Major headache, right between the eyes. Deepstudy did that sometimes especially on too little food, especially when it was tape-study on population dynamics, which wasn"t a commercial tape, wasn"t paced to be, was just raw notes and data and conclusions dumped into one"s head under the deepteach drug, so the habitual mind wanted to add it up and make it make sense and the critical faculties just weren"t answering the phone.

But the too-little-food part was another very good reason for the headache, which was why Ari had scheduled herself to come out of it at 1115h. She still was on the edge of the drugwhen she was coming out, she"d told domestic staff just not to talk to her or ask her anything or tell her anything. She was apt to have what they said running around in her head all day, otherwise, and there was already too much running around in her head, psychsets, genesets, this population burst, the other burst added to the Novgorod sets, all of it cla.s.sified, most all of it done during the War, with the Defense Bureau nagging her predecessor to do this, do that, psych-design by committee and with no understanding what they were asking. So the first Ari had done what she wanted to do because n.o.body in the Defense Bureau had the skill to check on what she did.

Her predecessor had, for example, prepped a cadre of azi to survive if some Alliance ship had taken out Cyteen Station and dropped a rock on Reseune itself. They were to get to the weathermaker controls and the precip towers, hold them if they could, otherwise go for the safety domes, take over by armed action, and run things, never mind any plan Defense had laid down. There were some alphas seeded into Novgorod, just for leaven in the loaf. They"d have children by now. Children would have CIT numbers, ultimately indistinguishable from the CITs whose ancestors had come down to earth from the station. If the average held true, the children were probably not geniuses. But she could track them down. A little computer work, carefully shielded, would be interestingif she had the time to do that research. She didn"t. Her schedule said she was supposed to be doing math tape this afternoon. And she sat, muzzy-headed. wishing she could take a day off from everything on her schedule.

The door to her study opened, quietly She took a sip of coffee and looked up at Florian.

"Sera," he said. "He was willing. He did very well. Are you able to hear the report?"

That was a mental shift. A serious mental shift. Florian meant Justin. Willing meant Justin had done what they had talked about last night, she and Florian and Catlin. And she"d told him to report as soon as she was awake. She was intensely curioustoo wide-focused at the moment, but curious.

"Did it work?" she asked, shoving population dynamics and all the equations to the rear. What concerned Justin worried her. on a personal basis, and she didn"t like involving him in operations. "Did you learn anything?"

"Patil claimed not to know Jordan Warrick except by reputation. But she accepted the younger Warrick"s advis.e.m.e.nt that he has influence with you. I have the transcript.Is this too early, yet, sera?"

She had a second sip of coffee, blinked at the headache between her eyes, and shook her head. "No. I"ll go over it. I want to. What are the details? How do you read it?"

"He invoked an investigation into your predecessor"s death, as if Jordan was seeking a new inquiry to be opened into that matterhis innocence established."

She didn"t know why. She didn"t quite like the sound of that, granted Justin had had to improvise. Was it because that issue was riding Justin"s subconscious, and that was what had surfaced in his mind? She was a little surprised, a little off put. But there was Jordan"s motive to question. He was a son of a b.i.t.c.h. But was he trying to get Admin"s attention?

"Ser Warrick suggested that she and Thieu might be subjects of investigation because of the card and the connection to the elder Warrick."

Which was even the plain truth, just a large enough dose of it to make it credible.

But the other matter hit her skull and rattled around unpleasantly before heading through her nerves, just an unsettling, undefined malaise. The question of Jordan"s innocence. Justinthe cause celebre in suspicion falling on Jordan ... a political firestorm if that case got raked over again in the media, taking public attention away from her before she"d had time to settle the image she wanted in public attention.

Deepstudy drug. d.a.m.n it.

"I am a little muzzy yet. I think I need to cut back the doses. Shouldn"t be lasting like this."

"Forgive me, sera. You said"

"I said tell me when I waked. And I ought to be awake. I am awake. I"m just a little disturbed by the direction he went."

"Dr. Patil was about to end the conversation. He used that matter as a wedge."

"What did she say then?"

"That she had no connection with Warrick Senior. And they concluded politely."

"Someone provided her address to Jordan. Either he handed on a card the full significance of which he didn"t know, a total coincidence, or he did know."

"In our opinion, the elder Warrick knew whose number that card was, and that she is currently important."

"Do you think that is possibly his motive, that he wants vindication? Florian, who actually sent Jordan to Planys?"

"Our indications are it was Yanni."

"That"s what my own search turned up. Yanni held the keys. Always. During Denys"s tenure. Yanni held the keys to Jordan"s sentence. And it was primarily Yanni who protected Justin, when Giraud would have taken a harder line. All these things are true?"

"Our indications are that, yes. But, sera"

She waited.

"If you"re not prepared to talk, sera . . ."

"I"m thinking quite clearly at the moment." What the drug did, besides diminish the ability to reject a fact, was to lower the bars on part.i.tioned informationmake cross-connections easier, if there was a shred of connection possible. It was like momentarily seeing the world from a plane window, disconnected from the land, but seeing all of it, every wrinkle, every canyon, every change of strata, how it all, all, all connected, even if it was too wide to remember once one was back on the ground. "I"m thinking quite clearly at the moment, Florian, thank you. I"m just a little deepstate. I"m sure you understand."

"I do, sera."

"I need to do something." She was aware she was staring straight ahead, her eyes wide open. She knew the look: black centered, unfocused, focused everywhere, and nowhere in the real world. "I like him, Florian. I like Yanni. I really do. But I can"t have him running operations he doesn"t tell me about."

"Should I take orders from you at this point?"

She was perfectly collected. She slowly moved her head from side to side. "No. You should not. I need about fifteen more minutes to get my head clear, Florian. I need a cold drink. Would you mind going and getting that? That"s a request, not an order."

"Are you safe to leave alone, sera?"

"Perfectly safe. I"ll sit here and think. I"d like that drink, thank you. Something sugary."

"Fifteen minutes, sera."

She wasn"t surprised when, hardly a moment behind Florian"s leaving, Catlin quietly opened the door and came in.

"Sit down," Ari said, still not focusing on anything but infinity. "I"m thinking a moment, Catlin. I know you"re there."

Catlin subsided into a chair without a word. And Ari stared off into her thoughts.

Yanni. Yanni was a resource, and a problem. What he had done said nothing about his motives in doing it. Yanni had intervened in the past to prevent further a.s.sa.s.sinations, of the Warricks, in specific.

Yanni said he had concerns about Jordan in her bringing him back, and was searching for involvement in leaks in Planys, which had gotten to Coram and possibly to others, possibly by the same conduit. One man was relieved of his position. That didn"t mean there wasn"t another.

And possibly Yanni had put challenges in front of Jordan before this to find out how he might react. Possibly he was testing Patil herself, who had at least some connections to Jordan, through Thieu. He talked about putting the woman in charge of a world in its transformation, in the most Centrist-friendly decision Reseune had taken in years: the woman had Centrist backing, a lot of Centrist backing, the same party that had taken up the cause of the Warricks" plight as a case of political persecution and called it a power grab by the Nyes.

True. It had been exactly that.

But the Centrists had, after Giraud"s death, attempted a brief but cuddly relationship with Denys Nye, seeing that Denys was not, after all, going to push the Expansionist agenda Giraud had espousednot because Denys was Centrist, but because Denys Nye was on his own agenda and wouldn"t spend a cred on Ariane Emory"s projects.

Denys Nye was going to continue the one Project, the cloning of Ariane Emory herself, but he was going to keep it, and her juvenile self, under his thumb for at least a decade . . . the Centrists hadn"t minded.

Meanwhile Denys focused entirely on post-War economics, on the complexities of Earth-Alliance-Union trade, and on those agreements, which pleased the Centrists no end. They might not have gotten their terraforming bill pa.s.sed, but they had gotten an administrator of Reseune who was pushing most of their agenda and precious little of Ariane Emory"sjust the Project, which guaranteed, so long as Denys Nye had physical guardianship of the Project, that it wasn"t going to threaten him ... in its lifetime.

Yanni"d done the day-to-day administrative part through all of both Nyes" terms, running Personnel, which, in Reseune, was a key post. Denys had been the genius behind the programs; Giraud had kept the lid on dissent and quietly smoothed the b.u.mps in the very short, very defined road Reseune had traveled in the post-War years.

But Giraud and Denys had each been seducedGiraud by devotion to Denys, and Denys by the one thing that Denys coveted for himself immortality. Denys and death hadn"t liked each other. If the Child succeeded, it proved the psychogenesis process was possible. Denys wanted the Project to succeed, at least until he knew the result.

And meanwhile Denys was busy storing all his own data, and Giraud"s, out in that archive. It was very likely that Denys had double dealt Ariane Emory"s plans by killing her; had double dealt the Centrists by continuing the Project; Denys had double dealt absolutely everybody, all to keep Denys Nye alive for another lifespan . . . solipsistic b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He"d attempted to kill her only when she"d succeeded and he had his resultunfortunately for him, she"d succeeded too well, too fast, and consequently he"d been the one to die, else he"d just have blamed her a.s.sa.s.sination on another Warrick and started all over again. That would have gained him another twenty years, during which he could bring up his own successor, another Giraud, who would be duty-bound to bring up him, the all-important center of his universe.

And Yanni? Yanni had kept his hold on power through both administrations, letting the Nyes run things, mopping up, keeping the Nyes from doing too much damage, while the Project ran, and she grew . . .

So which side was he on?

Florian came back into the room with the requested gla.s.s of orange and put it in her hand. She drank it, absorbing the sugar hit, still staring elsewhere.

"Yanni"s not necessarily pernicious," she said. "He is bent on his own agenda, and he"s been very clear about that. Getting the Eversnow project going . . . that"s major. He had Thieu in safekeeping at Planys. But Thieu"s gotten too old; he"s on his way to the grave. So now Yanni needs Patil. He"s saved the Eversnow project. He"s gotten it pa.s.sed. He"s saved the Warricks, kept Justin sane. I"m not so sure he wanted Jordan out, but he"s got him. He probably wants Justin for his ally. He can"t have Justin. Justin is mine."

Blink. The thoughts were trying to shred and go away in different directions. She held onto the central problem: Eversnow. "Yanni kept all the first Ari"s projects alive, and he preserved the Warricks, especially Justin. Yanni"s still on her program. Not Denys". Hers. And that"s not necessarily mine. He"s courting the Centrists. He"s trying to move them onto his agenda, and they"re buying it, seeing him as Denys" backup, in the years before I take over. If I did take over sooner, it would disturb them a lot. The Paxers would have a fit. They"ll go back to the underground, blowing things up again. But they"ll do that, whenever I take over."

Florian and Catlin waited, both seated, neither saying a thing to interrupt her.

Blink. More shreds. Tatters. But the structure stayed. "I still like Yanni. I don"t want him to die. I just don"t want him to do what he"s doing. Eversnow is something I wouldn"t have done and the more I think about it, the more uneasy I get. Yanni sees the job crisis and a new trade route as importantmore so than I do. It takes us further from Alliance, and I"m not sure that"s a good thing for humanity at this point." She thought: Ari set me to watch her projects. Her projects, and this was one. But keeping Union togetherkeeping humankind from fragmenting: there were already more variables than she could handleor she wouldn"t have created me. It was already afield-too-large problem, just with what we"ve already created, Novgorod, and Gehenna, and the military azi, and Alliance, and Earth. Then pile Eversnow on top of that, as odd as people could get, learning to survive on a s...o...b..ll. It"s a planet, not just one more star station. Gravity wells breed difference. They don"t communicate with the outside. Ari set me to watch her projects. Her projects, and this was one. But keeping Union togetherkeeping humankind from fragmenting: there were already more variables than she could handleor she wouldn"t have created me. It was already afield-too-large problem, just with what we"ve already created, Novgorod, and Gehenna, and the military azi, and Alliance, and Earth. Then pile Eversnow on top of that, as odd as people could get, learning to survive on a s...o...b..ll. It"s a planet, not just one more star station. Gravity wells breed difference. They don"t communicate with the outside.

There might have been a reason besides elder Ari"s health that she let Eversnow drop.

It was hard not to plunge back into deepstate, following that thread. But Florian and Catlin didn"t go away. They waited for something more concrete than her worries. "I"m not sure yet," she said. "Who, do you think, does Hicks belong to?"

"Possibly to Yanni," Florian said. "He was Yanni"s appointee in the current office. Giraud Nye"s second-in-command when Giraud was alive."

"Both, then. But he didn"t protect Denys. He just protected Yanni. And he didn"t resist me ousting Denys. Possibly Yanni protected me from Hicks."

"Likely," Catlin said. "Hicks and Yanni together would have been a difficult opposition. We met none, once Abban died."

She nodded slowly. "I have to take over," she said, half-numb, and with that wide focus that blanked out the whole room, except them. "I have to take charge. I don"t want to, but Hicks"s gift isn"t enough. I can"t let Yanni go on in the direction he"s going. I like him, understand. I don"t want him hurt. But Eversnow is much too dangerous. Yanni doesn"t see things the way I do. He belongs to the first Ari. And he wouldn"t like it if I started steering from over his shoulder. He"d rather go back to his labs. He should, now."

"Wait," Florian said, "wait, sera, until we have Hicks" people pa.s.sed through Justin Warrick"s opinion, and installed, and tested. We"re not enough to secure your safety, as is."

Sobering thought. Honest thought. People like Yanni had been honest, at least honest enough not to make an attempt on her life. On her freedom, howevershe"d been advised into seclusion. By Yanni. By the agreement of her own security. Now Hicks offered her either spiesor real power, in the presence of some unnamed threator in the progress of something Yanni was up to.

Did Hicks himself have an opinion? A loyalty? Unlike with azi, they couldn"t find it in a manual.

"We can wait," she said, "so long as we don"t alert anyone to our intentions. I don"t want anyone to be killed if we can help it. I want Justin safe. Can we do that?"

"Are you going to tell Sam and Amy?" Catlin asked. "And Maddy?"

The other members of the junior cabal. Her friends, her allies, the kids who"d grown up to take jobs in the real world. She was the only one who hadn"t. Who"d had real power, and laid it down for a time. She was still studying, still growing up. There was so, so much yet to grasp, so much to understand.

"I don"t know yet," she said. "I may not tell anyone my opinion. Or I may tell them." She looked at them, finding the blood moving away from her brain. She felt a little lightheaded, but collected, all the same. "I have a headache, still. I"ll be in my room. Go see about these things. Lay plans. Come back to me with a report before you implement anything. Let me know where we are and what we need to do."

"Yes, sera," Florian said. He and Catlin got up and opened the door. they left, and she got up, and walked out of her office and down the short hall to her bedroom, in her section, her own safe section of the safe apartment in the sacrosanct.i.ty of Wing One, wheretheoreticallyshe controlled her own security. But ReseuneSec guarded the doors of Wing One. ReseuneSec was in the halls. The old lab was dead. Dead as the first Ari. Equipment mostly removed. The place had become a little shabby she"d laid other plans, a grandiose plan, a notion of gathering what was hers where it was indisputably safe. That was what that construction was, between Wing One and the cliffs. She intended to live there. With people she loved. Yanni had been part of it.

She shut her bedroom door behind her. Locked it. She felt a Mad coming on, though she wasn"t sure yet at what. Maybe at Yanni: she couldn"t trust him enough. Maybe at the people outside Reseune, who didn"t have the sense to know enough to make themselves safe, and the stupid Paxers who were going to make bombs and kill people because they didn"t have any better plan.

She ought to have ReseuneSec track every one of the Paxer leadership before the news got out that she was taking over.

She could have them killed. Every one. She"d have the power to do that. The first Ari had had it. And hadn"t done it, when the first Ari had done so much that was justthings she didn"t want to think about.

She stood in the middle of her own room and looked around her at a place that was safe. She looked at her things, that, if she owned the whole world, still mattered, her chair, her bed, her dresser, and what was in it, things she shouldn"t keep.

She walked over to the dresser, picked up Poo-thing, poor, ignored Poo-thing. She smoothed the fur around his b.u.t.ton eyes, and rubbed his nose into shape. His sweater was all wrinkled. His fat tummy was still fat, and she straightened his feet a bit, and laid him back in the drawer, making room for him. He went on staring. Poo-thing had no way to blink when she shut the drawer on him and cut out the light.

Shoved it hard the last couple of inches and sat down in her chair and cried. Sobbed, with her face in her hands, trying not to make any sound to bring Florian and Catlin back, or staff, or anybody.

I wanted a childhood, she said to herself over and over. I really wanted a childhood, just a little one, just a year, is that too much to ask? I only wanted a year, and it"s not fair, not fair, not fair! I didn"t ask to be born! I didn"t ask everybody to hate me! I didn"t ask to be anythingI don"t want to be, I want to ride Horse when I want, anywhere in town, and not have to worry about people shooting me or trying to run off with me, and I want to have my friends around me and I don"t want to lose them, I don"t want to get them killed, either, and I don"t want Florian and Catlin to have to kill anybody, ever again, but they will.

I want my Uncle Yanni back. I want Maman not to be dead and Ollie to write me he"s coming back, and Valery, and everybody, I want it back the way it was before I grew up . . .

But it"s not going to be, is it? It"s never going to be. Ollie, maybe. Maybe Valery. They might come, if I can get them all back, all of them.

But they can"t find a teary, stupid girl when they do, can they? I can"t be stupid, or I"ll be dead, and I"ll get other people killed.

She blotted her eyes, one after the other, with the back of her hand. Sniffed. Got up and examined a reddened, unlovely face in the mirror, and got a tissue from the bath, all with a raw, unhappy feeling inside.

She didn"t quite know the girl that looked back at her, red-eyed, red-nosed, just human. It was the first Ari"s girl-face, but it wasn"t the face of the portraits.

Second try with the tissue. Her makeup was a mess. She blew her nose, blowing away the evil spirits, Maman had used to say that. Maman would take a cold washcloth and wash her face and tell her cold water and a clear head would made a good start on any problem.

She did that for herself, washed her face, fixed her makeup. Sharp pain had gone to leaden hurt, just a weight remaining where the pain had been. And that was stupid. Selfish. She"d had her childhood just now, all ten minutes of it; and maybe she should take a chance and have just a little freedom before the whole load came down on her, go do those relatively safe things she could get away with doing, just because she could, before it was forevermore too late.

BOOK TWO.

Section 1

Chapter i.

May 8, 2424.

Giraud Nye and his companions were steadily putting on weight. At twelve weeks, having doubled in size in the last seven days, Giraud ma.s.sed 28 grams, somewhat less than a generous shot of the whiskey he"d one day love.

He had gotten fists, and fingerprints, and his general body shape was a little more human. He"d been drinking in the tank"s biosynthetic amniotic fluid, and routinely p.i.s.sed it out againproving his kidneys were starting to work, a process that would never stop, in spite of his future abuses to his body, until he did.

His intestines were growing, and began to fill his abdomen. His nerve cells were proliferating, synapses getting organized enough to react to stimuli, but unaware at any higher levelthe nerves had no myelin sheath as yet, and that limited their function considerably. Consciousness was nowhere in the picture. His cells all had other jobs to do, mostly that of dividing like mad, according to the map in their nuclei. If it said cooperate, they cooperated. If it said make skin, they made skin, in its varied layers and detail. If it said make nerves, they made more nerves. There was no higher authority.

Chapter ii.