Cherryh, C J - Alliance-Union 08 (6 page)

My God.

Gorodin lifted a brow. "You know, Hayes has defense contracts."

"I don't know what you're getting to, but I don't like to talk finance anywhere near the word
vote.
And if you've got a recorder about your person, I take strong exception to it."

"As I would to yours, sera. But we're not talking finance. As it happens, I set my people to talking to people in Hayes when we heard that. And we know very well that the Reseune extension is connected to the Rubin bill,
and
when my staff spent last night investigating the Reseune Charter, a very helpful young aide came up with a sleeper in the articles that gives Reseune the unique right to declare any subsidiary facilities part of its Administrative Territory. That means what you're going to build at Fargone
won't
be under Fargone control. It's going to be under yours. An independent part of Union. And Rubin has something to do with it."

This is more than he could come up with on his own. Damn, but it is. Someone's spilled something and he keeps naming Hayes and Andrus. That's who I'm supposed to blame.

"This is all very elaborate," she muttered. They had reached the intersection of the balcony and the hall to the Council offices, where she wanted to go. She stopped and faced the admiral. "Go on."

"We find this of military interest. A Reseune facility at Fargone poses security risks."

For a moment everything stopped. It was not from the direction she had expected. It was not sane. It
was,
if one was worried about merchanter contacts.

"We're not talking about labs, admiral." "What
are
we talking about?"

"Rubin's going to be working there. Mostly it'll be his lab." You have enormous faith in this young man."
Trap. My God, where is it?
"He's a very valuable young man." I'd like to discuss the security aspects of this. Before the vote this afternoon. Can we talk?"

"Dammit, I've got a luncheon appointment."

"Dr. Emory, I honestly don't want to send this to committee. I'm trying to be cooperative. But I feel this is going through much too fast. I have other concerns that I
don't
think you want me to mention here."

Someone's talked. He's gotten to someone.

But aloud, to Florian: "Tell Yanni I'm caught in a crisis. Tell him to sit in for me. I'll get there when I can." She looked at the admiral, calmer, reckoning that it sounded like bargaining, not a torpedo from the flank. "Your place or mine?"

"Thank you," Ariane said, taking the coffee from Florian, who knew how she liked it. It was her office, her conference room, and her bodyguards present, the military aides staying outside, the admiral's own offer.

Conciliation, perhaps.

The admiral took his coffee black. Most did, who got a taste of it on special occasions. It was rare and real, imported all the way from Sol, Earth's southern hemisphere. It was one of Ariane's cultivated vices. And she took hers white. Real milk. A second extravagance.

"AG is still working on this," she said. "Someday." Cyteen had been a silicate-polluted hell when they started agriculture in the lowlying valleys, where domes and the precipitators could create mini-climate.

Another small flash: so much brown, so much blue-green on the hills. The lines spun above the valley like a webfly's work. The big mirrors caught light from space and flung power down from the hills. And the weathermakers in orbit raked the land with storms, terrible storms—
We're safe, Ari,
maman would say.
It's only noise. It's weather, that's all—

Leonid Gorodin sipped his coffee with a tranquil look. And smiled. And said: "The rumor inside the Bureau is that this Rubin project is yours. Personally. There's nothing you do that doesn't change the balance between us and Alliance, us and Sol. I've talked to Lu. We have a lot of anxiety about this."

"We manage our own security. We've always managed it."

"Tell me this, Dr. Emory. Is the project you're undertaking . . . going to have any strategic significance?"

Trap.
"Admiral, I suspect the development of a new toilet seat has strategic significance with some of your advisers."

Gorodin chuckled politely, and waited.

"That's fine," she said calmly. "We'll appreciate a vote of support from your Bureau. You want us to move the facility, we'll move it, even to Cyteen Station. We're very accommodating. We just don't want to lose Rubin."

"That important?"

"That important."

"I'll make a proposition to you, Dr. Emory. You've got an agenda. You want it passed. You want these things to go through, you want them to go through with a clean bill from Finance, you certainly don't want any long delays. You want to get back to Reseune. I want to get back to my command. I've got business out there, and between you and me, I'm allergic as hell to something around here and I hate the socializing."

"I'm also anxious to get home," she said. It was a dance. It would get where it was going in Gorodin's own time.

"You level with me," Gorodin said, "about the Fargone project."

"Say it's genetics. It's experimental."

"Are you going to have advanced labs out there?"

"No. Medical wing. Analysis. Administrative work. None of the classified equipment."

"Meaning you're following-up, not creating."

"In practical terms, yes. No birthlab."

Gorodin looked at the empty cup, and at the two azi, and held his out.

"Florian," Ariane said, and the azi, with a quiet nod, took the pot from the sideboard and filled it. Gorodin followed Florian's moves with his eyes, thoughts proceeding.

"You can rely on their discretion," Ariane said. "It's quite all right. They're not sensitive to discussion. Reseune's best work. Aren't you, Florian?"

"Yes, sera," Florian said, preparing her second cup. He offered it.

"Beauty and brains," Ariane said, and smiled with the mouth, not the eyes. "Alliance
won't
develop birthlabs. They have no worlds to fill."

"Yet. We have to think about that. —Who's going to manage that facility at Fargone?"

"Yanni Schwartz."

Gorodin frowned, and sipped slowly at the incongruously tiny cup.

Ah,
Ariane thought.
Now, now, we get closer to it.

"I'll tell you, Dr. Emory. A lot of my people rely on the psych hospital at Viking. For reasons which are only politics—I'd like to have a facility a lot closer to that Hope Station route you're promoting. I'd like to have a place to send some of my worse cases—where Cyteen
won't
take them through the station facility."

"Any particular reason for that?"

"We're talking about special operations. People whose IDs change. People whose faces—you understand—I don't want seen. These are people who live anxious lives. They feel exposed at the big stations. They'd feel a hell of a lot better if there were a way to get to a Reseune facility—not on Cyteen."

Ariane frowned, not bothering to hide her perplexity. It sounded halfway sane.

"What I want," Gorodin said, "is access. A facility where my people feel—safe. Where I know they are. I want to throw some of the covert budget in there. Some of my staff."

"No military."

"We're talking about unanimous support for that facility. I can deliver that."

"No military. Reseune staff. And it better be a damn large contribution. You'll force a redesign. I'm not having my project compromised by your people strolling through Reseune boundaries. There'll be a total separation between any military hospital and our offices."

"We can go with that. But we want a liaison between our side and yours that we have confidence in. Someone we've worked with."

The thought hit like ice water. It was hard not to react, to keep the fingers relaxed on the fragile handle of the cup. "Who did you have in mind?"

"Dr. Warrick. He designed the training tapes. We want him, Dr. Emory."

"Does he want you?" Calmly. Very calmly.

"We can ask him."

"I think I know your source, admiral. I'm damned sure I know your source. What else did he tell you?"

"I think you're jumping to conclusions."

"No, I'm not. I was afraid of something like this. You want him, do you? You want a man in charge of your highest security operations, who quite readily betrayed my interests."

"I've told you my sources."

"Of course you have. You're quite willing to have some Hayes employee's head on the block, some poor sod of an engineer, no doubt, that they'll find a way to blame if I come down on them. You want Jordan Warrick. Did he tell you why?"

"He didn't tell me anything."

"Admiral, you're a damn good poker player, but remember how I make my living. Remember how he makes his. What's he done? Offered to go public with his opinions? Is that how you'll guarantee me Corain?"

"Dr. Emory, you know I can deliver what I promise."

"Of course you can. And Jordan Warrick promises you my head on a platter. He promises you he can swing votes in Science. I'll tell you what I'll do. You can have him. I'll transfer him and his whole damned staff. If you want to put him over a top-secret facility, go right ahead. If he wants to make speeches and write papers against my policies, fine." She set the cup down. "Do we have a deal, admiral? We can get out of this damned city days early, if that's the case. You support me in a request to let us leave sealed ballots on the Hope bill, and if you can guarantee they'll be unanimous, none of us will have to show up here to call a question. Deal?"

"I think we can go with that."

She smiled. "Excellent. If you want Warrick's wing at Fargone, that'll have to be written up. I'll trust your staff for that. Mine's busy. But it'll wait on the establishment of a secure facility. And I do trust you know how to lay your hands on Warrick to get his signature on the request."

Gorodin swallowed his coffee in some haste and set his cup down. "Thank you, Dr. Emory. I'm sure this will work to everyone's good." He rose and offered his hand.

Ariane rose and reciprocated a strong handshake. And smiled at him all the way to the door.

The azi Catlin closed it then, her face as blank as any soldier at attention.

Florian picked up the cups, trying not to look at her either.

They knew when to be afraid.

The technician begins a routine procedure at Reseune, the transfer of genetic material already replicated. Ten units of AL-5766 remain unused in the genebank, standard operating procedure for commercial and experimental materials.

AL-5766 is female, Alpha class. Alpha, the highest intelligence in the A-Z non-citizen classifications, ranges upward from 150 on the Rezner scale, to a current known high of 215. AL-5766 is 190, which verges on genius. Alphas are generated only rarely except for specific executive assignments, experimental studies or colonial operations in which there is minimum population density and considerable latitude for independent judgment. Alphas without early socialization are prone to personality disorders: the best successes in non-social Alphas have been achieved with positive feedback in early training and an accelerated early tapestudy consisting of world awareness, reading, and mathematics skills, with minimal intervention except for reward. The most reliably successful Alphas are those given to human parentage from the moment of birth: in such cases the behavioral and social statistics follow the same profile as citizen-born individuals of equal Rezner values. It should always be remembered that an azi geneset's traits and to some extent, classification, are determined by the tape designed specifically for that geneset; and that the primary failing with Alphas seems to be in tape design.

AL-5766 has shown developmental patterns in human parentage situations which are within acceptable ranges, but which indicate a propensity toward aggression. Within azi communities the AL-5766 statistics are wholly unacceptable, involving violent behaviors, moodiness, and abnormal and irrational anxieties.

AL-5766 disorders once manifested find no amelioration through tape, and only rarely find relief through interventive counseling, although some salvage has been effected on two occasions by transfer to military situations where hardship and physical challenge is extreme.

Neither case, however, has utilized the high potential of the AL-5766s in mathematics, and not even experimental use has been made of the AL-5766 geneset since 2353. Now, however, Reseune believes it has a tape-fix for the problem, of interest since AL-5767 proved out as Beta-class, lacking the traits which made 5766 both brilliant and troublesome.

There are four sets in this group because a tape-design team has come up with two fixes, subtly different. Two each will provide adequate comparisons for a first run. There is no need of a control using the original tape: AL-5766s have forty-six years of data behind them, and no one needs to prove that the old tapes were faulty.

The eggs lack a code of their own until they receive the full diploid set of AL-5766. This is standard, for azi and citizen replications.

The womb into which each egg goes is bioplasmed and contractile, the whole environment closely duplicating a specific natural pregnancy which has served Reseune for forty-nine years: it replicates all the movements, the sounds, the chemical states, and the interactive cycles of a living womb.

The AL-5766 units are a day along, four motes of life with identical genetic codes busily dividing and growing in the dark of the wombs. The EU-4651s, male, have an identical start; and there are the usual ten units left in the genebank.

EU-4651 is an old type, Eta-class, between 90 and 95 on the Rezner scale and outstandingly stable, one of the most successful Etas in industrial and military fields, and not restricted to Cyteen, but patented in all its sets and derivative sets. Ordinarily Reseune would have simply sold the requisite eggs in whatever number the purchasing lab requested, but this is a new application for the EU-4651s, most of whom are in military service. An EU-4651 has shown an uncommon and late-developing aptitude under an emergency situation which might mean reclassification and upgrading of the type if a tape program could take advantage of it either in existing individuals or in future EU-4651s.