Cherryh, C J - Alliance-Union 08 (74 page)

Which was a lie. Dr. Ivanov had finally said so, when she found out she was a replicate and asked whether the first Ari had had something wrong with her:
No, but the first Ari had tests just like yours, because her maman knew she was going to be somebody special, and because tests like these are valuable information. You're a very bright little girl. We'd like to know if something special goes on in your bloodstream.

But the shots made her dizzy and sick at her stomach and she was tired of getting shots and having needles in her arm.

She frowned at the nurse and thought where she would like to give the nurse a hypo, right when her back was turned. But she took the thermometer under her tongue a second till it registered, then took it out and looked at it.

"A point under," she told the nurse. Who insisted to look at it. "I always am. Do I get to go now?"

"Wait here," the nurse said, and went out, leaving her sitting in the damn robe and a little cold, the way the hospital always was, people could
freeze
to death in this place.

In a moment Dr. Ivanov came in. "Hello, Ari. Feeling fine?"

"The shot made me sick. I want to go get an orange or something."

"That's fine. That's a good idea." He came and took her pulse again. And smiled at her. "A little mad?"

"I'm tired of this. I've been in here twice this week. I'm not going to have any blood left."

"Well, your body is going through some changes. You're just growing up, sweet, that's all. Perfectly normal. You know a lot of it. But you're going to take a tape this afternoon. If you have any questions you can call me or Dr. Wojkowski, whichever you'd rather—she might be a little better at this."

She wrinkled her nose, not with any clear idea, really, what he was talking about, except she was embarrassed sitting there in the robe, which was more than she used to sit there in, and suspecting that it had to do with sex and boys and that she was going to be embarrassed as hell if she had to listen to Dr. Ivanov explain to her what she had already figured out.

Do you understand?
he would ask her every three lines, and:
Yes,
she would say, because he would not get through it without that.

But he didn't mention it. He just told her go on to library, she had the tape to do.

They gave it to her to take home to use, on the house machine, so it wasn't one of the skill ones, that she had to take with a tech.

It certainly wasn't, she decided, when she saw the title. It said
Human Sexuality.
She was embarrassed in front of the librarian, who was a man, and tucked it into her bag and took it fairly straight home, very glad that Seely was out and Nelly was at her day job and there wasn't anyone around.

She applied the patch over her heart and lay down on the couch in the tape lounge and took the pill. When the pill began to work she pushed the button.

And was awfully glad, in a vague, tape-dazed way, that she hadn't had to take this one with any tech sitting by her.

There
were
things she hadn't known, things a lot different than horses, and things the same, and things Dr. Edwards had sort of hit on in biology, but not really explained with pictures and in the detail the tape had.

When it was over she lay there recovering from the pill and feeling really funny—not bad. Not bad at all. But like something was going on with her she could not control, that she sure as hell didn't want uncle Denys or Seely to know about.

It certainly had to do with sex. And it was hard to get up finally and get her mind off it. She thought about doing the tape again, not that she was not going to remember, but because she wanted to try out the feeling again, to see if it was the way she remembered it.

Then she thought it might not feel the same, and she didn't want it not to. So she put the tape back in her bag and because she didn't want the thing lying around her room where Nelly would find it and look at her funny, she had a glass of orange juice to get her blood moving again and walked all the way back to the library to drop it in the turn-in slot.

Then she went to lunch and went to class, but her concentration was shot to hell. Even Dr. Edwards frowned at her when he caught her woolgathering.

She did her write-up on the filly. It was a long day, because people were mostly busy, uncle Denys and Seely and Nelly and everybody, because Florian and Catlin were off since three days ago on a training exercise that was not going to finish till the end of the week.

She went over to the guppy lab to see if Amy was there. Tommy was. Tommy was not who she wanted to see, but she sat and talked with him a little while. Tommy was doing some stuff with the reds that she could give him some information on.

She went home to do more homework. Alone.

"Ari," uncle Denys said, on the Minder, when she had had dinner and she was still doing homework in her room. "Ari, I want to talk with you in my study."

Oh, God, she thought. Uncle
Denys
was going to ask her about the tape.

She had rather die.

But it was even more embarrassing to make a fuss about it. So she got up and slunk in and stood in uncle Denys' doorway.

"Oh. Ari. There you are."

I'm going to
die.
Right here. On the spot.

"I want to talk with you. Sit down."

God. I have to look at him.

She sat, and held on to the arms of the chair.

"Ari, you're getting older. Nelly's really fond of you—but she's really not doing much but housework anymore. She really lives with the lab babies. And she's awfully good at that. I wonder if you've thought any more whether you'd like—well, to see Nelly go over to lab full-time. It's the nature of nurses, you know, the babies grow up."

That
was all it was. She drew a long breath, and thought about her room, and how she
liked
Nelly, but she liked Nelly better when she wasn't
with
Nelly, because Nelly always had her feelings hurt and was always upset when she wanted to spend more time with Florian and Catlin, and was constantly tweaking at her hair, her clothes, straightening her collar—sometimes Nelly made her want to scream.

"Sure," she said. "Sure, if
she's
all right. I don't think she's very happy."

She felt guilty about that, sort of, because Nelly had been maman's, because Nelly had been hers—because Nelly was—Nelly—and never would understand the way she was now.

And because she was so glad it was about that and not about the other thing she just wanted to agree and get out of there.

She was guilty the next morning when Nelly went to hospital not knowing what they were going to do with her tape this time.

"I'm really not upset," Nelly protested to uncle Denys at the door, with her overnight kit in her hand. "I don't think I need to."

"That's fine," uncle Denys said. "I'm glad. But I think you're due for a check."

A Super said anything that he had to say, to keep an azi from being stressed.

So Nelly came and kissed her goodbye. " 'Bye, Nelly," Ari said, and hugged her around the neck, and let her go.

She was able to do that, because letting Nelly know would scare Nelly to death. Only when the door shut she bit her lip hard enough to bleed and said to uncle Denys:

"I'm going on to class."

"Are you all right, Ari?"

"I'm fine."

But she cried when she got out in the hall, and straightened her face up and wiped her eyes and held it in, because she was not a baby anymore.

Nelly was not going to get hurt; Nelly was going to hospital where they would slide her right over to a job she was happy at, and tell her she had done a wonderful job, her first baby was grown, and she had a whole lot of others that needed her.

It was foolish to cry. It was foolish to cry when it was just part of growing up.

The apartment was going to be lonely until suppertime. She went over to Amy's to do her homework, and told Amy about Nelly leaving, because she was finally able to talk about it.

"She was in the way anyway," she said. "She was always sniping at Florian and Catlin."

Then she felt mean for saying that.

"How are you feeling?" uncle Denys asked her again at dinner. "Are you all right with Nelly?"

"I'm fine," she said. "I just wish Florian and Catlin would get back.

"Do you want to call them home?"

Right at the end of one of their Exercises. It was very serious to them. So was she, but it was like taking something away from them. "No," she said. "They really like the overnights. Not—
like,
because they come back all scraped up; but,
like,
you know—they enjoy telling me about it. I don't need them that bad."

"I'm proud of you," uncle Denys said. "A good Super has to think that way."

She felt a little better then. And went to do her homework ahead, because she could, and she had rather do it and have something to fill her time and have it over with when Florian and Catlin got home.

Except she had a message from the computer when she went in her room.

"Ari," the Minder said. "Check Base One."

"Go ahead," she said, and looked at the screen.

Ari, this is Ari senior.

Sex is part of life, sweet. Not the most important part, but this is your coming-of-age lecture. I don't know how old you are, remember, so I have to keep it simple. Library says you've checked out
Human Sexuality.
Have you had it?

"Yes. Yesterday."

Good. You're 10 years old. This program is triggered by your medical records.

You're about to start your monthly cycles, sweet. Welcome to a damn unfunny fact of life. Housekeeping has been notified. You're going to have the appropriate stuff in your cabinet. Hell of a thing to get caught without. You've also had a shot that means you'll reject any pregnancy. So you don't have to worry about that, at least. . . because without that, your body's perfectly capable of it now.

I'm going to leave the what-to and what-with to the tape program, sweet. I figure you know. Probably it's given you some ideas. I know. I had it too. They're not bad ideas. I want you to listen to what I'm going to say next with everything you've got, like it was tape. This is private, it's about sex, and it's one of the most important things I'll ever have to tell you. Are you alone?

"Yes."

All right.

The ideas you have, sweet, are perfectly natural. Is your pulse a little elevated?

"Yes."

You feel a little flushed?

"Yes."

That's because you're thinking about sex. If I asked you to do complicated math you'd probably make a mistake right now. That's the important lesson, sweet. Biology interferes with logic. There's two ways to deal with it—do it and get it out of your head, because that feeling explodes like a soap bubble once you've done sex—or if it's somebody you really like, or somebody you don't like, who upsets you and makes you feel very, very strong reactions, you'd better think a whole lot about doing it, because that kind explodes all right, but it keeps coming back and bothering you. When you get into bed with somebody, you're not going to be thinking with your brain, sweet, you'll be thinking with the part of you that doesn't have anything but feeling, and that's damned dangerous.

When adults meet, sweet, and start getting to know each other, this is one of the main things that's different than kids. Kids are quite logical in some ways adults aren't. That's why they seem to see character so clearly. But when adults deal with each other, this
feeling
you've begun to get, gets right in the middle of their judgment.

Now there are some people who just let it take over. And the thing about this
feeling is
that it's playing totally off the emotional level, out of memories, out of what we're set up to believe is handsome or sexy, a whole lot of things that haven't got a damn thing to do with truth.

There are some people who learn early that they're very good-looking and that they can make anybody have this feeling about them—and they use it to get what they want. This doesn't mean they have any feeling inside at all. That's one reason to watch out who you go to bed with and who you let affect you that way.

There are other times when you get that
feeling
about somebody who doesn't have it for you, and that's one of the hardest things in the world to deal with. But you have to stop it then and let your brain take over, because you don't get everything you want in this world, and it's not fair to the other person at all. If you think about it you'll know how they'd feel, first if they didn't care for you as a friend and then if they did, and you kept insisting on having your way.

You can see how messy that gets.

Sometimes it happens the other way around. And if you don't see it happening or if you're too soft-hearted to say no, you can hurt somebody worse than if you say:
I'm sorry, this won't work,
right off.

Sometimes it works right on both sides, and watch out then too, sweet, because sex isn't the only thing in life, and if you let it be, that's all you'll ever have.

I'll tell you what the most important thing is, in case you haven't figured it out: It's being able to do what makes you the happiest the longest, and I don't mean sex and I don't mean chocolates, sweet, I mean being
able.
Able means just exactly having the time, the money, the ability, and a thing to do that makes your life worth living long enough to get it done.

You aren't going to have a clear sight of that
thing
until you've had a look at the world as it is, and had a chance to figure out what the world could be if you worked at it.

So when you get that
feeling,
you think real clearly whether you can afford to give in to it and whether you're
able
to handle it without getting your whole life slanted in some direction that isn't smart. The time to give in to that
feeling
is when you can
afford
to, just the same as you don't spend money you haven't got, promise things you don't have time to do, or get involved in projects you can't finish. If it's a minor thing and nobody can get hurt, fine, do it. If it's got complications,
don't
do it until you know damn well you can handle it, and know how far the complications can possibly extend. At 10, you can't see everything. I was there. Believe me, I know. I got involved with somebody once, and I really liked him; unfortunately, he wasn't as smart as I am, and he wanted to tell me what to do and how to run my life, because he sensed I really was hooked on him, and he really liked ordering people around. So do I, of course. So when I got that figured out, which took longer than usual, because neurons work logic problems a hell of a lot faster than glands—I'm being facetious—anyway, I told him off, I reversed what was going on, and he hated it like hell. Hated me after that, too. So not only did the
feeling
go away, I lost a friend who would have stayed a friend if I hadn't let him do a power-move on me. I'm telling you about it now because you can learn about fire two ways: put your hand in it and understand it with the neurons below your neck or listen to me tell you about it and understand it with the ones up in your head. Your brain is the operations center that has to keep your hand out of the fire in the first place, so if you can believe me, and use the sense you were born with, you can save yourself all the pain and embarrassment of a real lesson.