Cherryh, C J - Alliance-Union 08 (65 page)

He had Security push a button that opened the wall back, and she stood there staring while the Council Chamber opened right into the big Council Hall, becoming a room to the side of the seats, with the Rostrum in front of the huge wall uncle Giraud said was made out of stone from the Volga banks, all rough and red sandstone, just like it was a riverside.

The seats all looked tiny in front of that.

"This is where the laws are made," uncle Giraud said, and his voice echoed, like every footstep. "That's where the Council President and the Chairman sit, up there on the Rostrum."

She knew that. She could tape-remember the room full, with people walking up and down the aisles. Her heart beat fast.

"This is the center of Union," uncle Giraud said. "This is where people work out their differences. This is what makes everything work."

She had never heard uncle Giraud talk like that, never heard uncle Giraud talk in that quiet voice that said these things were important. He sounded like Dr. Edwards, somehow, doing lessons for her.

He took her back outside then, where it was noisy and Security made room for them. Down the stairs then. She could see cameras set up down below.

"We're going to do a short interview," uncle Giraud told her, "and then we're going to have lunch with Chairman Harad. Is that all right?"

"What's going to be for lunch?" she asked. Food sounded good. She was not so sure about Chairman Harad.

"Councillor," an older woman said, coming up to them, and put her hand on uncle Giraud's sleeve and said: "Private. Quickly.
Please."

It was some kind of trouble. Ari knew it, the woman was giving it off like she was about to explode with worry, and Giraud froze up just a second and then said: "Ari. Stand here."

They talked together, and the woman's back was to them. The noise blurred everything out.

But uncle Giraud came back very fast, and he was upset. His face was all pale.

"Sera," Florian said, very fast, very soft, like he wanted her to say what to do. But she didn't know where the trouble was coming from, or what it was.

"Ari," uncle Giraud said, and took her aside, along by the wall, the huge fountain, and down to the other end where there were some offices. Security moved very fast, Florian and Catlin went with her, and nobody was following them. There was just that voice-sound, everywhere, murmuring like the water.

Security opened the doors. Security told the people inside to go into a back office and they looked confused and upset.

But: "Wait out here," uncle Giraud said to Florian and Catlin, and she looked at them, scared, uncle Giraud hurrying her into an empty office with a desk and a chair. They were going to follow her, not certain what to do, but he said:
"Out!"
and she said: "It's all right."

He shut the door on them. They were scared. Uncle Giraud was scared. And she didn't know what was going on with everyone, except he took her by the shoulders and looked at her and said:

"Ari, —Ari, there's news on the net. It's from Fargone. I want you to listen to me. It's about your maman. She's died, Ari."

She just stood there. She felt his hands on her shoulders. He hurt her right one. He was telling her something crazy, something that couldn't be about maman, it didn't make sense.

"She died some six months ago, Ari. The news is just breaking over the station net. It just got here. They're picking it up out there, on their comlinks. That woman—heard it; and told me, and I didn't want you to hear it out there, Ari. Take a breath, sweet. Ari."

He shook her. It hurt. And she couldn't breathe for a moment, couldn't, till she got a breath all at once and uncle Giraud hugged her against him and patted her back and called her sweet. Like maman.

She hit him. He hugged her so she couldn't, and just went on holding her while she cried.

"It's a damn lie!" she yelled when she got enough breath.

"No." He hugged her hard. "Sweet, your maman was very old, very old, that's all. And people die. Listen to me. I'm going to take you home. Home, understand? But you've got to walk out of here. You've got to walk out of here past all those people and get to the car, you understand me? Security's going to get the car, we're going to go straight to the airport, we're going to fly home. But the first thing you have to do is get to the car. Can you do that?"

She listened. She listened to everything. Things went past her. But she stopped crying, and he set her back by the shoulders and wiped her face with his fingers, and smoothed her hair and got her to sit down in the chair.

"Are you all right?" he asked her, very, very quiet. "Ari?"

She got another gulp of air. And stared through him. She felt him pat her shoulder, and heard him go to the door and call Catlin and Florian.

"Ari's maman has died," she heard him say. "We just found it out."

More and more people. Florian and Catlin. If all of them believed it, then it was truer and truer. All the people out there. Maman was on the news. The whole of Union knew her maman had died.

Uncle Giraud came back and got down on one knee and got his comb and very carefully began to comb her hair. She messed it up and turned her face away.
Go away.

But he combed it again, very gentle, very patient, and patted her on the shoulder when he finished. Florian brought her a drink and she took it in her good hand. Catlin just stood there with a worried look.

Dead is dead, that was what Catlin said. Catlin didn't know what to do with a CIT who thought it was something else.

"Ari," uncle Giraud said, "let's get out of here. Let's get you to the car. All right? Take my hand. There's no one going to ask you any questions. Let's just walk to the car."

She took his hand. She got up and she walked with her hand in Giraud's out into the office and outside again, where all the people were standing, far across the hall; and the voice-sound died away into the distance. She could hear the fountain-noise for the first time. Giraud shifted hands on her, and put his right one on her shoulder, and she walked with him, with Catlin in front of her and Florian on her other side, and all the Security people. But they didn't need them. Nobody asked any questions.

They were sorry, she thought. They were sorry for her.

And she hated that. She
hated
the way they looked at her.

It was a terribly long walk, until they were going through the doors and getting into the car, and Florian and Catlin piling in on the other side, while uncle Giraud got her into the back seat and sat down with her and held her.

Security closed the back doors, one of them got in and closed the doors and the car started up, fast and hard, the tunnel lights flashing past them.

"Ari," Giraud said to her on the plane, moving Florian out of his seat to sit down across the little table from her, once they were in the air. "I've got the whole story now. Your maman died in her office. She was at work. She had a heart attack. It was very fast. They couldn't even get her to hospital."

"Where are my letters?" she asked, looking straight at him, looking him right in the face.

Giraud looked at her straight too. "At Fargone. I'm sure she read them."

"Why didn't she answer me?"

Giraud took a moment. Then: "I don't know, Ari. I truly don't know. I don't know if I can ever answer that. I'll try to find out. But it takes time. Everything between here and Fargone—takes a long time."

She turned her face away from him, to the window where the outback showed hazy reds.

She had not had her maman for six months. And she had never felt it. She had gone on as if nothing had happened, as if everything was still the same. It made her ashamed. It made her mad. Terrible things could have happened besides that, and it would take that long to know about them.

"I want Ollie to come home," she said to Giraud.

"I'll see about it," Giraud said.

"Do it!"

"Ollie has a choice too," Giraud said. "Doesn't he? He's your maman's partner. He'll have taken care of your maman's business. He'll have seen that things went right. He's not a servant, sweet, he's a very good manager, and he'll be handling your maman's office and handling her affairs for her. He'd want to do that. But I'll send and ask him what he wants to do."

She swallowed at the lump in her throat. She wished Giraud would go away. She didn't know what she thought yet. She was still putting it together.

She thought of that long walk and everybody in the Hall staring at her. And she had to do that again at Reseune—everybody staring at her, everybody knowing what was going on.

It made her mad. It made her so mad it was hard to think.

But she needed to. She needed to know where people were lying to her.

And who would want to take things from her. And whether that
was
what had happened to maman.

Who are they, where are they, what have they got?

She looked at Giraud when he was not looking, just looked, a long time.

The news played the clip over and over, the solemn, shaken girl in the blue suit, walking with Giraud and Florian and Catlin past the silent lines of newspeople and government workers, just the cameras running, and the quick, grim movement of Security flanking them as they passed through the hall.

Mikhail Corain watched it with his jaw clamped, watched the subsequent clips, some provided by Reseune, of Ari's childhood, of Jane Strassen's career, all interposed with the Court sequences, the interview after, and then back through the whole thing again, with interviews with the Reseune Information Bureau, with Denys Nye, with child psychologists—with solemn music and supered images and reportorial garbage making photo comparisons between the original Ariane standing solemnly at her mother's funeral, and the replicate's decorously pale, shock-stricken face in a still from the clip they played and played and played, dammit.

The whole of Cyteen was wallowing in the best damn theater Reseune could have asked for. That bitch Catherine Lao hardly had to bend any effort to key up the newsservices, which had already been covering the Discovery bill—then the bombshell revelation that there was an Emory replicate filing for the right of Succession, no Bok clone,
brilliant—
then the court appearance, the interview—all points on the Expansionist side; Defense's invocation of the Military Secrets Act against the bill, a little coverage of Centrist objections, a possible gain against the tide—

Then Strassen's death, and the child getting the news, virtually on live cameras—

God, it was a circus.

A freighter docked at Cyteen Station and shot the content of its Fargone-acquired informational packet into the Cyteen data-sorters, the news-packet hit the Cyteen news-comp, the news-comp upgraded its information and scrolled it past the human watcher, and what might have been a passing-interest kind of story, the death of a Reseune administrator who was not even a known name to the average citizen, became the biggest media event since—

Since the murder at Reseune and the Warrick hearing.

The news had to be real: the data-storage of a starship—the whole system that carried news, electronic mail, publications, stockmarket data, financial records and statistics, ballots and civil records—was the entire dataflow of the last station visited, shot out of a starship's Black Box when it came to dock, as the current station's data spooled in. It was the system that kept the markets going and the whole of Union functioning: tampering with a Black Box was physically unlikely and morally unthinkable, and Fargone was six Cyteen months away, so there was no way in hell the information could have been timed for the impact it had—

God, he found himself sorting through every move he had made and every contact with Giraud Nye and Reseune he had had, wondering if there was any remotest chance he had been maneuvered into the Discovery bill at a time when Reseune was ready.

A lifetime of dealing with Emory, that was what made him have thoughts like that.

Like Strassen being murdered. Like the kind of ruthlessness that would use a kid the way they created and used this one—killing off one of their own, who was, God knew, a hundred forty-odd and already on the brink—

What was a life, to people who created and destroyed it as a matter of routine?

It was a question worth following up, quietly, by his own investigatory channels; but by everything he knew of RESEUNESPACE, existing in the same separate station as the Defense Bureau installation at Fargone with absolutely nothing to link them with Fargone Station except a twice-daily shuttle run, it was difficult to get at anything or anyone on the inside.

And the Centrist party could lose, considerably, by making the wrong move right now—by making charges that might not prove out, by going ahead with the bill that had to result in lengthy hearings and a court case involving the little girl who had turned seasoned reporters to emotional jelly and generated such a flood of inquiries the Bureau of Information had set aside special numbers for the case.

That was only the beginning. The ships that undocked from Cyteen Station this week were the start of a wave front that would go clear to Earth before it ran out of audience.

No way in hell to continue with the bill.
Anything
that involved drawn-out procedures could intersect with future events in very unpredictable ways.

While I consider the investigation ultimately necessary in the public interest, it seems inappropriate to proceed at this time.
That was the sentence his speechwriters were still hammering out.

He was damned to look bad no matter what he did. He had thought of demanding an investigation into the child's welfare, and raising the issue of Reseune's creating the child precisely to shield those records.

The whole Centrist party suddenly found itself saddled with a serious position problem.

Nelly helped her take the blouse off—it fastened on the bad shoulder, and the sleeve was cut and fastened back together, so it would come on and off over the cast. She had several of the same kind, and she wore things with jackets, that she could wear draped over the shoulder on the right side.