“I’m trying to protect him from himself,” she said. “He’s certainly not making it easy.”
Score. She saw it in his expression, just the little dilation of the iris. “I appreciate that.”
“This Dr. Patil,” she said. “I can tell you something about that. We’re going to send her to Fargone. She’s the authority in her field—she’s certainly got the credentials. But we’re digging into her associations, all the way back. Just so you know what that was about.”
“I’m not sure I want to know more than that.”
“Justin, I’m not in charge of Reseune. I won’t be, for awhile. But you know I direct some decisions. Yanni listens to me.”
“I’m sure he does.”
“Don’t be like that. I’m not your enemy.”
“I don’t want you to be,” he said plainly. “I hope you won’t be.”
“Jordan wants me to be your enemy.”
And his eyes averted, his whole body posture changing, as if he had to re-balance his thinking.
“Doesn’t he?” she asked flatly. “Or what do you think his motive is?”
Justin didn’t say anything for a moment. His hand found the datastick atop the books, picked it up, turned it over. And over. And set it down, not looking at her. “I don’t know why you ask my opinion on this,” he said, and let a long breath go. “I don’t know why you need it.”
“I need it,” she said. “I do need it.”
“No, you don’t. You’re good. The hell you’re working routine theta sets, you’re good.”
“So are you,” she said. “You’re too good to go along with something even he didn’t plan to have work. You know what he’s really up to.”
“Then I wish you’d tell me what that is!”
“I just did.”
“God.” He did turn his face toward her, upset. “Dammit, Ari.”
“I’m being honest. I want you to be all right. I really do. I don’t mind you getting along with Jordan. But he certainly minds your getting along with me. That’s what it’s about, isn’t it? Am I wrong? His battles are all old history. The Centrists lost a lot of their power when we passed the anti-terraforming bills and saved Cyteen’s native life. They lost this world to develop. So some not-very-bright people in that party thought they were going to get their way when Ari died. But Giraud didn’t let them repeal those laws. Giraud was friendly with Defense and that blocked them. And now there’s Yanni, telling them they’ve got just a little time to make deals before I come in. Eversnow is a poor second choice, but it’s what the pro-terraformers have got.”
“Eversnow.”
“It’s a planet out beyond Fargone—”
“I know that.”
“Well, Patil’s in charge of terraforming it, and that’s a secret, so don’t tell it. If certain people think they can bring that snowball to life without wrecking it, well, they might, mightn’t they, but then, that’s not a very Centrist position for Corain’s people to be stuck in, a dozen light years from anything civilized, and no longer in the center of anything. It’s not their kind of territory. They want cities. They want Earth remade in a temperate world that’s central to everything, with all of Union clustered around it, and they want it fast. Well, fast won’t happen there. It’s going to take a long time, and we’ll be changing the Centrists, right along with Eversnow. People that go out there will belong there. Or their children will. That’s the way things work.”
“You’re losing me. Eversnow. Not Fargone.”
“Fargone’s just a cover.”
“I’m not sure I want to know these things. I’m not sure Yanni would be happy with my knowing these things.”
“Oh, pretty soon more people inside Reseune are going to know it. We’re just not putting it on the news until it launches. That’s why security’s all stirred up about this card.”
“You think Jordan could have had any contact with a secret some professor in Novgorod is up to? I thought you monitored his phone calls.”
“Not any current contact, no, he doesn’t have. But then he never cared whether it was Centrists or Expansionists he was supporting, so long as it gave his Ari grief, do you think? She was all his focus. Whatever she wanted, he was against, once that partnership split up. And the fight between them wasn’t ever really about Cyteen, or Eversnow, or Alpha or Beta or Fargone or terraforming or any station in the whole universe, for that matter. Reseune was everything. He wanted to leave it, but he didn’t, not in his head. And now he’s back, but Reseune after Denys isn’t the place he remembers. So it’s not a happy situation, and he’s not dealing well with the changes he finds here. That’s what I think.”
“That, I’ll entirely agree with.”
“I can’t make him happy. You can’t.”
Justin heaved a long sigh. “You’re right about that.” And then looked at her: “You just gave me that information on Patil to track whether or not I’d let it leak.”
“I know you won’t. You’re good on other things I’ve told you.”
A small, sorrowful laugh. “No, I’m not likely to. Lack of opportunity, maybe. I’m not in anyone’s social circles. So I take it you’re wondering if I’ll be crazy and take it to Jordan.”
“Florian was right in what he did: you needed to be out of Jordan’s reach unless you initiate the contact.”
Justin muttered something under his breath, and pushed the data stick in a circle, where it lay. “I won’t ask you for favors. I know your security requirements. I know they’re justified. I won’t become a problem to you.”
“I couldn’t replace you,” she said. “I really couldn’t.”
He gave a short laugh. “Seems that’s what we do here, isn’t it?”
“Not in my lifetime. I’d miss you terribly. I really would. I’ve lost a lot of people I relied on.”
“Giraud. Denys.” That was a gibe. Giraud hadn’t been one of his favorite people. Denys wasn’t one of hers.
“My mother.” she said, matching dark for dark.
Lips tightened, and he didn’t look at her when he said, bitterly: “My father.”
“Right now,” she said soberly, “one of my worst problems is that I can’t be absolutely sure that Denys didn’t install some feature in the systems that just hasn’t gone off yet. Right now security has me completely walled in, same as you, because they can’t figure what else to do with me. Same as you. But that’s going to change, starting with my getting a security presence that’s mine, no one else’s. I’ll have a much longer reach and a way of knowing what’s going on that I don’t have now. I’ll be able to protect myself if I can trust it. And maybe if I’m safer, it can change things for your father—if he calms down. If you can talk him toward common sense. He took my gift and got off the plane looking for a fight, with Yanni, with me…”
“With everyone. No question of that.” A small silence, Justin looking hallward, in Grant’s general direction, then back. “I’ll talk to him, best I can. When we talk. I’m not meeting with him until he calms down.”
“Tranquilizer in his coffee might be a good idea.”
He laughed, shortly. “Coming from someone who could actually do it.”
“It wouldn’t be real peace.” She got up. “You’ve got work to do, and I’m bothering you. Let me know what you think of those sets as soon as you can. It’s a priority. I’ll be back for a lesson Monday afternoon.”
“Will do,” he said, and she walked outside, where Grant and Florian waited, not in conversation.
“I think I’m going to have a small dinner party tonight,” she said to Grant, “just Justin and you, Jordan and Paul. What do you think?”
“You may have to send security to bring Jordan.”
“Maybe not,” she said. Jordan was rather like a bomb with a motion switch: thus far, she’d hesitated to jostle him. If you were going to Work someone you needed a good hook, and a theory had begun to gel. Jordan wanted dominance, wasn’t well socialized, had to be the center of attentio
n, but didn’t like to be talked at by fools, because there wasn’t an ounce of tolerance in him. He couldn’t tolerate, say, a cocktail party, or someone who bored him for a minute. But his curiosity suffered in that isolation of his, the engine of that curiosity being a very keen intellect. She’d gotten that much long-distance—that and the fact he was Justin’s twin as well as his father… Justin had been very much his twin until the first Ari ran an intervention and set a broad streak of insecurity into Justin’s pattern: insecurity, a strong sex drive, and self-doubt.
The first two, Jordan certainly had. Self-doubt was the big difference, self-doubt in Justin that constantly put out feelers toward other people, constantly checked the environment and analyzed it, all with a high emotional charge. It hadn’t made Justin more brilliant than Jordan, but it had made him much, much more social, much more reachable.
She had the entire record of that encounter. It was hard to deal with. It told her what the first Ari could do. It told her what she could turn into. It told her the Ari who’d fought with Jordan had had some of Jordan’s characteristics—and tolerance of a rival hadn’t been high in the first Ari’s own list of qualities. The first Ari had actually tried…she’d tried very hard to work with Jordan. But he’d wanted to dominate their partnership and she absolutely had wanted to run things, as natural as breathing. What kept bringing the first Ari back, she suspected, what might even have sexually fascinated her, was the fact that she hadn’t been able to Work him: that would have kept her mentally engaged with him. The fact she hadn’t been about to work with him—that was the thorn in the arrangement. The same terrible boredom had afflicted the first Ari: the first Ari had shared that trait of impatience with Jordan, but, unlike Jordan, the first Ari would at times tolerate fools—would analyze them, and use them, sometimes ruthlessly. Challenge set her off, challenge that would rouse her out of her boredom—so even that thorn in the arrangement might have been just one more attraction. She met challenge: she provoked it, enjoyed it until it potentially threatened her, and then she absolutely crushed it.
There was an extreme watch-it in that mix, wasn’t there?
A very extreme watch-it, for Jordan and for herself…because that challenge thing stirred something so visceral in her. It did, and she tried to keep the anger in it down. She could tolerate parties. She had friends—Sam, and Amy and Maddy, that she didn’t see nearly often enough these days. She valued people like Justin, who’d disagree with her. She valued him extremely She defined challenge as a threat to people she loved. And that was different than the first Ari, wasn’t it? She didn’t let a challenge to her as what she was…become personal. Anger was the bad part of it, and she kept that way back, bottled, stoppered, and far back on the shelf.
She walked on her way, saying nothing to Florian at first, knowing Catlin had heard the exchange with Grant, too, and both her bodyguards knew that what she wanted was ultimately what would happen, even if her staff didn’t like it. Scary notion, a supper with Justin and Jordan, in her hitherto off-limits premises. Deliciously, excitingly scary. Maybe stupid. But she wasn’t sure it wasn’t smart.
She’d been patient, she’d been so good, but she was close to freedom, was what, and, out in the wide world, things were all of a sudden happening that she didn’t like. With that gift of security personnel from ReseuneSec, if they passed Justin’s scrutiny as well as hers and Florian’s, she established a presence inside Reseune Security. And once she had that, she’d know things; she’d know when it was safe to go somewhere, and she’d know when she needed to deal with a situation. She’d be much less reliant on others filtering what got to her attention…like secret meetings in Novgorod.
Interesting, what she felt. Aggression was part of her motives: she recognized that when it reared its head, and it was potent. The challenge impulse. Curiosity. Much more than Justin was Jordan, she was the first Ari. It felt good to go on the attack in this long waiting. It felt very good.
That was a suspect emotion, too. She was having strong reactions to this news about more freedom; she was having emotional reactions to the business with the card and someone having told Jordan about Patil, and at least part of what Patil was up to.
Endocrine thinking, she said to herself. The first Ari consistently warned her about that, told her do something to get rid of it. Sex could work, if it was a passing urge. But that just touched off more flux-thinking, and sometimes complicated things worse than before. Rational thought was the long-term cure for problems.
That was what the first Ari had said, out of Base One. Steady down. Think.
Florian asked quietly, as they walked: “What are we to expect tonight, sera?”
“I don’t quite know,” she said, still wondering if she’d just done something very unwise. But something to break the stalemate between Justin and Jordan once and for all—was that unwise? “Something interesting, at least.”
BOOK ONE Section 3 Chapter iv
MAY 2, 2424
1528H
Maybe, she still thought, she should have been a little less aggressive, and a little more cautious. Justin wouldn’t turn down her invitation, if his father was going. She was relatively sure of that: he’d be there partly out of unbearable curiosity, partly to be there to fling himself between his father and a bullet, so to speak—or literally. Jordan would be there out of pure curiosity, and because he wanted to hear what calumnies his son would say about him—she’d bet on that, even more than she’d bet on Justin.
So she sent an invitation to Jordan that said dinner at 1800h. And one to Justin that said 1830. Justin would turn up five minutes early because he worried about being late. Jordan was guaranteed to be at least a quarter of an hour late, just to prove he could be. She bet on that, too.
Her staff was not happy with the arrangement. Wes and Marco were taking the security station, Florian and Catlin were dining early, to be actually on duty in the dining room. Gianni, their pro tem cook, was in a state, and dented one of their pots. The unprecedented clang set off house alarms and scrambled her security to alert.
But she dressed in silvery satin, her current favorite gown, and her hairdresser did her hair in a modern way, nothing at all like the first Ari in the portraits. It was her coming-out, like in the old stories, though not for a ballroom full of people—just two. She wore her hair upswept, wore a single diamond, a modest one, and her rings, several, and had the servers light the candles the very instant Jordan turned up in the hall—no way could he look at a quarter of an hour’s candle-melt and feel smug in being late.
Marco showed her first guests into the hall and took their coats…precisely at 1816h. Ari met him just outside the dining room.
“Jordan Warrick,” she said in her nicest, warmest tone, and offered her hand. “I’m so glad you’ve come. Paul.” That for the quiet, handsome man who shadowed him.
“Ariane.” Jordan took her hand, a chilly and unenthusiastic grip, and what he was seeing, or remembering in that moment, there was no telling: certain things weren’t in the first Ari’s records, lost, lost except for this man’s memory. “Is my son here?”
“Soon, I’m sure. Would you like a drink?” Service staff was hovering just inside. And Catlin moved in, very deftly, to cut Paul off with conversation and steer him aside.
“You always made a good Vodka Collins.”
“I don’t.” She flashed her brightest grin, and signaled staff. “I haven’t the least idea how. A Collins, Callie. Paul?” She glanced over her shoulder. “What will you have?”
“Wine, sera, white.”
“Wine for me, too. I had my juvie fling with hard liquor. It does my head no favors. I’m so glad you came, Jordan.”
What are you up to? was likely the question he burned to ask her. He didn’t. “Invitations are rare. I’m a little out of the social circuit these days.”
“Well, there hasn’t been much social circuit lately, not since Denys died. It’s all been too grim here. Guards everywhere. Locked doors. Minders on high
alert. But that’s changing. I’ll imagine a lot of things have changed.”
“Some have. Some haven’t.”
“Oh, Catlin, do entertain Paul. I’m aching to talk to Jordan a moment. Jordan, do come into the dining room. Please.” She snagged his arm, moved him, solo, the two further steps through that doorway. “I’m so curious about you,” she said brightly. He was warm, and smelled like Justin. “There aren’t many people in my acquaintance who really remember from way back, way back when everything was starting up in Reseune.”
An eyebrow lifted as she let go his arm. He looked at her, just like Justin. “I’m not that old.”
“But you did actually meet my sort-of grandmother.”
“I did.”
“Was she really the bitch everybody says she was?”
That got a little flare of the pupils, and an immediately suspicious shutdown, no laughter at all. “I never knew her personally. But she was reputed to be that. And passed the trait on.”
She took that with a silent laugh. And just then Callie showed up with the drinks, damn her timing, but she took hers and let Jordan take his own. “I know about your feud with the first Ari. Two very bright people trying to work together. Two people who each had to run things.”
That didn’t sit totally well. “You could say so.”
“She valued you, though, as the most brilliant designer in Reseune, right along with her. She couldn’t get along with you, you weren’t in the same field, exactly, but she did respect you.”
“The hell.”
“I have her notes. She also warned me you were pigheaded.” Sip of wine. Jordan hadn’t touched his Collins. “Is it all right?”