“But to really understand either born-men or azi, or me, you have to understand feelings, and Uncle Denys was all turned inward. He understood what he wanted. He could predict what Uncle Giraud was going to do most of the time. He actually trusted Giraud, and after Uncle Giraud died, Denys didn’t trust anybody. He probably had confidence that Abban and Seely would do what their manuals said they had to do, but here’s the salient part: he didn’t, I think, have the least idea why they would do it. He was so far from being able to deal with azi on an individual level, it’s a wonder he got a non-provisional Supervisor’s certificate; I’m sure he finagled it, or Giraud got it for him. But don’t ever think he didn’t know azi, in the macro sense. He really did. His writings are brilliant, on economics stemming from azi populations turned CIT, macrosets in the largest sense, and profound integrations. I very, very much respect that work and I’m still reading it.
“And personally, one on one, he could smile and be sweet. He did favors for people, and he could tell in talking to them just what they wanted to hear—oh, he’d give them just exactly what would make them relax and believe him, and he could read that the way you’d read a book. But all that understanding of what people wanted to hear never got inside him, where he really lived, Inside he was all numbers, just numbers, and all the macroview, nothing micro at all. Much as I loathed Abban and Seely, I know he mishandled them terribly, and that may be their destiny again, because they’ll be Jus when he needs them.
“Maybe you see the situation clearer than I do, because emotions both make things clearer and obscure the truth. You can understand and manipulate people without experiencing empathy—sociopaths do that really well; but if you don’t know very clearly what your own objective is in the transaction, you can’t really understand what your own emotions are doing to you, and it’s easy to get confused. You can think you’re being really smart, when you’re really just getting by. I think that was Denys’ central trouble: he had a lot of the traits of a sociopath—totally self-interested, no empathy even for Giraud… And it’s not a flaw in him I feel safe correcting yet, or we could lose everything he was, intellectually.
“I’m just beginning work on my section of the tape you’ll get. And maybe I won’t tell you everything I could say right now, because you have to figure certain things out for yourself.
“My current decision is to let Ari One talk to you first, with the very same tape she gave to me, starting with your first log-on to Base One—for one thing, because it exists, and I can’t predict how long I’ll live. If things turn out the way I plan, you’ll have heard her voice for years before you hear mine.
“So you’ll come to know me, starting with this tape, if I haven’t created any others to precede it.
“One thing is relatively sure: that you won’t remember me. But you may know Justin, and Grant, and Yanni, and maybe you’ll deal with my Amy and Sam and Maddy. And maybe even my Florian and my Catlin, whom I love above all the world, though I may have to order them to die. They’re too powerful, and I honestly don’t know what they’d do without me, or if they could love an Ari who isn’t theirs. Most of all, they couldn’t be children with you. But I don’t want to think about that. Of all the things I suspect Ari One did, that’s the one I can’t stand. And yet it may have been absolutely necessary. It may have been the hardest and the kindest thing she ever did. I can’t think what would have happened if I hadn’t had my Florian and my Catlin when I was growing up. It would have changed everything.
“You see why, with all the questions I haven’t answered for myself, I may let Ari Senior talk to you first. She never grew too old for questions. But she could give you answers from a much longer view. That isn’t my perspective yet.
“I hope I have her years, to gain that sense. I hope I leave things in better order for you than she did for me. But I can’t promise it.
“So hello, Ariane, in case we’ve never met before. I can’t call myself your mother, because we’re probably both eighteen, and maybe when I’m old I’ll make early tapes for you, the way Ari Senior did for me, and you can decide what to do and which to give your own successor, or whether your successor should exist at all. The world shouldn’t just repeat itself. The advice the first Ari gave me may not apply to the world forever.
“Most of all I’m sorry for all you’ve been through. I understand. Of all people who’ve ever existed, I know what you’ve been through to get here. Hello, from a sister. Maybe that’s the way to think of me. Hello, and don’t trust anybody but your Florian and your Catlin.
“If you don’t have them, then someone has betrayed you.”
BOOK ONE Section 1 Chapter iii
APRIL 21, 2424
1448H
Ari flicked the camera off. Session ended.
How would she look to future eyes? Like mirror into mirror, for a girl who wasn’t born yet? Someone in an odd, outmoded style of dress telling another eighteen-year-old things she didn’t want to believe were true?
She couldn’t help the outmoded part. Her successor would see that tape at least on reaching her majority. That was the current plan—granted she, or someone, authorized her successor to exist. She would be the one to lay down the protocols under which her successor would get full access to that tape or any tape. She would decree the time at which the data and operational system that was Base One would open up to her successor.
On some future day of upheaval, or simply on an otherwise significant birthday, her successor would log on to her computer for the day, and Base One would start to tell her things that would shake her world.
Her own wakeup had come early. The program Ari Senior had written had made decisions and advanced the date of her majority and her assumption of power—catching Denys totally off guard. Was it wise of Ari to have done that?
Yes. She was alive. And Denys wasn’t. She hadn’t exactly killed Denys. But her defenses were indisputably lethal.
Fingers flew on the keys now that she hit the programming part, which she liked far better than talking into the camera. She’d keyboarded and coded since she could remember and did this part without thinking too much about the process, at least in replicating routines she’d lifted from the files that had taught her. The hands flew very fast as she linked modules, which was like taking chunks of thinking, like building blocks, and dragging them all together into a coherent program. Her moves dictated what would flow from that first session, and moved the defcons Ari Senior had created for her own tapes into position to protect and assess and seal that session from anyone’s future deletion—even her own later second thoughts. That was the way it worked—at least on the level she worked at, inside Base One. She needed to be better than she was, but she was good enough for this. She wouldn’t be able to get in and tamper, no matter if she had better thoughts later. If she interfered with what she was now, she couldn’t get her successor to be who she would be…
How was that for klein-bottle thinking?
BOOK ONE Section 1 Chapter iv
APRIL 22, 2424
1121H
Pre-lunch meeting, in a small conference room, not on the agenda: Dr. Sandur Patil, Yanni Schwartz was notified, had entered the Bureau of Science, was downstairs at the moment, and on her way up.
It wasn’t an extraordinary event: a professor registered in Science entered the offices of that bureau in Novgorod. But it was uncommon that such a visit would reach the attention of the Proxy Councillor for Science, and more unusual still that it would bring said Councillor to put on his coat and head down the hall to the back entry to an anonymous conference room.
In the capital, in an environment rife with media ferrets and political gossips, Yanni Schwartz found time, personally, to meet with Patil by a circuitous route. Technically she was one of his constituents, since Dr. Sandi Patil was a scientist, still registered to vote in Science, and he was Proxy Councillor of that Bureau…de facto Councillor. Lynch, erstwhile Secretary of Science, had been Proxy Councillor when Giraud died; Ly
nch had become Councillor for Science by succession, with the right to appoint a new Proxy Councillor: Yanni. So Yanni sat and voted in sessions, even though Lynch was in the city: it was a valid vote unless Lynch should rise up and repudiate it, which Lynch wasn’t going to do, being a timid sort; and the office staved, de facto, in Reseune, where it had always been.
And being Director of Reseune as well as Proxy Councillor—Yanni wielded a certain power as head of the Expansionist Party, which meant what he did politically was usually policy-setting in that party.
That was why, if any of the reporters outside the building had seen him meeting with Sandi Patil, it would have drawn notice—Dr. Patil being a particular darling of the Centrist cause, adored by the radical fringe of that group, though the majority of those registered in Science were Expansionist. She had voted against Giraud Nye, that was a near certainty. Now she arrived and proceeded as if she had business somewhere in the mundane administrative offices downstairs, some matter of records or certifications…then took the lift straight up to the administrative third floor, where a good Centrist was decidedly in foreign territory.
Yanni entered the conference room: his azi companion, Frank, was with him, but Frank went on through to the foyer. He had no other security present, unusual, in itself, for a Director of Reseune. His visitor, upward bound, didn’t have a wire or a bug: the moment she walked into the lift, Frank had made sure she was clean. She likely would expect someone like Frank to sit in on the meeting, but she had seemed skittish of this dealing, Yanni was forewarned of that, so he stationed Frank in the anteroom and settled alone at the head of the conference table, waiting—about, he trusted, to find out what Patil thought of the offer she’d gotten three months ago.
I need time to think, she’d told the Reseune aides who’d initially contacted her. They’d warned her that any indiscretion would cancel the offer. And for three months she hadn’t talked to anyone—not that they’d been able to track. That was encouraging.
Are the papers I have still valid? she’d asked, via the same contacts, after Denys Nye’s assassination.
Yes, she’d been told. She’d asked for a meeting with other aides last week—which was too much potential for noise: Yanni had insisted she meet with him this week, face to face. The Council of Nine was in session. The vote on a critical bill was at hand. So she came to the Science offices, and hadn’t talked to any reporters.
That cooperation didn’t surprise him. Patil had lived very quietly, avoided the news so far as she could, had gone silent when controversy had tried to attach to her name—and she’d been one around whom political storms could very easily have formed. She had common sense. She was an expert in her field. Centrists backed her. He had everything arranged to make it a bipartisan deal, if the interview went well. It was just the reporters and the public they didn’t want informed.
The woman who entered the conference room—Frank showed her in and left again—was fortyish in appearance, but the record said she was past a century: on rejuv, clearly. She was blonde, wore a chignon of braids—which might be her own—wore a stylish brown tweed suit and high black heels. Fashion plate. Compulsive in that regard. He’d heard that about her.
“Dr. Patil,” Yanni said pleasantly, rising to offer his hand. “Have a seat. Coffee?” Staff had provided a carafe, with two cups. Yanni poured one, for an opener.
“Thank you,” Patil said, and he poured another for himself.
“Quarterly break for you, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Patil said in a flat tone, and took the coffee he handed her.
Straight to business, then, with the warmth of a desert night. Yanni had a fortifying sip of his cup and sat down.
“I know you’ve read the offer,” Yanni said.
“I’ve read it.” Patil said. The beginning didn’t augur well. He had his own notorious temper, he knew Patil’s reputation as a bitch, and he wasn’t going to react. They were safe here, however, from the media and less stable elements of the population, and his contacts had indicated the woman was leaning toward acceptance. Discreet, difficult to read: and that was a plus, in terms of the offer they’d made her.
“And?” he said.
“Not going to change your mind on this project?” she asked.
Sore spot.
“I assure you. Giraud Nye set this one in motion. It still moves.”
“The position would be Wing Director in Reseune, at Fargone.”
“Yes.”
“Inside ReseuneSpace.”
“Yes.”
“Under an azi director.”
Well, there was a nasty little tone. Prejudice on that score occasionally did come from stationers, which she had been. It even occasionally turned up in the halls of Reseune, in certain places. It grated on him, in a major way. “Oliver Strassen is a CIT now, Dr. Patil. He’s been a CIT for some time. Social as they come and I’m sure you’ll enjoy his company.”
“Supposing I take this post, I’m to have this signal honor.”
He was, for one heartbeat, not sure they wanted her anywhere near azi, let alone in charge of a program where there would be thousands. She was the best at what she did: that was one reason they’d approached her, that, along with her Centrist connections.
But she wouldn’t be dealing with that aspect of the program. She’d be presiding over a station research installation, for cover, and she’d be well-insulated. “The deal has sat on the table for three months, Dr. Patil. We’ve answered all your questions, I trust. You’ve been free to consult certain advisors. We appreciate your discretion. Now do you have an answer for us?”
“Your influence, ser, got me hauled down onto this planet two and a half decades ago, cancelled a guaranteed program, shoved me into a teaching position, which is another honor I’d rather not have had. So now you want me to set up a lab, and I suppose you expect I should gratefully vote for you, if you stand in the next elections.”
Oh, she was absolutely everything his aides had said. Brilliant, a Special, a mind ranked as a national treasure. Specials weren’t necessarily nice people—a lot of them were downright eetee. The woman’s students either worshiped or hated her—according to their skills and personal tolerances. But they still enrolled. Nobody cared about a Special’s manners, where it came to her work.
“We haven’t said a thing about your voting your conscience, which I trust, being an ethical woman, you will do wherever you’re based. Hell, stand for Science yourself. You always could have done that.”
“Correction. Not easy in a military bubble, where politics has kept me for decades. Equally inconvenient to do that from a Reseune Security bubble at the end of space, where you want to send me. I detest the military. I detest Reseune. And you want me to work under a local Reseune director who’s absolutely guaranteed to be a by-the-book rule-follower.”
Ah. That was the concept. Maybe not an entirely irrational prejudice.
“If you knew Ollie Strassen you wouldn’t hold that opinion. And I’d have thought you’d gotten tired of graduate theses. You got caught in a situation, let me remind you, I didn’t personally choose. I still support the decision, for the record, but this post I’m offering you is vastly different; and it may, I hope, make some amends for your time in purgatory. Far-gone is a very comfortable place.”
“And I’d be under stringent security.”
“You were under that security at Beta, which has far fewer amenities than Fargone.”
“And how long would I be there? Eventually I foresee a hardscrabble station orbiting a snowball.”
“A living laboratory. Your laboratory, should you ever choose to view that world in person. But I think the proposal makes it clear—you’ll never be required to leave Fargone Station. You’ll work in a civilized, state of the art laboratory, handling everything from there…a three-month lag in information, necessarily, six on a query to the object of your operations and back again, but you’ll be in civilized surroundings, under perfectly innocuous cover, so
long as you yourself choose to be.” Give it a few years, and he’d bet that Eversnow would draw her out to the site. Hands-on work, a whole world for a lab, would draw Sandi Patil like an addiction: he knew her history She’d eventually get exasperated with the six-month timelag on her results and go to Eversnow herself…if she’d take the post in the first place. And nothing he had thus far heard from her discouraged him from enlisting her. “Let me be perfectly open with you,” he said quietly. “Yes, you got an infamously bad deal during the War—”
“I got an infamously bad deal, damned right. Yanked out of my own research. Lured onto this dustball for a huge program I worked on for fifteen years—that got canceled six weeks before it implemented, largely thanks to Reseune. Pardon me if I have just a little apprehension about agreeing to another Reseune operation.”
“There’ll be no going back on this.”
Patil stared at him, dark eyes in a pale face surrounded by pale hair, and right now there was no beauty, nothing but harsh, hard assessment. “And how long will you stay in office, Proxy Councillor? And how long until this kid comes along and cancels everything I’m working on, just the way her predecessor did?”
Blunt question.
“We advance it now,” he said carefully. “We get the project implemented. That way there’ll be no profit in not going ahead, and there’ll be, let me remind you, nothing like the die-off zones, nothing like woolwood. Or platytheres.”
“It’s a damn snowball!”