Cyteen

None came.

Small boats went out of one port and never got to another, that was all. It happened even to experienced pilots.

He thought about every step he had taken, every choice he had, over and over again. He thought about calling Jordan, telling him everything.

No, he told himself. No. He could handle it with Ari. Jordan needed help, and Jordan not knowing was the only way it worked.

iv

A plane flew over. Grant heard it even above the steady noise of his own engines, and his hands sweated on the wheel as he ran down the clear middle of the river, his meager speed boosted by the current. He had no lights on, not even the small chart-light on the panel, for fear of being spotted. He did not dare increase the speed of the engines now, for fear of widening the white boil and curl of wake that might show to searchers.

The plane went over and lost itself in dark and distance.

But in a little time it circled back again: he saw it coming up the river behind him, a searchlight playing over the black waters.

He put the throttle up full, and felt the easy rock of the boat become an increasing vibration of waves as the bow came up. To hell with the wake, then, and with the floating snags that had sunk many a boat in the Novaya Volga.

If they had sent boats out from Moreyville, or from the other end of Reseune, and if someone on those boats had a gun, shots could go through the cabin, breach the seals fatally even if they missed him, or go through the hull and maybe hit the fuel tanks�but they had rather put a hole in the boat and slow it with waterlogged compartments. They would not, he was sure, want him dead if they had a choice.

He did not intend to harm Justin, that was his first determination: not to be used against Justin, nor against Jordan. And beyond that, even an azi had a right to be selfish.

The plane roared directly over him, throwing the decks into bright light, blinding glare through the cabin windows. The beam passed on a moment, leaving him half blind in the sudden dark. He saw it light the trees on the far side of the river, pale gray of native foliage against the night.

Suddenly the bow fell off to starboard and that floodlit view of the bank turned up off the bow, not the beam. In a moment's fright he thought the propeller might have fouled, and then he knew it was current he had run into�the Kennicutt's effluence into the Volga.

He put the helm over, still blind except for the fleeting glimpse the searchlight had shown him of the wooded ground on the far side. He could run aground. He dared not turn the lights on.

Then he saw the shadow of the banks, tall trees black against the night sky on either side of an open space of starlit water.

He drove for it; and the boat shuddered and jolted to impact along the keel, scrape of sand and a shock that threw him violently as the boat slewed out of control.

He caught himself against the dash then, saw a black wall in front of him and swerved with everything the boat had.

Something banged against the bow and scraped portside. Snag. Sandbar and snag. He heard it pass aft, saw the clear water ahead of him and hoped to God it was the Kennicutt he was in after that sort-out and not the Volga. He could not tell. It looked the same as the other, just black water, glancing with starlight.

He risked the chart-light for a second to sneak a look at the compass. Bearing northeast. The Volga could bend that much, but he thought it had to be the Kennicutt. The plane had not come back. It was even possible that the maneuver had confused it, and he was not, God knew, running with the Locator beacon on. Ari's power was enough to get Cyteen Station in on the hunt, and that plane's beacon could guide the geosynchronous surveillance satellites to a good fix, but so far as he knew there was no strike capacity on the Locators, and he could still, he hoped, outrun any intercept from Moreyville or further down the Volga.

First lights after that, Justin had said. Two, maybe three hours further on, up a river that had no further development on its banks. Krugers' Station was a mining outpost, largely automated, virtually all related to each other: what azi they brought in all got their CIT papers within the year, and a share of Kruger Mines on top of it�a dream of an assignment, the kind of place azi whispered among themselves did exist, if one were very, very good�

And if one's Contract was affordable.

Nothing like that existed for a seventeen-year-old azi with an X on his number, and all the political sense a boy could gain, living in Reseune and in the House, advised him that Justin had done something for his sake desperate beyond all reason�

Advised him that the Krugers might well have welcomed a Warrick with an azi he had a valid Contract for, but that there were good reasons they might not welcome that azi by himself.

God knew.

He was, the more he had time to think about it, a liability on all accounts, except for what he knew about Reseune, Ari, and Warrick business, which people might insist he give up; and he had had no instructions on that. He was Alpha, but he was young and he was azi, and all that he had learned only told him that his responses were conditioned, his knowledge limited, his reasoning potentially flawed� (Never worry about your tapes, Jordan had told him gently. If you ever think you're in trouble, come to me and tell me what you think and what you feel and I'll find the answer for you: remember I've got your charts. Everything's all right�)

He had been seven then. He had cried in Jordan's arms, which had embarrassed him, but Jordan had patted him on the back and hugged him the way he hugged Justin, called him his other son and assured him even born-men made mistakes and felt confused.

Which had made him feel better and worse, to know that born-men had evolved out of old Earth by trial and error, and that when Ari had decided he should exist, she had done something of the same thing. Trial and error. Which was all the X on his number meant to a seven-year-old.

He had not understood then that it meant Jordan could not deliver what he promised, or that his life was Reseune's and not Jordan's. He had clutched that 'my other son' to him like daylight and breath, a whole new horizon of being.

Then he had grown enough, when he and Justin were twelve and Justin discovered girls, to know that sex made things very different.

"Why?" he had asked Jordan; and Jordan had walked him into the kitchen, his arm about his shoulders while he explained that an Alpha was always mutating the instructions the tapes gave him, that he was very bright, and that his body was developing and that he really should go to the azi who specialized in that.

"What if I make somebody pregnant?" he had asked.

"You won't," Jordan had said, which he had not asked about then, but he knew later he should have. "You just can't mess around with anyone in the House. They aren't licensed."

He had been outraged. And thought there was a kind of irony in it. "You mean because I'm an Alpha? You mean whoever I go to bed with�"

"Has to be licensed. You don't get a license at your age. Which lets out all the girls your age. And I don't want you sleeping with old aunt Mari, all right?"

That had been halfway funny. At the time. Mari Warrick was decrepit, on the end of her rejuv.

It had gotten less funny later. It was hard to stay cool while a Carnath girl put her hands where they did not belong and giggled in his ear; and to be supposed to say: "I'm sorry, sera, I can't."

While Justin, poor Justin, got girlish giggles and evasions, because he was Family; and Justin's azi was fair game�or would have been, if he had only been Beta.

"Lend him, can't you?" Julia Carnath had asked Justin outright, in Grant's presence, when Grant knew damned well that Justin was courting Julia for himself. Grant had wanted to sink through the floor. As it was, he had gone blank-faced and proper, and kept very quiet later when Justin sulked and said that Julia had turned him down.