Cyteen

  Yanni looked up and he braced himself. “Sit down,” Yanni said very quietly.

  Oh, God, he thought, gone completely off his balance. He sank into the chair and felt himself tensed up and out of control.

  “Son,” Yanni said, more quietly than he had ever heard Yanni speak, “how are you?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, two syllables, carefully managed, damn near stammered.

  “I raised hell when I heard,” Yanni said. “All the way to Denys’ office and Petros and Giraud. I understand they let Grant stay through it.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “Petros put that as a mandate on your charts. They better have. I’ll tell you this, they did record it, not on the Security recorders, but it exists. You can get it if you need it. That’s Giraud’s promise, son. They’re sane over there this morning.”

  He stared at Yanni with a blank, sick feeling that it had to be a lead-in, that he was being set up for something. Recorded, that was sure. Trust the man and he would come in hard and low.

  “Is this another voice-stress?” he asked Yanni, to have it out and over with.

  The line between Yanni’s brows deepened. “No. It’s not. I want to explain some things to you. Things are real difficult in Giraud’s office right now. A lot of pressure. They’re going to have to break the secrecy seal on this. The kid’s timing was immaculate. I don’t want to go into it more than that, except to tell you they’ve broken the news to Ari, at least as far as her not being Jane Strassen’s biological daughter, and her being a replicate of somebody named Ariane Emory, who’s no more than a name to her. So some of that pressure is going to be relieved real soon. She’s got a broken arm and a lot of bruises. They threw the news at her while she was tranked so they could at least hold the initial reaction to the emotional level where they could halfway control it, get it settled and accepted on a gut level before she heads at the why of it with that logical function of hers, which, I don’t need to tell you, is damned sharp and damned persistent. I’m telling you this because she’s come your way before and she’s going to be hunting information. If it happens, don’t panic. Follow procedures, call Denys’ office, and tell her you have to do that: that Security will get upset if you don’t—which is the truth.”

  He drew easier breaths, told himself it was still a trap, but at least the business assumed some definable shape, a calamity postponed to the indefinable future.

  “Do you have any word,” he asked Yanni, “how Jordan came through this?”

  “I called him last night. He said he was all right, he was concerned for you. You know how it is, there’s so damned much we can’t do on the phone. I told him you were fine; I’d check on you; I’d call him again today.”

  “Tell him I’m all right.” He found himself with a deathgrip on the right chair arm, his fingers locked till they ached. He let go, trying to relax. “Thanks. Thanks for checking on him.”

  Yanni shrugged, heaved a sigh and scowled at him. “You suspect me like hell, don’t you?”

  He did not answer that.

  “Listen to me, son. I’ll put up with a lot, but I know something about how you work, and I knew damn well you hadn’t had anything to do with the kid, it was Giraud’s damn bloody insistence on running another damn probe on a mind that just may be worth two or three others around this place, never mind my professional judgment, Giraud is in a bloodyminded hurry, to hell with procedures, to hell with the law, to hell with everything in his way.” Yanni drew breath. “Don’t get me started. What I called you in here to tell you is, Denys just put your research on budget. Not a big one, God knows, but you’re going to be seeing about half the load you’ve been getting off the Rubin project, and you’re going to get computer time over in Sociology, not much of it, but some. Call it guilt on Administration’s part. Call it whatever you like. You’re going to route the stuff through me to Sociology, through Sociology over to Jordan, and several times a year you’re going to get some time over at Planys. That’s the news. I thought it might give you something cheerful to think about. All right?”

  “Yes, ser,” he said after a moment, because he had to say something. The most dangerous thing in the world was to start trusting Yanni Schwartz, or believing when indicators started a downhill slide that it had been a momentary glitch.

  “Go on. Take a break. Go. Get out of here.”

  “Yes, ser.” He levered himself up out of the chair, he got himself out the door past Marge without even looking at her, and walked the hall in a land of numb terror that somewhere Security was involved in this, that in the way they had of getting him off his guard and then hitting him hardest, he might find something had happened to Grant—it was the most immediate thing he could think of, and the worst.

  But Grant was there, Grant was in the door waiting for him and worried.

  “Yanni was polite,” he said. The tiny, paper-piled office was a claustrophobic closeness. “Let’s go get a cup of coffee.” No mind that they had the makings in the office. He wanted space around him, the quiet, normal noise of human beings down in the North Wing coffee bar.

  Breaking schedule, being anywhere out of the ordinary, could win them both another session with Giraud. Nothing was safe. Anything could be invaded. It was the kind of terror a deep probe left. He ought to be on trank. Hell if he wanted it.

  He told Grant what Yanni had said, over coffee in the restaurant. Grant listened gravely and said: “About time. About time they came to their senses.”

  “You trust it?” he asked Grant. Desperately, the way he had taken Grant’s word for what was real and what was not. He was terrified Grant would fail him finally, and tell him yes, believe them, trust everything. It was what it sounded like, from the one point of sanity he had.

  “No,” Grant said, with a little lift of his brows. “No more than yesterday. But I think Yanni’s telling the truth. I think he’s starting to suspect what you might be and what they might lose in their preoccupation with young Ari. That’s the idea he may have gotten through to Denys. If it gets to Denys, it may finally get through to Giraud. No. Listen to me. I’m talking very seriously.”

  “Dammit, Grant,—” He felt himself ludicrously close to tears, to absolute, overloaded panic. “I’m not holding this off well. I’m too damned open, even wide awake. Don’t confuse me.”

  “I’m going to say this and get off it, fast. If the word is getting up to them from Yanni, it’s perfectly logical they’re turning helpful. I’m not saying they’re any different. I’m saying there may be some changes. For God’s sake take it easy, take it quietly, don’t try to figure them on past performance, don’t try to figure them at all for a few days. You want me to talk to Yanni?”

  “No!”

  “Easy. All right. All right.”

  “Dammit, don’t patronize me!”

  “Oh, we are short-fused. Drink your coffee. You’re doing fine just fine, just get a grip on here, all right? Yanni’s gone crazy, you re put fine, I’m just fine, Administration’s totally off the edge, I don’t know what’s different.”

  He gave a sneeze of a laugh, made a furtive wipe at his eyes, and took a sip of cooling coffee.

  “God, I don’t know if I can last this.”

  “Easy, easy, easy. One day at a time. We’ll cut it short today and go home, all right?”

  “I want us near witnesses.”

  “Office, then.”

  “Office.” He drew a slow breath, getting his pulse-rate back to normal. And bought a holo-poster at the corner shop, on the way back, for the office all over his desk.

  Grant lifted an eyebrow, getting a look at it while he was handing the check-out his credit card.

  It was a plane over the outback. FLY RESEUNEAIR, it said.

  Verbal Text from:

  A QUESTION OF UNION

  Union Civics Series: #3

  Reseune Educational Publications: 9799-8734-3

  approved for 80+

  In the years between 2301 and 2351, Expansion was the
unquestioned policy of Union: the colonial fervor which had led to the establishment of the original thirteen star stations showed no sign of abating.

  The discovery of Cyteen’s biological riches and the new technology of jump-space travel brought Cyteen economic self-sufficiency and eventual political independence, not, however, before it had reached outward and established a number of colonies of its own. The fact that Cyteen was founded by people seeking independence from colonial policies of the Earth Company, however, provided a philosophical base important to all Union culture—the idea of a new form of government.

  From the time the tensions between Cyteen and the Earth Company they had fled, led to the Company Wars and the Secession, we have to consider Cyteen as one planet within the larger context of Union. Within that context, the desire for independence and the strong belief in local autonomy; and second, the enthusiasm for exploration, trade, and the development of a new frontier—have been the predominant influences. The framers of the Constitution made it a cardinal principle that the Union government will not cross the local threshold, be it a station dock, a gravity well, or a string of stars declaring themselves a political unit within Union—unless there is evidence that the local government does not have the consent of the governed, or unless one unit exits its own area to impose its will on a neighbor. So there can be, and may one day be, many governments within Union, and still only one Union, which maintains what the founders called a consensus of the whole.

  It was conceived as a framework able to exist around any local structure, even a non-human one, a framework infinitely adaptable to local situations, in which local rule serves as the check on Union and Union as the check on local rule.

  But, in the way of secessions, Union began in conflict. The Company Wars were a severe strain on the new government, and many institutions originated as a direct response to those stresses—among them, the first political parties.

  The Expansionist party may be said to have existed from the founding of Union; but as the war with the Earth Company entered its most critical phase, the Centrist movement demanded negotiation and partition of space at Mariner. The Centrists, who had a strong liberal, pacifist and Reunionist leaning in the inception of the organized party, gained in strength rapidly during the last years of the War, and ironically, lost much of that strength as the Treaty of Pell ended the War in a negotiation largely unpopular on the home front. Union became generally more pro-Expansion as enormous numbers of troops returned to the population centers and strained the systems considerably.

  From that time the Centrist platform reflected in some part the growing fears that unchecked Expansion and colonization would lead to irredeemable diffusion of human cultures—and, in the belief of some,—to war between human cultures which had arisen with interests enough in common to be rivals and different enough to be enemies.

  But except for social scientists such as Pavel Brust, the principal proponent of the Diffusion Theory, the larger number of Centrists were those who stood to be harmed by further colonization, such as starstations which looked to become peripheral to the direction of that expansion, due to accident of position; and the war-years children, who saw themselves locked in a cycle of conflict which they had not chosen.

  The Centrists received a considerable boost from two events: first, the peaceful transition within the Alliance from the wartime administration of the Konstantins to that of the Dees, known to be moderates; second, the discovery of a well-developed alien region on the far side of Sol. Sol, sternly rebuffed by the alien Compact, turned back toward human space, and it became a principal tenet of the Centrist Party that a period of stability and consolidation might lead to a reunification of humanity, or at least a period of peace. To certain people troubled by the realization that they were not only not alone, but that they had alien competitors, this seemed the safest course.

  In 2389 the Centrists were formally joined by the Abolitionists, who opposed the means by which existing and proposed colonies were designed, some on economic grounds and others on moral grounds ranging from philosophical to religious, denouncing practices from mindwipe to psychsurgery, and calling for an end to the production of azi. Previously the Abolitionists had lacked a public voice, and indeed, were more a cross-section of opposition to the offworld government, including the Citizens for Autonomy, who wished to break up the government and make all worlds and stations independent of central authority; the Committee Against Human Experimentation; the Religious Council; and others, including, without sanction of the official party, the radical Committee of Man, which committed various acts of kidnapping and terrorism aimed at genetics research facilities and government offices.

  To those who feared Sol’s influence, and those who felt the chance of alien war was minimal, the Centrist agenda seemed a dangerous course: loss of momentum and economic collapse was the Expansionist fear. And at the head of the new Expansionist movement was a coalition of various interests, prominent among whom, as scientist, philosopher and political figure, was Ariane Emory.

  Her murder in 2404 touched off a furor mostly directed at the Abolitionists, but the Centrist coalition broke under the assault.

  What followed was a period of retrenchment, reorganization, and realignment, until the discovery in 2412 of the Gehenna plot and the subsequent investigations of culpability gave the Centrists a cause and an issue. Gehenna lent substance to Centrist fears; and at the same time tarnished the image of the Expansionist majority, not least among them Ilya Bogdanovitch, the Chairman of the Nine; Ariane Emory of Reseune; and admiral Azov, the controversial head of Defense, who had approved the plan.

  The Centrists for the first time in 2413 gained a majority in the Senate of Viking and in the Council of Mariner; and held a sizable bloc of seats and appointed posts within the Senate of Cyteen. They thus gained an unprecedented percentage of seats in the Council of Worlds and frequently mustered four votes of the Nine.

  Although they did not hold a majority in either body, their influence could no longer be discounted, and the swift gains of the Centrists both worried the Expansionist majority and made the uncommitted delegates on any given issue a pivotal element: delegates known to be wavering were courted with unprecedented fervor, provoking charges and countercharges of influence-trading and outright bribery that led to several recall votes, none of which, however, succeeded in unseating the incumbent.

  The very fabric of Union was being tested in the jousting of strong interest groups. Certain political theorists called into question the wisdom of the founders who had created the electorate system, maintaining that the system encouraged electorates to vote their own narrow interests above that of the nation at large.

  It was the aphorism of Nasir Harad, president of the Council, on his own re-election after his Council conviction on bribery charges, that: “Corruption means elected officials trading votes for their own advantage; democracy means a bloc of voters doing the same thing. The electorates know the difference.”

  C H A P T E R

  8

  i

  An announcement came through the public address in Wing One corridors—storm alert, Justin thought, ticking away at his keyboard on a problem while Grant got up to lean out the door and see what it was.

  Then: “Justin,” Grant said urgently. “Justin.”

  He shoved back and got up.

  Everything in the hall had stopped, standing and listening.

  “…in Novgorod,” the PA said, “came in the form of briefs filed this morning by Reseune lawyers on behalf of Ariane Emory, a minor child, seeking a Writ of Succession and an injunction against any Discovery proceedings of the Council against Reseune. The brief argues that the child, who will be nine in five days, is the legal person of Ariane Emory by the right of Parental Identity, that no disposition of Ariane Emory’s property can be taken in any cause without suit brought against the child and her guardians. The second brief seeks an injunction against the activities of the Investigatory Commission on the
grounds that their inquiries invade the privacy and compromise the welfare and property rights of a minor child.

  “The news hit the capital as the Commission was preparing to file a bill requiring the surrender of records from Reseune Archives pertinent to the former Councillor, on the grounds that the records may contain information on other Gehenna-style projects either planned or executed.

  “Mikhail Corain, leader of the Centrist party and Councillor of Citizens, declared: ‘Its an obvious maneuver. Reseune has sunk to its lowest.’

  “James Morley, chief counsel for Reseune, when told of the comment, stated: ‘We had no wish to bring this suit. The child’s privacy and well-being have been our primary considerations, from her conception. We cannot allow her to become a victim of partisan politics. She has rights, and we believe the court will uphold the point. There’s no question about her identity. A simple lab test can prove that.’

  “Reseune Administration has refused comment…”

  ii

  Ari thought she was crazy sometimes, because twice an hour she thought everyone was lying, and sometimes she thought they were not, that there really had been an Ari Emory before she was born.

  But the evening when she could get out of bed and come in her robe to the living room with her arm still in a sling, uncle Denys said he had something to show her and Florian and Catlin; and he had a book filled with paste-in pictures and old faxes.

  He had them sit at the table, himself on her left and Florian and then Catlin on her right, and he opened the book on the table, putting it mostly in front of her, a book of photos and holos, and there were papers, dim and showing their age. He showed her a picture of her, standing in the front portico of the House with a woman she had never seen.

  “That’s Ari when she was little,” Uncle Denys said. “That’s her maman. Her name was Olga Emory.” There was another picture uncle Denys turned to. “This is James Carnath. That was your papa.” She knew that. It was the picture maman had once showed her.