Regenesis (10 page)

And Justin didn’t want another round on that score. Jordan’s situation was on hold until the Reseune board met, that was that. Jordan wouldn’t get his clinician’s certification and his security clearance back until Yanni and Jordan were talking again.

There’d been some sort of blowup right before Yanni headed for Novgorod, and what Jordan had said in that office or what Yanni had said wasn’t in his need-to-know, apparently, because neither of them had been willing to talk about it, but it certainly hadn’t advanced the cause of Jordan getting his security clearance back.

And it wouldn’t be helped by a public scene tonight.

They took the escalator up one, walked over to Education B, where Jordan’s apartment was—not a word spoken until they’d gotten inside and into the living room.

Jordan immediately went to the bar, filled four glasses with ice, and poured healthy shots of vodka. Justin frowned and didn’t say a thing. He took his when it was offered, and went and obligingly sat down in the conversation pit, with Grant on the other end of the couch; Jordan and Paul took the other side.

“So,” Justin said. His plan for a quick exchange and exit was evaporating, but, well, predictably Jordan’s anger would probably give way to a complaint about the certification issue, and the clearance issue, which then would go into known territory—not pleasant, but he owed it to his father to sit through another rehearsal of grievances. “What can’t we say in the bar?”

“That you’re making some bad choices.”

“Professionally, or personally?”

“Both.”

“They’re my choices. Bad or not.”

“You bring me these piddling clinicals…which you get paid for. In effect, I’m working for you.”

“If that’s a bother to you, I won’t bring them.”

“They’re all that’s keeping me sane.” A drink of the vodka. “A damned thin thread, these days. Damn Yanni.”

“I hoped you’d give me a reasonable critique on the other set I sent you,” Justin said. “I’m waiting for it, in fact.” Jordan had had too much vodka to make sense on that topic, Justin was well sure—Jordan had likely forgotten all about it, in the heat of the argument at dinner, but he had questions of his own that Jordan hadn’t satisfied. The reward structure in that theta set emanated directly from work he and Jordan shared for years, it was related to the problem he’d handed Jordan in the bar this evening, and he hadn’t expected that kind of reaction. Yanni used to heap scorn on his reward concept in the low-level sets, claiming it would produce problems down the generations in an azi-derived population. Yanni had called him a damned fool—until Jordan started working with him, and then Yanni had started listening.

“Piece of crap,” Jordan said.

Well, that wasn’t what he’d hoped to hear.

“In what regard?”

“In what regard…don’t give
me
that calm-down routine. Your damn design is out in the ether. Piece of crap, just like that crap you handed me at dinner. Same fucking reason.”

“Sorry, then. I won’t press you for specifies tonight.”

“I’ll give them to you with a broad brush, same issue. Same reason. Same damn problem I fought out with Ari. She didn’t listen. She implemented. Now I see it in my son. Grant, do you agree with this crap?”

“Ser,” Grant said, “insofar as I follow the thread of this argument, I am in agreement with the design, yes.”

“But then, you’re Ari’s design, aren’t you?”

“Ser.”

“Jordan,” Justin said sharply, “don’t pull that. You don’t believe it, you don’t mean it, so just don’t touch it. That’s your fourth glass.”

“You don’t see a problem. You think you’re fucking brilliant, skipping over any substructure, just go straight for the deepsets: it’s the shortcut, everything for the shortcut. And the poor azi you program, pity them—they’re not alphas, they’re not going to figure that’s a leap of flux-thinking logic, no, you’re going to have theta minds making a leap from a to zed with no supportive structure, no crosslinks, no work-up in their skill-set level to encourage any critical thought about their actual performance…”

“Thetas aren’t good at that.”

“Don’t read me basic lessons! You know damned well you’re taking a shortcut.”

“I am. Yes. Admittedly. That’s the whole purpose.”

“And you’re going to have a pack of thetas gone eetee with no recourse but Reseune operators to pull them back to sanity…
if
they can. A batch of smug, happy,
wrongheaded
workers.”

“That’s why I come to you.” A little bald flattery never hurt. But it was also the truth. “I see you don’t think it’s a good idea. I respect that. I just expect more specific reasons for your opinion than I’m getting here.”

“I don’t know why I’d bother. You’re getting all your theories from the little darling.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t think so.”

“I damned well know so. You think that’s new, that leap of procedures you threw into that last paper? That’s Ariane Emory. That’s Emory, cut and dried. She’d just wave her hand and say, with the appropriate gesture, ‘It will work. It will work.’ Hell! That kind of thinking created Gehenna. There’s her kind of thinking run amok. She was doing it that far back!”

“But the azi there lived. They weren’t expected to. But she expected it of them. She just didn’t tell Defense. And what she did worked. The fact there’s been other input into the system—that wasn’t in program…”

“Well, that’s the universe for you! Don’t you get it? You can’t anticipate your little program to run forever in a bubble. Something’s going to impact it. Something damned sure
did
, on Gehenna.”

“There’s got to be a dividing line, between trusting the subject will adapt, and going only by micromanaging little situations, constantly referring back to a Supervisor. We’re so damned conservative with the deepsets…”

“With reason! Have you ever seen a real eetee case? Has your real-life practice ever gotten the results of one of your damned thought experiments?”

“No. I’m teaching. It’s all theory.”

“At this point.”

“We argue. In point of fact, I know the present Ari would love to hear your objections. She’d be very interested. We could have some good conversations…if you were so inclined.”

“While she’s hot after my son? The hell.” The rest of the vodka went down. “Get me another, Paul.”

“Jordan,” Justin said, as Paul looked dismayed.

“I said get me another. There are things I need to say. I didn’t know my geneset could produce a fool.”

Paul got up and shot more vodka into the glass. Twice that, Justin thought, if that’s what it takes…bundle him off to bed and let’s end this evening somewhere short of disaster.

“I hate to point out,” Justin said as Jordan took the glass, “that’s five.”

“Have you been alone with her?”

“Are you asking if I’ve had sex with her?” Justin asked.

“I’m asking if you’ve been alone with her. Grant, has he ever been alone with her?”

“Ser, I’d rather not enter this conversation.”

Grant, damn the situation, wasn’t able to lie, not to a man who’d been his Supervisor as well as his CIT father. In some situations he was thorough azi, and too vulnerable for this fight.

“I’m taking Grant home,” Justin said, and set the glass on the side table. “ ’Til you’re sober. Grant, don’t answer him. You don’t have to answer him.”

“Oh, I’ll imagine the answer, then. Stay put, Grant! I’m not through.”

“
I
am.”

“You sit where you are and you listen to me. I’m seeing things in your work—I’ve been seeing them. I’ve corrected you. You’ve changed things right back—”

“Where it matters.”

“You’ve changed things right back in the same vein as that little item you sent me this afternoon. The same thing you shoved in my face at dinner.”

“I was uneasy about the concept, I didn’t get an answer on the others, just a correction with no note. I wasn’t sure why. I was asking your help with a problem, Dad… I’m sorry if it gives you some eetee flashback to your own time…”

“Oh, back to my time, is it? What is my time, can you tell me that, son of mine?”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Pretty clear what people here think. Twenty years out of the current here, twenty years of a real style change in operations here, Yanni Schwartz losing his mind and putting you with the little bitch to let her pick your bones clean. I don’t appreciate that move. I don’t care if the spoiled darling did threaten to stop breathing if he didn’t.”

“Actually, Jordan, I agreed to it. Clear the family name and all.”

“Oh. Oh, that’s good. I didn’t do it, dammit! Do you need to hear that?”

“I hear you. I just think it’s as well the public—when this goes public—hears it, too. I’d like to see the day—”

“What, the day everything’s sweet again? It won’t come. You want me to work with you? Quit working with her.”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t!”

“Let’s put it this way, Dad. I won’t. I respect you, I respect you tremendously, but you don’t have the right to tell me who I work with. I’m getting something out of this…”

“Oh, it’s clear you’re getting something out of it! And you don’t have the right to take
my
theories and hand them on a platter to that little walking memory bank. I had to put up with the last Ari taking my work and putting her name on it and I’m sure as hell not going to see it happen in the second generation.”

“I haven’t given her your work, except as you’ve taught me. After that. Dad, in the way things work in the universe, it becomes
mine
.”

“The hell it does.”

“It becomes
mine
. Dad, not because I’m regurgitating it verbatim, but because I’m using
my
brain and
everybody else’s
a input
along with yours
to come up with my own ideas.”

“And
her
input, it’s very damned clear.”

“Because you didn’t like a two-line routine I wrote on a cocktail napkin? I gave you a second instance of a similar routine, because my own leap of logic bothered me and I wanted your reaction on it, but do I get a sensible discussion, on this one or the last two weeks? No. First you ignore it—”

“I didn’t ignore it. I corrected it!”

“Twice, without any explanation!”

“I’d think you damned well knew my objection!”

“I’m not reading your mind!”

“So I said something, tonight!”

“In the bar? You didn’t say something in any rational way. You went orbital without a launch, just up there, bang! No preface, no sensible discussion, nothing but a fucking emotional reaction, alcohol-fueled, and fluxed to the max. You aren’t thinking clearly on this. Dad. If you saw something in my work that triggered a flash of your own—”

“Don’t you go patronizing with me!”

“All right, all right. This is it. We’re going home.”

“Home. Is
that
what you call it?”

“I live in Wing One! I live there because there was a time, thanks to my trying to find out about
your
situation, that I was apt to be arrested, which was damn near a monthly event in my life, and it was getting serious, about then. I’d have been in lockup. That was my choice.”

“And then things all changed. All right. Level with me. There was a time they wouldn’t trust you. I’m not talking about the little darling. I’m not even talking about Denys. I’m talking about Yanni. They wouldn’t trust you. Now they do. Why?”

“Because she told them to. Because Denys Nye is dead, and his apparatus isn’t functioning any more. Because Yanni likes me better than Denys did!”

“
Because she told them to
. Because she’d had a chance to work you over, that last time, when Grant was in Planys, and you were here solo, in her reach.”

It was too close to the truth. He didn’t want to lie about it. “She’s a kid. Dad.”

“She’s a monstrosity. And she got her hands on you when Grant wasn’t around. She finished what her predecessor started. Didn’t she?”

“Dad…”

“I’m not hearing you deny it. Is it true. Grant? Did she do that?”

Silence from that quarter. Grant had prior orders, an instruction from his current Supervisor that outranked anything his first Supervisor could order on that topic.

“I draw my conclusion,” Jordan said. “She did. Just you? Or both of you?”

“I have the session tapes,” Justin said, braced for the storm. “And nothing happened. She asked me where I stood on certain matters. I satisfied the questions—that I wasn’t an assassin. That
you
weren’t. And Grant wasn’t.”

“Let me see the tapes.”

Reasonable request, on one level. But not a good idea. That second thought flashed up, fast and hard: Jordan wasn’t
any
father—Jordan and he twitched off exactly the same impulses: Jordan took a deep breath and he felt as if he had just breathed. Jordan flared off and his own adrenaline surged, mirror-image. He couldn’t help it. He was a PR, Jordan’s exact replicate, and the resonances were there, every muscle twitch. It was his face, as he’d never be, because he’d started rejuv at thirty-five and Jordan hadn’t until forty-five—but it was close enough. Every lift of a brow, every frown, psychologically connected as they were, to hoot, by Jordan’s having brought him up as a son—resonated, in a way a natural son wouldn’t feel it. They were twins. Identicals. And his father, besides all that, besides the fact that his father’s own gut would react to that tape of him lying there, deep-tranked, undergoing questions from Ari’s twin—besides all that, his father was a psych operator, and the first time seeing that tape, Jordan might be in shock, but the second and third time through he’d be gathering bits and pieces, tabs, things he could use in a constant, battering attempt to undo everything he’d seen done, to grab hold of parts of his son’s soul and jerk—hard. Every damned time anything came up that Jordan didn’t like, he’d have? a key to his psyche that nobody else would.

“No,” he said. “No. Those tapes are private.”

“I’ll bet they are.”

“This was a mistake,” Justin said, and this time, in his own moment of temper, reached for the double vodka on the side table and downed it in three gulps, half ice melt, because he was going to need anesthesia to get any sleep tonight. After which he propelled himself to his feet, and Grant got up. “ ’Night, Dad.”