Cherryh, C J - Alliance-Union 08 (57 page)

"That's so, " Catlin said. "But that's the Rule. And they know it. Nobody else's orders. "

She drew a long breath. "Even if uncle Denys is a Super. "

"Not for us, " Catlin said. "You told us mind him. And Nelly. We'll do that. But if it's any big thing we come to you. "

"You come to me first after this, if it's anything more than a 'pick that up. ' You don't go anywhere they tell you and you don't go with anybody they tell you, until after you tell me. "

"Good. If you tell us that, that's the Rule. "

"You be sneaky about it. Don't fight. Just get away. "

"That's smart. That's real good, sera. "

"And you don't ever, ever tell on me, no matter who asks. You lie if you have to. You be real smooth and then you come and tell me what they asked. "

"Yes, sera. " Both of them nodded, definitely.

"Then I'll tell you a big secret. I never tell anybody everything. Like on my exam this morning. I could have put down more. But I won't. You don't let anybody but me know what you really know. "

"Is that a Rule?"

"That's a big Rule. There's a boy named Sam: I used to play with him. He's the one that gave me the bug. He's not real smart, but everybody likes Sam—and I figured out it's easier to
be
Sam most of the time. That way I can get a lot of people to be nicer: that way even stupid people can understand everything I need them to if I'm going to Work them. But they can't know you're not like that, you can't let them find out from anybody. So you do it all the time. I learned that from Sam and uncle Denys. He does it. He's smart, he always uses little words, and he's real good at getting points on people. That's one thing you do. You don't want them to know you're doing it unless that's part of the Working. And we don't. So here's what we do. We start being real nice to Giraud. But not right off. The first thing we do is shake him up. Then we let him yell, then we act like he yelled too much, then we get him to do something nice to make up for it. Then he won't be surprised when we start being nice, because he thinks he's Working
us.
That's how you Work an Older. "

"That's sneaky, " Catlin said, and actually grinned.

"I'll tell you another secret. I've been counting What's Unusuals. It's Unusual that people Disappear. It's Unusual that maman didn't tell me she was going or even say goodbye. It's Unusual Nelly goes to the hospital all the time. It's Unusual a CIT kid has two azi to Super. It's Unusual I have to get my blood tested every few days. It's Unusual I go to adult parties and other kids don't. It's Unusual I'm so smart. It's Unusual you're on a job when you're still kids. I'm still counting the Unusuals. I think there's a lot of them. A whole lot. I want you to think and tell me all the ones you know. And tell what you can do to find out stuff without getting caught. "

The plane touched and braked and rolled toward the terminal, and Grant gave a sigh of profoundest relief, watching it from the windows.

There was still a lot to wait through: there was a Decon procedure for anything coming in from the other hemisphere, not just the passengers having to go through Decontamination, but the luggage had to be treated and searched, and the plane itself had to be hosed down and fumigated.

That was starting when Grant left the windows and walked over to the Decon section and stationed himself outside the white doors, hands locked between his knees, flexing and clenching—nervous tic, that. You have a lot of tension, a Supervisor would tell him, who saw it.

A Supervisor could say that about any CIT anytime, Grant reckoned. Flux-thinking bred it. Azi-mindset said: there's not enough data to solve the problem, and the sane and sensible azi filed it and blanked out to rest or worked on another problem. A CIT threw himself at a data-insufficient problem over and over, exploring the flux in his perceptions and shades of value in his opinions, and touching off his endocrine system, which in turn brought up his flux-capable learning—which hyped the integrative processes in the flux. He was doing too much of it lately for his liking. He hated the stress level CITs lived at.

And here he was sitting here worrying about four and five problems at once, simply because he had become an adrenaline addict.

The white doors opened. Part of the crew came out. They ignored him and walked on down the hall.

Then the doors opened again, and Justin came through. Grant got up, caught the relief and the delight in Justin's expression and went and hugged him because Justin offered him open arms.

"Are you all right?" Grant asked.

"I'm fine. Jordan's fine. " Justin pulled him out of the way of more people coming out the doors, and walked with him behind them. "Got to pick up my briefcase and my bag, " he said, and they walked to Baggage, where it was waiting, fogged, irradiated, and, Grant reckoned, searched and scanned, case and light travel bag alike.

"I'll carry them, " Grant said.

"I've got them. " Justin gathered everything up and they walked to the doors, to the waiting bus that would take them up to the House.

"Was it a good trip?" Grant said, when they were where no eavesdropper could likely pick it up, going out the doors into the dark.

"It was, " Justin said, and gave the bags to the azi baggage handler.

Security was in the bus, ordinary passengers like themselves, from this point. They sat down, last aboard. The driver shut the doors and Justin slumped in the seat as the bus pulled out of the lighted portico of the terminal and headed up toward the house.

"I got to talk to Jordan. We stayed up all night. Just talking. We both wished you were there. "

"So do I. "

"It's a lot better there than I thought it was. A lot worse in some ways and a lot better. There's a good staff. Really fine people. He's getting along a lot better than I thought he would. And Paul is fine. Both of them. " Justin was a little hoarse. Exhausted. He leaned his head on the seat-back and said: "He's going to look at my projects. He says at least there's something there that the computers aren't handling. That he's interested and he's not just saying that to get me there. There's a good chance I can go back before the year's out. Maybe you too. Or you instead. He'd really like to see you. "

"I'm glad, " Grant said.

There was not much they could say, in detail. He
was
glad. Glad when they pulled up in the portico of the House, checked in through the front door, and Justin doggedly, stubbornly, insisted to carry his own baggage, tired as he was.

"You don't carry my bags, " Justin snapped at him, hoarsely.

Because Justin hated him playing servant in public, even when he was trying to do him an ordinary favor.

But Justin let him take them and put them over against the wall when they were inside, in their own apartment, and Justin took his coat off and fell onto the couch with a sigh. "It was good, " he said. "All the way. It's hard to believe I was there. Or that I'm back. It's so damned different. "

"Whiskey?"

"A little one. I slept on the plane. I'm out, already. "

Grant smiled at him, Justin half-nodding with time-lag. He went and fixed the whiskey, never mind now that he was playing servant. He made two of them.

"How's it been here?" Justin asked, and there was a small upset at Grant's stomach.

"Fine, " he said. "Just fine. " The upset was more when he brought the drink and gave it into Justin's hand.

Justin took it. His hand shook when he drank a sip of it, and Justin looked up at him with the most terrible, weary look. And smiled with the same expression as he lifted the glass in a wry toast. There was no way for either of them to know, of course, whether the other had been tampered with.

But that was all right: there was nothing either of them could do about it, if Security had done anything. There was nothing, Grant thought, worth the fight for either of them if that was the case.

Grant lifted his glass the same way, and drank.

Then he went to the bedroom and pulled a note out from under Justin's pillow. He brought it back to him.

If I'm showing this to you,
it said,
I'm in my right mind. If I didn't, and you just found it, I'm not. Be warned.

Justin looked at him in frightened surmise. And then in earnest question.

Grant smiled at him, wadded up the note, and sat down to drink his whiskey.

It wasn't hard at all to get out the kitchen way. They didn't go together. Catlin and Florian went first because they were Security and the kitchen staff wouldn't know they shouldn't: Security went everywhere.

Then Ari went in. She Worked her way through, made herself a pest to the azi who was mixing up batter, and got a taste, then went over to the azi chopping up onions and said it made her cry. So she went out onto the kitchen steps and dived right off and down, and ran fast to get down the hill, where the hump was Florian and Catlin told her about.

She slid down on her back and rolled over and grinned as they looked at her, lying on their stomachs too.

"Come on, " Catlin said then. She was being Team Leader. She was the best at sneaking.

So they followed her, slithered down to the back of the pump building where she stripped off her blouse and her pants and put on the ones Florian gave her, azi-black. Getting shoes that fit was harder, so she had bought some black boots on uncle Denys' card that worked all right if nobody looked close. And she was wearing those. Florian got her card off her blouse and taped a black band across the bottom and a mark like the azi triangle in the CIT blank.

"Do I look right?" she said when she had clipped the card on.

"Face, " Catlin said. So she made an azi face, very stiff and formal.

"That's good, " Catlin said.

And Catlin slithered over, looked around the corner of the pump building, then got up and walked out. They followed Catlin as far as the road, and then they just walked together like they belonged there.

It was going to take them a while to miss her up at the House, Ari thought, and then Security was going to get real upset.

Meanwhile she had never seen the Town except from the House, and she wished they could walk faster, because she wanted to see as much as she could before they got caught.

Or before she decided to go back, somewhere around dark. It was going to be fun at the same time as it was not going to be: it was going to be a lot of trouble, but she really hoped they could sneak back up and get her clothes, and just sneak back in by the kitchen, when everyone was really in a panic. But that might look too smart, and that might make them watch her too close.

It was better to be Sam, and get caught.

That way she would say she made her azi do it, and that would work, because they had to take her orders, and everybody knew that. So they wouldn't get in any trouble. She would. And that was what she wanted.

She just wanted to have a little fun before they caught her.

The problem was running, the computer working timeshare on a Beta-class design and going slow this morning, because Yanni Schwartz had the integrative set running: everyone else got a lower priority. So Justin leaned back, got up, poured himself a cup of coffee, and filled Grant's empty cup, Grant working away at his terminal in that kind of fixed concentration that was not going to lose that chain of thought if the ceiling fell around him.

Grant reached over without even looking away from the screen, picked up the coffee cup and took a sip.

Someone arrived in the door, brusque, abrupt, and more than one. Justin's ears had already registered that as he looked around, saw Security black, and had a man in his office, two others behind him.

Muscles tightened, gut tightened in panic.

"You're wanted in Security, " the man said.

"What for?"

"No questions. Just come with us. "

He thought of the hot coffee in his hands, and Grant
had
noticed, Grant was getting up from his chair, as another Security guard moved in behind the first.

"Let's go straighten this out, " Justin said calmly, and put the cup down.

"Let me shut down, " Grant said.

"Now!" the officer said.

"My program—"

"Grant, " Justin said, articulate, he did not know how. It was happening, the thing he had been expecting for a long, long time; and he thought of doing them all the damage he could. But it could be something he could talk his way out of. Whatever it was. And there was, whatever else, enough force at Reseune Administration's disposal to take care of two essentially sedentary tape-designers, however well-exercised.

The only thing he could hope for was to keep the situation calm, the way he had mapped it out in his mind years ago. He kept his hands in sight, he got himself and Grant peacefully out the door, he walked with the Security guards without complaint, to take the lift down to the basement storm-tunnel.

The lift door opened, they walked out as the guards directed. "Hands on the wall, " the officer said.

"Grant, " he said, catching Grant by the arm, feeling the tension. "It's all right. We'll sort it out. "

He turned to the wall himself, waited while two of them searched Grant for weapons and put on the handcuffs, then took his own turn. "I don't suppose, " he said calmly as he could with his face against the wall and his arms pulled behind him, "you people know what this is about. "

"Come along, " the officer said, and faced him about again.

No information. After that at least the guards were less worried.

Keep to the script. Cooperate. Stay calm and give absolutely no trouble.

Through a locked door into a Security zone, lonelier and lonelier in the concrete corridors. He had never seen this part of Reseune's storm-tunnels in all his life, and he hoped to hell they
were
going to Security.

Another locked door, and a lift, with the designation SECURITY 10N on the opposing wall: he was overwhelmingly glad to see that sign.

Up, then, with extraordinary abruptness. The doors opened on a hall he did know, the back section of Security, a hall that figured in his nightmares.