And here was the result of it. The planes of the walls evolved one into another as they all walked through. “That’s my fish wall!” she exclaimed, spotting the deep recess, delighted, and Sam beamed and blushed a bit.
“The glass is here. That was big. The build for the tank will be among the last. I’ll be looking to experts’ specs on that.”
“I’ve got the data you want,” she said. She was seeing a tank filled with water, where now there was only white. “I want to learn it myself, but I’m going to be Contracting a specialist in salt aquaculture to actually do the running long-term. He’ll help you set it up. His name’s Chris BCN-3. He was supposed to be on the Beta Station production tanks. He’s seventeen, still taking tape, but he’s getting info on Earth exotics and he’s through enough already to help you, this week if you need him: he’s going to be supering all the watery technicals—with a couple of assistants if he turns out to need them.”
“Wouldn’t hurt at all. I’m anxious to get the pumps arranged. Any of your other staff you’ll want to tour through, or consult during the build, you let me know. The kitchens might be an issue.”
“Florian and Catlin are on it. They’ll get you a list of people we might have come here to walk around at certain stages. Security. Operations. Kitchen, in particular. We’re getting staff. They aren’t cleared into the house yet.”
“A few here might be helpful,” Florian said, behind them. “Not many though. We won’t inundate you with advice.”
A laser must be running. A burned stench wafted through. Something metal fell, distant, and the impact of something the size of the runabout echoed off the walls.
Sam tapped his hardhat. “Must’ve dropped a wrench out there. This area’s safe. Down the main corridor, they’re doing some light work in the ceiling today.”
“The supers are all on our list,” Catlin said. It was a question, regarding the CITs onsite.
“Always,” Sam said, unruffled. “Security never lapses. They don’t even take an inside lunch break: the azi crew is deepset against discussing their work off-duty, so damned enthusiastic I have to make them take breaks—they all know what they’re doing is unique, and they’re excited. So are the rest of us, to tell the truth. Want to see the latest?” He walked them to a serpentine line marked on the floor, which ran to the edge of the living room. “I want to S-curve a meter-deep channel through the flooring. A water channel, clear top, lighted underneath, with rock.”
“I love it!” Ari exclaimed. “A river.”
“Well, a stream. It’ll share its water source with the waterfall, not the tank. Fresh water. Complete loop. There’s a submersible pig to clean it and zap the algae.”
“Pig.” She envisioned the ones that sniffed native life that got onto the grounds.
Sam’s eyes danced. They were brown, unpretentious as the rest of him. He so loved knowing something technical that she didn’t. “A machine-pig. A cleaner bot. Same as they use for regular water-systems, standard piece of equipment, actually. That’s what they call it. It ought to work.”
“Pig.” She liked that word. It conjured the working pigs that patrolled the grounds and kept them safe. “Do it, if you think it’ll work. I like your river, Sam. I love it!”
“It just came to me when I was walking through here. We can have a pump at the top of the loop, right where the waterfall is, keep the water really moving.”
“Oh, don’t tell me everything! I just want to be astonished when I see it!”
They toured the downstairs bathroom, a modern installation that played a little off the waterfall concept, with sealed stone, but the fixtures were all modern. And there was a second scissor-lift to take them up to the second floor—a scary little step across vacant space, and onto solid foamcrete.
At one end of that hall, beside the as yet rail-less balcony, was Florian and Catlin’s suite, which was going to have a gym, and a workshop, and a library of its own. Other staff quarters would be right below it.
“Much more convenient,” was Florian’s only comment. But their eyes were bright. They were happy and easy with Sam. They always had been.
And then her room, her huge bedroom, with a cozy nook for a bed, and a living-sky ceiling, and a glassed-in area for the divider from her office, where her terrarium would be, and her wardrobe, and her bath, which had an in-floor tub, and a mister, and its own little salon, plus a little exercise room of her own…it was everything, all in one. It was all her imagination wrapped up in a design of white plaster at the moment, and she went out onto the unrailed balcony—Florian and Catlin were there in a heartbeat—but not too far toward the edge, just looking down at all of the living and dining area below.
She might have to take over Reseune early. She might not have the years she wanted.
But she was going to have all her friends, all the people she most wanted. Yanni, too, if she could answer the questions she had. She’d been pent in, feeling like a prisoner in the slow ruin of Wing One. When they finished this, they could start repairs, where the search for bugs had literally ripped walls out—repairs much, much beyond a fresh coat of plaster.
Maybe it was dangerous to think of directing Reseune and still hoping to be as happy as she wanted to be in this castle in the air; but this place was all light and optimism. It cost. But it was where she could keep safe what her existence threatened, make an iron-hard core that wouldn’t be vulnerable to threat.
Maybe it was the stupidest, most dangerous thing in the world, to surround herself with the people she was fondest of. The first Ari would have warned her it was, that it was setting herself up to get them killed, or to get herself hurt.
Weak is dead. The first Ari had said that, too.
And the first Ari hadn’t had anybody she was that fond of, except Florian, except Catlin. The first Ari had told her her own nightmares of guilt…the discovery she’d enjoyed inflicting pain, and yet did it, when she did it, purely for a reason. The first Ari had warned her, as best she rationally knew how, that the path she was on went further and further into solitude, and into the dark.
She’d had hormones shot into her deliberately to make her mad and had moan things done to make her miserable, all because she was supposed to live the first Ari’s life, the way Ari’s life, under her own mother, had been one long lab-test, intimately recorded, and full of Ari’s mother’s orders.
It was just everything, every cruel thing justified for the Project, until Denys died and the Project stood on her own two feet.
Well, she was on her own two feet, with her own walls rising around her. And she’d always been smart. All it took for her to learn something was for her to get her head in the right mode, and she’d been quick enough to take in what they wanted—once they’d gotten her scattershot mind both mad and focused…because Mad was always part of it. She could still be the genius her geneset could make her, without her being as cold as the first Ari—couldn’t she? Controlling the Mad was the important thing.
It was what this place was for.
She could love people. Now that she knew the whole scheme, she could try to set things right. Yanni would be here. Most of what Yanni wanted was to get back to his work, his real work. He didn’t ever want to run Reseune. He didn’t really want to fight her for his big project out on the fringe of space. He’d understand, if she just got his hands off the controls and gave him back his labs.
Sam would live here in the wing, Sam, the one in their group who’d just been so reliable, so sensible, in their growing up, that if Sam hadn’t existed, they might have all gone at each other’s throats and nothing would ever have worked. Though, when he got through with her wing, Fitzpatrick wanted him up at Strassenberg, which was a big thing for Sam, the height of his childhood ambitions. It would be hard to have him gone that long, but Sam would be her eyes and ears on that site—Sam and the high-level security team Florian and Catlin would pick out to keep him safe. So Sam’s apartment would be vacant for a while. Maybe a couple of years.
Maddy and Amy, at least, would be living in the wing with her, right from the start.
And when Sam got back from Strassenberg, all the old gang would be here, all of them. She was going to have Justin, too, though he was twice their age. She had a place for him and Grant, a beautiful apartment, where nobody would ever threaten him again.
There’d been her playmate, Valery. In her mind he was still a little, little boy with a mop of dark hair. He was out at Fargone, like Ollie. Early on she’d sent a letter, inviting them all back this summer, all the exiles, when Alpha Wing was finished. It took six months to get an answer, even; but she had started it, on the last day she’d held absolute control of Reseune, before she’d turned the directorship over to Yanni. She couldn’t get Maman back: but Maman’s companion Ollie was still alive. He’d had the CIT tape, and he’d become Director out there. She’d asked Ollie to come home, too, but she’d added, as she hadn’t in Valery’s letter—only if you want to. There’s a place for you here. But if you’re happy there, then stay. I remember you and Maman every day. But you do what you most feel you should do, for Maman’s sake. He was azi, or he had been; and nothing could shake him from that loyalty and have him be happy, and she knew that.
There was Julia, and Gloria Strassen, who never had liked her when she was little, but she could patch that up. She’d been a baby when Denys had sent them away.
She could set some of Denys’ injustices right. And she could use the power she had to protect what her existence jeopardized.
It was scary to think how dead set the first Ari had been against trusting people.
The ones you trust most, the first Ari had said, watch most.
And the ones who’d had their lives torn apart because she was born? They were dangerous because they had a real reason to be mad at her.
But she could try to fix it.
And the first Ari hadn’t lived in a prison, not half so much as she did. The first Ari had been absolutely free to run around the halls and go where she wanted and do what she wanted. The first Ari hadn’t been afraid of anything. But everybody but Giraud had hated that Ari. She’d begun to realize that, and it was a hard truth to live with.
She was different than that Ari. Some people hated her. But a lot of people loved her. And a lot more people knew they needed her. They’d all protected her so much, so devotedly, they’d made her afraid of people. Most of all, afraid of people.
And that made her mad. And Mad always made her think.
And she wasn’t like Yanni’s beetle, a creature in a bottle, forever going in the same circle, forever the same Ari.
“So sober, Ari,” Sam said.
“Thinking,” she said, and then thought that she’d used too harsh a tone, too much out of the dark depths of her heart. She set a hand on his shoulder and walked back to safety, Florian and Catlin attending.
Sam led them all back to the scissor-lift, the someday lift shaft, and sent it back down into what would be the central hallway of the whole complex—right where Sam’s river would run.
“So?” Sam asked.
“Perfect! It’s just perfect!”
He grinned, then. Sam was happy. That was all it took. And Sam’s pleasure lightened her heart. It always did.
“So,” he said, “do you want to pick out colors?”
“Blue,” she said. “A blue couch. Just so it’s comfortable.”
“Cooler white walls, then, for blue.”
“Violet and cool white walls. Maybe some quiet blue-greens. Pastel stuff. I want color.”
“That should be pretty,” he said. “Should be real pretty. Are you moving any of her stuff in?”
She gave a little twitch of the shoulders, thoughtless flinch. There was what she lived with. There was some in storage. Historic. Some really nice pieces, imports from Earth. Human history.
But human history had started over again on Cyteen. In cities founded, like Novgorod, mostly by azi, and going on into generations of freedmen—what did old Earth mean to them? What could it mean? Human history this lot of humans hadn’t replicated, had largely forgotten.
She didn’t have as many blank walls in the new place. Not as much room for paintings and sculptures.
And ought she to take those old paintings off her walls and lend them to a museum, or to the University down in Novgorod, and let people study them for what they were and try to figure out what it meant to lay paint on canvas, instead of commands into a computer?
Maybe the old things were important things to know. Maybe somebody should learn how to do it again.
“You’re thinking again,” Sam said. “Is something the matter?”
“No,” she said, and laughed, and laid a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “No. I was just wondering whether we ought to teach azi to paint.”
“To paint.” Sam laughed.
“Pictures. To paint pictures, like the old paintings. I think it might be good for them. Maybe it’s good for people. I think maybe I ought to let some of those paintings out, and see what they think.”
“They are pretty,” Sam said. “I always admired them.”
“They’re pretty. They’re alien as they can be. I can’t imagine trees that thick. That’s just strange. I think people would be looking at that, the green color, and not at the paint.”
“I think you’re actually supposed to,” Sam said, then. “You’re supposed to believe in them, and not the paint.”
“That’s a point.”
“What did you say about my little river? ‘I want to be amazed?’ I think the paintings are like that.”
He never ceased to surprise her. “So what do you think? Should I get into storage? Bring them out?”
He nodded. “I’ve seen them. Some aren’t that pretty. Some are spooky. But you feel something when you look at them.”
“Maybe I should look at more of them,” she said, and found she’d gathered her arms around herself as if she’d met a chill in the air. It wasn’t just paintings. It was the first Ari’s mind. It was the images the first Ari had seen, lived with, picked out to surround herself with, out of everything she could have had. What even the first Ari might have flinched at, and hidden away.
And instead of building, the first Ari had surrounded herself with things out of old Earth. Priceless things…spooky things. Things that weren’t Cyteen.
Trust Sam to have looked at them, when he was about to build this place. With a heart that had no guilt, no preconceptions, he’d looked at them, when probing that deep into the first Ari’s stored artwork was something she’d zealously avoided. She hadn’t wanted to meet them. Hadn’t wanted to be surrounded by the first Ari’s mind, swallowed up, drowned in the first Ari’s acquisitions. She wanted some of her own.
But you felt something, Sam said. And Sam was always in favor of feeling things.
“Hang them all,” she said suddenly. “Hang the ones you like wherever you think they ought to be, in my apartment, in the corridors where people walk.”
“Hey, I’m the builder, not the decorator.”
“You know them, though. You’ve seen them. Hang the really spooky ones in the guest apartments.”
He laughed. “Wicked, Ari.”
She laughed, too. Laughing took the haunt out of her predecessor’s furnishings and made her think—maybe I ought to use more of them. I’m saving Denys’ stuff, and Giraud’s, to bend their successors’ brains into the old mold.
Maybe—it was a sobering thought—maybe I should meet her…finally. She’s the voice of Base One. I’ve always trusted her voice…
So what’s to be afraid of, in seeing what she saw, what she troubled to bring here out of old Earth?
“About the furniture, Sam, her stuff. Don’t strip her old apartment, the one I’m in. We’ll just lock it up, leave it as it was, just like Giraud’s, just like Denys’. With all the pictures that hang there.” In case they didn’t replicate her, but the first Ari, but she didn’t say that to Sam. “But with what’s in storage, if you ca
n use it, never mind my colors—do it.”
“Her taste was a lot of brown and green.”
That was true. Along with occasional greens and golds in the paintings, alien greens, yellowy Earth greens like the lawn outside, like the plants in the vivarium, when every green growing thing native to the planet was tinged with blue and gray, and the ground was red. “Maybe I should do green and brown in this room, her green, water green. Old Earth brown. Oh, just make it fit, Sam.”
“I told you, I’m no decorator. I’m really not.”
“But you knew how to look at the paintings in the warehouse. You’ll know what to do with them. Surprise me.”
“That’s too many surprises, Ari.”
“No such thing,” she said suddenly, and remembered the first Ari saying, out of Base One, “There are people who aren’t surprised because they don’t notice what’s surprising in the world and they just never wonder. And there are, much rarer, people who aren’t surprised because they always see what’s coming. When you’re a child, you’re surprised by most things. It gets rarer as the years pass. Surprises keep us sane. They set us into new territory. They give us something to think about, when same old things have been the rule. You can go to sleep for years with the same old things. Sleep can eat away at your life. And sleep can be dangerous.”
Not always good things, but maybe—maybe it was good for her to meet some things she hadn’t planned.
And paint was cheap…until it made a thousand-year-old painting.
“No such thing, Sam. You’re king of surprises. You do it all. You pick.”
“You’re going to hate it!”
“I’ve never hated anything you’ve ever done. Don’t hold back. Give me the best place you can, with whatever of her stuff fits, and bring all the hidden stuff out where people can see it.”
“All right.” Sam said, and together they walked out of her apartment and on down the corridor, past scaffolding and into the vicinity of a good deal of cutting and banging—past doors that would belong to people she’d grown up with, and then downstairs by yet another scissor-lift.