"You're better-looking," Justin had complained. "Ari made you perfect, dammit. What chance have I got?"
"I'd rather be you," he had answered faintly, realizing for the first time that was the truth. And he had cried, for the second time in his life that he remembered, just cried for no reason that he could figure out, except that Justin had hit a nerve. Or a tape-structure.
Because he was made of both.
He had never been sure after that, until Jordan had let him see the structures of his own tapes when he was sixteen and starting into advanced design studies. He had figured out enough of his tape-structures on his own that Jordan had opened the book for him and let him see what he was made of; and so far he had not traced any lines that could lead to fear of sex.
But Alphas mutated their own conditioning, constantly. It was a constant balancing act, over an abyss of chaos. Nothing could dominate. Balance in everything.
Or the world became chaos.
Dysfunction.
An azi who had become his own counselor was begging for trouble. An azi was so terribly fragile. And so very likely to get into a situation he could not handle, in a larger game than anyone had bothered to tell him about.
Dammit, Justin!
He wiped his eyes with his left hand and steered with the right, trying to watch where he was going. He was, he told himself, acting the fool.
Like a born-man. Like I was like them.
I'm supposed to be smarter. I'm supposed to be a damn genius. Except the tapes don't work that way and I'm not what they wanted me to be.
Maybe I just don't use what I've got.
So why didn't I speak up louder? Why didn't I grab Justin and haul him off to his father if I had to hit him to do it?
Because I'm a damn azi, that's why. Because I go to jelly inside when someone acts like they know what they're doing and I stop using my head, that's why. Oh, damn, damn, damn! I should have stopped him, I should have dragged him aboard with me, I should have taken him to the Krugers and gotten him safe, and then he could have protected both of us; and Jordan would be free to do something. What was he thinking of?
Something I couldn't?
Dammit, that's the trouble with me, I haven't got any confidence, I'm always looking to be sure before I do anything, and I don't do a damn thing, I just take orders
because the damn tapes have got their claws into me. They never told me to hesitate, they just make me do it, because the tapes are sure, they're so damned fucking sure, and nothing in the real world ever is
That's why we never make our own minds up. We've known something that has no doubt, and born-men never have. That's what's the matter with us
The boat hit something that jolted the deck, and Grant threw the wheel over and corrected furiously, sweating.
Fool, indeed. He suddenly arrived at the meaning of it all and damned near holed his boat, which was the kind of thing that happened to born-men, Justin would say, just the same as anybody else; which was how things workeda second cosmic truth, in sixty seconds. His mind was working straight or he was scared into hyperdrive, because he suddenly had a sense what it was to be a born-man, and to be a fool right on top of understanding everything: one had to swallow down the doubts and just go, how often had Jordan told him that. The doubts aren't tape. They're life, son. The universe won't break if you fuck up. It won't even break if you break your neck. Just your private universe will. You understand that?
I think so, he had said. But that had been a lie. Till now, that it jumped into clear focus. I'm free, he thought. Out here, between here and the Krugers, I'm free, on my own, the first time in my life. And then he thought: I'm not sure I like it.
Fool. Wake up. Pay attention. O my God, is that the plane coming back?
As a light showed suddenly behind him.
A boat. O God, O God, it's a boat back there.
He shoved the throttle wide. The boat lifted its bow and roared along the Kennicutt. He turned the lights on. They shone on black water, on water that swirled with currents, on banks closer than the Volga's, banks overgrown with the gangling shapes of weeping williestrees that tended to break as they aged and rot worked on them, trees which shed huge gnarled knots of dead wood into the Volga, navigation hazards far worse than rocks, because they floated and moved continually.
The lights were less risk now, he figured, than running blind.
But there would be guns back there, maybe. Maybe a boat that could overpower the runabout. He would be surprised if Moreyville had had something that could outrun him; damned surprised, he thought, with a cold knot of fear at his gut, watching the light wink out around a turning of the river; and then reappear in his rearview mirror.
A boat out of the precip station, maybe; maybe that end of Reseune had boats. He had no idea.
He applied his attention forward after that brief glance; center of the channel, Justin had warned him. Justin at least had taken the boat back and forth to Moreyville and down to precip ten; and he had talked to people at Moreyville who had gone all the way to Novgorod on the river.
Justin had done the talking; and Grant had paid attention mostly to the Novgorod part, because that had been what he was curious about. He and Justintalking together about taking a boat that far someday, just heading down the river.
He steered wildly around a snag floating with one branch high.
A whole damned tree, that one. He saw the root-mass following like a wall of tangled brush in the boat's spot; and swerved wider, desperately.
God, if one of those came floating sidewaysif the bow caught it
He kept going.
And the light stayed behind him until he saw the lights Justin had promised him shining on the right, out of the dark Ambush, he thought in the second heartbeat after he had seen them, because everything had become a trap, everything was an enemy.
But they were too high, they were too many: lights that twinkled behind the screen of weeping willies and paperbarks, lights that were far too high for the river, lights blinking red atop the hills, warning aircraft of the obstacles of precip towers.
Then his knees began feeling weak and his arms began shaking. He missed the light from behind him when he looked to see; and he thought for the first time to put Justin's note in his pocket, and to take the paper that had been under it, in the case someone returned the boat to Reseune.
He throttled back, seeking some dockage, alarmed as the spotlight showed up a low rusty wall on the riverside, and another, after that
Barges, he realized suddenly. Kruger's was a mining settlement. They were ore barges, not so big as the barges that came down from the north; but the whole place was a dock; and there was a place for a little boat to nose to, there was a ladder that went up from a lower dock to an upper one, which meant he was not in the wild anymore, and he could breach the seals: but he did not do that. He did not think he ought to use the radio, since Justin had not told him anything about it; and he was not sure how to work it in any case. He just blew the horn, repeatedly, until someone turned the dockside lights on, and people turned out to see what had come to them from the river.