Cyteen

i

The small jet touched down at Planys airfield and rolled to the front of the little terminal, and Justin unbuckled his safety belt, moving in the same sense of unreality that had been with him since the plane left the ground at Reseune.

He had thought until that very moment that some agency would stop him, that the game was giving him permission to travel and then maneuvering him or Jordan into some situation that would cancel it.

He was still scared. There were other possibilities he could think of, more than a psych of either one of them—like the chance of Reseune creating a situation they could use to harm Jordan or worsen his conditions. He tried to put thoughts like that in the back of his mind, where they only warned him to be careful; like the thoughts that armored him against the sudden recall, the sudden reversal of the travel permit, even this far into the matter.

One had to live like that. Or go crazy.

He picked up his briefcase and his bag from the locker while his Security escort were coming forward—it was the plane that shuttled back and forth between Reseune and Planys at need, a corporate plane with the Infinite Man symbol on its tail, not the red and white emblem of RESEUNEAIR, which carried passengers and freight over most of the continent and a few points overseas. Reseune Labs owned this one, even if it was a RESEUNEAIR crew that flew it; and the fact that this plane was, like RESEUNE ONE, private—kept its cargoes and its passenger lists from the scrutiny of the Bureau of Transportation.

A long, long flight from Reseune, over a lonely ocean. A plane with an airlock and a suction filter in the lock, and the need for D-suits and masks before they could go out there. He took his out of the locker, white, thin plastic, hotter than hell to wear, because the generic fits-everyone sort had no circulating system, just a couple of bands you put around your chest and shoulders to keep the thing from inflating like a balloon and robbing you of the air the helmet gave you.

The co-pilot took him in hand and checked his seals, collar, wrists, ankles and front, then patted him on the shoulder, pointing to the airlock. The generic suits had no com either, and you shouted or you signed.

So he picked up his baggage, likewise sealed in a plastic carry-bag, and looked to see if Security was going to let him out there.

No. One was going to lock through with him. That was how closely they were watching him.

So he went into the airlock and waited through the cycle, and went out down the ladder with the Security guard at his back, down where the ground crews, in custom-fitted D-suits, were attending the plane.

There was very little green in Planys. Precip towers did their best to keep the plants alive, but it was still raw and new here, still mostly red rock and blue scrub and woolwood. Ankyloderms were the predominant phylum of wildlife on this continent, as platytheres were in the other, in the unbridged isolation that had given Cyteen two virtually independent ecologies—except, always, woolwood and a few other windborne pests that propagated from virtually any fiber that got anywhere there was dirt and moisture.

Flora reinforced with absorbed silicates and poisonous with metals and alkaloids, generating an airborne profusion of fibers carcinogenic in Terran respiratory systems even in minute doses: the plants would kill you either in minutes or in years, depending on whether you were fool enough to eat a leaf or just unlucky enough to get an unguarded breath of air. The carbon monoxide in the air was enough to do the job on its own. But the only way to get killed by the fauna was to stand in its path, and the only way it ever died, the old joke ran, was when two of equal size met head to head and starved to death.

It was easy to forget what Cyteen was until you touched the outback.

And there was so profound a sense of desolation about this place. You looked away from the airport and the buildings, and it was Cyteen, that was all, raw and deadly.

Jordan lived in this place.

There was no taking the suits off until they got to Planys Annex, and the garage, and another airlock, where you had to brush each other off with some violence while powerful suction fans made the cheap suits rattle and flutter. You had to lift and stretch the elastic straps to get any fiber out of them, then endure a hosing down in special detergent, lock through, strip the suits and step up onto a grating without touching the outside surfaces—while the decontamination crew saw to your baggage.

Damn, he thought, anxious until the second door was shut and he and his escort were in a hall that looked more like a storm-tunnel at home—gray concrete, completely gray.

It was better on the upper floor: green-painted concrete, decent lighting. No windows . . . there was probably no window in all of Planys. A small concession to decor in a few green plastic hanging plants, cheap framed prints on the walls.

Building A, it said occasionally, brown stencil letters a meter high, obscured here and there by the hanging pictures. Doors were brown-painted metal. There was, anomaly, an office with curtained hallward windows. That was the one that said, in a small engraved-plastic sign: Dr. Jordan Warrick, Administrator, Educational Division.

A guard opened that door for him. He walked in, saw Paul at the desk, Paul, who looked—like Paul, that was all: he was dyeing his hair—who got up and took his hand and hugged him.

Then he knew it was real. "Go on in," Paul said into his ear, patting him on the shoulder. "He knows you're here."

He went to the door, opened it and went in. Jordan met him there with open arms. For a long, long while they just held on to each other without saying a word. He wept. Jordan did.

"Good to see you," Jordan said finally. "Damn, you've grown."

"You're looking good," Justin said, at arms' length, trying not to see the lines around the eyes and the mouth. Jordan felt thinner, but he was still fit and hard—perhaps, Justin thought, Jordan had done what he had done, from the day Denys had called him into his office and told him he had gotten a travel permit—run lap upon lap in the gym, determined not to have his father see him out of shape.

"I wish Grant could have come."

"So did he." It was hard to keep his composure. He got it back. And did not add that there was reason to worry, that Grant was more scared than Grant wanted to let on, being left alone at Reseune—azi, and legally under Reseune's authority. "Maybe some other trip."

This trip had to work. They had to make it as smooth and easy as possible, to get others in future. He had an idea every paper in his briefcase was going to be gone over again by every means Security had here; and that when he got back to Reseune they were going to do it all again, and strip-search him the way they had before he boarded the plane, very, very thoroughly. But he was here. He had the rest of the day and till noon tomorrow. Every minute he spent with Jordan, two high-clearance Security agents would be sitting in the same room; but that was all right, right as the cameras and the bugs that invaded every moment of his life and left nothing private.

So he walked over to the conference table with Jordan, he sat down as Paul came in and joined them, he said: "I brought my work. They'll get my briefcase up here in a bit. I'm really anxious for you to have a look at some of it."

It's a waste of time, Yanni had said, in Yanni's inimitable way, when he had begged Yanni to give him a clearance to bring bis latest design with him.

And then cleared it by that afternoon. This'll cost you, the note Yanni sent him had said. You'll pay me in overtime.

"How have things been going?" Jordan asked him, asking him more than that with the anxiousness in his eyes, the way a son and a psych student could read and Security and voice-stress analyzers might possibly miss.

Is there some condition to this I don't know about?

"Hell," he said, and laughed, letting the tension go, "too damn well. Too damn well, all year. Last year was hell. I imagine you picked that up. I couldn't do anything right, everything I touched fell apart—"

A lot of problems I can't mention.

"– but it's like all of a sudden something sorted itself out. For one thing, they took me off real-time work. I felt guilty about that—which is probably a good indicator how bad it was; I was taking too long, I was too tired to think straight, just no good at it, that's all, and too tied up in it to turn it loose. Yanni thought I could break through, you know, some of my problems that way, I know damn well what he was trying to do; then he R&R'd me into production again. Until for some reason he had a change of heart and shoved me back into R&D, on a long, long lead-time. Where I do just fine, thanks."

They had talked so long in time-lag he found himself doing it again, condensing everything into packets, with a little worry about Security objecting in every sentence. But here he had more freedom. They promised him that. There was no outside eavesdropping to worry about and they could talk about anything—that offered no hint of escape plans or hidden messages to be smuggled outside Reseune.

Jordan knew about the Project. Both Projects, Ari and Rubin.

"I'm glad," Jordan said. "I'm glad. How's Grant's work?"

"He never was in trouble. You know Grant." And then he realized how far back that question had to go.

All those years. Grant in hospital. Himself in Security's hands. Jordan being whisked away to testify in Novgorod before they shipped him out to Planys.

His hand shook, on the table in front of him, shook as he carried it to his mouth and tried to steady himself.

"Grant—came out of it all right. Stable as ever. He's fine. He really is. I don't know what I'd have done without him. Have you been all right?"

"Hell at first. But it's a small staff, a close staff. They can come and go, of course, and they know my condition here, but it's a real difference—a real difference."

O God, be careful. Anything you say, anything you admit to needing, they can use. Watch what you say.

". . . We take care of each other here. We carry each other's loads, sometimes. I think it's all that desert out there. You either go crazy and they ship you out, or you get seduced by the tranquillity here. Even Security's kind of reasonable. —Aren't you, Jim?"

One guard had settled in, taken a chair in the corner. The man laughed and leaned back, ankles crossed.

Not azi. CIT.

"Most times," Jim the guard said.

"It's home," Jordan said. "It's gotten to be home. You have to understand the mentality out here. Our news and a lot of our music comes in from the station. We're real good on current events. Our clothes, our books, our entertainment tapes, all of that—get flown in when they get around to it, and books and tapes don't get into the library here until Security vets the addition. So there's a lot of staff silliness—you have to amuse yourself somehow; and the big new E-tape is Echoes. Which ought to tell you something."

Three years since that tape had come out. "Damn, I could have brought you a dozen."

"Listen, anything you can do for library here will be appreciated. I've complained. Everyone on staff has complained. The garrison snags everything. Military priority. And they do the luggage searches. I couldn't warn you. I hope to hell you haven't got anything in your overnight kit that's in short supply here, because they've got a censored number of soldiers over at the base really desperate for censored, censored, and censored. Not to mention toilet paper. So we're not the only ones."

He laughed, because Jordan laughed and Paul laughed, and Jim-the-guard laughed, because it was desperately, bleakly funny to think of, when there was so much that was not at all funny in this isolation; because it was so much relief to know Planys finally, not as a totally barren exile, but as a place where humanness and humor were valuable.

They talked and argued theory till they were hoarse. They went to the lab and Jordan introduced him to the staffers he had never met, always with Jim and his azi partner Enny at left and right of them. They had a drink with Lel Schwartz and Milos Carnath-Morley, neither one of whom he had seen since he was seventeen; and had dinner with Jordan and Paul—and Jim and Enny.

He had no intention of sleeping. Neither did Jordan or Paul. They had allotted him a certain number of hours to stay and he could sleep on the plane, that was all.

Jim and Enny traded off with two others at 2000 of the clock. By that time Jordan and Paul were both arguing ideas with him, criticizing his structures, telling him where he was wrong and teaching him more about sociological psych integrations than he had learned from all Yanni's books.

"Oh, God," he said, toward 0400 in the morning, in a break when they were all three hoarse and still talking, "if we could consult together—if you were there or I was here—"

"You're retracing a lot of old territory," Jordan told him, "but I don't call it a dead end. I don't know, you understand, and I don't say that too often, pardon my arrogance. I think it's worth chasing—not that I think you'll get where you're going, but I'm just curious."

"You're my father. Yanni says I'm crazy."

"Then Ari was."

He looked sharply at Jordan. And his gut knotted Up just hearing Jordan name the dead without rancor.

"She told me," Jordan said, "when I suggested she'd rigged the Aptitudes—politely, of course—that it was your essay question cinched it. I thought that was her usual kind of snide answer. I'm not so sure, now, having seen where you've taken it. Did she help you with this?"

"Not this one. The first—" Few, he almost said. Till she died. Till she was killed. Murdered. He shuddered away from the remembrance. "You didn't take me seriously, then."

"Son, it was pretty bright for a youngster. Ari evidently saw something I didn't. Now so does Yanni."

"Yanni?"

"He wrote me a long letter. A long letter. He told me what you were working on. Said you were crazy, but you were getting somewhere. That you were getting integrations on deep-sets that he could see, and that he'd run them through Sociology's computers and gotten nothing—indeterminate, insufficient data, field too wide. That sort of thing. Sociology hates like hell to have its computers give answers like that; you can imagine how nervous it makes them."

Jordan started back to the table with the tea, and sat down. Justin dropped into his chair, shivering from too little sleep, too late hours. And leaned on his folded arms and listened, that was all.

"Ariane Emory helped map those sociology programs," Jordan said. "So did I. So did Olga Emory and James Carnath and a dozen others. You've at least handed them something that exceeds their projective range, that the computer's averaging can't handle. It's what I said. I don't know is a disturbing projection—when it comes from the machines that hold the whole social paradigm. Sociology, I think, is less interested in what you've done than in the fact that your designs refuse projection: Sociology's computers are very sensitive to negatives. That's what they're programmed to turn up."

He knew that.

"And there's either no negative in the run or it can't find it. It carried it through thirty generations and kept getting an I don't know. That may be why Administration sent you here. Maybe Reseune is suddenly interested. I am. They have to wonder if I'd lie—or lie to myself—because I'm your father. . . ."

Justin opened his mouth and stopped. So did Jordan stop, waiting on him; and there were the guards, there was every likelihood that they were being taped for later study by Security. And maybe by Administration.

So he did not say: They can't let me succeed. They don't want me to call their Project into question by being anything like a success. He clamped his mouth shut.

Jordan seemed to sense the danger. He went on quietly, precisely: "And I would lie, of course. I have plenty of motives. But my colleagues at Reseune wouldn't: they know there's something in this, Yanni says so, the Sociology computers say so, and they certainly don't have ulterior motives."

They could lock me away like you, couldn't they? What doesn't get out, doesn't breach Security. No matter what it contradicts.

Except—except I said it to Denys: if I go missing from Reseune, there are questions."

I don't know if there's a hope in hell of getting you transferred to Planys," Jordan said. "But I'll ask you the question first: do you want to transfer?"

He froze then, remembering the landscape outside, the desolation that closed about him with a gut-deep panic.

He hated it. For all its advantages of freedom and relief from the pressure of Reseune, Planys afflicted him with a profound terror.

He saw the disappointment on Jordan's face. "You've answered me,

"No, I haven't. —Look, I've got a problem with this place. But it's something I could overcome. You did."

"Say I had a limited choice. Your choice is real. That's what you can't overcome. No. I understand. Your feelings may change with time. But let's not add that to the problems. We're certainly going to have Yanni in the loop. No way they're going to let us send anything anywhere without someone checking it for content. We'll just work on it—as we can, when we can. They're curious right now, I'm sure. They aren't so locked on their Project they can't see the potential in an unrelated idea. And that, son, is both a plus and a minus. You see how concerned they are for my well-being.

"Ser," the guard said.

"Sorry," Jordan said, and sighed, staring at Justin for a long while with somber emotions playing freely across his face.

Not free here, not as free as seems on the surface.

Succeed and gain protection; and absolutely protected, become an absolute prisoner.

He felt a lump in his throat, part grief, part panic. For a terrible moment he wanted to leave, now, quickly, before the dawn. But that was foolishness. He and Jordan had so little time. That was why they stayed awake and drove themselves over the edge, into too much honesty.

Dammit, he left a kid, and I'm not sure how he sees me. As a man? Or just as someone grown? Maybe not even someone he knows very well. I know him and he knows so little what I am now.

Damn them for that.

There's no way to recover it. We can't even say the things to each other that would lei us know each other. Emotions are the thing we can't give away to our

He looked away, he looked at Paul, sitting silent at the table, and thought that their life must be like his with Grant—a pressured frustration of things

It's no different from Reseune, here, he thought. Not for Jordan. Not really, no matter what the appearance they put on it. He can't talk. He doesn't dare. Nothing, for us, is different from Reseune.

ii

"Working late?" the Security guard asked, stopping in the doorway, and Grant's heart jumped and kept up a frantic beat as he looked up from his desk.

"Yes," he said.

"Ser Warrick's out today?"

"Yes."

"Is he sick?"

"No."

Where Justin was fell under Administrative need-to-know. That was one of the conditions. There were things he could not say, and the silence was irritating to a born-man. The man stared at him a moment, grunted and frowned and continued on his rounds.

Grant let go his breath, but the tension persisted, the downside of an adrenaline rush, fear that had only grown from the time Justin had told him he was going to Planys.

Justin was going—alone, because that was one of the conditions Administration imposed. He had brushed off Justin's worry about him and refused to discuss it, because Justin would go under whatever conditions, Justin had to go: Grant had no question about it.

But he was afraid, continually, a fear that grew more acute when he saw the plane leave the ground and when he walked back into Reseune alone.

It was partly ordinary anxiety, he told himself: he relied on Justin; they had not been apart since the incidents around Ari's death, and separation naturally brought back bad memories.

But he was not legally Justin's ward. He was Reseune's; and as long as Justin was not there to obstruct Administration and to use Jordan's leverage to protect him, he had no protection and no rights. Justin was at risk, traveling completely in the hands of Reseune Security—which might arrange an incident; but much more likely that they might take an azi down to the labs where they could question him or, the thing he most feared, run tape on him.

There was no good in panic, he told himself, since there was nothing, absolutely nothing he could do about it, nowhere he could hide and nothing he could do, ultimately, to stop them if that was what they intended.

But the first night that he had been alone with all the small lonely sounds of a very large apartment and no knowledge what was happening on the other side of the world, he had shot himself with one of the adrenaline doses they kept, along with knock-out doses of trank, in the clinical interview room; and taken kat on top of it.

Then he had sat down crosslegged at the side of his bed, and dived down into the innermost partitions he had made in himself, altering things step by step in a concentration that slicked his skin with sweat and left him dizzy and weak.

He had not been sure that he could do it; he was not sure when he exited the haze of the drug and the effort, that the combination of adrenaline and cataphoric would serve, but his heart was going like a hammer and he was able to do very little more after that than fall face down on the bed and count the beats of his heart, hoping he had not killed himself.

Fool was the word for a designer who got into his own sets and started moving them around.

Not much different, though, from what the test-unit azi did, when they organized their own mental compartmentalizations and controlled the extent to which they integrated new tape. It was a question of knowing one's own mental map, very, very thoroughly.

He turned off the computer, turned off the lights and locked the office door on his way out, walking the deserted hall to go back to that empty apartment and wait through another night.

Azi responses, dim and primal, said go to another Supervisor. Find help. Take a pill. Accept no stress in deep levels.

Of course doing the first was extremely foolish: he was not at all tempted. But taking a pill and sleeping through the night under sedation was very, very tempting. If he sedated himself deeply enough he could get through the night and go meet Justin's plane in the morning: it was only reasonable, perhaps even advisable, since the trank itself would present a problem to anyone who came after him, and if they were going to try anything at the last moment—

No, it was a very simple matter to delay a plane. They could always get more time, if they suddenly decided they needed it.

Mostly, he decided, he did not trank himself because he felt there was some benefit in getting through this without it; and that thought, perhaps, did not come from the logical underside of his mind—except that he saw value in endocrine-learning, which the constantly reasonable, sheltered, take-a-tape-and-feel-good way did not let happen. If it were an azi world everything would be black and white and very, very clear. It was the grays of flux-thinking that made born-men. Shaded responses in shaded values, acquired under endocrine instability.

He did not enjoy pain. But he saw value in the by-product.

He also saw value in having the trank in his pocket, a double dose loaded in a hypospray, because if they tried to take him anywhere, he could give them a real medical emergency to worry about.

iii

Nelly, Ari reflected, was still having her troubles.

"We have to be careful with her," Ari said to Florian and Catlin, in a council in Florian and Catlin's room, while Nelly was in the dining room helping Seely clean up.

"Yes, sera," Florian said earnestly; Catlin said nothing, which was normal: Catlin always let Florian talk if she agreed. Which was not to say Catlin was shy. She was just that way.

And Nelly had taken severe exception to Catlin showing Ari how to do an over-the-shoulder throw in the living room.

"You'll hurt yourself!" Nelly had cried. "Florian, Catlin, you should have better sense!"

Actually, it was Florian who was the one with the complaint coming, since Florian was the one on the floor. He was being the Enemy. Florian was all right: he could land and come right back up again, but Catlin wasn't teaching her what to do next, just first, and Florian was lying down being patient while Catlin was showing her how to make sure he wouldn't get up.

Nelly had heard the thump, that was all, and come flying in after Florian was down in the middle of the rug. Catlin was demonstrating how to break somebody's neck, but she was doing it real slow. If Catlin was really doing it and pulling it, she was so fast you could hardly see what she did. Catlin and Florian had showed her how to fall down and roll right up again. It was mar-velous what they could do.

Sometimes they played Ambush, when they had the suite to themselves. You turned out the lights and had to find your way through.

She was always the one who was Got. That was all right. She was getting harder to Get and she was learning things all the time. It was a lot more fun than Amy Carnath.

Florian showed her a whole lot of things about computers and how to set Traps and do real nasty things with a Minder, like blow somebody up if you had a bomb, but they kept those down in the Military section. She knew about voice-prints and how the Minder knew who you were, and how handprint locks were linked into the House computer, along with retina-scans and all sorts of things; and how to make the electric locks open without a keycard.

Florian found out a lot of things, real fast. He said the House residential locks were all a special kind that was real hard to get past. He said that uncle Denys' apartment had a lot of interesting stuff, like really special special locks, that were tied in somewhere Florian couldn't trace, but he thought it was Security: he said he could try to find out, but he could get in trouble and they were Olders and he would do it only if she wanted.

He wouldn't tell her that until they were outside, because he and Catlin had found out other things.

Like the Minder could listen to you.

It was a special kind, Florian had told her: it could hear anything and see anything, and it was specially quiet, so you never knew; and specially shielded, with the tape functions somewhere outside the apartment. The lenses and the pickups could be small as pinheads, the lenses could be fish-eyed and the pickups could be all kinds, motion detection and sound. "They can put one of those in the walls," Florian said, "and it's so tiny and so transparent you can't see it unless you go over the walls with a bright light sort of sideways, or if you've got equipment, which is the best, but they have real good focus. Then they can digitalize and you can get it a lot tighter than that. Same with the audio. They can run a voice-stress on you. If they want something they can get it. That's if they want to. It's a lot of work. Most Minders are real simple and you can get into them. The ones in the House are all the complicated kind, all security, all built-ins, and it's really hard to spot all the pickups if they set them into the cement between stones and stuff. "

That had made her feel real upset. "Even in the bathroom?" she had asked.

Florian had nodded. "Especially, because if you're setting up surveillance, they're going to try to go places they don't think they'll have a bug. "

She had gone to uncle Denys then, and asked, worried:

"Uncle Denys, is there a bug in my bathroom?"

And uncle Denys had said: "Who told you that?"

"Is there?"

"It's for Security, " uncle Denys had said. "Don't worry about it. They don't turn them on unless they have to. "

"I don't want it in my bathroom!"

"Well, you're not a thief, either, dear, are you? And if you were, the alarm would go off in Security and the Minder would watch and listen. Don't worry. "

"Yes, ser, " she said; and had Florian go over the whole bathroom till he found the lenses and the pickups and put a dab of clay over them. Except the one in the wall-speaker. So she hung a towel over it, and Nelly kept moving it, but she always put it back.

Florian found the ones in the bedroom too, but uncle Denys called her in and told her Security had found the bathroom pickups dead in a regular test they ran, and he would let her cover up the bathroom ones, but the rest were apartment Security, and she had better not mess with them.

So they hadn't.

That wasn't the only Security, either. Catlin said Seely was Security. So was Abban, Giraud's azi. She could tell. Florian said he thought so too.

Catlin taught her things too: how to stand so still nobody could hear you, and where all the spots were that you ought to hit for if somebody attacked you.

So uncle Denys didn't need to worry so much about security all the time, and didn't need to worry about her being in the halls. And when maman's letter came—it had to come, soon; she had the months figured out—then she could take care of herself going to Fargone.

She was a lot more scared of going where there were strangers than she had ever been, since she had begun to understand there were a lot of people outside Reseune who wanted to break into places and steal and a lot who would kill you or grab you and steal you; but at least it was a scared that knew how to spot somebody being wrong; and she was learning how to handle nasty people more than by getting Hold of them and Working them.

She would really like to do it to Amy Carnath.

But that was where you stopped thinking about like-to and knew how wide that would go, all over the place, and Amy would really be dead, which meant something you couldn't take back and you couldn't Work and you couldn't get Hold of.

You got a lot more by Working people, if you had the time.

That was something she showed Florian and Catlin a little about. But not too much. First, they were azi, and you couldn't push them and it was hard to show them without doing it; and, second, she didn't want them learning how to do it at her.

For one thing she had to be best at it. She was their Super.

For another, they made her scared sometimes; sometimes she really wanted them, and sometimes she wished she didn't have them, because they made her mad and they made her laugh and they made her think sometimes, in the middle of the night, that she shouldn't like them that much, because maman might not let them come.

She didn't know why she thought that, but it hurt a lot, and she hated it when people made her scared; and she hated it when people made her hurt.

"We shouldn't get in trouble, " she said to Florian and Catlin, when they were in the room after Nelly had scolded them; and finally, because it was on her mind, sneaked up on what she had been wanting to tell them for a long time, but it was hard to put words on it and it made her stomach upset. "I know a lot of people who aren't here anymore. You get in trouble and they get Disappeared. "

"What's that?" Florian asked.

"They just aren't here anymore. "

"Dead?" Catlin asked.

Her heart jumped. She shook her head, hard. "Just Disappeared. Out to Fargone or somewhere. " The next was hard to talk about. She warned them with her face to be real quiet or she would be mad, because it wasn't Nelly she was going to talk about. "My maman and her azi got Disappeared. She didn't want to. Uncle Denys said she had real important business out on Fargone. Maybe that's so. Maybe it isn't. Maybe it's what they tell you because you're a kid. A lot of kids got Disappeared, too. That's why I'm real careful. You've got to be careful. "

"If anybody Disappears us, " Catlin said, "we'll come back. "

That was like Catlin. Catlin would, too, Ari thought, or at least Catlin and Florian would do a lot of damage.

"My maman is real smart, " she said, "and Ollie is real strong, and I'm not sure they just grab you. I think maybe they Work you, you know, they psych you. "

"Who's our Enemy?" Florian asked.

It was the way they thought. Her heart beat hard. She had never, ever talked about it with anyone. She had never, ever thought about it the way the azi did, without being in the middle of it. Things suddenly made sense when you thought the way they did, straight and plain, without worrying. And when you thought: what if it could be an Enemy? She sat trying to think about who could do things like grab people and psych people and Disappear strong grown-up people without them being able to do anything about it.

She dragged Florian real close and whispered right into his ear between her two hands, the way you had to do if you really wanted something to be secret, because of the Minder—and if they were talking about an Enemy, you didn't know where you were safe. "I think it might be Giraud. But he's not a regular Enemy. He can give you orders. He can give Security orders. "

Florian looked real upset. Catlin elbowed him and he leaned over and whispered in Catlin's ear the same way.

Then Catlin looked scared, and Catlin didn't do that. She pulled Catlin close and whispered: "That's the only one I know could have Got my maman. "

Catlin whispered in her ear: "Then you have to Get him first. "

"He might not be it!" she whispered.

She sat and she thought, while Catlin passed it to Florian. Florian said something back, and then leaned forward and said to her: "We shouldn't be talking about this now. " She looked at Florian, upset.

"An Older is real dangerous, " Florian said. And in the faintest whisper of all: "Please, sera. Tomorrow. Outside. "

They understood her, then. They believed her, not just because they were azi. What she said made sense to them. She tucked up her legs in her arms and felt shaky and stupid and mad at herself; and at the same time thought she had not put a lot of things together because she hadn't had any way of making it make sense. She had thought things just happened because they happened, because they had always happened and the world was that way. But that was stupid. It wasn't just things that happened, people made things happen, and Florian and Catlin knew that the way she should have known it if it hadn't always been there, all the time.

What's unusual? was a game they played. Florian or Catlin would say: What's unusual in the living room? And they timed how long it took you to find it. Once or twice she beat Catlin and once she beat Florian at finding it; a couple of times she set things up they had to give on. She wasn't stupid about things like that. But she felt that way about this.

The stupid part was thinking things had to be the way they were. The stupid part was that she had thought when maman went away, that someone had made her go, but then she had just fitted everything together so that wasn't so important—if maman had had to go without her, it was because she was too young and it was too dangerous. And that was what she had been looking at, when the Something Unusual was sitting right in plain sight beside it.

The stupid part now was the way she still didn't want to think all the way to the end of it, about how if there was an enemy and he Got maman, she didn't really know whether maman was all right; and she was scared.

She remembered arguing with uncle Denys about the party last year. And her not wanting Giraud to come; and uncle Denys said: That's not nice, Ari. He's my brother.

That was scary too.

That was scary, because uncle Giraud might get uncle Denys to do things. Uncle Giraud had Security; and they might get into her letters. They might just stop the letters going to maman at all.

And that tore up everything.

Stupid. Stupid.

She felt sick all over. And she couldn't ask uncle Denys what was true. Denys would say: He's my brother.

iv

Giraud poured more water and drank, tracking on the reports, bored while the tutors argued over the relative merits of two essays, one out of archives, one current.

Denys, Peterson, Edwards, Ivanov, and Morley: all of them around a table, discussing the implications of vocabulary choice in eight-year-olds. It was not Giraud's field. It was, God help them, Peterson's.

"The verbal development, " Peterson said, in the stultifying murmur that was Peterson in full display, "is point seven off, the significant anomaly in the Gonner Developmentals.... "

"I don't think there's any cause for worry, " Denys said. "The difference is Jane and Olga, not Ari and Ari. "

"Of course there is some argument that the Gonner battery is weighted away from concept. Hermann Poling maintained in his article in—"

It went on. Giraud drew small squares on his notepaper. Peterson did good work. Ask him a question, he had a pre-recorded lecture. Teacher's disease. Colleagues and strangers got the same as his juvenile subjects.

"In sum, " Giraud said, finally, when the water was at half in his glass, and his paper was full of squares. "In sum, in brief, then, you believe the difference was Olga. "

"The Poling article—"

"Yes. Of course. And you don't think corrective tape is necessary. "

"The other scores indicate a very substantial correspondence—"

"What John means—" Edwards said, "is that she's understanding everything, she knows the words, but so much of her development was precocious, she had an internal vocabulary worked out that for her is a kind of shorthand. "

"There may be a downside effect to insisting on a shift of vocabulary, " Denys said. "Possibly it doesn't describe what she's seeing. She simply prefers slang and her own internal jargon, which I haven't tried to discourage. She does know the words, the tests prove that. Also, I'm not certain we're seeing the whole picture. I rather well think she's resisting some of the exams. "

"Why?"

"Jane, " Denys said. "The child hasn't forgotten. I hoped the letters would taper off with time. I hoped that the azi could make a difference in that. "

"You don't think, " Edwards said, "that the way that was handled—tended to make her cling to that stage; I mean, a subconscious emphasis on that stage of her life, a clinging to those memories, a refusal—as it were, to leave that stage, a kind of waiting. "

"That's an interesting theory, " Giraud said, leaning forward on his arms. "Is there any particular reason?"

"The number of times she says: 'My maman said—' The tone of voice. "

"I want a voice-stress on that, " Denys said.

"No problem, " Giraud said. "It's certainly worth pursuing. Does she reference other people?"

"No, " Edwards said.

"Not family members. Not friends. Not the azi. "

"Nelly. 'Nelly says. ' When it regards something about home. Sometimes 'my uncle Denys doesn't mind' this or that.... She doesn't respect Nelly's opinions, she doesn't respect much Nelly says, but she evidences a desire not to upset her. 'Uncle Denys' is a much more respectful reference, but more that she uses the name as currency. She's quite willing to remind you that 'my uncle Denys' takes an interest in things. " Edwards cleared his throat. "Quite to the point, she hints her influence with 'uncle Denys' can get me a nicer office. "

Denys snorted in surprise, and laughed then, to Edwards' relief. "Like the party invitation?"

"Much the same thing. "

"What about Ollie?" Giraud asked.

"Quite rarely. Almost never. I'm being precise now. I'd say she used to mention Ollie right after Jane left. Now—I don't think I've heard that name in a long time. Maybe more than a year. "

"Interesting. Justin Warrick?"

"She never mentions him. I did, if you recall. She was quite anxious to quit the subject. That name never comes up. "

"Worth the time on the computers to run a name search, " Denys said.

On all those tapes. On years of tapes. Giraud let his breath flow out and nodded. More personnel. More time on the computers.

Dammit, there was pressure outside. A lot of pressure. They were prepared to go public finally, to break the story; and they had an anomaly; they had a child far less serious than the first Ari, far more capricious and more restrained in temper. The azi had not helped. There was a little more seriousness to the child lately, a little gain in vocabulary: Florian and Catlin were better at essay than she was, but the hard edge was not there, maman was still with Ari in a very persistent sense, and the Warrick affair, Yanni's sudden revelation that young Justin had handed them something that stymied the Sociology computers—

Give it to Jordan, Denys had suggested. Send him to Jordan. The Warricks are far less likely to cause trouble with the Project if they're busy, and you know Jordan would work on the damned thing, no matter what it was, if it gave him a chance to see his son.

Which was trouble with Defense: they were jealous of Warrick's time. There was a chance Defense would take official interest in Justin Warrick: there was no way to run him past their noses unnoticed, and in the way of Defense, Defense wanted anything that might seem to be important, or useful, or suddenly anomalous.

Damn, and damn.

Ari wanted him, Yanni had said. And, dammit, there's something there.

There was the paradox of the Project: how wide the replication had to be. How many individuals, essential to each other? Thank God the first Ari's society had been extremely limited in terms of personal contacts—but it had been much more open in terms of news-services and public contact from a very early age.

"We've got to go ahead, " Giraud said. "Dammit, we've got to take her public, for a whole host of reasons, Lu's out of patience and we're running out of time! We can't be wrong, there's no way we can afford to be wrong. "

No one said anything. It was too evident what the stakes were.

"The triggers are all there, " Petros said. "Not all of them have been invoked. I think a little more pressure. Academic will do. Put it on her. Frustrate her. Give her things she's bound to fail in. Accelerate the program. "

That had consistently been Petros' advice.

"She hasn't met intellectual frustration, " Denys said, "—yet. "

"We don't want her bloody bored with school, either, " Giraud snapped. "Maybe it is an option. What do the computers say lately, when they're not running Warrick's school projects?"

"Do we run it again?" Peterson asked. "I don't think there's going to be a significant change. I just don't believe you can discount the results we have. Accelerating the program when there's an anomaly in question—"

Petros leaned forward, jaw jutting. "Allowing the program to stagnate while the anomaly proliferates is your answer, is it?"

"Dr. Ivanov, allow me to make my point—"

"I know your damn point, we know your damn point, doctor. "

Giraud poured another glass of water.

"Enough on it, " he said. "Enough. We run the damn tests. We take the computer time. We get our answers. Let's have the query in tomorrow, can we do that?"

Mostly, he thought, the voice-stress was the best lead. All those lesson-sessions to scan.

The Project ate computer time at an enormous rate. And the variances kept proliferating.

So did the demands of the Council investigating committee, that wanted to get into documents containing more and more details of Science Bureau involvement in the Gehenna project, because Alliance was asking hard questions, wanting more and more information on the Gehenna colonists, and Unking it to the betterment of Alliance-Union relations.

The Centrists and the Abolitionists wanted the whole archives opened. Giraud's intelligence reported Mikhail Corain was gathering evidence, planning to call for a Council bill of Discovery to open the entire Emory archives, charging that there were other covert projects, other timebombs waiting, and that the national security took precedence over Reseune's sovereignty: that Reseune had no right to the notes and papers which Ariane Emory had accrued while serving as Councillor for Science, that those became Union property on her death, and that a bill of Discovery was necessary to find out what was Reseune's and what of Emory's papers belonged to Union archives.

There were timebombs, for certain. The essential one was aged eight, and exposing her to the vitriol and the hostility in Novgorod—making her the center of controversy—

Everything came down to that critical point. They had to go public.

Before they ended up with a Discovery bill opening all Ari's future secrets into public view, where a precocious eight-year-old could access them out of sequence.

v

In mornings it was always lessons, and Ari took hers with Dr. Edwards in his office or in the study lab, but it was not just mornings now, it was after lunch in the library and the tape-lab, so there was a lot of follow-up and Dr. Edwards asked her questions and gave her tests.

Catlin and Florian had lessons every day too, their own kind, down in the Town at a place they called Green Barracks; and one day a week they had to stay in Green Barracks overnight. That was when they did a Room or did special drill. But most times they were able to meet her at the library or the lab and walk her home.

They did this day, both of them very proper and solemn in their black uniforms, but more solemn than usual, when they walked down to the doors and out to the crosswalk.

"This is as safe as we can find to talk, " Catlin said.

"But you don't know, " Florian said. "There's equipment that can hear you this far if they want to. You can't say they won't, you can just keep changing places so if they're not really expecting you to say something they want right then they won't bother. Set-up is a lot of work if your Subject moves around a lot. "

"If they didn't hear us last night, I don't think they would be onto us, " Ari said. She knew how to be nice enough not to get in trouble without being too nice and making people think she was up to something. But she didn't say that. She walked with them along toward the fishpond. She had brought food in her pocket. "What were you going to tell me?"

"It's this, " said Catlin. "You should hit your Enemy first if you can. But you have to be sure, first thing, who it is. Then how many, where are they, what have they got? That's the next thing you have to find out. "

"When your Enemy is an Older, " Florian said, "it's real hard to know that, because they know so much more. "

"If he's not expecting it, " Catlin said, "anybody can be Got. "

"But if we try and miss, " Florian said, "they will try to Disappear us. So we re not sure, sera. I think we could Get them. For real. I could steal some stuff that would. They put it in Supply, and they're real careless. They ought to fix that. But I can get it. And we could kill the Enemy, just it's real dangerous. You get one chance with an Older. Usually just one. "

"But if you don't know where his partners are, " Catlin said, "they'll Get you. It depends on how much that's worth. "

That made a lot of things she was thinking fall into place. Click. She walked along with her hands in her pockets and said: "And if you don't know all those things, it's more than getting caught; it's not knowing what one to grab next. There's things that run all over Reseune, there's what his partners are going to do, there's who's friends and who's not, and who's going to take Hold of things, and we can't do that. "

"I don't know, " Florian said. "You'd have to know those things, sera, we wouldn't. I know we could Get one, maybe two, if we split up, or if we could get the targets together. That's the main ones. But it's not near all the ones that would be after us. "

They reached the fishpond. Ari knelt down at the edge of the water and took the bag of fish-food out of her pocket. Catlin and Florian squatted beside her. "Here, " she said, passing them the bag to get their own, and then tossed a bit into the water for the white one that came up, from under the lilies. White-and-red was almost as fast. She watched the rings go out from the food, and from the strike, and the lilies swaying. "He's not easy, " she said finally. We can't Get everything. There are too many hook-ups. Connections. He's important; he's got a lot of people, not just in Reseune, and what he's got– Security, for one thing. I don't know what else. So even if he was gone—" It was strange and upsetting to be talking about killing somebody. It didn't feel real. But it was. Florian and Catlin really could do it. She was not sure that made her feel safer, but it made her feel less like things were closing in on her. "—We'd still be in trouble.

"Also, " she said, "they could Get my maman and Ollie. For real. " They didn't understand that part, she thought, because they had never had a maman, but they looked at her like they took it very seriously. "I'm afraid they could have. They're at Fargone. I sent letters. They should have got there by now. Now I'm not sure—" Dammit, she was going to snivel. She saw Florian and Catlin look at her all distressed. "—I'm not sure, " she said in a rush, hard and mad, "they ever got sent. "

They didn't understand, for sure. She tried to think of what she had left out they had to know.

"If there is an Enemy, " she said, "I don't know what they want. Sometimes I thought maman left me here because it was too dangerous to go with her. Sometimes I thought she left me here because they made her. But I don't know why, and I don't know why she didn't tell me. "

The azi didn't say anything for a minute. Then Florian said: "I don't think I'd try to say. I don't think Catlin can. It's CIT. I don't understand CITs. "

"CITs have connections, " she said. It was like telling them how to Work someone. She felt uneasy telling them. She explained, making a hook out of two fingers to hook together. "To other CITs. Like you to Catlin and Catlin to you and both of you to me. Sometimes not real strong. Sometimes real, real strong. That's the first thing. CITs do things for each other, sometimes because it feels good, sometimes because they're Working each other. And sometimes they do things to Get each other. A lot of times it's to protect themselves, sometimes their connections: connections are a lot more in danger, sometimes, if you don't let your Enemy be sure where your connections are, and whether some of them are to people he's connected to. Like building-sticks. "

Wide, attentive stares. Anxious stares. Even from Catlin.

"So you can Work somebody to make them do something if you want to, if you tell him you'll hurt him or hurt somebody he's connected to. Like if somebody was going to hurt me, you'd react. " While she was saying it she thought: So it's maman they must want something out of, because maman's important. If that's true she's all right. They're Working her with me.

It couldn't be the other way. They haven't told me they'd hurt maman.

Could that be?

But they're Olders, like Florian says, and they always know more and they don't tell you everything you need.

"That's one way to Work people, " she said. "There's others. Like finding out what they want and almost doing it and then not, if they don't make you happy. But maman wouldn't leave me just for something she wanted. "

Would she?

Is there anything she would want more than me?

Ollie?

"There's ways to Get someone that way, " she said, "instead of just Working them. You get them to get in trouble. It's not real hard. Except you have to know—"

What can get Giraud in trouble?

What could I get instead if I could Work him like that?

"—you have to know the same things: who are they, how many are there, what have they got? It's the same thing. But you can find out by Working them a little and then watching what they do. "

Their eyes never left her. They were learning, that was what, they were paying attention the way azi could, and they would never ask questions until she was done.

"Me, " she said, thinking carefully about how much she was giving away, "I don't give anybody anything I don't have to. They take Nelly in and they ask her stuff and she'll tell them right off. I can't Work that. I wish I could. But if they try to take you, I'll Work them good. It's easier. Uncle Denys said you're mine. So if Security tells you to go to hospital, you go right to me first. That's an order. All right?"

"Yes, sera. " One movement, one nod at the same time.

"But, " Florian said, "we're not like Nelly. Nobody but you can give us orders. They'd have to go to you first and you have to tell us. That's the Rule, because otherwise we're supposed to Get them. "

She had not known that. She had never even suspected that. It made her feel a lot better in one way, and feel threatened in another. Like everything had always been a lot more serious than she had thought. And they had always known. "If you come to me, I'll tell them no. But they're stronger than you are. "

"That's so, " Catlin said. "But that's the Rule. And they know it. Nobody else's orders. "

She drew a long breath. "Even if uncle Denys is a Super. "

"Not for us, " Catlin said. "You told us mind him. And Nelly. We'll do that. But if it's any big thing we come to you. "

"You come to me first after this, if it's anything more than a 'pick that up. ' You don't go anywhere they tell you and you don't go with anybody they tell you, until after you tell me. "

"Good. If you tell us that, that's the Rule. "

"You be sneaky about it. Don't fight. Just get away. "

"That's smart. That's real good, sera. "

"And you don't ever, ever tell on me, no matter who asks. You lie if you have to. You be real smooth and then you come and tell me what they asked. "

"Yes, sera. " Both of them nodded, definitely.

"Then I'll tell you a big secret. I never tell anybody everything. Like on my exam this morning. I could have put down more. But I won't. You don't let anybody but me know what you really know. "

"Is that a Rule?"

"That's a big Rule. There's a boy named Sam: I used to play with him. He's the one that gave me the bug. He's not real smart, but everybody likes Sam—and I figured out it's easier to be Sam most of the time. That way I can get a lot of people to be nicer: that way even stupid people can understand everything I need them to if I'm going to Work them. But they can't know you're not like that, you can't let them find out from anybody. So you do it all the time. I learned that from Sam and uncle Denys. He does it. He's smart, he always uses little words, and he's real good at getting points on people. That's one thing you do. You don't want them to know you're doing it unless that's part of the Working. And we don't. So here's what we do. We start being real nice to Giraud. But not right off. The first thing we do is shake him up. Then we let him yell, then we act like he yelled too much, then we get him to do something nice to make up for it. Then he won't be surprised when we start being nice, because he thinks he's Working us. That's how you Work an Older. "

"That's sneaky, " Catlin said, and actually grinned.

"I'll tell you another secret. I've been counting What's Unusuals. It's Unusual that people Disappear. It's Unusual that maman didn't tell me she was going or even say goodbye. It's Unusual Nelly goes to the hospital all the time. It's Unusual a CIT kid has two azi to Super. It's Unusual I have to get my blood tested every few days. It's Unusual I go to adult parties and other kids don't. It's Unusual I'm so smart. It's Unusual you're on a job when you're still kids. I'm still counting the Unusuals. I think there's a lot of them. A whole lot. I want you to think and tell me all the ones you know. And tell what you can do to find out stuff without getting caught. "

vi

The plane touched and braked and rolled toward the terminal, and Grant gave a sigh of profoundest relief, watching it from the windows.

There was still a lot to wait through: there was a Decon procedure for anything coming in from the other hemisphere, not just the passengers having to go through Decontamination, but the luggage had to be treated and searched, and the plane itself had to be hosed down and fumigated.

That was starting when Grant left the windows and walked over to the Decon section and stationed himself outside the white doors, hands locked between his knees, flexing and clenching—nervous tic, that. You have a lot of tension, a Supervisor would tell him, who saw it.

A Supervisor could say that about any CIT anytime, Grant reckoned. Flux-thinking bred it. Azi-mindset said: there's not enough data to solve the problem, and the sane and sensible azi filed it and blanked out to rest or worked on another problem. A CIT threw himself at a data-insufficient problem over and over, exploring the flux in his perceptions and shades of value in his opinions, and touching off his endocrine system, which in turn brought up his flux-capable learning—which hyped the integrative processes in the flux. He was doing too much of it lately for his liking. He hated the stress level CITs lived at.

And here he was sitting here worrying about four and five problems at once, simply because he had become an adrenaline addict.

The white doors opened. Part of the crew came out. They ignored him and walked on down the hall.

Then the doors opened again, and Justin came through. Grant got up, caught the relief and the delight in Justin's expression and went and hugged him because Justin offered him open arms.

"Are you all right?" Grant asked.

"I'm fine. Jordan's fine. " Justin pulled him out of the way of more people coming out the doors, and walked with him behind them. "Got to pick up my briefcase and my bag, " he said, and they walked to Baggage, where it was waiting, fogged, irradiated, and, Grant reckoned, searched and scanned, case and light travel bag alike.

"I'll carry them, " Grant said.

"I've got them. " Justin gathered everything up and they walked to the doors, to the waiting bus that would take them up to the House.

"Was it a good trip?" Grant said, when they were where no eavesdropper could likely pick it up, going out the doors into the dark.

"It was, " Justin said, and gave the bags to the azi baggage handler.

Security was in the bus, ordinary passengers like themselves, from this point. They sat down, last aboard. The driver shut the doors and Justin slumped in the seat as the bus pulled out of the lighted portico of the terminal and headed up toward the house.

"I got to talk to Jordan. We stayed up all night. Just talking. We both wished you were there. "

"So do I. "

"It's a lot better there than I thought it was. A lot worse in some ways and a lot better. There's a good staff. Really fine people. He's getting along a lot better than I thought he would. And Paul is fine. Both of them. " Justin was a little hoarse. Exhausted. He leaned his head on the seat-back and said: "He's going to look at my projects. He says at least there's something there that the computers aren't handling. That he's interested and he's not just saying that to get me there. There's a good chance I can go back before the year's out. Maybe you too. Or you instead. He'd really like to see you. "

"I'm glad, " Grant said.

There was not much they could say, in detail. He was glad. Glad when they pulled up in the portico of the House, checked in through the front door, and Justin doggedly, stubbornly, insisted to carry his own baggage, tired as he was.

"You don't carry my bags, " Justin snapped at him, hoarsely.

Because Justin hated him playing servant in public, even when he was trying to do him an ordinary favor.

But Justin let him take them and put them over against the wall when they were inside, in their own apartment, and Justin took his coat off and fell onto the couch with a sigh. "It was good, " he said. "All the way. It's hard to believe I was there. Or that I'm back. It's so damned different. "

"Whiskey?"

"A little one. I slept on the plane. I'm out, already. "

Grant smiled at him, Justin half-nodding with time-lag. He went and fixed the whiskey, never mind now that he was playing servant. He made two of them.

"How's it been here?" Justin asked, and there was a small upset at Grant's stomach.

"Fine, " he said. "Just fine. " The upset was more when he brought the drink and gave it into Justin's hand.

Justin took it. His hand shook when he drank a sip of it, and Justin looked up at him with the most terrible, weary look. And smiled with the same expression as he lifted the glass in a wry toast. There was no way for either of them to know, of course, whether the other had been tampered with.

But that was all right: there was nothing either of them could do about it, if Security had done anything. There was nothing, Grant thought, worth the fight for either of them if that was the case.

Grant lifted his glass the same way, and drank.

Then he went to the bedroom and pulled a note out from under Justin's pillow. He brought it back to him.

If I'm showing this to you, it said, I'm in my right mind. If I didn't, and you just found it, I'm not. Be warned.

Justin looked at him in frightened surmise. And then in earnest question.

Grant smiled at him, wadded up the note, and sat down to drink his whiskey.

vii

It wasn't hard at all to get out the kitchen way. They didn't go together. Catlin and Florian went first because they were Security and the kitchen staff wouldn't know they shouldn't: Security went everywhere.

Then Ari went in. She Worked her way through, made herself a pest to the azi who was mixing up batter, and got a taste, then went over to the azi chopping up onions and said it made her cry. So she went out onto the kitchen steps and dived right off and down, and ran fast to get down the hill, where the hump was Florian and Catlin told her about.

She slid down on her back and rolled over and grinned as they looked at her, lying on their stomachs too.

"Come on, " Catlin said then. She was being Team Leader. She was the best at sneaking.

So they followed her, slithered down to the back of the pump building where she stripped off her blouse and her pants and put on the ones Florian gave her, azi-black. Getting shoes that fit was harder, so she had bought some black boots on uncle Denys' card that worked all right if nobody looked close. And she was wearing those. Florian got her card off her blouse and taped a black band across the bottom and a mark like the azi triangle in the CIT blank.

"Do I look right?" she said when she had clipped the card on.

"Face, " Catlin said. So she made an azi face, very stiff and formal.

"That's good, " Catlin said.

And Catlin slithered over, looked around the corner of the pump building, then got up and walked out. They followed Catlin as far as the road, and then they just walked together like they belonged there.

It was going to take them a while to miss her up at the House, Ari thought, and then Security was going to get real upset.

Meanwhile she had never seen the Town except from the House, and she wished they could walk faster, because she wanted to see as much as she could before they got caught.

Or before she decided to go back, somewhere around dark. It was going to be fun at the same time as it was not going to be: it was going to be a lot of trouble, but she really hoped they could sneak back up and get her clothes, and just sneak back in by the kitchen, when everyone was really in a panic. But that might look too smart, and that might make them watch her too close.

It was better to be Sam, and get caught.

That way she would say she made her azi do it, and that would work, because they had to take her orders, and everybody knew that. So they wouldn't get in any trouble. She would. And that was what she wanted.

She just wanted to have a little fun before they caught her.

viii

The problem was running, the computer working timeshare on a Beta-class design and going slow this morning, because Yanni Schwartz had the integra-tive set running: everyone else got a lower priority. So Justin leaned back, got up, poured himself a cup of coffee, and filled Grant's empty cup, Grant working away at his terminal in that kind of fixed concentration that was not going to lose that chain of thought if the ceiling fell around him.

Grant reached over without even looking away from the screen, picked up the coffee cup and took a sip.

Someone arrived in the door, brusque, abrupt, and more than one. Justin's ears had already registered that as he looked around, saw Security black, and had a man in his office, two others behind him.

Muscles tightened, gut tightened in panic.

"You're wanted in Security, " the man said.

"What for?"

"No questions. Just come with us. "

He thought of the hot coffee in his hands, and Grant had noticed, Grant was getting up from his chair, as another Security guard moved in behind the first.

"Let's go straighten this out, " Justin said calmly, and put the cup down.

"Let me shut down, " Grant said.

"Now!" the officer said.

"My program—"

"Grant, " Justin said, articulate, he did not know how. It was happening, the thing he had been expecting for a long, long time; and he thought of doing them all the damage he could. But it could be something he could talk his way out of. Whatever it was. And there was, whatever else, enough force at Reseune Administration's disposal to take care of two essentially sedentary tape-designers, however well-exercised.

The only thing he could hope for was to keep the situation calm, the way he had mapped it out in his mind years ago. He kept his hands in sight, he got himself and Grant peacefully out the door, he walked with the Security guards without complaint, to take the lift down to the basement storm-tunnel.

The lift door opened, they walked out as the guards directed. "Hands on the wall, " the officer said.

"Grant, " he said, catching Grant by the arm, feeling the tension. "It's all right. We'll sort it out. "

He turned to the wall himself, waited while two of them searched Grant for weapons and put on the handcuffs, then took his own turn. "I don't suppose, " he said calmly as he could with his face against the wall and his arms pulled behind him, "you people know what this is about. "

"Come along, " the officer said, and faced him about again.

No information. After that at least the guards were less worried.

Keep to the script. Cooperate. Stay calm and give absolutely no trouble.

Through a locked door into a Security zone, lonelier and lonelier in the concrete corridors. He had never seen this part of Reseune's storm-tunnels in all his life, and he hoped to hell they were going to Security.

Another locked door, and a lift, with the designation SECURITY 10N on the opposing wall: he was overwhelmingly glad to see that sign.

Up, then, with extraordinary abruptness. The doors opened on a hall he did know, the back section of Security, a hall that figured in his nightmares.

"This is familiar, " he said lightly, to Grant; and suddenly the guards were pulling Grant off toward one of the side rooms and himself off down the hall, toward an interview room he remembered.

"Don't we get checked in?" he asked, fighting down the panic, walking with them on legs suddenly gone shaky. "I hate to complain, but you're violating procedures all the way through this. "

Neither of them spoke to him. They took him into the room, made him sit down in a hard chair facing the interview desk, and stayed there, grim and silent, behind him.

Someone else came in behind him. He turned his head and twisted to see who it was. Giraud.

"Thank God, " Justin said, half meaning it. "I'm glad to see somebody who knows the answers around here. What in hell's going on, do you mind?"

Giraud walked on to the desk and sat down on the corner of it. Positional intimidation. Moderate friendliness. "You tell me. "

"Look, Giraud, I'm not in any position to know a thing. I'm working in my office, these fellows come in and haul me over here, and I haven't even seen the check-in desk. What's going on here?"

"Where did you go for lunch?"

"I skipped lunch. We both did. We worked right through. Come on, Giraud, what does lunch have to do with anything?"

"Ari's missing. "

"What do you mean missing?" His heart started doubling its beats, hammering in his chest. "Like—late from lunch? Or missing?"

"Maybe you know. Maybe you know all about it. Maybe you lured her outside. Maybe she just went with a friend. "

"God. No. "

"Something Jordan and you set up?"

"No. Absolutely not. My God, Giraud, ask the guards at Planys, there wasn't a time we weren't watched. Not a moment. "

"That they remember, no. "

It had reached to Jordan. He stared at Giraud, having trouble breathing.

"We're going over your apartment, " Giraud said calmly. "Never mind your rights, son, we're not being recorded. I'll tell you what we've found. Ari went out the kitchen door, all right. We found her clothes at the back of the pump station. "

"My God. " Justin shook his head. "No. I don't know anything. "

"That's a wide shore down there, " Giraud said. "Easy for someone to land and get in. Is that what happened? You get the girl out to a meeting, where you don't show up, but someone else does?"

"No. No. No such thing. She's probably playing a damn prank, Giraud, it's a damn kid escapade—didn't you ever dodge out of the House when you were a kid?"

"We're searching the shore. We've got patrols up. You understand, we're covering all the routes. "

"I wouldn't hurt that kid! I wouldn't do it, Giraud. "

Giraud stared at him, face flushed, with a terrible, terrible restraint. "You'll understand we're not going to take your word. "

"I understand that. Dammit, I want the kid found as much as you do. "

"I doubt that. "

"I'll consent. Giraud, I'll give you a consent, just for God's sake let Grant be with me. "

Giraud got up.

"Giraud, does it cost you anything? Let him be here. Is that so much? Giraud, for God's sake, let him be here!"

Giraud left in silence. "Bring the other one, " Giraud told someone in the hall.

Justin leaned against the chair arm, broken out in cold sweat, not seeing the floor, seeing Ari's apartment, seeing it in flashes that wiped out here and now. Hearing the opening of doors, the shouts in distance, the echoes of footsteps coming his way. Grant, he hoped. He hoped to God it was Grant first, and not the tech with the hypo.

ix

Olders passed them on the sidewalk and Ari kept on being azi, did just what Florian and Catlin did, made the little bow, and kept going.

They were not the only kids. There were youngers who bowed to them, solemn and earnest. And one group hardly more than babies following an Older leader in red, the youngers all in blue, all solemnly holding each other's hands.

"This is Blue, " Florian said as they walked along past the string of youngers. "Mostly youngers here. I was in that building right over there when I was a Five. "

They took the walk between the buildings, going farther and farther from the road that ran through the Town.

They had already seen Green Barracks, outside, because it would be hard to get out without questions, Catlin said; and they had seen the training field; and the Industry section, and they walked up and looked in the door of the thread mill; and the cloth mill; and the metal shop; and the flour mill.

The next sign on the walk was green, and then white in green. It was real easy to find a place in the town: she knew how to do it now. She knew the color sequence, and how the Town was laid out in sections, and how you could say, like they were now, red-to-white-to-brown-to-green, and you just remembered the string. That meant you went to red from where you were, and then you looked for red with a white square, and so on.

The next was a huge building, bigger than the mills, and they had come to the very end of the Town: fields were next, with fences that went all the way to the North Cliffs and the precip towers.

So they stood right at the edge, and looked out through the fences, where azi worked and weeded with the sniffer-pigs.

"Are there platytheres out there?" Ari asked. "Have you ever seen one?"

"I haven't, " Florian said. "But they're out there. " He pointed to where the cliffs touched the river. "That's where they come from. They've put concrete there. Deep. That stops them so far. "

She looked all along the fence to the river, and looked along the other way, toward the big barn. There were big animals there, in a pen, far away. "What are those?"

"Cows. They feed them there. Come on. I know something better. "

"Florian, " Catlin said. "That's risky. "

"What's risky?" Ari said.

Florian knew a side door to the barn. It was dark inside with light coming from open doors at the middle and down at the far end. The air was strange, almost good and not quite bad, like nothing she had ever smelled. The floor was dirt, and feed-bins, Florian called them, lined either wall. Then there were stalls. There was a goat in one.

Ari went to the rail and looked at it up close. She had seen goats and pigs up by the House, but never up close, because she was not supposed to go out on the grounds. It was white and brown. Its odd eyes looked at her, and she stared back with the strangest feeling it was thinking about her, it was alive and thinking, the way not even an AI could.

"Come on, " Catlin whispered. "Come on, they'll see us. "

She hurried with Catlin and Florian, ducked under a railing when Florian did, and followed him through a door and through a dark place and out another door into the daylight, blinking with the change.

There was a pen in front of them, and a big animal that jangled tape-memory, tapes of Earth, story-tapes of a long time ago.

"He's Horse, " Florian said, and stepped up and stood on the bottom rail.

So did she. She leaned her elbows on the top rail as Catlin stepped up beside her, and just stared with her heart thumping.

He snorted and threw his head, making his mane toss. That was what you called it. A mane. He had hooves, but not like the pigs and the goats. He had a white diamond on his forehead.

"Wait, " Florian said, and dived off the rail and went back in. He came back out with a bucket, and Horse's ears came up, Horse came right over and put his head over to the rail to eat out of the bucket.

Ari climbed a rail higher and put out her hand and stroked his fur. He smelled strong, and he felt dusty and very solid. Solid like Ollie. Solid and warm, like nothing in her life since Ollie.

"Has he got a saddle and a bridle?" she asked.

"What's that?" Florian asked.

"So you can ride him. "

Florian looked puzzled, while Horse battered away with his head in the bucket Florian was holding. "Ride him, sera?"

"Work him close to the corner. "

Florian did, so that Horse was very close to the rail. She climbed up to the last, and she put her leg out and just pushed off and landed on Horse's back.

Horse moved, real sudden, and she grabbed the mane to steer with. He felt—wonderful. Really strong, and warm.

And all of a sudden he gave a kind of a bounce and ducked his head and bounced again, really hard, so she flew off, up into the air and down again like she didn't weigh anything, the sky and the fence whirling until it was just ground.

Bang.

She was on her face, mostly. It hurt and it didn't hurt, like part of her was numb and all her bones were shaken up.

Then Catlin's voice: "Don't touch her! Careful!"

"I'm all right, " she said, tasting blood and dust, but it was hard to talk, her breath was mostly gone and her stomach hurt. She moved her leg and tried to get up on her arm, and then it really hurt.

"Look out, look out, sera, don't!" Florian's knee was right in her face, and that was good, because the pain took her breath and she fell right onto his leg instead of facedown in the dirt. "Catlin, get help! Get Andy! Fast!"

"I think I needed a saddle, " she said, thinking about it, trying not to snivel or to throw up, because she hurt all through her bones, worse than she had ever hurt, and her shoulder and her stomach were worst. There was still dust in her mouth. She thought her lip was cut. "Help me up, " she told Florian, because lying that way hurt her back.

"No, sera, please, don't move, your arm's broken. "

She tried to move on her own, to get a look at what a broken arm looked like. But she was hurting worse and worse, and she thought she would throw up if she tried.

"What did Horse do?" she asked Florian. She could not figure that.

"He just flipped his hind legs up and you flew off. I don't think he meant to, I really don't, he isn't mean. "

There were people running. She heard them, she tried to move and see them, but Florian was in the way until they were all around, azi voices, quiet and concerned, telling her the meds were coming, warning her not to move.

She wished she could get up. It was embarrassing to be lying in the dirt with everyone hovering over her and her not able to see them.

She figured Giraud was going to yell, all right; that part would work real well.

She just wished the meds would hurry.

x

Grant sat with his back braced against the padded wall, with a cramp in his folded legs gone all the way to pain under Justin's weight, but he was not about to move, not about to move even his hands, one on Justin's shoulder, one on Justin's forehead, that kept him stable and secure. No movement in the cell, no sound, while the drug slowly ebbed away.

Security would not leave them unattended. There were two guards in the soundproofed, glass-walled end of this recovery cell. Rules, they said, did not permit anyone but a physician with a detainee in recovery. But Giraud had not regarded any of the rules this far. He did whatever he wanted; and permission was easy for him, an afterthought.

Justin was awake, but he was still in that de-toxing limbo where the least sensation, the least sound magnified itself and echoed. Grant kept physical contact with him, talked to him now and again to reassure him. "Justin. It's Grant. I'm here. How are you doing?"

"All right. " Justin's eyes half-opened. "Are you clearer now?"

A little larger breath. "I'm doing all right. I'm still pretty open. "

"I've got you. Nothing's going on. I've been here all the time. "

"Good, " Justin murmured, and his eyes drifted shut again. Beyond that Grant did not attempt to go. Giraud had limited the questioning to the visit with Jordan and the possibility of Justin's involvement in Ari's disappearance. To reassure Justin there would be no more questions would be dangerous. There might be. To encourage him to talk, when they were likely being taped—was very dangerous, tranked as he was. Giraud had asked: "How do you feel about young Ari?" And Justin had said, with all his thresholds flat: "Sorry for her. " There was motion in the glass-walled booth. Grant looked up, saw Denys Nye in the room with the guards, saw them exchange words, saw the guards come and open the door into the recovery cell to let Denys in.

Grant gave Denys a hard look, locked his arms across Justin, and bent close to his ear: "Justin. Ser Denys is here, easy, I have you, I won't leave. "

Justin was aware. His eyes opened.

Denys walked very quietly for so large a man. He came close and stopped, leaning near, speaking very softly. "They've found Ari. She's all right. "

Justin's chest moved in a gasp after air. "Is that true?" he asked. "Grant, is he telling the truth?"

Grant glared at Denys, at a round, worried face, and gave up a little of his anger. "I think he may be. " He tightened his arms again so Justin could feel his presence.

"It's true, " Denys said and leaned closer, keeping his voice very, very quiet. "Justin, I'm terribly sorry. Truly I am. We'll make this up to you. " Justin's heart was hammering under his hand. "Easy, " Grant said, his own heart racing while he sorted Denys' words for content. And then because he had never felt so much unadulterated anger in his entire life. "How are you going to do that, ser?" he said to Denys softly, so softly. "The child is safe. What about the rest of Reseune's resources? You're fools, ser. You've risked a mind whose limits you don't even know, you've persecuted him all his life, and you treat him as if he were the perpetrator of every harm in Reseune—when he's never, never, in his entire life—done harm to any human being, when Yanni Schwartz could tell you they took him off real-time because he couldn't stand people suffering. Where's Reseune's vast expertise in psychology, when it can't tell that he isn't capable of harming anyone, not even the people who make his life hell?"

"Grant, " Justin murmured, "Grant, —"

Denys' brow furrowed. "No, " he said in a hushed voice, "I know, I know, I'm sorry is too little, and far too late. Grant is quite right. You're going home now, you're going home. Please. Believe me. We did find Ari. She's in hospital, she had a fall, but everything's all right. She ran away on her own, disguised herself—it was a childish prank, absolutely nothing you had anything to do with, we know that. I won't stay here, I know I have no business here, but I felt I had to tell you Ari's all right. I believed you'd want to know that because you don't want any harm to her, and God knows you deserve some courtesy after this. I mean it. I'll make this up somehow, I promise that. I let too much go on for security's sake, and it's not going to go on happening. I promise that, too. " He put a hand on Grant's shoulder. "Grant, there's a group of meds coming here. They'll take him the tunnel route, over to your Residency, they'll take him home, if that's what he wants. Or he can rest here till he recovers. Whatever he wants. "

"Home, " Grant said. "Is that right, Justin? Do you want to go home now?"

Justin nodded faintly. "I want to go home. "

Carefully enunciated. More self-control than a moment ago. Justin's arm twitched and lifted and he laid it on his stomach, in the same careful way, return of conscious control.

"I promise you, " Denys said tightly. "No more of this. "

Then Denys left, anger in the attitude of his body.

Grant hugged Justin and laid his head against Justin's, editing the tension out of his own muscles, because Justin could read that. Azi-mind. Quiet and steady.

"Was Denys here?" Justin asked.

"He just left, " Grant said. "Just a little while and you're going home. I say it's true. They found Ari, it wasn't your fault, they know that. You can rest now. Wake up at your own speed. I'm not going to leave you, not even for a minute. "

Justin heaved a sigh. And was quiet then.

xi

Ari rode back home in the bus, just for that little distance, and she argued with uncle Denys until he let her walk from the front door herself, holding his hand, with the other arm in a sling; but after the ride, it was almost longer, she thought, than she was going to be able to make. Her knees were getting weak and she was sweating under her blouse, that they had had to cut because of the cast, even to get it on.

She was not going to be out in public in her nightgown and her robe. She was going to walk, herself. She was determined on that.

But she was terribly glad to see the inside of uncle Denys' apartment, and to see Nelly there, and Florian and Catlin, all looking worried and so glad to see her. Even Seely looked happy.

She felt like crying, she was so glad to see them. But she didn't. She said: "I want my bed. " And uncle Denys got her there, with the last strength that she had, while Nelly fluttered ahead of them.

Nelly had her bed turned down. Poo-thing was there where he belonged. The pillows were fluffed up. It felt so good when she lay down.

"Let me help you out of your clothes, " Nelly said.

"No, " she said, "just let me rest a while, Nelly. " And uncle Denys said that was a good idea.

"I want a soft drink, Nelly, " she said, while uncle Denys was leaving. "I want Florian and Catlin. "

So Nelly went out; and in a little while Florian and Catlin came in, very quiet, very sober, bringing her soft drink.

"We feel terrible, " Florian said. And they both looked it.

They had been with her at the hospital. They had been so scared, both of them, and they had stayed with her and looked like they could jump at anybody who looked wrong. But finally they had had to go home, because she told them to, uncle Denys said she should, they were so scared and so upset, and they needed to settle down. So she woke up enough to tell them it wasn't their fault and to send them home.

I'll be there in a little while, she had said.

So she was.

Dr. Ivanov said she was lucky she had only broken her arm, and not her head. And she felt lucky about it too. She kept seeing the sky and the ground, and feeling the jolt in her bones.

Uncle Denys said she was lucky too, that Horse could have killed her, and he was awfully upset.

That was true. But she told uncle Denys it wasn't Horse's fault, he just sort of moved. "Horse is all right, isn't he?" she had asked.

"Horse is fine, " uncle Denys had said. "He's just fine. You're the one we're worried about. "

That was nice. People generally weren't, not in any nice way. Dr. Ivanov was kind to her, the nurses gave her soft drinks, Florian and Catlin hung around her until she sent them away. The one thing she had not gotten out of it was uncle Giraud: uncle Giraud had not come at all, but she was too tired to want him there anyway, it was all too much work.

Now Florian and Catlin were back and she was safe in her bed and she really, truly, felt just sort of—away from everything. Quiet. She was glad people were being nice, not because she couldn't Work them, but because she was so tired and it took so much, and she just wanted to lie there and not hurt awhile, after she had drunk a little of her soft drink.

"It's not your fault, " she said to Florian and Catlin. "It was my idea, wasn't it?"

"We shouldn't have let you, " Florian said.

"Yes, you should have, " she said, frowning real quick. "You do what I tell you and that's what I told you. Isn't that so?"

"Yes, " Catlin said after a moment. "That's so. "

They both looked happier then.

She slept all afternoon, with her arm raised in a sling the way Dr. Ivanov said she had to, to keep her hand from swelling. She didn't think that would work, because she always tossed around a lot, but it did: she went right off to sleep, waked up once when Nelly told her to take a pill, and went back to sleep, because it was her bed and her room, and the pills that kept her from hurting also made her very drowsy.

But Nelly woke her up for supper, and she had to eat with her left hand. Dr. Ivanov had said things about left-right dominance to her and said how she mustn't do any writing until she got out of the cast, but she could do everything else. Dr. Ivanov said she should have a Scriber to help her with her lessons, just like his, and she liked that idea.

He said that she ought to be in the cast about three weeks, because he had done a lot of special things to help it heal fast, and it was going to be good as new. He said she was going to do gym exercises after, to make her arm strong again. She agreed with that. Having a broken arm was an adventure, but she didn't want it to do anything permanent.

It was kind of interesting to have the cast and all, and to have everyone fussing over her. The way people changed when they were anxious was interesting. She thought a lot about it when she was awake.

She had her supper, things she could eat with her fingers, and she wanted Florian and Catlin to stay in her room, because she was awake now. But uncle Denys came in and said they could come in a little while, but right then he had to have a Talk with her.

"I don't want to, " she said, and pouted a little, because she really hurt, and it wasn't fair of uncle Denys, uncle Denys had been nice all day, and now everybody was going to go back the other way before she was ready for it, she saw it coming.

"It won't be a long one, " uncle Denys said, shutting the door, "and I'm not even going to mention about your going down to the Town. "

That wasn't what she expected. So she was curious and uncomfortable at the same time, while he pulled Nelly's chair over: she was glad he wasn't going to sit on the bed, because she was just settled and he was so heavy.

"Ari, " he said, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his face very anxious. "Ari, I want to tell you why everyone was so upset, but this isn't about the Town: it's about how important you are, and how there are people—there are people who might want to hurt you, if they got into Reseune. That's why you scared Security so bad. "

That was serious. It clicked right in with the Safety in the Halls lecture and the fact that she was the only kid she knew who had two Security azi for company. She was interested and scared, because it was like it sent out little hooks into a whole lot of things. "So who are they?"

"People who would have hurt your predecessor. Do you know why they put PR on a CIT number?"

"Because they're a Parental Replicate. "

"Do you know what that means?"

She nodded, definitely. "That means they're a twin to their own maman or their papa. "

"Just any kind of twin?"

"No. Identical. "

"Identical all the way down to their genesets, right?

She nodded.

"You don't have a PR on your number. But you could have.

That was confusing. And scary. It didn't make sense at all.

"Pay attention. Don't think about it. Let me guide you through this, Ari. Your maman, Jane Strassen, had a very good friend, who died, who died very suddenly. Reseune was going to make another one of her, which, you know, means making a baby. Jane said that she wanted that baby, she wanted to bring it up herself, for her own, because she didn't want that baby to go to anybody else. She did it for her friend, who died. And when she got that baby she loved it so much it was hers. Do you understand me, Ari?"

There was a cold lump in her throat. She was cold all over, right down to her fingers.

"Do you understand me, Ari?"

She nodded.

"Jane is truly your maman. That's so, nothing can change that, Ari. Your maman is whoever loves you and takes care of you and teaches you like Jane did. "

"Why did she leave me?"

"Because she had to do something only she could do. Because, next to the first Ari herself, Jane Strassen is the best one to do it. Also, Ari, Jane had another daughter—a grown daughter named Julia, who was terribly jealous of the time you took; and Julia had a daughter too, named Gloria Strassen, who's your age. Julia made things very hard for your maman, because Julia was being very difficult, and Julia was assigned to Fargone too. Your maman finally had to see about her other daughter, and her granddaughter, because they were terribly jealous and upset about her being your maman. She didn't want to, but that was the way it was. So she went to Fargone and she took them with her because she wasn't going to leave them here where they could be mean to you. She told me to take care of you, she told me she would come back if she could, but it's a terribly long way, Ari, and your maman's health isn't too good. She's quite old, you know, and it would be awfully dangerous for her now. So that's why your maman left, and why she knew she might not be able to come back: she'd done everything for her friend who died, to start with. And she knew she'd have to go away before you were grown. She thought it would be easy, when she started. But she really got to be your maman, and she got to love you not just because of the Ari who died, but because you're Ari, and you're you, and she loves you just because, that's all. "

Tears started rolling down her face. She didn't even know she was crying till she felt that. Then she moved the wrong arm to wipe them and had to use the other hand, which was awkward.

"She can't have you at Fargone, " uncle Denys said, "because, for one thing, she has Julia and Gloria there. And because you're you, you're Ari, and your genemother was what she was, and because you have enemies. You could grow up safe here. There were teachers to teach you and people to take care of you—not always the best; I know I'm not the best at bringing up a little girl, but I really have tried, Ari, and I go on trying. I just figure it's time I explained some things to you, because you're old enough to try to go places on your own, that's pretty plain, isn't it? You might run into people who might accidentally say the wrong thing to you, and most of all I didn't want you to hear any of this from some stranger down in the Town. A lot of people know who you are, and you're getting old enough to start asking questions—like why your name is Emory and not Strassen, to start with. "

She hated to feel stupid. And that was a big one, a terribly, terribly big one. Of course people had different names, a lot of people had different names. She thought it was who maman picked to make her baby with.

You got into trouble, making up your mind why things were that grown-ups wouldn't tell you.

Why can't I be Strassen? she remembered asking maman.

Because you're Emory, maman had said, because, that's why. I'm Strassen. Look at Tommy Carnath. His maman is Johanna Morley. Grown-ups figure these things out.

Her stomach turned over, suddenly, and she felt sweaty and cold.

"Please, " she said, "uncle Denys, I'm going to be sick. Call Nelly. "

Denys did, real quick. And Nelly got her arm unhooked and got her to the bathroom, where she felt that way for a long time, but nothing happened. She only wished she could be, because she hurt inside and out.

Nelly got her a glass of fizzy stuff for her stomach, and it was awful, but she drank it. Then she felt a little better, and lay against her pillows while Nelly stroked her face and her hair a long, long time and worried about her.

Nelly was the same. Nelly was the way Nelly had always been to her. She guessed it was true maman was really still her maman, but she was not sure who she was anymore. She wanted to find out. Uncle Denys knew, and she wanted to ask him, but she was not sure she wanted any more yet.

Uncle Denys came back in finally, and he came and patted her shoulder, the good one. "Are you all right, sweet? Are you going to be all right?"

Maman called her that. Uncle Denys never had. Ari bit her lip till it hurt more than that did.

"Ari?"

"What other things was I going to notice?"

"That there was a very famous woman at Reseune who had the same name as you, " uncle Denys said, and pulled the chair over, so Nelly got back, and took some stuff off the night-table and took it to the bath. "That you look just like her when she was a little girl, and her pictures are all through the tapes you really need to study. She was very, very smart, Ari, smarter than anyone. She wasn't your maman. You aren't her daughter. You're something a lot closer. How close we don't know yet, but you're a very extraordinary little girl, and I know Jane is very, very proud of you. "

He patted her shoulder then. Nelly had come back through and left. Now he got up again. She didn't care. She was still thinking and it was like her brains were mush.

"Ari, I'm going to have Florian and Catlin stay all night in your room, if you want. I think you'd like that, wouldn't you?"

She didn't know how she was going to tell Florian and Catlin she had been that stupid. They wouldn't stop liking her: they were her azi, and they had to like her. But they were going to be upset. They were going to be upset by her being upset. So she swiped the back of her left hand across her face and tried to stop sniveling.

"Ari?"

"Does Nelly know?"

"Nelly knows. Nelly doesn't understand, but Nelly knows, she always has. "

That made her awfully mad at Nelly.

"Nelly was your maman's, Ari. Your maman put an awfully heavy load on Nelly, telling her as much as she did, and telling Nelly she had to keep that secret. Nelly is very loyal to your maman. Of course she would. "

"Ollie knew too. "

"Ollie knew. Do you want me to send Florian and Catlin to spend the night? They can have pallets over in the corner. They won't mind at all. "

"Do they know?"

"No. Only your maman's people knew. They're yours. "

She felt better about that. At least they hadn't been laughing at her. "Does Amy Carnath know?"

Uncle Denys frowned and took a second about that. "Why does Amy Carnath knowing matter?"

"Because it does, " she snapped at him.

"Ari, I'm in charge of your education. Your maman and I agreed that there are some questions I just won't answer, because they're for you to figure out. You'll be mad at me sometimes, but I'll have to stay by what I agreed with your maman. You're very, very bright. Your maman expects you to figure out some of these things yourself, just the way the first Ari would, because she knows how good you are at figuring things out. It's part of your growing up. There'll be a lot of times you'll ask me things—and I'll say, you have to figure that one, because you're the one who wants that answer. Just remember this: whatever you ask anyone—can tell them a lot. You think about that, Ari. "

He closed the door.

Ari thought about it. And thought that uncle Denys was maybe doing what maman had said; and maybe again uncle Denys wasn't. It was hard to tell, when people could be lying to you about what maman had said.

Or even about what she was.

In a little while more Florian and Catlin came in, very quiet and sober. "Ser Denys says you have orders for us, " Catlin said.

Ari made her face azi-like, very quiet. Her eyelashes were still wet. She figured her nose was red. They would pick all of that up, but she couldn't stop that, they had to be near her. "I've got something to tell you first. Sit down on the bed. I've found out some answers. "

They sat down, one on a side, very carefully, so they didn't jostle her.

"First, " she said, "uncle Denys says I'm not from maman's geneset at all, I'm a PR of somebody else, and she was a friend of maman's. That maman has a grown-up daughter and a granddaughter maman never told me about, and Nelly and Ollie both knew all about where maman got me. But he won't tell me a whole lot else. He says I have to find it out. " She made the little sign with her fingers that said one of them should come close and listen. But she couldn't make it with the right hand. So it was Florian who got up and came clear around the bed to put his ear up against her mouth. "It might be uncle Denys Working me. I don't know. And I don't know why he would, except Giraud is his brother. Pass it to Catlin. "

He did, and Catlin's eyebrows went up and Catlin's face got very thoughtful and still when she looked at her. Catlin nodded once, with a look that meant business.

So she was not sure whether she felt stupid or not, or whether it was true at all, or whether part of it was.

Florian and Catlin could track down a lot of things, because that was what they knew how to do.

It answered a lot of the What's Unusuals, that was what scared her most, except it didn't answer all of them.

Like why the Disappeareds and what Giraud was up to.

Like why maman hadn't written her a letter in the first place, or what had happened to it if maman had.

There were new ones.

Like it was Unusual that they didn't just tell her the truth from the start.

Like it was Unusual maman had gone all round the thing about her name, and told her her papa was a man named James Carnath. Which was still not where she got the Emory.

It was Unusual maman had dodged around a whole lot of things that maman had not wanted to answer. She had not wanted to ask very much when she was a little kid, because she felt it make maman real uncomfortable.

And when she thought about it, she knew maman had Worked her too, she could feel it happen when she remembered it.

That was what made her want to throw up.

She was scared, scared that nothing was true, not even what uncle Denys was telling her. But she couldn't let anybody know that.

That last uncle Denys had said was something she knew: what you asked told a whole lot to somebody you might not want to trust. So uncle Denys knew that too, and warned her not to ask him things.

Like maman, only uncle Denys did it a different way, straight out: don't give things away to me because you don't know whether I'm all right or not.

If uncle Denys wanted to Work her, he was doing something real complicated, and the pain medicine made her brain all fuzzy. If that was what he was doing he was starting off by confusing her.

Or taking her Fix off what she was trying to look at.

Dammit, she thought. Dammit.

Because she was stuck in this bed and she hurt and she couldn't think at all past the trank.

xii