Cyteen

i

"The first bill on the agenda is number 6789, for the Bureau of Trade," Nasir Harad said, "Ludmilla deFranco, Simon Jacques co-sponsors, proposing restructuring of the Pan-Paris credit system. Call for debate."

"Citizens," Mikhail Corain said, lifting his hand. "For the bill."

"Finance," Chavez said. "For the bill."

"Move to forgo debate," Harogo said, "in the absence of opposition."

Corain cast a look down the table, toward Nye, who had reached for his water glass.

It was a bargain, the time-saving sort. The acquiescence of the Expansionists in the move designed to take pressure off the ailing Pan-Paris central bank, the promise of military contracts, the private assurance that Reseune would grant more time on the considerable sum Pan-Paris owed—of course it would: Pan-Paris was Lao's central constituency and the bill was the first step in a long-proposed settlement on the Wyatt's Paradise-Pan-Paris loop that called for a fusion-powered station at Maronne Point, where there was only dark mass, but enough to pull a ship in.

There were four bills lined up, Expansionists falling all over themselves after decades of opposition, finally diverting funds from the slow construction of Hope to the more immediate difficulties of home space and a trade loop that had gotten, since the War, damnably short of exportable commodities.

Major construction, finally, beyond the rebuilding of stations damaged in Azov's desperate push in the last stages of the War; beyond the endless restructurings of debt and adjustments necessary when the merchanters associated into Alliance and left Union banks holding enormous debt.

Seventy years later, a policy shift to save that trade loop became possible only because the special interests that had blocked it suddenly discovered there was nothing left to do.

"Move to suspend debate," Harad said in his usual mutter. "Second?"

"Second," Corain said.

"Call for the vote."

A clatter from down the table. Nye had knocked the water glass over his papers, and sat there—sat there, with the water running across his notes, in a frozen pose that at first seemed incongruous, as if he were listening for something.

Then Corain's heart ticked over a beat, a moment of alarm as he saw the imminent collapse, as Lao, next to Nye, rose in an attempt to hold him, as of a sudden everyone was moving, including the aides.

But Giraud Nye was slumping down onto the papers, sliding from his chair, completely limp as the azi Abban shoved Lao aside and caught Nye in his fall between the seats.

The Council, the aides, everyone broke into tumult, and Corain's heart was hammering. "Get Medical," he ordered Dellarosa, ordered whoever would go, while Abban had Nye on the floor, his collar open, applying CPR with methodical precision.

It was quiet then, except the aides slipping from the chamber—strange that no one moved, everyone seemed in a state of shock, except a junior aide offering to spell the azi.

Medical arrived, running steps, a clattering and banging of hand-carried equipment, Councillors and aides clearing back in haste to let the professionals through, then waiting while more medics got a portable gurney through and the working team and Abban, clustered about Nye, lifted him and lifted the gurney up.

Alive, Corain thought, shaken: he could not understand his own reaction, or why he was trembling when Nasir Harad, still standing, brought the gavel down on Chairman's discretion for an emergency recess.

No one moved to leave for a moment. Centrists and Expansionists looked at each other in a land of vague, human shock, for about a half a hundred heartbeats.

Then Simon Jacques gathered up his papers, and others did, and Corain signaled to his own remaining aides.

After that it was a withdrawal, increasingly precipitate, to reassess, to find out in decent discretion how serious it was, whether Nye was expected to recover from this one. Or not. In which case—in which case nothing was the same.

ii

". . . collapsed in the Council chamber," the public address said, throughout Reseune, and people stopped where they were, at their desks, in the halls, waiting; and Justin stood, with his arms full of printout from the latest run on Sociology, with that vague cold feeling about his heart that said that, whatever Giraud was to him personally—

–there was far worse.

"He stabilized in the emergency care unit in the Hall of State and is presently in transit via air ambulance to the intensive care unit in Mary Stamford Hospital in Novgorod. There was early consideration of transfer to Reseune's medical facilities, but the available aircraft did not have necessary equipment.

"His companion Abban was with him at the time of the collapse, and remains with him in transit.

"Secretary Lynch has been informed and has taken the oath as interim proxy, for emergency business.

"Administrator Nye requests that expressions of concern and inquiries regarding his brother's condition be directed to the desk at Reseune hospital, which is in current contact with Stamford in Novgorod, and that no inquiries be made directly to Novgorod.

"Reseune staff is urged to continue with ordinary schedules. Bulletins will be issued as information becomes available."

"Damn," someone said, on the other side of the room, "here it goes, doesn't it?"

Justin took his printout and left, out into the hall beyond the glass partitions, where people lingered to talk in small groups.

He felt stares at his back, felt himself the object of attention he did not want.

Felt—as if the ground had shifted underfoot, even if they had known this was coming.

"It's the slow preparation," a tech said in his hearing. "He may already be dead. They won't admit it—till the Bureau has the proxy settled. They can't admit anything till then."

It was a dreadful thing—to go to Denys now. But a call on the Minder was too cold and too remote; and Ari faced the apartment door and identified herself to the Minder, with Florian and Catlin at her back, and nothing—nothing to protect her from the insecurity in front of her—an old man's impending bereavement, an old man facing a solitude he had never—Giraud himself had said it—never been able to come to grips with.

If Denys cried, she thought, if Denys broke down in front of her he would be terribly ashamed; and angry with her; but she was all the close family he had left, who did not want to be here, who did not want, today, to be adult and responsible, in the face of the mistake this visit could turn out to be.

But she had, she thought, to try.

"Uncle Denys," she said, "it's Ari. Do you want company?"

A small delay. The door opened suddenly, and she was facing Seely.

"Sera," Seely murmured, "come in."

The apartment was so small, so simple next her own. Denys could always have had a larger one, could have had, in his long tenure, any luxury he wanted. But it felt like home, in a nostalgic wrench that saw her suddenly a too-old stranger, and Florian and Catlin entering with her . . . grown-up and strange to the scale of this place: the little living room, the dining area, the suite off to the right that had been hers and theirs and Nelly's; the hall to the left that held Denys' office and bedroom, and Seely's spartan quarters.

She looked that direction as Denys came out of his office, pale and drawn, looking bewildered as he saw her. "Uncle Denys," she said gently.

"You got the news," Denys said.

She nodded. And felt her way through it—herself, whom Union credited for genius in dealing with emotional contexts, in setting up and tearing down and reshaping human reactions—but it was so damned different, when the emotional context went all the way to one's own roots. Redirect, that was the only thing she could logic her way to. Redirect and refocus: grief is a self-focused function and the flux holds so damn much guilt about taking care of ourselves. . . . "Are you all right, uncle Denys?"

Denys drew a breath, and several others, and looked desperate for a moment. Then he firmed up his chin and said: "He's dying, Ari."

She came and put her arms around Denys, self-conscious—God, guilty: of calculation, of too much expertise; of being cold inside when she patted him on the shoulder and freed herself from him and said: "Seely, has uncle Denys still got that brandy?"

"Yes," Seely said.

"I have work to do," Denys said.

"The brandy won't hurt," she said. "Seely."

Seely went; and she hooked her arm in Denys' and took him as far as the dining table where he usually did his work.

"There's nothing you can do by worrying," she said. "There's nothing anyone can do by worrying. Giraud knew this was coming. Listen, you know what he's done, you know the way he's arranged things. What he'll want you to do—"

"I damned well can't do!" Denys snapped, and slammed his hand down on the table. "I don't intend to discuss it. Lynch will sit proxy. Giraud may recover from this. Let's not hold the funeral yet, do you mind?"

"Certainly I hope not." He's not facing this. He's not accepting it.

Seely, thank God, arrived with the brandy, while Florian and Catlin hovered near the door, gone invisible as they could.

She took her own glass, drank a little, and Denys drank, more than a little; and gave a long shudder.

"I can't go to Novgorod," Denys said. There was a marked fragility about the set of his mouth, a sweating pallor about his skin despite the cool air in the room. "You know that."

"You can do what you put your mind to, uncle Denys. But it's not time to talk about that kind of thing."

"I can't," Denys said, cradling the glass in his hands. "I've told Giraud that. He knows it. Take tape, he says. He knows damned well I'm not suited to holding office."

"It's not a question of that right now."

"He's dying, dammit. You know it and I know it. And his notions about my going to Novgorod—dammit, he knows better."

"You'd be very good."

"Don't be ridiculous. A public speaker? An orator? Someone to handle press conferences? There's no one less suited than I am to holding public office. Behind the scenes, yes, I'm quite good. But I'm much too old to make major changes. I'm not a public man, Ari. I'm not going to be. There's no tape fix for age, there's no damned tape fix to make me a speechmaker . . ."

"Giraud isn't exactly skilled at it, but he's a fine Councillor."

"Do you know," Denys said, "when I came down to the AG unit that time—that was the first time since I was nine, that I'd ever left these walls?"

"My God, uncle Denys."

"Didn't add that up? Shame on you. I came down to see my foster-niece risk her lovely neck, the way I watched from the airport remotes when your predecessor would come screaming in, in that damned jet. I hate disasters. I've always expected them. It's my one act of courage, you understand. Don't ask me to handle press conferences." Denys shook his head and leaned on his elbows on the table. "Young people. They risk their lives so damned lightly, and they know so little what they're worth."

He wept then, a little convulsion of shoulders and face, and Ari picked up the decanter and poured him more, that being the only effective kindness she could think of.

She said nothing for perhaps a quarter, perhaps half an hour, only sat there while Denys emptied another glass.

Then the Minder said: "Message, Abban AA to Base Two, special communications."

Denys did not answer at once. Then he said: "Report."

"Ser Denys," Abban's voice said, cold with distance and the Minder's reproduction, "Giraud has just died. I'll see to his transport home, by his orders. He requested you merge his Base." Denys lowered his head onto his hand.

"Abban," Seely said, "this is Seely SA. Ser thanks you. Direct details to be; I'll assist."

Ari sat there a very long time, waiting, until Denys wiped his eyes and drew a shaken breath.

"Lynch," Denys said. "Someone has to notify Lynch. Tell Abban see to that. He's to stand proxy. He's to file for election. Immediately."

iii

The Family filed into the East Garden, by twos and threes, wearing coats and cloaks in the sharpness of an autumn noon. With conspicuous absences, absences which made Ari doubly conscious of her position in the forefront of the Family—eighteen, immaculate in mourning, and correct as she knew how to be—wearing the topaz pin on her collar, the pin Giraud had given her . . . something that's only yours. . . .

The funeral was another of those duties she would have avoided if she could have found a way.

Because Denys had made a damnable mess of things. Denys had fallen to pieces, refused the appointment as proxy Councillor of Science, and refused to attend the funeral. Denys was over at the old Wing One lab, supervising the retrieval and implantation of CIT geneset 684-044-5567 . . . precisely at this hour—at which Ari, even with compassion for his reasons, felt a vague shudder of disgust.

It left her, foster-niece, as nearest kin—not even directly related to Giraud, but ranking as immediate family, over Emil Carnath-Nye, and Julia Carnath-Nye, and Amy. She felt uncomfortable in that role, even knowing Julia's attachment to Giraud was more ambition than accident of blood. Hell with Julia: there was prestige involved, and she hated to move Amy out of her proper place, that was the uncomfortable part. The Carnath-Nyes stood, an ill-assorted little association of blood-ties far from cordial these days—Amy bringing Quentin as she had brought Florian and Catlin, for personal security in troubled times, not to flaunt him in front of the Family and her mother's disapproval; but that was certainly not the way Julia Carnath took it.

Julia and her father Emil resented having Abban standing beside them; and took petty exception to the man– man, dammit, who had been closer to Giraud in many ways than any next-of-kin, even Denys; who had held Giraud's hand while he died and taken care of notifications with quiet efficiency when no Family were there to do anything.

That attitude was damned well going to go: she had served notice of it and scandalized the old hands before now. Let them know what she would do when she held power in the House: hell with their offended feelings.

Amy was there; Maddy Strassen was in the front row, with aunt Victoria—maman's sister, and at a hundred fifty-four one of the oldest people alive anywhere who was not a spacer. Rejuv did not seem near failing Victoria Strassen: she was wearing away instead like ice in sunlight, just thinner and more fragile with every passing year, until she began to seem more force than flesh. Using a cane now: the sight afflicted Ari to the heart. Maman would be that old now. Maman would be that frail. She avoided Victoria, not alone because Victoria hated her and blamed her for Julia Strassen's exile to Fargone. The Whitely clan was there: Sam and his mother; and the Ivanovs, the Edwardses; Yanni Schwartz and Suli; and the Dietrichs.

Justin and Grant were not. Justin had sent, all things considered, a very gracious refusal, and let her off one very difficult position. It was the only mercy she had gotten from Family or outsiders. Reporters clustered down at the airport press area, a half hour down there this morning, an appointment for an interview this afternoon, a half a hundred frustrated requests for an interview with Denys—

I'm sorry., she had said, privately and on camera. Even those of us who work lifelong with psych, seri, do feel personal grief. Coldly, precisely, letting her own distress far enough to the surface to put what Giraud would call the human face on Reseune. My uncle Denys was extremely close to his brother, and he's not young himself. He's resigning the proxy to Secretary Lynch out of health considerations– No. Absolutely not. Reseune has never considered it has a monopoly on the Science seat. As the oldest scientific institution on Cyteen we have contributions to make, and I'm sure there will be other candidates from Reseune, but no one in Reseune, so far as I know, intends to run. After all—Dr. Nye wasn't bound to appoint Secretary Lynch: he might have appointed anyone in Science, Secretary Lynch is a very respected, very qualified head of the Bureau in his own right.

And to a series of insistent questions: Seri, Dr. Yanni Schwartz, the head of Wing One in Reseune, will be answering any specific questions about that. . ..

. . . No, sera, that would be in the future. Of course my predecessor held the seat. Presently I'm a wing supervisor in Research, I do have a staff, I have projects under my administration—

Every reporter in the room had focused in on that, sharp and hard—scenting a story that was far off their present, urgent assignment: she had thrown out the deliberate lure and they burned to go for it despite the fact they were going out live-feed, with solemn and specific lead-ins and funeral music. She handed them the hint of a story they could not, with propriety, go for; and kept any hint of deliberate signal off her face when she did it.

But they had gone for it the moment they were off live-feed: to what extent was she actually in Administration, what were the projects, how were the decisions being made inside Reseune and was she in fact involved in that level?

Dangerous questions. Exceedingly dangerous. She had flashed then on bleeding bodies, on subway wreckage, on news-service stills of a child's toy in the debris.

Seri, she had said then, direct, not demure: with Ari senior's straight stare and deliberate pause in answering: any wing administrator is in the process.

Read me, seri: I'm not a fool. I won't declare myself over my uncle's ashes.

But don't discount me in future.

I came here, she had reminded them in that context, as a delegated spokesman for the family. That's my immediate concern. I have to go, seri. I have to be up the hill for the services in thirty minutes. Please excuse me. . . .

It was the first funeral she had attended where there was actually burial, a small canister of ash to place in the ground, and two strong gardeners to raise the basalt cenotaph up from the ground and settle it with a final thump over the grave.

She flinched at that sound, inside. So damned little a canister, for tall uncle Giraud.

And burial in earth instead of being shot for the sun. She knew which she would pick for herself—same as her predecessor, same as maman. But it was right for Giraud, maybe.

Emil Carnath called for speeches from associates and colleagues.

"I have a word," Victoria Strassen said right off.

O God, Ari thought.

And braced herself.

"Giraud threw me out of my sister's funeral," Victoria began in a voice sharper and stronger than one ever looked for from that thin body. "I never forgave him for it."

Maddy cast Ari an anguished look across the front of the gathering. Sorry for this.

Not your fault, Ari thought.

"What about you, Ariane Emory PR? Are you going to have me thrown out for saying what the truth is?"

"I'll speak after you, aunt Victoria. Maman taught me manners."

That hit. Victoria's lips made a thin line and she took a double-handed grip on her black cane.

"My sister was not your maman," Victoria said. "That's the trouble in the House. Dead is dead, that's all. The way it works best. The way it's worked in all of human society. Old growth makes way for new. It doesn't batten off the damn corpse. I've no quarrel with you, young sera, no quarrel with you. You didn't choose to be born. Where's Denys? Eh?" She looked around her, with a sweeping gesture of the cane. "Where's Denys?" There was an uncomfortable shifting in the crowd. "Sera," Florian whispered at Ari's shoulder, seeking instruction.

"I'll tell you where Denys is," Victoria snapped. "Denys is in the lab making another brother, the way he made another Ariane. Denys has taken the greatest scientific and economic power in human history and damned near run it into bankruptcy in his administration, —never mind poor Giraud, who took the orders, we all know that—damned near bankrupted us all for his eetee notion of personal immortality. You tell me, young sera, do you remember what Ariane remembered? Do you remember her life at all?"

God. It was certainly not something she wanted asked, here, now, in an argumentative challenge, in any metaphysical context. "We'll talk about that someday," she said back, loudly enough to carry. "Over a drink, aunt Victoria. I take it that's a scientific question, and you're not asking me about reincarnation."

"I wonder what Denys calls it," Victoria said. "Call your security if you like. I've been through enough craziness in my life, people blowing up stations in the War, people blowing up kids in subways, people who aren't content to let nature throw the dice anymore, people who don't want kids, they want little personal faxes they can live their fantasies through, never mind what the poor kid wants. Now do we give up on funerals altogether? Is that what everyone in the damn house is thinking, I don't have to die, I can impose my own ideas on a poor sod of a replicate who's got no say in it so I can have my ideas walking around in the world after I'm dead?"

"You're here to talk about Giraud," Yanni Schwartz yelled. "Do it and shut up, Vickie."

"I've done it. Goodbye to a human being. Welcome back, Gerry PR. God help the human race."

The rest of the speeches, thank God, were decorous—a few lines, a: We differed, but he had principles, from Petros Ivanov; a: He kept Reseune going, from Wendell Peterson.

It ascended to personal family then, always last to speak. To refute the rest, Ari decided, for good or ill.

"I'll tell you," she said in her own turn, in what was conspicuously her turn, last, as next-of-kin, Denys being exactly where Victoria had said he was, doing what Victoria had said, "—there was a time I hated my uncle. I think he knew that. But in the last few years I learned a lot about him. He collected holograms and miniatures; he loved microcosms and tame, quiet things, I think because in his real work there never was any sense of conclusion, just an ongoing flux and decisions nobody else wanted to make. It's not true that he only took orders. He consulted with Denys on policy; he implemented Bureau decisions; but he knew the difference between a good idea and a bad one and he never hesitated to support his own ideas. He was quiet about it, that's all. He got the gist of a problem and he went for solutions that would work.

"He served Union in the war effort. He did major work on human personality and on memory which is still the standard reference work in his field. He took over the Council seat in the middle of a national crisis, and he represented the interests of the Bureau for two very critical decades—into my generation, the first generation of Union that's not directly in touch with either the Founding or the War.

"He talked to me a lot in this last year: Abban made a lot of trips back and forth—" She looked to catch Abban's eye, but Abban was staring straight forward, in that nowhere way of an azi in pain. "—couriering messages between us. He knew quite well he was dying, of course; and as far as having a replicate, he didn't really care that much. We did talk about it, the way we talked about a lot of things, some personal, some public. He was very calm about it all. He was concerned about his brother. The thing that impressed me most, was how he laid everything out, how he made clear arrangements for everything—"

Never mind the mess Denys made of those arrangements.

"He operated during the last half year with a slate so clearly in order that those of us he was briefing could have walked into his office, picked up that agenda and known exactly where all the files were and exactly what had to be priority. He confessed he was afraid of dying. He certainly would have been glad to stay around another fifty years. He never expressed remorse for anything he'd done; he never asked my forgiveness; he only handed me the keys and the files and seemed touched that I did forgive him. That was the Giraud I knew."

She left it at that.

I have the files. That was deliberate, too. The way she had done with the press.

Not to undermine Lynch, damned sure. Denys refused the seat and someone had to hold it; Reseune was in profound shock. Certain people were urging Yanni to declare for the seat, challenge Lynch.

No, Denys had said, focused enough to foresee that possibility. No challenge to Lynch from anyone. He's harmless. Leave him.

What Yanni thought about it she was not sure. She did not think Yanni wanted that honor.

But Denys' refusal had jerked a chance at Reseune Administration out of Yanni's reach. And that, she thought, however much any of them in Reseune had suspected Denys would refuse the seat, that had to be a disappointment.

She made a point of going over to Yanni after the services, catching his arm, thanking him for his support and making sure the whole Family saw that.

Making sure that the whole Family knew Yanni was not out of the running in future, in her time. "I know what you're doing," she said fervently, careless of just who could hear, knowing some would. "Yanni, I won't forget.

Hear?"

She squeezed his hand. Yanni gave her a look—as if he had not believed for a second it was more than a salve to his pride and then caught on that it was altogether more than that, in that subtle way such indicators passed in the Family.

Not a word said directly. But there were witnesses enough. And Yanni was profoundly affected.

Hers, she reckoned, when it came down to the line, in the same way Amy and Maddy and the younger generation were.

And others in the House would see the indicators plain, that she had declared herself on several fronts, and started making acquisitions, not on a spoils system for the young and upcoming, but for a passed-over senior administrator who enjoyed more respect in the House than he himself imagined.

Signal clearly that Yanni was hers and let Yanni collect his own following: Yanni took no nonsense and let himself be taken in by no one. Yanni had stripped his own daughter of authority when she had abused it, and favored no one except on merit: that was his reputation—when Yanni thought of himself as a simple hardnosed bastard.

Yanni had some reassessing to do. Figure on that.

Yanni was not going to be taken in by the bootlickers and the Stef Dietrichs in the House or elsewhere.

He had been one of maman's friends. She thought with some personal satisfaction, that maman would approve.

iv

She took the outside walk back to the House, around the garden wall, toward the distant doors: it was, thank God, quiet, after the pressure of the interviews. Damn Victoria, she thought, and reckoned that Maddy had wanted to sink out of sight.

"Do you wonder why we do such things?" she murmured to Florian and Catlin. "So do I."

They looked at her, one and the other. Catlin said, in Florian's silence: "It's strange when someone dies. You think they ought to be there. It was that way in Green Barracks."

Ari put her hand on Catlin's shoulder as they walked. Memories. Catlin was the one who had seen people die. "Not slowing down, are you?"

"No, sera," Catlin said. " I don't intend to be talked about."

She laughed softly. Count on Catlin.

Florian said nothing at all. Florian was the one who would have taken in every signal in the crowd; and work over it and work over it to make it make sense. Florian was the one who would worry about the living.

"He's gone," Ari said finally, at the doors. "Damn, that is strange." And looked at Florian, whose face had just gone quite tense, that listening-mode that said he was getting something attention-getting over the Security monitor. One or the other of them was always on-line.

"Novgorod," Florian said. "Jordan Warrick—has declared his innocence– He says—he was coerced. Reseune Security is issuing orders to place him in detention—"

Ari's heart jolted. But everything came clear then. "Florian," she said while they were going through the doors, "code J Red, go. We're on A; go for Q and we're Con2."

Make sure of Justin and Grant: Catlin and I are going for Denys; get home base secure and stay there; force permitted, but not as first resort.

That, before they were through the doors, while a Security guard whose com would not be set on that command-priority gave them a slightly puzzled look at their on-business split-and-go.

"They're not saying much," Catlin said as they went.

"Out to the news-services?"

"That, first," Catlin said. "Com 14 is loaded with incomings."

Reporters at the airport, at the edge of a major news event and hemmed in by an anxious, noncommunicative Security.

"Damn, is Denys on it? What in hell is he doing?"

Catlin tapped the unit in her ear. "Denys is still in the lab; Base One, relay Base Two transmission? —Affirmative, sera. He's sent word to defer all questions; he's saying the charges are a political maneuver, quote, ill-timed and lacking in human feeling. He says, quote, the Family is returning from the funeral and people are out of their offices: Reseune will have a further statement in half an hour."

"Thank God," she said fervently.

Denys was awake. Denys was returning fire.

Damned well about time.

v

It was a good day to stay home, Justin reckoned—given the situation in the House, given a general unsettled state in Security now that its chief was dead:

I don't want to be alarmist, Ari had said in a message left on the Minder, but I'd be a lot easier in my mind if you and Grant didn't go anywhere you don't have to for the next few days– work at home if you can. I'm going to be busy; I can't watch everything; and Security is confused as hell—a little power struggle going on there. Do you mind? Feel free to attend the services. But stay where people are.

I'll take your advice, he had messaged back. Thank you. I know you have a lot to take care of right now. I don't think our presence at the services would be appropriate, or welcome to his friends; but if there should be anything Grant or I can do in the wing to take care of details, we're certainly willing to help.

She had not asked anything of them—had more or less forgotten them, Justin reckoned, small wonder with the pressure she was under. The news was full of speculations about Denys' health, about the political consequences of Reseune yielding up the seat Reseune had held on Council since the Founding—about whether the Centrists could field a viable candidate inside Science, or whether Secretary and now Proxy Councillor Lynch had the personal qualifications to hold the party leadership which Giraud had held.

"There's nothing wrong with Denys' health," Grant objected, the two of them watching the news in the living room.

"I don't know what he's about," Justin said. And trusting then to the freedom Ari swore they had from monitoring: "But losing Giraud is a heavy blow to him. I think it's the only time I've ever felt sorry for Denys."

"They're doing that PR," Grant said; then: "Denys had to get Ari's backing, isn't that ironic as hell?"

"He's what—a hundred twenty-odd?—and that weight he carries doesn't favor him. He'd be lucky to see ten, fifteen more years. So he has to have Ari's agreement, doesn't he?"

"It's not going to work," Grant said.

Justin looked at Grant, who sat—they had found a scattering of red and blue pillows—in a nest at the corner of the couch, his red hair at odds with half of it.

"Denys has to set the pattern," Grant said, "has to give him that foundation or there's no hope for Giraud. I firmly think so. Yanni may have known their father in his old age, but Yanni's much too young to dp for Giraud what Jane Strassen did—not mentioning how they've treated him—"

"He owes them damned little, that's sure enough."

"And there's always the question what's in and not in those notes Ari-younger got from her predecessor," Grant said. "I think Ari knows a lot she's not putting in those notes. I think our Ari is being very careful what she tells her guardians."

"Ari says sometimes—not everything was necessary."

"But whatever is necessary—is necessary," Grant said. "And Denys can't know—isn't in a position to know, that's what I think; and she's keeping it that way."

"The Rubin boy's going into chemistry, isn't he?"

"Fine student—test scores not spectacular, though."

"Yet."

Grant made a deprecating gesture. "No Stella Rubin. No one to tell him when to breathe. Hell is necessary for CITs, do we make that a given? You warned them not to let up on him too much—but the project is still using him for a control. Put the whole load on Ari; go easy on Ben Rubin; see what was necessary. ... I'll bet you anything you like that Denys Nye had more to do with that decision than Yanni Schwartz did. Yanni never went easy on anyone."

"Except—Yanni's got a family attachment in the way. Rubin's suicide really got him, and Jenna Schwartz, remember, had some little thing to do with that. It could well be Yanni's going easy."

"But Rubin's still a control," Grant said. "And what he's proving—"

"What he's proving is, A, you can't do it with all genesets; B, some genesets respond well to stress and some don't—"

"Given, given, but in the two instances we have, —"

"And, C, there's bad match-ups between surrogate and subject. Don't discount the damage Jenna Schwartz did and the damage the contrast between Jenna Schwartz and Ollie Strassen did to the boy."

"Not to mention," Grant said, holding up a finger, "the fact Oliver AOX is male, and Alpha; and Stella Rubin is female and not that bright. I'd like to do a study on young Rubin. No edge to him, not near the flux swings. The instability goes with the suicide, goes with the brilliance—Among us, you know, they call it a flawed set."

"And do a fix for it."

"And lose the edge, just as often. —Which brings us back to young Ari, who's maybe given the committee all she knows—which I don't believe, if she's as much Ari as she seems, and our Ari—doesn't take chances with her security. I very much think access to those programs is a leverage of sorts—and do you know, I think Denys would have begun to guess that?"

Justin considered that thought, with a small, involuntary twitch of his shoulders. "The committee swears no one can retrieve from Ari's programs without Ari's ID. And possibly it's always been true."

"Possibly—more than that. Possibly that Base, once activated—can't be outmaneuvered in other senses. Possibly it's capable of masking itself."

"Lying about file sizes?"

"And invading other Bases—eventually. Built-in tests, parameters, —I've been thinking how I'd write a program like that ... if she were azi. The first Ariane designed me. Maybe—" Grant made a little quirk of his mouth. "Maybe I have a—you'd say innate, but that's a mistake– in-built resonance with Ari's programs. I remember my earliest integrations. I remember—there was a—even for a child– sensual pleasure in the way things fit, the way the pieces of my understanding came together with such a precision. She was so very good. Do you think she didn't prepare for them to replicate her? Or that she'd be less careful with a child of her own sets, than with an azi of her design?"

Justin thought about it. Thought about the look on Grant's face, the tone of his voice—a man speaking about his father ... or his mother. "Flux-thinking," he said. "I've wondered– Do you love her, Grant?" Grant laughed, fleeting surprise. "Love her."

"I don't think it's impossible. I don't think it's at all unlikely."

"Reseune is my Contract and I can never get away from it?"

"Reseune is my Contract: I shall not want? —I'm talking about CIT-style flux. The kind that makes for ambivalences. Do you love her?"

A frown then. "I'm scared of the fact this Ari ran a probe. I'm scared because Ari's got the first Ari's notes—which include my manual, I'm quite sure. And what if—what if—This is my nightmare, Justin: what if—in my most fluxed imaginings, Ari planned for her successor; what if she planted something in me that would respond to her with the right trigger? —But then I flux back again and think that's complete nonsense. I'll tell you another nightmare: I'm scared of my own program tape."

Justin suffered a little sympathetic chill. "Because Ari wrote it."

Grant nodded. "I don't want to review it under trank nowadays. I know I could take enough kat to put me flat enough I could take it—but then I think—I can handle things without it. I can manage. I don't need it, God,

CITs put up with the flux and they learn from it. And I do—learn from it, that is."

"I wish to hell you'd told me that."

"You'd worry. And there's no reason to worry. I'm fine—except when you ask me questions like that: do I love Ari? God, that's skewed. That's the first time I ever wondered about it in CIT terms. And you're right, there's a multi-level flux around her I don't like at all."

"Guilt?"

"Don't do that to me."

"Sorry. I just wondered."

Grant shifted position in the nest of pillows, against the arm. "Have you ever scanned my tape for problems?"

"Yes," Justin said after a little hesitation, a time-stretch of hesitation, that felt much too long and much too significant. "I didn't want to make it evident—I didn't want to worry you about it."

"I worry. I can't help but worry. It's too basic to me."

"You—worry about it."

Grant gave a small, melancholy lift of the brows, and seemed to ponder for a moment, raking a hand through his hair. "I think she asked something that jolted me—deep. I think I know where. I think she asked about my tape—which, admittedly, I have a small guilt about: I don't use it the way I'm supposed to; I think she asked about contact with subversives; and I dream about Winfield, lately. The whole scene out at Big Blue. The plane, and the bus with those men, and that room. . . ."

"Why didn't you tell me that?"

"Are dreams abnormal?"

"Don't give me that. Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because it's not significant. Because I know—when I'm not fluxed—that I'm all right. You want me to take the tape, I'll take it. You want to run a probe of your own—do it. I've certainly no apprehensions about that. Maybe you should. It's been a long time. Maybe I'd even feel safer if you did. —If,"

Grant added with a little tilt of the head, a sidelong glance, a laugh without humor. "If I didn't then wonder if you weren't off. You see? It's a mental trap."

"Because you got a chance to see Jordan. Because the damn place is crazy!" Of a sudden he felt a rush of frustration, an irrational concern so intense he got up and paced the length of the living room, looked back at Grant in a sudden feeling of walls closing in, of life hemmed around and impeded at every turn.

Not true, he thought. Things were better. Never mind that it was another year of separation from his father, another year gone, things no different than they had ever been—things were better in prospect, Ari was closer than she had ever been to taking power in her own right, and her regime, he sincerely believed it—promised change, when it would come.

They're burying Giraud today.

Why in hell does that make me afraid?

"I wish," Grant said, "you'd listened to me. I wish you'd gone to Planys instead."

"What difference? We'd have still been separate. We'd still worry—"

"What then? What's bothering you?"

"I don't know." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Being pent up in here, I think. This place. This—" He thought of a living room in beige and blue; and realized with a little internal shift-and-slide that it was not Jordan's apartment that had come back with that warm little memory. "God. You know where I wish we could go back to? Our place. The place—" Face in a mirror, not the one he had now. The boy's face. Seventeen and innocent, across the usual clutter of bottles on the bathroom counter, getting ready for an evening—

Tape-flash, ominous and chaotic. The taste of oranges.

"—before all this happened. That's useless, isn't it? I don't even want to be that boy. I only wish I was there knowing what I know now."

"It was good there," Grant said.

"I was such a damned fool."

"I don't think so."

Justin shook his head.

"I know differently," Grant said. "Put yourself in Ari's place. Wonder—what you would have been—on her timetable, with her advantages, with the things they did to her– You'd have been—"

"Different. Harder. Older."

"—someone else. Someone else entirely. CITs are such a dice-throw. You're so unintentionally cruel to each other."

"Do you think it's necessary? Can't we learn without putting our hand in the fire?"

"You're asking an azi, remember?"

"I'm asking an azi. Is there a way to get an Ariane Emory out of that geneset—or me—out of mine—"

"Without the stress?" Grant asked. "Can flux-states be achieved intellectually—when they have endocrine bases? Can tape-fed stress—short of the actual chance of breaking one's neck—be less real, leave less pain—than the real experience? What if that tape Ari made—were only tape? What if it had never happened—but you thought it had? Would there be a difference? What if Ari's maman had never died, but she thought she had? Would she be sane? Could she trust reality? I don't know. I truly don't know. I would hate to discover that everything until now—was tape; and I was straight from the Town, having dreamed all this."

"God, Grant!"

Grant turned his left wrist to the light, where there was always, since the episode with Winfield and the Abolitionists, a crosswise scar. "This is real. Unless, of course, it's only something my makers installed with the tape."

"That's not good for you."

Grant smiled. "That's the first time in years you've called me down. Got you, have I?"

"Don't joke like that."

"I have no trouble with reality. I know tape when I feel it. And remember I'm built right side up, with my logic sets where they belong, thank you, my makers. But flux is too much like dreams. Tape-fed flux—would have no logical structure. Tape-fed flux is too much like what Giraud did in the War, which I don't even like to contemplate—building minds and unbuilding them; mindwiping and reconstruction . . . always, always, mind you, with things the subject can't go back to check; and a lot left to the imagination. I honestly don't know, Justin. If there's a key to taping those experiences– Giraud could have had some insight into it, isn't that irony?"

It made some vague, bizarre sense, enough to send another twitch down his back, and a feeling of cold into his bones.

"Talking theory with Giraud—" But Giraud was dead. And yet-to-be. "It wasn't something we ever got around to."

"The question is, essentially, whether you can substitute tape for reality. I'm very capable, Justin; but I sweated blood on that flight to Planys, I was so damned helpless during the whole trip. That's what you give up: survivability in the real world."

Justin snorted. "You think I don't worry."

"But you could learn much more rapidly. Back to the old difference: you flux-learn; I logic my way through. And no aggregate of CITs is logical. Got you again."

Justin thought about it; and smiled finally, in the damnable gray apartment, in the elegant prison Ari appointed them. For a moment it felt like home. For a moment he remembered that it was safer than anywhere they had been since that fondly-remembered first apartment.

Then the apprehension came back again, the great stillness over Reseune, deserted halls, everything in flux.

There was sudden break-up on the vid, the news commentary thrown off in mid-word.

The Infinite Man appeared on screen. Music played. One never worried about such things. Someone kicked a cable, and Reseune's whole vid-system glitched.

Except it was also something Reseune Security did, for selected apartments, selected viewers.

My God, he thought, a sudden rush of worry, lifelong habit. Were they monitoring? Have they gotten through her security? What could they have heard?

vi

"Uncle Denys," Ari had relayed on the way, via Base One and Catlin's com unit, "I need to talk to you right away."

"Lab office," Seely had relayed back.

Shocked looks followed them through the labs from the time they had entered, techs who knew that things were already Odd with Denys, azi who were reading the techs if not the situation, and worried as hell; and now an unexplained break-in of conspicuous Family coming straight from the funeral, in mourning, and headed for lab offices at high speed—small wonder the whole lab stopped and stared, Ari thought; and at least she could freely admit to knowing as much as she knew, excepting what Planys was doing.

Past the tanks, the techs, the very place where she had been born, where likely by now half a dozen Girauds were in progress—up the little stairs with the metal rail, to the small administrative office Denys had commandeered: Seely was evidently keeping a look-out through the one-way glass of the lab offices, because Seely opened the door to let them in before she had made the final turn of the steps.

Denys was behind the desk, on the phone—with Security, by what it sounded. Ari collected herself with a breath. "That's fine," she said, when Catlin whisked a chair to her back; she took off her gloves and her jacket, gave them to Catlin and sat down as Denys hung up the phone.

"Well, sera," Denys said, "we have the result of your baulking Security at Planys."

"Where is Jordan?"

"Under arrest at Planys. He and his companion. Damn him!"

"Mmmn, Justin is accounted for."

"Are you certain?"

"Quite. Justin is the one I want to talk to you about."

"Ser," Florian said when they had let him in, Florian in House uniform and without his coat, so Florian and therefore probably Ari had had time, Justin reckoned, to come in next door first.

But it made him anxious that it was not a call over the Minder, or a summons to Ari's apartment or her offices, just a Minder-call at the door, Florian asking entry.

And the vid still showed nothing on the news channel except that single logo.

"There's been an incident," Florian said, preface, and in the half-second of Florian's next breath: O God, Justin thought, something's happened to Ari; and was bewildered in the same half-second, that the fear included her, her welfare, which was linked with their own. "Your father," Florian said, and fears jolted altogether into another track, "—has gotten a message to the Centrists, claiming innocence."

"Of what?" Justin asked, still tracking on incident, not making sense of it.

"Of killing Dr. Emory, ser."

He stood there, he did not know how long, in a state of shock, wanting to think so, wanting to think—

– but, my God, during Giraud's funeral—what's he doing? What's going on?

"We don't know all the details yet," Florian said. "Sera doesn't want to admit to ser Denys just how far her surveillance extends, please understand that, ser, but she does know that your father is safe at the moment. She's asking you, please, ser, understand that there's extreme danger—to you, to her, to your father, no matter whether this is true or false: the announcement has political consequences that may be very dangerous, I don't know if I need explain them. ..."

"God." Art's safety. Everything— He raked a hand through his hair, felt Grant's hand on his shoulder. Florian—seemed older, somehow, his face utterly without the humor that was so characteristic of him, like a mask dropped, finally, time sent reeling. . . . Could it be true?

"She wants you to pack a small bag, ser. Sera's interim staff is on the way up to this floor, and sera asks Grant to stay here and put himself under their orders. . . ."

"Pack for where?"

Separate us? God, no.

"Sera wants you to go with her to Novgorod—to defuse this matter. To speak to the press. She wants to take the politics out of the question—for your father's sake, as much as her own. Do you understand, ser? There'll be a small question-and-answer at Reseune airport; that's safest. She's asking a meeting with Councillor Corain and Secretary Lynch. She earnestly hopes you won't fail her in this—"

"My God. God, Grant—" What do I do?

But Grant had no answers. CITs are all crazy, Grant would say.

Ari's out of her mind. Take me to Novgorod? They don't dare.

They need me. That's the game. My father under arrest. They want me to call him a liar.

Reseune Security doesn't need to kill him. They can use drugs. It takes time.

Time I can buy them to operate on him– Would Ari—do this to us? Would Florian be here without her orders?

In front of those cameras—if I get that far– How can they stop me from any charges I can make?

Grant.

Grant—being here, in Ari's keeping. That's what they're offering me– Grant's sanity—or my father's.

He looked up into Grant's face—far calmer, he thought, than his own, Grant's un-fluxed logic probably understanding there was no choice in his own situation.

I have faith in my makers.

"Grant comes with me," he said to Florian.

"No, ser," Florian said. "I have definite instructions. Please, pack just the essentials. Everything will be inspected. Grant will be safe here, with sera Amy. There will be Security: Quentin AQ is very competent, and sera Amy will have her friends for help here. No way will any general Security come onto this floor or interfere with the systems. No way will sera Amy do anything to harm Grant."

A gifted eighteen-year-old, with a thin, earnest face and a tendency to go at problems head-on: an eighteen-year-old who, he had always thought, liked him and Grant. Honest. And sensible as an eighteen-year-old had any likelihood of being.

God, they all were. "It's a damn Children's Crusade," he said, and caught Grant's arm. "Do what they say. It'll be all right."

"No," he said in front of the cameras, in the lounge at Reseune airport. "No, I haven't been in contact with my father. I hope to get a call through—when we get to Novgorod. It's the middle of their night. They—" He tried, desperately, not to look nervous: Don't look guilty, Ari had said, before they left the bus. Don't look like you're hiding anything. You can be very frank with them, but for God's sake think about the political ramifications when you do it. Be very careful about making charges of your own, they can only muddy things up, and we have to rely on uncle Denys—we can't offend him, hear me?

"My father—is in Detention at the moment," he said, finding the pace of things too much, the dark areas too extensive. The truth seemed easier to sort out than lies were, if one kept it to a minimum. "All I can tell you—" No. Can meant dangerous things. "All I know how to tell you—is that there's an inquiry. My father told me—at the time it happened—exactly what he told the Council. But there were tilings going on at the time—that might have been a reason. That's why I'm going to Novgorod. I don't know—Ari herself doesn't know—who's telling the truth now. I want to find out. Reseune Administration wants to find out."

"I can assure you," Ari said, beside him, "I have a very strong motive for wanting to know the truth in this case."

"Question for Dr. Warrick. Are you presently under any coercion?"

"No," Justin said firmly.

"You are a PR. Are you—in any way—more than that?"

He shook his head. "Standard PR. Nothing extraordinary."

"Have you ever been subject to intervention?" He had not expected that question. He froze on it, then said: "Psychprobe is an intervention. I was part of the investigation. There were a lot of them." They would question his sanity for that reason; and his reliability. He knew that. It would cast doubt on his license for clinical practice and cast a shadow on his research. He knew that too. The whole thing took on a nightmarish quality, the lights, the half-ring of reporters. He became quite placid, quite cold. "There was an illicit intervention when I was a minor. I've been treated for that. I'm not presently under drugs; I'm not operating under anyone's intervention. I'm concerned about my father and I'm anxious to get to Novgorod and answer whatever questions Council may have: I'm most concerned about my father's welfare—"

"Is he threatened in any way?"

"Ser, I don't know as much as you do. I'm anxious to talk with him. For one thing, I want to be sure what he did say—"

"You're casting doubt on his statement through Councillor Corain, as valid, or as coming from him."

"I want to be sure that he did send that message. I want to hear it from him. There are a lot of unanswered questions. I can't tell you what you want to know. I don't know."

"Sera Emory. Do you know?"

"I have ideas," Ari said, "but I'm being very careful of them. They involve people's reputations—"

"Living people?"

"Living and dead. Please understand: we're in the middle of a funeral. We've had charges launched and questions asked that depend on records deep in Archive, about things that are personal to me and personal to Justin—" She reached and laid her hand on his, clenched it. "We had come to our own peace with what happened. Justin's my friend and my teacher, and now we wonder what did happen all those years ago, and why Justin's father wouldn't have told him the truth, if there was more to it. We don't understand, either one of us. That's why we're going outside Reseune. We're going to handle this at the Bureau level—at Council level, since they're the ones who did the first investigation, if we have to go that far. But it's not appropriate for us to investigate this on a strictly internal level. Dr. Warrick has made charges; they need to be heard in the Bureau. That's where we're going—and I think we ought to get underway, sen, thank you. Please. We'll have more statements later."

"Dr. Warrick," a journalist shouted. "Do you have any statement?" Justin looked at the man, blank for a fraction of a second until he realized that Dr. Warrick was the way the world knew him. "Not at the moment. I've told you everything I know."

Florian touched him as he got up, showed him a route through to the boarding area, for the plane that waited for them. RESEUNE ONE.

A solid phalanx of regular Security made a passage for them, an abundance of Security that clearly said: This is official; Administration is involved.

It answered to Ari. Giraud was a wisp of ash and a group of cells trying to achieve humanity; and meanwhile Ariane Emory was in charge, with all the panoply of Reseune's authority around her.

He went quickly through the doors, and down the corridor into the safeway and into the plane, where he stopped in confusion, until Florian took him by the arm and guided him to one of a group of leather seats, and settled him in.

"Would you like a drink, ser?"

"Soft drink," he said, while Ari was settling in opposite him, while the plane was starting engines and more Security was boarding.

"Vodka-and-orange," Ari said. "Thank you, Florian." And looking straight at him: "Thank you," she said. "You handled that very well."

He gazed back at her in a virtual state of shock, thoughts darting in panic to the Security around him, the fear that one of them could simply pull a gun and spray the cabin; fear for Grant back in the apartment, that, no matter what Florian said about general Security not having admittance to that level, an eighteen-year-old girl was in charge, along with a Security guard no older than she was, and anything could happen; fear that something might be happening with Jordan; or that Paxer lunatics might somehow have rigged a missile that could take the plane out of the sky—

There was not a damned thing he could do, except say what he was supposed to say, trust. . . God, that was the hard part. Let go all the defenses, do whatever Ari told him, and hope that another eighteen-year-old knew better than he did how to handle the situation.

"I was seventeen," he said to Ari, quietly, while the engines were warming up, "when I thought I knew what I was doing well enough to send Grant to Krugers. You know what that came to."

Ari snapped her seat buckle across, and reached up to take the drink Catlin handed her. "Warning taken. I know. But sometimes there aren't any choices, are there?"

vii

RESEUNE ONE made cruising altitude, and Ari took a sip of her drink and checked the small unit she had clipped to her chair arm, remote for the more complex electronics in the briefcase in its safety rack beside her seat, the first time she had ever carried it. She pushed the check button. It flashed a reassuring positive and beeped at her.

System up, link functioning.

Across from her, in his seat beside Justin, Florian nodded to her smile and nod at him. Florian had done the updating into the code system—of course it worked; and worked, so long as she made no queries, as a very thorough observer in Reseune's state-of-the-art net, simply picking up on all her flagged items and routing them to her as they came up in the flow.

Not even Defense had cracked that code-upon-code jargonesque flow Reseune Security used: one hoped.

Ari picked up her drink again and leaned back. "Everything's all right," she said to Justin. "No troubles we don't know about, and we're picking up our Bureau escort in about five minutes."

Justin looked from the window at his right toward her, truly looked at her, eye to eye across the low table that divided the seats. He had darted glances toward every movement in the plane, tense as Florian or Catlin when they were On; he was tracking even on the working of the plane's hydraulics, and the light from the window touched taut muscle in his jaw, mature lines of worry set into his brow and around his mouth: the years had touched him, no matter the rejuv. He worries so much, she thought. He's too smart to trust anyone. Certainly not Reseune. Now, not even his father. He'll doubt Grant himself if he's gone too long.

That's what he's trying to figure out—trying to estimate where I am in this, and whether Grant is safe, and how much I'm a young fool and how much I've got him fluxed and how much he can believe now of anything I say or do.

I'm not the kid he knew. He's begun to figure that; and he's started to wonder when it happened, and how far it's gone, and who was working on him while he was under kat. He's scared —and embarrassed about being scared of me; but he knows he has every right to be afraid now.

The brain has to rule the flux, Art-elder; I think I've finally understood what you mean. Whether he slept with me or not, I'd have come round to this, I do think I would: you didn't bring up a fool, Ari-elder. Neither did maman and my uncles.

Ollie doesn't write because he values his neck, that's the truth. This universe is dangerous, and Ollie's just as upset as Grant is back there, alone, with strangers. He's trusted nothing since maman died. He works for Reseune Administration.

"We can talk now," she said, with a slide of her eyes toward the rear of the plane where the regular Security people sat. The engine noise was as good as any Silencer, given that Security did not have any unreported electronics back there; but the carry-bag at Florian's feet had its own array of devices, which one had to trust was up to what Florian vowed it was—and Florian's Base One clearance was quite adequate for him to find out whether it was up to date.

"An explanation would do," Justin said. "What are you doing?"

"I'd be ever so happy if I knew. I'm not choosing the timing on this. I'm afraid Councillor Corain is and it's not like him. I'm afraid the information has gotten to someone else, like Khalid, and he had to jump fast to be first—which is why it came out in the middle of the funeral, not tonight."

Justin looked taken off his balance. "You know about things like that.

I'm sure I don't."

"You know, Justin, you know damn well, you just haven't had uncle Giraud's briefings; and it still caught us. Giraud knew there was a leak. He knew what your father would say; he warned me what your father would say if he got a chance. The question isn't even whether it's true. Let's assume it is."

He was going to slip her, she saw it coming, and she maintained his attention with an uplifted finger, exactly, exactly Ari senior's mannerism: she knew it. "What does it do for your father?"

"It gets him the hell out of Planys. It gets him clean, dammit, it gets him his standing with the Bureau—"

"All of which I'm not averse to—in my own time. My own time isn't now. It can't be now. Think about it, Justin; you can handle Sociology equations. Try this one, try this one near-term, like the next few years—tell me what's going to happen and what's going to result from it. That's first. That's the thing that matters. What does it do to him, what's going to happen? Second question: where does he stand, where does he think he stands, what side has he just taken—and don't tell me your father's naive, no one in Reseune is naive, just under-briefed."

He said nothing. But he was thinking, deep and seriously, on what she had said, and around the peripheries: who am I dealing with, what is she up to, has Denys choreographed this business? He was much too smart to take anything at one level.

"Did you leak it to Corain?" he asked.

Oh. That was a good one. It jolted a thought loose. " I didn't. But, God, Denys might have, mightn't he?"

"Or Giraud," Justin said.

She drew a long breath and leaned back. "Interesting thought. Very interesting thought."

"Maybe it's the truth. Maybe whoever leaked it is in a position to know it's the truth."

Florian was interested: Florian was watching Justin with utmost attention. She reckoned that Catlin was. God, Ari thought, and found herself smiling. He's not down, is he? I see how he's survived.

"Easier to answer that," she said, "if I had an idea what happened that night, but there's no evidence. I thought there might have been a Scriber record. There was just the Translate. There's nothing there. The sniffers were useless; there'd been too many people in and out before they thought about it. Psychprobe would have been the only way. And that didn't happen. And won't. It doesn't matter. Giraud talked about 'the Warrick influence.' Giraud made an enemy. Now what do we do about that enemy?"

A slower man, an emotional man, would have blurted out: Let him go. She sat watching Justin think, relatively sure of some of the tracks—the fact that Jordan's name was in Paxer graffiti; that Jordan's ideas had opposed her predecessor; that there was one election shaping up in Science and another virtually certain in Defense, both critical, both of which, if the Centrists won—could destroy Reseune, shift the course of history, jeopardize all Reseune's projects, and all her purposes. . . .

Perhaps three, four, minutes he sat there, deep-focused and calm as kat could have sent him. Then, in with careful control:

"Have you run the projections of Jordan's input?"

She drew breath, as if one of a dozen knots about her chest had loosed.

There is an echo, she thought, imagining that dark place, that floating-in-null place. She took her own time answering. "Field too large," she said finally." I don't aim at him. I want him safe. The problem is—he's quite intelligent, quite determined, and even if he didn't leak that message—what's he going to do if he gets in front of the news cameras? What's he going to do to every plan for solving this that I could have come up with?"

"I can solve it. Give me fifteen minutes on the phone with him."

"There's still a problem. He won't believe a word of it. Giraud said it: that tape was an intervention. Your father saw it—" He reacted to that as if it had hit in the gut. "You haven't," she said, "have you? Ever. You don't know what Ari did. You should have asked to see it. You should have gone over that damned thing as often as it took. It fluxed me too, fluxed me so I wasn't thinking straight: it took Giraud to point out the obvious. If I could see what Ari did, so could your father. Your father didn't see it as a seventeen-year-old kid, your father saw it as a psychsurgeon who had to wonder exactly how often and how deep Ari's interventions had been. He had to wonder how far they'd gone. You and Grant worry about each other when you've been separate three days. I know. You know they can't run an intervention on Jordan—but don't you think he has to wonder—after twenty years—just whose you are?"

Justin leaned forward and picked up his drink from the table, breathing harder: she marked the flare of his nostrils, the intakes and the quick outflow. And the little body moves that said he wanted out of that round. "Florian," he said, "would you mind terribly—I thank I'd like something stronger." She could read Florian too, instant suspicion: Florian distrusted such little distracting tactics, with thoughts engendered of lifelong training. He was not about to turn his back on an Enemy. "Florian," she said, "his usual."

Florian met her eyes, nodded deferentially then and got up, not even looking at Catlin, who sat beside her: there was no question that Catlin was on, and hair-triggered.

"You can talk to your father," she said to Justin, "but I doubt he's believed you entirely for years. Not—entirely. He knows you were psychprobed, over and over again; and he doesn't believe in Reseune's virtue. If you try to reason with him—I'm afraid what he's going to think, do you see? And I'm not just saying that to get at you, Justin, I'm afraid what he's going to think, and I don't think you can do anything to stop him, not with reason."

"You forget one thing," he said, leaning back against his seat.

"What's that?"

"The same thing that keeps Grant and me alive. That past a certain point you don't care. Past a certain point—" He shook his head, and looked up as Florian brought the drink back. "Thank you."

"No problem, ser." Florian sat down.

"If he gets into public," Ari took up the thread of thought, "he can dp himself harm, he can do me harm, of course—which I don't want. It's possible that your father has been psychologically—very isolate, for a very long time: insular and insulated from all the problems going on in the world. If he was protecting you against the release of that tape—which may be a real motive for him lying until now—he evidently believes you're capable of handling it or he's been told something by someone that makes him desperate enough to risk you as well as himself—if that message actually came from him, which is a question . . . but it doesn't really matter. What he'll do—that matters. And we have an image problem in all this mess, you understand me?"

Justin was understanding her, she thought so by the little motions of his eyes, the tensions in his face. "What is there to do?" he said. "You've left Grant back there; I don't know what they're doing to my father at Planys—"

"Nothing. They're not going to do anything to him."

"Can you guarantee that?"

She hesitated awhile over that answer. "That depends," she said. "That very much depends. That's why you're with me. Someone has to do something. I'd wanted to be inconspicuous for a while more, but I'm the only face the media knows and I'm the only one who has enough credit with them to patch this mess up—but I need you, I need your help. Possibly you'll double on me. I don't know. But whether it's true or false what they're saying, it's going to be terribly hard for your father to handle this or to back away from the cameras if he gets the chance. You're my hope of stopping that."

Another small silence. Then: "How did you get Denys's permission for this move?"

"The same way I've gotten you into my residency. I told Denys you're mine, that I ran a major intervention, that Grant is far more of a hold on you than your father is; that you'd choose him over your father if it came to a choice, because your father can take care of himself; while Grant—" She shrugged. "That kind of thing. Denys believes it."

That got through to him, just about enough threat to make sure he understood. Justin sat there staring at her, mad, very mad. And very worried. "You're quite an operator, young sera."

The compliment made her smile, though sadly. "Giraud died too soon. The Paxers aren't going to sit still in all this commotion. The elections are going to be chaos, there may be more bombings, more people dead—the whole thing is going to blow wide if we don't head it off. You know all of that. Your work is exactly in my field. That's one thing at stake. So you can put your father in a position where he has to do something desperate and put himself out front of something he can't control and I don't think he has any idea exists; or you can help me defuse this, calm him down and let me run a little game with Denys—put your father wise to it if you can, I don't mind; encourage your father to wait until I do run Reseune. We can double-team Denys, or you can blow everything to hell with the newsservices—by asking to get your father in front of the cameras; by doing things that make you look like you're under duress—"

"The truth, you mean."

"—or by doing things that give you a bad image. You can't look like a traitor to your own father. You're very good with bright people and design-systems; but you don't know where the traps are, you're not current with the outside world, you're not used to the press and you're not used to picking up on your own public image. For God's sake take advice and be careful. If you get stubborn about this you can lose every leverage you've got."

He stared at her a long time, and sipped his whiskey. "Tell me," he said finally, "exactly what sort of thing I should watch out for."

Grant watched, entranced by the precision, as the cards crackled into a precise shuffle in the girl's fingers. "That's amazing," he said.

"This?" Sera Amy looked pleased and did it again. "My mother taught me, God, I guess from the time my fingers were big enough." She shot a series of cards to her and to him. Quentin AQ was the silent presence in the room, a tall, well-built young man in Security uniform, who sat and watched—a young man altogether capable of breaking a neck in a score of different ways: Grant had no illusions about his chances if he made a move crosswise of Amy Carnath. He had looked to spend the time confined to his room at best and under trank or under restraint at worst; but young sera had instead made every attempt to reassure him: It won't take long, they'll meet with the Bureau, I don't doubt they'll have everything straightened out in a couple of days: and she had finally, after a mid-afternoon lunch, declared that she would teach him to play cards.

He was touched and amused. Young Amy was taking her recently-acquired Alpha license very seriously, and doing outstandingly well: the game did keep his mind off what, if he were half-tranked and locked in solitude, would have been absolute hell—a situation which was still hell, what time he let himself worry whether the plane had landed yet, whether Justin was safe, what was going on with Jordan in Planys.

He wished he were on that plane; but he figured he was actually doing more good for Justin as a hostage, being civil and cool-headed and not pouring fuel on the fires of juvenile excitement—or Administration paranoia.

Poker was also an interesting game, in which Amy said an azi had two considerable advantages, first, profound concentration, and second, the ability to conceal one's reactions. Sera was right. He very much wanted to try it with Justin.

When Justin got home.

It was the little thoughts like that, that sent panic rushing through him, with the thought that something could happen, that somehow an order could come through that sera Amy could not resist or that authorities elsewhere could take Justin into custody; and, Reseune holding his Contract, they might not meet again. Ever.

Then he might not sit placidly waiting for re-training. Then he might do something incredibly unlikely for an azi designer, and get his hands on a weapon: in a very fluxed way it seemed what a CIT might do and what was the best thing to do. At other moments—he was fluxing that wildly—he knew that his own personal CIT might fight to be free, but he would never turn a weapon on sera Amy, nor on Quentin AQ, and that Justin could never—he had told the truth to ser Denys—never harm any of the people who had harmed him. His CIT might threaten with a weapon, but pull the trigger– Justin could not, not even if it was Giraud, who was dead anyway.

No, when it came to it, Grant thought, studying the hand young sera had dealt him—he could not see himself surrendering to the hospital; but he could not see himself shooting to kill, either.

Young Amy told him that the secret of the game she was teaching him was to keep one's intentions and one's predicaments off one's face. Young Amy was very intelligent, and quite good at it herself, for a CIT. Possibly she was playing more than one game and trying to read more than what cards he held, the same way he was trying to read her for more information than she was willing to give.

So meanwhile he gambled for small markers, because one was supposed to play for money, but he owned none that was not Justin's; and he would not risk that, even at the minuscule levels young Amy proposed. He risked nothing that was Justin's, was very glad to have enough liberty in the apartment to know that Justin's papers were safe, and generally to catch what bits of information he could . . . dumb-annie was a role he still knew how to play. I'll be all right, Justin had said to him. And after all was said and done, he had to rely on that, like any azi—while he kept fluxing on Winfield and the Abolitionists and the fact that at thirty-seven he was legally a minor; and Amy Carnath at eighteen was legally an adult. Dammit, he wanted to shout at her, take advice. Tell me what's going on and listen to someone with more experience than you have.

But that was not likely to happen. Amy Carnath took Ari Emory's orders; and whether it was Denys Nye or Ari Emory managing things now—he could not at all figure.

viii

The airport stirred boyhood memories, himself in the terminal gift shop, begging a few cred-chits from Jordan for trinkets and gifts for home: Justin thought of that as they walked the safeway from the plane to the Novgorod terminal, with armed Security going ahead of them and crowding close behind.

No passage through the public terminal: Ari had explained that; no transfer to a car in the open. Things were too dangerous nowadays. They took a side door, hurried downstairs to a garage where cars waited with shielded windows.

There Security laid hands on him and took him apart from Ari and Catlin and Florian. Ari had warned him it would happen and asked him to do exactly what Security told him, but they were damned rough, and their haste and their force getting him into the car was more than it need have been.

He kept his mouth shut about it, sandwiched in between two guards in the back seat, and with a heavy hand on his shoulder as the doors locked.

Then the man let go of him and he settled back, watching as the first few cars left the garage. Their own driver joined the tight convoy, whisking out past RESEUNE ONE's wing, along the edge of the field and out a guarded gate where they picked up more escort.

It was the son of official protection, he thought, that must have attended Giraud Nye in these troubled years. He sat between the hard-muscled bodies of two of Reseune's senior House Security, with another, armed, in the front-seat passenger side, and one driving. He watched the road unfold to the river, the bridge and the drive—he remembered it—which led up to the government center, green crops growing in the interstices, a handful of trees which had prospered in the years since he had ridden this road at Jordan's side, taking the tour—

The Hall of State loomed up around a turn, suddenly filling the windshield; and he felt a chill and a sense of panic. "Aren't we going to the Bureau?" he asked his guards quietly, calmly. "I thought we were going to the Science Bureau."

"We follow the car in front of us," the one on the left said.

He figured that much. Damn, he thought, and sat and watched, wishing he had Grant's ability to go Out awhile. He wanted this day done with. He wanted—

God, he wanted to go home.

He wanted a phone, and a chance to talk to Jordan, and to find out the truth, but the truth, Ari had said it, was the least important thing.

He was numb, in overload, total flux. He tried to find answers and there was no information to give them to him, except the ones Ari herself led him through, bringing order where none existed—or finding the only way through, he did not know any longer. He had found himself agreeing to lie to the press, agreeing to deny his father's innocence—to which he himself could not swear—

He found himself doubting Jordan, doubting Jordan's motives, Jordan's love for him, everything in the world but Grant. Doubting his own sanity, finally, and the integrity of his own mind.

Not even Giraud did this to me. Not even Giraud.

Flux of images, the older Ari, the younger; flux of remembered panic, interview in Ari's office:

. . . You make my life tranquil, sweet, and stand between me and Jordan, and I won't have his friends arrested, and I won't do a mindwipe on Grant, I'll even stop giving you hell in the office. You know what the cost is, for all those transfers you want. . . .

. . . I told Denys you're mine, that I ran a major intervention, that Grant is far more of a hold on you than your father is; that you'd choose him over your father if it came to a choice. . . .

The convoy drew up under the portico at the side of the Hall of State. He moved when his guards flung the door open and hastened him out and through the doors—not so roughly this time: this time there were news cameras.

Ari stopped and took his arm. The thought flashed through his mind that he could shove her away, refuse to go farther, tell the cameras everything that had happened to him, shout out the fact that Reseune was holding Grant hostage, that they had worked on him to divide him from his father, that Jordan might well have spent twenty years in confinement for a lie—

He hesitated, Ari tugging at his arm, someone nudging him from behind.

"We're going to meet with Secretary Lynch," Ari said, "upstairs. Come on. We'll talk to the press later."

"Is your father innocent?" someone shouted at him out of the echoing chaos.

He looked at that reporter. He tried to think, in the time-stretch of nightmare, whether he even knew the answer or not, and then just ignored the question, going where Ari wanted him to go, to say whatever he had to say.

"You do this one alone," Ari told him when they reached the upstairs, turning him over to Bureau Enforcement. "I'll be getting the hearing on monitor, but nobody from Reseune will be there. The Bureau wants you not to feel pressured. All right?"

So he walked with blue-uniformed strangers still of Reseune's making, taught by Reseune's tapes—who brought him into a large conference room, and brought him to a table facing a triple half-ring of tables on a dais, where other strangers took their seats in a blurred murmur of conversation—

Strangers except Secretary-now-Proxy for Science Lynch: Lynch he knew from newscasts. He settled into his chair, grateful to find at least one known quantity in the room, at the head of the committee, he supposed. There was a pitcher of water in front of him, and he filled a glass and drank, trying to soothe his stomach. Ari's staff had offered him food on the plane, but he had not been able to eat more than the chips and a bite of the sandwich; and he had had another soft drink after the whiskey. Now he felt light-headed and sick. Damn fool, he told himself in the dizzying buzz of people talking in a large room, quit sleepwalking. Wake up and focus, for God's sake, they'll think you're drugged.

But the flux kept on, every thought, every nuance of everything Jordan had last said to him; everything Ari had said that might be a clue to what was going on or whether the threat was threat or only show for Denys and Security.

Secretary Lynch came up to the table where he was sitting, and offered his hand. Justin stood up and took it, felt the kindness in the gesture, saw a face that had been only an image on vid take on a human concern for him; and that small encouragement hit him in the gut, he did not know why.

"Are you all right?" the Secretary-Proxy asked.

"A little nervous," he said; and felt Lynch's fingers close harder on his. A little pat on his arm. Giraud's career-long associate, he suddenly remembered that with a jolt close to nausea, and felt the whole room go distant, sounds echoing in his skull in time with the beating of his heart. Where does Ari stand with him? Is this choreographed?

"You're inside Bureau jurisdiction now," Lynch said. "No Reseune staff is here. Three Councillors are in the city: they've asked to audit the proceedings: Chairman Harad, Councillor Corain; Councillor Jacques. Is there any other witness you want? Or do you have any objection to anyone here? You understand you have a right to object to members of the inquiry."

"No, ser."

"Are you all right?" It was the second time Lynch had asked. Justin drew in a breath and disengaged his hand.

"Just a little—" Light-headed. No. God, don't say that. He thought his face must be white. He felt the air-conditioning on sweat at his temples. "I was too nervous to eat. I don't suppose I could get a soft drink before we start. Maybe crackers or something."

Lynch looked a little nonplussed; and then patted his shoulder and called an aide.

Like a damned kid, he thought. Fifteen minutes, a pastry and a cup of coffee, that little time to catch his breath in an adjoining conference room, and he was better collected—was able to walk back into the hearing room and have Secretary Lynch walk him over to Mikhail Corain and to Simon Jacques and Nasir Harad one after the other, faces he recognized in what still passed in a haze of overload, but a less shaky one: God, he was fluxed. He had had nightmares about publicity, lifelong, felt himself still on the verge of panic—still kept flashing on Security—the cell—the Council hearings. . . .

Giraud's voice, saying things he could not remember, but which put a profound dread in him.

Wake up, dammit! No more time for thinking. Do!

"Dr. Warrick," Corain said, taking his hand. "A pleasure to meet you, finally."

"Thank you, ser."

When did that message actually come from my father? That was what he wanted to ask.

But he did not, not being a fool. Audit, Lynch had said: then the Councillors were not here to engage in questions.

"If you need anything," Corain said, "if you feel you need protection—you understand you can ask for it."

"No, ser. —But I appreciate your concern." This is a man who wants to use Jordan. And me. What am I worth to him? Where would his protection leave me?

Out of Reseune. And Grant inside.

Corain patted him on the arm. Simon Jacques offered his hand, introducing himself, a dark-haired, neutral kind of man with a firm grip and a tendency not to meet his eyes. "Councillor. . . . Chairman Harad." —as he shook Harad's thin hand, meeting a gray stare appallingly cold and hostile. One of Reseune's friends.

"Dr. Warrick," Harad said. "I hope you can clear up some of the confusion in this. Thank you for agreeing to appear."

"Yes, ser," he said. Agreeing to appear. Who asked me? Who agreed in my name? How many things have gone out, in my name, and Jordan's?

"Dr. Warrick," Lynch said, taking his arm. "If we can get this underway—"

He took his seat at the table; he answered questions: No, I have no way of knowing anything beyond my father's statements. He never discussed the matter with me, beyond the time—just before the hearing. When he was leaving. No, I'm not under drugs; I'm not under coercion. I'm confused and I'm worried. I think that's a normal reaction under the circumstances. . . . His hand shook when he picked up the water glass. He sipped water and waited while committee members consulted together, talking just under his hearing.

"Why do you believe," a Dr. Wells asked him then, "—or did you ever believe—your father's confession?"

"I believed it. He said so. And because—" Bring out some of the sexual angle, Ari had said on the plane. It plays well in the press. Scandal always gets the attention, and you can work people en masse a lot easier if you've got their minds on sex: everybody's got an opinion on that. Just don't mention the tape and I won't mention the drugs, all right? "Because there was a motive I could believe in—that everyone in Reseune believed in. Me. Ariane Emory blackmailed me into a relationship with her. My father found out."

The reaction lacked surprise. The interrogator nodded slowly.

"Blackmailed you—how?"

He slid a glance toward Mikhail Corain, though it was a committee member who asked the question. He said, watching Corain's reactions in his peripheral vision: "There was a secret deal for Jordan's transfer to RESEUNESPACE. Ari found out Jordan had pulled strings to get past her, and she made a deal with me—not to stop my father's transfer." Corain did not like that line of questioning. So, he thought, and looked back at the questioner. "She told me—that she intended me to stay in Reseune; that she meant to teach me; that she saw potential in my work she wanted developed, and that she wanted a guarantee Jordan wouldn't mess up the psychogenesis project. It looked like it would be a few years. Then she said she'd approve my transfer to go with him. Probably she would have. She usually kept her promises."

Slowly, slowly, there began to be consultation. They knew, he thought to himself. They knew—the whole damn committee—even Corain– All these years; my God, the whole damn Council and the Bureau—there was no secrecy about me and Ari. But something I said—they didn't know.

God! What am I into? What deals did Giraud make, what am I treading on?

"You wanted to keep the sexual relationship secret," Wells said. "How long did that continue?"

"A few times."

"Where?"

"Her office. Her apartment."

"Who initiated it?"

"She did." He felt the heat in his face, and leaned his arms on the table for steadiness. "Can I say something, ser? I honestly think, ser, the sex was only a means to an end—to make me guilty enough to drive a wedge between me and my father. It wasn't just the encounter itself. It was the relationship between her and my father. I'm a PR, ser. And she was not my father's friend. I thought I could handle the guilt. I thought it wouldn't bother me. From the other side of the event it looked a lot different; and she was a master clinician—she was completely in control of what was going on and I was a student way out of his limits. My father would have understood that part of it, when I couldn't, at the time. I didn't plan for him to find out. But he did." A thought flashed up with gut-deep certainty out of the flux: He didn't do it. He couldn't kill anyone. He'd have been concerned for me. He'd have wanted to work the situation, get me clear before he did anything—and I can't tell them that. . . . —to change an instant later into: Anyone can do anything under the right stress. If that was the right stress for him—the unbearable point—

Lynch asked: "Did your father confront you with the discovery?"

"No. He went straight to her. I had a meeting with Ari for later that evening. I didn't know she was dead until they told me, after I was arrested." Then—then the thing that had been trying to click into place snapped into lock, clear and plain, exactly where the way out was: Disavow what Jordan's said—be the outraged son, defending his father: put myself in a position to be courted by both sides. That's the answer.

Out of everything that Ari had said on the plane, exactly where she was trying to lead him. Her pieces, handed him bit by bit—damn, she's an operator. But there was a way to position all of it so he could step to either shore, play the emotional angle, the outrage—oppose Jordan and be won over; or win Jordan over—whichever worked, hell with Corain, hell with all the would-be users in this mess: he could maneuver if he could just get a position and focus everyone's efforts on him, to persuade him. It collected information, it collected a small amount of control, and he thought, he thought it possibly exceeded the perimeters where Ari had intended he should go—but only enough to worry her and keep her working on him and his position, not so long as he could tread a very narrow line between opposition and cooperation.

Under fire. When he always did his best thinking. He picked up the glass and took a second drink, and his hand was suddenly steady, his heart still pounding: Damn, Giraud did a piece on me, didn't he? Shot my nerves to hell. But the mind works.

"Were you aware of any other person who might have had a motive for murder?"

"I'm not aware of any," he said, frowning, and plunged ahead unasked. "I'll tell you, ser, I have a major concern about what's going on here."

"What concern?"

"That my father's being used. That if he did recant his confession—that can't be checked any more than the confession can be. No one knows. No one can know. He's a research scientist. He's been twenty years out of touch with current politics. He could make a statement. He could say anything. God knows what he's been told or what's going on, but I don't trust this, ser. I don't know if he's been told something that made him come out with this, I don't know if he's been promised something, but I'm extremely worried, ser, and I resent his name being caught up in politics he doesn't know anything about—he's being used, ser, maybe led into something, maybe just that people are taking this up that had absolutely nothing to say to help him twenty years ago and all of a sudden everyone's interested, not because they know whether he's guilty or innocent, but because it's a political lever in things my father's not in touch with, for reasons that don't have anything to do with my father's welfare. I'll fight that, ser."

There was silence for about two breaths, then a murmur broke out in the room.

Now the knives were going to come out, he thought. Now he had found his position and now he had built Jordan a defense no matter what he had said.

His hand was shaking nearly enough to spill the water when he took his next drink, but it was the after-a-fight shakes. Inside, he had more hope for himself and Jordan and Grant than he had had since he had known where they were taking him.

Corain bit his lip as young Emory courteously shook his hand during the mid-session recess, as she said earnestly, in the insulation of her personal Security and his: "It's politics, of course: Reseune understands that; but it's very personal with Justin. He's not political. He sees what happened to his father in the first place as political and now he sees it all starting up again now that Giraud's dead and there are elections on. I've advised him to tone it down; but he's terribly upset."

"You should advise him," Corain said coldly, "if that's his primary concern, he should stay away from the media, young sera. If he raises charges, they'll go before Council."

"I'll pass him that word, ser." With a little lift of the chin. Not Ari senior's smile, not that maddening, superior smile; just a direct look. "Possibly my predecessor slipped and fell. I have no idea. I'm interested in the truth, but I really don't think it's going to come out in this hearing."

If Ari senior had said that, it would surely have meaning under meaning. He looked this incarnation in the eye and was absolutely sure it did. Reseune was pulling strings in Science, damned right it was.

"I hate it," Ari Emory said, assuming a confidential friendliness, "that this has blown up now. Politics change, positions change—and develop common interests. I'll administer Reseune before too many years; there's a lot I can do then, and there are changes I want to make. I want you to understand, ser Corain, that I'm not welded to the past."

"You have a few years yet," Corain said. And thought: Thank God.

"A few years yet. But I've been in politics a long, long time. If my predecessor were alive right now, she'd look at the general situation and say something has to be done to calm it down. It's not good for either party. All it does is help Khalid."

Corain looked at the young face a long, long moment. "We've always maintained a moderate position."

"We absolutely overlap, where it comes to solving Novgorod's problems. And the Pan-Paris loop. All of that. I think you're entirely right about those bills—the way I know I'm right about Dr. Warrick."

"You don't have any power, young sera."

"I do," she said. "At least within Reseune. That's not small. Right now I'm here because I know people, and Justin doesn't; and because Justin's my friend and quite honestly, I don't think his father is any danger to me personally and neither does Reseune Administration. So it's psychology of a sort: I want people to know that I support Justin. He sees his father in danger of getting swept up in causes he knows his father wouldn't support; and that's where Reseune is going to insist on its sovereignty to protect its citizens, both him and his father. It can end up in court; and it can get messy. And that just helps the Paxers, doesn't it, that I don't think you like either. So is there a way out of this? You've got the experience in Council. You tell me."

"First off," Corain said, with a bitter taste in his mouth, "young Warrick has to back off the charges he's making."

She nodded. "I think that's a good idea."

"If I gave the committee the idea that I blame Councillor Corain," Justin said carefully, quietly, "I certainly want to apologize for that impression, that came to my attention at recess. I'm sure he has my father's welfare at heart. But I am afraid of violent influences that could have involved themselves in this—"

ix

It was after midnight before they made the hotel, via the underground entrance, the security lift straight to the upper floors that Reseune Security had made their own: Ari sighed with relief as the lift stopped on the eighteenth floor—a sprawling, single interconnected suite on this VIP level of the Riverside, and one that Giraud still had reserved for the month, in a hotel that Reseune Security knew down to its foundations and conduits.

Abban met her at the lift, and Ari blinked, surprised at first, then ineffably relieved to see Abban's competence handling what Florian and Catlin had had no opportunity to oversee, quietly on the job, no matter that they had buried Giraud that morning, no matter that Abban had been through hell this week. He had to have flown up from Reseune this afternoon, after the rest of the staff arrived.

"Young sera," Abban said. "Florian, Catlin, I've already made the checks: sera will want the master bedroom, I'm sure; ser Justin to the white room or the blue—as sera pleases."

The blue bedroom was far off across the suite, down a hall and past the tape studio; the white was next to the master suite, connected by a side door, if it was unlocked: white had lately been her room, when she had been in Novgorod with uncle Giraud. I'd rather my old room, was her thought; but that was too emotional a thing to say, Abban was not terribly social, even after all those years, and it was the pressure of the day and her exhaustion that made her wish she was a child again, with Giraud next door to handle all the problems. "He can take white," she said, and looked at Justin, who was altogether exhausted. "Go with Kelly, Justin, he'll see you settled—is there anything to eat, Abban? Justin's starved."

"We thought meals might be short. Staff has a cold supper ready on call for any room; white wine, cheese and ham; or if sera prefers—"

"You're a dear, Abban." She patted his arm and walked wearily through the main doors of the VIP suite, Abban walking at her right, Florian at her left, and Catlin a little behind as they passed the guards into the long main hall of Volga sandstone. "I really appreciate your doing this. You didn't have to."

"Giraud asked me to close down his office and collect his personal papers. And ser Denys has asked me to oversee House Security, in somewhat Giraud's capacity, I hope on a tolerably permanent basis. It's only part of my job."

"I'm glad someone's looking after you. Are you all right, Abban?"

Abban was well above a hundred himself, having had one Supervisor for most of his life. He was very lost now, she thought, with Denys focused now on Giraud-to-come. Somebody had to take him—or give him Final tape and a CIT-number, which Abbban was ill suited for. All Abban had gotten since Giraud had died seemed to be snubs from the Family and responsibility for all the details, precious little grace for what he was suffering, and it made her mad.

"Perfectly well, thank you, sera. Ser Denys has offered me a place in his household."

"Good." She was surprised and relieved. "Good for Denys. I worry about you."

"You're very kind, young sera."

"I do. I know everything's in order; the staffs got it going. Go get some rest yourself."

"I'm perfectly fine, young sera, thank you: I prefer to stay busy." They stopped at the door of the master bedroom, a small suite within the suite, and Abban opened the door on manual. "I'll handle the staff and order your suppers—Florian and Catlin are staying right in your bedroom, aren't they? I'd advise that."

"Yes. Don't worry. It's all right." Abban would, she thought, have preferred Justin in the blue room, at the other end of the floor; and likely Giraud and therefore Abban had never believed there was no bed-sharing going on. "I assure you, just Florian and Catlin. Everything's fine. Get us our suppers and we'll all be in for the night."

"Remember even the main Minder is a limited system: you're on manual for the door. Please don't forget to lock it."

"Yes," she said. That would nettle Florian and Catlin—Abban's damned punctilious superiority, as if they were still youngers. She smiled, glad at least Abban had that intact. "Go," she said. "It's all right." And Abban nodded, gave her a courteous "sera" and left her to Florian and Catlin.

"He's doing fine," Florian said, with precisely that degree of annoyance she had figured. "Abban for head of Security. . . ."

Abban's nit-picking outraged Florian; Catlin found his reminders merely a waste of her time and treated them with cool disdain. That was the difference in them. Ari smiled, shook her head and walked on into the living area of the master suite, gratefully turned the briefcase over to Catlin and fell into a formfit chair with a groan, while Florian went straight to the Minder to read out the entries since Abban would have set it sometime today.

"God," she sighed, leaned back in the soft chair and let it mold around her, feet up. "How are we, clean enough?"

"Nothing's clean enough in this place," Catlin said. She set the briefcase on the entry table, opened it, pushed a button and checked the interior electronics. "Everything's real nervous," Catlin said. "I'll be glad to get out of here."

Florian nodded. "Minder was set up at 1747, only staff admitted since then."

"It was supposed to be set by 1500," Catlin said, cool disapproval.

"Abban did the set." Snipe. "Probably re-set it when he came in." Double snipe. "I'll ask him. —Sera, just sit here awhile. Let us go over everything."

"God," Ari moaned, and reached down and pulled off her shoes. "If there's a bomb I don't care. I want my shower, I want my supper, I want my bed, I don't care who's in it."

Florian laughed. "Quick as we can," he said, and left the Minder and went and looked at Catlin's readouts, then unpacked his own kit, laying out his equipment.

Carelessness was the one direct order they would never obey. No one checked out her residences except them and that was the Rule. Catlin had made it, years ago, and they all still respected it. No matter the inconvenience.

So she tucked her knees up sideways in the chair and shut her eyes, still seeing the cylinder going into the ground, the cenotaph slamming down; Abban's pale face; Justin's, across from her on the plane, so pale and so upset—

Damned long day. Damnable day. Corain was willing to deal but Corain was being careful, Corain was playing as hard and as nasty as he could. Corain had gotten to Wells, on the Bureau committee, and after the recess the questions had gotten brutal and detailed.

What is your present position in Reseune? Who approved it?

When was the last time you spoke to your father? What was his state of mind?

Have you ever had treatment for psychological problems? Who administered it?

You have an azi companion, Grant ALX-972. Did he come with you? Why not?

Have you ever been subject to a psych procedure you haven't previously mentioned to this committee?

Justin had held his ground—occasionally outright lying to the committee, or lying by indirection, a flat challenge to the opposition inside the Bureau to see if they had the votes to mandate another psychprobe: they don't have, she had assured him in the recess; but let's don't put that to the test, for God's sake.

He had held up, absolutely no fractures, till his voice began to give out: the temper built, the nerves steadied—he always did that, nervous as hell because politics gave him flashes, because that mind of his saw so many possibilities in everything, and sorted and collated over so wide a range he had trouble thinking of where he was and what was going on around him, but he had stalled off, found his equilibrium—she had recognized that little intake of breath, that set of the shoulders the instant she saw it on camera in the adjoining room, known that all of a sudden the committee was dealing with a Justin Warrick who was in that room, and starting onto the offensive.

Good, she had thought then, good. They think they can push him. He hasn't even been here till now. Now he is. He's too smart to go over to Corain. He'll never follow anyone's lead who's making mistakes: he's got far too much impatience with foul-ups and he said it while he was under kat: No one helped my father then. Not one of his damn friends. He has a lot of hostility about that.

They'll find out they're dealing with a Special, after he's made off with their keys and their cred-slips—damn, he's good when he cuts loose; everything they say his father has, including the temper—once you get it going, once you get him to stop analyzing and move. He's still learning these people and he hates real-time work with a passion. Field-too-large. He's never learned to average and extemp the way I have: Justin wants exactitudes, and you don't get that in real-time and you don't get it in politics. The same precision that makes him so valuable in design, that's why his designs are so clean—that's why he's so damn slow, and why he keeps putting embellishments on them—patches, for intersects he can see and the other designers, even Yanni, damned well can't—

Someday, when we get back, out of this, we've got to talk about that. . . .

There's got to be a search-pattern he's using that isn't in program, even if he's got total recall on those sets—

If he could explain it—

I can almost see it. There's something in the signature of the designers themselves—a way of proceeding—he's comprehending on a conceptual level. But he's carrying it into CIT work—

"They're sending a tray up," a strange voice said, and Justin, lying on the bed and almost gone, felt a jolt of panic: it should be Grant's voice; and it was not.

Kelly, the man's name was. Security. He passed a hand over his eyes, raked fingers through his hair and murmured an answer.

He was all right, he kept telling himself; he was safe. Kelly was on his side, there only to protect him.

He levered himself up off the bed, dizzy from fatigue, the down-side of the adrenaline high he had been on hour after hour. "I don't think I can eat."

"I have orders you should, ser," Kelly said, in a tone that said he would, bite by bite.

"Damn." A thought got to him. "I have a hospital appointment tomorrow. Rejuv. God." He thought of making the request through Kelly, but by his experience, nothing got done through lower levels. "Is Florian or Catlin still in the net?"

"Yes, ser."

"Tell them give me a call. Tell them I'm without my medication." He went into the bath and splashed water into his face and onto the back of his neck, worried now about Grant. He had no liking for taking medication from any random stock in Novgorod; he thought about Ari's elaborate security precautions around Grant and worried about the breach it could create, or whether there was any motive for anyone at Reseune to substitute drugs.

"Ser Justin?" Florian hailed him, from the wall-speaker. "This is Florian. Do you mean your prescription? We have that."

"Thanks. Have they made arrangements for Grant? He's on the same schedule."

"We thought of that. It's taken care of, ser. Do you need it tonight?"

"Thank you," he said, relieved. Trust Florian. No detail dropped. "No, I'm going to rest tonight, it sends me hyper—God knows I don't need it before bed." It also hurt like hell; and he was not looking forward to it. Could not go through tomorrow's hearings on pain-killer.

"Yes, ser. It's all right then. Have a good sleep."

"Endit," he said to the Minder. And heard the suite door open. His heart jumped.

Kelly, he told himself. Dinner was a little early. He toweled his face dry, hung the towel on the hook and walked out into the bedroom.

No Kelly.

Not like Security. "Minder," he said. "Minder, get Florian AF. Next door."

No sound.

"Minder, give me an answer."

Dead.

O my God.

"It's Abban, sera," the Minder said; and Ari levered herself out of the chair to manual the door herself, Florian and Catlin still being occupied about their checks in the bedroom.

"Sera!" Florian said sharply from behind her, and she stopped as he hurried to get the door himself. The Rule again. "I'll set supper out," he said quietly then, and with a little smile: "The shower's safe."

"I'm so glad." She started on her way, looked back as the door opened and Abban showed up with the catering staff.

As suddenly there was a pounding on the adjoining door from Justin's side. "Florian!" she heard him shout.

Then the whole wall blew outward, a sheet of bright fire, a percussion like a fist slamming against her; and she fell over a chair arm, complete tumble onto her knees and into the narrow wedge against the wall as flames shot up, as of a sudden a volley of gunshots exploded from her right, shells exploded to her left, and she stared in a split-second's horror, flinging up her arms as a flying body came at her, bore her over and cracked her head against the floor.

Second explosion, jolting the bones. "Sera!" Florian gasped into her ear, and she tried to move, cooperating by instinct as he tried to haul her along the floor behind the chair, with fire lighting the smoke and heat already painful. One more shot went off and exploded, and Florian fell on top of her, covering her with his body, protecting her head with his arms.

In a moment more there was a dreadful quiet, except the crackle of the fire that lit the lowering pall of smoke—then a sudden scrape of the chair pulled away and flung tumbling. Florian moved. She saw Catlin's stark, grim face upside down above her in the orange light, felt Florian's knee bruise her leg and his hand press her shoulder as he tried to get up and they tried to get themselves sorted out: he hauled himself up and got an arm around her with Catlin on the other side, Florian stumbling and catching himself on the wall.

A solid wall of fire enveloped the open door, a tumult of voices outside– Theirs or ours? Ari wondered desperately– The fire enveloped bodies on the floor, half-exploded, unrecognizable except the black Security uniforms—where Abban had been standing—and the heat burned her hands and her face—

Who's the Enemy? What's waiting out there? What's first? Can you run through fire that thick? Is it burning in the hall?

She felt the hesitation in Florian and Catlin, only a second; then Florian breathed, to someone not present: "Florian to Security Two—somebody's turned off the fire-systems. Re-engage, system two. That's an incendiary. Acknowledge."

"They're answering," Catlin said.

"Who's they?" Ari said, and choked on the smoke. The fire blinded, burned them with the heat, worse by the moment. "Dammit to hell, where's the hand extinguishers?"

As suddenly the fire-systems cut on with a wail of sirens.

There was fire: Justin was aware of that first, of blistering heat that drove him to move before he was fully conscious, of smoke that stung his nose and his throat and his lungs—deadly as the fire and harder to evade. He clawed his way up over debris of shattered structural panels and hot metal, felt one cut his leg as he went over, lost his balance and wormed through underneath the massive bureau that had come down onto the end of the bed—away from the fire, that was all he could think of at the moment, until his vision cleared and he could see the hallward door through the smoke, beyond the ruin of ceiling and wall-panels piled on the furniture.

There was a blank then. He came to on his knees, clinging to the door handle, trying to get to his feet again, finding fire on his left, the lights only clusters of suns in a universe gone to murk, to fire and shouts coming from somewhere. He pulled the manual latch, got the door unlocked, and pulled it open against the obstruction of debris around him.

Another blank. He was in the hall, dark figures rushed at him and one hit him, flinging him against the irregular stone of the wall. But that one stopped then, and hauled him up and yelled at him: "Get to the exit! That way—"

He felt the stiff material of a firesuit; felt a mask pressed to his face; felt himself dragged along while he inhaled cleaner air. Then he saw the emergency exit for himself, and tried to go under his own power—through the doors into clean air. The man yelled something at him, shoved him through—

Blank. Someone caught hold of him. There were people around him, in the stairwell.

"How far up is it?" someone shouted at him. "Where did you come from?"

He could not answer. He coughed and almost fell; but they helped him, and he walked.

x

"Kelly EK is dead," Catlin reported calmly, between listening to the net.

The rescue copters were still coming in at the pad outside Mary Stamford Hospital, and Ari angrily fended away the medtech who was trying to see if the lump on her head needed scan: "For God's sake, let me alone! Catlin, where, in the room?"

"In the hallway," Catlin said. "Alone. They identified him by his tags. —They're searching out on the far side of the building now, where the exit stairs let out: a lot of the guests went that way."

"God." Ari wiped a hand over her face—reflex: there was Neoskin on her hand and sweat stung.

The fire teams had it under control, the report ran. Explosions had gone off at several points on the floor, in the blue room and the white. The explosives were rigged in White, Florian had said, vastly chagrined. A periphery scan wouldn't pick them up, but we'd have found them if we'd run the check from the top. But Abban psyched us. He had the trigger: I saw the flash from the briefcase on the table; and that rig was state-of-the-art.

It had gone so fast, Justin's urgent shout through the connecting door, the split-second warning that had triggered Florian's something's-wrong reflexes and brought Catlin, armed, out that bedroom doorway the instant after the initial explosion, in a chain of thought that went something like: explosions-can't-happen-with-adequate-checks; there's-Abban-who-ran-the-checks; fire!— about a nanosecond before Abban's fire came back at her a hair off. A good shot with a regular pistol and a better one with explosive rounds, that was what it had come down to, while Abban had hesitated one fatal synapse-jump between target A and target B.

Giraud's orders, Ari thought. Giraud ordered me killed. . . .

Rescue teams had gotten into Justin's charred room. They were searching through the wreckage; but from the time they had said that the heavy display cabinet had crashed down beside the connecting door and shielded that area from the force of the blast, and that they had found the hall door open, then she had believed Justin had to have gotten out. There were two dead of smoke inhalation that they had found; Kelly burned, evidently, beyond recognition, not with Justin, where he should have been; several severely burned trying to get to her—God help them; but Security from the floor below had gotten up there with emergency equipment and a unit captain with good sense had gotten Florian's advisement the fire systems were not operating and gotten to the control system to turn them on again—Abban had seen to that little detail too—while another had ordered all personnel who could not reach fire control equipment to get out, immediately ... a damned good thing, because the majority were azi, who might well have tried to help her without fire-gear and died trying.

"Damn!" Astringent stung the wound on her head. They had already pulled a finger-wide fragment of plastic out of her shoulder. Florian was in worse shape, having caught several, and having bled profusely, in no condition to be running check-in, but Florian was at one door and a reliable guard was at the other, making sure badges got checked and that Reseune personnel were accounted for.

Abban and the two with him were dead. I don't know if they were his, Catlin had said. There wasn't time to ask.

An arriving ambulance jumped a curb, and Justin reeled back, stumbled and recovered himself in the dark, in the chaos of lights and firefighting equipment, announcements over loud-hailers, guests in night-robes and pajamas huddled together in the street outside and onto the gravel garden area. Firelight spread through smoke, smoke hazed the emergency lights and the floods around the entrance and down the drive.

He was on the street then. He did not know how he had gotten there, or where the hotel was. He was wobbling on his feet and he found a bench to sit on, in the dark. He dropped his head into his hands and felt clammy sweat despite the night chill.

He was blank for a time more. He was walking again, confronted with a dead end in the space between two buildings, and a stairway down. Pedway, the sign said.

Find a phone, he thought. Get help. I'm lost.

And then he thought: I'm not thinking clearly. God, what if—

It was someone on staff. Security had checked it.

Abban—had checked it.

Was it aimed at me? Was I the only one?

Ari—

He stumbled on the steps, caught himself on the rail, and made it to the bottom, to security doors that gave way to his approach, to a lighted tunnel that stretched on in eerie vacancy.

"Uncle Denys," Ari said; and of a sudden the load seemed too much– Uncle Denys, the way she had said in the hospital when she had broken her arm, when they had handed her the phone and she had had to tell Denys she had been a fool. Not a fool this time, she told herself that; lucky to be alive. But the report was nothing to be proud of either. "Uncle Denys, I'm all right. So are Florian and Catlin."

"Thank God for that. They're saying you were killed, you understand that?"

"I'm pretty much alive. A few scratches and some burns. But Abban's dead. Five others. In the fire." There was a limit to what they could say on the net, via the remotes Florian had set up with the mobile system. "I'm taking command of Security here myself. I'm issuing orders through the net. Security is compromised as hell, understand me. Someone got inside." Her hand started to shake. She bit her lip and drew in a large breath. "There've been two other bombings tonight—Paxers blew up some track in center city, they're claiming the attack on the hotel, and they're threatening worse; I'm in contact with the Novgorod police and all our systems—"

"Understood," Denys said, before she had to say more than she wanted. "I'm relieved. We've got that on the net. God, Ari, what a mess!"

"Don't be surprised by much of anything. It's all right, understand. Bureau Enforcement is moving on the hotel situation. Watch the net."

"Understood. Absolutely. We'd better cut this off. I'll up your priorities, effective immediately. Thank God you're safe."

"I plan to stay that way," she said. "Take care of yourself. All right?"

"You take care," Denys said. "Please."

She broke the contact, passed the handset back to Florian.

"We have confirmation," he said. "The plane has left the ground at Planys. They expect touchdown about 1450 tomorrow."

"Good," she said. "Good." From the fragile amount of control she had.

"Councillor Harad is waiting on-line; so is Councillor Corain. They've asked about your safety."

Strange bedfellows, she thought. But of course they would—Harad because he was an ally; Corain because, whatever he feared from her, he had more to fear from the Paxers, the radicals in his own spectrum; and the radicals in Defense.

"I'll talk to them. Have we got reporters down there?"

"Plenty."

"I'll talk to them."

"Sera, you're in shock."

"That's several of us, isn't it? Damn, get me a mirror and some makeup. We're in a war, hear me?"

The mirror in the ped-tunnel restroom showed a soot-streaked face that for a heartbeat Justin hardly knew for his own. His hands and arms were enough to raise question, the smell of smoke about his clothing, he had thought; and now he turned on the water full, took a handful of soap and started washing, wincing at bruises and burns.

The dark blue sweater and pants showed soot, but water and rubbing at least got the worst off and ground the rest in. He went through an entire stock of soap packets and dried his hair and his shoulders under the blowers, looked up again and saw a face shockingly pale. He was starting to need a shave. His sweater was burned and snagged, he had a tear above the knee and a gash I where the tear was. Anyone who saw him, he thought, would report him to the police.

And that would catch him up in Cyteen law.

He leaned against the sink and wiped cold water across his face, clamping his jaws against a sick feeling that had been with him since he had come to. Thoughts started trying to insinuate themselves up to a conscious, emotional level: It was Art's wall; whoever did this was staff—whoever did this—

Abban. Giraud's orders. But I'm only the incidental target. If she's dead— The thought was incredible to him. Shattering. Ariane Emory had years to live. Ariane Emory had a century yet, was part of the world, part of his thinking, was—like air and gravity—there.

– someone else is in charge, someone else—wanting—someone to blame. Paxers. Jordan.

Amy Carnath waiting in the apartment, with Grant, with Security—if Ari's dead—what can anyone do—

They've got Jordan, got Grant—I'm the only one still free—the only one who can make them trouble—

Something was wrong. Grant heard the Minder-call in the other bedroom—they had given him Justin's, which was his own as well, out of courtesy, he thought, as the larger room, or perhaps because they had known. Florian had re-set the Minder to respond to Amy Carnath, so nothing of what it was saying got to him, but he reckoned that it was not minor if it wakened young sera in the small hours of the night. After that he heard both Amy and Quentin stirring about and talking together in voices he could not quite hear with his ear to the door.

He slammed the door with his open palm. "Young sera, is something wrong?"

No answer. "Young sera? Please?"

Damn.

He went back to the large and unaccustomedly empty bed, lay staring at the ceiling with the lights on and tried to tell himself it was nothing.

But finally sera Amy came on the Minder to say: "Grant, are you awake?"

"Yes, sera."

"There's been an incident in Novgorod. Someone bombed the hotel. Ari's all right. She's coming on vid. Do you want to come to the living room?"

"Yes, sera." He did not panic. He got up, got his robe, and went to the door, which Quentin opened for him. "Thank you," he said, and walked ahead of Quentin as far as his own living room, where Amy was sitting on the couch.

He took the other side of the U, Quentin took the middle, between him and Amy; and he sat with his arms folded against too much chill, watching the images of emergency vehicles, smoke billowing from breached seals on the hotel's top two floors.

"Were people killed?" he asked quietly, refusing to panic. Sera Amy was not cruel. She would not bring him out here to psych him: he believed that, but it was a thin thread.

"Five of Security," Amy said. "They say the Paxers got a bomb in. They aren't saying how. I don't know any more than that. We're not supposed to do things on the phones that give away where people are or what's going on or when they're going to be places. That's the Rule."

Grant looked at her past Quentin. Not panicking, not yet; but the adrenaline flood was there, threatening shivers, pure fight-flight conflict.

"I had a call from Dr. Nye warning me not to let you loose," Amy said. "He says he'd really like me to send you downstairs to Security, but I told him no. I lied to him. I said you were locked up."

"Thank you," Grant said, because something seemed called for.

And watched the vid.

Makeup covered the minor burns, but she left the visible bruise and the burn on her cheek; she put two pins in her hair, but she let it fly loose about her face. She had a clean sweater in her luggage that Security had rescued from the suite, but she chose to meet the cameras in what she was wearing, the tailored, gray satin blouse, with the blood and the burns and the soot, and the watermark the firefighting foam had made.

She was also sure, having stalled off twice, that the clips would hit the morning news with full exposure in Novgorod.

"They tried," she said grimly, in answer to the first question, which asked her reaction to what had happened; and she confronted the cameras with a rapid-fire series of answers that got around the fine question of who had done it and gave her the launching point that she wanted—

"We are very well, thank you. And I have a personal statement, which I'll give you first. Then questions.

"I don't know yet why this happened. I know part of it; and it was an attempt not quite to silence me, because I have no voice in politics—but to kill me before I do come of age enough to acquire one.

"It was a power move of some kind, because whoever did it wanted power without process. It cost the lives of brave people who tried despite fire and the dangers of more explosions, to rescue me and others; more, it was a clear attempt to destroy the political process, no matter who instigated it, no matter who perpetrated it. I don't think that the Paxers had anything to do with this. That they're anxious to claim they had is typical of the breed: and they hope to benefit from it– benefit from it, because that's exactly what's going on: that a handful of individuals too few to make a party and incapable of winning votes in debate thinks it can wear down the majority by terror—creates an atmosphere in which every fool with a half-conceived program can try the same thing and add to the confusion they hope to use. Let me tell you: whether this was the Paxers or one individual with a personal opinion he thinks outweighs the law, it's the peace under assault, it's our freedoms under assault, and every one of these attacks, no matter how motivated, makes the lawful rest of us that much more certain we don't want killers in charge of our lives and we damned well don't want their advice on how to conduct our affairs.

"Let me tell you also that within an hour of the disaster, Chairman Harad and members of the Council, Simon Jacques and Mikhail Corain, called me to express their profound outrage. Everyone, no matter what political party, understands what's threatened by actions like this. I don't need to say that to the people of Novgorod, who've held out against the tactics of the extremists and who've equally well held out against offers of help from the central government. I take my example from Novgorod. People can persuade me with ideas but there's no way in hell they're going to move me with violence or the possibility of violence.

"This isn't the first time in history someone's tried this; and by everything I've ever learned, the answer that works with them is exactly the land of contempt Novgorod turns on them and their ideas—contempt, but no patience, no patience. Every time the Council sits to debate honest differences, everybody wins, precisely because civilization is working and the majority and the minority are trying to work out a fair compromise that protects the people they represent. That's why these types who want their own way above all have to destroy that; and that's precisely why the best answer is a consensus of all the elected bodies that ideas are valuable, peaceful voices deserve serious consideration, human needs have to be dealt with in a wise distribution of resources, and the principle of life itself has to be high on our list of values, just under our regard for the quality of life and the freedom to speak our opinions. Whoever did this, from whatever misguided notion of right above the law, he hasn't scared me into retreat, he's made me know how important law is; and I will run for office, someday; I'll run, and I'll respect the vote in my electorate, whatever the outcome, because an honest contest is one thing, but creating chaos to undermine the people's chosen representative isn't dissent, it's sabotage of the process, the same as the bombers are trying, and I'll have no part of that either."

Hear that, Vladislaw Khalid.

"If my electorate does think I should sit on Council I'll remember the cost it takes to have Council at all; and I'll remember that we have to have it, no matter the types who think they're above the law and so right they can take lives with impunity.

"That's the end of my personal statement. I've been very happy until now being as private as I could be; and I can't be now, because somebody decided to kill people to keep me from ever speaking out. So now I will speak up, loud and clear and often as there's something to say, because that's the best way I know to fight the ones who want me silenced.

"I'll take questions."

It was all right, she thought. She got off with a: "I'm sorry, my voice is going"; and a tremor in the hand she used to wipe a stray strand of hair—no need to pretend the latter: she had hid it until then, and got away from the cameras and had to sit down quickly, but she had gotten through it and said exactly what she had wanted to say.

"Is there any word?" she asked Catlin, who had been monitoring the net.

"No, sera," Catlin said.

She let go her breath and took the water Florian handed her. "Damn." Tears threatened, pain and exhaustion and the frustration of the situation. It was dawn. She had not slept since the morning of Giraud's funeral. Yesterday. God. "I'm going to make a phone call to Amy," she said in a controlled, quiet voice. "Ask Lynch to set up a very brief meeting with the Councillors and proxies at hand; and with the Bureau; I want to be at the airport by 0900."

"Sera, you haven't slept. Allow for that."

She sat a moment and thought about that. The blast kept replaying in her memory. The burned bodies. The smoke-filled halls, the lights shining out of haze.

She had no desire to shut her eyes at the moment, or to put food into her stomach, or to disturb her wounds by wrestling herself into the sweater she had brought: such little pains unnerved her, when there was so much worse to think about.

So one did not think about what-if and might-have-been. One handled things at the present, and trusted one's long-prepared decisions.

One Worked the whole of Union if that was what it took. One promised order where order did not exist; one held out the promise of moderation and rapprochement to shore up Corain, who was the opposition she preferred to Khalid.

One moved close to center for a while, to move the opposition closer to one's position—granted, of course, that they were trying to do the same: and granted at that point the clever and the quick would make the next jump out, leaving the opposition sitting bewildered at the new center.

Working the macrosystem, Ari senior would say.

While everything else went to hell and nothing that one wanted—stayed for long.

Except Florian and Catlin. Except the one flawless loyalty—the one thing that Ari's murderer had not dared to face.

Justin waked, winced at stiffened joints and the cramped position the thinly-padded bench in the restroom afforded; waked and tried to move in a hurry at the sound of the outer doors, to rake his hair into some kind of order and get to his feet before the intrusion passed the second doors; but he was only halfway up and off his balance before he faced two men in work-clothes, who stared at him half a heartbeat in surprise. He just turned to the sink, natural as breathing, turned on the water, wet his hands and ran them through his hair.

Except the two men showed up in the mirror, close behind him.

One moment he panicked. The next he thought: Hell, they're not Reseune Security, and turned around with a right elbow and all the strength he had—shocked as it connected, but still moving in the tape-taught sequence, full spin and a punch to the breastbone.

He stared a split-second at the result, one man flung backward against the corner, the other down– God, he thought, and then seeing the first man bracing to go for him, darted for the door and knocked it banging, went through the second the same way, and came out into a tunnel already beginning to fill with morning traffic.

What if I was wrong? That man could die. I may have killed someone.

Then: No. I read it right.

And: I haven't studied that tape since I was a kid. I didn't know I could do that.

He slowed to a fast walk, shaking in the knees and hurting in his shoulders and his back and knowing he was attracting attention with his unshaven face and his agitated manner: he tried to match the pace of the general traffic, put his hands in his pockets and tried to look more casual, all the while thinking that the men could be after him now with more than robbery in mind.

Damn, I'd have given them the keycard and wished them luck using it, let them lead the police on a chase—

God. No. Novgorod doesn't have a check-system. There's no tracking system, they refused to put it in.

He turned on one foot—his neck and shoulders were too stiff—caught his balance, looked back and moved on. He was not sure he could even recognize the men among the crowds—

More strangers than I've ever seen at once in my whole life—too many faces, too many people in clothes too much alike. . . .

People jostled him and cursed him: Damn z-case, a man said. He rubbed an unshaven chin and, since shutters were opening and shops were lighting up in this section of the tunnels, he found a pharmacy and bought a shaving kit; and a breakfast counter and bought a roll-up and a glass of synth orange. But the boy took an extra look at the keycard and made him nervous.

Justin Patrick Warrick, it said, CIT 976-088-2355PR, which was damning enough; but in faint outline behind that was the Infinite Man emblem of Reseune Administrative Territory.

"Reseune," the boy said, looking up, checking the picture, he thought—in case it was stolen. "Never seen one of those. You from there?"

"I—" He had not tried talking. His voice was hoarse and cracked. "I work in the city offices."

"Huh." The boy slid it into the register slot and handed it back with the cup and the roll on the lid. "You return the cup and lid we refund half." The number 3 was on both.

"Thanks." He went over to the counter, unlidded the drink, and took down the roll with huge gulps of the sugary, iced drink, no matter the rawness of his throat—uneasy on his stomach in the first few moments and then altogether equal to anything Changes could offer at twenty times the price. He leaned there a moment with his eyes watering, just breathing and letting his stomach get used to food.

Where in hell am I going? What am I going to do?

He wiped his blurring eyes, went back to the counter with the cup and the lid, among other customers, delayed a moment until they were served. "Where can you get the news?"

"They got a board down to the subway."

"Where?"

"Straight on, to your Wilfred tunnel, go right. —You been up to that fire at the Riverside?"

"Up all night with it," he said. "You hear anything—who did it, why?"

The boy shook his head, and served another patron. Justin waited.

"Emory was on vid this morning," the boy said; and Justin's heart skipped. "Madder'n hell."

"Emory's all right?"

"She was, yey." The boy broke off to take a card and pour a drink. "You from Reseune?"

Justin nodded. "Can I use a phone? Please."

"I can't do that." Another customer. The boy yelled, pointing past the woman: "Down to the corner, public phone."

"Thanks!"

He went, walking fast, with the traffic, in the direction the boy had said, passing some casual walkers. Call the Bureau. Ask for protection. They can't think I'm responsible. They can't blame anyone but Reseune Security—

Abban, the head of it—

He saw the sign that said Phone, and kept his keycard in his hand. He knew the Bureau number: he had had it memorized for years—but he had never used a phone outside Reseune, and he picked up the receiver, reading instructions: Lift receiver, insert card, key in or touch 0 and voice in. ...

"Ser."

He turned and saw a gray uniform, a tall, heavy-set body.

Novgorod police.

He dropped the receiver and hit the officer a glancing blow getting past him; and ran, desperately, through the crowds.

But his keycard, he realized to his horror, dodging past a group of workers and down a side tunnel—his keycard was still in the phone-slot.

xi

". . . My own Security was remiss at best," Ari said, in what of a voice she had left, sitting at the table in the conference room where Justin had sat. "Reseune will be conducting an internal investigation. I will tell you this, sen, —" Her voice cracked, and she took a drink of water. She had gotten her clothes changed, her hair pinned up—Catlin and Florian had helped; and she had the shakes—even if they had gotten her a cup of coffee and a liquid breakfast, which was all she could stand on her smoke-irritated throat. "I'm sorry. The voice isn't much. —I was about to say: I'm functioning as temporary head of Reseune Security; I'm ordering transfers; I'm posting and making assignments. I'm prepared to continue in that post at least administratively if Family council confirms it, though I'm quite aware my age and experience in Security are at issue: my view of my position is as someone qualified to assess the individuals in charge of operations and to make sure communications go through. I feel—to put this delicately—that my uncle's death has left some disarray in the department; the death of the acting head in the fire—is extremely unfortunate."

"Do you feel," Lynch asked, "that there is a chance the attempt was entirely internal?"

She drew a breath and took another drink of water. "Yes. I don't discount that possibility. Reseune is in transition. Dr. Nye—my surviving uncle—is very much affected by his brother's death. There are questions about his own health. But there are certainly experienced administrators who can deal with the problems if Reseune's own council should give them that mandate."

"In short, you feel Reseune can handle the problems."

"I have no doubt."

"Internally," Dr. Wells said, Corain's voice in Science. "But there is, pardon me, sera Emory, some question in my mind, regarding Dr. Warrick's disappearance. You say he was lodged in the room next to yours—but you know he cleared that area."

"Yes."

"Do you consider there's a chance he ran?"

"I don't think that likely, no."

"Why? Because his father is detained by Reseune?"

"Because," she shot back, "of his testimony before this committee. The Paxers were damned—excuse me: were extremely quick to take advantage of the hotel bombing; I'm scared mindless that there may well have been Paxer agents hovering around the hotel because we were there, and that whether or not they were the ones who planted the bomb—they may have been in a position to recognize Dr. Warrick among the evacuees and to kidnap him."

"Certain people might suggest other agencies."

"We certainly have no motive to. We brought him here."

"His father remains in detention."

"Under protective guard, in view of a security breach that put him in contact with unauthorized personnel. We don't know what else could have gotten to him. The attempt on my life makes that more than a remote possibility. In the meanwhile I'm extremely worried about Justin Warrick's whereabouts and about his physical condition."

"While Dr. Jordan Warrick remains under arrest."

"You can call it what you like, ser; the facts are as I gave them."

"Under your direction of Security."

"Under my direction."

"From whom are you taking your orders?"

"I operate within the directives of Reseune Administration. I'm reviewing Jordan Warrick's security and I will be in communication with him; and with Reseune Administration; I'm not empowered to make changes without consultation."

"Is he aware of his son's disappearance?"

"No, ser. We hope to have better news for him. Justin's well aware of his personal danger—he may well have hidden somewhere until he can be sure of the situation. That's my best hope."

"Is there any likelihood," Lynch asked, "that one of the blasts was aimed at him?"

"The blast was incendiary and directional; they put it in his room because my security could have found it immediately if it had been inside. It was elaborately shielded, it was mounted, more than likely, my security tells me, behind the very large bureau—a floor-to-ceiling cabinet—against that wall." Her voice cracked. She took another drink. "Excuse me. Justin was at a connecting door at the time, right against that wall—he was trying to warn me or my staff of something: we don't know what. The wall blew; the bureau spun half about and fell against the bed between him and the blast; and the plastic fragments hit that and the far wall. He was protected. That's how we know he survived the blast and we know he made it out of that room. Possibly he had seen something in the room that shouldn't have been there. I want to ask him. I want to know why his personal guard was found dead down the hall, not in the room. There are a lot of unanswered questions revolving around Dr. Warrick."

"For the record, you don't consider any possibility that Dr. Justin Warrick was part of a conspiracy."

"Absolutely not. For the record, I'm worried about a problem inside our own staff, within the area of personnel attached to my late uncle—and I'm very hesitant to be more specific than that even with this distinguished committee and guests. I'm continuing to answer questions, but I'm exceedingly anxious to get to the airport and get home, to carry reports to members of the Reseune staff who may decide to take action. The attack proves well enough that lives may be in danger."

"From what source?" Wells asked.

"Again, ser, I don't feel I should make charges: the next step is internal investigation, after which appropriate authorities from my Territory will be in contact with the Bureau."

"You're extremely young to lecture this committee on judicial matters."

"I believe, ser, that I'm factually right; and I hold an administrative post within Reseune which requires legal expertise—I refer to my post as wing supervisor, ser. It is correct for me to bring my information before Reseune authorities: I can appeal to the Bureau only in a personal matter, and it would be irresponsible to treat this as a personal incident: its implications are far more extensive."

"Specifically?"

"The possibility that Reseune law is being violated. That security is compromised to the extent I can't be sure of my Administrator's security. Either his involvement—or his safety from persons who may be. I have to say that much, to make you understand it could cost lives if we delay in this committee, or if a message goes out of here to Reseune." God. Let's not have a debate on this. We can't leak it that Jordan Warrick is on a plane, it's too damn vulnerable till it's on the ground; and after it is—

It lands at 1500. God knows into what.

"Then perhaps Reseune should ask for Bureau Enforcement."

"Perhaps Reseune will. At the moment I ask you to realize that Reseune's internal stability is threatened. Its sovereignty is at issue. I hope to find I'm wrong. I'd like for this to have come entirely from outside. I don't see a reasonable possibility that it did."

"You talk about personnel attached to your late uncle, the Councillor. I have questions about that."

How many of the Bureau have ties to Giraud?

Lynch himself?

God, have I made a mistake?

"In consideration of sera Emory's health," Lynch said, "and request for consultation with her staff—"

"Mr. Chairman, —" Wells objected.

"—we'll take a recess at this time." The gavel came down. "Committee will re-convene at 1930 hours, sera Emory's health permitting."

She let go the breath she had been holding, and shoved back the chair from the table. "Thank you, ser Secretary," she said in what voice she had left; and looked to the side as Florian came up to her and cut the microphone off.

"Sera," he said in a low voice. "He's in the tunnels. Novgorod police almost had him. He left his keycard. They're sure it's him."

She almost had to sit down. She leaned on the table. "He's run?" But they could not discuss it; Lynch was moving up on her other side. She turned and took his hand. "Thank you." Lynch nodded. "Take care, sera." Harad wished her much the same. "Sera," Jacques said stiffly, non-committal. And Corain: Corain gave her a long and wary look as he shook her hand.

xii

"Another, ser?" the guard asked, appearing by Jordan's seat.

"I could stand it," Jordan said. "Paul?"

"Yes," Paul said. And after the guard had walked down the aisle toward the bar: "You can't complain about the service."

"Sun off the right," Jordan observed. They were reaching cruising altitude again, after refueling at, he supposed, Pytho. In the dark. But the dawn-glow was visible ahead of the plane; and ever so slightly to the right.

From Pytho the plane could have gone to Novgorod or to Reseune. If it held course as they bore, it was Reseune—which was not, he was sure, any sort of good news.

Paul took his meaning. Paul was steady as ever, his support through the years; and now.

He wanted to see Reseune: it was strange that he could feel that way. But it was part of his life; it was civilization; and he was in some part glad to be going home. He hoped to see Justin.

He feared—much worse things.

"We've picked up a tailwind," one of the guards had said, in his better-than-average hearing. "We're going to beat our schedule."

The tunnels afforded few hiding places, only nooks, the dim recess of the news-shop; that took money to enter but the crowded doorway offered Justin a brief refuge and a vantage to scan the tunnel up and down. Then another public restroom, and a quick shave: he had kept the shaving kit and left the damned keycard; but he was afraid to stay there long—

The crowd in a restaurant, the general drift toward another corridor—another appeal to a shopkeeper: "Can I use your phone? I was robbed: I need to call my office—"

"Better call the police," the shop-owner said.

"No," Justin said; and seeing the look of suspicion on the man's face: "Please."

"Police," the man said into the receiver.

Justin turned and left, moving quickly into the crowds, dodging away, heart pounding. The strength the breakfast had lent him was gone. He felt the stiffness and the sprains, and his skull ached. He found himself farther down the corridor than he had thought, found another gap in his memory; and looked behind him in panic.

There were police at the intersection. He saw them look his way.

He turned back again and dived down a stairs: Subway, it said. He jostled past other walkers, came out at the bottom.

"Hey," someone yelled behind him.

He ran, out onto the concrete rim, evaded a headon collision and dodged around a support column.

People dived away from him, scrambled out of the way in panic: the whole strip was vacant. "Stop right there!" a voice thundered behind him, and screams warned him of a weapon drawn.

He dodged wildly aside and something slammed like a fist into his back; but he saw safety ahead—saw the black of Reseune Security, a man yelling: "Don't shoot!" and a gun in that man's hand too, aimed toward him.

But a numbness was spreading from his shoulder across his back, and balance went. He fell on the concrete, conscious, but losing feeling in his limbs.

"I'm Justin Warrick," he said to the black-uniformed officer who knelt down to help him. "Call Ari Emory."

And: "No," he heard the officer say, not, he thought, to him: "This man is a Reseune citizen. He's under our authority. File your complaints with my captain."

They wanted to take him to hospital. They wanted to take him to the Novgorod police station. They told him that it had not been a bullet but a high-velocity trank dart that had penetrated his shoulder: "I'm very glad to know that," he said, or tried to say, past the numbness of his mouth. And was equally relieved when the agent told him they had reached Ari, and that RESEUNE ONE, already on the runway, had turned back to hold for him.

xiii

"I'll walk," he said, and did, facing the climb up the passenger ramp; but Florian had come halfway down to help him and Ari was waiting at the top, in the doorway, with the frown he expected.

Ari put her arm around him when he made it through the doorway; so did Catlin, fending away other Security personnel; and steered him for the nearest seat. But he stopped, resisting their help for a moment, scanning the group of Security staff for Abban or for strangers. "Who's back there?" he asked. "Ari, who oversaw the plane, do you know?"

"The pilot and co-pilot," Ari said, in a voice only a little less hoarse than his. "And staff we're sure of."

"Abban—"

"Dead," Catlin said, and patted his shoulder. "We're onto it, ser. Come on."

He let go the seat then, eased himself into it, leaned back and stared at Ari in a dull, all-over malaise as she sat down opposite him. "Thanks for holding the plane," he said between breaths.

"Where in hell were you?"

"Went shopping," he said, as the door thumped to and sealed. For a moment he was disoriented. "Sorry." He knew her suspicions—and Florian's and Catlin's. He felt a dull surprise that they let him this close to her. "I wasn't anywhere. I got disoriented. Wandered off." The plane began to move, pale landscape swinging past the windows in the edge of his vision. "I just walked until I knew I was in the tunnels; and I found Security and I told them find you."

"That's not half of what I hear. Novgorod is real nervous about people acting odd around the subways."

He shut his eyes, just gone for the moment, exhausted, and the seat was soft, comfortable as a pillow all around him, while he was trying to organize his thoughts. The engines began to drown out sound, a universal white-out. Someone leaned near him and drew the belt over him. He looked up at Catlin as the catch snapped. The plane was gathering speed. Ari was belting in. Catlin and Florian dropped into the seats by him.

The takeoff had a peculiarly perilous feel. Maybe it was the drug that dizzied him; maybe it was the steep bank the pilot pulled, an abrupt maneuver unlike anything he had ever felt. He gripped the arms of the seat, remembering the chance of sabotage, remembering the fire—

"Wes, back there, is a class one medic," Ari said to him, raising her voice over the engine-sound. "He's got the equipment. When we level off we can get you an almost-real bed. How are you doing?"

"Fuzzed. They shot me with numb-out." He tried to focus on here and now, the list of things he wanted to ask her. "Giraud—Jordan—could be in danger."

"I'm head of Security at the moment," Ari said. "I'll tell you—I'm quite aware of our problems. I went to the Bureau, I laid the problems out, and when we land we're going to call Family council—that's why I desperately want you there. For one thing, you've a vote. For another, you can probably tell things I can't, about what's gone on all these years."

"You're challenging Denys?"

Ari nodded. "I'm bringing your father in. He's already left Pytho. That was for his protection, to get him home where there are witnesses. I could divert the plane. But that would tell too much. Say that I can hide certain orders from Denys. Not a whole plane. It's due in at 1500. We're projecting arrival about 1400. We're running that close. I can stall its landing, divert it to Svetlansk or somewhere, after we've landed. I hope to have Denys thinking I'm coming back for safety reasons. But he probably won't accept that."

He had thought he had had all he could take, already. He sat there with adrenaline pouring into his exhausted system and wondered why he was relatively calm. We're going to die, he thought. Somewhere along this—they're going to get us. Somewhere in the networks of Security orders, the airport, the military—the Bureau—House Administration—

"The first thing he'll move on," he said, "is my father and your friends. And they haven't got a way of finding it out."

"I sent Amy a very simple message this morning. It contained a codeword. There's a good chance she's been able to warn the others: she's on Base One right now, and that's a lot of defense in itself. Don't worry."

"God." He took several slow breaths. "Why are you trusting me?"

Ari gave a one-sided smile—her predecessor's expression, so like her it affected his pulse rate. "I could say, because you know how safe your father and Grant are with Denys right now. Or because you made your choice when you told them to call me. —But the real reason is, I always could read you—better than anyone in the House. You're my friend. I never forget that."

"You choose a damned peculiar way to show it."

The smile hardened. "I choose what works. I don't get my friends killed letting them run into a situation I can see and they don't. I don't argue about some things. I'm self-protective as hell. But you're special with me. You always have been. I hope we never come to odds."

He felt a profound unease at that. And reckoned she meant him to.

"I want to help your father," she said. "But you have to keep him from bringing this to Council. You have to get me the time. Give him time to know me, not the Ari he remembers."

"He'll do that for me."

"He won't trust you."

That hurt. It was also true. "But he'll give me the time. He won't betray his friends, but if I ask him I can get that from him. He is reasonable, Ari. And he does care what happens to me."

"That's clear too." She leaned her head back, turned her face toward Florian, beside her. "Tell Wes come help him. I'm going to trank out about half an hour. I've got to have it."

Justin thought the same. He unbuckled, levered himself out of his seat, and let the Security medic take his arm and steady him on his way aft.

xiv

Grant rested his head on his hands and wiped them back through his hair. "Here," Quentin said, and offered him a soft drink from their own kitchen. "Thank you." He took it and sipped at it, sitting on the couch, while Amy Carnath pored over the output that they had linked up to the living room monitor.

Justin was all right; the plane was up. They were on their way back; the worst of their fears had not come true; but they were not home yet.

Ari had stalled the press conference till dawn, putting out bulletin after bulletin, each more appalling than the last, until she had come on herself and fueled a whole new set of speculations– not laying it indubitably to the Paxers, but by implication taking into Khalid, perhaps even intimating the existence of high-level complicity, virtually declaring for office—

Then, after the news conference, a message came through Base One to sera Amy, and Base One started pouring out instructions. . . .

Amy, this is Ari, via Base One. This is all pre-recorded, so you can't talk back and forth, just listen and do this.

Something's happened. I can't know what in advance, but if you're getting this, something drastic will have happened, and I'm either in hospital, dead, or somewhere outside Reseune and in trouble.

First thing, protect yourself.

Second, the warning flasher we talked is out over the House system now, so everybody knows to take precautions.

Help them if you can. Base One is now available for you to use on Florian's and Catlin's level, and that means you can get information and perform operations without leaving a flag even for Denys or Giraud. The Help function is under Tutor if you need it.

I don't think they'll go at you. They know Base One uses lethal force. I don't advise your taking other people up onto the floor, but use your discretion in extreme need.

Don't use Base One to request information outside Reseune. I can, but for various reasons I haven't incorporated that routine under this access—mostly that it's hard not to give yourself away. I've encoded every single contingency I can think of and if I've activated this, I've probably fired you off a list of pertinent items via a code transmission in the net to Base One.

As follows:

Assassination attempt; from inside Reseune; Jordan Warrick; not involved; Jordan Warrick moved; to Reseune; trust Grant; but; Justin Warrick; whereabouts uncertain; in Novgorod; watch out for; Denys.

Grant drank his soft drink and stared bleakly at the computer flow, codes, mostly, which he could not read, which, very likely, Amy could not read, but the advanced system which had annexed their home unit very probably did read, and Base One answered Amy's questions.

"Damn," Amy said.

Grant did not like that. He waited for illumination, and finally got up, but Quentin's instant, wary attention dissuaded him from taking a step in any direction.

"What's wrong?" he asked quietly. "Sera?"

"Oh, damn!" She spun her chair around. "Security's just gone off-line. The whole net is down."

"Denys is aware," Grant said with a cold feeling; and then saw the black screen come to life again.

This is the House System emergency function. Someone has attempted interrupt. The Bureau has been notified and the interrupt documented.

The System is now re-integrating. Source of the interrupt: Security main offices.

Control of the System has now passed to Ariane Emory.

All Security personnel, stand by further orders through normal channels: Security main offices are downgraded to: Unreliable; House Administrative offices downgraded to: Unreliable; control re-routed to: RESEUNE ONE.

"God," Grant breathed, and sat down.

"Well, Denys has done it," Ari said, and leaned back in her seat, watching the system-flow transit the briefcase flat-screen, Florian and Catlin reading over her shoulder.

"That sounds like my predecessor's work," Florian said. "It might well be. And mine. —I'm surprised at Seely letting Denys try that."

"Seely is likely following orders," Catlin said. "Seely would have advised against it."

"Might not be there?"

"Might not," Catlin said, "but mostly, I think, they're preparing to defend the Administrative wing."

"Makes sense," Florian said. "The system may have downgraded his Base, sera, but I'm sure he's already gone to manual on those locks."

"Negotiation's what he's aiming for. He has absolutely nothing else to gain. Denys wants to be immortal. Giraud is down there in that tank, and Denys can't keep his hand on everything."

"Security won't like to be used against the House," Catlin said. "Abban I can understand. Seely I can. Some of the others—"

"Yakob?" Florian suggested.

"Could be odd tape. Could be odd tape on that whole senior wing. They've had twenty years to do it. I don't trust any of them."

"Don't count the Administrative systems as gone, sera," Florian said. "There could be a way—check and see if there's any order for Q system equipment credited to Administrative."

"Security 10: acquisitions: Administrative: computer equipment: search. —Why? You think that could have been the tamper in Security?"

Florian leaned on her seat-back, nodded vigorously as she looked up over her shoulder. "Acquisitions might not turn it up either," he said. "You can rig modules you could port in a suitcase, right down to the memory. Giraud could do it, easy. Right past Decon and everybody."

"Security 10: widen search, last item: computer equipment: twenty-year range: search. —You're right. Denys isn't stupid—even about the House systems. It makes damn good sense: divert Base Two to an alternate system, outflow without respecting any command-level inflow—like a one-way filter, to shut out the House system and still run it?"

"It's more complicated than that, but that's generally the idea. Your predecessor was full of tricks. He'd know there were protections—"

"He does know. What about airport defenses? Can we get in there?"

"As long as we have affirmative control while we're going in, and it's talking to us," Florian said, then shrugged. "Unless that system can do something I can't figure. It's always possible. Jeffrey BJ's supposed to be in charge at the airport, and I don't know there's anything wrong with him; but I'd say the best thing to do is check the flight schedules, make sure nothing's inbound, and then use the override to reorient and then lock down: that way if Denys' Base is going to touch anything off it won't hit anything."

"I can name you a handful," Catlin said, "who can make sure that power stays down."

"You two take it."

He came around and sat down carefully in the chair next to her, and took the microphone. Catlin perched on the leather arm of his chair; and for a few moments it was all their peculiar jargon and names she did not know, but Catlin and Florian did.

Meanwhile she watched the dataflow. Search negative. She was only moderately interested. It made thorough sense, what Florian suggested; and Giraud could well have gotten the equipment in years ago. They had had all her childhood to set it up, and make sure it functioned.

Kill the airport defenses first, get the plane on the ground; and then figure something could go wrong with the precip towers: envelope rupture would make things uncomfortable for anyone trying to get to the House; figure that Denys might simply have ordered the buses uphill and parked them.

Search: she keyed, airport: bus, ser # ?; graph.

The schematic of Reseune turned up both buses, at the front of the Administrative wing.

She keyed orders to the main boards at the precip towers. They were an hour away from the field.

Then she got up and went, herself, back where her Security staff sat talking together: they had heard the net go down and re-establish itself, each and every one of them who had been listening to the net, and that was all of them, she figured.

"We're doing all right," she said. "Stay seated: listen. Florian's taking the defenses down. Wes, Marco, you stay with me and Dr. Warrick, on the plane: we're going to be busy as hell and someone's got to coordinate whatever they can set for our protection. Dr. Warrick's a friendly, but he doesn't know the Rules: if so happen we have to move, you see he does what you tell him. The advance team is going to have to get into Administrative, and Florian and

Catlin are going to be leaders going in. Tyler, you're First after either one of them."

"Yes, sera," Tyler said, a smallish, wiry man, white-haired and crew-cut. Tyler had served as one of Ari senior's staff. Two of the others were retired marines, Wes was a Green Barracks instructor, and the rest ranged from diplomatic security to Marco, who was a systems programmer.

"We'll have a number of other Security on call-up," she said. "Take that advisement from Catlin: she's doing the organization, Florian's doing the special work, Catlin will brief you: we've kept this operation in ready-state for the last two years, not quite like we're improvising, all right? We just didn't know our target. Now we do. And we know right where the keys are. All right?"

"Yes, sera."

She patted Tyler's shoulder, walked back down the narrow aisle past the galley and the staff restrooms; and opened the door of the bedroom. Justin was asleep, completely out.

Burns and bruises, Wes had said. Memory gaps were the serious part; but, as Wes put it, you have one go off next to you, you drop a few things. Nothing unusual.

"Wake up," she said. "Justin. I need you up front."

xv

"They're in," Amy said. "That's the Tower. They're on the ground." Grant, leaning on the back of the couch, breathed again. Amy had confused hell out of Security, changing the whereabouts of everyone on her list for protection, lying with one output while she monitored the whereabouts of every Security unit in the buildings they could access, called Security personnel on the Approved list to Wing One, and secured the doors.

While Sam Whitely down at the motor pool arranged transport for Green Barracks personnel and Maddy Strassen and 'Stasi Ramirez and Tommy Carnath had simply gone missing to unlikely places as lies in the net persuaded any inquirers they had taken refuge in B lab and down in the Ag lab.

Call to Family council, the advisement flashed out on the net: Ariane Emory, calling emergency session via House System, to consider the question: nomination of Dr. Yanni Schwartz to replace Denys Nye as Administrator of Reseune, meeting to be held at 1700 or as soon as practical.

Grant stood back and folded his arms. He had no vote. He was following the scroll of activity on the monitor, that had accelerated markedly ever since RESEUNE ONE had entered approach. That last advisement came as a vast relief to more than himself, he thought: a calculated bit of psych, a tag of grim humor: Emory in full flower.

There were Security orders all over the system of a sudden, outpouring from Base One.

Ari did not look up from the screen; and Justin did not speak, following the flow on an auxiliary Florian had used. Occasionally she gave a voice input or pushed a key; and changes happened. Queries were incoming: RESEUNE ONE's crew, forward, kept their posts, keeping the plane ready to move away and, if the airport seemed threatened, to take to the air again.

He had much rather stay on the ground; and he wished to hell he had some knowledge of the codes that might have told him where things stood.

"We're all right," Ari said. "Sam's got the trucks up from Green; they're going up the hill—no challenge yet. He's holding inside Administration, probably inside Security itself."

She made more changes.

She could, she said, open any doors that were not disabled or under an outlaw Base's control.

Makes it easier, Florian had said, stuffing the pockets of his jacket with various small components out of his own kit—probes and wire, mostly, with some sort of system evident. And Florian had taken a small bag from a locker, and another from a second locker; and handled those very carefully, while Catlin had arranged things with the Security agents aft.

They must be halfway up the hill now, Justin thought.

"Sera," the intercom said suddenly, communication from RESEUNE ONE's crew. "We've got a phone relay from Administration. Dr. Nye, asking to speak with you personally, sera."

"Don't divert your attention," Justin muttered.

"Damn right. —Put it over the intercom; we're all intimate here. —Justin, punch that yellow button on your arm-rest and pass me the mike, will you? This one's engaged."

"Ari," Denys' voice said over the intercom. "I really think you're being a little excitable."

Ari laughed, never taking her eyes from the screen in front of her. She held out her left hand and Justin laid the mike-wand into it. "Are you hearing me, uncle Denys?"

"I'm hearing you fine, dear. I wish you'd make clear exactly what's going on here, and call off your troops before they do serious damage to the wing."

"You want to unlock those doors, uncle Denys? We can talk about this. I promise you'll be safe. I'll even continue Giraud."

"I don't know what happened in Novgorod: I'm sure it's more than you've told me. Can we talk about this?"

"I don't mind."

"I'm willing to resign. I want protection for myself and my people. I think that's reasonable."

"Perfectly reasonable, uncle Denys. How do we make that official?"

"You stop your people. You guarantee me custody of Giraud's replicate. I'm perfectly willing to accept retirement. I have the means to make taking this place extremely expensive; but there's no need. I have the feeling you must blame me for the events in Novgorod—"

Ari laughed again, with less humor, Justin thought. "I really don't know, uncle Denys. I don't entirely care. I've rather well overrun the course you set for me; and it's my time. The changing of the seasons. Perfectly natural. You can have a wing, you can have your comforts– I know that matters to you, uncle Denys. You can work on your books, – I do know about that. They're wonderful. You have so much valuable yet to do. . . ."

"You're very flattering, young sera. I want Seely."

Ari was silent a moment. "Under some restrictions. I can agree to that."

"You don't touch him!"

"I wouldn't hurt Seely, uncle Denys. We can work something out. I promise you. I won't file charges. Your life will be exactly the same. You don't travel anyway; and you'll have Giraud to occupy you and Seely, won't you? You were a damned good parent, you know; and very kind, really you were. You could have done a lot of things to me Geoffrey did to Ari senior; and you took a chance with the program and didn't. I really have quite a warm feeling for you about that, uncle Denys; and for Seely; and for Giraud. Giraud and I got to be really close at the last; and I really don't think he did it, I think it was a worm in Abban's tapes. I think it was something you put there. Maybe not. I may have an over-active imagination. —They're going to take those doors down, uncle Denys; and practically speaking, —you're running out of time."

"Stop them."

"Are you going to come outside, uncle Denys? With Seely?"

"All right. When you get up here. I want a guarantee of safety."

"You have it in my word, uncle Denys."

"I want you here to control your people. Then I'll open the doors."

Justin shook his head. Ari looked at him and said: "All right, uncle Denys. I'll be up there." She pointed at the button on Justin's seat. Justin pushed it, breaking contact.

"Ari?"

Ari pushed a button on her chair arm. "We're finished. Break contact."

"Ari," Justin said, "he wants you in range."

Ari watched the screen and said: "That might be, but he's in an awfully bad position." She picked up her own microphone. "We've got contact with Denys. He says hold off, he's just resigned. Confirm; pick it up. —Justin: you stay here."

"Dammit, Ari, —"

" I wouldn't be going up there, except I hope we can do this without a shot. I'm enough for Security to worry about; they don't need another one. If something goes badly wrong, this plane is going back to Novgorod, and you can tell the Bureau the whole damn mess, then do what you like. But I'd prefer you back in Reseune, running another of my sets. I'll even let you pick the surrogates."

He stared at her.

"I have a lot of unfinished business," Ari said, standing by the seat. "If I don't make it out of this—getting me back is a real priority. Gehenna is only one of the problems. And you need me the same as I need you."

She gathered up Marco, and Wes unsealed the door, and sealed it again after her.

It was true, he thought as that door closed. Everything else considered, —it was true.

Then he thought of what she had said: only one of the problems; and: the same as I need you. . . .

xvi

"I don't like this," Florian said, crouched close to Catlin, where the bus and the hill made a little cover a curve away from the glass main doors. His hands were cold, exposed to the air: he protected the left one under his arm and watched the data-flow on the hand-held monitor in his right.

"It's a case of What's he got," Catlin said, tucked down tight, chest against arms against knees.

"Seely isn't sera's kind of problem," Florian said.

Catlin looked at him, quick and hard. "Sniper or something bigger up there. You want those doors?"

"Grenade will handle that. They're doing final prep in there now, I'm sure of it, now sera's left the airport. This whole thing is a set."

"Go, then," Catlin said. "You time it. There's got to be a trigger in that hall."

Florian took a breath, flexed a stiffened hand and an injured shoulder. "Photocell, likely. Floor and body-height, with an interrupt, electric detonator, best guess—I'm first in on this one."

The shockwave shook the bus; and Ari was already ducking when Marco grabbed her and pulled them both down, but she fought to get a look as the bus made the turn.

Smoke billowed up from the area of the Administration Wing front doors. She could see the other bus parked on the slope. The black-uniformed group there was in sudden motion, running uphill.

Her driver stopped.

Marco pulled her flat and threw himself over her.

As the air shook and clods peppered the windows.

Florian picked himself up, wiped his eyes and staggered to his feet as someone helped him, he was not sure who, but it was from behind and it was friendly if it got him up again.

He saw Catlin ahead of him in the dim hall, saw her arm a grenade and wait, the thing live in her hand—because somebody like Seely could give it back to you.

She threw it, but a black blur came out that door.

Florian snapped his pistol up and fired; and the grenade blew the whole doorway to rum. Catlin had fired too. She took another shot, point-blank, to be sure.

Florian leaned against the wall and caught his breath. The net was saying that the teams from Green Barracks had gotten into Security—up the lift shafts from the tunnel system: easy job, till they got to the traps and the defenses.

The whole hall was filled with bluish smoke. The fire alarms had gone off long since.

Catlin walked back to him, swinging her rifle to cover the hall beyond, while he kept a watch over her blind-side. "One more," she said.

He nodded.

He was not glad of this one. Denys had been kind to them. He remembered the dining room, remembered Denys laughing.

But it was sera's safety in question, and he had only a second's compunction.

Catlin had less.

The front doors were in ruins, the smoke still pouring out when Ari climbed off the bus; and Florian and Catlin both came out under the portico to meet her.

"Denys is dead," Florian told her first off. "I'm sorry, sera. It was a set-up."

"What about Seely?"

"Dead," Catlin said.

Ari walked up onto the porch and looked into the hall. Bodies lay scattered in the dim emergency lights, under a lowering canopy of smoke. She had known that place since childhood. It did not look real to her.

Denys gone. . . .

She looked back at Florian and Catlin. Catlin's expression was clear-eyed and cool. It was Florian who looked worried. Florian, who had a gash running blood down his temple and another on his cheek, not mentioning what he had had from Novgorod.

She did not ask. Not anywhere near witnesses.

xvii

The Reseune corporate jet touched smoothly, braked, and swung into a brisk roll toward the terminal and Decon—always a special treatment of plane and passengers, when a flight came in from overseas.

"It's going to take a while," Justin said, hand on Grant's shoulder; and they might have gone to sit down, then, in the comfort of the VIP and press room. But he watched it roll up to the safeway; watched the windows after it had come to rest. He could make out shadows moving inside, nothing more.

But one of them was Jordan and another was Paul.

Everything's all right, he had said, when RESEUNE ONE had let him speak to the incoming plane, when Grant was on the way down from the hill and Reseune was stirring to heal its wounds. Don't worry. Yanni Schwartz is the new Reseune Administrator. Welcome home.

He worried. He watched out the window mostly, while Decon did its work, hosing down the plane in foam. He and Grant exchanged stories in distracted bits and pieces, what they had known, and when, and what they had been in a position to pick up.

He worried until the doors opened and gave up two tired travelers.

After which they had the lounge to themselves, Ari had said, for as long as they wanted; and the sole surviving bus waiting out under the portico, to get them back up the hill.