Cyteen

But where does that go?

Damn! I wish I could tell it to Justin. . . .

Define: world. There's the worm. God! It could be one, if you could guide that semantic mutation.

Pity we have to input words instead of numbers. Into a hormone-fluxed system.

Justin says.

Justin says semantics is always the problem; the more concrete a value you link the sets to, the better off your design is with the computers�but that's not all of it. The link-point has to be a non-fluxing thing�Justin says�

No! Not non-flux. Slow-flux. Flux relative or proportional to the rest of the flux in the sets�like a scissors-joint: everything can move without changing the structure, just the distance down the one axis�

No. Not even that. If the flux on the macro-set has a time-lag of any kind you're going to increase the adaptive flux in the micro-sets in any system. But if you could work out that relevancy in any kind of symbological matrix�then you can get a numerical value back.

Can't you?

Doesn't that do something with the Field Size problem? Isn't that something like a log, if the internal change rates in the sets could be setted; and then�

No, damn, then your world is fine until it gets immigrants; and the first random inputs come in and give you someone who doesn't share the same values�

Immigration�on Gehenna�

Could change the definition of world . . . couldn't it?

Damn, I wish I could ask Justin about these things. Maybe I know something. Even if I am sixteen. I know things I can't tell anybody. Especially Justin. And they could be terribly dangerous.

But Gehenna's quarantined. It's safe�so far. I've got time. Don't I?

Justin resents what I did, when I made him be my teacher. I know he does. He frowns a lot. Sometimes Grant looks worried about the situation. Grant's mad at me too. He would be. Even if both of them try to be nice. And not just nice. They are kind. Both. They're just upset. Justin's been arrested every time I got in trouble. A lot of things that weren't fair at all. I know why they did it. Like what my uncles did to me. But they were never fair to him.

So it's not like I blame him for his mad. And he keeps it real welclass="underline" I can respect that. I have one of my own that I'll never forgive. Not really. He knows it's not my fault about his father and all. He knows I'm not lying when I say he and Grant can both go see his father when all this political mess clears up, and I'll help him every way I can.

But he's still hurting about his father. Maman was clear away on Fargone and I never even heard from her again, but she was far away, out of reach, and after a while it didn't hurt so awful much. His father is on Cyteen, and they can talk, but that's bad too, because you'd always have to be thinking about how close that is. And now they can't even talk by phone and he's worried about his father, I know he is.

Then I go and tell him he's going to give me his research, that he's been working on with his father and he hopes could help his father�that's something I did, me. People have been terrible to him all his life and everything he's got he's fought to have, and some kid comes in and wants everything he's done�and I'm the one who gets him in trouble� That's my fault, I know it is, but I've got to have his stuff. It's important. But I can't tell him why and I can't tell him what I want. So he just goes azi on me. That's the only way I can describe it�just very cool and very proper.

We work in his office mostly. He says he wants witnesses when he's around me. The Warricks have had enough trouble, he says.

He gives me some real work, because he says I'm not bad, and I can do the frameworks. And then I catch him sometimes, because when I'm really, really doing my best, and especially when I come up with something all the way right, he forgets his mad for a second or two and he loosens up and something shines out of him, that's a hell of a precise description, isn't it? But he gets interested in what we're doing and the ice thaws a bit, and he's just�all right with me. For about two or three minutes, until he remembers that everything he teaches me is going away from him and into me. And I think he thinks I'm going to rob him of everything. And I wish I could make him understand I'd like to help him.

Because I do. I hurt when he's cold with me. It feels so good when he's happy.

Hell if I can give him what's mine, but I don't need to take what's his. And he's a lot like me, everybody's messed with his life.

If I could figure out something, if I could figure out something of Ari senior's that I could give him, maybe that would make it fair. Because I know so much, but I don't know enough to make it worth anything. And maybe I'm sitting still with something I think is a real little piece, but that would be worth a lot to him.

Because, oh, he's smart. I know, because when he tells me his reasons for what he does, he has a lot of trouble, because he just knows some of these things. He said once I'm making him structure his concepts. He said that's good. Because we can talk, sometimes Grant gets into it, and once, it was the best day we ever worked together, we all went to lunch and talked and talked about CIT and azi logic until I couldn't sleep that night, I was still going on it. It was one of the best days I ever remember. And they were happy, and I was. But it sort of died away, then, and everything got back to normal, things just sort of got in the way and Justin came in kind of down, the way he does sometimes, and it was over. Like that.

I'm going to Get him one of these days, though. I'm going to Get both of them. And maybe this is it.

Maybe if I just run through everything I've got on this model thing, maybe it won't work, I guess if it did someone would have thought of it�

No, dammit, Ari, Justin said�I should never tell myself that.

Don't cut ideas off, he says, till you know where they go.

If I could do something real, �

What would he do, �get mad, because then I'd be getting closer to what he's working on, and he'd resent that?

Or get mad, because he'd want it all to be his idea?

Maybe he would.

But maybe he'd warm up to me and it could be the way it is sometimes�all the time. That's what I wish. Because so much bad has happened. And I want to change that.

CHAPTER 12

i

There were new tapes. Maddy brought them. Maddy did the ordering of things like that, because her mother didn't mind, and uncle Denys said that it would be a scandal if it were on her account: which Maddy might have figured out, Maddy was not really stupid, but it pleased Maddy to be involved in intrigue and something she truly did best.