Regenesis. Part 18

Catlin signed off. He did. He felt sick. He didn't move. He felt the pressure of Grant's fingers, and finally got up from the chair, knowing, d.a.m.n them all, that everything he said was being recorded, watched, pa.r.s.ed, combed through.

"Security's upset. I can't blame them. Nanistics. They don't want the experimental stuff on a planet . . . particularly the one we happen to live on. Particularly the one the radicals have wanted to terraform for the last century or so. d.a.m.n. d.a.m.n. d.a.m.n it, Grant. I don't want any part of this. What is he doing to me? What does he think he's doing?"

Grant shook his head slowly, helplessly. "Logic tells me he wants you involved with him in his situation. Beyond that"

It hit like a hammer blow. He could have said it himself ten times, even thought it himself, and not heard it quite the same way, but from Grant, in that calm, reasoned way Grant struggled to navigate CIT emotional insanity, it made utter, reasonable sense. Jordan wasn't azi. Neither he nor Jordan had, as Grant liked to put it, their logic-set at the foundation of their reasoning. No. They were born-men, and born-men grew up by chance, not by tape-study. Emotions ruled their actions, foundational, and inescapable. Flux-thinking at its finest.

Jordan had created him out of his own geneset and Jordan had lost him. Lost him to Ari, who had done things to Jordan's work that Jordan couldn't counter, and the new Ari was co-opting him out of Jordan's reach.

"The government didn't kill him for killing Ari," he said aloud, to Grant's worried look. "they could only exile him. So he figures whatever he does, exile's the worst that will ever happen to him. He created me. He wants me back. He's making his best play."

"To get you on the outs with Yanni."

"To get us all all sent to Planys, where he ran his own little world." Things clicked, just clicked, all of a sudden. "It might have been a prison, but he ran it, inside, and Ari ripped him out of it and brought him here to put him under what he sees as close house arrest. He's not grateful for it, not once he got here and saw the way things are: he's d.a.m.ned p.i.s.sed. He wants me to break with Ari. He wants to create a situation. I don't know who this Patil is, or how Jordan got that number, but Patil isn't really the game . . ." sent to Planys, where he ran his own little world." Things clicked, just clicked, all of a sudden. "It might have been a prison, but he ran it, inside, and Ari ripped him out of it and brought him here to put him under what he sees as close house arrest. He's not grateful for it, not once he got here and saw the way things are: he's d.a.m.ned p.i.s.sed. He wants me to break with Ari. He wants to create a situation. I don't know who this Patil is, or how Jordan got that number, but Patil isn't really the game . . ."

Chapter vi.

April 26, 2424 1659 H.

". . . it's him. Maybe he hates Patil. Or maybe there's something actually going on, and he doesn't give a d.a.m.n about it, because they're trying to use himthe old radicalsh.e.l.l, I don't know how they could have gotten to him, but he won't play anybody else's game. Just his own, always his own, the h.e.l.l with anybody else."

Interesting observation, Ari thought, sitting beside Catlin at the eon-sole. The audio clip ran to its conclusion: "Will you go to Yanni?" Grant had asked. Grant had asked.

And Justin: "I'm going to give Catlin another phone call. I'm not taking this. I'm not taking this from him. He wants us back under suspicion, he wants us arrested, he wants me upset, he'll make himself the martyr, so we both get sent to Planys, back to his private kingdom, and he has years to work on us. . . . d.a.m.n it. Grant, you're right." "I'm going to give Catlin another phone call. I'm not taking this. I'm not taking this from him. He wants us back under suspicion, he wants us arrested, he wants me upset, he'll make himself the martyr, so we both get sent to Planys, back to his private kingdom, and he has years to work on us. . . . d.a.m.n it. Grant, you're right."

"Did he call you?" Ari asked, when the clip ended. he call you?" Ari asked, when the clip ended.

"Yes," Catlin said, with a nod. "He did. He said" She keyed another clip, listened, then made it audible.

". . . he doesn't give a d.a.m.n about this Dr. Patil. He's after me. He wants to get me at odds with admin and better yet, get us all sent back to Planys, where he has a base."

"Why would he pick Dr. Patil?" recorded-Catlin asked.

"I've no idea. An outside and problematic contact he once had. Somebody he didn't really know and doesn't care about. Maybe somebody he hates. I just don't know."

Catlin stopped the clip.

"Jordan Warrick is a very interesting person," Ari said. "And now Justin's quite angry at him. Jordan's supposed to be good at Working. Very good. I wonder if he intended all he got from Justin."

"Warrick Senior's behavior seems self-destructive," Catlin said.

"Not only self self-destructive," Ari said. "He'd gladly take us with him. He seems to want things back the way they were before I was born, and he's bound to be frustrated with me."

"There is a solution to this," Catlin said.

Kill him, Catlin meant. It wasn't legal to do, but that certainly wouldn't stop Catlin and Florian, if she ordered it. And very likely Yanni wouldn't let her or them take the consequences for it. There was far too much invested in her. So she could even get away with it, under the law.

But not in Justin's eyes, and the likelihood that Justin would find out sooner or lateroddly enough that was the first Stop the thought ran into. Not the Law. Justin. Justin.

Jordan was just very, very interestingsomeone from the first Ari's time, a piece of the puzzle of the first Ari's life and death that had been missing all these. Everyone had said Jordan was a problem.

He certainly was. A very high-powered problem. He was attempting to Work his son, whatever else this was about, and Justin possibly had it figured out entirely accurately.

It was also clear Jordan Warrick still had secrets. The first Ari had wanted him for a partner: they'd worked together productively for a while, before their personalities clashed. Politics had been part of itthe Centrist Party with their program of stopping further explorations, concentrating Union into a tight, strong knot, so that their longtime rivals over at Pell's Starthe Alliancehad to concentrate there, too. So no one would be expanding. If mankind went on exploring and expanding and trying to out-race each other to likely stars, expanding so fast they had to use birthlabs to multiply fast enough to keep economies going, the Centrists feared that so much use of birthlabs was going to change mankind And that was quite true. It was changing the balance in the genome. It had, already, in much more than just the genome. There were differences between them and Alliance and Earth far other than genetic balance.

But psychosociology wasn't the reason why Jordan had aligned with the Centrists. Oh, no. His reason for taking their side was that the first Ari and most of Reseune was Expansionist. The first Ari's whole life's work was Expansionist.

And, not too strange to say, Jordan had taken up corresponding with the Centrists and their more radical branch at about the time the partners.h.i.+p between himself and Ari had broken up . . . so figure that Jordan didn't really believe in the Centrist Party or give a d.a.m.n about their fears for the future. He'd just used them.

Interesting.

Interesting, interesting.

"We're going to watch him," Ari said. "Yanni's managing this so far. I'm sure you'll tell him there was some sort of a leak, when you think it's right to do."

"Hicks has given us agents to be totally at our disposal," Catlin said. "Thirty, with clericals."

This was news. "Because of Jordan Warrick?"

"Perhaps. Ser Warrick, Dr. Patil, Dr. Thieu, and events unforeseen. We laid down conditions to our working with this staff. Florian is over at the barracks going through their records, a.n.a.lyzing the abilities of what we've been given."

"A permanent gift? From Hicks?"

"Permanent, yes, sera. Much like the protection the first Ari had, high-level ReseuneSec, with accesses, only Florian said we wouldn't take them except if you hold the Contracts, sera."

"The first Ari's guard. They were Contracted to Reseune itself?"

"Not our predecessors. But yes, the others were. Your predecessor never internalized the staff ReseuneSec lent hershe rather used all of ReseuneSec; but we think that may have been a problem, that her security staff wasn't wholly hers. We're taking care of that. You need to hold those Contracts."

"To be inside the apartment?" She was a little appalled. "We need domestic staff."

"Those are coming, sera. But we were offered the others. They can have a barracks here, in the wing, an adjunct office with computer ties to ReseuneSec. We're moving out the rest of the records storage and taking over the guest apartment on the first floor. We can cancel everything if it's not a good idea. But there's room for them on the first floor, down by the old lab, and they won't be in the apartmentwe wouldn't let them in, until we're very comfortable with them; though I'm sure, when they are Contracted, that they'd like you to be there, sera. If it's all right."

That was a natural thing, an emotional thing. And it would cement the Contract, in that sense. She'd be their Supervisor, the CIT they'd come to in distress or in needto be remote from them was unacceptable. And she'd told Florian to see to staff. He certainly had. She'd turned them loose to see to things, and they'd done it without making a ripple in her own schedule . . . maybe a bit widely, butall the samethey had the chance to gain loyal personnel. That wasn't a bad idea.

"Of course," she said. "Of course I will. When are they coming in?"

"Soon. A few days. The domestic staff should get here first. Florian's checking on their progress while he's down the hill."

"You've been very quiet to be so busy."

"These are things we can do. I hope we've done them well enough."

She'd been completely lost in her work, her deepstudy and her own tracking of problems down in Novgorod, out of touch with domestic issues, so long as her clothes appeared clean and her breakfast and supper arrived mostly on time. She walked about with her head stuffed with population equations and spent her days in the first Ari's population dynamics designsshe'd reached a point, a strange point in such study, when whole disciplines had begun to come into focus, as if the brain had started a.s.sembling all the scattered bits of what had been her predecessor's operations two decades ago, and put it all together. She was at that critical point, dammit, on the verge of overload, and she just went there on any stray thought, far, far from the needs of domestic staff. Her head achedliterally achedfrom the effort it was to jump between the real world and Ari's world, and back againto try to grasp the underlying reasons for the ethics her predecessor had installed to patch what had already been done at Novgorodlaying down the commandment to work, and the necessity for recreation, and above all the mantra "We are different as our world is different, and our different world is a valuable resource . . ."

h.e.l.l, that was dangerous. It was sweeping, it had no exceptions, it was potentially troublesome, and the first Ari had dared embed that in the tape, high and wide, which was the way she worked. Half a million Novgoroders kept voting against terraforming, and, azi-originated as they were, and doggedly devoted to work for validationthey had deep suspicions about CIT-descended Centrists and about proposals for terraforming, and were increasingly inclined in the last ten years to favor red-brown architecture, one might notethe color of Cyteen's outback.

Was that significant?

Was that going to produce a problem integrating into Union ethic as a wholewhere her predecessor had done other interesting tweaks in local mindsets?

"Sera?" Catlin asked, and she blinked. That was how she was lately. That was the territory where her own thoughts wandered, and the choice of protective and service staffessential to her safetybecame just part of the overload.

"I think it's likely very fine what you've done.' She brought herself to short-focus on it, and try to integrate it into her concept of her household, and how it was all going to work, and Catlin was right to persist in getting an answer out of her. You couldn't make mistakes with azi. You couldn't just Contract them and throw them away.

And it was scary, thinking of all the changes racketing around her.

She had two people in all the worldFlorian and Catlinthat she trusted to be competent and devoted to heran array of people like Sam and Yanni, that she trusted for other fields, but when it came down to it, it was Florian and Catlin who would keep her alive and give her time to pursue those abstracts she chased through the maze of records.

They reported to her. They made choicesin this case, they'd made one that affected the household around her.

And more security. Her life, certainlymaybe Union's survival depended on her bodyguards' judgement.

"I have no doubt of you," she said briskly to Catlin, totally focused for the moment on the here and now, and Catlin's fair demand for her to back them or not. "Do what you see fit to do. Did Justin stay in the Wing today?"

"Working in his office, since a late breakfast, sera. So is Grant. Perfectly cooperative. Jordan called him; Justin left the office and went to breakfast. There was, however, no contact between them beyond that. Justin and his companion spoke only to the waiters at the restaurant and to each other. And he of course communicated with me. Jordan staved in his new office with Paul and rearranged things. He found two bugs. It wasn't all."

Ari gave a perfunctory laugh, not whole-hearted, more wistful. "It would be so much nicer if Jordan weren't an enemy. Does Justin like his life, I wonder? Is he mad at me, do you think?"

"Grant is content," Catlin said. The azi, she could judge quite well. The born-man, she didn't attempt.

And that was, of course, a correct answer.

"I wish I could turn things around with Jordan," she said. "I wish I could figure how to Work him. But he's stubborn. And he knows all the tricks." She gave a sigh and got up from the console. Paused, then, looking directly at Catlin, a second time sharply focused on the present, and on Catlin's and Florian's problems. "Sending Jordan back to Planys wouldn't be good, would it, if he has a network there? I'd planned on Stra.s.senburg. But he'll Work the azi there and try to change them, and they're all foundational to that city, and that would be a big problem. I could build an ethic around him in that population, but once he's dead, what will that do? He'd be a rock in the stream. Everything would bend around him. Forever."

Catlin shook her head. "I'm sure I don't know any answer, sera."

"Unfortunately I don't, either," she said, and went to her bedroom, and her private bath, and took a headache remedy before she took another deepstudy pill and went back to her bed, leaving everything to them, going back to what she had to do.

There'd been a garden once in legend, a perfect garden. But there'd been a snake in it. The woman hadn't known what to do about him. And every problem of humankind had started from that. The snake had done a Working, about knowledge, and pride, and the woman had gone off her path and taken all her descendants with her.

She had her own snake under close watch. And she couldn't let concern about Jordan disrupt her concentration, not when things were starting to gel, not when her essential job for the next few months was absorbing the sum of several sciences, dosing down with kat so often she could almost go deep-state the way Catlin or Florian could learn, just by thinking hard, and become only the thing she was absorbing, without objection, without question, just wide open to unquestioned knowledge.

You had to trust the tapes, you had to really trust them to dose down that far, or to go that open. You had no resistence when you did that. You had no way to say no. You had no extraneous thoughts. You just recorded, embedded the knowledge as fast as possible, burning it into the brain's pathways, strong, strong, strong pathways.

There was only one source of tapes she'd trust like that: the first Ari's tapes, stored in Base One, tapes recording Ari I's thoughts, her opinions on technical questions, her data, her projects, her working life.

If there was any personal prejudice embedded in those records, any Working her predecessor had designed for her beyond the obvious, it was going into her head, too.

If she'd had the choice, if she'd had the leisure, if the world hadn't been as high-pressure as it was, and if the legislature wasn't boiling with important decisions Yanni was trying to handleif all those things were so, and the world were safer, she'd have taken less of the deepteach drug, she'd have taken longer in her learning, she'd have stayed near enough to the surface to let a little of her conscious mind work on the problems, and see more critically what she personally thought.

But in Denys Nye's fall, Union had gone quietly into crisis, and civilization could make some serious missteps while she lazed her way through, learning at an ordinary pace.

So she took the dose she did, on her off days, and gave up critiquing her predecessor. She wasn't giving up her conscious mind in the long runshe banked on that. She was strong-willed, she was psychologically knowledgeable, she knew the tricks a person used in Working another, and she had a good memory for where and when she'd learned something, right down to the session. If she ran up against an ethical problem, she'd do her own thinkingeventually. She had tags on all of it.

Was it her own thinking, for instance, that had let her matter-of-factly consider Catlins matter-of-fact offer simply to kill Jordan Warrick? She might have been shocked a few months ago. But maybe not. Denys had been trying to kill her. Ultimately they'd killed him. That was a lesson life had given her.

Was it her own thinking, still, that said doing away with Jordan might still be the better, safer answer, that said there might be a way to do the deed quietly, and that Justin might not stay too long in mourning if she did it very cleverly?

She said no. She said no. That was the one mentality in the transaction she could entirely identify. That was her, saying no, and not clearly knowing whether it was the first Ari's pragmatic sense or her own soft-hearted inexperience behind that answer.

It was scary. Two days ago she'd taken Poo-thing out of his drawer and set him on the dresser, so she could see him from this bed. She'd been too old for him. Now she was old enough to want contact with childhood years he represented. Poor' battered bear. He'd been through a lot. Denys, in the main. But never discount her predecessor's intentions, battering her mind into a pattern she was supposed to follow for all her life.

Was rebellion stupidity? Or was it just her genetics snuggling around the first Ari's precepts, hardheadedness and arrogance trying to find a convenient shape to settle into?

She wanted Florian tonight. She really wanted Florian. But she, and he, had so much work to do . . . so very much work to do . . . things about the household, which kept them all fed, and safe ... in a Reseune that didn't all want them to stay alive.

The dose began to take hold. Critical thinking ebbed. The machine started up, a gentle repet.i.tive tone, warning the tape was about to start. She had to press a b.u.t.ton to get it to go on. She had that much volition left.

Beginning. The Novgorod designs, the overall structure.

Maybe n.o.body should examine their own world that closely. She'd been out in the world, however briefly She'd seen the world from the air, seen it from the ground, gone through its corridors and met its violence.

Now she was working directly with the ethics that drove it, examining the ethics set into the azi who had been the foundational citizens. Did she intend to tweak that mix? She could. She could subtly, by sending in other azi into key positions, s.h.i.+ft the whole Cyteen electorate.

She could set others at work at Fargone, where Ollie ruled. She knew Ollie's ethical structure. She had a copy of Ollie's personal manual, down to the day he left. She could skim it at high speed, and recognize ordinary structures from special ones. She could design azi to fit around Ollie, no question, the foundations of something special, around one that she'd loved, when she was little. She could make all Fargone Station into Ollie's image.

Ethics were the stop-marks, and the directional choices, in a psych-map. And she knew set after set of the cla.s.sic ones, the ones from before the first Ari's time, the ones designed by committee.

She knew the ones that had the first Ari's peculiar stamp on them. Like those key sets in Novgorod, and at Gehennathe people that would rise to the top and become important, the leaders, the movers.

She could replicate that at Stra.s.senburg. She could do something else. Yes, she could.

And something else was her choice in building that place.

Surveillance of past projects like Gehenna was her job, the key thing that the first Ari had created her to do. Be the watchdog. Steer the directed populations in a good direction. Understand. Change at need. Know the program, and know how to change it.

Stra.s.senburg would always be closely tied to Reseune, and it would be hers. Her chosen genesets, her chosen CITs, her designed psychsets, never part of Novgorod or any of the rest of Cyteen: something new under the sun. The thetas she was about to manage for sheer practice would be the foundation of a site where her programs ran, not her predecessor's. Every problem case in Reseune was currently worried that the new facility might serve as a gulag for her oppositionand in fact she had thought of creating a little secure lab there, for the likes of Jordan Warrick.

But there was a problem with secure labs, and the Patil incident had demonstrated that, hadn't it, abundantly? Secure labs were full of very bright people, who could be very devious if they wanted to be.

And getting a Special like Jordan involved there would jeopardize the far more important reason for Stra.s.senberg, that the whole town was itself a lab, a control for herself, and for her successor. She wanted to see what her designs grew into, isolated from those at Novgorod.

She intended nothing ant.i.thetical to Novgorod, unless intolerance for other ideas was a timebomb developing in the first Ari's design.

Within decades, Novgorod would meet something on its beloved planet that wasn't Novgorod, when it had been the only true city in the world for all the world's existence. Novgorod had had some experience in tolerance, tolerating Reseune itself, Reseune's autocracyeven needing an Ariane Emory, and voting for her programs.

But would they tolerate diversity when it wasn't their brand of diversity?

For the good of the planet, they would have to. Or their idiosyncrasy became a problem that she would have to handle with subsequent population surges.

And what she did carried through generations. That was the point of everything: ultimately it was people you were dealing with, people whose psychsets might have been planned like a jigsaw puzzle, groups of the one psychset clicking into place with other groups of another, and tending to bond and procreate with individuals of like psychset, so there was a certain persistence of typethat was setted-in, too. All part of integrations.