"Like the stuff they did to you?"
She thought about that a moment. "A lot, yes. A lot. With some differences. Jordan wanted him to be like Jordan. He wouldn't have been. Ari knew what she wanted out of that geneset and she got it. That's the real story. She manipulated CIT deep-sets . . . with real accuracy." Amy gave her a look.
"Psychogenesis can go two ways," Ari said, "just like any other kind of cloning. Either an identicalor a designer job. I'm as close an identical as you're likely to get. I told Justin I wasn't my predecessor and he said that was only a game of semantics. And I think he's right about that. There were real differences: my maman; Ollie; Denyshe wasn't Geoffrey Carnath, not by half, thank God. A lot of different things happened. But I had Florian and Catlin; I had no doubt the theories I was handedworked. I could feel it work. I know what put me ahead of Ari. I had to work. I was scared. I couldn't just sink into out-there and survive on people taking care of me. I learned to focus-down and to work real-time, and to think out-there too.
That's the real lesson. Bok's clone never came in out of the dark, never owned anything, never was anything. You know what I'd have answered to the land of questions that poor woman got? Go to hell! And if piano-playing was what I did, damn, I'd do it! And maybe I'd spit in the eye of math teachers who didn't teach me the kind of things Bok must have learnedlike being in space, dammit! Like living like a spacer! Like knowing math is life and death! Bok's clone got dry theory. She was creative, and they gave her dry dust. They cushioned her from everything. And they couldn't understand her music. She was a lousy pianist. She couldn't transcribe worth shit. But I wonder what kind of music she heard in her head, and why she spent more and more time there? I'm not sure she did fail. Maybe the damn geniuses couldn't talk to her. Maybe their notation didn't work for her. I wonder what the whole symphony was, and whether she was playing accompaniment. Huh." She shook herself. "That's spooky, too, isn't it?"
"They ran her stuff through computer analysis. It came up neg."
"With Bok's theories. Yes. But she never knew her genemother."
"With her teachers' stuff?"
"Might be. Or something completely off in the beyond."
"I'd like to pull those files. Just to see what they tried."
"Do it. Do any damn thing you want. We're research, aren't we? You pull all your projects out of the other wings, you put them into our budget, and our credit balance will hold just fine for that kind of tiling. The guppies and the bettas can buy a lot of computer time."
vi
The airport lobby was mostly deserted, RESEUNEAIR'S regular flights all departed, the passengers that came and went in this small public area of Reseune all on their way to Novgorod or Svetlansk or Gagaringrad. There was the usual presence of airport security, and a handful of black-uniformed Reseune Security down from the House, waiting to meet their comrades in from Planys. The same as he was there for Grant, Justin thought; nothing more.
But Florian had gone off into the deplaning area he had no admittance to, had assured him: "Sera Amy Carnath is just across the room, ser, and so is Sam Whitely, both friends of sera's: I've asked them keep their distance, so if you do get in trouble here, they have a pocket com and they can advise me, but I'm on the regular Security band" This with a touch near the small button Florian wore next to his keycard. "I'll be monitoring Security. If anything should happen, go along with it and trust we can unravel it."
The two watchers kept to their side of the lounge, a big-boned, square-faced youth who was already huge, hard muscle and a way of sitting that said he was no accountantWhitely was a Reseune name, but from the Town, not the House; Justin remembered seeing him in Ari's crowd. And Julia Carnath's girl Amy, Ari's frequent shadow, thin and bookish, and sharp, very sharp, by her reputation among the staff. Denys Nye's niece and a boy who looked like he could bend pipe barehandeda combination that would give Security pause, at least, Security tending to abhor noisy incidents. He felt safer with the kids there.
Damn, he had lived this long to be protected by children. To be co-opted by a child who was the same age as himself when he had fallen victim to her predecessorthat was the peculiarly distressing thing. Not that he had a chance, taking on Ari in the prune of her abilities, but that her successor reached out so easily, and justswept him in and put him in this situation, with Grant on the other side of those doors likely wondering what Ari's personal bodyguard was doing involving himself in the baggage check and in the body search Florian was bound to insist on Grant would start with a little worry in his look, an initial realization that something was amiss, and quietly go more and more inward, terrified, going through the motions because in that situation there was nothing to gain, nothing to do except hope to get through to his partner and hope that his partner was not already in Detention. Florian had refused to take so much as a note: I'm sorry, ser; I have to follow regulations here. I'll get him through as quickly as I can.
Not knowing what was toward, not knowing what could have happened to his partner, and that partner waiting to tell him
God, to tell him he was going up to Ari's floor. That he was going to have to take a probe. That it was all rightbecause his partner said so, of course, having just had one himself.
He thought it remarkable that he could sit through this nightmare, sit watching the guards in their small group, the two kids talking, listening to the ordinary sounds from the baggage department that meant they were active back there, probably lining up the luggage on the tables where Reseune Security would go through it and check everything item by item, nothing cursory on this one, he figured. Examination right down to the integrity of seams on one's shaving kit or the contents of opaque bottles.
He was used to packing for Security checks. No linings, everything in transparent bottles, transparent bags, as little clothing as possible, all documents in the briefcase only, and those all loose-leaf, so they could feed through the scanners.
Take sweaters. Shirts rumpled untidily in searches, and Security always questioned doubled stitching and double-thick collars.
He stretched his feet out in front of him, leaned back and tried to relax, feeling the old panic while the minutes went by like hours. Sure, it's all right, Grant. I'm sure I wasn't tampered with. Like hell. But what have we got, else? Where can we go, except hope Ari's reincarnation isn't going down Ari's path?
If she's got those notes, dammit, she knows what her predecessor meant to do with me. She can change itor she can finish it the way the first Ari would have, make me into what the first Ari planned. Whatever that is. I thought once that might have been the best thingif Ari had lived. If there ever was a design. Now it's too imminent. Now it's not what Ari could have given me. I'm the adult. I've got my own work, I've got my own agenda
And Grant, my God, Grantwhat have I dragged him into? What can I do?
The doors opened, and Grant came out, carrying his own briefcase, Florian behind him with the luggage.
"Bus, ser," Florian said, waving a hand toward the doors as Justin stood up and started toward Grant.
Their paths in that direction intersected.
"I'm certainly glad to see you," Grant said. He had that slightly dazed look that went with a transoceanic flight and a complete turnabout of hours. Justin threw an arm about him, patted him on the back as they walked.