"He could guess he would be stopped, and the end would be the same, whether he turned it over to me, or whether ReseuneSec asked for it. Perhaps he wasn"t thinking of that yet. He"d just argued with Jordan."

"Perhaps Jordan wanted him to be stopped, to make him angry with Admin."

"Possible."

"Neither of them is stupid," Catlin said.

"The same geneset. One won"t easily get the better of the other. But Jordan has lost something tonight. Justin won"t be in his reach. He won"t like that. I wonder if this card is worth it."

"How did Justin seem?"

"You heard the exchange."

"I didn"t see Justin"s face."

"He expressed distress at disturbance to his workwhich I"m sure he knows is being copied. He showed no particular reluctance to be separated from Jordan. He had warned Grant to avoid being alone with Jordan."

"I heard that part. He thought there was a physical danger. To Grant, did he mean, or to him?"

"To Grant, likely. But anything that would harm Grant would harm him. They"re partners."

"No choice but get them out tonight," she said with a shake of her head. "Well that we did it. Can Section Three handle the transfer top to bottom? Will they bring it over in time, or do we have to go through Hicks"s office?"

"They indicate yes, they will. I put it through as an emergency. I think that"s accurate. They"ll tell Hicks in the morning, likely. Hicks will get the copies they make in Justin"s office. I"m not happy about Hicks"s access, but the alternative is much worse. Meanwhile we need to put through Justin"s address change. Inside sera"s wing he won"t be having his files copied again."

"Easily done." She spun her chair about, her fingers flew for a moment, and she sent, registering Justin Warrick"s new office address with Yanni"s office and incidentally with ReseuneSec.

That handled details that might have inconvenienced Justin in the morningjust to keep him calm in the transfer. For Jordan Warrick"s imminent inconvenience, or state of mind in the morning, she had no great concern at all.

One thing did worn her. "Sera"s papers are in that safe."

"Not now." Florian said. "Marco took them before Section Three could arrive. They"ll be in the office sera uses."

They trusted no one completely, she and Florian . . . and that, on certain levels, meant they didn"t trust Hicks"s office, or Yanni"s, to run things, or to hold information that might bear on Ari"s security. Their predecessors had failed, by all outside accounts, and dieddeservedly so, because they had let their Ari die, and let Denys Nye take over Reseune. They took that event as a personal failure, a fault committed by their genesets, and they were absolutely determined to better the record in their tenure. they were not about to lose their Ari to Jordan Warrickif it had been Jordan that murdered Ari One, as the public records officially said had happened . . . though that certainly wasn"t the whole story, and sera agreed they had had every reason to blame Denys Nye"s staff for the crime.

It didn"t matter. Denys Nye and his personal guard were dead and past. They guarded against Jordan, knowing he could have killed the first Arithat he had wanted to kill her, that was the salient point. They didn"t altogether understand Jordan Warrick: his actions sat deep in a very complex CIT psychology, a man so brilliant he was a Special, all but immune to the law. Sera said the long exile had made him angry, and the focus of that anger might be her existence, which had defined the term of his exile.

For their part, not understanding the man simply meant being on their guard against him. And they constantly were.

They didn"t understand Justin Warrick, either, though they knew him betterknew, for instance, that Justin Warrick had initially welcomed his father back to Reseune, and had disagreements with him. Justin himself had not been the one to apply for Jordan"s release from detention. It had been, in fact, sera herself who had brought Jordan back from exile, which brought a very dangerous man back into a place where he could be more dangerous, in their estimation. But sera had moved fast to get Jordan out of military reach, and out of the reach of any dissident attempt to contact him. There was a leak in Planys: they knew that. A leak could turn into an access for all sorts of mischief, from a.s.sa.s.sination to rescue: sera had been right.

But letting Jordan stay in Reseune now that things were tranquil had taken turns into CIT politics: a decision on sera"s part, possibly to avoid upsetting Justin.

Just wait, Ari had said, in discussing the matter. He"s not Justin. It"s the same geneset, but the first Ari changed Justin"s psychset. Jordan hated her for that.

Jordan had hated the first Ari well before she"d taken Justin. That was true, too. Jordan had briefly been the first Ari"s working partner, sharing ideas, sharing power.

Except, sera had said further, that neither of those two was of a nature to share anything. So the partnership had dissolved into a feudmore bitter on Jordan"s side than on Ari"s, in terms of overt anger, sera said; but not in terms of who had gotten in the first strike. The first Ari had converted Justin to her own design, appropriated Grant along with him.

Jordan wanted Justin and Grant backtwo a.s.sets their own Ari very much wanted for herself.

That implied that there would inevitably be trouble in that quarter. And their Ari had chosen to live right beside Justinkept him in her wing, all except his office staff, which he had clung to, and that was the reason Justin maintained his office over in Education.

Well, as of now, sera"s wing had Justin"s office, too, and the staff was gone. Now there was no actual reason for Justin ever to leave her highly secure perimeter and cross Jordan"s path . . . unless Justin chose to do that, which would be many fewer opportunities, and ones they could watch.

First on the list, they had to be sure Justin was comfortable in his new office, to keep him and sera happy.

And they could expect that Jordan was going to be furious when he found out in the morning that that office was shut and emptyand it could be all his, for what they cared. They had even left a request for Hicks to officially allow Jordan possession of that office, with staff, if he asked, a request it was likely for several reasons might go through. They smoothed things over, not willing to provoke the man by their own action: sera might not approve that.

Catlin keyed a screen up, saw Jordan and Paul standing in the living room of their apartment, Jordan with a drink in hand. There would be a record of that conversation. She could scan it visually faster than she could listen to it.

"They"ve gotten to him," was the only thing that truly leapt out of the current transcript. She took the reference as applying to Justin, and understood "they" to mean sera and her whole apparatus.

It was true. There was also nothing Jordan could do about it.

There was no reference to the card with the Novgorod number. Florian had set the card on the console and looked at the screen.

"Patil," he said. "Dr. Sandur Patil, University at Novgorod."

Catlin focused in on that. Sharply. "One of Yanni"s meetings in Novgorod-was with that person. Sera has a list. I have Patil"s CIT number. I asked System for a bio."

"Call it."

She located the file.

Professor of Science, but under the Defense Bureau"s Secrecy Act. Lecturer in the Franklin Series, whatever that was. Expert in nanistics, and Catlin did know about that. It meant micro tags, stable and self-mutating nanostructures. It meant a whole cla.s.s of contraband for customs, and it was a bioweapon, besides its commercial uses in medicine and manufacture, which she had never looked up, but she sent out a search.

"Nanistics. I"m calling up references."

Florian copied her screen to his console.

Nanistics, the information came back, was a course of study not banned from theoretical research or commercial use on Cyteen"s surface and on Cyteen Alpha Station, but all actual experimental work was done out at Beta Station, at the deep end of the solar system. There was a lab at Beta serving both Defense and Science. The science was used on Cyteen, in Reseune, mostly in medical or agricultural research, or in the manufacture of carefully selected exotics, particularly in replication of Earth or Pell goods.

And a cross-search with Patil involved university offerings, lectures, Paxer and Abolitionist attendance. Nanistics and Patil had been a major part of the terraforming project, now canceled: the Preservation Act had excluded certain types of bionanistics from Cyteen surface. Bionanistics and Patil wound through the list.

The inquiry rapidly developed side branches. A lot of them.

Right now the words of interest were clearly nanistics, Patil, Planys, and Warrick, any two of those words in a.s.sociation, and that search had produced one other warning flag: More information is available from 1381 sources requiring higher base. 142382 sources are in Library behind gateway access. Proceed? Y/N. . .

Base One, sera"s base, could cross that threshold. It warned when it was about to go somewhere securitied, and it didn"t leave footprints in System. But it would draw a lot of securitied information into their office, and that was worth a little hesitation.

No, Catlin decided. But: "Interesting," Catlin said. "Patil is someone Yanni was talking to. He told sera they were going to terraform a world called Eversnow, and it"s not public knowledge. He was talking to Dr. Patil."

And Florian asked: "How did Jordan Jordan know Yanni was meeting with her?" know Yanni was meeting with her?"

Section 2

Chapter i.

April 26, 2424 0500 H.

Giraud and his two companions grew fast this week.

The organs were presentjust barely starting to function inside the body cavity, largely visible through transparent skin. Fingers had discernable nails. The yolk sac had gone. Blood functioned to feed the cells.

The babies were mostly head at this point, because brainsvery high order brainswere developing fast. Nerves were growing out from the spine. Arms had wrists and elbows. Underdeveloped legs kicked, a function of those newly active nerves. Giraud and his two companions weighed only a quarter of an ounce apiece, but they had some distinction as human, they were becoming becoming, was what. They were becoming what they could be.

Chapter ii.

April 26, 2424 0744 H.

d.a.m.n. Staff had been busy last night.

Florian had taken direct action, the morning"s messages informed Ari while she dressed: Florian had gotten Justin and Grant out of range of Jordan"s machinationswell, that was good. She"d been trying to accomplish that for six weeks. There"d been the chance, the very real chance, that Jordan might resort to s.n.a.t.c.hing one or the otherlikely Grantfor a few hours of therapy. Her staff had been watching nonstop for just such a move. Now they could all relax a bit.

But the next line of Florian"s report suggested otherwise.

A contact number? Yanni"s Dr. Patil. Yanni"s transcript had included that interview. She"d initially ignored that part of the schedule as probably just one of Yanni"s frequent meetings with ranking scientists, and university professors were thick on his usual list. But Patil was clearly a significant name, and Ari did know the content of Yanni"s talk with her.

And it wasn"t the first time she"d heard the name. Dr. Patil had had a set-to with Uncle Denys about a paper last year. Denys had gotten mad. He"d threatened to send Patil to Planys, except Yanni had talked him out of it.

And Jordan handed Justin a card with that name on it? d.a.m.n! was her immediate reaction.

Florian suggested Jordan might want to signal Yanni he knew something about Yanni"s business in Novgorod. Or maybe there was some connection with the fight Jordan and Yanni had had before Yanni left. . . which made a certain sense.

Jordan wasn"t in official communication with anybody but Yanni, had no social contact but Justin, and he had no security clearance beyond Library, not all of that, and not even the most basic access to System.

That posed a question.

A possibly scary question.

She keyed a message back to her security, whoever was at the desk: "Find out how Jordan got that card. Do anything that furthers that investigation."

Then she pushed back from the desk and got up.

It was probably safest not to talk to Justin until the immediate irritation of the disarrangement had gone awayhe was bound to be adrenaline-high, and that never improved communication, did it?

Yanni, Florian"s message had said, was already notifiedabout the move, at least. Yanni wouldn"t object to whatever she did regarding Justin Warrick.

But Yanni hadn"t heard about this Dr. Patil being linked to a mysterious card Jordan knew they were going to question.

That was a matter worth telling Yanni, and getting his reaction. And since she"d officially read the transcript and it jibed with what she"d gotten from Base One, she could at least take that caution out of her thinking and ask some questions.

If Jordan had found out that Yanni was talking to Patil, how had he known that? He didn"t get mail. He had no way to get a business card. Maybe Yanni himself had dropped information, making the move to rattle Jordan out of his cover. In that case she had better find out about it. And the worst thing she could do would be to start giving blind orders to put Florian and Catlin in the middle of it.

She put on her sweater, searched her closet for a pair of pants, herself she managed her own wardrobe lately.

There was a leak somewhere. Maybe Yanni had arranged it, just to see where information flowed. She didn"t like to be caught by surprise.

And she didn"t want Justin involved in any investigation of his father. He wasn"t involved in Jordan"s business: she"d stake everything on that. And did.

But she still didn"t want to trip up anything Yanni was doing.

Meanwhile Justin was probably mad as h.e.l.l about being moved, and upset about the business with the card, and probably under-informed, over all. Justin without enough information was going to wonder about it, and wonder, and build his own hypotheses in private, and just stew for hours.

Maybe it was better to send a simple friendly message to Justin, just a deliberately naive welcome-in. Justin wouldn"t believe she was innocent of ordering this disruption of his life.

Or he might: this time he had Jordan to blame. She might be able to turn the frustration in that direction.

She lapped her hair into three quarters of a braid and let it goit would be hanging loose in ten minutes; but she put on makeup, at least, and took care about it.

Grant had to be considerably relieved, this morning, to know they weren"t going to be working up close with Jordan daily, where it was oh, so easy for Jordan to get at him. Justin had to be relieved, at least, that Grant wasn"t involved. Justin would certainly focus his irritation on Jordan, unless she stepped in the line of fire and created an issue and a target. So any message she sent into that ferment of vexation had to be cautious.

She sat down at the keyboard and tapped into the secure, local net. It wasn"t my order, she typed, which was the truth. But I think it"s a good idea. He can have the office all to himself. It was hugged anyway.Ari. But I think it"s a good idea. He can have the office all to himself. It was hugged anyway.Ari.

Justin might think that was funny.

Or maybe he wouldn"t.

She sighed.

And typed a postscript: Justin, don"t he upset with me. Phone, if you have a problem with this. Justin, don"t he upset with me. Phone, if you have a problem with this.

Not that" she was going to back down from what Florian had done. It was only moving the schedule up, regarding the move to her wing for both residency and and office s.p.a.ce. Justin didn"t know that, but it was the truth. office s.p.a.ce. Justin didn"t know that, but it was the truth.

She went back to the console and keyed one more message. Yanni didn"t do it either. Yanni didn"t do it either.

Then she put on her boots and went to gather up Florian and Catlin.

Straight to Yanni"s office, over in Admin, before she did anything else, and she did that, with FlorianCatlin was busy with some research. By the time she got there it was 0840h, and Yanni"s foyer was already full of problems.

She didn"t go through the foyer. She took the side entry, the one Yanni himself used, and Yanni"s secretary, Chloe, looked up in startlement.