Sam kept company with his significant other, Maria. She looked very nice in a white lace-edged skirt—was a little tanned, a little freckled, a little on the well-fed side, and was very anxious, clinging close to Sam and thus far speaking to no one without being spoken to. But it was nice to have somebody find a relationship who wasn’t a security problem, and if Sam liked her, she had to have special qualities. Give Maria plenty of latitude—because it was, in a very major way, Sam’s evening, and he deserved to be absolutely happy. Ari found the chance to say so, in the way of welcoming everyone officially.
“This is all Sam’s doing, all this place. He’s worked so hard. How do you like the new wing?”
That was a set-up question. Of course they all had to say yes, and Sam blushed, and looked at Maria, and Maria looked at him with a little blush of her own, adoring, so sweet it was acutely embarrassing.
At least she didn’t need to single Maria out for a special introduction: most present knew Maria, and Sam took care to introduce her to anyone else in range, even Patrick, who hastily wiped crumbs from his fingers—on his coat—and extended a hand. “This is Maria Wilkins-Teague,” Sam said, beaming. “She’s from the AG wing. This is Patrick Emory. He’s Sera Ariane Emory’s cousin.”
Wilkins-Teague. Freckles and curious mixed-color eyes, mostly green. Ari had only rarely met the name of Teague, more often the Wilkinses. Definitely not one of the Families of Reseune, not at all common names in the CIT lists, which repeated a great deal. But Maria had never even had a security reprimand, not from her very outdoor childhood. And she didn’t wipe her fingers on her skirt.
Sam made his way across the room to pay his respects officially, did so: “Ari, you know Maria.”
“Of course,” she said. “So glad you’ll be a neighbor, Maria.” And Maria blushed brighter than Sam and said, softly, with, God help her, a kind of little curtsey. “Thank you, sera. Thank you so much.”
“My pleasure,” she’d said. “Anyone Sam likes is all right. I’d be jealous if Sam wasn’t my brother. You’ve got a good one in him.”
“I know I have,” Maria said, and hesitated over an offered tray of pricey imported cheese and crackers while Sam asked Ari matter-of-factly how the tank plumbing and water system was working.
“Fine,” Ari said. “Absolutely not a glitch.” Which showed where Sam’s mind was today, besides Maria. He was looking around, up and down, seeing all the forms and the conduits and the works of the place, and he just wanted everything he’d done to work right, all the switches and all the plumbing.
She loved him tremendously for that. And Maria had finally taken a peppery piece from the tray and now looked as if the taste wasn’t at all what she wanted. Ari pretended not to notice, and Sam, with finesse, simply took it in his big hand and ate it on his way, hooking Maria’s arm, as it proved, to show Maria the workings of the electronic glass, which switched on and off in the next moments.
Ari wended her own way over to the olders. “How do you find your apartments?” she asked in general.
“Big,” Yanni said, in Yanni’s way. “My furniture’s kind of swallowed up.”
“But is it all right?”
“Nice,” was Yanni’s answer. “The garden’s infested with fast little things. They ate one of the bugs. I take it they take care of themselves. Where does the shit go? Or are we supposed to clean it?”
She was amused. “There’ll be maintenance, Yanni. Trust me.”
“You don’t need my beetle, now, do you?”
She kissed him on the cheek. “It’s in my study,” she said, “holding down my important papers, right along with Giraud’s butterfly. And I will never, never in my life think he’s superfluous.”
“Go on with you,” Yanni said. “Carry on this way and there’ll be talk.”
She laughed, moved on, and snagged Justin’s arm next—in such a happy mood she went up on tiptoe and kissed Justin’s cheek, next. “You’re a dear,” she said. Justin had tried to turn, but she held fast.
“A dear, am I? That old?”
“Not nearly too old,” she said, and caught Grant’s arm on the other side, and walked them both to the waterfall hall, where there was a bit more room, and the sunset sky overhead. “I absolutely meant what I wrote in the note. I want my lessons. I need them, understand, I really desperately need them right now.”
“Is my father behaving himself?”
The designs Jordan was doing, Justin meant. “He’s dropped a bug in. Naturally. It went back. Naturally. I’m sure he’ll clean that out and add another one.” It was funny, and it wasn’t. She didn’t kiss Grant. She hugged his arm hard. “You take care of each other, hear me? It may be chancy in the next few years. I proved who I was in court, but a court ruling is one thing. By the time certain people figure out that I really am what the law says I am, I’m going to be in charge. I’m in charge of this wing, in a way I wasn’t ever, in Wing One. And this wing is coming alive, tonight. Reseune is going to know Base One is active again, not just tiptoeing around the edges. It can snatch control. It can lock out any other Base, just the way it did. I laid it down for a while, so far as people know, but it’s up and running full bore now. And as of tonight, Yanni’s still Director, but every operation in Reseune, down to the electronics on the precip towers, and the off-ons in the birth labs, they’re all reachable, if I want to reach them. It’s been true all along—I think you’ve suspected so. But now everybody in Reseune will know it. They’ll know it in the town tomorrow and I give it twenty-four more hours before it’s all over Novgorod and Planys.” She hugged Justin’s arm. “Your father will know it, right along with everybody else, and he’s likely to be upset, but I don’t want to upset him. I’m glad I’m working with him. It gives him an outlet for his frustration. Is that all right with you?”
“Fine,” was Justin’s answer, very proper, very quiet, and never quite looking at her.
“Justin, you’re not mad at me. Please say you’re not upset.”
He didn’t answer glibly, or at once. “Truthers running?”
“No,” she said. He looked at her then, quite soberly.
“I’m not upset. It’s a beautiful apartment. More than we earn, by a long shot. I just hope we won’t get a hell of a bill one of these days…in the physical or the metaphysical sense.”
“No,” she said. “You never will. Not that I have any control over. You paid it. All those years, you certainly paid for it. What you’ll do in future will pay for it. Don’t doubt that.”
“I want to design sets,” he said. “I’m a designer. That’s what I trained to be. I like doing that.”
“No doubt of it,” she said. “You and Grant—both. You’re going to do pretty well what you want to do. Teach me for another year. Maybe two. There are projects coming. Things on the drawing board that mean I need your advice. What you do—what you do is going to matter in the universe. And you’re not going to be wondering when the next security panic comes through. If it does, they’ll be protecting you.”
“That would certainly be a novelty” Justin said.
“No question of that,” Grant said.
“You’ve got what I gave you.”
“Yes,” Justin said, touching his coat pocket. “Does everybody have them?”
“No,” she said, the truth. “Do you like the apartment?”
“It’s not black and white,” Justin said, humor restored, and that made her happy.
“Lessons on Monday next?”
“Lessons Monday next. We still have to search up our office.”
Humor definitely back. She grinned and hugged his arm and Grant’s, and slipped free, happy, finally, because everybody was all right. For once, everybody was.
Then Florian turned up in her path, with a very businesslike look. “Sera,” Florian said.
Catlin was there, too.
And the happiness took a dive. Instantly. Florian’s eyes traveled further down the hall, where it became private, in front of the security
office, and she went there with him.
Florian said, “Sera, there was a bombing at Strassenberg.”
“At Strassenberg.” She was utterly floored. “What damage?”
“The precip tower’s down.”
“Damn.” It didn’t make sense. Strassenberg wasn’t a place anybody went. Yet. Except for the construction crew, the transport people, and a handful of sniffer pigs and handlers. “Anybody hurt?”
“Reports are still coming in,” Catlin said. “A perimeter alarm went off. ReseuneSec reports the alarm triggered was between the port and the barracks. Somebody attempted approach. They thought it was a platythere: they scrambled to deal with that. Then the tower came down.”
“No need to disturb the party, sera,” Florian said, “at this point. There is a general shutdown of perimeters, a search in progress, but it’s believed they got in by river, overland, not by using the port. ReseuneSec’s placed Reseune and Reseune Township on yellow alert; they have river patrols out, looking for the landing site. They re diverting flights to Moreyville.”
Strassenberg was several hundred klicks upriver, still in Reseune Administrative Territory. It was a long stretch of river to try to find anything human-sized—even a small boat. Reseune itself, on yellow alert, sat isolated in the midst of a no-fly zone, surrounded by hundreds of kilometers of unbreathable atmosphere and antagonistic flora and fauna. The Novaya Volga ran along its shore; it had an airport. Those were the two most likely approaches for trouble to take. Overland was too much work. But—
She saw, down the hall, Yanni and Frank, in process of leaving.
She went that way. Yanni delayed for her at the front door, by the waterfall.
“I heard.” she said. “Yanni, can I help?”
“I’ll handle it,” Yanni said. “Just carry on. We’re not going to make a big thing of it. Natural gas explosion. That’s what we’ll say.”
“It wasn’t, though.”
“Whole damn truckful of explosives by the look of it. You carry on, you and your young people. This is going to take some sorting out.”
“Go,” she said, and by this time cousin Patrick had shown up, tucking a napkin full of something into his coat pocket, one more piece of Admin on his way.
“Ari,” Patrick said, with a little bow, and then he followed Yanni and Frank out, alone—they didn’t wait for him.
“Searches are in progress,” Florian said, “there and here. We’re under a mild alert, nothing that should bother the guests.”
You didn’t get into Reseune by water that easily these days. The bots zapped anything small; they reported anything big. The big machines that channeled the wild part of the river—they didn’t let things in easily, either. Somebody had gotten to Strassenberg a short distance overland, she’d bet on it. There was legitimate shipping that got close enough to it. You landed, and there were no barriers on the river shore yet, nothing like Reseune.
“Why?” she asked, the big why, but she wasn’t surprised when Florian and Catlin both shrugged an I-don’t-know.
“We’re hoping to find out, sera.”
“Understood,” she said, and thought, damn. She knew she had a worried, unhappy expression on her face, and tried to amend it as she walked out into the living room, but maybe Yanni and Patrick hadn’t been too discreet in their departure: heads turned. Conversation, already at a low ebb, died.
“We’ve got a problem,” she said. “Tower blown upriver at the new construction, definitely hostile action, but that stays under this roof. We don’t know why or what. We’re under a mild security alert here: if you’re going anywhere else this evening, use the storm tunnels.”
“Damn,” Amy said, just, “Damn.” And conversation stayed dead for a moment.
“Well,” Ari folded her arms and looked at the rest of her guests. “So we’re stuck here. Anybody want to follow this on the System?”
“Is somebody possibly on the grounds?” Maddy asked.
“Unknown, sera,” Catlin said. “But this wing is secure. Also secure: Admin, Ed, Labs A, B, C, and D. Search of Residencies A and B proceeding. Search of grounds proceeding, cascading alert. All AG notified.”
“Slow,” Ari muttered. She’d had time to hold converse, and they were just now closing up AG? “They can move faster than that.”
Storm sirens blew. Finally. They advised anyone out to get under cover, into the storm tunnels. Lethals might be patrolling the grounds: the little weedzappers, which already had a camera function, turned suddenly nasty and helping defenses target any response. It wouldn’t be a time to be walking around out there.
“Well,” Maddy said with a nervous little laugh. “I’ll stay in the Wing tonight. Champagne, anyone?”
There were takers, most of the party, and staff moved about seeing to it.
“It’s just become a dinner party,” Ari said. “In case any of you had planned on elsewhere after this: we’ll be serving something, and serving late, Joyesse, go tell Wyndham so.”
“Yes, sera,” Joyesse said.
“Catlin, tell Wes put the security screens up.”
“Yes,” Catlin said. Florian was in the hall, checking something, probably conversing with Wes and Marco, maybe communicating with Rafael and company.
The fish tank went opaque, dark blue. Then the other wall came alive with images, some with sunset darkening to night, showing the downed tower from a perspective below the cliffs, some with numbers, and one showing the view from a bot scurrying at turf level across Reseune grounds.
“Ari.” Justin came up at her elbow. “My father. I’d like permission to leave.”
Above all else she didn’t want Justin running around in the dark with the whole complex under alert. No was the reflexive answer.
But she couldn’t hold on to him. Or she’d lose him. She understood that.
“I’m going to be a spacecase until you get back. You’ve got Mark and Gerry with you. Get your father on the phone. Be sure he’s all right before you go anywhere. Security may have moved. Mark and Gerry can pull rank.”
“I—” he started to protest, but the security comment quieted any objection.
“Thank you,” Grant said, and the two of them went for the door, while she advised Marco to have Mark and Gerry meet them somewhere before the security desk.
Amy drifted over to her side, champagne glass in hand. “Something up with Jordan?”
“Not in play,” she said to one of her oldest co-conspirators. “Whatever’s going on, if it’s Paxers, or if it’s not, Jordan’s a piece worth pinning down. Justin’s just going to tell him we care.”
Amy nodded, took a slow sip of champagne. Quentin was over with Florian and Catlin, getting information, watching the screens, which weren’t apt to change much this far into the emergency. Just the little robot skittering along in the dark, gone to night-vision.
From Novgorod to Moreyville, even in Big Blue and faroff Planys, that scene was playing. The world was on alert.
Wonder if they knew, Ari asked herself. Wonder if this is specially for me. Another housewarming gift.
That implied a certain knowledge of the inner workings of Reseune—where the fact of so many relocations into Alpha Wing had, in fact, created quite a stir, and quite a lot of gossip.
The storm sirens still blew. Not a physical storm in the offing—but a storm, all the same.
BOOK THREE Section 3 Chapter vi
JULY 3, 2424
1934H
Two security were in the lower hall, black-uniformed, rattling with full kit, including seldom-worn helmets, and on an intercept. It didn’t make quiet company, but they were earnest types—Mark and Gerry, their names were. They hadn’t had time to introduce themselves formally—two lanky, tall azi, a lot alike: Mark, a serious fellow and Gerry a little less so: Justin actually recalled their files; but both were deadly serious at the moment.
“Ser,” they called him, and they said “ser,” to Grant, too, keeping their pace with no effort at all.
&
nbsp; “We’re going to Ed,” Justin said. “My father lives there. I want to be sure he’s all right, considering what’s going on.” He had his ordinary pocket com. He punched the fast-response buttons as they exited the lift toward the security station, and let it ring.
And ring.
“Brilliant,” he said to Grant. “He’s not home and he’s not answering.”
“Probably out at dinner,” Grant said.
“Ten thousand-odd people are probably caught out at dinner.” They reached the desk and Justin showed his keycard. “Sera’s direct permission,” he said. “Out to Ed, personal.”
“Yes, ser,” the guard said. “Stay to the tunnels.”
“Absolutely.” They went out the door, into the familiar storm-tunnel level of Wing One, and took an immediate left, Mark and Gerry rattling along behind. The sirens were intermittent now, as they were during a storm. The main corridor as they came out of Wing One and into the area of Admin was full of traffic, people generally in a fair hurry, one direction and the other, most trending the same direction they were going, which led, as the rim of a great box, through the Ed tunnels and over to the Residencies and the Labs. Anybody from the Township was going to have a long wait for buses or a long hike, via the Labs, to the second tier of storm tunnels and shelters…and there were people with children, one upset lost child—the father came and swept the lost boy up out of the bewildering traffic just as they came in range: the father and his partner had four others in their group, and tried to urge them to more speed.
“It’s all right,” Justin said as he came up with the harried father. “It’s a precautionary alert. No rush.”
Others heard, shouted out, “What’s going on?” and Justin yelled, “Precautionary alert. Damage upriver is all.”
He didn’t know if he made a dent in the distress, but a little further on, just as they were leaving Admin, Yanni’s voice came over the general address:
“This is Director Schwartz. The alert is downgraded to level three. Those with indoor business are advised to pursue it with attention to level three cautions. Repeat…”