Life was not enough, to trade a soul for. But power . . . power to stop it happening, power to pay it back, that was worth the trade. His father's safety was. The hope someday of being in a position to do something about Ariane Emory—that was.
"I'm going to go home," he said to Florian, "take something for my headache, get my messages, and go on to the office. I don't suppose my father's called my apartment."
"I wouldn't know, ser."
"I thought you kept up with things like that," he said, soft and sharp as a paper-cut. He set down the coffee cup, remembering where the outside door was, and headed off through the halls, with Florian trailing him like an anxious shadow . . . Ari's guard, too polite to show it, and much too worried to let him walk that course through Ari's apartments unwatched.
For half a heartbeat he thought ahead to the safety of his own rooms upstairs and expected Grant would be there to confide in, the two of them would think things out—it was the habit of a lifetime, a stupid kind of reflex, that suddenly wrenched at a stomach ravaged by too little food, too much drink, too many drugs, too much shock. He went light-headed and grayed out, kept walking all the same, remembering the way from here, that it was a straight course down a hall decorated with fragile tables and more fragile pottery.
A triple archway, then, of square travertine pillars. And the reception room, the one Catlin had said was for show. He remembered the warning about the rugs and the floor, negotiated the travertine steps and crossed the room, up the slight rise to the door.
He reached to the door-lock to let himself out, except Florian interposed his hand and pushed the latch himself. "Be careful, ser," Florian said. And meant more, he was sure, than the walk home.
He remembered the nine-year-old. And the azi Ariane had killed. Remembered the vulnerability any azi had, even Grant. And saw Florian's—who had never had a chance since the day he was created and who was, excepting his dark side, gentle and honest as a saint, because he was made that way and tapes kept him that way despite all else Ari made him be.
It was that enigma that dogged him out the door and down the hall, in a confusion of graying vision and weakness, all part of the nightmare that crowded on his senses—tape-flash and physical exhaustion.
Ari had shaped Florian—in both his aspects, with all his capacities—the dark and the light. She might not have made him in the first place, but she maintained him according to the original design . . . from her own youth.
To have a victim? he wondered. Was that all it was?
Test subject—for an ongoing project?
Interface,the answer came rolling up to the surface and dived down again, nightmarish as a drowned body. Crossing of the line.
Truth lies at the interface of extremes.
Opposites are mutually necessary.
Pleasure and pain, sweet.
Everything oscillates... or there's nothing. Everything can be in another state, or it can't change at all. Ships move on that principle. The stars burn. Species evolve.
He reached the lift. He got himself inside and leaned against the wall until the door opened. He walked into a reeling hall, kept his balance as far as his own apartment and managed the key.
"No entries since the last use of this key."
Can't depend on that,he thought, in gray-out, in a sudden weakness that made the couch seem very far away, and nothing safe. Can't depend on anything. She can get into anything, even the security systems. Probably bugged the place while I was out. She'd do a thing like that. And you can't know if the Minder can catch the kind of things she can lay hands on. State of the art. Expensive stuff. Classified stuff. She could get it.
Maybe Jordan can.
He reached the couch and sat down, lay back and shut his eyes.
What if I'm not alone?
Ari's voice, soft and hatefuclass="underline"
I planned your father's actions. Every one of them. Even if I couldn't predict the microstructures. Microstructures aren't that important.
Tape-designer's aphorism: macrostructure determines microstructure. The value-framework governs everything.
I even planned you, sweet. I planted the idea. Jordan has this terrible need for companionship. Am I lying? You owe your existence to me.
He imagined for a heartbeat that Grant would walk in from the other room, Grant would ask what was the matter, Grant would help him unweave the maze in which he found himself. Grant had experienced deep-tape. God knew.
But it was only a ghost. A habit hard to break.
And Grant, certainly, I planned. I made him, after all.
He had to go to the lab. He had to get out of the isolation in which the tape-structures could fester and spread before he could deal with them. He had to get about routine, occupy his mind, let his mind rest and sort things out slowly.
If the body could only have a little sleep.
"Messages, please," he murmured, remembering he had to know, hadto know if he had calls from Jordan. Or elsewhere.
They were generally trivia. Advisories from the wing. From Administration. A note of reprimand about the illicit entry. He drifted in the middle of it, woke with a start and a clutch at the couch, the erotic flush fading into a lightning-flash clinical recollection that he was going to have to wear long sleeves and high collars and put some Fade on the bruises: he could put Jordan off with a claim that Ari had him on extra lab duty, logical, since Ari had no reason, in what he had told Jordan, to be pleased with him. He could notface Jordan at close quarters until he had better control of himself.
In the next heartbeat as the Minder's half-heard report clicked off, he realized that he had lost track of the playback, and that two days ago he had defaulted the Minder's message-function to play-and-erase.
ix
Grant could see the plane long before they reached the strip—not the sleek elegance of RESEUNEAIR by any stretch of the imagination, just a cargo plane with shielded windows. The car pulled up where people were waiting. "There," the driver said, virtually the only word he had spoken the entire trip, and indicated the people he was supposed to go to.
"Thank you," Grant murmured absently, and opened his own door and got out, taking his lunchbag with him, walking with pounding heart up to total strangers.
Not all strangers, thank God, Hensen Kruger himself was there to do the talking. "This is Grant. Grant, these people will take you from here." Kruger stuck out his hand and he was supposed to shake it, which he was not used to people doing: it made him feel awkward. Everything did. One of the men introduced himself as Winfield; introduced the woman in the group, the pilot, he supposed, in coveralls and without any kind of badge or company name, as Kenney; and there were two other men, Rentz and Jeffrey, last name or first or azi-name, he was not sure. "Let's get going," Kenney said. Everything about her was nervous: the shift of her glance, the stiffness of her movements as she wiped her hands on her grease-smeared coveralls. "Come on, let's move it, huh?"
The men exchanged looks that sent little twitches through Grant's taut nerves. He looked from one to the other, trying to figure whether he was the object of contention. Arguing with strangers was difficult for him: Justin always fended problems for him. He knew his place in the world, which was to handle what his employer wanted handled. And Justin had told him to object.