“We’re not Cyteen.”
“I know.”
“You’re very smug. Why?”
“Because you’re not going to file charges.”
“Do you want to bet on that?”
He was supposed to react. He smiled at her. He had himself that far under control, not knowing, not at all knowing whether or not Grant was in her hands. “I’m betting on it,” he said, and held his voice steady. “You’ve got me. You haven’t got Grant. As long as things go right with me and my father, Grant keeps his mouth shut and we’re all just fine.”
“That’s why you stayed behind.”
That had bothered her. The irrational act.
He smiled wider, a thin, carefully held triumph, alone, in her territory. “One of us had to. To assure you we’ll keep quiet otherwise.”
“Of course. Did Jordan plan this?”
He did react then. He knew that he had. It was an unexpected and offhanded praise.
“No,” he said.
“You did.” Ari gave a breath of a laugh; and he did not like that, even when all the movements of her body, her rocking back against the back of the lab-stool, her rueful smile, all said that she was surprised.
Ari played her own reactions the way his father did—with all her skill, all the way to the end of a thing.
So must he. He gave a matching, deprecatory shrug.
“It’s really very good,” Ari said. “But you have to put so much on Grant.”
He’s dead, he thought, bracing himself for the worst thing she could say. She might lie about that.
“I trust him,” he said.
“There’s one flaw in your set-up, you know.”
“What would that be?”
“Jordan. He’s really not going to like this.”
“I’ll talk to him.” His muscles started to shake, the cold of the cryogenics conduits that ran overhead seeming to leach all the warmth from him. He felt all his control crumbling and made a profound effort to regroup. It was a tactic his father had taught him, this alternate application of tension and relief she was using, watching cues like the dilation of his eyes, the little tensions in his muscles, everything fallen into a rhythm like a fencer, up, down, up, down, and then something out of the rhythm the moment he had discovered the rules. He saw it coming. He smiled at her, having gotten command of himself with that thought. “He’ll be amused.”
He watched a slow grin spread over Ari’s face, either his point or a deliberate dropping of the shield for a moment to make him think it was.
“You really have nerve,” Ari said. “And you aren’t at all cocky, are you? Damn, boy, the edges are ragged, you’re not real confident you’ve got all the pieces in your hands, but I’ll give it to you, that’s a damned good maneuver. Harder than hell to do twice, though.”
“I don’t need to leave till my father does.”
“Well, now, that is a problem, isn’t it? Just how are we going to disengage this little tangle? Have you thought it all the way through? Tell me how it works when it comes time for Jordan to go off-world. I’m interested.”
“Maybe you’ll make me an offer.”
Ari flashed a bright smile. “That’s marvelous. You were so quiet. What did you do, try to throw those test scores?”
“You’re supposed to be able to figure that out.”
“Oh, cheek!” She outright laughed. “You are bright. You’ve taught me something. At my age, I value that. You’re very fond of Grant, to give up your camouflage for him. Very fond of him.” She leaned against the counter, one elbow on it, looking soberly up at him. “Let me tell you something, dear. Jordan loves you—very much. Very, very much. It shows in the way you behave. And I must say, he’s done a marvelous job with Grant. Children need that kind of upbringing. But there’s a dreadful cost to that. We’re mortal. We lose people. And we really hurt when they hurt, don’t we?—Families are a hell of a liability. What are you going to tell Jordan?”
“I don’t know. As much as I have to.”
“You mean, as much as will let him know he’s won?”
Break and reposition. He only smiled at her, refusing a debate with a master.
“Well,” she said, “you’ve done Jordan proud in this one. I don’t say it’s wise. The plan was very smart; the reasons are very, very stupid, but then,—devotion makes us fools, doesn’t it? What do you suppose Jordan would do if I charged you with this?”
“Go public. Go to the Bureau. And you don’t want that.”
“Well, but there’s a lot else we can do, isn’t there? Because his son really is guilty of theft, of vandalism, of getting into files that don’t concern him—And there’s so much of that that doesn’t have to happen. Jordan can make charges, I can make charges; you know if this breaks, that appointment he wants won’t make it, no matter what interests are behind it. They’ll desert him in a flash. But you know all that. It’s what makes everything work, isn’t it—unless I really wanted to take measures to recover Grant and prosecute those friends of yours. That’s what you’ve missed, you know. That I can do just exactly what you did, break the law; and if someone brings out your part in this, and if your father has to listen to your personal reasons, our little private sessions, hmmn?—it’s really going to upset him.”
“It won’t do you any good if I go to court, either. You can’t afford it. You’ve got the votes in Council right now. You want to watch things fall apart, you lay a hand on Grant—and I talk. You watch it happen.”
“You damned little sneak,” she said slowly. “You think you understand it that well.”
“Well enough to know my friends won’t use a card before they have to.”
“What have you got on the Krugers, that they’d risk this kind of trouble for you? Or do you think the other side won’t use you? Have you taken that into account?”
“I didn’t have much choice, did I? But things ought to be safe as long as the deal for Jordan’s transfer is going to hold up and you keep your hands off Grant. If they put me under probe they’ll hear plenty—about the project. I don’t think you want outsiders questioning anyone in Reseune right now.”
“Damned dangerous, young man.” Ari leaned forward and jabbed a finger in his direction. “Did Jordan map this out?”
“No.”
“Advise you?”
“No.”
“That amazes me. It’s going to amaze other people too. If this goes to court, the Bureau isn’t going to believe he didn’t put you up to this. And that’s going to weigh against him when it comes to a vote, isn’t it? So we’ll keep it quiet. You can tell Jordan as much as you want to tell him; and we’ll call it stalemate. I won’t touch Grant; I won’t have the Krugers arrested. Not even assassinated. And yes, I can. I could arrange an accident for you. Or Jordan. Farm machinery—is so dangerous.”
He was shocked. And frightened. He had never expected her to be so blunt.
“I want you to think about something,” she said. “What you tell your father will either keep things under control—or blow everything. I’m perfectly willing to see Jordan get that Fargone post. And I’ll tell you exactly what deal I’ll strike to unwind this pretty mess you’ve built for us. Jordan can leave Reseune for Fargone just as soon as there’s an office there for him to work in. And when he ships out from Cyteen Station, you’ll still be here. You’ll arrange for Grant to follow him as soon as the Hope corridor is open and the Rubin project is well underway. You can take the ship after his. And all of that should keep your father—and you—quiet long enough to serve everything I need. The military won’t let Jordan be too noisy—They hate media attention to their projects.—Or, or, we can just blow all of this wide right now and let us fight it out in court. I wonder who’d win, if we just decided to pull Rubin back to Cyteen and give up the Fargone facility entirely.”
I’ve fallen into a trap, he thought. But how could I have avoided it? What did I do wrong?
“Do you agree?” she asked.
“Yes
. So long as you keep your end of it. And I get my transfer back to my father’s wing.”
“Oh, no, that’s not part of it. You stay here. What’s more, you and I are going to have an ongoing understanding. You know—your father’s a very proud man. You know what it would do to him, to have to choose whether to go to the Bureau and lose everything over what you’ve done, or keep his mouth shut and know what you’re involved in to keep that assignment for him. Because that’s what you’ve done. You’ve handed me all the personal and legal missiles I need—if I have to use them. I’ve got a way to keep your father quiet, an easy way, as it happens, that doesn’t involve him getting hurt. And all you’ve got to do is keep quiet, do your work, and wait it out. You’ve got exactly the position you bargained for—hostage for his release; and his good behavior. So what I want you to do, young man, is go put in an honest day’s work, give me the BRX reports by the time your shift’s over, and let me see a good job. You do what you like: call your father, tell him Grant’s gone missing, tell him as much as you like. I certainly can’t stop you. And you come to my Residency, oh, about 2100, and you tell me what you’ve done. Or I’ll assume it’s gone the other way.”
He was still thinking when she finished, still running through all of it, and what she meant; but he knew that. He tried to find all the traps in it. The one he was in, he had no trouble seeing. It was the invitation he had dreaded. It was where everything had been going.
“You can go,” she said.
He walked out past Florian in the outer lab, out into the hall, out through the security doors and upstairs into the ordinary hallways of Wing One operations. Someone passed him on the way to his office and said good morning to him; he realized it half the hall further on, and did not even know who it had been.
He did not know how he was going to face Jordan. By phone, he thought. He would break the news by phone and meet his father for lunch. And get through it somehow. Jordan would expect him to be distraught.
Ari was right. If Jordan got involved in it, everything that was settled became unsettled, and for all that he could figure, Jordan had no hand to play.
At best, he thought—go along with it till he could get control of himself enough to think whether telling Jordan the whole story was the thing to do.
Whatever the time cost.
vi
“What we did…” Justin turned the stem of his wine-glass, a focus to look at, anything but Jordan’s face. “What we did was what we always planned to do, if one of us got cornered. Her taking Grant—was to pressure me. I know—I know you told me I should come to you. But she sprang that on us, and there wasn’t time to do anything but file a protest with the Bureau. That’d have been too late for Grant. God knows what she might have put him through before we could get any land of injunction, if we could get one at all—” He shrugged. “And we couldn’t win it, in the long run, the law’s on her side and it would foul everything up just after everything was settled on the Fargone deal, so I just—just took the only chance I thought would work. My best judgment. That’s all I can say.”
It was a private lunch, in the kitchen in Jordan’s apartment. Paul did the serving, simple sandwiches, and neither of them did more than pick at the food.
“Damn,” Jordan said. He had said very little up to that point, had let Justin get it out in order. “Damn, you should have told me what was going on. I told you—”
“I couldn’t get to you. It’d make everything I did look like it was your doing. I didn’t want to lay a trail.”
“Did you? Did you lay one?”
“Pretty plain where I’m concerned, I’m afraid. But that’s part of the deal. That’s why I stayed here. Ari’s got something on me. She’s got me to use against you, the way she planned to use Grant against me. Now she doesn’t need him, does she?”
“You’re damn right she doesn’t need him! My God, son—”
“It’s not that bad.” He kept his voice ever so steady. “I called her bluff. I stayed around. She said—She said that this is the way it’s going to work: you get your transfer as soon as the facility is built, earnest of her good faith. Then I get Grant to go out there to you, earnest of mine. That way—”
“That way you’re left here where she can do anything she damn well pleases!”
“That way,” he reprised, calmly, carefully, “she knows that she can hold on to me and keep you quiet until her projects are too far advanced to stop. And the military won’t let you go public. That’s what she’s after. She’s got it. But there’s a limit to what she can do—and this way all of us get out. Eventually.”
Jordan said nothing, for a long, long while, then lifted his wine glass and took a drink and set it down.
And still said nothing, for minutes upon minutes.
“I should never, never have kept Grant,” Jordan said finally, “when things blew up with Ari. I knew it would happen. Damn, I knew it would, all those years ago. Don’t ever, ever take favors from your enemies.”
“It was too late then, wasn’t it?” Justin said. The bluntness shocked his nerves, brought him close to tears, an anger without focus. “God, what could we do?”
“Are you sure he’s all right?”
“I haven’t dared try to find out. I think Ari would have told me if she knew anything different. I set everything up. If the number I gave him doesn’t answer, Krugers will keep him safe till it does.”
“Merild’s number?”
Justin nodded.
“God.” Jordan raked his hair back and looked at him in despair. “Son, Merild’s no match for the police.”
“You always said—if anything happened—And you always said he was a friend of the Krugers. And Ari’s not going to call the police. Or try anything herself. She said that. I’ve got all the ends of this. I really think I have.”
“Then you’re a damn sight more confident than you ought to be,” Jordan snapped. “Grant’s somewhere we’re not sure, Krugers could have the police on their doorstep—Merild may or may not be available, for God’s sake, he practices all over the continent.”
“Well, I couldn’t damn well phone ahead, could I?”
Jordan’s face was red. He took another drink of wine, and the level in the glass measurably diminished.
“Merild’s a lawyer. He’s got ethics to worry about.”
“He’s also got friends. Hasn’t he? A lot of friends.”
“He’s not going to like this.”
“It’s the same as me coming to him, isn’t it?” He was suddenly on the defensive, fighting on the retreat. “Grant’s no different. Merild knows that, doesn’t he? Where’s ethics, if it turns Grant over to the police?”
“You’d have been a hell of a lot easier to answer for. If you’d had the sense to go with him, for God’s sake—”
“He’s not ours! He belongs to the labs! My being with him couldn’t make it legal.”
“You’re also a minor under the law and there’re extenuating circumstances—you’d have been out of here—”
“And they’d bring it to court and God knows what they could find for charges. Isn’t that so?”
Jordan let go a long breath and looked up from under his brows.
He wanted, he desperately wanted Jordan to say no, that’s wrong, there is something—Then everything became possible.
But: “yes,” Jordan said in a low voice, dashing his hopes.
“So it’s fixed,” Justin said. “Isn’t it? And you don’t have to do anything unless the deal comes unfixed. I can tell you if I’m getting trouble from Ari. Can’t I?”
“Like this time?” Jordan returned.
“Better than this time. I promise you. I promise. All right?”
Jordan picked at his sandwich, sidestepping the question. It was not all right. Justin knew that. But it was what there was.
“You’re not going to end up staying here when I transfer,” Jordan said. “I’ll work something out.”
“Just don’t give anything away.
”
“I’m not giving a damned thing away. Ari’s not through. You’d better understand that. She doesn’t keep her agreements longer than she has to. Grant’s proof of that. She’s damned well capable of cutting throats, hear me, son, and you’d better take that into account the next time you want to bluff. She doesn’t think any more of you or me or anyone than the subjects in her labs, than the poor nine-year-old azi down there in the yards that she decides to mindwipe and ship off to some damn sweathouse because he’s just not going to work out; because she needs the space, for God’s sake! Or the problem cases she won’t solve, she won’t even run them past my staff—she’s not going to use that geneset again anyway and she damned well put three healthy azi down last month, just declared them hazards, because she didn’t want to take the time with them, the experiment they were in is over, and that’s all she needed. I can’t prove it because I didn’t get the data, but I know it happened. That’s who you’re playing games with. She doesn’t give a damn for any life, God help her lab subjects, and she’s gotten beyond what public opinion might make of it—that’s what she’s gotten to, she’s so smart they can’t figure out her notes, she’s answerable only to Union law, and she’s got that in her pocket—she just doesn’t give a damn, and we’re all under her microscope—” Jordan shoved his plate away and stared at it a moment before he looked up. “Son, don’t trust there’s anything she won’t do. There isn’t.”
He listened. He listened very hard. And heard Ari saying that accidents at Reseune were easy.
vii
His watch showed 2030 when he exited the shower and picked it up to put it on…in an apartment entirely too quiet and depressingly empty.
He was halfway glad not to spend the night here, with the silence and Grant’s empty room, glad the way biting one’s lip did something to make a smashed finger hurt less, that was about the way of it. Losing Grant hurt worse than anything else could, and Ari’s harassment, he reckoned, even became a kind of anodyne to the other, sharper misery she had put him to.
Damned bitch, he thought, and his eyes stung, which was a humiliation he refused to give way to on her account. It was Grant had him unhinged, it was the whole damned mess Grant was in that had his hands shaking so badly he had trouble with the aerosol cap and popped it a ricocheting course around the mirrored sink alcove. It infuriated him. Everything conspired to irritate him out of all reason, and he set the bottle down with measured control and shaved the scant amount he had to.