Tape-flash, ominous and chaotic. The taste of oranges.
"before all this happened. That's useless, isn't it? I don't even want to be that boy. I only wish I was there knowing what I know now."
"It was good there," Grant said.
"I was such a damned fool."
"I don't think so."
Justin shook his head.
"I know differently," Grant said. "Put yourself in Ari's place. Wonderwhat you would have beenon her timetable, with her advantages, with the things they did to her You'd have been"
"Different. Harder. Older."
"someone else. Someone else entirely. CITs are such a dice-throw. You're so unintentionally cruel to each other."
"Do you think it's necessary? Can't we learn without putting our hand in the fire?"
"You're asking an azi, remember?"
"I'm asking an azi. Is there a way to get an Ariane Emory out of that genesetor meout of mine"
"Without the stress?" Grant asked. "Can flux-states be achieved intellectuallywhen they have endocrine bases? Can tape-fed stressshort of the actual chance of breaking one's neckbe less real, leave less painthan the real experience? What if that tape Ari madewere only tape? What if it had never happenedbut you thought it had? Would there be a difference? What if Ari's maman had never died, but she thought she had? Would she be sane? Could she trust reality? I don't know. I truly don't know. I would hate to discover that everything until nowwas tape; and I was straight from the Town, having dreamed all this."
"God, Grant!"
Grant turned his left wrist to the light, where there was always, since the episode with Winfield and the Abolitionists, a crosswise scar. "This is real. Unless, of course, it's only something my makers installed with the tape."
"That's not good for you."
Grant smiled. "That's the first time in years you've called me down. Got you, have I?"
"Don't joke like that."
"I have no trouble with reality. I know tape when I feel it. And remember I'm built right side up, with my logic sets where they belong, thank you, my makers. But flux is too much like dreams. Tape-fed fluxwould have no logical structure. Tape-fed flux is too much like what Giraud did in the War, which I don't even like to contemplatebuilding minds and unbuilding them; mindwiping and reconstruction . . . always, always, mind you, with things the subject can't go back to check; and a lot left to the imagination. I honestly don't know, Justin. If there's a key to taping those experiences Giraud could have had some insight into it, isn't that irony?"
It made some vague, bizarre sense, enough to send another twitch down his back, and a feeling of cold into his bones.
"Talking theory with Giraud" But Giraud was dead. And yet-to-be. "It wasn't something we ever got around to."
"The question is, essentially, whether you can substitute tape for reality. I'm very capable, Justin; but I sweated blood on that flight to Planys, I was so damned helpless during the whole trip. That's what you give up: survivability in the real world."
Justin snorted. "You think I don't worry."
"But you could learn much more rapidly. Back to the old difference: you flux-learn; I logic my way through. And no aggregate of CITs is logical. Got you again."
Justin thought about it; and smiled finally, in the damnable gray apartment, in the elegant prison Ari appointed them. For a moment it felt like home. For a moment he remembered that it was safer than anywhere they had been since that fondly-remembered first apartment.
Then the apprehension came back again, the great stillness over Reseune, deserted halls, everything in flux.
There was sudden break-up on the vid, the news commentary thrown off in mid-word.
The Infinite Man appeared on screen. Music played. One never worried about such things. Someone kicked a cable, and Reseune's whole vid-system glitched.
Except it was also something Reseune Security did, for selected apartments, selected viewers.
My God, he thought, a sudden rush of worry, lifelong habit. Were they monitoring? Have they gotten through her security? What could they have heard?
vi
"Uncle Denys," Ari had relayed on the way, via Base One and Catlin's com unit, "I need to talk to you right away."
"Lab office," Seely had relayed back.
Shocked looks followed them through the labs from the time they had entered, techs who knew that things were already Odd with Denys, azi who were reading the techs if not the situation, and worried as hell; and now an unexplained break-in of conspicuous Family coming straight from the funeral, in mourning, and headed for lab offices at high speedsmall wonder the whole lab stopped and stared, Ari thought; and at least she could freely admit to knowing as much as she knew, excepting what Planys was doing.
Past the tanks, the techs, the very place where she had been born, where likely by now half a dozen Girauds were in progressup the little stairs with the metal rail, to the small administrative office Denys had commandeered: Seely was evidently keeping a look-out through the one-way glass of the lab offices, because Seely opened the door to let them in before she had made the final turn of the steps.
Denys was behind the desk, on the phonewith Security, by what it sounded. Ari collected herself with a breath. "That's fine," she said, when Catlin whisked a chair to her back; she took off her gloves and her jacket, gave them to Catlin and sat down as Denys hung up the phone.
"Well, sera," Denys said, "we have the result of your baulking Security at Planys."
"Where is Jordan?"
"Under arrest at Planys. He and his companion. Damn him!"
"Mmmn, Justin is accounted for."
"Are you certain?"
"Quite. Justin is the one I want to talk to you about."
"Ser," Florian said when they had let him in, Florian in House uniform and without his coat, so Florian and therefore probably Ari had had time, Justin reckoned, to come in next door first.
But it made him anxious that it was not a call over the Minder, or a summons to Ari's apartment or her offices, just a Minder-call at the door, Florian asking entry.
And the vid still showed nothing on the news channel except that single logo.
"There's been an incident," Florian said, preface, and in the half-second of Florian's next breath: O God, Justin thought, something's happened to Ari; and was bewildered in the same half-second, that the fear included her, her welfare, which was linked with their own. "Your father," Florian said, and fears jolted altogether into another track, "has gotten a message to the Centrists, claiming innocence."
"Of what?" Justin asked, still tracking on incident, not making sense of it.
"Of killing Dr. Emory, ser."
He stood there, he did not know how long, in a state of shock, wanting to think so, wanting to think
but, my God, during Giraud's funeralwhat's he doing? What's going on?
"We don't know all the details yet," Florian said. "Sera doesn't want to admit to ser Denys just how far her surveillance extends, please understand that, ser, but she does know that your father is safe at the moment. She's asking you, please, ser, understand that there's extreme dangerto you, to her, to your father, no matter whether this is true or false: the announcement has political consequences that may be very dangerous, I don't know if I need explain them. ..."
"God." Art's safety. Everything He raked a hand through his hair, felt Grant's hand on his shoulder. Florianseemed older, somehow, his face utterly without the humor that was so characteristic of him, like a mask dropped, finally, time sent reeling. . . . Could it be true?