“Forget it.” Rattle of ice in a glass, and a thump, a glass set down. Hard. “They’ll do what they want to anyway.”
“I’ll find a way,” Justin said.
“Stubbornness,” Jordan said, “runs in the family.”
“So Justin offered sera’s help,” Catlin said.
It was curious, considering where Justin’s loyalties lay. It was worth bringing to sera, who understood born-men infinitely better.
“Sera should definitely hear this,” Florian said.
Reaching to her own keyboard, Catlin said, “I’ll send the transcript to her queue. She may not like that part.”
BOOK THREE Section 2 Chapter v
JUNE 12, 2424
0602H
Sleep hadn’t come early, but Ari was up and dressed before Joyesse had a chance to show up…she’d fallen asleep before she’d heard how things had gone, and trusted Catlin to wake her if they’d gone spectacularly badly.
There was a note in System from Catlin. And files for her. Interesting, Catlin’s note said. There was a flag on a section of note, but she started skimming the file from the top, choosing rapid-audio over script—she wanted the nuances.
And it was interesting, right from the start. Jordan tended to be that.
“…So my own appeal couldn’t get you through my door, but you don’t mind bringing the little dears guards to burgle my apartment.”
A little odd to hear oneself snarled at in absentia. She had a pet name. How sweet.
“I was concerned for your safety.” That was Justin, a little further from the pickup, talking about Patil, and she slowed the audio down. “She was talking about somebody inside, Dad. Who would that be?”
Then, “How was Patil involved? Why were you carrying her card around? And why in hell did you dump it on me?”
There was a nice list of questions. She didn’t expect answers from Jordan, but it was a good fight, very much the same as at her dining table.
“…the fact I got close to Ari,” Justin fired back at one point. “Who, outside of being the incarnation you deplore, is a pretty good little kid in her spare time.”
The audio went on. And on. Her heart had begun picking up its beats. Gotten harder and harder. And she got Mad. As Mad as she’d ever been. And that was all she could hear. A pretty good little kid. A pretty good little kid. That wasn’t Justin putting on an act. That was Justin defending her. A pretty good little kid.
Damn him! Damn him!
She shook, she was suddenly so mad. And her breath came short, and her eyes stung, suddenly swimming with tears.
Well, that was interesting. She’d just had a heavy hit of adrenaline, and a rush of hormones, and she kept hearing those same five words, over and over, and she wanted to cry. She wanted to cry so badly she burst into sobs and buried her face in her hands. Which was just damned stupid. She wiped her eyes, and kept wiping, smearing tears all over her face, and hiccuping, which just finished it—she hadn’t had a tantrum like that since she was three.
God!
The audio had just gone on, far past, and the worst part was, she had to run it back to find her place and hear it again.
Little kid.
Dammit all. She wondered what else she’d hear that would send her over the edge. Or break her heart. She really, really didn’t want to go on listening.
But it was what one got for eavesdropping on somebody else’s conversation, and he probably hadn’t even thought twice about saying it. That was the problem. He was, face it, older. A lot older. And that was exactly how he saw her. And that was where he was, her Justin, forever out of reach.
She had to hear it to the end. She had to know, about Justin, of all people, what he was thinking and saying. It was her job to know, if she was going to take over Reseune, if she was going to go on trusting him as a major asset.
And it was an interesting reaction. Her heart was still beating hard. She wasn’t thinking straight. Jordan was saying important things about where the card could actually have come from and how he’d reacted, and she couldn’t analyze anything. They used to shoot her full of hormones so she’d react in certain ways. This was like that. She was still shaken, and still feeling sorry for herself, and actually jealous of the first Ari, for having had, just once, a physical chance at Justin. And simultaneously, she was ashamed of that thought; and knew, still, that the first Ari hadn’t won Justin’s heart. Or she had, but not in the way anybody would want to—she’d taken him, shaken him, and then died, leaving him to suffer the consequences of being under Denys Nye’s regime and tangled somewhere in the first Ari’s involvement with Jordan. So it had kept him safe, but it had made him a target. Not mentioning what Ari had done to him, deliberately, as an act of policy.
That had to be part of Justin’s reaction to her…as long as she was a pretty good little kid, he had her in a safe place in his mind. Sex, in Justin, wasn’t going to go her way and she had to face it, was all. No other woman ever seemed to interest him; and she seemed to be the female he reacted to, but it wasn’t the reaction she wanted—or that at least part of her wanted. When she thought about it logically—or as logically as she could manage—she knew it was one thing to imagine having sex with Justin; but it was a damned scary prospect to contemplate really doing it. It scared him; it scared her. And—the real stinger—it inevitably had a morning after, which just wouldn’t be good for either of them.
So maybe she was the little kid for now. As they aged, the difference in their ages would get less. He’d be more like Jordan was now, she’d be more like Ari was then—
And it just wouldn’t get any better, would it? Forget the thought.
She just had to prevent it all going nova, was all. She couldn’t lose him, the way Ari had lost Jordan. That was the important thing.
She wondered what sort of answer she’d get from Jordan, if she asked him if he and the first Ari had ever had sex. She hadn’t found it in the records, and she wondered about it. He’d be shocked at the question, she thought, probably disturbed, given that the relationship had gone the way it did—and then he’d twist it around and ask her if she aimed at Justin. Only he’d probably put it more bluntly—to shock her.
If she took the old war with Jordan into the realm of sexual innuendo, it could divert it away from the real issues—sex being, even with people who weren’t kids, a short-circuit in the logic process.
So she didn’t want to ask him, or get into that dialogue, because he wouldn’t answer. He didn’t have to answer anything, ever, and he used that fact like a weapon, challenging them, outright challenging them to break their own law and go after him, because then they’d be what he’d always said they were.
Maybe that was what went on in his head—just a spaghetti code of a thought process that hoped someday he could break them before they broke him…
And, dammit, she’d let the recording get away from her again. She remembered the place, sent it back to the precise number, and ran it the third time—this time hearing that little kid remark with a lot more logic functioning. It was sad, it was hurtful, but her pulse rate had settled and she had her brain working again.
The recording ran on. There wasn’t anything else…down to the bit Catlin had flagged.
“Answer them, dammit! Leave it for security. Live your life. Ask Yanni for a few cases, and get busy, high-level, low-level, it doesn’t matter. I’ll go to him…”
“But you haven’t done it, have you? I seem to remember you were going to do that.”
“I’ve been a little busy. Never mind how. Just—I will.”
“You really don’t get the picture, do you? They won’t let me write sets. They’re paranoid. And, no, I’m not going to get any work.”
“Jordan, don’t explode. She’d check them over. If she passed them, ultimately, they’ll be passed.”
“That’s not even worth a comment.”
“Because you’re too fucking proud.”
“Because I’m not going to deal with her
. I’m not going to her begging.”
“Then I will. She’ll get you through this. Nobody’s going to pin anything on you. No more frame-ups.”
Would he ask her? She wasn’t sure how she was going to answer that if Justin did. It would be interesting to critique one of Jordan’s current designs. But if she said one word to him, Jordan would blow, and that wouldn’t help anything. If he really did, it might poison the atmosphere between her and Justin, and Jordan was perfectly capable of writing something she’d have to criticize, just to get that result.
So maybe that wasn’t a good idea. Endlessly, Jordan played the martyr and Justin tried to do something to help him. Catlin didn’t like it, from the viewpoint of her own profession, and she’d flagged that particular exchange as worrisome, but that was how those two were, just being Jordan and Justin, to the hilt. That she’d be upset about something else in the file—Catlin, dear, loyal Catlin, hadn’t picked that up, didn’t feel the least upset herself by Justin’s statement, or remotely think she would be upset, or Catlin would have warned her. It was downright funny—Catlin just hadn’t seen it.
She loved Catlin. And Catlin helped her, finally, get it all in perspective. Her own reaction was all gauzy wisp, pure emotion, evaporative on a breeze, and nothing to do with rationality—unless you started taking your own rattled assessment for solid and factual, and that was a mistake that launched your whole universe into mythology, especially when it was a love-hate reaction. Catlin dealt purely in substance, and found real substance in that latter bit that she herself didn’t see as alarming, or at least didn’t see as at all surprising—so she wasn’t fluxed by it, just analytical, and that was that, and she could tell herself calmly, yes, she’d hear the request and she’d think about it and she’d probably say no. When Justin actually asked her.
It was interesting, however, to hear that first scene as Catlin, and realize that, if she were Catlin, she just couldn’t be fazed by any assessment of her age—Catlin was just Catlin, and knew what she could do, any other judgement was, in Catlin’s view, just mistaken.
Catlin did, however, worry about Justin’s mental engagement with Jordan’s frustration, and possibly the vector it would take, entangling her and trying for sympathy.
And it would involve Justin going right to Yanni’s door, at a sensitive time in her own relations with Yanni. There was that little question.
That was worth a slow rethinking, in Catlin’s way of looking at born-man behavior. In Catlin’s view, a born-man following his emotions was apt to do any damned thing, not necessarily prudent, or successful, or even in his own self-interest.
This request certainly wouldn’t be in Justin’s interest. That was the thing about real self-sacrifice, unlike Jordan’s martyrdom: it knowingly gave away bits of itself, trying to make the environment saner, and better.
On the other hand, another inquiry about Jordan could, coming from her, constitute a very interesting probe into Yanni Schwartz’s motives.
She thought about it a moment. And she was surer and surer about her course of action.
She wrote a note to Justin, and sent it. It said:
Don’t go to Yanni with your fathers situation. The Patil investigation is going to have Yanni’s office in an uproar, ReseuneSec is conducting the investigation, and I don’t want Hicks’ office to sweep you and Grant up for questioning. Then I’d have Hicks getting all upset and bothered because I’d have to go over his head to Yanni to get you out. I would do it, understand, but that would just complicate things and you still wouldn’t get your answer out of Yanni and I’d have Hicks mad at me, which would just make matters worse. I have to talk to Yanni anyway. Let me approach Yanni about Jordan’s getting some work to do. I’d be happy to. I want things to work out, the same as I know you do. You and Grant just be careful about going out of the wing, even to restaurants, and don’t send Grant by himself. I don’t want trouble with ReseuneSec.
Justin had a strong tic, where it concerned ReseuneSec. And it wasn’t altogether the most honest thing she’d ever written, but its purpose was. And there was still the question of who had put Jordan on to Eversnow, and who had dropped that card into his pocket—if they could believe a word of what he’d said.
I won’t critique his work, she said at the end of that note. I won’t say a word. I know he’d like me to so he can have a fight. So I’ll just pass/fail it. Tell him he’ll have to write it well enough to get it past me and I’m going to be hypercritical. Bet he can’t do it. Tell him that.
BOOK THREE Section 2 Chapter vi
JUNE 13, 2424
0802H
“God,” Justin said, and then laughed, outright laughed.
“That’s good,” Grant said.
“I hope she can convince Yanni,” Justin said, and Grant:
“I want to see this one.”
BOOK THREE Section 2 Chapter vii
JUNE 13, 2424
2310H
Pajama conference. That was what they’d used to call it, back when the Enemy was Denys, and they did it now that they ruled the Wing and had a force of their own. Florian and Catlin sat on Ari’s big bed—Ari in her nightgown and Florian and Catlin in their gym sweats; and Ari tucked her knees up with her arms around her ankles and Florian and Catlin sat cross-legged. They played the oldest Game, Who’s the Enemy?
“Paxers are easy,” Florian said. “They’re always out there.”
Ari asked: “But have they got a leader?”
“We have names,” Catlin said. “But there’s no one single leader that anybody knows.”
“Anton Clavery. Is that one?”
“A new name,” Catlin said. “Anton Clavery doesn’t show on any records. There is no CIT number.”
“An alias, then.”
“Or a nonperson,” Florian said. “Births happen off the record. Particularly Paxer children. And children from the outback don’t always get logged in.”
That was a small revelation—though not a huge surprise. She saw it could certainly happen, if parents opting for natural birth didn’t go to a hospital or register a birth for weeks—or months. Or never got around to it. “They’d have to intend to do this long-term. Motive?”
“Secrecy from the authorities,” Florian said. “No registry of DNA, fingerprints, retinals, nothing of the sort. Hard to track a nonperson.”
“Hard to find a job, too,” Ari said. “How do they manage?”
Catlin hugged her knees up. “They borrow. Their job is being off the records and out of the system. They borrow cards, to ride public transport. People steal for them: they use a stolen card, then dump it before they get caught. They always have jobs. They’re employed by clandestine groups. They’re greatly prized for employment in some circles.”
“Do we have data on the parents of these individuals? Do we try to track pregnant people that don’t register a child?” She was instantly interested: a subset of the Paxers, likely of other dissident groups. And she’d about bet they were all CIT, not azi, in origin. Azi-descended weren’t inclined to plots, and they’d prize that CIT registry for their children: but CITs were inclined to be argumentative. People who’d opted to leave where they were and emigrate to Cyteen hadn’t been the happiest where they were, or they’d have stayed. They’d either been hungry for something they didn’t have, or they’d been at odds with where they were. Maybe a certain segment was at odds with the status quo again.
“There are names and numbers,” Catlin said. “Some are known. It’s a felony to fail to register a child—crime against person.”
Mark a new element. Novgorod had existed at the outlet of the Novaya Volga since Reseune had existed near its headwaters. Her predecessor’s mother, Olga, had seen the first days. So they weren’t that many generations into Novgorod’s existence. The Paxers had organized around opposition to the War, which had pretty well been going on since before Cyteen existed, in its cold war phase. But malcontents had been there probably since the second batch of people got to Cyteen Stati
on in its pioneer days and complained about some regulation the first batch of colonists had voted on.
It took something, to deny your offspring a number, a normal life—medical care, and schooling, and easy travel, and everything else you could do with a CIT number.
“People groomed just to get past surveillance,” she said. “I suppose they’re more used than users. I can’t see it would be a happy life. But if there was a nonperson who was really, really a black hole in the system, and he was really smart, he could get power, I suppose. If he was really determined, if he had a lot of arms and legs, he could do damage.”
“He could,” Florian said. “You’d only see the arms and legs. And Anton Clavery doesn’t exist. A nonperson is one possibility. A hollow man is the other thing you have to deal with. A dead person anybody can be, if he pays the rent on the identity. Back during the War, there were even a few instances of Alliance agents—stationers. Not spacers, that we never found. The stationers didn’t cope well, however.”
“There are a lot of schemes in Novgorod,” Catlin said. “Cons and schemes alike.”
“One thing Novgorod CITs are in my notes as being,” Ari said, “is really good at finding ways around rules. I’m betting CITs descended from azi aren’t much inclined to be nonpersons. Or use hollow men. I’m betting that’s not in their psychsets. They’ll go to birthlabs, mostly, to have their children. They’ll get them registered. A CIT number is important to them.”
“I certainly don’t want one,” Catlin said. “But then I don’t want to be a CIT.”
“You’re not setted for it,” Ari said, which threw her into thinking about what would in fact happen to them if she died, the way Maman had left Ollie, and she didn’t want to think about that. It was one real good reason for her to live a long, protected life, was what. Two people relied on her, absolutely, and this Anton Clavery, whoever he was, whatever he was—threatened more than the Eversnow project. He had brought her really unpleasant questions, like currents running in Novgorod, among the Paxers, and the Rocher Party, the Abolitionists, who absolutely wouldn’t understand Catlin’s rejection of being a CIT. They’d want to free her, depend on it.