Cyteen

  Nelly was by her in the morning, and maman was not, the bedroom was strange, it was uncle Denys’ place, and Ari wanted to scream or to cry or to run again, run and run, until no one could find her.

  But she lay still, because she knew maman was truly gone. And uncle Denys was right, she was better than she was, she was thinking about breakfast in between thinking how much she hurt and how she wished Nelly was somewhere else and maman was there instead.

  It was still something, to have Nelly. She patted Nelly’s face hard, until Nelly woke up, and Nelly hugged her and stroked her hair and said:

  “Nelly’s here. Nelly’s here.” And burst into tears.

  Ari held her. And felt cheated because she wanted to cry, but Nelly was azi and crying upset her. So she was sensible like maman said, and told Nelly to behave.

  Nelly did. Nelly stopped snuffling and sniveling and got up and got dressed; and gave Ari her bath and washed her hair and dressed her in her clean blue pants and a sweater. And combed and combed her hair till it crackled.

  “We’re supposed to go to breakfast with ser Nye,” Nelly said.

  That was all right. And it was a good breakfast, at uncle Denys’ table, with everything in the world to eat. Ari did eat. Uncle Denys had seconds of everything and told her she and Nelly could spend the day in the apartment, until Nelly had to go to hospital, and then Seely would come and take care of her.

  “Yes, ser,” Ari said. Anything was all right. Nothing was. After yesterday she didn’t care who was here. She wanted to ask Denys where maman was, and where maman was going. But she didn’t, because everything was all right for a while and she was so tired.

  And if Denys told her she wouldn’t know the name of that place. She only knew Reseune.

  So she sat and let Nelly read her stories. Sometimes she cried for no reason. Sometimes she slept. When she woke up it was Nelly telling her it would be Seely with her.

  Seely would get her as many soft drinks as she wanted. And put on the vid for her. And do anything she asked.

  She asked Seely could they go for a walk and feed the fish. They did that. They came back and Seely got her more soft drinks, and she wished she could hear maman telling her they weren’t good for her. So she stopped on her own, and asked Seely for paper and sat and drew things.

  Till uncle Denys came back and it was time for supper, and uncle Denys talked to her about what she would do tomorrow and how he would buy her anything she wanted.

  She thought of several things. She wanted a spaceship with lights. She wanted a new coat. If uncle Denys was going to offer, she could think of things. She could think of really expensive things that maman never would get her.

  But none of them could make her happy. Not even Nelly. Just when they were going to give you things, you took them, that was all, and you asked them for lots and lots to make it hard for them, and make them think that was important to you and you were happier with them,—but you didn’t forget your mad. Ever.

  vii

  Grant sweated, waiting in Yanni Schwartz’s outer office, with no appointment and only Marge’s good offices to get him through the door. He heard Yanni shouting at Marge. He could not hear what he said. He imagined it had to do with interruptions and Justin Warrick.

  And for a very little he would have gotten up and left, then, fast, because from moment to moment he knew he could bring trouble down on Justin by coming here. He was not sure that Yanni would not shake him badly enough to make him say something he ought not. Yanni was the kind of born-man he did not like to deal with, emotional and loud and radiating threat in every move he made. The men who had taken him to the shack in the hills had been like that. Giraud had been like that when he had questioned him. Grant sat there waiting and not panicking only by blanking himself and not thinking it through again until Marge came back and said:

  “He’ll see you.”

  He got up and made a little bow. “Thank you, Marge.”

  And walked into the inner office and up to the big desk and said: “Ser, I want to talk to you about my CIT.”

  Azi-like. Justin said Yanni could be decent enough to his patients. So he took the manner and stood very quietly.

  “I’m not in consultation,” Yanni said.

  Yanni gave him no favors, then. Grant dropped the dumb-annie pose, pulled up the available chair and sat down. “I still want to talk to you, ser. Justin’s taking the favor you’re doing him and I think it’s a bad mistake.”

  “A mistake.”

  “You’re not going to let him have anything but the first-draft work, are you? And where does that leave him after twenty years? Nowhere. With no more than he had before.”

  “Training. Which he badly needs. Which you should know. Do we have to discuss your partner? You know his problems. I don’t have to haul them out for you.”

  “Tell me what you think they are.”

  Yanni had been relaxed, mostly. The jaw clamped, the chin jutted, the whole pose shifted to aggression as he leaned on his desk. “Maybe you’d better have your CIT come talk to me. Did he send you? Or is this your own idea?”

  “My own, ser.” He was reacting, dammit. His palms were sweating. He hated that. The trick was to make the CIT calm down instead. “I’m scared of you. I don’t want to do this. But Justin won’t talk to you, at least he won’t tell you the truth.”

  “Why not?”

  The man had no quiet-mode. “Because, ser,—” Grant took a breath and tried not to pay attention to what was going on in his gut. “You’re the only teacher he has. If you discard him, there’s no one else good enough to teach him. You’re like his Super. He has to rely on you and you’re abusing him. That’s very hard for me to watch.”

  “We’re not talking azi psych, Grant. You don’t understand what’s going on, not on an operational level, and you’re on dangerous personal ground—it’s your own mindset I’m talking about. Don’t identify. You know better. If you don’t,—”

  “Yes, ser, you can recommend I take tape. I know what you can do. But I want you to listen to me. Listen! I don’t know what land of man you are. But I’ve seen what you’ve done. I think you may be trying to help Justin. In some ways I think it has helped. But he can’t go on working the way he is.”

  Yanni gave a growl like an engine dying and slowly leaned back on the arm of his chair, looking at him from under his brows. “Because he’s not suited to real-time work. I know it. You know it. Justin knows it. I thought maybe he’d calm down, but he hasn’t got the temperament for it, he can’t get the perspective. He hasn’t got the patience for standard design work, repetition drives him crazy. He’s creative, so we put him in on the Rubin project. Denys got him that. I seconded it. It’s the best damn thing we can do for him—put him where he can do theoretical work, but not that damn out-there project of his, and he won’t concentrate on anything else, I know damn well he won’t! He’s worse than Jordan with an idea in his head, he won’t turn it loose till it stinks. Have you got an answer? Because it’s either the Rubin project or it’s rot away in standard design, and I haven’t got time on my staff to let one of my people take three weeks doing a project that should have been booted out the door in three days, you understand me?”

  He had thought down till then that Yanni was the Enemy. But of a sudden he felt easier with Yanni. He saw a decent man who was not good at listening. Who was listening for the moment.

  “Ser. Please. Justin’s not Jordan. He doesn’t work like Jordan. But if you give him a chance he is working. Listen to me. Please. You don’t agree with him, but he’s learning from you. You know that an azi designer has an edge in Applications. I’m an Alpha. I can take a design and internalize it and tell a hell of a lot about it. I’ve worked with him on his own designs, and I can tell you—I can tell you I believe in what he’s trying to do.”

  “God, that’s all I need.”

  “Ser, I know what his designs feel like, in a way no CIT can. I have the logic system.”

  “I’m not ta
lking about his ability. He’s fixed his rat-on-a-treadmill problems. He’s got that covered. I’m talking about what happens when his sets integrate into CIT psych. Second and third and fourth generation. We don’t want a work-crazy population. We don’t want gray little people that go crazy when they’re not on the assembly line. We don’t want a suicide rate through the overhead when there’s job failure or a dip in the economy. We’re talking CIT psych, and that’s exactly the field he’s weakest in and exactly what I think he ought to go study for ten or twenty years before he does some real harm. You know what it feels like. Let me tell you I know something about CIT psych from the inside, plus sixty years in this field, and I trust a junior designer can appreciate that fact.”

  “I respect that, ser. I earnestly assure you. So does he. But his designs put—put joy into a psychset. Not just efficiency. The designs you say will cause trouble are their own reward tape. Isn’t it true, ser, that when an azi has a CIT child, and he teaches that child as a CIT, he teaches interpretively what he understands out of his pyschset. And an azi with one of Justin’s small routines somewhere in his sets, even if he was never as lucky as I am, to be socialized as I am, to be Alpha and have one lifelong partner, would get so much sense of purpose out of that, so much sense of purpose, he would think about his job and get better at it. And have pride in that, ser. Maybe there are still problems in it. But it’s the emotional level he reaches. It’s the key to the logic sets themselves. It’s a self-programming interaction. That’s what no one is taking into account.”

  “Which create a whole complex of basic structural problems in synthetic psychsets. Let’s talk theory here. You’re a competent designer. Let’s be real blunt. They tried this eighty years ago.”

  “I’m familiar with that.”

  “And they hung a few embellishments onto the psychsets and they ended up with neuroses. Obsessive behaviors.”

  “You say yourself he’s avoided that.”

  “And it’s self-programming, do you hear yourself talking?”

  “Worm,” Grant said. “But a benign one.”

  “That’s just about where that kind of theory belongs. Worm. God! If it is self-programming, you have created a worm of sorts, and you’re playing with people’s lives. If it isn’t, you’ve got a delayed-action problem that’s going to crop up in the second or third generation. Another kind of worm, if you want to put it that way. Hell if I want to give research time to it. I’ve got a budget. You two are on my departmental budget and you’re a hell of an expense with no damned return that justifies it.”

  “We have justified it this last year.”

  “Which is killing Warrick. Isn’t that your complaint? He can’t go on outputting at that level. He can’t take it. Psychologically he can’t take it. So what are you going to do? Carry it by yourself, while Justin lives in the clouds somewhere designing sets that won’t work, that I’m damned well not going to let him install in some poor sod of a Tester. No!”

  “I’ll do the work. Give him the freedom. Lighten the load. A little. Ser, give him the chance. He has to rely on you. No one else can help him. He is good. You know he is.”

  “And he’s damned well wasting himself.”

  “What were you doing at the start? Teaching him, while you took his designs apart. Do that for him. Lighten the load a little. The work will get done. You just can’t pressure him like that, because he’ll do it if he thinks someone is suffering, he just won’t stop, he’s like that. Give us things we can handle and we’ll handle them. Justin has a talent at integration that can get more out of a genotype than anyone ever did, because he does get into the emotional level. Maybe his ideas won’t work, but, for God’s sake, he’s still studying. You don’t know what he can be. Give him a chance.”

  Yanni looked at him a long time, upset, unhappy, with his face red and his teeth working at his lip. “You’re quite a salesman, son. You know what’s the matter with him on this? Ari got hold of a vulnerable kid with an idea that was real advanced for a seventeen-year-old, she flattered hell out of him, she fed him full of this crap, and psyched him right into her bed. You’re aware of that?”

  “Yes, ser. I’m well aware of it.”

  “She did a real job on him. He thinks he was brilliant. He thinks there was more there than there was, and you don’t do him any service by feeding that. He’s bright, he’s not brilliant. He’d be damn good on the Rubin project. I’ve seen what he can do, and there is a lot in him. I respect hell out of that. I don’t like to feed a delusion. I spend my life trying to make normal people and you’re asking me to humor him in the biggest delusion of his poor fucked-up life. I hate that like hell, Grant. I can’t tell you how much I hate it.”

  “I’m talking to a man who’s the nearest thing to a Supervisor Justin’s got; the man Justin fought to get to help him; who’s going to take a talent that’s been fucked-up and kill it because it’s a drain on the teacher. What kind of man is that?”

  “Dammit.”

  “Yes, ser. Damn me all you like. It’s Justin I’m talking about. He trusts you and he doesn’t trust many people. Are you going to damn him because he’s trying to do something you think will fail?”

  Yanni chewed on his lip. “You’re one of Ari’s, aren’t you?”

  “You know I am, ser.”

  “Damn, she did good work. You remind me what she was. After all that’s happened.”

  “Yes, ser.” It stung. He thought that it was meant to.

  But Yanni gave a great sigh and shook his head. “I’ll do this. I’ll put him on the project. I’ll keep the work light. Which means, dammit, that you’re going to carry some of it.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “And if he does his damn designs I’ll rip them apart. And teach him what I can. Everything I can. Has he got his problem with tape solved?”

  “He has no problem with tape, ser.”

  “If you’re in the room with him. That’s what Petros says.”

  “That’s so, ser. Can you blame him?”

  “No. No, I can’t.—I’ll tell you, Grant, I respect what you’re doing. I’d like to have a dozen of you. Unfortunately—you’re not a production item.”

  “No, ser. Justin as much as Ari and Jordan—had a hand in my psychsets. But you’re welcome to analyze them.”

  “Stable as hell. Good. Good for you.” Yanni got up and came around the desk as Grant got up in confusion. And Yanni put his hand on his shoulder and took his hand. “Grant, come back to me if you think he can’t handle things.”

  That affected him, when before, he doubted everything about this man’s goodwill. “Yes, ser,” he said, thinking that if Yanni was telling the truth, and if there was anything of himself he could give that Yanni could not have out of library and lab, he would give it. Freely.

  “Out,” Yanni said brusquely. “Go.”

  Azi-like, simple, equal to equal. When he knew that Yanni was upset about Strassen, and about everything that was going on, and it had been the worst of times to go to him.

  He went, with a simplicity of courtesies he had not felt with anyone but Justin and Jordan, since he was very young.

  And with an anguish over what he might have done in his presumption, adding stress to what he knew was a delicate tolerance for Justin in the House, at a delicate time and a delicate balance in Justin’s own mind. He had not known, from the time he determined to go to Yanni, whether Justin would forgive him—or whether he would deserve forgiveness.

  So that was where he had to go first.

  “You did what?” Justin cried, from the gut; and felt a double blow, because Grant reacted as if he had hit him, flinched and turned his face and turned it back again, to look at him helplessly, without any of Grant’s accustomed defenses.

  That took the wind out of him. There was no way to shout at Grant. Grant had acted because Grant had been forced into a caretaker role by his behavior, that was what his knowledge of azi told him; and he had misread that, an Alpha Supervisor’s worst
mistake, and leaned on Grant for years in ways that, God help him, he had needed.

  Grant going azi on him—was his fault. No one else’s.

  He reached out and patted Grant’s shoulder and calmed himself down as much as he could, while he was shocked full of adrenaline and he could hardly breathe, as much from what he had done to Grant as from the fact that Grant might well have damned him.

  So. That was not Grant’s fault. Everything would be all right, if Grant had not exposed himself to Giraud’s attention again. Just go back to Yanni and try to recover things without the emotionalism that would finish the job in Yanni’s eyes.

  He just wanted to sit down a moment. But he could not even do that without letting Grant know how badly he was upset.

  “Yanni wasn’t mad,” Grant pleaded with him. “Justin, he wasn’t mad. It wasn’t like that. He just said he would lighten up.”

  He gave Grant a second pat on the arm. “Look, I’m sure it’s all right. If it isn’t, I’ll fix it. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Justin?”

  There was pain in Grant’s voice. His making. Just like the crisis.

  “Yanni’s going to have my guts for shoving you in there,” Justin said. “He ought to. Grant, you don’t have to go around me. I’m all right. Don’t worry.”

  “Stop it, dammit.” Grant grabbed him and spun him around, hard, face to face with him. “Don’t go Supervisor on me. I knew what I was doing.”

  He just stared in shock.

  “I’m not some dumb-annie, Justin. You can hit me, if you like. Just don’t pull that calm-down routine on me.” Anger. Outright anger. It shocked hell out of him. It was rescue when he thought there was none. He was shaking when Grant let go his arm and put his hand on the side of his face. “God, Justin, what do you think?”

  “I put too much on you.”

  “No. They put too much on you. And I told Yanni that. I’m not plastic. I know what I’m doing. What have you been doing all these years? I used to be your partner. What do you think I’ve gotten to be? One of the psych-cases you deal with? Or what do you think I am?”