Cherryh, C J - Alliance-Union 08 (109 page)

So she sat down on the couch where Justin lay drowsing with the lights dimmed, with a light blanket over him and Florian keeping watch near him.

"How are you?" she asked.

"Not uncomfortable," he said, and a little line appeared between his brows as he tried to move. He gave that up. "I'm a bit gone yet. Let me rest.

Don't talk to me."

On the defensive. Not the time with him, then. She laid her hand on his shoulder. "You can try to wake up a bit," she said. That was an intervention too, but a benign one. "Everything's fine. I knew you were all right. And I've talked to uncle Denys and told him keep hands off Grant, so Grant's going to be safe, but I do need to talk to you. Meanwhile you're going to stay in the guest room tonight. I don't think you ought to go back to your apartment till you're really awake."

"I can leave," he said.

"Of course you can, when you're able to argue, but not tonight. If you like, I'll have Florian guard your door all night, so it'll be very proper. It's completely in the other wing from my room. All right? As soon as you can walk all right, Florian will put you to bed."

"Home," he said.

"Sorry," she said. "I need to talk to you in the morning. You shouldn't leave before then. Go to sleep now."

That was, in his state, a very strong suggestion. His eyelids drifted lower, jerked, lowered completely.

"Guest bedroom," she told Florian. "Soon as he can. I do want you to stay with him, just to be sure he's safe."

It was a strange bed, a moment of panic. Justin turned his head and saw Florian lying on his stomach on the second bed, fully dressed, boyish face innocent in the glow from the single wall-light. Eyes open.

He thought that he remembered walking to this room, that it was down a hallway he could remember, but he was still disoriented and he still felt a touch of panic at the remembrance of the drugs. He thought that he ought to be distraught to be where he was, flat-tranked as he was. He lay half-asleep, thinking that as the numbness let up he would suffer reactions. He was still dressed, except his sweater and his shoes. Someone had put a blanket over him, put a pillow under his head. It was, thank God, not Ari's bedroom.

"You're awake, ser?"

"Yes," he said, and Florian gathered himself up to sit on the edge of the other bed.

"Minder," Florian said aloud, "wake Ari. Tell her Justin is awake."

Justin shoved himself up on his hands, caught his balance, rubbed at his stubbled face.

"What time—?"

"Time?" Florian asked the Minder.

"0436,"
it said.

"We should start breakfast," Florian said. "It's near enough to the time sera usually gets up. There's a guest kit in the bath, ser. A robe if you like, but sera will probably dress. Will you be all right while I check on my partner?"

"Sera is almost ready," Catlin said, and poured him coffee, Catlin—whose blonde hair was for once unbraided, a pale rippled sheet past black-uniformed shoulders. "Cream, ser?"

"No," he said, "thank you."

Kids, he thought. The whole situation should be funny as hell, himself—at his age—virtually kidnapped, tripped, and finally solicitously fed breakfast by a pack of damned kids . . .

Not feeling too badly, he thought. Not as rough as one of Giraud's trips, in any sense. But he was wrung out, his lungs felt too open, and his limbs felt watery and altogether undependable.

Which they would, considering what a physiological shock that much cataphoric was; which was the reason for the mineral and vitamin pill Catlin put on a dish and gave to him, and which he took with his coffee without arguing.

It was a cure for the post-kat shakes, at least.

Ari arrived, in a simple blue sweater and blue pants, her black hair loose as she almost never wore it nowadays. Like Ari-the-child. Ari pulled back the chair at his right and sat down. "Good morning. —Thanks, Catlin." As Catlin poured coffee and added cream. And to him: "How are you feeling? Are you all right?"

"You said you had something important to say," Justin said. "About Grant," Ari said, straightway. Then: "—We can make anything you want for breakfast."

"No. Thanks. Dammit, Ari, let's not do games, shall we?"

"I'm not. I just want to make sure you get something to eat. Have some toast at least. There's real honey."

He reached for it, smothering temper, patiently buttered it and put on a bit of the honey. An entire apiary set-up over in Moreyville, along with several other burgeoning commercializations. Fish. Exotics. Frogs. Moreyville was talking about expanding upriver, blasting out space on the Volga and creating new flats for agricultural use.

"This is the thing," Ari said, "I talked to uncle Denys last night and Denys pulled Security away from Grant. We had a bit of a fight about it. But I told him I couldn't trust having people in my wing gone over by people I don't know. It came down to that. So this is the deal we made. I run my own Security checks, and if I'm satisfied, that's all that gets done. What you have to do is agree that if there is a question, —I do an interview and get it settled." He stared at the piece of toast in his hand, without appetite. "Meaning you run another probe."

"Justin, I hope there won't be any more questions. But this Pax thing is really dangerous. It's going to get worse—because they're seeing I'm serious. There aren't very many people anywhere I can trust. There aren't very many people anywhere you can trust either, because when politics gets thick as it's going to get—you know better than I do how innocent people get hurt. You remember you asked me to do something for your father. Well, I have: I probably stopped him from being arrested last night, at least on suspicion, and I know I stopped Grant from getting probed by Security. Probably your father won't even know how close it was, and if you'll take my advice, please don't tell him. Grant's going to get home all right. Your father's safe. And you're not any worse off this morning than yesterday, are you?"

"I don't know."
Shaken up, dammit, which I wasn't, yesterday. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, and, God, where's a choice?

"You don't want to deal with Security," Ari said. "Giraud doesn't like you, Justin, he really doesn't like you. I don't need professional psych to pick that up. I want you to stay; and that means everybody in the universe will know you could be a pressure point against me—they could put pressure on you, or Grant, or Jordan. Giraud certainly is going to put the pressure on and try to prove something against you or your father—if we don't have contrary evidence that you're working with me. That's what I need. I need it from you and I need it from Grant, and if you do that, then you'll be my friend and you'll have Security working to protect you. If you don't—I've got to put you and Grant out—outside, where you
can't
be trusted, because every enemy I've got will think of you and Grant and Jordan just as levers to be used. That's the way it is. And I think you know that. That's why you told me last night you hoped if you stayed close to me—you could make things better. You said that. Do you remember?"

"I don't remember. But I would have said that."

"I want you to be in my wing, I want you to work with me—but being on the inside of my Security means if I have the least idea something could be wrong, —I have to ask questions. That's the way it is."

"Not much choice, is there?" He took a bite of the toast, swallowed, found the honey friendlier to his stomach than he had thought it would be. "You expect me to order Grant to take a probe from a seventeen-year-old kid?"

"I don't want him to be upset. I wish you'd at least explain to him."

"Dammit, I —"

"He's safe, isn't he? When you see him off the plane, you'll know I kept my promise; and you can tell him why I'm doing it. Then you'll both be safe from anybody else. You won't have to worry about people making mistakes anymore, or blaming you for things. And I'm not a kid, Justin. I'm not. I know what I'm doing. I just don't have much real power yet. That's why I can't reach out of my wing to protect my friends, that's why I'm doing such a damn stupid thing as bringing you on the inside under
my
Security wall—you and a few others of my friends."

"Us. Grant and me.
Sure,
Ari. Sure, you are. Let's have the truth for a minute. Are you working some maneuver around your uncles—or did Giraud suggest this?"

"No. I trust you."

"Then you're damn stupid. Which I don't think you are."

"You figure it. You and Grant are the only adult help I can get that, first, I have to have, because I need you; second, that I can constantly check on, because there's nobody but you who needs something I can do, that only I'm willing to do. Sure I can hire help. So can my opposition."

"So can your opposition—threaten my father."

"Not—past my net. You're part of it. You'll tell me if you think he's threatened. And you figure it: are you safer on your own? Is Grant? Not at all. Besides which—if your safety is linked to mine—it's not really likely your father would make a real move against Reseune, is it?"

He stared at her, shocked; and finally shrugged and took another bite of toast and washed it down.

"You know, I tried this same move with your predecessor when I was seventeen," he said. "Blackmail. You know what it did for me."

"Not blackmail. I'm just saying what is. I'm saying if you go out that door and I put you out of my wing—"

"I get it from Giraud faster than I can turn around, I get it and Grant gets it, every time he finds an excuse. That's real clear. Thanks."

"Justin—Giraud might
make up
a case. I hate to say that. There's a lot good about Giraud. But he's capable of things like that. And he's dying. Don't tell that. I'm not supposed to know. But it's changed a lot of his motives. He and Jordan never got along—not personally, not professionally, not at all: they had a terrible fight when Jordan was working with Ari—really, terribly bitter. He disagrees with what he sees as a whole Warrick attitude—an influence toward a whole slant of procedure, a kind of interventionist way of proceeding that in his mind permeated Education and got out into the tapes through what he called 'Warrick's influence.' Which isn't so. Ari knew what she was doing. She knew absolutely what she was doing, and what Giraud hates so much was really Ari's—but you can't make him understand that. In Giraud's mind Jordan was the source of that whole movement—in fact, I think in Jordan's own mind Jordan was the source of the whole movement—which was never true. But Giraud won't believe it. He
wants
to settle the Centrists before he dies, because Denys is getting on in years too, and Giraud foresees a time when his generation will be gone and I'll still be vulnerable. He sees your father as a pawn the Centrists could use. He sees you as a reservoir of Warrick influence in Reseune, me as a kid thinking with her glands, and he's desperate to get you away from me. So I've not only got to convince myself you're clean-clearance, I've got to convince uncle Denys
and
Giraud I'm absolutely sure what I'm doing. I can handle them, however crazy I make it sound . . . because
I'm
going to tell them I've got Ari's notes on your case.

" He swallowed hard. "Have you?"

"That's what I'm going to tell them."

"I heard what you're going to tell them! I also know you just evaded me. You do have them, don't you?"

"You also know that whatever I say occasionally about what I'd
like
to be the truth, I do lie sometimes. Yanni says there are professional lies and they're all right. They're what you do for good reasons."

"Dammit—"

"I'm lying to protect you."

"To whom? You have
her
kinds of twists, young sera. I hope to hell it doesn't extend deeper."

"I'm your friend. I wish I were more than that. But I'm not. Trust me in this. If you can't—the way you say—who can you? I've kept you out of Detention. And I'll give you the session tape, I always will. With Grant too. I don't ever want you to doubt each other."

"Dammit, Ari."

"Let's be honest. That's an issue, and I'm disposing of it. Let's try another. You think I'll intervene with you—the way I'm going to tell Denys. You know—let's be plain about it—you're safer with me running unsupervised than with Giraud with all the safeguards there are. You're worried about trusting yourself and Grant to a kid. But I'm Ari's student. Directly. And Yanni's. I'm not certified . . . not just because I've never bothered to be. There are a lot of things I can do that I don't want on Bureau records yet. I confess to some very immature thoughts. Some very selfish thoughts. But I didn't do it. You woke up down the hall, didn't you?"

He felt his face go red. And expected a flash, in this place, under strained circumstances, but it was faint and almost without charge, just the older face, Ari getting ready for work, matter-of-factly, leaving him there with the kind of damage he had taken. . . .

He felt resentment, that was all... resentment much more than shame.

"You
did
something," he said to the seventeen-year-old.
His
seventeen-year-old.

"I told you calm down about this place," she said. "I figured it would bother you. I didn't think that was unethical."

"Ethics had nothing to do with it, sera. No more than with her."

She looked a little shocked, a little hurt. And he wished to hell he had kept
that
behind his teeth.

"Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean that. But, dammit to hell, Ari! If you've got to take these trips, stay off the peripheries with me!"

"It's embarrassing for you," she said, "because I'm so young, —isn't it?"

He thought about that. Tried to calm down. Temper. Not fright. And what she had said. "Yes, it's embarrassing."

"For me, too. Because you're so much older. I feel like you're going to critique everything I do, all the time. It makes me nervous, isn't that funny?"

"That's not the word I'd pick for it."

"I
will
listen to you."

"Come on, Ari, let's not do games, didn't I say? Don't play little-girl with me. You've stopped listening to everyone."