Cherryh, C J - Alliance-Union 08 (108 page)

An open door on the right again was the tape library, with a couch with all the built-ins for deep-study. He walked in and sat down there, set the vial down on the couch beside him and pulled off his sweater, feeling lightheaded. "I want Ari here," he said, "I want to talk to her."

"Yes, ser," Florian said. "There's no lead, ser, it's just a patch, let me help you."

"
I want to talk to Ari."

"I'm here," she said at the door. "I'm right here."

"Pay attention," he said shortly. And uncapped the vial and took his pill, while the cardiac monitor flashed red with alarms. He looked at the flashes and concentrated, willing himself calmer. "Your patient tends to panic, sera, I hope to hell you remember that."

"I'll remember," Ari said, very quietly.

He worked with the monitor, staring at that, concentrating only on the rate of the flashes. A thought about his father leaked through, about Grant, a single second, and the light flickered rapidly; slow, he thought, that was all, while the numbness started and panic tried to assert itself. He felt a touch on his shoulder, heard Florian urging him: "Lie down, ser, please, just lean back. I've got you."

He blinked, thinking for a moment of the boy-Florian, spinning through the years to Florian grown strong enough to handle his weight, Florian bending over him—

"Be calm, ser," his gentle voice said. "Be calm. Are you comfortable?"

He felt an underlying panic, very diffuse. He felt the numbness growing, and his vision started going out. His heart began to speed, frighteningly, run-away.

"Calm," Ari said, a voice that jolted through his panic, absolute. "Steady down. It's all right. Everything's all right. Hear me?"

"Has your father ever worked with these people?" Ari asked, sitting by the side of the couch, holding Justin's limp hand.

"No," he said. Which meant, of course, to the limit of Justin's knowledge. No, no, and no. She saw the cardiac monitor flash with a very strong rise in heart rate.

"Conspired with anyone against Reseune Administration?"

"No."

"Have you?"

"No."

Not conspiring with anyone. Against Reseune. Against Ariane Emory.

Justin, at least, was not aware of any plot.

"Don't you ever get frustrated with Security?"

"Yes."

"Do you think things will ever change?"

"I—hope."

"What do you hope?"

"Keep quiet. Live quiet. People believe me. Then things change."

"Are you afraid?"

"Always."

"Of what?"

"Mistakes. Enemies."

He hoped if he could work with her—it would prove something about himself and his father, in a calmer world—

He was afraid for Grant more than Jordan. Jordan had his Special's status to protect him. Grant—if they interrogated him—would be subject to things they might try to impose on him, ideas and attitudes they might try to shape— Grant would resist it. Grant would throw himself into null and stay there: he had before. But if they kept working at him—

If
he
were arrested, here, in Reseune, if Reseune Administration was determined to make a case, then they could do that. He thought that could be the case—that politics always mattered more than truth. And more than a Warrick life—always.

"Jordan's not a killer," Justin said. "He's not like that. Whatever happened was an accident. He made his mistake in trying to cover it, that's what I know happened."

"How do you know it?"

"I know my father."

"Even after twenty years?"

"Yes."

He was close to the upturn, when the drug would fade. And she was all but hoarse from questions and from strain.

She thought:
I almost know enough to take on what Ari did. Almost. But he's not the boy she worked with.

I could Work him to make him want me. So easily. So easily.

She remembered the tape, remembered it with sexual flashes that troubled her.

And thought, thinking of the possible intersections with so many, many knot-ups in his sets:
Damn, no.
Damn,
damn,
Ari, not so fast, not so reckless.

I could make him happy. I could take all of that away—

Politics is real and everything else takes second place,
he
knows that—There's that on top of everything that's wrong in him.

I could make him worry less. I can make him trust me more.

Is even that—fair? Or safe—in the world the way it is, or inside Reseune?

She got up, cut the recorder off and sat down on the edge of the couch beside him. She touched his face very gently, saw the monitor blips increase. "Hush, it's all right, it's all right—" she said, until she could get the monitor blips down again.

"Justin," she said when it was running even, "I believe you. You'd never hurt me. You'd never let me be hurt. I know all those things. I don't think they're going to make a move on Grant—not now that I've got you on record. I can tell my uncle what I have, and at the same time I'll tell him Grant's in my wing, and he'd better not move against him. That's what I'm prepared to do, because I believe you. Do you understand me?"

"Yes." A little flutter from the monitor.

"Don't be anxious about this place. This is my home. My predecessor isn't here anymore. That's all gone. That's all gone. You're safe here. I want you to remember these things. I can't get what I'd like out of hospital, without them knowing I'm doing this—but I want you to do the deep-fix for me, the way Grant could do it. Can you do that? Bear down hard, feel good, and remember this."

"Yes. . . ."

"I want you to think: I'm going to believe this forever. I promise you, if you trust me, if you come to me and if Grant comes to me when you need help, I'll do the best I can. You can rest now. You'll wake up feeling fine, and you'll be all right. Do you hear me?"

"Yes."

No flutter now, just a strong, steady beat. She got up, signaled Florian and Catlin to be very quiet, patted Justin gently on the shoulder. You stay with him, she signaled Florian.

And to Catlin, in the hall, she said: "What's the news?"

"Nothing more than we had," Catlin said.

"Stand by in case Florian needs you." She went to her own office and phoned Denys directly.

"Seely," she said, "I need Denys, right now." And when Denys came on: "Uncle Denys, how are you?"

"I'm quite well, Ari, how are you?"

"I wanted to tell you something. I've gotten very nervous about the situation, you know, with Grant being out and all, and Grant
is
vulnerable, so I asked Justin to talk with me about it—"

"Ari, this involves exterior Security. I strongly suggest you let this alone."

"I've done it already. I want an order, uncle Denys, for Grant to be immune to Security, I don't care if something should go on at Planys with Jordan, I have an agreement with Justin—"

"I'm sorry, Ari, this isn't at all wise. You
don't
tie down your Security people. You have no business making promises to Justin, especially to Justin. I've talked to you about this."

"This is the agreement, uncle Denys. Justin's agreed to take a probe with
my
security."

"Ari, you're interfering in a matter you have no expertise in whatsoever, that involves your safety. I won't have that."

"Uncle Denys, I've been thinking a lot. It runs like this: I'm getting a lot more grown-up. People couldn't ever make a campaign out of killing a cute kid. Paxers and all these groups haven't come out into the open all at once just by coincidence. They see me getting older, they know that I'm real, they know I'm going to be a lot of trouble to them someday, and they're going to throw everything they've got at me in the next few years. But you know what occurs to me, uncle Denys? That could be true on this staff too, inside Reseune. And I'm not going to have my staff tampered with by anybody except me."

"Ari, that's halfway prudent, but you're meddling with a kind of situation you're not equipped to deal with."

"I perfectly well am, uncle Denys. I'm not going to be reasonable on this. I want Grant back without any problems. Florian's going to meet the plane and bring him up here, and I'm going to talk to him, myself,
with
trank. If I find out anyone else has, I'm going to be real upset. I don't care if it's Jordan, or if it's Reseune Security, either one, I'm going to be real upset."

"Ari, —"

"I'm just telling you, uncle Denys. I know you don't like it. And I
don't
want to fight with you. Look at it from my point of view. You're getting up there in years, you could have a stroke or something—where would that leave me, if I don't have control of my own wing? I'd
have
to trust a lot of people all of a sudden, without knowing what's going on. And I don't ever want to be in that situation, uncle Denys."

"We've got to talk about this."

"We can. Only I want your promise that you're not going to let Security touch Grant even if you think Jordan did something to him: I'll tell you how Justin feels about it—if Jordan did something like that, Justin would be real mad. And that would mean Justin would be on my side about it. But if
you
did, then Justin would be mad at me. There's an old proverb about muddying up the water, do you know it? I'm getting old enough I don't want other people's notions of what's good for me muddying up the waters I have to swim in for the rest of my life, uncle Denys. That's exactly what it comes down to."

"I appreciate your feelings, Ari, but you'd better gather your data before you interfere with an operation, not after."

"We can talk about this as much as you like and you give me advice I know is going to be worth listening to. But then's then. Now is, I'm not going to have them messed with by anybody. They're in my wing and I've made promises I'm going to keep. If you do anything else, you cut me down with my own staff, and I'm not going to have that, uncle Denys. That's a promise."

There was a long silence on the other end.
"Have you discussed with Justin the chance that Grant might have been tampered with?"

"He's
afraid of it. He's the one brought it up with me. He's willing to trust
me
in this, uncle Denys, not Reseune Security, strange as that may seem—but then, by what he tells me Reseune Security isn't very polite. I've
got
his deposition that Grant went out of here clean, uncle Denys. I've got it under deep probe, and I'm quite sure of it. So we'll find out when Grant gets back, won't we? I'll be happy to lend you a transcript of the interview."

Another long silence.
"That's very kind of you. Dammit, Ari, Justin's got medical cautions, he's got major problems, I don't care if he thought this would be better, you're a seventeen-year-old kid—"

"Eighteen in two months, which is going on twenty in the way Base One reckons. And damned good, uncle,
damned
good ... or what's all your work good for, you want to answer me that one, uncle Denys? I've been running interventions on Florian and Catlin for more than five years, so I'm not really likely to slip up, am I?"

"I'm telling you, Ari, dammit, you've seen the tape Ari made, you know you're dealing with a man with a damn tenuous hold on sanity where you're concerned, and you want to go running interventions on him? We're talking about a thirty-six-year-old man who's lived half his life with a problem, and you want to meddle with it, alone, without any protection for yourself or him if he has a heart attack or slides over the mental edge. You want to know what you're meddling with, young sera, you could be working in your office, minding your own business someday, and have that young man come through the door with a knife, that's what you're playing with. We're dealing with a grown man a long time and a whole lot of business past that incident when he was your age—he's changed, what Ari planted in him has had time to mutate unwatched, he
won't
go in for therapy, and like a fool, because I agreed with him, he had to become self-guiding, I
let
him decline therapy. Now it's turned out to be a major mistake. I had no idea my niece was going to let her glands interfere with her common sense, my dear, I certainly had no idea she was going to take this unstable young man to her bosom and make an adolescent fool of herself, no indeed, I didn't. And, my God! the kind of pressure you can put on this young man with your well-intentioned meddling— Don't you understand, child, Reseune has
never
intended any harm to Justin Warrick? We know his value, we've worked with him, we've done the best we could to secure his future and to prevent him from precisely the kind of blow-up you're courting with your meddling. And whose fault will it be then?"

"All that's very fine, uncle Denys, but I know what I'm doing, and my reasons stand."

A long silence.

"We'll talk about this,"
Denys said then.

"Yes. We will. But in the meantime you call Planys and call Security there and tell them be damned careful they don't lay a hand on Grant."

"All right, Ari. You get your way on this. We'll talk about it. But I don't just get that transcript. I get the tape of the session. You know what a transcript is worth. If you want my support in this let's try a little cooperation, shall we?"

"That's all I want, uncle Denys. You're still a dear."

"Ari, dammit, we're not talking about a little thing here."

"My birthday's coming up, uncle Denys. You know I'd like a party this year. I really would."

"
I don't think this is the time to discuss it."

"Lunch, the 18th?"

Back, then, to Base One to be sure that call went the way uncle Denys said.

Be careful, Ari senior had said, using the information in the expanded base, because it was so easy to slip up and reveal what one should not have known—like exactly what Security was doing half a world away.

So one lied. One tried to get very good at it.

She went back to the library, because Catlin reported that Justin was coming out of it, quietly, still a little fuzzed—which was not a bad time to explain something.