No. Careful.
Careful.
“What did she do when she found out I was gone?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
Dammit, he did not need worry to upset his stomach. It felt like home. Secrets, Ari, and trouble. And everything he loved. He took in a slow, long breath. “I’m holding on,” he said, knowing Justin would understand. “I don’t want any more tape. I don’t want any more sedation. I need to stay awake. I want them to leave the lights on. All the time. I want to get this damn tube out of my arm.”
“I haven’t got any authority. You know that. But I’ll tell Ivanov. I’ll make it real strong with him. And I’ll take the tube out. Here.”
It stung. “That’s going to drip all over the floor.”
“Hell with it. There.” He stopped the drip. “They’re going to put a phone in here. And a vid.”
His heart jumped. He remembered why a phone was important. But he was not there anymore. Or none of it had happened. Or there were possibilities he had missed.
“You know I’m not really well-hinged.”
“Hell, I don’t notice a difference.”
He laughed, a little laugh, automatic, glad Justin was willing to joke with him; and realized that had come totally around a blind corner. Surprised him, when he had been expecting smooth, professional pity. It was not a funny laugh. Surprise-laugh.
Tape could hardly get Justin down pat enough to do something his mind had not expected, not when he was resisting it and not cooperating out of his subconscious.
He laughed again, just to test it, saw Justin look like he had glass in his gut, and hope at the same time.
“It’s a worm,” he told Justin. And grinned wide, wider as he saw an instant of real horror on Justin’s face.
“You damn lunatic!”
He laughed outright. It hurt, but it felt good. He tried to draw his legs up. Wrong. “Oh, damn. You think they can get my legs free?”
“Soon as you know where you are.”
He sighed and felt tension ebbing out of him. He melted back against the moving bed and looked at Justin with a placidity different than tape offered. It still hurt. Muscle tension. Sprain. God knew what he had done to himself, or what they had done to him. “I had you, huh?”
“If you put this on for an act—”
“I wish. I’m fogged. I think I’m going to have flashes off this. I think they’ll go away. I’m really scared, if you don’t come back. Dr. Ivanov’s running this, isn’t he?”
“He’s taking care of you. You trust him, don’t you?”
“Not when he takes Ari’s orders. I’m scared. I’m really scared. I wish you could stay here.”
“I’ll stay here through supper. I’ll come back for breakfast in the morning; every hour I can get free till they throw me out. I’m going to talk to Ivanov. Why don’t you try to sleep while I’m here? I’ll sit in the chair over there and you can rest.”
His eyes were trying to close. He realized it suddenly and tried to fight it. “You won’t leave. You have to wake me up.”
“I’ll let you sleep half an hour. It’s nearly suppertime. You’re going to eat something. Hear? No more of this refusing food.”
“Mmnn.” He let his eyes shut. He went away awhile, away from the discomfort. He felt Justin get up, heard him settle into the chair, checked after a moment to be sure Justin really was there and rested awhile more.
He felt clearer than he had been. He even felt safe, from moment to moment. He had known, if the world was halfway worth living in, that Justin or Jordan would get to him and pull him back to it. Somehow. When it came he had to believe it or he would never believe anything again, and never come back from the trip he had gone on.
ii
The reports came in and Giraud Nye gnawed his stylus and stared at the monitor with stomach-churning tension.
The news-services reported the kidnapping of a Reseune azi by radical elements, reported a joint police-Reseune Security raid on a remote precip station on the heights above Big Blue, with explicit and ugly interior scenes from the police cameras—the azi, spattered with the blood of his captors, being rescued and bundled aboard a police transport. It had taken something, for sharpshooters in outback gear to hike in, break into the garage via a side door, and make a flying attack up the stairs. One officer wounded. Three radical Abolitionists killed, in full view of the cameras. Good coverage and bodies accounted for, which left no way for Ianni Merino and the Abolition Centrists to raise a howl and convoke Council: publicly, Merino was distancing himself as far and as fast as he could from the incident. Rocher was deluging the Ministry of Information with demands for coverage for a press conference: he got nothing. Which meant that the police would be watching Rocher very carefully—the last time Rocher got blacked out, someone had unfurled a huge Full Abolition banner in the Novgorod subway and sabotaged the rails, snarling traffic in a jam the news-services could not easily ignore.
God knew it had not won Rocher the gratitude of commuters. But he had his sympathizers, and a little display of power meant recruits.
About time, he thought, to do something about Rocher and de Forte. Thus far they had been a convenient embarrassment to Corain and to Merino, discrediting the Centrists. Now Rocher had crossed the line and become a nuisance.
Convenient if the damage to Grant had been extreme. A before-and-after clip given to the news-services would show the Abolitionists up for the hounds they were. Honest citizens never saw a mindwipe in progress. Or botched. Convenient if they could take the azi down for extreme retraining—or take him down altogether. God knew he was Alpha, and a Warrick product, and God knew what Rocher’s tapes had done: he had rather be safe; he had told Ari as much.
Absolutely not, Ari had said. What are you thinking of? In the first place, he’s a lever. In the second, he’s a witness against Rocher. Don’t touch him.
Lever with whom, Giraud thought sourly. Ari was holding night-sessions with young Justin, and Ari was, between driving Jane Strassen to ulcers over the refitting of Lab One and the relocation of eight research students, so damned wrapped up in her obsession with the Rubin project that nobody got time with her except her azi and Justin Warrick.
Got herself a major triste. Lost youth and all of that.
Goes off and leaves me to mop up the mess in Novgorod. ‘Don’t touch Merild or Krugers. We don’t want to drive the enemy underground. Cut a deal with Corain. That’s not hard, is it?’
The hell.
The phone rang. It was Warrick. Senior. Demanding Grant’s release to his custody.
“That’s not my decision, Jordie.”
“Dammit, it doesn’t seem to be anybody’s, does it? I want that boy out of there.”
“Look, Jordie—”
“I don’t care whose fault it isn’t.”
“Jordie, you’re damn lucky no one’s prosecuting that kid of yours. It’s his damn fault this came down, don’t yell at me—”
“Petros says you’re the one has to authorize a release.”
“That’s a medical matter. I don’t interfere in medical decisions. If you care about that boy, I’d suggest you let Petros do his job and stay—”
“He passed the mess to you, Gerry. So did Denys. We’re not talking about a damn records problem. We’re talking about a scared kid, Gerry.”
“Another week—”
“The hell with another week. You can start by giving me a security clearance over there, and get Petros to return my calls.”
“Your son is over there right now. He’s got absolute clearance, God knows why. He’ll take care of him.”
There was silence on the other end.
“Look, Jordie, they say about another week. Two at most.”
“Justin’s got clearance.”
“He’s with him right now. It’s all right. I’m telling you it’s all right. They’ve stopped the sedation. Justin’s got visiting privileges, I’ve got it right here on my sheet, all right?”
&
nbsp; “I want him out.”
“That’s real fine. Look, I’ll talk to Petros. Is that all right? In the meantime your kid’s with Grant, probably the best medicine he could get. Give me a few hours. I’ll get you the med reports. Will that satisfy you?”
“I’ll be back to you.”
“Fine, I’ll be here.”
“Thanks,” came the mutter from the other end.
“Sure,” Giraud muttered; and when the contact broke: “Damn hothead.” He went back to the draft of the points he meant to make with Corain, interrupted himself to key a query to Ivanov’s office, quick request for med records on Grant to Jordan Warrick’s office. And added, on a second thought, because he did not know what might be in those records, or what Ari had ordered: SCP, security considerations permitting.
iii
The new separator was working. The rest of the equipment was scheduled for checkout. Ari made notes by hand, but mostly because she worked on a system and the Scriber got in her way: in some things only state of the art would do, but when it came to her notes, she still wrote them with a light-pen on the Translate, in a shorthand her Base in the House system continually dumped into her archives because it knew her handwriting: old-fashioned program, but it equally well served as a privacy barrier. The Base then went on to translate, transcribe and archive under her passwords and handprint, because she had given it the password at the top of the input.
Nothing today of a real security nature. Lab-work. Student-work. Any of the azi techs could be down here checking things, but she enjoyed this return to the old days. She had helped wear smooth the wooden seats in Lab One, hours and hours over the equipment, doing just this sort of thing, on equipment that made the rejected separator look like a technologist’s dream.
That part of it she had no desire to recreate. But quite plainly, she wanted to say I in her write-up of this project. She wanted her stamp on it and her hand on the fine details right from the conception upward. I was most careful, in the initiation of this project—
I prepared the tank—
There were very few nowadays who were trained in all the steps. Everyone specialized. She belonged to the colonial period, to the beginnings of the science. Nowadays there were colleges turning out educated apes, so-named scientists who punched buttons and read tapes without understanding how the biology worked. She fought that push-the-button tendency, put an especially high priority on producing methodology tapes even while Reseune kept its essential secrets.
Some of those secrets would come out in her book. She had intended it that way. It would be a classic work of science—the entire evolution of Reseune’s procedures, with the Rubin project hindmost in its proper perspective, as the test of theories developed over the decades of her research. IN PRINCIPIO was the title she had tentatively adopted. She was still searching for a better one.
The machine came up with the answer on a known sequence. The comp blinked red on an area of discrepancy.
Damn it to bloody hell. Was it contamination or was it a glitch-up in the machine? She made the note, mercilessly honest. And wondered whether to lose the time to replace the damn thing again and try with a completely different test sample, or whether to try to ferret out the cause and document it for the sake of the record. Doing the former, was a dirty solution. Being reduced to the latter and, God help her, failing to find solid evidence, which was a good bet in a mechanical glitch-up, made her look like a damn fool or forced her to have recourse to the techs more current with the equipment.
Dump the machine and consign it to the techs, run the suspect sample in a clean machine, and install a third machine for the project, with a new sample-run.
Every real-life project is bound to have its glitch-ups, or the researcher is lying…
The outer lab-door opened. There were distant voices. Florian and Catlin. And another one she knew. Damn.
“Jordan?” she yelled, loud enough to carry. “What’s your problem?”
She heard the footsteps. She heard Florian’s and Catlin’s. She had confused the azi, and they trailed Jordan as far as the cold-lab door.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Jordie, I’ve got a problem here. Can we do it in about an hour? My office?”
“Here is just fine. Now. In private.”
She drew a long breath. Let it go again. Grant, she thought. Or Merild and Corain. “All right. Damn, we’re going to have Jane and her clutch traipsing through the lab out there in about thirty minutes.—Florian, go over to B and tell them their damn machine won’t work.” She turned and ejected the sample. “I want another one. We’ll go through every damn machine they’ve got if that’s what it takes. I want the thing cleaner than it’s providing. God, what kind of tolerances are they accepting these days? And you bring it over yourself. I don’t trust those aides. Catlin, get up there and tell Jane she can take her damn students somewhere else. I’m shutting down this lab until I get this thing running.” She drew a second long breath and used the waldo to send the offending sample back through cryogenics, then ejected the sample-chamber to a safe-cell and sent it the same route. When she turned around the azi were gone and Jordan was still standing there.
iv
It was a hike from the hospital over to the House itself, a long round-about if the weather made it necessary to go through the halls and the tunnel, a good deal shorter to walk over under open sky. Justin opted for the open air, though the shadows of the cliffs had cut off the sun and he ought to have brought a coat. He got tape-flash. He got it almost everywhere. The sensations got to him most, and his stomach stayed upset—“You eat the damn stuff,” Grant had challenged him, since hospital staff had brought two dinners. “I’ll match you.”
He had gotten it down. He was not sure it was going to stay there. It had been worth everything to have Grant able to sit up and laugh—they had let him free to have his supper and Grant had sat cross-legged in bed and managed the dessert with some enthusiasm. Even if the nurses said they were going to have to put the restraints back on when he was alone for the night.
He would not have left for the night at all, and Ivanov would have let him stay; except he had an appointment with Ari, and he could not tell Grant that. Late work at the lab, he had said. But Grant had been a hundred percent better when he had left him than when he had come in, quickly exhausted, but with liveliness in his eyes, the ability to laugh—perhaps a little too much, perhaps a little too forced, but the way the eyes looked said that Grant was back again.
Just when he was leaving the mask had come down, and Grant had looked sober and miserable.
“Back in the morning,” Justin had promised.
“Hey, you don’t have to, it’s a long walk over here.”
“I want to, all right?”
And Grant had looked ineffably relieved.
That was the good in the day. It was worth everything he paid for it. He felt for the first time since that day in Ari’s office, that there might be a way out of this.
If—if Ari had enough to keep her busy, if—
He thought of Grant and Ari, Grant already on the edge of his sanity-Grant, who had the looks, the grace that every girl he had ever known had preferred to him—
He waded through tape-flash that diminished only to shameful memory, through a muddle of anguish and exhaustion. He was not going to be worth anything. He wanted to go somewhere and be sick—he could call Ari and plead that he was sick, truly he was, he was not lying, she could ask him the next time he—
O God. But then there was the agreement that let him get to Grant. There was the agreement that promised Grant would be free. She could mindwipe Grant. She could do anything. She had threatened Jordan. Everything was on him, and he could not tell Grant, not in the state Grant was in.
He took in his breath and slogged on down the path that led around the corner toward the main door—a jet was coming in. He heard it. It was ordinary. RESEUNEAIR flew at need, as well as on a weekly schedule. He saw it touch down,
walking along by the gravel bed and the adapted shrubbery that led to the front doors. The bus started up from in front of the doors and passed him on its way around the drive and down toward the main road. On its way to pick up someone on the jet, he reckoned, and wondered who in the House had been downriver in all this chaos.
He walked in through the automatic doors, using his keycard in the brass slot, clipped the keycard back to his shut and headed immediately for the lift that would take him up to his apartment.
Phone Jordan first thing he got in and tell him Grant was better. He wished he had had time to call while he was in the hospital, but Grant had not wanted him out of his sight, and he had not wanted to upset him.
“Justin Warrick.”
He turned and looked at the Security guards, putting their presence together with the plane and the bus and instantly thought that some visitor must be coming in.
“Come with us, please.”
He indicated the lift buttons. “I’m just going up to my room. I’ll be out of here.”
“Come with us, please.”
“Oh, damn, just use the com, ask your Supervisor—You don’t touch me!” As one of them reached for him. But they took him by the arms and leaned him up against the wall. “My God,” he said, unnerved and exasperated, as they proceeded to search him thoroughly. It was a mistake. They were azi. They got their instructions upside down and they went damned well too far.
They wrenched his arms back and he felt the chill of metal at his wrists.
“Hey!”
The cuffs clicked shut. They faced him about again and walked him down the hall. He balked, and they jerked him into motion, down the hall toward the Security office.
God. Ari had filed charges. On him, on Jordan, Kruger, everyone involved with Grant. That was what had happened. Somewhere she had gotten the leverage she wanted, something to silence them and bring everything down on them; and he had done it, he, thinking he could deal with her.