Cherryh, C J - Alliance-Union 08 (116 page)

He looked shocked.

"You want my help," she said, "it does cost. It costs you the apartment you have. It costs you your independence. It costs you convenience the way it costs me. But you're not going to go into Security and you're damn sure not going to spill what you know about me to Giraud either. Which is the other part of your threat, isn't it?"

"I don't know what I know—"

"I'm sure you could figure it. You come and go through that security door; your cards will admit you. You'll move into Wing One facilities, and I don't know who I'm going to have to bump to make room for you, but you're going inside Wing One security, and inside my security; and I don't want any argument about it."

"None," he said quietly.

"Grant is here,"
the Minder said, and Justin leapt up off the couch, was at the door almost before Grant could open it, as Grant came alone into the apartment.

"Are you all right?" Grant asked, first-off.

"Fine," Justin said, and embraced him. "Thank God. No trouble?"

Grant shook his head, and drew a breath. "I got the call, I told Em hold the office down—I walked out into the hall and Catlin picked me up. Walked me all the way to the lift. She said she'd go to the apartment and bring essentials and anything we call down for."

No questions, nothing. Habit of half a lifetime. "We can talk," Justin said, realizing that fact—that there was nothing, now, that could be secret if Ari wanted it, nothing that anyone
but
Ari was going to reach, here, in this place. It was a moment of vertigo, old cautions tumbling away into dark on either side. The thought shook him, left him lonely for reasons he could not understand. "God, it's not home, is it?"

Grant held on to him. He felt himself shivering, suddenly, he had no notion why, or what he feared, specifically, only that nothing seemed certain any longer . . . not even their habits of self-defense.

Not home. Not the place he had always lived, not the obscurity they had tried to maintain. They were closer and closer to the center of Reseune.

"No probe," he said. "Ari asked why—reasonable question. I told her. This is her notion of increased security. I've got to show you around this place. You won't believe it."

He got control of his nerves, turned Grant around and gave him the full perspective of the living room and dining room.

It was a huge apartment by any standards: a front hall mostly stone, roofed in plasticized woolwood; a sitting-room with a gray sectional, black glass tables; and beyond that a dining hall with white tile, white walls, black and white furnishings—
My God,
Justin's first thought had been, an emotional impact of stark coldness, an irrational:
one red pillow, anything, to save your sanity in this damn place—

"It's—quite large," Grant said, —diplomatically, he thought: "isn't it?"

"Come on," he said, and took Grant the tour.

It was better in the halls, pastel blues and greens leading off to a frost-green kitchen and a white hall to a suite of rooms in grays and blues—a lot of gray stone, occasional brown. A sybaritic bath in black and silver, mirrored. Another one, white and frost-green glass.

"My God," Grant said, when he opened another door on the master bedroom, black and black glass and white, huge bed. "Five people could sleep in that."

"They probably have," Justin said. And suffered a moment of flashback, a bad one. "They promise us sheets and supplies. There's some sort of scanning system they run things through, even our clothes. It puts some kind of marker on it. If we pass the door with anything that hasn't gone through scan—"

"Alarm sounds. Catlin explained that. Right down to the socks and underwear." Grant shook his head and looked at him. "Was she angry?"

He did not mean Catlin. Justin nodded. "Somewhat. God knows she's got a right to be, considering. But she's willing to listen. At least—that."

Grant said nothing. But the silence itself was eloquent as the little muscle twitch in the eyes toward the overhead.
Do we worry about monitoring?

Because Grant knew—Grant knew everything that he had confessed to Ari and then some, as far as their intention to divert Giraud. But there were things between himself and Ari he could not say where monitoring might exist, things she might go after under probe, but he could not bring them out, coldly, and have her know that Grant knew: the feeling he had had in that room in Ari's apartment, the shifting between then and now—

The gut-deep feeling—passing at every other blink between then and now; to look into Ari's eyes gone by turns young and old—knowing, for the first time since he was younger than she was now—that the sexual feelings that haunted every touch of other human beings, every dealing he had with humanity—had a focus, had always had a specific, drug-set focus—

He might have gone to bed with her. He could have gone to bed with her—in one part of his imagining. More, he had
wanted
to, for about two heartbeats—until he had flashed, badly, waiting on her answer, and known that he would panic; and was caught somewhere between a fevered hope of her and a sweating terror. As if she was the key.

Or the destruct.

God, what has she done to me?

What keys has she got?

"Justin?" Grant said, and caught his arm. "Justin, —"

He held to Grant's shoulder and shuddered. "O God, Grant. . . ."

"What's wrong?" Grant's fingers gripped the back of his neck, pressed hard. "Justin?"

His heart raced. He lost vision for a moment, broken out in sweat, feeling himself nowhere at all, if Grant were not holding to him.

That's what Ari wanted—all those years ago. Wanted me—fixed on her—

I've lost everything, dragged Grant and Jordan with me—

This is all there'll ever be, sweet—

Worm. Psychmaster. She was the best there ever was—

Pleasure and pain.
Deep-set links—

His heart made a few deep, painful beats. But he could adjust to that, the way he adjusted to everything, always. Life
was,
that was all. One lived.

Even knowing that the worst thing that had been done to him all those years ago was not sexual. Sex was only the leverage.

Endocrine-learning and flux, applied full-force, the kind of wrench that could take a vulnerable, frightened kid and twist him sideways into another research, another path for his entire existence.

She saw to my birth.

One could live. Even with the ground dropping out from under one's feet. Even with black space all around.

"What did she do?" Grant asked him, a sane, worried voice out of that mental dark, a hard pressure around him, at the back of his neck. "Justin?"

"She gave me the keys a long time ago," he murmured. "I knew, dammit, I knew—I should have seen. . . ."

Things began to focus then. Vision came back, the edge of Grant's shoulder, the stark black and white room that was not home, the knowledge that, foreseeably, they would not go back to the friendly, familiar apartment with the brown stone and the little breakfast nook that had always seemed safe, no matter what they knew about Security monitoring. . . .

"She knew she was dying, Grant. She was the best damned analyst going— She could read a subject like no one I ever saw. D'you think she never knew Giraud?"

"Ari senior?" Grant asked.

"Ari. She knew Giraud was no genius. She knew who would follow her. Do you think she didn't know them better than we do? Ari said—I was the only one who could teach her. The
only one.
That she needs my work. And she's working off Ari's notes, doing what Ari told her to do ... all down the line."

Grant pushed him back. He stared up into Grant's worried face, seeing it as a stranger would, in an objective way he had never looked at Grant, the unlikely perfection—Ari's handiwork too, from his genesets to his psychset.

Everything was, everything. No good, any longer, in fighting the design.

Even Grant was part of it. He was snared, he had always been.

She wanted Jordan. Jordan failed her. She saw to my creation. Designed Grant.

Fixed me on her—in one damnable stroke—

Everything's connected to everything—

Field too large, field too large—

"Justin?"

God, is the kid that good, does she know what she's doing to me?

Whose hand was on the switch in there? Which Ari? Does it even matter—that one could set a path that sure—that the other could operate, just take it up and go—

Grant seized his face between his hands, popped a light slap against his cheek. "Justin!"

"I'm all right," he said.

I'm scaring hell out of him. But I'm not scared. Just—

Cold as hell now. Calm.

Helps, when you know the truth, doesn't it?

"—I'm all right. Just—went a little sideways for a moment." He patted Grant's shoulder, distanced himself a few steps and looked down the hall, the strange, not-home hallway. "Like—I'd waked up. Like—for a moment—I could just shake it all off. Think right past it." He felt Grant's hand on his shoulder, and he acknowledged it with a pressure of his own—scared again, because he was alone where he was standing, and Grant wanted to be with him, but he was not sure Grant could be—that anyone could be. And Ari was out so far ahead of him, in territory that was hers and her predecessor's, in places that he could not reach.

Places Jordan had never been.

Ultimate isolation.

"Our poor kid," he murmured,
"is
Ari. Damn, she is. No one ever caught up to her. She's going out into that place no one else can get to and no one can really speak to. That's what's going to happen to her. Happening to me . . . sometimes." He blinked and tried to come back. To see the lights again. The damned stark decor. Black and white dining room down the hall. "God, Housekeeping's got to have a red vase or something, doesn't it? Pillows. Pictures. Something."

"What are you talking about?" Grant asked.

The Super's training tried to assert itself.
Get yourself together. You're scaring him.
"Flux. Not a damn thing human in this apartment. Until we get a few things up from ours. Things with color. Things that are
us.
God, this place is like a bath in ice water."

"Is that what's the matter?"

"Something like." He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his eyes of the fog and focus short-range. "Maybe just—thinking this was where we would have ended up, if Ari had lived a little longer. This would have been ours."

"Justin, what in hell are you talking about?"

"Common sense. Ari didn't want to ruin Jordan. She needed his abilities. She was dying. She knew the Nyes for pragmatic sons of bitches. Conservative as hell. She wasn't. And
they
were going to have her successor. Don't you think she worried about that? And if she'd had two more years, even six more months, I think—I damn well know—I wouldn't have been what she took in. I might have been able to fight Giraud. Might have had some input into Ari's upbringing. Might be in Administration, might be high in the Bureau, by now, maybe sitting in Peterson's chair, who knows?"

Now—I'm not that person.

But Ari's following her predecessor's program. Following her notes.

Its a dangerous course for her. If Ari hasn't the perspective to figure that out, to figure
me
out—it's very dangerous.

Not because I wish her harm.

Because I can't help it. I have ties—I can't shed.

"I don't want to hurt her, Grant."

"Is there a question of it?"

It was too much to say. Ari had sworn there was no monitoring, but that was only the truth she wished were so: her capabilities were another story. Ari would lie by telling what she wished instead of what she would do: Ari had confessed that to him—manipulative in that admission as in anything else she did.
Never take me for simple . . . in any sense.

"No," he answered Grant. "Not by anything
I
want."

Are you listening, Ari?

Do you hear what I'm saying?

"Message,"
the Minder said, waking Ari out of sleep, and waking Florian.

"Coded private, Base Three."

Giraud.

Giraud was in Novgorod. Or had been when she went to sleep.

"Damn," she said; and rolled out of bed and searched for her slippers and her robe.

"Shall I get up, sera?"

"Go back to sleep," she said. "It's just Giraud going through the overhead. What else did I expect? Probably one from Denys too. . . ."

She found one slipper and the other as she put her arms into the sleeves, found the sashes and lapped them. "A little light," she said, "dammit, Minder. Eight seconds. On in the hall."

The room light came up a little, enough to see her way to the door, while—a backward glance—Florian pulled the covers over his head and burrowed into the dark. Eight seconds. She opened the door to the outside, blinking in brighter light, rubbing her eyes, as the light faded behind her.

She shut the door, and saw Catlin in the hall, in her nightrobe, her hair loose. "Back to bed," she told Catlin. "Just Giraud."

Catlin vanished.

She wanted a cup of something warm. But she was not about to rouse either of them: they had worked themselves to exhaustion getting Justin packed and upstairs before the rest of House Security could get at Justin's belongings or Justin's notes, and getting enough essentials through the Residency scanners to give them a choice of clothing and the basics for breakfast and to put their working notes into their hands again—after which, she reckoned, Justin might be a good deal happier.

Giraud certainly would not be.

She went into her office, tucked up in the chair and said, "Minder, message. I'm alone."

"Message, Base Three to Base One. Ari, this is Giraud."

All right, all right. Who else?

"Abban's flying down with this tape and flying back again tonight. He'll probably be on his way back to the airport by the time the system's alerted you. I can't afford this time. He can't. But I expect you know what's got me upset."