“I do have ultimately to make a decision about Uncle Denys. Brilliant as he was in his field, he’s not essential to the universe. But I’m nearly certain Uncle Giraud may need him, once he’s born. Giraud is important to us, and it might be important that my Giraud have a brother he can take care of, speak for, and protect obsessively. Not to have Uncle Denys born might change Giraud, maybe not for the better…though I have as long as seven years before I make the ultimate decision on that. I won’t prejudice your thinking about Giraud, supposing my version of him is in your life–or maybe a third is, who knows? He could outlive me, and you might well have to deal with the Giraud I created. How I create him and whether I ultimately create Denys for him to focus on has bearing on what, kind of Giraud you’ll have. So pay close attention to what I say on that subject. If you’re not in power yet, you need to start taking measures to protect yourself and stay alive. Giraud can be pleasant, but he’s capable of killing you.
“So I am leaning toward yes on the matter of Denys. Ultimately, I liked Giraud. I didn’t like him most of the time he was alive, really, not as much as I like him in retrospect. One thing I know: I have to keep myself somewhat distant from the Giraud yet to be born, and not let my feelings for the old one enter into his upbringing He has to oppose me: that’s what his use is.
“The first Giraud always wanted to belong to something. Or he wanted something to belong to him. He had to serve something. He wasn’t inclined, like me, like you, like the first Ari, to covet a solitary eminence. He had an azi’s need to serve, in a certain sense–in his case, he served Denys–and I find that need fascinating…proving, I suppose, that one of the most universal and limiting traits we instill into the azi we create is actually a profoundly human one.
“Giraud served his brother long before I existed. And after Giraud died, Denys was, I think, a sad and very unbalanced man. Denys began to take actions, being afraid of me, and not having Giraud any longer to keep the world away from him. That was what Denys most feared, you should know. Not me. Not even dying Denys was afraid of the world outside his world. And when Giraud died, Denys started having to do things for himself. He had very good azi: Abban, of course, who had belonged to Giraud first, and he had Seely, but they weren’t Giraud, Worse, Denys didn’t ever respect azi, not even alpha azi, and that lack of respect colored everything he ever did with them. They were loyal to him; they wanted to serve him; they did everything for him; but Denys couldn’t respect anybody but Giraud. Born‑men, CITs: they were even more of a cipher to him, and he knew it. He had the program manuals for Abban and Seely; he could read them very well, so he knew them as well as he knew any azi, and I’m sure he thought he understood them, the way he thought he understood me.
“But to really understand either born‑men or azi, or me, you have to understand feelings, and Uncle Denys was all turned inward. He understood what he wanted. He could predict what Uncle Giraud was going to do most of the time. He actually trusted Giraud, and after Uncle Giraud died, Denys didn’t trust anybody. He probably had confidence that Abban and Seely would do what their manuals said they had to do, but here’s the salient part: he didn’t, I think, have the least idea why they would do it. He was so far from being able to deal with azi on an individual level, it’s a wonder he got a non‑provisional Supervisor’s certificate; I’m sure he finagled it, or Giraud got it for him. But don’t ever think he didn’t know azi, in the macro sense. He really did. His writings are brilliant, on economics stemming from azi populations turned CIT, macrosets in the largest sense, and profound integrations. I very, very much respect that work and I’m still reading it.
“And personally, one on one, he could smile and be sweet. He did favors for people, and he could tell in talking to them just what they wanted to hear–oh, he’d give them just exactly what would make them relax and believe him, and he could read that the way you’d read a book. But all that understanding of what people wanted to hear never got inside him, where he really lived, Inside he was all numbers, just numbers, and all the macroview, nothing micro at all. Much as I loathed Abban and Seely, I know he mishandled them terribly, and that may be their destiny again, because they’ll be Jus when he needs them.
“Maybe you see the situation clearer than I do, because emotions both make things clearer and obscure the truth. You can understand and manipulate people without experiencing empathy–sociopaths do that really well; but if you don’t know very clearly what your own objective is in the transaction, you can’t really understand what your own emotions are doing to you, and it’s easy to get confused. You can think you’re being really smart, when you’re really just getting by. I think that was Denys’ central trouble: he had a lot of the traits of a sociopath–totally self‑interested, no empathy even for Giraud… And it’s not a flaw in him I feel safe correcting yet, or we could lose everything he was, intellectually.
“I’m just beginning work on my section of the tape you’ll get. And maybe I won’t tell you everything I could say right now, because you have to figure certain things out for yourself.
“My current decision is to let Ari One talk to you first, with the very same tape she gave to me, starting with your first log‑on to Base One–for one thing, because it exists, and I can’t predict how long I’ll live. If things turn out the way I plan, you’ll have heard her voice for years before you hear mine.
“So you’ll come to know me, starting with this tape, if I haven’t created any others to precede it.
“One thing is relatively sure: that you won’t remember me. But you may know Justin, and Grant, and Yanni, and maybe you’ll deal with my Amy and Sam and Maddy. And maybe even my Florian and my Catlin, whom I love above all the world, though I may have to order them to die. They’re too powerful, and I honestly don’t know what they’d do without me, or if they could love an Ari who isn’t theirs. Most of all, they couldn’t be children with you. But I don’t want to think about that. Of all the things I suspect Ari One did, that’s the one I can’t stand. And yet it may have been absolutely necessary. It may have been the hardest and the kindest thing she ever did. I can’t think what would have happened if I hadn’t had my Florian and my Catlin when I was growing up. It would have changed everything.
“You see why, with all the questions I haven’t answered for myself, I may let Ari Senior talk to you first. She never grew too old for questions. But she could give you answers from a much longer view. That isn’t my perspective yet.
“I hope I have her years, to gain that sense. I hope I leave things in better order for you than she did for me. But I can’t promise it.
“So hello, Ariane, in case we’ve never met before. I can’t call myself your mother, because we’re probably both eighteen, and maybe when I’m old I’ll make early tapes for you, the way Ari Senior did for me, and you can decide what to do and which to give your own successor, or whether your successor should exist at all. The world shouldn’t just repeat itself. The advice the first Ari gave me may not apply to the world forever.