Cherryh, C J - Alliance-Union 08 (71 page)

Uncle Denys had given her a whole lab. And guppies and aquariums were a craze in Novgorod, the first time in the world, uncle Denys said, that anybody had had pets, which people used to, on Earth. Reseune had gotten a flood of requests for guppies, ever since she had said on vid that they were something anybody could do.

And she got a place to sell her culls: uncle Denys said she should keep all the records on it, she would learn something.

Which meant that most every flight RESEUNEAIR's freight division made out, had some of her guppies on it, sealed in plastic bags and Purity-stamped for customs, and now it was getting to be an operation larger than the lab she did the breeding in: uncle Denys said it was about time she franchised-out, because guppies bred fast, and bred down, and the profit was in doing the really nice ones, which meant you had to get genesets. It was really funny, in some ways it was a lot easier to clone people than guppies.

"We hear," someone else said, "you've taken up another project. Can you tell us about the horse?"

"It's a filly. That's what you call a female baby horse. But she's not born yet. I had to study about her and help the techs get the tank ready; and I have to do a lot of reports—it's a
lot
of work. But she's going to be pretty just like her genesister.
She's
pregnant. She's going to birth not too long after my filly comes out of the tank. So we'll have
two
babies."

"Haven't you had enough of horses?"

"Oh, no. You have to
see
them. I'm going to ride mine. You can, they do it on Earth, you just have to train them."

"You're not going to break another arm, are you?"

She grinned and shook her head. "No. I've studied how to do it."

"How do you do it?"

"First you get them used to a saddle and a bridle and then you get them used to a weight on their back and then they don't get so scared when you climb on. But they're smart, that's what's so different, they're not like platytheres or anything, they
think
what they're going to do. That's the most wonderful thing. They're not like a computer. They're like
us.
Even pigs and goats are. You watch them and they watch you and you know they're thinking things you don't know about. And they feel warm and they play games and they do things just like people, just because they think of it."

"Could we get a clip of that?"

"Could
we, uncle Giraud?"

"I think we could," Giraud said.

Uncle Giraud was very, very happy with the session in Novgorod, Ari decided that on the flight back. She and Florian and Catlin sat up front in the usual spot and drank soft drinks and watched out the windows, while Giraud and the secretaries and the staffers sat at the back and did business, but there was a lot of laughing.

Which was why uncle Giraud bought her things, she thought. Which was all right. Sometimes she almost warmed up to Giraud. That was all right too. It kept Giraud at ease. And she learned to do that, be very nice to people she knew quite well were the Enemy, and even like them sometimes: it didn't mean you weren't going to Get them, because they were bound to do something that would remind you what they were sooner or later. When you were a kid you had to wait, that was all. She had told that to Catlin and Florian, and she got Catlin in front of a mirror and made Catlin practice smiling and laughing until she could do it without looking like she was faking it.

Catlin was ticklish right around her ribs.
That
was a discovery. Catlin was embarrassed about it and said nobody was supposed to get that close anyway. She didn't like her and Florian laughing at first. But then Catlin decided it was halfway funny, and laughed her real laugh, which was kind of a halfway grin, without a sound. The other was fake, because Catlin was good at isolating muscles and making them do whatever she wanted to.

Catlin had laughed her real laugh when she saw herself in the gauzy blouse, in the shop in Novgorod, and her eyes had lit up the way they would when Florian showed them something he had learned in electronics.
Catlin
had a new skill.

Then Catlin had turned around to the shopkeeper with her stage-manners on and acted just like Maddy Strassen, which was funny as hell, maman would say, right down to Maddy's slither when she turned around to look at the satin pants in the mirror. It was a Maddy-imitation. Ari had nearly gotten a stitch, inside, especially seeing Giraud's face. But Giraud was fast, especially when she winked at him and cued him in it was a prank.

Florian had stood over in the doorway to the men's side being just straight azi, which meant he was having a stitch too, because Florian never had to practice laughing. Florian just did; and stopping himself was the trick, before he gave Catlin away.

Things were a lot better in Novgorod, and there was a lot less pressure, Ari picked that up. Giraud said he thought there was a market for
tapes
about animals people couldn't own, that it was a real good idea, and that getting two hundred fifty credits for a fancy guppy meant there was a market for a lot of things, and hell if they were going to franchise it out: they could
hire
it done over in Moreyville, and maybe there was a market for koi, too, and the people who had been making aquariums and filter systems on special order for Reseune research labs might want to invest in a whole new division of manufacture.

"That's the way it works," he said. "Everything is connected to everything else."

There were miners clear out in brown little outback domes who were spending a fortune on guppy rigs, especially for the bright-colored ones, and for green
weed,
because they liked the colors and the water-sound, out where there was nothing but pale red and pale gray-blue. At Reseune people said it was the contact with a friendly ecosystem, and it was good for people: miners swore the air off the tanks made the environment healthier. Reseune said it just made people
feel
healthier and gave them a sense of connection to everything that was green and bright and Terran.

Giraud just said it made money and maybe they could look in the genebanks and the histories and see if there was something else they were missing.

Meanwhile it didn't hurt anything that people thought of her as the kid who made all that available to people. It made it hard for the people who had been the first Ari's enemies.

That was Giraud, all right. But she was doing the same thing when she practiced how to smile for the cameras. She had met the Councillor for Information, Catherine Lao, who wore a crown of braids just like Catlin, and was blonde like Catlin, but about a hundred years old: and Councillor Lao had been a friend of Ari senior's, and was so happy to see how she was growing up, the Councillor said,
so
pleased to see her doing so well.

Ari tried not to like people right off: that was dangerous, because you missed things that way that you ought to see—Ari senior had told her that, but it just clicked with something she already knew, down inside. All the same, she liked Councillor Lao a lot; and Councillor Lao was friendlier with her than with Giraud, no matter how hard the Councillor tried to hide it:
that
gave Ari a contrast to work with, which made anybody easier to read, and it made her think Councillor Lao really was someone she might like.

It didn't hurt at all that Catherine Lao was Councillor of Information, which meant the whole news-net, among other things, and libraries and publishing and archives and public education.

There was Admiral Gorodin too, who was Defense, and Defense had protected her stuff from people going through it; he was a lot different than Lao, kind of this way and that about a lot of things, not friendly, not hostile, just real interested and kind of prickly with Giraud, but coming at her like he had known her a long time.

She had even met Mikhail Corain, who was the Enemy, and said hello to him, and he tried his best to be nice. They had been in the Hall of State, in front of all the cameras. Councillor Corain had looked like he had indigestion, but he said he had a daughter about her age, and he hoped she enjoyed her trip to Novgorod, did she want to run for Council someday?

That was too close to ideas she had that she wasn't about to tell even Giraud or Denys, so she said she didn't know, she was busy with her schoolwork, which gave the reporters a stitch and made Corain laugh, a laugh like Catlin being Maddy, and he backed up and said the world had better look out.

So would he, she thought, a little worried about that: that had been a little nasty at the last, and she wished she could have thought of something else real fast to Get him in front of the cameras. But she didn't know what was going on that he could have been talking about, and uncle Giraud had said she had done exactly right, so she supposed she must have.

So it was the plane flight and touchdown at Reseune; and the reporters waiting for her at landing—so Amy and Tommy got to be on vid. She smiled for the cameras—they didn't have to do an interview, just there were some shots the news wanted, so they got them, and then the camera people folded up to catch their RESEUNEAIR flight back on up to Svetlansk, where they were covering a big platythere that had broken right through an oil pipeline—she would like to have
seen
that, she wanted to go, but uncle Giraud said she had been away from classes long enough, and she had
better
go see about her filly.

"Is she all right?" she asked, scared by that.

"Well, who knows?" uncle Giraud said, Working her for sure, but it was a good one. "You haven't checked on her in a week."

She didn't wait for baggage. She took the bus with uncle Giraud and Florian and Catlin and Amy and Tommy went too; and she didn't even go home first, she went straight over to the lab.

The filly was doing fine, the lab said; but the Super there gave her a whole packet of fiches and said that was what she had to catch up on.

It was a trap. She got a look at the filly on the monitor: she was looking less and less like a person and more and more like a horse now. That was exciting.

It was exciting when she went over to Denys' office and got permission to bring Amy and Tommy home with her, because her baggage was going to be there by now and she wanted to give them their presents.

"Don't mess the place up," uncle Denys said, because Nelly was working babies during the day and just showing up at night; and that meant Seely and Florian and Catlin had to do a lot of the pick-up. She didn't care about Seely, but she did about Florian and Catlin; so she was careful. "Give me a hug," uncle Denys said, "and be good."

She had forgotten to get something for uncle Denys. She was embarrassed. And made a note to order something from the gourmet shop in North Wing and put it on her own card, because she had an allowance.

Something like a pound of coffee. He would like that and he wouldn't care it didn't come from Novgorod.

Besides, she got to have some of that too.

So she told Base One to buy it and send it to his office when she got in, easy as talking to the Minder.

Amy and Tommy were real impressed.

They were real happy with their presents. She brought them out of her room and didn't show off the other things—it's not nice, uncle Denys would say, to advertise what you've got and others don't.

Uncle Denys was right. Also smart.

Tommy loved his sweater. He looked good in it.

Amy looked a little doubtful about the tiny box, like a little box like that wasn't going to be as nice a gift, until she opened it.

"It's real," she told Amy, about the pin. And Amy's face lit up. Amy was not a pretty girl. She was going to be tall and thin and long-faced, and she had to take tape to make her stop slouching, but for a moment Amy looked pretty. And felt pretty, she guessed, which made the difference.

She wished Amy had the allowance she did, to buy nice things.

Then she got an idea.

And made a note to ask uncle Denys if
Amy
could take over the guppy project, Amy knew all about it, and she was sharp about what to breed to what, and very good with numbers.

She had enough to do with the filly, and she wanted to go back to just having a few pretty fish in the aquarium in her bedroom, and not having to do in the ugly ones.

Justin dumped his bags in the bedroom and went and threw himself facedown on the bed, aware of nothing until he realized he had a blanket over him and that he was being urged to tuck up onto the bed. "Come on," Grant's voice said to him. "You're going to chill. Move."

He halfway woke up then, and rolled over and found the pillow, pulling it up under his head.

"Rotten flight?" Grant asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Damn little plane; they had a hell of a storm over the Tethys and we just dodged thunderheads and bounced."

"Hungry?"

"God, no. Just sleep."

Grant let him, just cut the lights, and let him lie.

Which he dimly remembered in the morning, hearing noise in the kitchen. He found himself in his clothes, unshaven.

And the clock saying 0820.

"God," he muttered, and threw the cover over and staggered for the bath and the kitchen, in that order.

Grant, in white shirt and plain beige pants, looked informally elegant, was having morning coffee at the kitchen table.

Justin raked a hand through his hair and fumbled a cup out of the cabinet without dropping it.

Grant poured him half his cup.

"I can make some," he protested.

"Of course you can," Grant said, humoring the incompetent, and pulled his chair back. "Sit down. I don't suppose you're going in today. —How's Jordan?"

"Fine," he mumbled, "fine. He really is." And sat down and leaned his elbows on the table to be sure where the cup was when he took a drink, because his eyes were refusing to work. "He's looking great. So is Paul. We had a great work-session—usual thing, too much talk, too little sleep. It was great."

He was not lying. Grant's eyes flickered and took on a moment's honest and earnest relief. Grant had already heard the word last night, at the airport, but he seemed to believe it finally, the way they always had to doubt each other, doubt every word, without the little signals that said things were what they seemed.