Cyteen

"But whatever is necessary�is necessary," Grant said. "And Denys can't know�isn't in a position to know, that's what I think; and she's keeping it that way."

"The Rubin boy's going into chemistry, isn't he?"

"Fine student�test scores not spectacular, though."

"Yet."

Grant made a deprecating gesture. "No Stella Rubin. No one to tell him when to breathe. Hell is necessary for CITs, do we make that a given? You warned them not to let up on him too much�but the project is still using him for a control. Put the whole load on Ari; go easy on Ben Rubin; see what was necessary. ... I'll bet you anything you like that Denys Nye had more to do with that decision than Yanni Schwartz did. Yanni never went easy on anyone."

"Except�Yanni's got a family attachment in the way. Rubin's suicide really got him, and Jenna Schwartz, remember, had some little thing to do with that. It could well be Yanni's going easy."

"But Rubin's still a control," Grant said. "And what he's proving�"

"What he's proving is, A, you can't do it with all genesets; B, some genesets respond well to stress and some don't�"

"Given, given, but in the two instances we have, �"

"And, C, there's bad match-ups between surrogate and subject. Don't discount the damage Jenna Schwartz did and the damage the contrast between Jenna Schwartz and Ollie Strassen did to the boy."

"Not to mention," Grant said, holding up a finger, "the fact Oliver AOX is male, and Alpha; and Stella Rubin is female and not that bright. I'd like to do a study on young Rubin. No edge to him, not near the flux swings. The instability goes with the suicide, goes with the brilliance�Among us, you know, they call it a flawed set."

"And do a fix for it."

"And lose the edge, just as often. �Which brings us back to young Ari, who's maybe given the committee all she knows�which I don't believe, if she's as much Ari as she seems, and our Ari�doesn't take chances with her security. I very much think access to those programs is a leverage of sorts�and do you know, I think Denys would have begun to guess that?"

Justin considered that thought, with a small, involuntary twitch of his shoulders. "The committee swears no one can retrieve from Ari's programs without Ari's ID. And possibly it's always been true."

"Possibly�more than that. Possibly that Base, once activated�can't be outmaneuvered in other senses. Possibly it's capable of masking itself."

"Lying about file sizes?"

"And invading other Bases�eventually. Built-in tests, parameters, �I've been thinking how I'd write a program like that ... if she were azi. The first Ariane designed me. Maybe�" Grant made a little quirk of his mouth. "Maybe I have a�you'd say innate, but that's a mistake� in-built resonance with Ari's programs. I remember my earliest integrations. I remember�there was a�even for a child� sensual pleasure in the way things fit, the way the pieces of my understanding came together with such a precision. She was so very good. Do you think she didn't prepare for them to replicate her? Or that she'd be less careful with a child of her own sets, than with an azi of her design?"

Justin thought about it. Thought about the look on Grant's face, the tone of his voice�a man speaking about his father ... or his mother. "Flux-thinking," he said. "I've wondered� Do you love her, Grant?" Grant laughed, fleeting surprise. "Love her."

"I don't think it's impossible. I don't think it's at all unlikely."

"Reseune is my Contract and I can never get away from it?"

"Reseune is my Contract: I shall not want? �I'm talking about CIT-style flux. The kind that makes for ambivalences. Do you love her?"

A frown then. "I'm scared of the fact this Ari ran a probe. I'm scared because Ari's got the first Ari's notes�which include my manual, I'm quite sure. And what if�what if�This is my nightmare, Justin: what if�in my most fluxed imaginings, Ari planned for her successor; what if she planted something in me that would respond to her with the right trigger? �But then I flux back again and think that's complete nonsense. I'll tell you another nightmare: I'm scared of my own program tape."

Justin suffered a little sympathetic chill. "Because Ari wrote it."

Grant nodded. "I don't want to review it under trank nowadays. I know I could take enough kat to put me flat enough I could take it�but then I think�I can handle things without it. I can manage. I don't need it, God,

CITs put up with the flux and they learn from it. And I do�learn from it, that is."

"I wish to hell you'd told me that."

"You'd worry. And there's no reason to worry. I'm fine�except when you ask me questions like that: do I love Ari? God, that's skewed. That's the first time I ever wondered about it in CIT terms. And you're right, there's a multi-level flux around her I don't like at all."

"Guilt?"

"Don't do that to me."

"Sorry. I just wondered."

Grant shifted position in the nest of pillows, against the arm. "Have you ever scanned my tape for problems?"

"Yes," Justin said after a little hesitation, a time-stretch of hesitation, that felt much too long and much too significant. "I didn't want to make it evident�I didn't want to worry you about it."

"I worry. I can't help but worry. It's too basic to me."

"You�worry about it."

Grant gave a small, melancholy lift of the brows, and seemed to ponder for a moment, raking a hand through his hair. "I think she asked something that jolted me�deep. I think I know where. I think she asked about my tape�which, admittedly, I have a small guilt about: I don't use it the way I'm supposed to; I think she asked about contact with subversives; and I dream about Winfield, lately. The whole scene out at Big Blue. The plane, and the bus with those men, and that room. . . ."

"Why didn't you tell me that?"

"Are dreams abnormal?"

"Don't give me that. Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because it's not significant. Because I know�when I'm not fluxed�that I'm all right. You want me to take the tape, I'll take it. You want to run a probe of your own�do it. I've certainly no apprehensions about that. Maybe you should. It's been a long time. Maybe I'd even feel safer if you did. �If,"

Grant added with a little tilt of the head, a sidelong glance, a laugh without humor. "If I didn't then wonder if you weren't off. You see? It's a mental trap."

"Because you got a chance to see Jordan. Because the damn place is crazy!" Of a sudden he felt a rush of frustration, an irrational concern so intense he got up and paced the length of the living room, looked back at Grant in a sudden feeling of walls closing in, of life hemmed around and impeded at every turn.

Not true, he thought. Things were better. Never mind that it was another year of separation from his father, another year gone, things no different than they had ever been�things were better in prospect, Ari was closer than she had ever been to taking power in her own right, and her regime, he sincerely believed it�promised change, when it would come.

They're burying Giraud today.

Why in hell does that make me afraid?

"I wish," Grant said, "you'd listened to me. I wish you'd gone to Planys instead."

"What difference? We'd have still been separate. We'd still worry�"

"What then? What's bothering you?"

"I don't know." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Being pent up in here, I think. This place. This�" He thought of a living room in beige and blue; and realized with a little internal shift-and-slide that it was not Jordan's apartment that had come back with that warm little memory. "God. You know where I wish we could go back to? Our place. The place�" Face in a mirror, not the one he had now. The boy's face. Seventeen and innocent, across the usual clutter of bottles on the bathroom counter, getting ready for an evening�