“Well, I secretly thought I’d treat my father.”
“I didn’t ask you here to soak my son for the tab.”
“Let me do it. It’s my pleasure.”
“They pay you pretty well for what you do.”
“I’ve been where you are. It ends. You’ll get back. All the way back. You’ll be treating me.” Fast change of subject. A cheerier one. “How’s it coming with the sets you did? Your own ones, that you were looking at—how they’ve developed over two, three decades? That’s got to be interesting.”
“Getting back into it, at least. I need an office.”
“Yanni might be agreeable.”
“You’re rattling around in our old one.”
“We have staff,” Justin said. His guard was instantly up… God, he hated to be so paranoid. And he didn’t want to show it in his expression. But talking to Jordan lately was like walking through broken glass barefoot.
“Nice location. Convenient. And there’s room enough.”
Guard went way up.
“Not with staff. Sorry, Jordan, that won’t work.”
“Paul and I haven’t gotten all our Planys notes pried out of Security,” Jordan said glumly. “Our wardrobe’s barely made it through. You can see our splendor this evening. Pretty shabby stuff.”
“You’re fine.”
“Don’t suppose you can use your influence with the little darling to speed our stuff along.”
“I’ll ask, if you like.” He was glad the little darling was as far as the sarcasm about young Ari went in this venue. The walls had ears and even if they didn’t, he didn’t like Jordan dragging him into a proxy quarrel with Admin while half the Wing Directors and Agency heads in Reseune sat at the other tables. “Be genteel. Trust me. This time, trust me, and take my word for it. She’s not her genemother.”
“No?” Jordan feigned surprise. “After all they’ve done to be sure she is?”
The waiter arrived. Mercifully. The dinner wasn’t going well and they hadn’t even ordered yet.
Justin gave his order. Grant ordered smoked salmon, a likely match for cost, Paul ordered boeuf a la maison and Jordan ordered a modest, all-local caesar salad with blackened chicken.
“Saving room for dessert,” Jordan said when Justin frowned at his economy. “I noticed a cheesecake.”
“Sounds good,” Justin said—not tempted to believe Jordan was through with gestures this evening, no. Not once he’d started. And the waiter departed.
“So I’m going to impose on you,” Jordan said. “We need desk space. I’m sure they watch me. I’m sure they watch you. We can consolidate their job. Make them happy.”
“I’m telling you we have staff. Five staffers and us in that office. And security won’t let you in there.”
“So who’s important? Your clericals or your father?”
“I’m saying we need the staff. They have work to do.”
“Fine. Ask the little dear for space for them. I’m sure she’d find it. After all, she’s not stingy like her predecessor.”
“Jordan, give it up. You haven’t got your clearance. You’ll get it. But it’s still no, on the office.”
“I’m saying I’m going eetee locked into that living room. I can’t work in there. Put your spare clericals into our living room if you have to. You’re not even there five days a week. Who’s using the desks?”
It wasn’t an outrageous request—except it was his convenient Integrations computer access, which his staff used, which he used, dammit, for Ari’s lessons, and his father didn’t have clearance, or a license. His safe was there. His manuals were there. His projects were there—he didn’t keep those in their cubbyhole of a Wing One office.
“You’re not happy,” Jordan said. “Sorry.”
“Look, if you want your office back…” Yanni wasn’t likely to approve Jordan’s moving into general office space in the first place, there was that. But he could easier get another office in the Education wing, for them and their staff.
“I would like that. Yes. I mean when I get the license back, for God’s sake. We can share. What happened to us working together?”
And his and Grant’s work with the G-27, while not under security seal, had some bits in it he felt fairly proprietary about, and, no, dammit, he didn’t want another round of security investigations going through his notebooks, or Grant’s because Jordan was in there. More to the point, he didn’t want his father going through his notes and appropriating anything he was working on.
No way in hell.
“I just don’t see why it’s an issue,” Jordan said with a wistful little frown. “Apply to move your staff out. I’m sure they’ll find a space somewhere.”
“It’s a little matter of convenience.”
“You know there are virtual connections—same as being there. Unless, of course, there’s some reason you’d rather not.”
“You know the reasons I’m a little reluctant. Last Sunday night was a case in point.”
“Many fewer drinks in the office.”
“Listen, Jordan. My life is going perfectly fine. So could yours be, if you’d just put the brakes on a bit and get along with Yanni. You’re home, for God’s sake. He knows you didn’t—whatever.”
“Yanni’s a prick.”
“Dad. Don’t.”
“Have you caved in that far?”
He lowered his voice way down and leaned across the table. “And do you have to agitate Admin just to get a reaction? I don’t particularly want a reaction, thank you.”
“So the little dear is something like her predecessor.”
Not sotto voce. Just normal conversation level, and not cooperating worth a damn. Justin found his pulse rate had gotten up, old familiar sensation. And he didn’t like it. “Well, there you have it, don’t you? We’re arguing again and I don’t think it would work, sharing an office. Look, I’ve had enough of investigations. I don’t want to be in the middle of another one. And get off the notion it’s Ari. It’s Yanni, and you know you don’t want to be in his bad book, but you persist in picking fights.”
“Ah. So it’s fear for your reputation. But you should be golden. You were quite the hero, overthrowing the Nyes, saving her highness…”
“Neither.” Jordan was stalking some point, he saw that, and he didn’t know why or what. For a top-flight psychset designer, it was downright embarrassing, not to know what was behind his own identical’s actions, and that hinted at a Working, either verbal or otherwise. Jordan knew him from way back, owned most of the buttons, knew his body from inside out, and that was a fact. Sitting here, across the table from Jordan, mirror into mirror with that damned infuriating smile on Jordan’s face that his own body knew gut-deep was no smile at all, because it never reached the eyes—damn, he knew it. And there was nobody more dangerous to him, if Jordan decided to pull old strings.
Set psych-switches in his own baby boy? Damned right Jordan would have done that, from the cradle up. Ari One had flipped them the other way. Jordan had had twenty years to figure how to get at him past Ari’s Working, or worse—and then those questions Sunday night. Had he been alone with Ari? Had Ari done anything further? It very much assumed the character not of an outraged father, but of a psych operator wanting a case history.
And much worse—
Jordan knew how to get at Grant. Grant had been under Jordan’s supervision, too, in their collective childhood, and if Jordan could get his hands on Grant’s updated manual, which was in the computer system in that office, once Jordan got his license back…
That thought sent cold chills through him. The very thought, that Grant could be put into that situation—that sent his hand questing after the lately-arrived drink.
Share an office with Jordan? No. Absolutely not. License or no license. And subtlety only wound his own gut in knots, it gave Jordan chance after chance to get to him.
“It’s just not going to work,” he said. “I’ll go to Yanni, if you can’t do it without flaring
off. I’ll talk to him and see if I can get your stuff out of customs and your license hurried along.”
“I don’t want any damn charity.”
“But you damn sure want my office. And I don’t want you in there.”
“Your office?”
“Let’s try honesty,” he said abruptly. “You want to start the war with Admin up again. I don’t. I don’t want to subject Grant to it, either. So make your own choices, but—”
“Are you making your choices these days?”
“My choice right now is to have my office to myself, to do my work, outside politics—”
“Oh, come now!”
“—to have Grant do his. To enjoy my life…”
“Will you? Enjoy it? And are you outside politics?”
That did it. He smiled with his father’s own false warmth, right back at him, and something ticked over deep in his makeup that could be cold as ice—something he didn’t damn well trust, but right now it felt like an asset, not to have himself out of control with this man who had all the buttons. “I don’t know, Dad. I haven’t a clue who’s had a go at me or who’s reshaped my psyche during Denys Nye’s tenure—there are things I don’t actually remember. But I’m actually pretty happy these days, and I lately find I haven’t any stake in your game, whatever it is.”
“You think you haven’t.”
“I know I haven’t. I don’t give a damn for what happened twenty years ago and if you plan to live here in Reseune, I really hope you’ll just let it all go. So enjoy your dinner. I plan to.”
“Justin, Justin, Justin, you really believe you’re not in it.”
“Won’t work, Pop. Really won’t work.” He took a sip of wine. The rich tastes were sharp, solid, complex. Where Jordan wanted to lead him was complicated, too, the wrong end of Jordan’s ambitions, whatever they currently were, and he discovered, since the last fight, he truly failed to give a damn, tonight, and decided not to subscribe to Jordan’s list of problems.
“You have your own agenda,” Jordan said. “You think it’s in your practical interests to keep your own counsel. And you don’t want to share. I can respect that.”
“Thanks for the analysis.”
“You’re waiting. You plan to have influence in the great someday. Yanni’s not any younger and she‘s not old enough, not as old as she needs to be. So you’re going to be the stopgap. What kind of position will that put you into? You know, you could parlay your connections into the Directorship, what time the little dear doesn’t hold that post herself. Maybe Councillor for Science. And are you ready for that?”
He took another drink of wine, a deliberately small one, thinking: God, no. And said, “You’re scared of her. But not scared enough. Watch it about trying to read me. You could make a mistake. You’re locked in what was. And things just may not be the same after twenty years.”
“You think I can’t read you, down to the fine print? I do, believe me, I do, right down to the fact you’re running scared of the little dear, same as you did her predecessor. I know all the twitches.”
“I know you owned the geneset first. But genesets are only part of the story. We both know that, don’t we? But do we both actually believe it? I wonder.”
“Oh, programming can do wonders,” Jordan said. “And you’ve been Worked for all those years. How many sessions did you have with Giraud Nye’s people, before you had one with little Ari?”
“Arrests, you mean?” He kept his tone light. “Oh, a few. But you were in one long detention, yourself, over on Planys. Do you find that makes a psychological difference? I’d say so.”
That actually caught Jordan just a little by surprise. Or maybe it stung, for reasons he hadn’t, until now, guessed. “So you won’t like having me in your office,” Jordan said, flank attack and redirect. “You don’t trust me.”
“Living the life I’ve lived, I don’t trust anybody. You think they did Work you over when you were arrested? Or aren’t you sure of that?”
Jordan avoided his eyes. In a psychmaster, that was a devastating flinch. And that avoidance hit him right in the heart, reminding him of his own little sojourns with interrogators. Ricochet, he thought, feeling the pain. Damn. And he didn’t look at Paul. He hadn’t invoked Paul’s name, or queried him. Paul wasn’t looking at him. But the shots didn’t go just at Jordan.
Salads arrived. They ate while Jordan sat and had more wine. They managed small talk, catching up on who was sleeping with whom, who was married, who had procreated. One of the many Carnaths had given natural birth to a daughter, opting to skip the birthlabs. It was the talk of the offices. Crazy, no few said.
“There’s a certain merit in it,” Jordan said. “Think of all the thousands who don’t have access to a lab, or don’t have it government-subsidized. Fargone. Pan-Paris. All those poor women doing it the hard way…those poor childless men with no other recourse…”
Justin didn’t often imagine Fargone, or Pan-Paris, waystations in the dark which touched his personal world very little. He was glad not to have to imagine them, steel worlds orbiting stars whose planets, if any to speak of, were good only for mining. “We’re spoiled, I suppose.”
“Spoiled as hell,” Jordan said, more cheerfully. “Though there’s Planys, if you ever want not to be spoiled.”
Right back to the bitter edge.
And it didn’t pay to go there. “Rather not. Hope never to.”
“So how’s your apartment? Nice, I’ll imagine, being where it is.”
“Nice. Yes.”
“Bugged. Naturally.”
“Naturally.”
Main course arrived. Gratefully. Another service of wine. Jordan took a refill. He didn’t. Nor did Grant, nor Paul.
“Ever think of moving back to Education?” Jordan asked.
“I think about it.”
“You could come and visit me. But I can’t get into your restricted little paradise.”
“I know. I’m sorry about that. I really am.”
“Can’t do anything about it, can you?”
“I know it’s not going to last.”
“Isn’t it? Got a date when they’re going to stop bugging my apartment? Got a date when I can go into my son’s extravagant palace?”
“You know I don’t. Maybe, to a large extent, Dad, that depends on you.”
“Right next door to the little princess. Convenient for sex. Is that what you do for your keep?”
He said nothing, speared a bite of his dinner, and ate it. The spiced shrimp was curiously tasteless, and he resisted the impulse to lay his fork down and leave. Or have another wine. His pulse rate was up. Jordan always did that to him. And another wine would be deadly. He decided on a redirect, and had another bite of shrimp. “Paul?”
“Ser?”
“Ser, hell. I’m Justin. Remember?”
Paul’s face was generally somber. It remained that way—with good cause, tonight. “I remember.”
“Grant,” Jordan said, and Justin felt his heart kick up another notch. He couldn’t help it. And he resented that, resented Jordan having anything to do with Grant these days. “Are you taking good care of my boy? In every respect?”
“No problems, ser.” Grant’s voice was perfectly light and smooth, not a twitch. “Thank you.”
“You came through all the troubles in good shape.”
“Absolutely, Ser.”
“Have you ever needed a supervisor, beyond what you have?”
“Damn it, Jordan, just enjoy your dinner.”
“I was just asking. Concerned.”
“The hell.” Grant’s welfare and their relationship and the number of times Grant had needed a supervisor wasn’t a topic he wanted opened up. The past wasn’t. He didn’t want to list the things that had changed his relationship with Grant into a sexual one. He didn’t want Jordan’s commentary on their existence. They all ate in prickly silence for a space, except that Paul asked how long they should have to wait for Library access, which seemed a fairly m
inor request.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Justin said patiently. “That’s something you might legitimately ask Yanni.” He couldn’t stop himself from charitable impulses. “Or I can. I will.”
“One often thousand little nuisances,” Jordan said. “I need my own past articles. I don’t think I’m going to blow up the laboratories with information I’d find in my own damned articles, would I?”
“We do have an inquiry going in Yanni Schwartz’s office,” Paul said, “but that’s had to wait for him to get back.”
“He’s back now. This evening. Give him a day to get his feet on the ground. I’m sure he’ll give you that access.”
“Well, I’m sure I’m not a priority,” Jordan said sourly, and shoved his plate back. He’d mostly picked the chicken out of his salad and eaten a little of the green. “In any respect.”
Justin decided he was through. Grant was hardly eating. “Shall we order dessert?”
“Out of the mood, thanks.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s sad,” Jordan said. “We were one mind, once and long ago. Remember that? We were happy, then.”
“I remember you and Ari Emory got into a fight and Grant and I ended up on the short end of it. I’m not looking for a replay, Dad. If you want to pick a fight with Admin, just excuse me out of it this time.”
“Why don’t you come over for drinks after dinner?” Jordan asked. “Just a quiet family evening.”
“Did that, thanks,” Justin said. “Had enough to drink tonight, as is, and so have we all. Late supper and I’m going to bed. I’ve got a meeting in the morning.”
“Oh?”
“We’re conferring on a psychset,” Justin said.
“What stem?”
“Oh, out of the old Reza GLX tree,” Justin said, which actually was the truth, and he watched Jordan drink it in and jog a doubtless rusty memory, eyes momentarily innocent, mind working on a problem—that was the father he wanted back. If the conversation was going to change direction he might change his mind on dessert.
“Worker set, isn’t it?”
“There’s a new lab upriver. Or will be. It’s quite a project. Research and light manufacture.”