Justin might never have existed at all. There might be no such place as Reseune and no such world as Cyteen. But the one who whispered correct numbers and code-phrases to him could enter his mind at will, and leave without a trace; or pick up this or that and look at it—not change it: a vase set on a table stayed a moment and sought its old position, not violently, just persistently— the other face belongs out.It would take many such entries, many rotations of the same vase, many distractions, like moving another table, shifting the couch about, before the vase would stay awhile in its new orientation. Even then it would tend to go back—over time.
Easier if the visitor said: we're going to rearrange this one room; and showed him the key. And ordered him to stand aside and watch. And then explained how all of it was going to fit together with the rest of the house, after which, if it truly worked, he would have less and less apprehension about it.
As it was, this visitor was rough, and knocked things about and then cornered him and asked him questions. Which made him anxious, because he was smart enough to know that occasionally tactics like that could be a distraction to get that vase on the table moved. Or to avoid that obvious temptation and go for something he might not notice for a while.
The visitor hit him once or twice and left him dazed. When he knew the door was closed he lay there awhile, and the vase that was in pieces picked itself up and mended itself;and the furniture straightened itself, and all the pieces started to go back again.
He had to he there a long time being sure that everything really was inits right place. The stranger could have done worse. The stranger could have gone a level deeper, and chased him through deeper and deeper rooms, until the stranger cornered him where there was no retreat. Then the stranger would have found a way into him,whereafter he would have been dragged inside himself, into dark territory the invader knew and he would probe only reluctantly.
That was not the way it was, of course. It was only the image he had, a child's picture, that a tech had helped him build. The vase was the tamper-gate. The yes-no/are-you-safe gate. It was right at the entry and any operator who tried to reassure him always rotated it just a little.
This visitor had thrown it to the floor.
He came out again in a room far more bleak and blank. Shadows came and went and spoke to him. But he was still largely not-there.He was exhausted, and the rooms kept coming disarranged, the furniture flying about at random, requiring him to order it again, which meant he had to go inside a great deal, and these people kept hitting him, blows on the cheek which felt like the flesh was deadened there. They spoke to him, but the words flew apart in pieces. He had no time for them. He was coming apart inside and if they woke him up he was not sure things would go back where they belonged.
Someone gave him the key-words the last visitor had left. And insisted he wake up. After which he was looking at Petros Ivanov sitting on his bed.
"They're going to take you in the chair. Will you let them do that?
"Yes," he said. He would let them do anything. Whoever they were. He was much too busy putting things back on shelves and watching them fall off again.
The room became a different room. There were flowers. There was a waterfall. It made a rhythmical sound that had no rhythm. Of course. It was a fractal. Fractals were common in nature. He tried obligingly to discover the pattern. They had handcuffed him to the chair. He was not sure what that datum had to do with anything. He worked at the math since that was the problem they had given him. He did not know why.
He slept, perhaps. He knew they had done something to his mind because the tamper-gate was unstable: the vase kept tottering off the table by the door. Not safe. Not safe.
But of a sudden he remembered that Justin was supposed to come. That had been true before. He violated the cardinal rule and cautiously, examining the cost of it carefully, took something other than the operator's truth as valid.
If he was wrong there was no way back from this, and he had no map.
If he was wrong he would not readily be able to reconstruct himself.
He put the vase back. He sat down to wait.
Justin would come. If not—nothing had ever existed.
He could see and taste and walk in their world. But not really. They would make wreckage of him. But not really. Nothing was—
—real.
Anyway.
vi
The lying-in-state was barbaric, the Hall of State echoing with somber funeral music and cloyed with flowers and greenery—a spectacle right out of old Earth, some commentator had remarked, while other news analysts compared it to the similar display at the death of Corey Santessi, chief architect of the Union, whose forty-eight-year tenure on Council first in the Internal Affairs seat and then in the Citizens Bureau, had set the precedent for inertia in the electorates—then too, there had been a need, considering the far-flung colonies and the degree to which a rumor could travel and grow, to demonstrate indisputably that Santessi was dead, to have a decorous passing-of-the-torch and allow all the colleagues who had fought Santessi's influence to get up in public, shed sufficient tears, and deliver pious speeches that stifled speculation by endless repetition.
Much more so, when the deceased was synonymous with Reseune and resurrection, and the victim of assassination.
"We had our differences," Mikhail Corain said in his eulogy, "but Union has suffered an inestimable loss in this tragedy." It would be tasteless to mention that it was a double loss, counting the presumed murderer. "Ariane Emory was a woman of principle and vision. Consider the arks that preserve our genetic heritage, in orbit about distant stars. Consider the rapprochement with Earth and the agreements which have made possible the preservation and recovery of rare species—"
It was one of his better speeches. He had sweated blood over it. There were worrisome mutterings about suppression of evidence in the case, about the unexplained order which Reseune had claimed was buried in the House computers by Emory herself, calling for the termination of Emory's personal guards, a termination carried out by staff without question. There was the notorious case of the Warrick azi kidnapped and tampered with by Rocher extremists, then returned to Reseune. There was the fact of Rocher himself making inflammatory speeches, publicly rejoicing in the assassination, a newsworthy item that got far more press than the legitimate Centrist-affiliated Abolitionists like lanni Merino regretting the taking of a life, then going on to decry the termination of the azi, all of which was too complicated for the news-services: lanni never hadlearned the technique of one-issue-at-a-time, and it echoed too closely what Rocher had said. The reporters swarmed the stairways and office doorways like predators staking out a reef, darting out, Scribers running, to ask every Centrist in the Council and Senate: "Do you think there was a conspiracy?" and: "What's your reaction to the Rocher speech?"
Which was a damned narrow line for some Centrists to walk.
He hoped to hell he had defused some of it. That he had been quotable.
Never say that the news-services were a function of the Bureau of Information, whose elected Councillor was Catherine Lao, Ariane Emory's reliable echo on Counciclass="underline" never say that promotions could be had and careers could be made—if reporters came up with material that would make Upper Management happy. It was not the reporters' fault if they sensed that Upper Management wanted more, more and more on the Conspiracy theory: it sure as hell was good theater.