So, so convenient to have a link to troublesome Jordan in those years, not informational, since there was hardly anything a ten-, a thirteen-year-old azi knew in the House that she did not.
But one never knew—when it might be of use.
She finished the salad, chatted with Giraud while the serving staff took away the plates and brought in the next course: a fine ham. Terrestrial pigs thrived at Reseune, on the residue of the gardens, in sufficient numbers to provide seed stock for several other farms. Pigs and goats, humankind’s oldest and hardiest foodstock, with sense enough not to poison themselves on a stray sprig of native shrubbery.
Horses and cattle had the damnedest self-destructive bent.
“Do you know,” she said, over the dessert, a simple ice, tangy and pleasant. “We are going to have to make some far-reaching adjustments in staff.”
Amazing how many ears were pricked at table, and how quiet a room could get, when she was only speaking to Denys.
“I really don’t anticipate any difficulty with the Hope bill.” They were all listening now, not pretending to do otherwise. She smiled at her family, put down the spoon and picked up the little cup of strong coffee. “You know how to read that. No difficulty. Forget the news reports. Everything is proceeding tolerably well on schedule, and we have a very exciting prospect in front of us…certainly a very exciting prospect, a military psych facility at Fargone—in addition. Which is going to make a real difference in operations here. You can congratulate Jordan for laying the groundwork—really, just everything that may put the Hope route in our laps; and the new labs; everything. That’s what’s going on. Jordan should have a lot of the credit for that.”
Jordan’s face was absolutely devoid of expression. “Let’s drop the pretense. We’re home, we’re not in front of the cameras.”
Ari flashed a smile. “Jordan, I don’t bear you the least ill will. I’m sorry if that offends you, but you’ve done Reseune—and me—a great favor. I truly don’t begrudge you the rewards of it.”
“The hell!”
Ari laughed gently and took another sip of coffee. “Jordie, dear, I know you’d like to have upstaged me with this; but as it happens, Gorodin came to me, and I’m going to give you everything you asked for, on a platter. You’ll get that long-awaited transfer, you and anyone in your wing who wants to go to Fargone, just as soon as the official request for military liaison comes down the tubes.”
“What is this?” Yanni Schwartz asked.
“I don’t say it’ll be a bad thing,” Ari said quite honestly, still smiling. “I’m not pulling surprises on you, Yanni—Jordan pulled this one on me. I think everyone should think about it, those who’ll prefer to go out to the frontier, those who’d rather stay with the comforts of Reseune—God knows, some of us would miss ham and fresh fruit. But the opportunities out there are worth thinking about.” Another sip of coffee, slow and thoughtful, watching Jordan’s eyes like a fencer. “The Educational wing here will continue, of course. There are some of you we can’t transfer, you understand that. We’ll have to restructure here, rather well replicate the whole wing—” A little wider smile. It was a joke. Suli Schwartz woke up, a quick look around to see if people were supposed to laugh. “Jordie, you’ll have to lay out some recommendations.”
“Of course,” Jordan said. “But I’m sure you’ll use your own list.”
She laughed, to keep it polite. “You know damn well I will. But I really will respect your choices wherever I can—after all, I’ll assume anyone on your list wants to transfer, and I’ll assume you want them. Yanni, you can deal with Jordie on that.”
There was a growing wariness behind the attentive faces. Young Suli finally seemed to have understood what was going on, perhaps to have figured out for the first time in his life what it was to sit in this room on Family Occasions, and not with the juniors down the hall. No one moved, not the Family, not the azi at the tables round about.
A sonorous clearing of the throat from Denys. “Well,” he said, “well, Ari, after all—” Another clearing of the throat. “I don’t suppose we could have some of those little cookies we had last night, hmmn?” Wistfully.
“Yes, ser,” a server said, close by the door, and slipped out, while Denys ladled sugar into his coffee.
“Hum. The essential thing is Reseune, isn’t it? Ari, Jordie, Yanni, really, we all have the same thing at heart, which is the freedom to do our work. We all hate these administrative messes, we all do, it’s such a damned waste of our time and there’s so much more important on our desks than a lot of little regional authorities bickering away in Novgorod. I’m sure it’s important whether station administrators can or can’t hold stock in their own stations, but it’s just not the kind of thing that we ought to have to sit through—I mean, the whole idea of the Bureaus was never meant to take valuable people completely away from work. Council’s certainly no great inconvenience to Corain, or Chavez, or, God knows, Bogdanovitch, but it’s not really productive to have Gorodin on a short string, and Science, my God, Science is an absolute tragedy—I mean, really, Ari, it’s a dreadful waste of your time and energy—”
“I don’t know why,” Jordan said from his end of the table, with a wry lift of his wine-glass, a rivalry old as their existence in Reseune, dinner witticisms, “since Ari just considers the whole damned universe her province.”
Ari laughed, pro forma. Everyone was relieved. Everyone laughed, because to do other than that was an Incident, and no one wanted it, not even Jordan.
“Well, you’ll have your chance, won’t you?” she said. “The whole Hope route right off Fargone, and you’ll be working with old friends, so it’s not like you’ll be out there alone. If I were younger, Jordie, damned if I wouldn’t jump at it; but Denys is right. The politics is done, the whole course is laid, and I’m sure I’m anxious to get on about my work, you’re anxious to get yours underway. I hate like hell to drop another administrative job in your lap, but I really want your expertise. You’ve got to set us up another Educational wing here, really, really an opportunity for you to hand us on a legacy, Jordie, I’m very serious—”
“I left that in cryogenics,” Jordan said. Another small round of anxious laughter. “Do you want another sample?”
Ari chuckled and took a sip of her coffee. “What? Jordie, I thought you went the other way. But we do have a second source.”
Justin blushed. People turned to see if he had. There was another laugh, much too thin.
“I’m sure Jordie will cooperate,” Denys said, intervening before the knives came out: it was the ancient rule in this room—nothing unpleasant. One retaliated with wit here, nothing else, and not too far.
“I’m sure,” Ari said. And seriously: “We do have restructuring to do. I’m going to be doing some of my Council work by proxy, figuring it’s going to be a little tamer now we have the major projects mapped out. There really shouldn’t be any difficulty. I suppose I can fly down if they need me, but Denys is very right: I’m a hundred twenty years old—”
“You’ve got a few more,” Denys said.
“Oh, yes, but I see the wall—true.” The room was quiet again. “The Rubin project will take a great deal of my time. I’m not getting morbid. But you know and I know that there’s not an infinite amount of time for getting this thing moving. I’ll leave most of the Fargone set-up to you, Yanni. I’ll be asking data from this department and that. I’ll be wanting to oversee the process myself—just a desire to have hands-on again. Maybe a little vanity.” She chuckled softly. “I’m going to be writing on my book, doing a little side research—preparation. Retirement, I suppose.”
“The hell,” Jordan said.
She smiled, covered her cup with her hand when the server wanted to pour more coffee. “No, dear, I’ve caffeine enough to see me to my rooms. Which is where I ought to go, figuring that the floor is still going up and down—we had a bitch of a lot of turbulence over the Kaukash, didn’t we? And I don’t think I really slept in Nov
gorod. Catlin?”
A chair moved, and Catlin was there, and Florian with her. Catlin drew her chair back for her.
“Good night, all,” she said; and to Florian, quietly, as chairs went back and people began leaving: “Tell Grant I’m reclaiming him.”
“Sera?”
“I need him,” she said. “Tell him I’ve filed a new assignment for him. Jordan never did have legal custody of him. He surely realizes that.”
iii
“A moment,” the azi Florian said, when Justin and Grant started out the door after Jordan and Paul, in the general mill of family and azi headed their separate ways.
“Later,” Justin said. His heart began to pound, the way it did anytime he came near Ari or her bodyguards on anything but coldest business, and he took Grant by the arm and tried to get him out the door as Florian blocked Grant’s path.
“I’m very sorry,” Florian said, looking as if he were. “Sera has said she wants Grant. He’s assigned to her now.”
For a moment Justin did not realize what he had heard. Grant stood very still in his grip.
“He can retrieve his belongings,” Florian said.
“Tell her no.” They were blocking the Schwartzes from exit. Justin moved confusedly into the hall, drawing Grant with him, but Florian stayed with them. “Tell her—tell her, dammit, if she wants my cooperation in anything, he stays with me!”
“I’m terribly sorry, ser,” Florian said—always soft-spoken, soft-eyed. “She said that it was already done. Please understand. He should get his things. Catlin and I will watch out for him the best we can.”
“She’s not going to do this,” Justin told Grant, as Florian slipped back into the dining hall, where Ari delayed. He was cold through and through. His supper sat uneasy at his stomach. “Wait here.” His father was waiting with Paul a little down the hall, and Justin crossed the distance in a half-dozen strides, face composed, showing no more, he hoped, than an understandable annoyance; and please, God, not as pale as he was afraid it was. “Something’s come up with a project,” he told Jordan. “I have to go see about it.”
Jordan nodded, had questions, perhaps, but the explanation seemed to cover it; and Justin walked back again to the doorway where Grant stood. He put a hand on Grant’s shoulder in passing, and went inside where Ari lingered talking to Giraud Nye.
He waited the few seconds until Ari deliberately passed her eye across him, a silent summons; she seemed to say something dismissing Giraud, because Giraud looked back too, then left.
Ari waited.
“What’s this about Grant?” Justin asked when he was face to face with her.
“I need him,” Ari said, “that’s all. He’s a Special geneset, he’s relevant to what I’m working on, and I need him now, that’s all. Nothing personal.”
“It is.” He lost control of his voice, seventeen and facing a woman as terrible as his father. He wanted to hit her. And that was not an option. Ari, in Reseune, could do anything. To anyone. He had learned that. “What do you want? What do you really want out of me?”
“I told you, it’s not personal. Nothing like it. Grant can get his things, he can have a few days to calm down—You’ll see him. It’s not like you’re not working in that wing.”
“You’re going to run tape on him!”
“That’s what he’s for, isn’t it? He’s an experimental. Tests are what he pays for his keep—”
“He pays for his keep as a designer, dammit, he’s not one of your damn test-subjects, he’s—” My brother, he almost said.
“I’m sorry if you’ve lost your objectivity in this. And I’d suggest you calm yourself down right now. You don’t have your license to handle an Alpha yet, and you’re not likely to get it if you can’t control your emotions better than this. If you’ve given him promises you can’t keep, you’ve mishandled him, you understand me? You’ve hurt him. God knows what else you’ve done, and I can see right now you and I are due for a long, long talk—about what an Alpha is, and what you’ve done with him, and whether or not you’re going to get that license. It takes more than brains, my lad, it takes the ability to think past what you want, and what you believe, and it’s about time you learned it.”
“All right, all right, I’ll do what you want. He will. Just leave him with me!”
“Calm down, hear? Calm down. I’m not leaving him with anyone in that state. Also—” She tapped him on the chest. “You’re dealing with me, dear, and you know I’m good at getting my own way: you know you always lose points when you show that much to your opposition, especially to a professional. You get those eyes dry, you put yourself in order, and you take Grant home and see he comes with everything he needs. Most of all you calm him down and don’t frighten him any further. Where are your sensibilities?”
“Damn you! What do you want?”
“I’ve got what I want. Just go do what I tell you. You work for me. And you’ll show up polite and respectful in the morning. Hear me? Now go take care of your business.”
“I—”
Ari turned and walked out the door that led to the service area and a lift upstairs; Catlin and Florian barred his way, azi, and without choice.
“Florian,” she called from some distance, impatient, and Florian left Catlin alone to hold the doorway—the worse, because Catlin had no compunction such as Florian had, Catlin would strike him, and strike hard, at the next step beyond her warning.
“Go the other way, young ser,” Catlin said. “Otherwise you’ll be under arrest.”
He turned abruptly and walked back to the other door, where Grant stood, very pale and very quiet, witness to all of it.
“Come on,” Justin said, and grabbed him by the arm. Ordinarily there would be a slight, human resistance, a tension in the muscles. There was none. Grant simply came, walked with him when he let him go, and offered not a word till they were down the hall and in the lift that took them up to third level residencies.
“Why is she doing this?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Don’t panic. It’s going to be all right.”
Grant looked at him, a fragile hope that hit him in the gut, as the lift stopped.
Down the hall again, to the apartment that was theirs, in a residential quiet-zone, only a handful of passersby at this hour. Justin took his keycard from its clip on his pocket and inserted it with difficulty in the slot. His hand was shaking. Grant had to see it.
“No entries since last use of this key,” the monitor’s bland voice said, and the lights came on, since that was what he had programmed his Minder to do for his entry at this hour, all the way through the beige and blue living room, to his bedroom.
“Grant’s here,” he mumbled at it, and more lights came on, Grant’s bedroom, visible through the archway leftward.
“I’ll get my things,” Grant said; and, the first sign of fracture, a wobble in his voice when he asked: “Shouldn’t we call Jordan?”
“God.” Justin embraced him. Grant held on to him, trembling in long, spasmodic shivers; and Justin clenched his own arms tight, trying to think, trying to reason past his own situation and the law inside Reseune which said that he could not protect the azi who had been a brother to him since he could remember.
Grant knew everything, knew everything that he knew. Grant and he had no difference, none, except that damning X on Grant’s number, that made him Reseune property as long as he lived.
She could interrogate him about Jordan, about everything he knew or suspected, test systems on him, put him under tape with one structure and another, put sections of his memory under block, do any damned thing she wanted, and there was no way he could stop it.
It was revenge against his father. It was a hold on him, who, the same way Grant had just been transferred, had been Aptituded into Ari’s wing. Let her, he had said to his father. Let her take me into her staff. Don’t contest it. It’s all right. You can’t afford a falling-out with her right now, and maybe it’s a good place for me to be.
>
Because he had had a notion then that his father, harried with plans (again) for getting a transfer, could lose too much.
You tell me, Jordan had said with the greatest severity, you tell me immediately if she makes trouble for you.
There had been trouble. There had been more than trouble, from his second day in that wing—an interview with Ari in her office, Ari too close and touching him in a way that started out only friendly and got much too personal, while she suggested quietly that there was more reason than his test scores that she had requisitioned him into her wing, and that he and Grant both could…accommodate her, that others of her aides did, and that was the way things were expected to be on her staff. Or, she had hinted, there were ways to make life difficult.
He had been disgusted, and scared; and worst of all, he had seen Ari’s intention, the trap laid—slow provocations, himself the leverage she meant to wield against Jordan, a campaign to provoke him to an incident she could use. So he had gone along with it when she put her hands on him, and stammered his way through reports while she sat on the arm of his chair and rested her hand on his shoulder. She had asked him to her office after hours, had asked him questions, pretending to fill out personnel reports, and he mumbled answers, things he did not dwell on, things he did not want even to remember, because he had never even had a chance to do the things she asked him about, and never wanted in his life to do some of the things she talked about; and suspected that without tape, without drugs, without anything but his own naivete and her skill, she was in the process of twisting his whole life. He could fight back—by losing his capacity to be shocked, by answering her flippantly, playing the game—
—but it was her game.
“I’ll think of something,” he said to Grant. “There’s a way out of this. It’ll be all right.” And he let Grant go off to his rooms to pack, while he stood alone in the living room in the grip of a chill that went to his bones. He wanted to phone Jordan, ask advice, whether there was anything legal they could do.