Cherryh, C J - Alliance-Union 08 (111 page)

That's the real lesson. Bok's clone never came in out of the dark, never owned anything, never
was
anything. You know what
I'd
have answered to the land of questions that poor woman got? Go to hell! And if piano-playing was what I did, damn, I'd do it! And maybe I'd spit in the eye of math teachers who didn't teach me the kind of things Bok must have learned—like
being
in space, dammit! Like living like a spacer! Like knowing math is life and death! —Bok's clone got dry theory. She was creative, and they gave her dry dust. They cushioned her from everything. And
they
couldn't understand her music. She was a lousy pianist. She couldn't transcribe worth shit. But I wonder what kind of music she heard in her head, and why she spent more and more time there? I'm not sure she
did
fail. Maybe the damn geniuses couldn't talk to her. Maybe their notation didn't work for her. I wonder what the whole symphony was, and whether she was playing accompaniment. —Huh." She shook herself. "That's spooky, too, isn't it?"

"They ran her stuff through computer analysis. It came up neg."

"With Bok's theories. Yes. But she never knew her genemother."

"With her teachers' stuff?"

"Might be. Or something completely off in the beyond."

"I'd like to pull those files. Just to see what they tried."

"Do it. Do any damn thing you want. We're research, aren't we? You pull all your projects out of the other wings, you put them into our budget, and our credit balance will hold just fine for that kind of tiling. The guppies and the bettas can buy a lot of computer time."

The airport lobby was mostly deserted, RESEUNEAIR'S regular flights all departed, the passengers that came and went in this small public area of Reseune all on their way to Novgorod or Svetlansk or Gagaringrad. There was the usual presence of airport security, and a handful of black-uniformed Reseune Security down from the House, waiting to meet their comrades in from Planys. The same as he was there for Grant, Justin thought; nothing more.

But Florian had gone off into the deplaning area he had no admittance to, had assured him: "Sera Amy Carnath is just across the room, ser, and so is Sam Whitely, both friends of sera's: I've asked them keep their distance, so if you do get in trouble here, they have a pocket com and they can advise me, but I'm on the regular Security band—" This with a touch near the small button Florian wore next to his keycard. "I'll be monitoring Security. If anything should happen, go along with it and trust we can unravel it."

The two watchers kept to their side of the lounge, a big-boned, square-faced youth who was already huge, hard muscle and a way of sitting that said he was no accountant—Whitely was a Reseune name, but from the Town, not the House; Justin remembered seeing him in Ari's crowd. And Julia Carnath's girl Amy, Ari's frequent shadow, thin and bookish, and sharp, very sharp, by her reputation among the staff. Denys Nye's niece and a boy who looked like he could bend pipe barehanded—a combination that would give Security pause, at least, Security tending to abhor noisy incidents. He felt safer with the kids there.

Damn, he had lived this long to be protected by children. To be co-opted by a child who was the same age as himself when he had fallen victim to her predecessor—that was the peculiarly distressing thing. Not that he had a chance, taking on Ari in the prime of her abilities, but that her successor reached out so easily, and just—swept him in and put him in this situation, with Grant on the other side of those doors likely wondering what Ari's personal bodyguard was doing involving himself in the baggage check and in the body search Florian was bound to insist on— Grant would start with a little worry in his look, an initial realization that something was amiss, and quietly go more and more inward, terrified, going through the motions because in that situation there was nothing to gain, nothing to do except hope to get through to his partner and hope that his partner was not already in Detention. Florian had refused to take so much as a note: I'm sorry, ser; I have to follow regulations here. I'll get him through as quickly as I can.

Not knowing what was toward, not knowing what could have happened to his partner, and that partner waiting to tell him—

God, to tell him he was going up to Ari's floor. That he was going to have to take a probe. That it was all right—because his partner said so, of course, having just had one himself.

He thought it remarkable that he could sit through this nightmare, sit watching the guards in their small group, the two kids talking, listening to the ordinary sounds from the baggage department that meant they were active back there, probably lining up the luggage on the tables where Reseune Security would go through it and check everything item by item, nothing cursory on this one, he figured. Examination right down to the integrity of seams on one's shaving kit or the contents of opaque bottles.

He was used to packing for Security checks. No linings, everything in transparent bottles, transparent bags, as little clothing as possible, all documents in the briefcase only, and those all loose-leaf, so they could feed through the scanners.

Take sweaters. Shirts rumpled untidily in searches, and Security always questioned doubled stitching and double-thick collars.

He stretched his feet out in front of him, leaned back and tried to relax, feeling the old panic while the minutes went by like hours.
Sure, it's all right, Grant. I'm sure I wasn't tampered with. Like hell. But what have we got, else? Where can we go, except hope Ari's reincarnation isn't going down Ari's path?

If she's got those notes, dammit, she
knows
what her predecessor meant to do with me. She can change it—or she can finish it the way the first Ari would have, make me into what the first Ari planned. Whatever that is. I thought once that might have been the best thing—if Ari had lived. If there ever was a design. Now it's too imminent. Now it's not what Ari could have given me. I'm the adult. I've got my own work, I've got my own agenda—

And Grant, my God, Grant—what have I dragged him into? What can I do?

The doors opened, and Grant came out, carrying his own briefcase, Florian behind him with the luggage.

"Bus, ser," Florian said, waving a hand toward the doors as Justin stood up and started toward Grant.

Their paths in that direction intersected.

"I'm certainly glad to see you," Grant said. He had that slightly dazed look that went with a transoceanic flight and a complete turnabout of hours. Justin threw an arm about him, patted him on the back as they walked.

"How was the trip?"

"Oh, the ground part was fine, Jordan and Paul—everything's all right with them, I really enjoyed the time; just talk, really—a lot of talk—" Doors opened behind them, and Grant's attention shifted instantly, a glance back, a loss of his thought. "I—"

The doors ahead opened automatically, one set and the others, onto the portico where the bus waited.

"Are we all right?" Grant asked.

"Ari's being sure we are," Justin said, keeping a hand on Grant's back, cautioning him against stopping. Florian put the luggage right up onto the bus deck and got up after, giving a sharp instruction to the driver to start up as Grant stepped up onto the deck and Justin followed him on the steps.

"We've ten more passengers," the driver objected.

"I've a priority," Florian said. "—Get aboard, ser."

Justin crowded a step higher as Grant edged his way past, as Florian shut the door himself.

The driver started the motor and threw them into motion.

"You can come back down after the others," Florian said, standing by the driver as Grant sat down on the first bench and Justin sat down beside him.

"What are we doing?" Grant asked quietly, reasonably.

"We're quite all right," Justin said, and took Grant's wrist and pressed it, twice, with his fingers where the pulse was. Confirmation. He felt Grant relax a little then.

Florian came back and sat down across from them. "Catlin will hold the elevator for us," Florian said. "House Security at the doors will be just a little confused when the bus comes without the rest of the passengers. There's nothing really wrong. They'll probably move to ask the driver what's going on, and we just walk right on through—absolutely nothing wrong with what we're doing, ser, only we just don't need a jurisdictional dispute or an argument over seniority. If we're stopped, absolutely there's no problem, don't worry, don't be nervous, we can move very smoothly through it if you'll just let me do the talking and be ready to take my cues. Ideally we'll walk straight to the doors, through, down to the elevator—-Catlin and I have double-teamed senior Security many a time."

"That'll take us up to Wing One residencies," Grant said quietly.

"That's where we're going," Justin said. "There's a little boundary dispute going on. Ari's coordinating this through the House systems so we
don't
end up with Giraud."

"Fervently to be wished," Grant said with a shaky little sigh, and Justin patted him on the knee.

"Terrible homecoming. I'm awfully sorry."

"It's all right," Grant murmured, as undone as Justin had seen him in many a year. Justin took hold of his hand and squeezed it tight and Grant just slumped back against the seat with a sigh, while the bus started the upward pitch of the hill.

Florian was listening to something through the remote in his left ear. He frowned a little, then his brows lifted. "Ah." A sudden twinkle in the eyes, a grin. "Security was complaining about the bus leaving. House Security just reported it's a request from sera; ser Denys just came on the system to confirm sera's authority to take Grant into custody. We're going to go through quite easily."

"We
are
in some trouble," Grant said. "Aren't we?"

"Moderately," Justin said. "Did you have trouble at Planys?"

"None," Grant said. "Absolutely none."

"Good," he said, and, considering they were within earshot of the azi driver, did not try to answer the look Grant gave him.

The lift doors let them out in the large, barren expanse of Ari's outside hall, baggage and all—which Catlin and Florian had appropriated, and Florian spoke quietly to empty air, advising Ari they were on the floor.

The apartment door opened for them, down the hall.

And Justin slipped his hand to Grant's arm as they walked. "We got into a bit of trouble," Justin said in the safety of Ari's private hall. "We have Giraud on our backs. They were going to plant something on you, almost certain. We've got a deal going with Ari."

"What—deal?"

He tightened his fingers, once, twice. "Take a probe. Just a handful of questions. It's all right, I swear to you."

"Same deal for you?" Grant asked. Worried. Terribly worried. Not:
do you promise this is all right?
But:
Are
you
all right?

Justin turned Grant around and flung his arms about him, a brief, hard embrace. "It's all right, Grant. She's
our kid,
all right? No games, no trouble, she's just taking our side, that's what's going on."

Grant looked at him then, and nodded. "I haven't any secrets," Grant said. His voice was thin, a little hoarse. "Do you get to stay there?"

"No," he said. "Ari says—says I make her nervous. But I'll be in the room outside. I'll be there all the while."

Justin flipped pages in the hardprint Florian had been thoughtful enough to provide him—the latest
Science Bureau Reports,
which he managed to lose himself in from time to time, but the physics was hard going and the genetics was Reseune's own Franz Kennart reporting on the design of zooplankton, and he had heard Franz on that before. While a biologist at Svetlansk had an article on the increasing die-off of native Cyteen ecosystems and the creation of dead-zones in which certain anaerobic bacteria were producing huge methane pockets in valleys near Svetlansk.

It was not, finally, enough to hold his attention. Even the pictures failed, and he merely read captions and isolated paragraphs in a complete hodgepodge of data-intake and stomach-wrenching anxiety, old, old condition in his life—reading reports while waiting for arrest, doing real-time life-and-death design-work while awaiting the latest whim of Administration on whether he could, in a given month, get word of his father's health.

He flipped pages, backward and forward, he absorbed himself a moment in the diagrams of Svetlansk geology and looked at the photos of dead platytheres. There seemed something sad in that—no matter that it made room for fields and green plants and pigs and goats and humans. The photo of a suited human providing scale, dwarfed by the decaying hulk of a giant that must have lived centuries—seemed as unfeeling as the photos from old Earth, the smiling hunters posing with piles of carcasses, of tiger skulls, and ivory.

For some reason tears rolled down his face, startling him, and his throat hurt. For a damn dead platythere. Because he was that strung, and he could not cry for Grant, Grant would look at him curiously and say:
Flux does strange things, doesn't it?

He wiped his eyes, turned the page and turned the page again until he was calm; and finally, when he had found nothing powerful enough to engage his attention, thought:
O God, how long can a few questions take?

The first Ari did Grant's designs. She's got access to those. She's got the whole manual. The same as Giraud.

Giraud left him a z-case.

Has he gone out on her?

They'd call me. Surely they'd call me.

He laid the magazine on the table in front of him and leaned his elbows on his knees, ground the heels of his hands into his eyes and clasped his hands on the back of his neck, pulling against a growing ache.

Suppose that Jordan did plant something deep in him—Grant could do that, could take it in, partition it—

Jordan wouldn't do that. God, surely, no.

The door opened, in the hall; he looked up, hearing Ari's voice, hearing her light footsteps.