And, oh, Denys knew by then he hadn’t won any favors of me, and I suppose I should, have kept my feelings a little more secret. Denys had wanted. Giraud back so desperately.
But Giraud had never been just for Giraud. That was the difference a little love had made, and Giraud might have interpreted their mother’s hammering away at him as a kind of love—in his own way, he might have taken it for that. Giraud was, of the two, far more the wild card. Giraud would attach, sooner or later.
If I knew I had a sister who wasn’t reproduced, I’d feel deprived, wouldn’t I? And knowing it would fester, and turn toxic in the process…so maybe I’m wrong. I won’t know. I won’t know for a few years. I’ll see if Giraud asks the question.
A lot of things will change in Reseune. Or maybe I’m deluding myself…trying to change some things back to what they were twenty years ago.
My letter’s had time to get to Fargone. An answer could be coming back to me as I write this. Maybe even the people I invited have gotten on a ship and they’re coming here. I’ll know, before Giraud is born, what the answer is from all those people I wrote to.
We aren’t making any progress to speak of on the Patil investigation. They’ve hauled in some Paxer elements, the usual. The investigation at Planys is slow: there are two CITs from Big Blue, and before that, from Novgorod: they’d been in the University. Hadn’t everybody, when Centrists, Abolitionists, and Paxers were the radical chic? They passed a questioning under trank. Patil’s still dead, and likely to stay that way—but we have her geneset on file. So never bet on it.
There haven’t been any other cards turning up in people’s pockets.
We still assume the two events, the card with Patil’s name, and Patil being murdered, were connected.
And the rest of it just boils down to a lot of police work, sifting hundreds of records of people who were put into Planys during the War, because of radical connections or Defense-connected projects—wasn’t that a brilliant mix? Everybody’s background has suspicious connections, because Defense used to shove anybody called “essential to the war effort” into Planys. And then Reseune, in Yanni’s time, moved in Jordan, who’s not the sort to be quiet or suffer fools.
The same with the University: Expansionist professors and Centrist professors, some that Defense moved down-world for protection, and the ones they taught, and then those that couldn’t take the pressured environment and just got jobs out in the city. It’s an odd, odd network in the University, not like Reseune at all: most of the professors have contacts in the city, and they live all over, some in the University neighborhood and some clear over in the port area, and it’s very hard to track what their contacts are. There’s just no information in Novgorod that isn’t tangled.
We have too many suspects, not too few. Patil hadn’t socialized with the radicals, but they clustered around her.
And Thieu was connected to her and Jordan. And he worked for Defense.
I wish I knew who’d pushed that card on Jordan. It almost makes me think Jordan is innocent of involvement. He’s innocent of an unusual number of things he was almost involved in. I find that odd enough to constitute a watch-it.
But I’m taking measures to protect everyone I can. And when I set up the new wing, I have to decide who’s in, and who’s out, the way it was when we were kids.
There’s Stef Dietrich. He’s been on the outs with us for a long time. He used to be one of us, but he’s a troublemaker when it comes to sex, and he can’t settle with anybody—people just don’t trust him. I don’t think I want to bring him in.
There’s Amy and Maddy and Sam, them first; Justin and Grant; Yvgenia Wojkowski’s in a relationship that won’t pass muster: if she asks, I’ll tell her that—it won’t make her happy, but at least she’ll know what her choice is. There’s Tommy and Mika Carnath; they’re definitely in; there’s Stasi Ramirez—she’s in; Will Morley: he’s all right, but his girl friend isn’t—another Yvgenia case. Pity Yvgenia’s boyfriend and Will’s girlfriend aren’t interested in each other. And there’s Dan Peterson—he’s got an azi companion, a beta, who’s all right: I checked. And there’ll be Valery, if he comes home, and there’s room for Gloria Strassen, who probably hates me; and Julia, who’s Maman’s real daughter; but she’ll probably tell me go to hell. That’s all right: I hope she does and she won’t be my responsibility.
I suppose I’m going to move in poor old Patrick Emory. He’s not that old, he’s just dull and a little odd, but then he’s my only living real relative but one, so for once in his life somebody’s going to be nice to him. And my aunt… God, my Aunt Victoria. She’s probably going to refuse to move, but there’s room if she wants to. I won’t leave her out. Nobody would dare do that. But I hope she’ll tell me go to hell, too. She’s still offended I exist, and she’d gladly pull the plug on Giraud, never mind Denys. And I think she’s immortal.
I hope Valery comes. I so much want to see him.
But there’ll be room, too, in that wing, for people that aren’t born yet.
You, maybe. I’ve no idea who’ll bring you up. Amy would be one of the best. But that’s, I hope, a long, long time from now.
BOOK THREE Section 3 Chapter iii
JULY 3, 2424
1405H
There wasn’t much to pack, and staff handled most of it. For herself, Ari just put together a bag that held her essential makeup, her current notebooks, her study tapes, anything security-sensitive, and Poo-thing—poor raggedy Poo-thing couldn’t make the transition to a new life in the bottom of some box.
She took her bag on her shoulder. She met Florian and Catlin, who had also packed their personal items—many of them lethal, she was quite sure, or at least classified, and this time when they went out to go to the new wing, they didn’t take the runabout. They took the ordinary mid-hall lift down, the three of them, and walked into the ell that had always been a dead end, keyed their way through a door that had only opened this morning, to a reception by her security—Rafael himself was on duty—and then to a lift that you had to have a key for.
The lift took them up to the upstairs hall of the new wing.
And it was marvelous. A gray carpeted floor had a ribbon of bright blue rippling down the middle and along the edges—weaving and interweaving not so much that one wanted to follow that path, but providing a hint of cheerful whimsy she would lay bets was Sam’s personal notion, not Maddy’s.
She hadn’t seen it in its final preparation. She deliberately hadn’t seen it in the month and a half Maddy and Sam had been doing all the work here. Her paintings—the first Ari’s—stayed where they were, in Ari’s apartment, to wait there until her successor made a decision, and by the time it was her successor’s successor in question, the first Ari’s apartment would probably become irrelevant, to that centuries-from-now world, its content just scattered where it made sense to go.
But the artwork on the first Ari’s walls had been only a fraction of the collection. Paintings in the modern mode were spaced along the walls of this corridor, turning the gray and white expanse into segments you could say belonged to the green painting, or the red one—nothing of the sterile black and gray and white surrounds of Wing One. Alpha Wing, still smelling of paint and plaster and the attendant moisture, was a different world, a profound change from where she’d always lived. Very, very unlike anything Denys would approve.
And the double doors that each gave access to various apartments down the hall—they weren’t black, or beige, or one of twenty variations on white: one pair of doors, apartment 10, was red, 9 was blue, and 8 was bright green.
Her own doors, at the end of the hall, were as blue-green as new Cy-teen leaves, and when Florian unlocked them, they gave way silently onto her waterfall, bubbling and flowing down a wall that could have been natural rock, and making a soft sound to welcome them.
The miniature brook, lighted underneath the glass, ran right across under the stonework hall floor, and meandered off into the living room. She followe
d it there, and just stopped and set down her bag, and looked around her and up at the tank, the immense tank that sparkled with ripples and moved with small living fish and shadowed with living rocks and waving sea life. That watery wall reflected off the unbreakable glass that topped the cross-floor river, so that the river underneath her feet was brown rock and flowing fresh water, and when she looked across the room, the glass top of the river reflected the Earth-ocean that was the wall.
The ocean suddenly vanished. It was directional glass, and Florian demonstrated the wall control, “if sera wants to have it plain,” Florian said, “it will vanish. The light is still on, on the other side. Sam sent us the instructions.”
She looked away, turning slowly. Paintings. Framed colors, on the severe stone walls. The master artisans of Earth.
Part of the living room wall was garden behind glass—the wall that divided the living room from the dining room turned out transparent, with that kind of glass, just like the other. It could turn opaque at the flick of a switch, making the wall something else, making the dining room or the living room a private, undistracted area at need.
And the living room, even with the furniture, was big enough for several large sets of people to sit and talk at once—in some privacy. The water-sound permeated the space, luxurious, and peaceful. Florian switched both walls back to transparency, and the ocean and the garden were instantly back.
It was everything Sam had promised. It was magical, top to bottom. She’d wanted to be surprised, and she was overwhelmed. Florian and Catlin looked around as she did, their own baggage left in the foyer.
Catlin asked:
“Are you happy with it, sera?”
“Very. Very.”
And there was no Sam. She’d thought he might be here to meet her, but he wasn’t, which was like him—just to have his work make its own declaration. He’d done it all: everything was going to be fresh, from the dinner plates in the dining room—rose-colored pottery, mostly—to the couches, blue, just as she’d asked, but they turned out a grayed blue that went better with the stonework and the water and the plants behind the glass.
It all just fit, a harmony of sound and color that reached right into the senses. It was hers, in a way no place she had ever been had been hers. Maddy had helped do this. So had Amy, in the organizational sense, finding all the pieces Sam wanted. They’d given her this wonderful place, and she loved them. And Yanni was going to talk about the cost, but she’d told them—do it with their own places. Do it everywhere. Make it right.
She was happy, she decided. Really, really happy. She’d been so scared it wouldn’t feel right to her, and it wouldn’t be home.
But it was. It was home even when she’d never been here before.
BOOK THREE Section 3 Chapter iv
JULY 3, 2424
1628H
Through with work for the day. Dinner over at Antonio’s, one of their older haunts, over in the main wing, and home again, or that was the direction they were going, in Justin’s intentions—himself and Grant, homeward bound for an entertainment vid they’d looked forward to, and with every intention of spending a quiet evening with absolutely nothing pressing to do.
But the door security at Wing One said, as they came through into the Wing: “Just a moment, ser. There’s a message for you.”
Message from whom was the instant question. Jordan or Yanni were the two fast guesses.
It turned out to be a note which the guard called up on his handheld with a few button-pushes, and it started out, “Justin, don’t be mad.”
That was Ari. He didn’t even need to read the next line to be sure it was going to be something he wouldn’t like, a bad surprise about Jordan, or—
“Your stuff has all been moved. Most of it, anyway, and the rest will be by the time you get back. Don’t worry about a thing If you want anything else from the apartment that didn’t get transferred, you can get it—just ask security.
“Go down to the storm tunnels the usual way, go to your left, to where there used to be a dead end, in C corridor. There’s a big door there today. To get to the new wing, just use your regular keycard and walk through the doors. Security on the other side will let you in, give you your new keycards, and tell you where to go. I really hope you like it. Love, Ari.”
Love? Love? was it?
And moved?
“Thank you.” he said to the guard.
“You’re welcome, ser.”
They walked on. He reached the point of decision, at the corner by the lift, and said, “I suppose there’s no real reason to go to our apartment, is there?”
“I suppose the vid will show up eventually,” Grant said. “It probably got switched over to the new system anyway.”
“We’d better try the route,” Justin said. “Find out what we’re into.”
They took the lift down to the tunnels. C corridor had always had a nook in it. They’d seen it on a fairly frequent basis since they’d come to Wing One. Two days ago he’d swear it had still had a nook in it.
Today it had a clean new doorway with a card slot and no labeling whatsoever except: ID AND KEYCARD REQUIRED.
He shoved his card in. The door opened. They went through. Another guard, in the glass-enclosed foyer, sat at a desk. The guard said pleasantly, “Justin Warrick, Grant ALX. Your keys. Your apartment is upstairs on the third floor, number 2. Your office will be on the first floor, number 28. Take the lift.”
“My keycard,” he said, and the guard returned it.
“Use the new card in the lift, ser.”
“Right,” he said, and he and Grant went into the lift. Grant hit 3, and they rose fast.
“With authority,” Grant commented. And the door let them out into a corridor with gray carpet—gray carpet, with a ripple of blue threading down its length. Abstract pictures hung at intervals, each one a bright color that played off the last one.
The place smelled of paint and plaster. And they walked. It was ghostly quiet. Deserted.
“Are we the only ones here, I wonder?” he asked.
“Not a sound,” Grant said.
“I can understand the suddenness,” he said. “Her security requirements. But, God…”
“It is certainly a surprise,” Grant said.
On the analogy of other moves, it would likely be thorough…and might include the rented vid. If there was a vending chit forgotten at the bottom of a drawer, he had every confidence that it was going to be swept up, installed in a neat box of “we don’t know where this goes” items, but it would be there. Anything that seemed like personal property was likely going with them.
It wouldn’t, however—a stray and irritated thought, from experience—include the electronic list in the minder, all his phone numbers and addresses. He remembered the color-coded office supplies.
And his minder file was precisely the sort of thing a security operation was going to peel out and go over with a microscope before they gave it back to him—but if he asked nicely they might stream it onto the new minder, in the new place, for his convenience.
That prospect annoyed him, in advance of the event, no matter that there wasn’t a thing in it he cared if they knew.
“They’ve moved our office again,” Grant commented.
“And, damn it all, we just got the pictures hung!”
“They might move them, too,” Grant said. “Or not. Maybe they’ve provided some.”
High-handed security touched off old twitches, no question, visions of little rooms and endless questions.
But this Ari was not the enemy, and she was keeping herself alive, and presumably taking care of those she deemed close to her. It was just one more step toward a life that, nervous as it made him, wasn’t going to be the quiet life he’d tried to make for himself and Grant. It wasn’t going to be inconspicuous, or safe—probably he lacked all power to do any damned thing in his career henceforward but serve as her backup, checker, and sounding board, but hell, he wasn’t ambitious. He’d survived
this far. That had, all along, been the name of the game. Never mind the job classification. Never mind personal aspirations. Just stay alive.
They walked. Doors on the left and right, very widely spaced. “Big apartments,” he said to Grant. There was number 10, 8, 6—all evens in this hall. And a corner.
Number 1, a blue-green door, occupied an enormous stretch of hall, and right across from it—
“Number 2,” Grant said.
There was a red door on the right, number 4, then, occupying the middle, number 2, a bright green one, and beyond that, finishing that corridor before another bend, gold number 3 and blue number 5.
“Right across from her,” he said tentatively. “Who are 3, 4 and 5, I wonder?”
“I have no notion,” Grant said, and used his new keycard on the door. It shot open.
The lights came on, brightened overhead, a high-ceilinged corridor with the illusion of mid-afternoon sky overhead—it drew the eye up, in total startlement, made one think, nervously, that it was a skylight.
But it went on brightening. There was the sound of water splashing, somewhere. And down the hall, beneath it—statuary, and pictures, old ones, classic ones.
Living room at the left. New furniture. Medium green couch. Abstract carpet pattern in rust browns. Classy. Goldtone metal edge on the coffee table in front of it. Big wall sculpture in brass and rust brown enamel, an explosion of angles. He just stood there, half-blocking Grant’s entry, until he realized that fact and walked all the way in.
Dining room, beyond that, in brass and glass, tiled floor like stone. A stream of water ran noisily down one wall, with a splashing sound that carried into the living room and the foyer.