Cherryh, C J - Alliance-Union 08 (20 page)

"I'm all right."

Lie. More and more real. Tape was better than this. In a while Justin would go away and he would remember believing it and be afraid. But in the meanwhile it made him afraid for a different, more tangible reason. Jordan's transfer; Justin's sending him away—the fragments assumed a time-sense.
When
existed again. The real world had traps in it, traps involved Ari, Justin had tried to get him free, he was home and Justin was in trouble. No. Careful. Careful.

"What did she do when she found out I was gone?"

"I'll tell you later."

Dammit, he did not need worry to upset his stomach. It felt like home. Secrets, Ari, and trouble. And everything he loved. He took in a slow, long breath. "I'm holding on," he said, knowing Justin would understand. "I don't want any more tape. I don't want any more sedation. I need to stay awake. I want them to leave the lights on. All the time. I want to get this damn tube out of my arm."

"I haven't got any authority. You know that. But I'll tell Ivanov. I'll make it real strong with him. And I'll take the tube out. Here."

It stung. "That's going to drip all over the floor."

"Hell with it. There." He stopped the drip. "They're going to put a phone in here. And a vid."

His heart jumped. He remembered why a phone was important. But he was not there anymore. Or none of it had happened. Or there were possibilities he had missed.

"You know I'm not really well-hinged."

"Hell, I don't notice a difference."

He laughed, a little laugh, automatic, glad Justin was willing to joke with him; and realized that had come totally around a blind corner. Surprised him, when he had been expecting smooth, professional pity. It was not a funny laugh. Surprise-laugh.

Tape could hardly get Justin down pat enough to do something his mind had not expected, not when he was resisting it and not cooperating out of his subconscious.

He laughed again, just to test it, saw Justin look like he had glass in his gut, and hope at the same time.

"It's a worm," he told Justin. And grinned wide, wider as he saw an instant of real horror on Justin's face.

"You damn lunatic!"

He laughed outright. It hurt, but it felt good. He tried to draw his legs up. Wrong. "Oh, damn. You think they can get my legs free?"

"Soon as you know where you are."

He sighed and felt tension ebbing out of him. He melted back against the moving bed and looked at Justin with a placidity different than tape offered. It still hurt. Muscle tension. Sprain. God knew what he had done to himself, or what they had done to him. "I had you, huh?"

"If you put this on for an act—"

"I wish. I'm fogged. I think I'm going to have flashes off this. I think they'll go away. I'm really scared, if you don't come back. Dr. Ivanov's running this, isn't he?"

"He's taking care of you. You trust him, don't you?"

"Not when he takes Ari's orders. I'm scared. I'm really scared. I wish you could stay here."

"I'll stay here through supper. I'll come back for breakfast in the morning; every hour I can get free till they throw me out. I'm going to talk to Ivanov. Why don't you try to sleep while I'm here? I'll sit in the chair over there and you can rest."

His eyes were trying to close. He realized it suddenly and tried to fight it. "You won't leave. You have to wake me up."

"I'll let you sleep half an hour. It's nearly suppertime. You're going to eat something. Hear? No more of this refusing food."

"Mmnn." He let his eyes shut. He went away awhile, away from the discomfort. He felt Justin get up, heard him settle into the chair, checked after a moment to be sure Justin really was there and rested awhile more.

He felt clearer than he had been. He even felt safe, from moment to moment. He had known, if the world was halfway worth living in, that Justin or Jordan would get to him and pull him back to it. Somehow. When it came he had to believe it or he would never believe anything again, and never come back from the trip he had gone on.

The reports came in and Giraud Nye gnawed his stylus and stared at the monitor with stomach-churning tension.

The newsservices reported the kidnapping of a Reseune azi by radical elements, reported a joint police-Reseune Security raid on a remote precip station on the heights above Big Blue, with explicit and ugly interior scenes from the police cameras—the azi, spattered with the blood of his captors, being rescued and bundled aboard a police transport. It had taken something, for sharpshooters in outback gear to hike in, break into the garage via a side door, and make a flying attack up the stairs. One officer wounded. Three radical Abolitionists killed, in full view of the cameras. Good coverage and bodies accounted for, which left no way for Ianni Merino and the Abolition Centrists to raise a howl and convoke Council: publicly, Merino was distancing himself as far and as fast as he could from the incident. Rocher was deluging the Ministry of Information with demands for coverage for a press conference: he got nothing. Which meant that the police would be watching Rocher very carefully—the last time Rocher got blacked out, someone had unfurled a huge Full Abolition banner in the Novgorod subway and sabotaged the rails, snarling traffic in a jam the newsservices could not easily ignore.

God knew it had not won Rocher the gratitude of commuters. But he had his sympathizers, and a little display of power meant recruits.

About time, he thought, to do something about Rocher and de Forte. Thus far they had been a convenient embarrassment to Corain and to Merino, discrediting the Centrists. Now Rocher had crossed the line and become a nuisance.

Convenient if the damage to Grant had been extreme. A before-and-after clip given to the newsservices would show the Abolitionists up for the hounds they were. Honest citizens never saw a mindwipe in progress. Or botched. Convenient if they could take the azi down for extreme retraining—or take him down altogether. God knew he was Alpha, and a Warrick product, and God knew what Rocher's tapes had done:
he
had rather be safe; he had told Ari as much.

Absolutely not, Ari had said. What are you thinking of? In the first place, he's a lever. In the second, he's a witness against Rocher. Don't touch him.

Lever with whom, Giraud thought sourly. Ari was holding night-sessions with young Justin, and Ari was, between driving Jane Strassen to ulcers over the refitting of Lab One and the relocation of eight research students, so damned wrapped up in her obsession with the Rubin project that nobody got time with her
except
her azi and Justin Warrick.

Got herself a major
triste.
Lost youth and all of that.

Goes off and leaves me to mop up the mess in Novgorod. 'Don't touch Merild or Krugers. We don't want to drive the enemy underground. Cut a deal with Corain. That's not hard, is it?'

The hell.

The phone rang. It was Warrick. Senior. Demanding Grant's release to his custody.

"That's not my decision, Jordie."

"Dammit, it doesn't seem to be anybody's, does it? I want that boy out of there."

"Look, Jordie—"

"I
don't care whose fault it isn't."

"Jordie, you're damn lucky no one's prosecuting that kid of yours. It's his damn fault this came down, don't yell at me—"

"Petros says you're the one has to authorize a release."

"That's a medical matter. I don't interfere in medical decisions. If you care about that boy, I'd suggest you let Petros do his job and stay—"

"He passed the mess to you, Gerry. So did Denys. We're not talking about a damn records problem. We're talking about a scared kid, Gerry."

"Another week—"

"The hell with another week. You can start by giving me a security clearance over there, and get Petros to return my calls."

"Your son is over there right now. He's got absolute clearance, God knows why. He'll take care of him."

There was silence on the other end.

"Look, Jordie, they say about another week. Two at most."

"Justin's got clearance."

"He's with him right now. It's all right. I'm telling you it's all right. They've stopped the sedation. Justin's got visiting privileges, I've got it right here on my sheet, all right?"

"I
want him out."

"That's real fine. Look, I'll
talk
to Petros. Is that all right? In the meantime your kid's with Grant, probably the best medicine he could get. Give me a few hours. I'll get you the
med
reports. Will that satisfy you?"

"I'll be back to you."

"Fine, I'll be here."

"Thanks,"
came the mutter from the other end.

"Sure," Giraud muttered; and when the contact broke: "Damn hothead." He went back to the draft of the points he meant to make with Corain, interrupted himself to key a query to Ivanov's office, quick request for med records on Grant to Jordan Warrick's office. And added, on a second thought, because he did not know what might be
in
those records, or what Ari had ordered: SCP,
security considerations permitting.

The new separator was working. The rest of the equipment was scheduled for checkout. Ari made notes by hand, but mostly because she worked on a system and the Scriber got in her way: in some things only state of the art would do, but when it came to her notes, she still wrote them with a light-pen on the Translate, in a shorthand her Base in the House system continually dumped into her archives because it knew her handwriting: old-fashioned program, but it equally well served as a privacy barrier. The Base then went on to translate, transcribe and archive under her passwords and handprint, because she had given it the password at the top of the input.

Nothing today of a real security nature. Lab-work. Student-work. Any of the azi techs could be down here checking things, but she enjoyed this return to the old days. She had helped wear smooth the wooden seats in Lab One, hours and hours over the equipment, doing just this sort of thing, on equipment that made the rejected separator look like a technologist's dream.

That
part of it she had no desire to recreate. But quite plainly, she wanted to say
I
in her write-up of this project. She wanted her stamp on it and her hand on the fine details right from the conception upward.
I
was most careful, in the initiation of this project—

I prepared the tank—

There were very few nowadays who
were
trained in all the steps. Everyone specialized. She belonged to the colonial period, to the beginnings of the science. Nowadays there were colleges turning out educated apes, so-named scientists who punched buttons and read tapes without understanding how the biology worked. She fought that push-the-button tendency, put an especially high priority on producing methodology tapes even while Reseune kept its essential secrets.

Some of those secrets would come out in her book. She had intended it that way. It would be a classic work of science—the entire evolution of Reseune's procedures, with the Rubin project hindmost in its proper perspective, as the test of theories developed over the decades of her research.
IN PRINCIPIO
was the title she had tentatively adopted. She was still searching for a better one.

The machine came up with the answer on a known sequence. The comp blinked red on an area of discrepancy.

Damn it to bloody hell. Was it contamination or was it a glitch-up in the machine? She made the note, mercilessly honest. And wondered whether to lose the time to replace the damn thing again and try with a completely different test sample, or whether to try to ferret out the cause and document it for the sake of the record. Doing the former, was a dirty solution. Being reduced to the latter and, God help her, failing to find solid evidence, which was a good bet in a mechanical glitch-up, made her look like a damn fool or forced her to have recourse to the techs more current with the equipment.

Dump the machine
and
consign it to the techs, run the suspect sample in a clean machine, and install a third machine for the project,
with
a new sample-run.

Every real-life project is bound to have its glitch-ups, or the researcher is lying
...

The outer lab-door opened. There were distant voices. Florian and Catlin. And another one she knew. Damn.

"Jordan?" she yelled, loud enough to carry. "What's your problem?"

She heard the footsteps. She heard Florian's and Catlin's. She had confused the azi, and they trailed Jordan as far as the cold-lab door.

"I need to talk to you."

"Jordie, I've got a problem here. Can we do it in about an hour? My office?"

"Here is just fine. Now. In private."

She drew a long breath. Let it go again.
Grant,
she thought.
Or Merild and Corain.
"All right. Damn, we're going to have Jane and her clutch traipsing through the lab out there in about thirty minutes. —Florian, go over to B and tell them their damn machine won't work." She turned and ejected the sample. "I want another one. We'll go through every damn machine they've got if that's what it takes. I want the thing cleaner than it's providing. God, what kind of tolerances are they accepting these days? And you bring it over yourself. I don't trust those aides. Catlin, get up there and tell Jane she can take her damn students somewhere else. I'm shutting down this lab until I get this thing running." She drew a second long breath and used the waldo to send the offending sample back through cryogenics, then ejected the sample-chamber to a safe-cell and sent it the same route. When she turned around the azi were gone and Jordan was still standing there.

It was a hike from the hospital over to the House itself, a long round-about if the weather made it necessary to go through the halls and the tunnel, a good deal shorter to walk over under open sky. Justin opted for the open air, though the shadows of the cliffs had cut off the sun and he ought to have brought a coat. He got tape-flash. He got it almost everywhere. The sensations got to him most, and his stomach stayed upset—
"You
eat the damn stuff," Grant had challenged him, since hospital staff had brought two dinners. "I'll match you."