“How was the trip?”
“Oh, the ground part was fine, Jordan and Paul—everything’s all right with them, I really enjoyed the time; just talk, really—a lot of talk—” Doors opened behind them, and Grant’s attention shifted instantly, a glance back, a loss of his thought. “I—”
The doors ahead opened automatically, one set and the others, onto the portico where the bus waited.
“Are we all right?” Grant asked.
“Ari’s being sure we are,” Justin said, keeping a hand on Grant’s back, cautioning him against stopping. Florian put the luggage right up onto the bus deck and got up after, giving a sharp instruction to the driver to start up as Grant stepped up onto the deck and Justin followed him on the steps.
“We’ve ten more passengers,” the driver objected.
“I’ve a priority,” Florian said. “—Get aboard, ser.”
Justin crowded a step higher as Grant edged his way past, as Florian shut the door himself.
The driver started the motor and threw them into motion.
“You can come back down after the others,” Florian said, standing by the driver as Grant sat down on the first bench and Justin sat down beside him.
“What are we doing?” Grant asked quietly, reasonably.
“We’re quite all right,” Justin said, and took Grant’s wrist and pressed it, twice, with his fingers where the pulse was. Confirmation. He felt Grant relax a little then.
Florian came back and sat down across from them. “Catlin will hold the elevator for us,” Florian said. “House Security at the doors will be just a little confused when the bus comes without the rest of the passengers. There’s nothing really wrong. They’ll probably move to ask the driver what’s going on, and we just walk right on through—absolutely nothing wrong with what we’re doing, ser, only we just don’t need a jurisdictional dispute or an argument over seniority. If we’re stopped, absolutely there’s no problem, don’t worry, don’t be nervous, we can move very smoothly through it if you’ll just let me do the talking and be ready to take my cues. Ideally we’ll walk straight to the doors, through, down to the elevator—-Catlin and I have double-teamed senior Security many a time.”
“That’ll take us up to Wing One residencies,” Grant said quietly.
“That’s where we’re going,” Justin said. “There’s a little boundary dispute going on. Ari’s coordinating this through the House systems so we don’t end up with Giraud.”
“Fervently to be wished,” Grant said with a shaky little sigh, and Justin patted him on the knee.
“Terrible homecoming. I’m awfully sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Grant murmured, as undone as Justin had seen him in many a year. Justin took hold of his hand and squeezed it tight and Grant just slumped back against the seat with a sigh, while the bus started the upward pitch of the hill.
Florian was listening to something through the remote in his left ear. He frowned a little, then his brows lifted. “Ah.” A sudden twinkle in the eyes, a grin. “Security was complaining about the bus leaving. House Security just reported it’s a request from sera; ser Denys just came on the system to confirm sera’s authority to take Grant into custody. We’re going to go through quite easily.”
“We are in some trouble,” Grant said. “Aren’t we?”
“Moderately,” Justin said. “Did you have trouble at Planys?”
“None,” Grant said. “Absolutely none.”
“Good,” he said, and, considering they were within earshot of the azi driver, did not try to answer the look Grant gave him.
The lift doors let them out in the large, barren expanse of Ari’s outside hall, baggage and all—which Catlin and Florian had appropriated, and Florian spoke quietly to empty air, advising Ari they were on the floor.
The apartment door opened for them, down the hall.
And Justin slipped his hand to Grant’s arm as they walked. “We got into a bit of trouble,” Justin said in the safety of Ari’s private hall. “We have Giraud on our backs. They were going to plant something on you, almost certain. We’ve got a deal going with Ari.”
“What—deal?”
He tightened his fingers, once, twice. “Take a probe. Just a handful of questions. It’s all right, I swear to you.”
“Same deal for you?” Grant asked. Worried. Terribly worried. Not: do you promise this is all right? But: Are you all right?
Justin turned Grant around and flung his arms about him, a brief, hard embrace. “It’s all right, Grant. She’s our kid, all right? No games, no trouble, she’s just taking our side, that’s what’s going on.”
Grant looked at him then, and nodded. “I haven’t any secrets,” Grant said. His voice was thin, a little hoarse. “Do you get to stay there?”
“No,” he said. “Ari says—says I make her nervous. But I’ll be in the room outside. I’ll be there all the while.”
Justin flipped pages in the hardprint Florian had been thoughtful enough to provide him—the latest Science Bureau Reports, which he managed to lose himself in from time to time, but the physics was hard going and the genetics was Reseune’s own Franz Kennart reporting on the design of zooplankton, and he had heard Franz on that before. While a biologist at Svetlansk had an article on the increasing die-off of native Cyteen ecosystems and the creation of dead-zones in which certain anaerobic bacteria were producing huge methane pockets in valleys near Svetlansk.
It was not, finally, enough to hold his attention. Even the pictures failed, and he merely read captions and isolated paragraphs in a complete hodgepodge of data-intake and stomach-wrenching anxiety, old, old condition in his life—reading reports while waiting for arrest, doing real-time life-and-death design-work while awaiting the latest whim of Administration on whether he could, in a given month, get word of his father’s health.
He flipped pages, backward and forward, he absorbed himself a moment in the diagrams of Svetlansk geology and looked at the photos of dead platytheres. There seemed something sad in that—no matter that it made room for fields and green plants and pigs and goats and humans. The photo of a suited human providing scale, dwarfed by the decaying hulk of a giant that must have lived centuries—seemed as unfeeling as the photos from old Earth, the smiling hunters posing with piles of carcasses, of tiger skulls, and ivory.
For some reason tears rolled down his face, startling him, and his throat hurt. For a damn dead platythere. Because he was that strung, and he could not cry for Grant, Grant would look at him curiously and say: Flux does strange things, doesn’t it?
He wiped his eyes, turned the page and turned the page again until he was calm; and finally, when he had found nothing powerful enough to engage his attention, thought: O God, how long can a few questions take?
The first Ari did Grant’s designs. She’s got access to those. She’s got the whole manual. The same as Giraud.
Giraud left him a z-case.
Has he gone out on her?
They’d call me. Surely they’d call me.
He laid the magazine on the table in front of him and leaned his elbows on his knees, ground the heels of his hands into his eyes and clasped his hands on the back of his neck, pulling against a growing ache.
Suppose that Jordan did plant something deep in him—Grant could do that, could take it in, partition it—
Jordan wouldn’t do that. God, surely, no.
The door opened, in the hall; he looked up, hearing Ari’s voice, hearing her light footsteps.
She came out into the front room, not distressed-looking. Tired.
“He’s sleeping,” she said. “No trouble.” She walked over to the couch where he was sitting and said: “He’s absolutely clean. Nothing happened. He’s asleep. He was upset—of course he had reason. He was worried about you. I won’t stop you from waking him. But I’ve told him he’s safe, that he’s comfortable. I’ll give the tape to Giraud; I have to. Giraud’s got a real kink in his mindsets on what he calls your influence. And you know
what he’d think if I didn’t.”
“Whether you do or not, he’s still going to think it. If that tape proved us innocent beyond a doubt—he’d find one.”
She shook her head. “Remember I told Denys I’ve got Ari’s working notes? I just tell him I’m quite well in control of the situation, that when I’m through it won’t make any difference what Jordan did or didn’t do, that if he’s worried about the Warrick influence he can stop worrying, I’m working both of you.”
It was credible, he thought; and of course it sounded enough like the truth under the truth to feed into his own gnawing worries and remind him of Emory at full stretch—layers upon layers upon layers of truth hidden in subterfuge and a damnable sense of humor. He rubbed the back of his neck and tried to think, but thoughts started scattering in panic—except the one that said: No choice, the kid’s the only force in the House that ultimately matters, no choice, no choice, no choice.
…Besides which—he heard her saying over the breakfast table—if your safety is linked to mine—it’s not really likely your father would make a real move against Reseune, is it?
“Let me tell you about Giraud,” she said. “Sometimes I hate him. Sometimes I almost love him. He’s absolutely without feelings for people he’s against. He’s fascinated by little models and microcosms and scientific gadgets. He views himself as a martyr. He’s resigned to doing dirty jobs and being hated. He’s had very few soft spots—except his feud with your father, a lot of personal anger in that; except me—except me, because I’m the only thing he’s ever worked for that can put arms around him and give him something back. That’s Giraud. We’re on opposite sides of him. I don’t say that to make you feel sorry for him. I just want you to know what he’s like.”
“I know what he’s like, thanks.”
“When people do bad things to you—it makes this little ego-net problem, doesn’t it, isn’t that what I learned in psych? There’s this little ego-net crisis that says maybe it’s your fault, or maybe everybody thinks you’re in the wrong,—isn’t that what goes on? And ego’s got to restructure and flux the doubt down and go mono-value on the enemy so there’s no doubt left he’s wrong and you’re right. Isn’t that the way it works? You know all that. If you think about that mono-value it restarts all the flux and it hurts like hell. But what if you need to know the whole picture about Giraud, to know what you ought to do?”
“Maybe nobody ever gets that objective,” he said, “when it’s his ass in the fire.”
“Giraud fluxed you. Fluxed you real good. Are you going to let him get away with it or are you going to listen to me?”
“You do this under kat, sera?”
“No. You’d feel the echo if I had,—wouldn’t you? You’re so fluxed on me you can’t think straight. You’re fluxed on me, on Giraud, on Jordan. On yourself. On everybody but Grant. That’s who you’ll protect. That’s the deal, and I’m the only one who can offer it in the long run. Giraud’s dying.”
He stood there, adrenaline coursing through him, but the body got duller with overload. The brain did. And flux just straightened out, even when he knew she was Operating, even when he knew step by step what she was doing: even when he realized there had been deep-level tweaks that had prepared for this, even when he felt amazement that she did it from around a blind corner and improvising as she went.
The knot unkinked. He was wide-open as drugs could send him, for one dizzy instant.
“All right,” he said. “That’s got one little flaw: Grant’s not safe when you can meddle with him.”
“Grant would never do anything against you. That’s as controlled as I need. I’d be a fool to meddle with the one stable point you’ve got—when what I want is to be sure where you are. You’re the one I’d intervene with—if I was going to do it. But if Grant’s safety is assured, you’re going to remember—anytime you think about doing anything against me—that much as your father might want to, he hasn’t got the power to protect himself, much less you; and I have. I’ll never hurt Jordan. I’ll never hurt Grant. I can’t promise that with you. And right now you know exactly why—because you’re my leverage on a problem that threatens a whole lot more than just me.”
It was strange that he felt no panic. Deep-set work again. He felt that through a kind of fog, in which intellect took over again and said: And you’re my leverage. Aren’t you?
But aloud, he said: “Can I see Grant?”
She nodded. “I said so. But you will stay here—at least for a few days. At least till I get it straightened out with my uncles.”
“It’s probably a good idea,” he said, quite calm, even relieved, past the automatic little flutter of alarm. Flux kicked back in. Defenses came up all the way. He thought about the chance that Giraud would arrest them even over Denys’ objections.
Or arrange their assassination. Giraud was not a man who worried about his own reputation. A professional—in his own nefarious way—who served a Cause, Ari was right about that. Giraud would sacrifice even Ari’s regard for him—to be sure in his own mind, that Ari was safe.
Giraud would do it dirty, too. It was Ari’s regard for them he had to terminate. It was his ideas Giraud had to discredit.
There had been a plot to incriminate him through Grant. He was sure of that. Every trip to Planys was a risk. They were cut off again. No more visits. No chance to see Jordan. They were lucky to get Grant back unscathed. And if Giraud could work on Jordan, indirectly—
Jordan knowing his son and his foster-son had joined Ari’s successor—
There was no end to the what-ifs, no way to untangle truth and lies. Anyone could be lying. Everyone had reason. Every move Jordan made in Planys—was a risk. Failing to get to them, Giraud might well move on Jordan to get leverage on them in Reseune, to create doubts in Ari’s mind—
And Ari said—I’m working both of you—
God.
He went to the hall and to the open library door; and into the dim room where Grant lay on the couch, asleep and very tranked. Florian was there, shadow in the corner, just sitting guard. Catlin was not. Catlin was somewhere else in the apartment, in the case he had violated instructions to stay to the front rooms, he thought.
He laid his hand on Grant’s shoulder and said: “Grant, it’s Justin. I’m here, the way I said.”
Grant frowned, and drew a deep breath and moved a little; and opened his eyes a slit.
“I’m here,” Justin said. “Everything’s all right. She said you’re all right.”
A larger breath. Eyes showing white and pupil by turns as Grant struggled up out of the trank and reached after him. He took Grant’s hand. “Hear me?” Double press on the inside of the wrist. “It’s all right. You want Florian and me to carry you? You want to go to bed?”
“Just lie here,” Grant murmured. “Just lie here. I’m so tired. I’m so tired—”
His eyes closed again.
vii
“I’m doing quite well,” Ari said, over a bite of salad; lunch, at Changes, the 18th December. “They’re back in their own residency. Everyone’s happy. There’s no problem with Jordan, no lingering messiness. I just wasn’t about to let them out where Giraud could get at them. You shouldn’t worry. I can take care of myself. Is that enough said?”
“You know what I think about it,” Denys said.
“I appreciate your concern. But,” she said with a small quirk of her brow, a deliberate smile, “you probably worried about Ari senior this way too.”
“Ari was murdered,” Denys said.
Point.
And feeler? Denys was upset. Giraud was upset. Giraud hated disorder and his own impending death was creating maximum disorder: there were beginning to be rumors in the House—no leak: Giraud’s own appearance, increasingly frail despite his large bones—was its own indicator of a man in failing health.
“One thinks she was murdered,” Ari said. “Who knows? Maybe the pipe just blew. I’ve tried that door. A breath of air would disturb it, at certa
in points. A blown cryo line is just that. Isn’t it? The line blows, she gets caught in the spray, falls, hits her head. The door closes quite naturally. Maybe murder was a useful story. Murder let you take fairly extreme measures.”
“Is that what Justin says?”
“No. Dr. Edwards.”
“When did John say a fool thing like that?”
“Not specifically. He just taught me scientific procedure. I never rule anything out. I just think some hypotheses are more likely than others.”
“Confession makes it more likely, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose it ought to. All things equal.” She cut up a cucumber slice. “You know the kitchen’s getting a little lazy. Look at this.” She impaled a large lettuce rib. “Is that a way to serve?”
“Let’s stay to business, dear, like why in hell you’re being a fool about this man. Which has much more to do with glands than you want to admit. If you don’t realize your vulnerability, I can assure you it’s going to dawn on him, just as soon as the waves stop.”
“Except one thing, uncle Denys: Justin’s not Jordan. And he can’t kill. He absolutely can’t, for the same reason he can’t work real-time. He’d freeze. He can’t even hate Giraud. He feels other people’s pain. Ari exacerbated that tendency in him. She leaned on it, hard. You see I do have those notes. I know something else, too: Jordan was hers. She just couldn’t use his slant on things, so she conned Jordan into a replicate, and she took him, she absolutely took him. If she hadn’t died, Justin would have slid closer and closer to her over the years—either healed the breach with Jordan or broken with him—because there’s something very sad about his relationship to Jordan, and he would have learned it.”
“What’s that, mmmn?”
“That Jordan would have smothered him. Ari was never afraid of competition. Jordan was; and that relationship—Justin and his father—would have become more and more strained under Ari’s influence. That’s exactly what I project. Jordan is an arrogant, opinionated man who had intentions for his replicate, but they weren’t going to work, because his son, with a good infusion of independence from Ari’s side, was going to go head to head against him and make his life miserable; and I don’t think Jordan’s ego would ever let him see that.”