorial craziness had found itself an issue and a time to surface—And here she was holding Ari senior's argument in both hands behind her back– You know what it would do to Union if they found out what I've done, Ari senior had said. So she couldn't tell them: she couldn't get the things about Sociology even Sociology didn't know they had done—for Ari senior. She couldn't tell Council about the deep-set work Ari had done, or the fact that Ari had been planning—and installing—imperatives in the azi work crews, in the military, in a whole lot of places—including the deep-sets of the Gehenna azi.

The thing was already going on. By design, thirty percent of the azi Ari senior had designed and turned out of Reseune, and thirty percent of all the azi everywhere who used Reseune tape, would have kids and teach them, all across Union. A certain number of those azi had gotten their CIT papers as early as 2384, on Fargone, then in other places. A lot of them were in Science, a whole lot were in Defense: the Defense azi couldn't get CIT papers till they retired—but they were mostly male and they could still have kids or bring tank-kids up. A lot would do that, because that was in the deep-sets. The rest of those azi were scattered out through the electorates, heavy in Industry and Citizens, just exactly where the Centrists were strongest—a mindset that was biased right in its deep-sets, toward Ari senior's way of things.

And even other psych people wouldn't likely see what she had done—unless they were onto it—or unless they were as good as Ari senior, simply because what she did was a very accepted kind of program, a very basic kind of azi mindset. She had showed Council, she had even told them the program—and they couldn't see what it did with all those military psychsets, because the connections were so wide and so abstract—except when a living azi mind integrated them and ran with them in the social matrix.

That was what had scared Ari senior so bad.

There were thousands and thousands by now: not a whole lot yet proportionate to all of Union, but the program was running, and those tapes were still turning out azi. Even out of Bucherlabs and Lifefarms, in the simpler, gentle types they trained—there were attitudes designed to mesh with the psychsets of Reseune azi in very special ways.

Look up the word pogrom, Ari had said, in her notes to her. And see why I am afraid for the azi if people find out too soon what I have done.

Or too late.

I don't know what I have done. But the Sociology computers in my time can't see beyond twenty of our generations. I do. I've tried to devise logarithmic systems—but I don't trust them. The holes in my thinking could be the holes in the paradigms. Field Too Large is what the damned thing spits back on my wide runs.

I'm becoming emotional about those words.

I'll tell you: if anyone threatens to access these files but you—there is a program that will move them and re-key them in such ways that they will look like a whole lot of different kinds of records and continually lie about file sizes and other data so that searchers will play hob finding them.

But for God's sake don't use it until they're breaking the door down: it's terribly dangerous. It has defensive aspects.

I will give you the keywords now to disorganize the System.

It has three parts.

First keyword: the year of your birth.

Second keyword: the year of mine.

Third keyword: annihilate.

Then it will ask you for a keyword to re-integrate Base One. Have one in mind and don't panic.

It was a little comfort, knowing that was in there. Knowing she could hide what was going on.

But she wouldn't have had just one answer in the computer, to protect something that important.

She didn't think Ari had.

She tossed over on her other side and burrowed again.

And finally she said: "Florian. . . ."

vii

Ari stepped off the plane and into the safeway, and walked the long weary way to the terminal, to get her baggage. Just the briefcase and her carry-bag, that Florian and Catlin had.

Night-flight again, with the escort. Which was a news story unto itself, but all Giraud would say was 'precautions.'

And all the public got was: 'quarantine justified.'

There were people going to be filming here, too—Reseune Information gave a live feed to Cyteen Station, and the station distributed it everywhere. Ships were on their way, the whole of Cyteen commerce was moving again, and the world took a collective breath.

Not knowing all of it, but feeling things were steadier. They were. The markets were up on bargain-hunting and in some ways healthier, because there had been a lot of built-up war-scare that just burst like a bubble, Defense stocks were taking a beating, but diversifieds were doing fine, shipping stocks were soaring again, the futures market was shifting: the Cyteen market believed in peace again after a bad scare, and there was a lot of anti-hawk feeling coming to the surface in the Information polls, which encouraged the shyer voices to speak up and dragged the undecideds back to the peace camp.

After three bad weeks, you could say you wanted peace with the Alliance and sound like a responsible moderate—not a Universalist-eetee, who wanted all the human governments to build a capital in the Hinder Stars—never mind that Earth had over five thousand governments at last count; or a Pax agitator, the sort that had bombed a rush-hour subway car and killed thirty-two people last week in Novgorod.

The police were afraid there was some kind of a pipeline from the Rocher Abolitionists to the Paxers. They might have gotten the explosives from mine-camp pilferage or maybe just making the stuff: there were possible crime connections, everything from the illicit tape-trade to illegal drugs to the body trade, and a lot of the ones the police could get at were z-cases, just wipe-outs the real criminals used to do the work and take the hits.

The familiar walk from the plane to the safeway doors, the quiet, beige cord-carpet, the sight of Reseune Security guards talking with each other in more than coded monosyllables and moving easily, like there was more than a synapse-jump between a sudden noise and hosing-down the room—made her want to melt down on the spot and just sleep for a week, right there, right then, knowing she was safe.

But cameras met her at the exit into the terminal, Security reacted, the few reporters who had gotten passes shoved mikes at her and asked why Giraud had stayed—"He's still got some clean-up," she said. "Office things."

Some secret meetings, staff with staff, Secretary Lynch's staff with Chavez's staff, which was a pipeline from Corain, but that was, God knew, not for the reporters.

"Do you feel confidence in the decision?"

"I think people are going to do the right things now. I think I made them understand—everything's fine if they just treat those people all right—"

"The Gehennans, you mean."

"Yes, the Gehennans. The Science Bureau is going to advise the Alliance ambassador we need some real close communication—that's what's going on right now. But that's the Bureau and the Secretary; and Councillor Harad's office. I think everything's going to work out fine."

Time, well time, to calm the situation down: that was her job; and Giraud's; and Harad's.

"There's no truth to the rumor about a secret base on Gehenna."

She made a deliberate surprise-reaction. "Absolutely not. No. It's not about that at all. I can let something out: they're going to make an official statement tomorrow morning: there was some real illegal bacteriological stuff done there. It was our fault. It shouldn't have happened. And we don't need that stuff coming back."

The reporters got excited. They were supposed to. And it was absolutely true, it was one of the cautions, the one they could give out right away, and one of the most urgent ones. "What sort of bacteriological stuff?" they asked.

"Designed stuff. Viruses. It's not fatal to humans; the Gehennans tolerate it fine. But there are a lot of questions. They did some stuff back in the war that shouldn't have been done. I can't talk about more than that. Councillor Harad said I could say that; he's going to hold a news conference tomorrow morning. I'm sorry—I'm awfully tired, and they're signaling me come on—"

"One more question! Is the rumor accurate the Councillor is gome to propose talks with Alliance?"

"I can't talk about that." Thank God Catlin just grabbed her by the arm and Florian body-blocked and adult Security and uncle Denys' staff got there, Seely in plain-clothes, like always, and Amy and Maddy and Sam closing in—doing the Family-homecoming number—getting her out of there—

Getting her all the way to the bus, where she could hug Amy and Maddy and Sam for a whole different reason, for real, because Giraud had let her in on the secret, that a Family reception at the airport was the best way in the universe to get a wedge in on the reporters, get her out, and still give the cameramen the kind of human-interest endshot that left the right kind of feeling with everybody– who showed up to do the airport-rescue depended on the kind of impression they wanted to give out.

So uncle Denys sent her the youngers, no official stuff, no indication to the outside world what Reseune's official reaction was, no high administrators who could get caught for follow-up by the reporters—just a real happy group of kids slipping in with the Security people, real Family stuff. Damn, they carried it off smooth as Olders could have. And left the reporters to guess who they were and to focus on something just human, about Reseune, about the fact Reseune wasn't long-faced and worried and just ordinary kids showed up to welcome her home, after they had seen so much of Reseune Security and asked questions about the chase planes.

Fade-out on happy kids. People grabbed on to things like that real fast. "I want to sleep," she said.

"Bad news," Amy said. "They're waiting for you in the front hall." Amy patted her shoulder. "Everybody wants to see you. Just to say welcome back. You were great, Ari. You were really great."

"Oh, God," she mumbled. And shut her eyes. She was so tired she was shivering all over. Her knees ached.

"What happened in the hearings?" Maddy asked.

"I can't say. Can't. But it was all right." Even her mouth had trouble working. The bus made the turn and started up the hill. She opened her eyes and remembered she had her hair against the seat back. She sat up and felt to see if it was mussed, and straightened it with her fingers. "Where's my comb?"

Because she was not going into the hall with her hair messed if people had come to see her.

Even if she was falling on her face.

Uncle Denys himself was at the door; she hugged him and kissed him on the cheek and said into his ear: "I'm so awful tired. Get me home."

But Florian had to go ahead to check the Minder before she could even have her bed. Especially now.

And she walked the hall through all the Family and the staff; and got hugs and flowers and kissed Dr. Edwards on the cheek and hugged Dr. Dietrich and even Dr. Peterson and Dr. Ivanov—him a long, long moment, because whatever else he had done, he had put her together right; and she had gotten mad at him, but she knew what he had done for her– "You and your damn shots," she said into his ear. "I held together fine in Novgorod."

He hugged her till her bones cracked and he patted her shoulder and said he was glad.

She got a little further. Then: "I've got to rest," she said finally to sera Carnath, Amy's mother, and sera Carnath scolded everybody and told them to let her through.

So they did; and she walked to the lift, went up and over to her hall, and her apartment, and her bed, clothes and all.

She woke up with somebody taking them off her, but that was Florian and Catlin, and that was all right. "Sleep with me," she said, and they got in, both of them, one warm lump, like little kids, right in the middle of the bed.

viii

The Filly loved the open air—there was a pasture bare of everything, where the horses could get a long run—good solid ground, and safe enough if you kept the Filly's head up and never let her eat anything that grew in the fields. Sometimes the azi that worked the horses when Florian was busy used her and the Mare's daughter to exercise the Mare instead of using the walker; but when the Filly was out with her or Florian on her back she really put on her manners, ears up, everything in her just waiting for the chance to run, which was what the Filly loved best.

It made uncle Denys nervous as hell when he got reports about her riding all-out.

Today she had Florian by her on Filly Two, both horses fretting at the bits and wanting to go. "Race you," she said, and aimed the Filly at the end of the field, to the kind of stop that had once sent her most of the way off, hanging on the Filly's neck—she had sworn she would kill Andy and Florian if they told; and she was very glad no one had had a camera around.

All the way there with both horses running nearly neck and neck; and it would have taken somebody on the ground to see who was first. Florian could try to be diplomatic. But the fillies had different ideas.

"Easier back," Florian said. The horses were breathing hard, and dancing around and feeling good. But he worried when they ran like that.

"Hell," she said. For a moment she was free as the wind and nothing could touch her.

But racing was not why they were out here, or down in AG, or why Catlin had special orders up in the House.

Not why Catlin was walking out of the barn now—a distant bit of black; with company.

"Come on," she said to Florian, and she let the Filly pick her pace, which was still a good clip, and with ears up and then back again as the Filly saw people down there too, and tried to figure it out in her own worried way.

ix

Justin stood still beside Catlin's black, slim impassivity, waiting while the horses brought Ari and Florian back—big animals, coming fast—but he figured if there were danger of being run down Catlin would not be standing there with her arms folded, and he thought—he was sure . . . that it was Ari's choice to scare him if she could.

So he stood his ground while the horses ran up on them. They stopped in time. And Ari slid down and Florian did.

She gave Florian her horse to lead away. She had on a white blouse, her hair was pinned up in Emory's way; but coming loose all around her face. The smell of the barn, the animals, leather and earth—brought back childhood.

Brought back the days that he and Grant had been free to come down here—

A long time ago.

"Justin," Ari said. "I wanted to talk to you."

"I thought you would," he said.

She was breathing hard. But anyone would, who had come in like that. Catlin had called his office, said come to the doors; he had left Grant at work, over Grant's objections. No, he had said; just—no. And gotten his jacket and walked down, expecting—God knew—Ari, there.

Catlin had brought him down here, instead, and no one interfered with that. But no one likely interfered much with anything Ari did these days. "Let's go sit down," Ari said now. "Do you mind?"

"All right," he said; and followed her over to the corner where the fence met the barn. Azi handlers took the horses inside; and Ari sat down on the bottom rail of the metal fence, leaving him the plastic shipping cans that were clustered there, while Catlin and Florian stood a little behind him and out of his line of sight. Intentionally, he thought, a quiet, present threat.

"I don't blame you for anything," she said, hands between her knees, looking at him with no coldness, no resentment. "I feel a little funny—like I should have put something together, that there was something in the past—but I thought—I thought maybe you'd gotten crosswise of Administration. The family black sheep. Or something. But that's all history. I know nothing is your fault. I asked you to come here—to ask you what you think about me." It was a civilized, sensible question. It was the nightmare finally happening, turning out to be just a quiet question from a pretty young girl under a sunny sky. But his hands would shake if he was not sitting as he was, arms folded. "What I think about you. I think about the little girl at the New Year's party. About the damn guppies. I think about a sweet kid, Ari. That's all. I've had nightmares about your finding out. I didn't want what happened. I didn't want fifteen years of walking around the truth. But they couldn't tell you. And they were afraid I would. That I would—feel some resentment toward you. I don't. None."

Her face was so much Ari's. The lines and planes were beginning to be there. But the eyes were a young woman's eyes, worried—that rare little expression he had seen first that day in his office—over a jar of suffocated baby guppies. I guess they were just in there too long.

"Your father's at Planys," she said. "They say you visit him." He nodded. A lump got into his throat. God. He was not going to break down and go maudlin in front of a fifteen-year-old. "You miss him."

Second nod. She could feel her way to all the buttons. She was Emory. She had proved it in Novgorod, and the whole damn government had rocked on its pinnings.

"Are you mad at me about it?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"Aren't you going to talk to me?"

Damn. Pull it together, fool!

"Are you mad at my uncles?"

He shook his head again. There was nothing safe to say. Nothing safe to do. She was the one who needed to know. He knew everything. And if there was a way out for Jordan it was going to be in her administration—someday. If there was any hope at all.

She was silent a long time. Just waiting for him. Knowing, surely, that he was fracturing. Himself, who was thirty-four years old; and not doing well at all.

He leaned forward, elbows on knees, studied the dust between his feet, then looked up at her.

No knowledge at all of what the first Ari had done to him. Denys swore to that. And swore what he would do if he opened his mouth about it.

I won't, he had said to Denys. God, do you think I want her into that tape?

She hasn't got it, Denys had assured him. And won't get it.

Yet—had been his thought.

There was nothing but worry in the look Ari gave him.

"It's not easy," he said, "to be under suspicion—all the time. That's the way I live, Ari. And I never did anything. I was seventeen when it happened."

"I know that," she said. "I'll talk to Denys. I'll make it so you can go visit when you like,"

It was everything he had hoped for. "Right now—" he said, "there's too much going on in the world. The mess in Novgorod. The same reason they have you flying with an escort. There's a military base right next to Planys. The airport is in between the two. Your uncle Denys is worried they might try to grab my father; or me. I'm grounded until things settle down. I can't even talk to him on the phone. —And Grant's never even gotten to go. Grant—was like his second son."

"Damn," she said, "I'm sorry. But you will get to see him. Grant, too. I'll do everything I can."

"I'd be grateful."

"Justin, —does your father hate me?"

"No. Absolutely not."

"What does he say about me?"

"We stay off that subject," he said. "You understand—every call I make to him, every second I spend with him—there's always somebody listening. Talking about you—could land me back in Detention."

She looked at him a long time. Shock, no. But they had not told her that, maybe. There was a mix of expressions on her face he could not sort out.

"Your father's a Special," she said. "Yanni says you ought to be."

"Yanni says. I doubt it. And they're not even going to allow the question—because they can't touch my father—legally—so they don't want me unreachable. You understand."

That was another answer that bothered her. Another moment of silence.

"Someday," he said, "when things are quieter, someday when you're running Reseune—I hope you'll take another look at my father's case. You could do something to help him. I don't think anyone else ever will. Just—ask him—the things you've asked me." But, O God, the truth . . . about that tape; about Art; the shock of that—no knowing what that will do to her.

She's not like her predecessor. She's a decent kid.

That tape's as much a rape of her—as me.

God, God, when's she going to get the thing? Two more years?

When she's seventeen?

"Maybe I will," she said. "—Justin, why did he do it?"

He shook his head, violently. "Nobody knows. Nobody really knows. Temper. God knows they didn't get along."

"You're his replicate."

He lost his breath a moment. And got caught looking her straight in the eyes.

"You don't have a temper like that," she said. "Do you?"

"I'm not like you," he said. "I'm just his twin. Physical resemblance, that's all."

"Did he fight with a lot of people?"

He tried to think what to say; and came up with: "No. But he and Ari had a lot of professional disagreements. Things that mattered to them. Personalities, mostly."

"Yanni says you're awfully good."

He wobbled badly on that shift of ground and knew she had seen the relief. "Yanni's very kind."

"Yanni's a bitch," she laughed. "But I like him. —He says you work deep-set stuff."

He nodded. "Experimental." He was glad to talk about his work. Anything but the subject they had been on.

"He says your designs are really good. But the computers keep spitting out Field Too Large."

"They've done some other tests."

"I'd like you to teach me," she said.

"Ari, that's kind of you, but I don't think your uncle Denys would like that. I don't think they want me around you. I don't think that's ever going to change."

"I want you to teach me," she said, "what you're doing."

He found no quick answer then. And she waited without saying a thing.

"Ari, that's my work. You know there is a little personal vanity involved here—" Truth, he was disturbed; cornered; and the child was innocent in it, he thought, completely. "Ari, I've had little enough I've really done in my hie; I'd at least like to do the first write-up on it, before it gets sucked up into someone else's work. If it's worth anything. You know there is such a thing as professional jealousy. And you'll do so much in your life. Leave me my little corner."

She looked put off by that. A line appeared between her brows. "I wouldn't steal from you."

He made it light, a little laugh, grim as it was. "You know what we're doing. Arguing like the first Ari and my father. Over the same damn thing. You're trying to be nice. I know that—"

"I'm not trying to be nice. I'm asking you."

"Look, Ari, —"

"I won't steal your stuff. I don't care who writes it up. I just want you to show me what you do and how you do it."

He sat back. It was a corner she backed him into, a damned, petulant child used to having her way in the world. "Ari, —"

"I need it, dammit!"

"You don't get everything you need in this world."

"You're saying I'd steal from you!"

"I'm not saying you'd steal. I'm saying I've got a few rights, Ari, few as they are in this place—maybe I want my name on it. And my father's. If just because it's the same last name."

That stopped her. She thought about it, staring at him.

"I can figure that," she said. "I can fix that. I promise you. I won't take anything you don't want me to. I don't lie, Justin. I don't tell lies. Not to my friends. Not in important things. I want to learn. I want you to teach me. Nobody in the House is going to keep me from having any teacher I want. And it's you."

"You know—if you get me in trouble, Ari, you know what it can do."

"You're not going to get in any trouble. I'm a wing supervisor. Even if I haven't got a wing to work in. So I can make my own, can't I? You. And Grant."

His heart went to long, painful beats. "I'd rather not be transferred."

She shook her head. "Not really move. I've got a Wing One office. It's just paper stuff. It just means my staff does your paperwork. —I'm sorry." When he said nothing in her pause: "I did it."

"Damn it, Ari—"

"It's just paperwork. And 1 don't like having stuff I'm working on lying around your office. —I can change it back, if you like."

"I'd rather." He leaned his arms on his knees, looking her in the eye. "Ari, —I told you. I've got little enough in my life. I'd like to hang on to my independence. If you don't mind."

"They're bugging your apartment. You know that."

"I figured they might be."

"If you're in my wing, I can re-route the Security stuff so I get it, same as uncle Denys."

"I don't want it, Ari."

She gave him a worried, slightly hurt look. "Will you teach me?"

"All right," he said. Because there was no way out of it.

"You don't sound happy."

"I don't know, Ari."

She reached out and squeezed his hand. "Friends. All right? Friends?"

He squeezed hers. And tried to believe it.

"They'll probably arrest me when I get back to the House."

"No, they won't." She drew her hand back. "Come on. We'll all walk up together. I've got to get a shower before I go anywhere. But you can tell me what you're working on."

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