He felt his face go red. And expected a flash, in this place, under strained circumstances, but it was faint and almost without charge, just the older face, Ari getting ready for work, matter-of-factly, leaving him there with the kind of damage he had taken. . . .
He felt resentment, that was all... resentment much more than shame.
"You did something," he said to the seventeen-year-old. His seventeen-year-old.
"I told you calm down about this place," she said. "I figured it would bother you. I didn't think that was unethical."
"Ethics had nothing to do with it, sera. No more than with her."
She looked a little shocked, a little hurt. And he wished to hell he had kept that behind his teeth.
"Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean that. But, dammit to hell, Ari! If you've got to take these trips, stay off the peripheries with me!"
"It's embarrassing for you," she said, "because I'm so young, isn't it?"
He thought about that. Tried to calm down. Temper. Not fright. And what she had said. "Yes, it's embarrassing."
"For me, too. Because you're so much older. I feel like you're going to critique everything I do, all the time. It makes me nervous, isn't that funny?"
"That's not the word I'd pick for it."
"I will listen to you."
"Come on, Ari, let's not do games, didn't I say? Don't play little-girl with me. You've stopped listening to everyone."
"I still listen to my friends. I'm not my predecessor. You'll remember me saying that top, don't you?"
Another jolt at nerves. "I think that's only a question of semantics."
She reacted with a little flicker of the eyes, and a laugh. "Point. But there, you're pretty quick this morning. Aren't you?"
It was true. That self-analysis was what kept him from total panic. "You have a lighter touch than Giraud," he said. "I give you that, young sera." Young sera annoyed her. He knew it did. He saw the little reaction on that too. A man didn't go to bed with young sera. And she was being honest. He saw the little frown he expected, that, by all that was accurate about flux, said that she was probably being straightforward this morningor the reactions would have showed. "But I want the tape of what you did. And I want to talk to Grant."
v
It was riding with Amy that afternoonherself on the Filly, Amy on the horse they called BayardAmy had found that in a story, so the third filly had a name, unlike goats and pigs who were usually just numbers, except a few who were exceptional.
Filly's just the Filly, Ari had said. And the Mare's Daughter they called the Daughter, or Filly Two, and Filly Two was Florian's even if he couldn't own her: no CIT was ever to ride her. But the third was Bayard, and that was Amy Carnath's horse; and the fourth and fifth and sixth belonged to Maddy and Sam and 'Stasi, what time they were not doing little runs into the fields, doing work, delivering items out where trucks would crush the plants and a human walking was too slow.
There was going to be a stable and an arena just for the horses someday, Ari had decided. Space in the safe zones was always at a premium and uncle Denys called it extravagant and refused to allow it.
But she had notions of exporting to Novgorod, animals just to look at and watch for a few years, but someday to sell use of, the way the skill tapes of riding and of handling animals sold as fast as they could turn them outto people who wanted to know what pigs and goats and horses were like and how they moved, and what riding a horse felt like. Spacers bought those skill tapes, marketed as entertainment Sensatape. Stationers did. People from one end of space to the other knew how to ride, who had never laid eye or hand on a horse.
That more than paid for the stable and the arena, she had argued; and the earth-moving and the widening of Reseune's flat-space: the horses did not need the depth of soil that agriculture did, and the manure meant good ground.
They eat their weight in gold, Denys had objected, with no, no, and no.
Grain is a renewable resource, she had said, nastily. It likes manure.
No, said Denys. We're not undertaking any expansions; we're not making any headlines with any extravagance in this political atmosphere; it's not prudent, Ari.
Someday, she had said, defeated.
Meanwhile the horses were theirs, unique, and did their small amount of work.
While out in the riding pen was the best place in Reseune besides her apartment to go to have a talk without worrying about security; and it had its own benefits, when it came to being casual and getting Amy Carnath to relax and talk about really sensitive things.
Because Amy was not happy lately. Sam had taken up with Maria Cortez-Campbell, who was a nice girl; Stef was back with Yvgenia; and Amyrode a lot and spent a lot of time studying and tending the export business, which had sort of drawn her into a full sub-manager rating in the whole huge Reseune Exports division and a provisional project supervisor's rating in the Genetics Research division.
Amy was always the brightest. Amy was getting a figure, finally, at seventeen, at least something of a figure. She was getting pretty in a kind of long-boned way, not because she was pretty, but because she was just interesting-looking, and might get more so.
And Amy was too damned smart to be happy, because there just happened to be a shortage of equally smart boys in her generation. Tommy was the only one who came close, and Tommy was Amy's cousin, not interested in the same field, and mostly interested in Maddy Strassen anyway. That pair was getting halfway serious, on both sides.
"How are things?" she asked Amy when they were out and away from everyone, under a tranquil sky. And prepared herself for a long story.
"All right," Amy said, and sighed. That was all.
Not like Amy at all. Usually it was damn Stef Dietrich, and a long list of grievances.
She didn't know this Amy. Ari looked at her across the moving gap between the horses, and said: "It doesn't sound all right."
"Just the same old stuff," Amy said. "Stef. Mama. That's the condensed report."
"You'll be legal this month. You can do anything you damn please. And you've got a slot in my wing, I always told you that."
"I can't do any damn thing," Amy said. "Justinhe's real. I've got a pack of stuff in Exports. Merchandising stuff is all I do. That's all I use my psych for. That's not your kind of business. I don't know what you'd want me for."
"You've got a clean Security clearance, cleanest of all my friends. You're good at business. You'd be a good Super, you'd be good at most anything you wanted to take on, that's your trouble. You get small-focused into doing it instead of learning it; and I want you learning for a while. Remember when I snagged you into the tunnels and we started off the whole gang? That's why I asked you out here before I talked to anybody. You were always first."
"What are you talking about?" Amy suddenly looked scared. "First at what?"