“From Reseune. From my office. Which is also my personal number.”
A small silence. Then, more quietly: “I appreciate the advisement. My respects to your connections. Good day, ser.”
Contact abruptly broken. He drew a long, shaky breath, and looked at Grant, and looked at Florian.
“Well-handled, ser,” Florian said. “Very well handled.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned Ari’s name.”
“Sera authorized it in her note,” Florian said. “The call is recorded, as I’m sure you know. It will go no further than sera’s security.”
“I appreciate that,” he said, feeling his stomach upset. He didn’t know who he’d just betrayed. He was sure, at least, it wasn’t Ari. That part made him—and Grant—personally safe, as long as he was in Ari’s wing.
Outside was another matter.
“Sera’s thanks,” Florian said, and held out his hand. For a moment Justin had no notion what he wanted. Then he realized the paper with Ari’s instructions was on the desk, and he gave it back. Florian folded it and tucked it away.
“The card, ser.”
He’d forgotten that. He handed that over, glad not to have it in his possession. Florian pocketed that, too, bowed, with a “Good day, ser, Grant.”
And left.
Damn, Justin thought as the door shut. And said it. “Damn, Grant. What did I just do?”
“Assuredly what pleases Ari,” Grant said softly. “Which is probably a good idea.”
“I’m sure it is,” he said, which was a lie: he wasn’t sure of anything in the universe at the moment. “I think I just upset Dr. Patil.”
“I don’t think we’re responsible for Dr. Patil,” Grant said. “We don’t know who she is, or what your father wanted.”
“Or what Yanni wants,” he said. “Damn it, Grant, Yanni, of all people. He can’t be moving on his own. I can’t imagine him doing that.”
“In a wide universe,” Grant said, “it’s extraordinary that this woman’s card arrived on that very evening.”
“It’s extraordinary,” he agreed, staring off into memory, that evening, the foyer at Jamaica, that card going into his pocket. Florian, in the dark, by the pond. Grant walking back to hand it over, because he’d known then that his father had handed him trouble, and challenged him to do something besides coexist with Admin.
Now he’d done something, and not on Jordan’s side. Not against him, necessarily, but not on Jordan’s side. His father had challenged him. And he’d picked a side. Committed himself, with a phone call.
Committed himself, when he’d given Grant that card to turn over to Florian that night. He was sure of that. He was one step further into the quagmire, and now a second one.
And Florian emphasized—sera’s security, not ReseuneSec. Why that distinction, he wondered? Was there actually a distinction? Or was there about to be? A schism, in the relations between Ari and the current directorship of Reseune?
“We’re Ari’s,” he said to Grant, still staring into memory, that night, the cold wind. Bright light, and Ari, perched in that chair in his office. And he had to consider where that office was. In it, neck deep, they were—living, now working, in her wing, doing work on, and for, her security. “I suppose we’re Ari’s. If there was ever any doubt of it in my father’s mind, he’s forced me—and we are.”
BOOK ONE Section 3 Chapter vi
MAY 3, 2424
1121H
Major headache, right between the eyes. Deepstudy did that sometimes—especially on too little food, especially when it was tape-study on population dynamics, which wasn’t a commercial tape, wasn’t paced to be, was just raw notes and data and conclusions dumped into one’s head under the deepteach drug, so the habitual mind wanted to add it up and make it make sense and the critical faculties just weren’t answering the phone.
But the too-little-food part was another very good reason for the headache, which was why Ari had scheduled herself to come out of it at 1115h. She still was on the edge of the drug—when she was coming out, she’d told domestic staff just not to talk to her or ask her anything or tell her anything. She was apt to have what they said running around in her head all day, otherwise, and there was already too much running around in her head, psychsets, genesets, this population burst, the other burst added to the Novgorod sets, all of it classified, most all of it done during the War, with the Defense Bureau nagging her predecessor to do this, do that, psych-design by committee and with no understanding what they were asking. So the first Ari had done what she wanted to do because nobody in the Defense Bureau had the skill to check on what she did.
Her predecessor had, for example, prepped a cadre of azi to survive if some Alliance ship had taken out Cyteen Station and dropped a rock on Reseune itself. They were to get to the weathermaker controls and the precip towers, hold them if they could, otherwise go for the safety domes, take over by armed action, and run things, never mind any plan Defense had laid down. There were some alphas seeded into Novgorod, just for leaven in the loaf. They’d have children by now. Children would have CIT numbers, ultimately indistinguishable from the CITs whose ancestors had come down to earth from the station. If the average held true, the children were probably not geniuses. But she could track them down. A little computer work, carefully shielded, would be interesting—if she had the time to do that research. She didn’t. Her schedule said she was supposed to be doing math tape this afternoon. And she sat, muzzy-headed, wishing she could take a day off from everything on her schedule.
The door to her study opened, quietly She took a sip of coffee and looked up at Florian.
“Sera,” he said. “He was willing. He did very well. Are you able to hear the report?”
That was a mental shift. A serious mental shift. Florian meant Justin. Willing meant Justin had done what they had talked about last night, she and Florian and Catlin. And she’d told him to report as soon as she was awake. She was intensely curious—too wide-focused at the moment, but curious.
“Did it work?” she asked, shoving population dynamics and all the equations to the rear. What concerned Justin worried her, on a personal basis, and she didn’t like involving him in operations. “Did you learn anything?”
“Patil claimed not to know Jordan Warrick except by reputation. But she accepted the younger Warrick’s advisement that he has influence with you. I have the transcript. —Is this too early, yet, sera?”
She had a second sip of coffee, blinked at the headache between her eyes, and shook her head. “No. I’ll go over it. I want to. What are the details? How do you read it?”
“He invoked an investigation into your predecessor’s death, as if Jordan was seeking a new inquiry to be opened into that matter—his innocence established.”
She didn’t know why. She didn’t quite like the sound of that, granted Justin had had to improvise. Was it because that issue was riding Justin’s subconscious, and that was what had surfaced in his mind? She was a little surprised, a little off put. But there was Jordan’s motive to question. He was a son of a bitch. But was he trying to get Admin’s attention?
“Ser Warrick suggested that she and Thieu might be subjects of investigation because of the card and the connection to the elder Warrick.”
Which was even the plain truth, just a large enough dose of it to make it credible.
But the other matter hit her skull and rattled around unpleasantly before heading through her nerves, just an unsettling, undefined malaise. The question of Jordan’s innocence. Justin—the cause célèbre in suspicion falling on Jordan…a political firestorm if that case got raked over again in the media, taking public attention away from her before she’d had time to settle the image she wanted in public attention.
Deepstudy drug. Damn it.
“I am a little muzzy yet. I think I need to cut back the doses. Shouldn’t be lasting like this.”
“Forgive me, sera. You said—”
“I said tell me
when I waked. And I ought to be awake. I am awake. I’m just a little disturbed by the direction he went.”
“Dr. Patil was about to end the conversation. He used that matter as a wedge.”
“What did she say then?”
“That she had no connection with Warrick Senior. And they concluded politely.”
“Someone provided her address to Jordan. Either he handed on a card the full significance of which he didn’t know, a total coincidence, or he did know.”
“In our opinion, the elder Warrick knew whose number that card was, and that she is currently important.”
“Do you think that is possibly his motive, that he wants vindication? Florian, who actually sent Jordan to Planys?”
“Our indications are it was Yanni.”
“That’s what my own search turned up. Yanni held the keys. Always. During Denys’s tenure. Yanni held the keys to Jordan’s sentence. And it was primarily Yanni who protected Justin, when Giraud would have taken a harder line. All these things are true?”
“Our indications are that, yes. But, sera—”
She waited.
“If you’re not prepared to talk, sera…”
“I’m thinking quite clearly at the moment.” What the drug did, besides diminish the ability to reject a fact, was to lower the bars on partitioned information—make cross-connections easier, if there was a shred of connection possible. It was like momentarily seeing the world from a plane window, disconnected from the land, but seeing all of it, every wrinkle, every canyon, every change of strata, how it all, all, all connected, even if it was too wide to remember once one was back on the ground. “I’m thinking quite clearly at the moment, Florian, thank you. I’m just a little deepstate. I’m sure you understand.”
“I do, sera.”
“I need to do something.” She was aware she was staring straight ahead, her eyes wide open. She knew the look: black centered, unfocused, focused everywhere, and nowhere in the real world. “I like him, Florian. I like Yanni. I really do. But I can’t have him running operations he doesn’t tell me about.”
“Should I take orders from you at this point?”
She was perfectly collected. She slowly moved her head from side to side. “No. You should not. I need about fifteen more minutes to get my head clear, Florian. I need a cold drink. Would you mind going and getting that? That’s a request, not an order.”
“Are you safe to leave alone, sera?”
“Perfectly safe. I’ll sit here and think. I’d like that drink, thank you. Something sugary.”
“Fifteen minutes, sera.”
She wasn’t surprised when, hardly a moment behind Florian’s leaving, Catlin quietly opened the door and came in.
“Sit down,” Ari said, still not focusing on anything but infinity. “I’m thinking a moment, Catlin. I know you’re there.”
Catlin subsided into a chair without a word. And Ari stared off into her thoughts.
Yanni. Yanni was a resource, and a problem. What he had done said nothing about his motives in doing it. Yanni had intervened in the past to prevent further assassinations, of the Warricks, in specific.
Yanni said he had concerns about Jordan in her bringing him back, and was searching for involvement in leaks in Planys, which had gotten to Corain and possibly to others, possibly by the same conduit. One man was relieved of his position. That didn’t mean there wasn’t another.
And possibly Yanni had put challenges in front of Jordan before this to find out how he might react. Possibly he was testing Patil herself, who had at least some connections to Jordan, through Thieu. He talked about putting the woman in charge of a world in its transformation, in the most Centrist-friendly decision Reseune had taken in years: the woman had Centrist backing, a lot of Centrist backing, the same party that had taken up the cause of the Warricks’ plight as a case of political persecution—and called it a power grab by the Nyes.
True. It had been exactly that.
But the Centrists had, after Giraud’s death, attempted a brief but cuddly relationship with Denys Nye, seeing that Denys was not, after all, going to push the Expansionist agenda Giraud had espoused—not because Denys was Centrist, but because Denys Nye was on his own agenda and wouldn’t spend a cred on Ariane Emory’s projects.
Denys Nye was going to continue the one Project, the cloning of Ariane Emory herself, but he was going to keep it, and her juvenile self, under his thumb for at least a decade…the Centrists hadn’t minded.
Meanwhile Denys focused entirely on post-War economics, on the complexities of Earth-Alliance-Union trade, and on those agreements, which pleased the Centrists no end. They might not have gotten their terraforming bill passed, but they had gotten an administrator of Reseune who was pushing most of their agenda and precious little of Ariane Emory’s—just the Project, which guaranteed, so long as Denys Nye had physical guardianship of the Project, that it wasn’t going to threaten him…in its lifetime.
Yanni’d done the day-to-day administrative part through all of both Nyes’ terms, running Personnel, which, in Reseune, was a key post. Denys had been the genius behind the programs; Giraud had kept the lid on dissent and quietly smoothed the bumps in the very short, very defined road Reseune had traveled in the post-War years.
But Giraud and Denys had each been seduced—Giraud by devotion to Denys, and Denys by the one thing that Denys coveted for himself—immortality. Denys and death hadn’t liked each other. If the Child succeeded, it proved the psychogenesis process was possible. Denys wanted the Project to succeed, at least until he knew the result.
And meanwhile Denys was busy storing all his own data, and Giraud’s, out in that archive. It was very likely that Denys had double dealt Ariane Emory’s plans by killing her; had double dealt the Centrists by continuing the Project; Denys had double dealt absolutely everybody, all to keep Denys Nye alive for another lifespan…solipsistic bastard. He’d attempted to kill her only when she’d succeeded and he had his result—unfortunately for him, she’d succeeded too well, too fast, and consequently he’d been the one to die, else he’d just have blamed her assassination on another Warrick and started all over again. That would have gained him another twenty years, during which he could bring up his own successor, another Giraud, who would be duty-bound to bring up him, the all-important center of his universe.
And Yanni? Yanni had kept his hold on power through both administrations, letting the Nyes run things, mopping up, keeping the Nyes from doing too much damage, while the Project ran, and she grew…
So which side was he on?
Florian came back into the room with the requested glass of orange and put it in her hand. She drank it, absorbing the sugar hit, still staring elsewhere.
“Yanni’s not necessarily pernicious,” she said. “He is bent on his own agenda, and he’s been very clear about that. Getting the Eversnow project going…that’s major. He had Thieu in safekeeping at Planys. But Thieu’s gotten too old; he’s on his way to the grave. So now Yanni needs Patil. He’s saved the Eversnow project. He’s gotten it passed. He’s saved the Warricks, kept Justin sane. I’m not so sure he wanted Jordan out, but he’s got him. He probably wants Justin for his ally. He can’t have Justin. Justin is mine.”
Blink. The thoughts were trying to shred and go away in different directions. She held onto the central problem: Eversnow. “Yanni kept all the first Ari’s projects alive, and he preserved the Warricks, especially Justin. Yanni’s still on her program. Not Denys’. Hers. And that’s not necessarily mine. He’s courting the Centrists. He’s trying to move them onto his agenda, and they’re buying it, seeing him as Denys’ backup, in the years before I take over. If I did take over sooner, it would disturb them a lot. The Paxers would have a fit. They’ll go back to the underground, blowing things up again. But they’ll do that, whenever I take over.”
Florian and Catlin waited, both seated, neither saying a thing to interrupt her.
Blink. More shreds. Tatters. But the structure stayed. ?
??I still like Yanni. I don’t want him to die. I just don’t want him to do what he’s doing. Eversnow is something I wouldn’t have done and the more I think about it, the more uneasy I get. Yanni sees the job crisis and a new trade route as important—more so than I do. It takes us further from Alliance, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing for humanity at this point.” She thought: Ari set me to watch her projects. Her projects, and this was one. But keeping Union together—keeping humankind from fragmenting: there were already more variables than she could handle—or she wouldn’t have created me. It was already afield-too-large problem, just with what we’ve already created, Novgorod, and Gehenna, and the military azi, and Alliance, and Earth. Then pile Eversnow on top of that, as odd as people could get, learning to survive on a snowball. It’s a planet, not just one more star station. Gravity wells breed difference. They don’t communicate with the outside.
There might have been a reason besides elder Ari’s health that she let Eversnow drop.
It was hard not to plunge back into deepstate, following that thread. But Florian and Catlin didn’t go away. They waited for something more concrete than her worries. “I’m not sure yet,” she said. “Who, do you think, does Hicks belong to?”
“Possibly to Yanni,” Florian said. “He was Yanni’s appointee in the current office. Giraud Nye’s second-in-command when Giraud was alive.”
“Both, then. But he didn’t protect Denys. He just protected Yanni. And he didn’t resist me ousting Denys. Possibly Yanni protected me from Hicks.”
“Likely,” Catlin said. “Hicks and Yanni together would have been a difficult opposition. We met none, once Abban died.”
She nodded slowly. “I have to take over,” she said, half-numb, and with that wide focus that blanked out the whole room, except them. “I have to take charge. I don’t want to, but Hicks’s gift isn’t enough. I can’t let Yanni go on in the direction he’s going. I like him, understand. I don’t want him hurt. But Eversnow is much too dangerous. Yanni doesn’t see things the way I do. He belongs to the first Ari. And he wouldn’t like it if I started steering from over his shoulder. He’d rather go back to his labs. He should, now.”