Cherryh, C J - Alliance-Union 08 (72 page)

And then Grant looked at the time and winced. "Damn. One of us had better make it in. Yanni's hunting hides this week."

"I'll get there," Justin said.

"You're worthless. Stay here. Rest."

Justin shook his head. "I've got a report to turn in." He swallowed down the last of the coffee at a gulp. "God. You go on first. I'll get the papers hunted down. I'll get there. Message Yanni I'm coming, I just have to get the faxes together, they messed everything up in Decon."

"I'm going." Grant dumped the last of his coffee into Justin's cup. "You need it worse. It seems to be a vital nutrient for CITs."

Damn. He had crashed incommunicado last night when Grant had been waiting days for news, and now he stole Grant's coffee at breakfast.

"I'll make it up to you," he called to Grant in the next room. "Get a rez at
Changes
for lunch."

Grant put his head back in. "Was it that good?"

"Sociology ran the TR design all the way past ten generations and it's still clean. Jordan called it clean as anything they're running."

Grant pounded the doorframe and grinned. "Bastard! You could have said!"

Justin raised an eyebrow. "I may be a son of a bitch, friend, but the very one thing I can't possibly be is a bastard. And now even Giraud will have to own up to it."

Grant hurled himself out into the living room again, crying: "Late, dammit! This isn't fair!"

In a moment the front door opened and shut.

There flatly was no time to go over things in the morning, even working back to back in the same office. Grant ticked away at the keyboard with occasional mutters to the Scriber-input, a constant background sound, while Justin ran the fax-scanner on his notes and Jordan's and the transcription of the whole week's sessions, punched keys where it was faster and sifted and edited and wrestled nearly fourteen hundred hours of constant transcription into five main topics with the computer's keyword scanning. Which still might miss or misfile things, so there was no question of dumping it: he created a sixth topic for Unassigned and kept the machine on autoTab, which meant it filed the original locations of the information.

He had four preliminary work-ups and one report nearing turn-in polish before Grant startled him out of a profound concentration and told him they had ten minutes to get to the restaurant.

He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, saved down and stretched and flexed shoulders that had been rigid for longer than he had thought.

"Nearly done on the Rubin stuff," he said.

But that was not what he and Grant talked about all the way downstairs and across to North Wing, through the door at
Changes
and as far as their table—small respite for ordering drinks, more report, another break for ordering lunch, and into it again.

"The next thing," he said, "is getting Yanni to agree to test."

Grant said: "I'd take it."

"The hell you will."

Grant lifted a brow. "I wouldn't have any worry about it. I d actually be a damned
good
subject, since it couldn't put anything over on me I couldn't identify—I understand the principles of it a hell of a lot better than the Test Division is going to—"

"And you're biased as hell."

Grant sighed. "I'm curious what it feels like. You don't understand, CIT. It's quite, quite attractive."

"Seductive is what I'm worried about.
You
don't need any motivation, friend, —a vacation, maybe."

"A tour of Novgorod," Grant sighed. "Of course. —I still want to
see
the thing when you get through with it."

Justin gave him a calculated, communicative frown. They
still
had to worry about bugs; and telling Security how skilled Grant was at reading-absorption of a program was something neither one of them wanted to do.

That look said:
Sure you would, and if you internalize it, partner, I'll break your fingers.

Grant smiled at him, wide and lazy, which meant:
You smug CIT bastardy I can take care of myself.

A tightening of his lips:
Dammit, Grant.

A wider smile, a narrowing of the eyes:
Discuss it later.

"Hello," a young voice said, and Justin's heart jumped.

He looked at the young girl who had stopped beside their table, at a young girl in expensive clothes, clothes that somehow, overnight, seemed to have developed a hint of a waist; caught a scent that set his heart pounding in remembered panic, looked up into a face that was the child gone grave, shy—that had gotten cheekbones; dark eyes gone somber and, God, touched with a little hint of violet eyeshadow.

"Hello," he said.

"I haven't seen you in a while."

"No. I guess I've been pretty busy."

"I was back there." She indicated the area of the restaurant past the archway. "I saw you come in, but I was already started on my sandwich. I thought I'd say hello, though."

"It's good to see you," he said, and controlled his voice with everything he had, managing a cheerful smile: the kid could read people faster than any of Security's computers. "How's your classwork?"

"Oh, too much of it." Her eyes lit, kid again, but not quite. "You know uncle Denys is going to let me have a horse—but I have to birth it;
and
do all the paperwork. Which is his way of getting me to study." She traced a design on the table edge with her finger. "I had the guppy business—" A little laugh. "But I turned that over to Amy Carnath. It was getting to be too much work, and now
she's
drafted her cousin in on it. Anyway— What are
you
doing?"

"A government study. And some stuff of my own. I've been working hard too."

"I remember when you came to my party."

"I remember that too."

"What Wing do you work in?"

"I'm in Design."

"Grant too?" With a flash of dark eyes Grant's direction.

"Yes," Grant said.

"I'm starting to study that," she said. The finger started doing designs again. The voice was lower, lacking the little-girl pitch. It was a different, more serious expression, a different tone of voice than she gave the cameras. "You know I'm a PR, don't you?"

"Yes," he said calmly, oh, very calmly. "I knew that."

"My predecessor was pretty good at Design. Did you know her?"

God, what do I say?
"I knew her, yes. Not very well. She was a lot older."
Best to create no mysteries.
"She was my teacher for a little while."

The eyes flashed up from their demure down-focus, mild surprise, an evident flicker of thought. "That's funny, isn't it? Now you know a lot more than I do. I wish I could just take a tape and know everything."

"It's too much to learn from one tape."

"I know." Another soft laugh. "I know where I can go if I get a question, don't I?"

"Hey, I can't help you dodge your homework, your uncle would have my skin."

She laughed, tapped the table edge with her finger. "Your lunch is getting cold. I'd better get back to the lab. Nice to see you. You too, Grant."

"Nice to see you," Justin murmured; and: "Sera," Grant murmured in courtesy, as Ari went her way.

Justin tracked her till he was sure she was out the door, then let out his breath and dropped his forehead against his hands. "God." And looked up at Grant. "She's growing up, isn't she?"

"It was a courtesy," Grant said. "I don't think it was more than that."

"No," he agreed, and got himself together, picked up his fork and prodded tentatively at a piece of ham, determined not to pay attention to the unease in his stomach. "Not a bit of malice. She's a nice kid, a damn nice kid." He took the bite. "Jordan and I talked about that, too. Damn, I'd like to see her test records."

Grant made a frightened move of his eyes toward the wall.
Remember the eavesdroppers.

"They're using the other—" Justin went on doggedly: Rubin was not a word they could toss around in the restaurant. "—the other subject—to see what they
can
get away with. And we can't get the results, dammit, for fifteen years."

"A little late," Grant murmured.

A little late to do anything for Ari's situation, Grant meant; and gave him a brows-knit look that said:
For God's sake, let's not talk about this, here, now.

It was only good sense. "Yes," Justin said, as if he were answering the former, and took another bite and a drink to wash it down. He was starved after the battering on the flight: food service had been limited. And sweating over the terminal had worked up an appetite nothing could kill.

"Talk to Yanni," Grant said when they were walking across the open quadrangle, on their way back to the office, "and call Denys, the way you're supposed to. For both our sakes."

"I have every intention to," Justin said.

Which was the truth. What else he meant to say, he hesitated to mention.

But it was in the transcripts from Planys.

His opinion, and Jordan's, both ... for what little it was worth to an Administration worried about its own survival.

Down into the tunnels, and, with Florian's little manipulation of the lock, down into the ventilation service area, from a direction that did
not
have a keycard access involved: they always had to be first, because nobody else could get the door to their meeting-place open; and the last, because Florian and Catlin were the sharpest when it came to cleaning up and making sure they left no trace at all for the workmen to find.

They used several of these little nooks. They had them coded, so Ari had only to say: number 3, and Amy passed the word to Tommy and Maddy, and Tommy got Sam up from the port school.

So they waited for the knock, and all of them came together: Amy and Tommy and Sam. Maddy was with them. And a girl named 'Stasi Morley-Ramirez, who was the reason they were meeting in a place they didn't use very often.

'Stasi was a friend of Amy's and Maddy's, but Maddy had opened her mouth, that was what had happened.

'Stasi was scared, coming in here, she was real scared, and Ari stood there with her hands on her hips, glaring at her with Catlin on her left and the flashlight on the shipping can in front of them, which made their shadows huge and their faces scary—she knew that. She had practiced that with the mirror, too, and she knew what she looked like.

"Sit down," she told 'Stasi, and Amy and Tommy sat her straight down on a big waterpipe they used to sit on here, while Florian came up and stood behind her. So 'Stasi was the only one sitting. That was a psych.

"When you come down here," Ari said, "that's it. We either vote you in or you're in a lot of trouble, 'Stasi Ramirez. You're in a whole lot of trouble, because we don't like to lose a meeting-place. And if you tell Security,
I'll
fix you good, I'll see you and your maman get shipped out of here and you won't ever come back. Say you understand."

'Stasi nodded. Emphatically.

"So you tell us why you want in."

"I know all of them," 'Stasi said desperately, twisting around where she sat to look at Amy and Maddy and the rest.

"You don't know Sam."

"I know him," 'Stasi said. "I know him from the House."

"But you don't know him like friends. And Maddy can't vote, she's the one bringing you. And Amy and Tommy can't, they're friends of yours. So it's me and Sam and Florian and Catlin who get to say. —What do you think, Catlin?"

"What can she do?" Catlin asked in her flat way.

"What
can
you do?" Ari asked.

"Like what?" 'Stasi asked anxiously. "What do you mean?"

"Like can you wire locks or memorize messages or get past a Minder or get stuff out of the lab?"

'Stasi's eyes got wider and wider.

"Catlin and Florian can do all that. They can kill people, for real. Take your head off with a wire. Pop. Just like that. Sam can get tools and wire and stuff. Maddy can get office stuff." And eyeshadow. "Tommy can get all kinds of stuff and what Amy and I do, you don't need to know about. What can you get?"

'Stasi got a more and more desperate look. "My mama and my dad manage
Ramirez's.
A lot of stuff, I guess. What do you need?"

She knew that already.
Ramirez's
was a North Hall restaurant.

"Mmmmn," she said. "Knives and stuff."

"I could," 'Stasi said earnestly. "Or food. Or most anything like that. And my uncle's a flight controller. All sorts of airline stuff—"

"All right. That part's good enough. Here's the rest. If you get in and you do anything stupid and get caught, you don't talk about us. You say it was just you. But you don't
get
caught. And you don't bring anybody here without asking. And you don't tell anybody about us. Hear?"

'Stasi nodded soberly.

"Swear?"

'Stasi nodded.

'Stasi didn't talk much. Like Sam. That was a good sign.

"I vote yes," Ari said. And Sam nodded, then. She looked at Florian and Catlin.

They didn't look like it was a bad idea. Catlin always frowned when she was considering somebody.

"They say all right," Ari said.

So everybody climbed over the pipe and sat down: it was clean. Florian and Catlin always made sure the sitting place was, because otherwise people could tell they were running around in dusty places.

And Florian and Catlin just squatted down when they were relaxing.

So they got down to business, which was her telling a lot about the trip to Novgorod—Sam had his new sweater on and so did Tommy, and Maddy wore her scarf, but Amy's pin was too good to wear to classes. Then they talked about the party Maddy was going to have, which
they
were all going to be invited to, and Maddy was happy, about 'Stasi getting in, and about being important for a while.

It was true Maddy was an early developer. The way Maddy sat and the way the light came up from their makeshift table showed that, real plain; and she was always slinking around and fluttering at the boys.

Tommy took it all right. It really bothered Sam: poor Sam had grown up big and he was in kind of a clumsy stage, because he grew so fast, Tommy said, but Sam was mostly always banging his head on things—like he was always misjudging how tall he was. He was quick as Florian when it came to fixing something, his fingers were so fast it was amazing to watch him, and he could figure out mechanical things very fast.