Cherryh, C J - Alliance-Union 08 (36 page)

"Sera," he said. And stayed very still, as if she had lost her mind after all these years. He was exhausted. She was still insomniac. But he was going to stay awake if his eyes crossed, if she wanted to talk, she knew that. She had his attention.

"That's all," she said. "I just decided to tell you that."

"Thank you," he said, not moving. Looking as if he still thought there was more to this.

"Nothing else." She rubbed his shoulder. "You ever wanted to be a CIT? Take the final tape? Go out of here?"

"No," he said. Sleep seemed to leave him. His breathing quickened. "I really don't. I don't want to. I couldn't leave you."

"You could. The tape would fix that."

"I don't want it. I truly don't want it. It couldn't make me not want to be here. Nothing could do that. Don't tell me to take it."

"I won't. No one will. I only wondered, Ollie. So you don't want to leave here. But what if I have to?"

"I'll go with you!"

"Will you?"

"Where will we go?"

"Fargone. Not for a while yet. But I really want to be sure you're all right. Because I do love you. I love you more than I do anyone. Enough to leave you here if that's what you want, or to take you with me, or to do anything you want me to. You deserve that, after all these years. I want you to be happy."

He started to answer, hitching up on one elbow. Facile and quick, an azi's ready and sincere protest of loyalty. She stopped him with a hand on his lips.

"No. Listen to me. I'm getting older, Ollie. I'm not immortal. And they're so damn scared I won't turn Ari loose when I have to— That's coming, Ollie. Two more years. God, how fast it's gone! Sometimes I could kill her; and sometimes—sometimes I feel so damn sorry for her. Which is what they don't want. They're afraid I'll break the rules, that's at the center of it. They—Giraud and Denys, damn their hearts, have decided she's too attached to you. They want that to stop. No more contact with her. Cold and critical. That's the prescription. Sometimes I think they earnestly hope I'll drop dead on cue, just like the damn script. I had a talk with Giraud today—" She drew a deep breath and something hurt behind her eyes and around her heart. "They offered me the directorship at RESEUNESPACE. Fargone. The Ru-bin Project, with bows and ribbons on it."

"Did you take it?" he asked, finally, when breath was too choked in her to go on.

She nodded, bit her lip and got it under control. "I did. Sweet Giraud.
Oh, you just withdraw to Wing One when she's seven,
that was what they told me when I took this on. Now they've got the nervies about it and they want me the hell out of reach.
It's not enough,
Giraud says.
Olga died when Ari was seven. Being over in Wing One, just walking out of her life, that's too much rejection, too attainable an object.
Dammit. So they offer me the directorship. Morley's out, I'm in, dammit."

"You always said you wanted to go back to space." Another several breaths. "Ollie, I wanted to. I've wanted to for years and years. Until—somewhere I just got old. And they offered me this, and I realized I don't want to go anymore. That's a terrible thing to realize, for an old spacer brat. I've gotten old on the ground, and all the things I know are here, everything that's familiar, and I want it around me, that's all—" Another breath. "Not the way I'm going to have it, though. They can promote me. Or they can retire me. Damned if I'll take retirement. That's the trouble of doing your job and never bothering to power-grab. That upstart Giraud can fire me. That's what it comes down to. Damn his guts. So I go to Fargone. And start the whole thing over with another damn brat, this one with medical problems. Shit, Ollie. Do somebody a favor and look at what they do to you."

Ollie brushed at her hair. Stroked her shoulder. Ached his heart out for her, that was what Ollie would do, because she was his Supervisor, and god was in trouble.

"Well, hell if I want to drag you into the same mess. Think what it'll be, if you go out there. I'll die on you in not so many years—add it up, Ollie; and there you are, twenty lightyears from civilization. What kind of thing is that to do to somebody who's got less choice than I do? Huh? I don't want to put you in that kind of position. If you like it here at Reseune, I can get you that CIT tape and you can stay here where it's civilized, no take-hold drills and no Keis and fishcakes and no corridors where people walk off the ceiling ..."

"Jane, if I tell you I want to go, what will you tell me? That I'm a stupid azi who doesn't know what he wants? I know. Am I going to let you go off with some damn azi out of the Town?"

"I'm a hundred and—"

"—I don't care. I don't care. Don't make us both miserable. Don't playact with me. You want me to tell you I want to be with you, I'm telling you. But it's not fair to hold this over me. I can hear it.
Dammit, Ollie, I'll leave you behind, I will—
I don't want to listen to that for two years. I don't even want to think about it."

Ollie was not one to get upset. He was. She saw that finally and reached up and brushed his cheek with her fingertips. "I won't do that. I won't do it. Damn, this is too much seriousness. Damn Giraud. Damn the project. Ollie, they don't want you to touch Ari after this."

His brow furrowed in distress. "They blame me."

"It's not a question of blame. They see she likes you. It's the damn program. They wanted to take you out of here right away and I told them go to hell. I told them I'd blow it, right then. Tell the kid everything. And
they'll
walk a narrow line, damn right they will. So they had a counteroffer ready. One they thought I'd jump at. And a threat. Retirement. So what could I do? I took the directorship. I get myself and you—you—out of here. I should be glad of that."

"I'm sorry if I did this."

"Dammit, no, you didn't. I didn't. No one did it. Olga never beat the kid. Thank God. But I can't stand it, Ollie. I can't stand it anymore."

"Don't cry. I can't stand that."

"I'm not about to. Shut up. Roll over. It's my turn. Do you mind?"

"Of course not," he said to Petros, across the desk from him, while the Scriber ran, and he knew well enough they had a voice-stress running, that was probably reading-out to Petros on that little screen. Petros glanced from it often and sometimes smiled at him in his best bedside manner.

"You're involved in an intimate relationship with your companion," Petros said. "Don't you have any misgivings about that? You know an azi really can't defend himself against that kind of thing."

"I've really thought about that. I've talked with Grant about it. But it's the pattern we were brought up with, isn't it? And for various reasons, you know what I'm talking about, we both have problems that cut us off from the rest of the House, and we were both—let's call it—in need of support."

"Describe these problems."

"Oh, come on, Petros, you know and I know we're not on top of the social set. Political contagion. I don't have to describe it for you."

"You feel isolated."

He laughed. "My God, were you at the party? I thought you were."

"Well, yes." A glance at the monitor. "I was. She's a nice little kid. What do you think?"

He looked at Petros, raised an eyebrow at Petros' dour drollery, and gave a bitter laugh. "I think she's a bit of a brat, and what kid isn't?" He made it a quiet smile, catching Petros' eye. "Thank God
I
couldn't get pregnant. You might have a kid of mine to play with. Put that in your tapes and file it. How am I doing on voice-stress?"

"Well, that was tolerably stressed."

"I thought it was. You're trying to get me to react, but do we have to be grotesque?"

"You consider the child grotesque."

"I consider the kid charming. I think her situation is grotesque. But evidently your ethics can compass it. They're holding my father at gunpoint as far as I'm concerned, so I'm damn well not going to make a move. Those are my ethics. Am I lying?"

Petros was not smiling. He was watching the monitor. "Nice. Nice reaction."

"I'm sure."

"Annoyed as hell, are you? What do you think of Giraud?"

"I love him like my own father. How's that for comparisons? True or false?"

"Don't play games with this. You can do yourself harm."

"Register a threat to the patient."

"I'm sure that's not what I intended. I am going to insist you undergo some therapy. Mmmmn, got a little heartbeat there."

"Of course you did. I'll do your therapy, in your facility. As long as my azi sits through it with me."

"Irregular."

"Look, Petros, I've been through hell in this place. Are you trying to drive me crazy or are you going to give me a reasonable safeguard? Even a non-professional has a right to audit a psych procedure if the patient requests it. And I'm requesting a second opinion. That's all. Do it right and you won't even need Security to bring me in. Do it wrong and I'll consider other options. I'm not a panicked kid anymore. I know where I can file a protest, unless you plan to lock me up and have me disappear—damned bad for your tape record, isn't it?"

"I'll do better than that." Petros flipped switches and the monitor swung aside, dead. "I'll give you the tape and you can take it home. I just want your word you're going to use it."

"Now you've got real surprise. Pity you cut the monitor."

"You're scared out of good sense," Petros said. "I don't blame you. Good voice control, but your pulse rate is way up. Psyched yourself for this, have you? I could order a blood test. Verbal intervention? Grant try to prep you?"

"I have to sign a consent."

Petros let out a slow breath, arms on the desk. "Keep yourself out of trouble, Justin. This is off the record. Keep yourself out of trouble. Take the orders. They
are
going to put off the phone calls."

"Sure." The disappointment made a lump in his chest. "I figured. It's all a game, anyway. And I believed Denys. I knew better."

"It's not Denys. Military security nixed it. Denys is going to put together a file that may convince them. Just cooperate for a while. You can't improve things by the show you just put on. You understand me. Keep out of trouble. You will go on getting the letters." Another sigh, an intensely unhappy look. "I'm going to see Jordan. Is there anything you want to tell him?"

"What are they doing with him?"

"Nothing. Nothing. Calm down. I'm just going over there to check out some equipment. Supering my techs. I just thought I'd offer. I thought it might make you feel better. I'm going to take him a photo of you. I thought he'd like that. I'm going to bring one back—or try."

"Sure."

"I'm going to. For his sake, as much as yours. I was his friend."

"The number of my father's friends amazes me."

"I won't argue with you. Any message?"

"Tell him I love him. What else won't be censored?"

"I'll tell him as much as I can. This is still off the record. I have a job here. Someone else would do it worse. Think about that for yourself. Go home. Go to your office. Don't forget to pick up the tape at the counter."

He was not sure, when he had left, when he was walking back across the quadrangle toward the House with the tape and a prescription, whether he had won or lost the encounter. Or what faction in the House had won or lost.

But he had not known that for years.

Q: Dr. Emory, thank you for giving us the chance for a few direct questions about your work.

A: I'm glad to have the opportunity. Thank you. Go on.

Q: Your parents founded Reseune. Everyone knows that. Are you aware some biographers have called you the chief architect of Union?

A: I've heard the charge, [mild laughter] I wish they'd wait till I'm dead.

Q: You deny your effect—politically as well as scientifically?

A: I'm no more the architect than Bok was. Science is not politics. It may affect it. We have so little time. Could I interject an observation of my own—which may answer some of your questions in one?

Q: By all means.

A: When we came out from Earth we were a selected genepool. We were sifted by politics, by economics, by the very fact that we were fit for space. Most of the wave that reached the Hinder Stars were colonists and crews very carefully vetted by Sol Station, the allegedly unfit turned down, the brightest and the best, I think the phrase was then, sent out to the stars. By the time the wave reached Pell, the genepool had widened a bit, but not at all representative of Sol Station, let alone Earth—we did get one large influx when politics on Earth took a hand, and the wave that founded Union ended up mostly Eastern bloc, as they used to call it. A lot of chance entered the genepool in that final push—before Earth slammed the embargo down and stopped genetic export for a long time.

Cyteen was the sifting of the sifting of the sifting. . . meaning that if there was one population artificially selected to the extreme, it was Cyteen—which was mostly Eastern bloc, mostly scientists, and very, very small, and very far, at that time, from trade and the—call it . . . pollination . . . performed by the merchanters. That was a dangerous situation. Hence Reseune. That's where we began. That's what we're really for. People think of Reseune and azi. Azi were only a means to an end, and one day, when the population has reached what they call tech-growth positive, meaning that consumption will sustain mass production—azi will no longer be produced in those areas.

But meanwhile azi serve another function. Azi
are
the reservoir of every genetic trait we've been able to identify. We have tended to cull the evidently deleterious genes, of course. But there's a downside to small genepools, no matter how carefully selected, there's a downside in lack of resiliency, lack of available responses to the environment. Expansion is absolutely necessary, to avoid concentration of an originally limited genepool in the central locus of Union. We are not speaking of eugenics. We are speaking of diaspora. We are speaking of the necessary dispersion of genetic information in essentially the same ratios as that present on ancestral Earth. And we have so little time.