Cherryh, C J - Alliance-Union 08 (60 page)

That made her awfully mad at Nelly.

"Nelly was your maman's, Ari. Your maman put an awfully heavy load on Nelly, telling her as much as she did, and telling Nelly she had to keep that secret. Nelly is very loyal to your maman. Of course she would. "

"Ollie knew too. "

"Ollie knew. Do you want me to send Florian and Catlin to spend the night? They can have pallets over in the corner. They won't mind at all. "

"Do they know?"

"No. Only your maman's people knew. They're yours. "

She felt better about that. At least
they
hadn't been laughing at her. "Does Amy Carnath know?"

Uncle Denys frowned and took a second about that. "Why does Amy Carnath knowing matter?"

"Because it
does, "
she snapped at him.

"Ari, I'm in charge of your education. Your maman and I agreed that there are some questions I just won't answer, because they're for you to figure out. You'll be mad at me sometimes, but I'll have to stay by what I agreed with your maman. You're very, very bright. Your maman expects you to figure out some of these things yourself, just the way the first Ari would, because she knows how good you are at figuring things out. It's part of your growing up. There'll be a lot of times you'll ask me things—and I'll say, you have to figure that one, because you're the one who wants that answer. Just remember this: whatever you ask anyone—can tell them a lot. You think about that, Ari. "

He closed the door.

Ari thought about it. And thought that uncle Denys was maybe doing what maman had said; and maybe again uncle Denys wasn't. It was hard to tell, when people could be lying to you about what maman had said.

Or even about what she was.

In a little while more Florian and Catlin came in, very quiet and sober. "Ser Denys says you have orders for us, " Catlin said.

Ari made her face azi-like, very quiet. Her eyelashes were still wet. She figured her nose was red. They would pick all of that up, but she couldn't stop that, they had to be near her. "I've got something to tell you first. Sit down on the bed. I've found out some answers. "

They sat down, one on a side, very carefully, so they didn't jostle her.

"First, " she said, "uncle Denys says I'm not from maman's geneset at all, I'm a PR of somebody else, and she was a friend of maman's. That maman has a grown-up daughter and a granddaughter maman never told me about, and Nelly and Ollie both knew all about where maman got me. But he won't tell me a whole lot else. He says
I
have to find it out. " She made the little sign with her fingers that said one of them should come close and listen. But she couldn't make it with the right hand. So it was Florian who got up and came clear around the bed to put his ear up against her mouth. "It might be uncle Denys Working me. I don't know. And I don't know why he would, except Giraud is his brother. Pass it to Catlin. "

He did, and Catlin's eyebrows went up and Catlin's face got very thoughtful and still when she looked at her. Catlin nodded once, with a look that meant business.

So she was not sure whether she felt stupid or not, or whether it was true at all, or whether part of it was.

Florian and Catlin could track down a lot of things, because that was what they knew how to do.

It answered a lot of the What's Unusuals, that was what scared her most, except it didn't answer all of them.

Like why the Disappeareds and what Giraud was up to.

Like why maman hadn't written
her
a letter in the first place, or what had happened to it if maman had.

There were new ones.

Like it was Unusual that they didn't just tell her the truth from the start.

Like it was Unusual maman had gone all round the thing about her name, and told her her papa was a man named James Carnath. Which was still not where she got the Emory.

It was Unusual maman had dodged around a whole lot of things that maman had not wanted to answer. She had not wanted to ask very much when she was a little kid, because she felt it make maman real uncomfortable.

And when she thought about it, she knew maman had Worked her too, she could feel it happen when she remembered it.

That was what made her want to throw up.

She was scared, scared that nothing was true, not even what uncle Denys was telling her. But she couldn't let anybody know that.

That last uncle Denys had said was something she knew: what you asked told a whole lot to somebody you might not want to trust. So uncle Denys knew that too, and warned her not to ask him things.

Like maman, only uncle Denys did it a different way, straight out: don't give things away to me because you don't know whether I'm all right or not.

If uncle Denys wanted to Work her, he was doing something real complicated, and the pain medicine made her brain all fuzzy. If that was what he was doing he was starting off by confusing her.

Or taking her Fix off what she was trying to look at.

Dammit, she thought. Dammit.

Because she was stuck in this bed and she hurt and she couldn't think at all past the trank.

Report to my office,
the message from Yanni said, first thing that Justin read when he brought the office computer up; and he turned around and looked at Grant. "I've got to go see Yanni, " he said; and Grant swung his chair around and looked at him.

No comment. There was nothing in particular to say. Grant just looked worried.

"See you, " Justin said with a wry attempt at humor. "Wish you could witness this one. "

"So do I, " Grant said, not joking at all.

He was not up to a meeting with Yanni. But there was no choice. He shrugged, gave Grant a worried look, and walked out and down the hall, with his knees close to wobbling under him, it was still that bad and he was still that much in shock.

God, he thought, get me around this.

Somehow.

Grant had kept track, with Grant's azi-trained memory and Grant's professional understanding of subject, psychset, and what he was hearing, of everything that had gone on around him while he was answering Giraud's questions and of everything that had gone on around him in recovery, right down to the chance words and small comments of the meds that had taken him home. Playing all that back and knowing it was
all
that had gone on, was immeasurably comforting; having Grant simply
there
through the night had kept him reasonably well focused on here and now, and made him able to get up in the morning, adopt a deliberately short-sighted cheerfulness, and decide he was going to work.

I can at least get some of the damned records-keeping done, he had said to Grant, meaning the several towering mounds of their own reports that had been waiting weeks to be checked against computer files and archives and hand-stamped as Archived before being sent for the shredder. Can't think of a better day for it.

He could not cope with changes, and he reckoned on his way down the hall and up to Yanni's door that Security thought it had found something or suspected something in the interview, God knew what, and Yanni—

God knew.

"Marge, " he said to Yanni's aide, "I'm here. "

"Go on in, " Marge said. "He's expecting you. "

A flag on his log-on, that was what.

He opened the door and found Yanni at his desk. "Ser. "

Yanni looked up and he braced himself. "Sit down, " Yanni said very quietly.

Oh, God,
he thought, gone completely off his balance. He sank into the chair and felt himself tensed up and out of control.

"Son, " Yanni said, more quietly than he had ever heard Yanni speak, how are you?"

"I'm fine, " he said, two syllables, carefully managed, damn near stammered.

"I raised hell when I heard, " Yanni said. "All the way to Denys' office
and
Petros
and
Giraud. I understand they let Grant stay through it. "

"Yes, ser. "

"Petros put that as a mandate on your charts. They better have. I'll tell you this, they
did
record it, not on the Security recorders, but it exists. You can get it if you need it. That's Giraud's promise, son. They're sane over there this morning. "

He stared at Yanni with a blank, sick feeling that it had to be a lead-in, that he was being set up for something. Recorded, that was sure. Trust the man and he would come in hard and low.

"Is this another voice-stress?" he asked Yanni, to have it out and over with.

The line between Yanni's brows deepened. "No. It's not. I want to explain some things to you. Things are real difficult in Giraud's office right now. A lot of pressure. They're going to have to break the secrecy seal on this. The kid's timing was immaculate. I don't want to go into it more than that, except to tell you they've broken the news to Ari, at least as far as her not being Jane Strassen's biological daughter, and her being a replicate of somebody named Ariane Emory, who's no more than a name to her. So some of that pressure is going to be relieved real soon. She's got a broken arm and a lot of bruises. They threw the news at her while she was tranked so they could at least hold the initial reaction to the emotional level where they could halfway control it, get it settled and accepted on a gut level before she heads at the why of it with that logical function of hers, which, I don't need to tell you, is damned sharp and damned persistent. I'm telling you this because she's come your way before and she's going to be hunting information. If it happens, don't panic. Follow procedures, call Denys' office, and tell her you have to do that: that Security will get upset if you don't—which is the truth. "

He drew easier breaths, told himself it was still a trap, but at least the business assumed some definable shape, a calamity postponed to the indefinable future.

"Do you have any word, " he asked Yanni, "how Jordan came through this?"

"I called him last night. He said he was all right, he was concerned for you. You know how it is, there's so damned much we can't do on the phone. I told him you were fine; I'd check on you; I'd call him again today. "

"Tell him I'm all right. " He found himself with a deathgrip on the right chair arm, his fingers locked till they ached. He let go, trying to relax. "Thanks. Thanks for checking on him. "

Yanni shrugged, heaved a sigh and scowled at him. "You suspect me like hell, don't you?"

He did not answer that.

"Listen to me, son. I'll put up with a lot, but I know something about how you work, and I knew damn well you hadn't had anything to do with the kid, it was Giraud's damn bloody insistence on running another damn probe on a mind that just may be worth two or three others around this place, never mind my professional judgment,
Giraud
is in a bloodyminded
hurry,
to hell with procedures, to hell with the law, to hell with everything in his way. " Yanni drew breath. "Don't get me started. What I called you in here to tell you is, Denys just put your research on budget. Not a big one, God knows, but you're going to be seeing about half the load you've been getting off the Rubin project, and you're going to get computer time over in Sociology, not much of it, but some. Call it guilt on Administration's part. Call it whatever you like. You're going to route the stuff through me to Sociology, through Sociology over to Jordan, and several times a year you're going to get some time over at Planys. That's the news. I thought it might give you something cheerful to think about. All right?"

"Yes, ser, " he said after a moment, because he had to say something. The most dangerous thing in the world was to start trusting Yanni Schwartz, or believing when indicators started a downhill slide that it had been a momentary glitch.

"Go on. Take a break. Go. Get out of here. "

"Yes, ser. " He levered himself up out of the chair, he got himself out the door past Marge without even looking at her, and walked the hall in a land of numb terror that somewhere Security was involved in this, that in the way they had of getting him off his guard and then hitting him hardest, he might find something had happened to Grant—it was the most immediate thing he could think of, and the worst.

But Grant was there, Grant was in the door waiting for him and worried.

"Yanni was polite, " he said. The tiny, paper-piled office was a claustrophobic closeness. "Let's go get a cup of coffee. " No mind that they had the makings in the office. He wanted space around him, the quiet, normal noise of human beings down in the North Wing coffee bar.

Breaking schedule, being anywhere out of the ordinary, could win them both another session with Giraud. Nothing was safe. Anything could be invaded. It was the kind of terror a deep probe left. He ought to be on trank. Hell if he wanted it.

He told Grant what Yanni had said, over coffee in the restaurant. Grant listened gravely and said: "About time. About time they came to their senses. "

"You trust it?" he asked Grant. Desperately, the way he had taken Grant's word for what was real and what was not. He was terrified Grant would fail him finally, and tell him yes, believe them, trust everything. It was what it sounded like, from the one point of sanity he had.

"No, " Grant said, with a little lift of his brows. "No more than yesterday. But I think
Yanni's
telling the truth. I think he's starting to suspect what you might be and what they might lose in their preoccupation with young Ari. That's the idea he may have gotten through to Denys. If it gets to Denys, it may finally get through to Giraud. No. Listen to me. I'm talking very seriously. "

"Dammit, Grant, —" He felt himself ludicrously close to tears, to absolute, overloaded panic. "I'm not holding this off well. I'm too damned open, even wide awake. Don't confuse me. "

"I'm going to say this and get off it, fast.
If
the word is getting up to them from Yanni, it's perfectly logical they're turning helpful. I'm not saying they're any different. I'm saying there may be some changes. For God's sake take it easy, take it quietly, don't try to figure them on past performance, don't try to figure them at all for a few days. You want me to talk to Yanni?"