“Most of all I’m sorry for all you’ve been through. I understand. Of all people who’ve ever existed, I know what you’ve been through to get here. Hello, from a sister. Maybe that’s the way to think of me. Hello, and don’t trust anybody but your Florian and your Catlin.
“If you don’t have them, then someone has betrayed you.”
BOOK ONE Section 1 Chapter iii
APRIL 21, 2424
1448H
Ari flicked the camera off. Session ended.
How would she look to future eyes? Like mirror into mirror, for a girl who wasn’t born yet? Someone in an odd, outmoded style of dress telling another eighteen‑year‑old things she didn’t want to believe were true?
She couldn’t help the outmoded part. Her successor would see that tape at least on reaching her majority. That was the current plan–granted she, or someone, authorized her successor to exist. She would be the one to lay down the protocols under which her successor would get full access to that tape or any tape. She would decree the time at which the data and operational system that was Base One would open up to her successor.
On some future day of upheaval, or simply on an otherwise significant birthday, her successor would log on to her computer for the day, and Base One would start to tell her things that would shake her world.
Her own wakeup had come early. The program Ari Senior had written had made decisions and advanced the date of her majority andher assumption of power–catching Denys totally off guard. Was it wise of Ari to have done that?
Yes. She was alive. And Denys wasn’t. She hadn’t exactly killed Denys. But her defenses were indisputably lethal.
Fingers flew on the keys now that she hit the programming part, which she liked far better than talking into the camera. She’d keyboarded and coded since she could remember and did this part without thinking too much about the process, at least in replicating routines she’d lifted from the files that had taught her. The hands flew very fast as she linked modules, which was like taking chunks of thinking, like building blocks, and dragging them all together into a coherent program. Her moves dictated what would flow from that first session, and moved the defcons Ari Senior had created for her own tapes into position to protect and assess and seal that session from anyone’s future deletion–even her own later second thoughts. That was the way it worked–at least on the level she worked at, inside Base One. She needed to be better than she was, but she was good enough for this. She wouldn’t be able to get in and tamper, no matter if she had better thoughts later. If she interfered with what she was now, she couldn’t get her successor to be who she would be…
How was that for klein‑bottle thinking?
BOOK ONE Section 1 Chapter iv
APRIL 22, 2424
1121H
Pre‑lunch meeting, in a small conference room, not on the agenda: Dr. Sandur Patil, Yanni Schwartz was notified, had entered the Bureau of Science, was downstairs at the moment, and on her way up.
It wasn’t an extraordinary event: a professor registered in Science entered the offices of that bureau in Novgorod. But it was uncommon that such a visit would reach the attention of the Proxy Councillor for Science, and more unusual still that it would bring said Councillor to put on his coat and head down the hall to the back entry to an anonymous conference room.
In the capital, in an environment rife with media ferrets and political gossips, Yanni Schwartz found time, personally, to meet with Patil by a circuitous route. Technically she was one of his constituents, since Dr. Sandi Patil was a scientist, still registered to vote in Science, and he was Proxy Councillor of that Bureau…de facto Councillor. Lynch, erstwhile Secretary of Science, had been Proxy Councillor when Giraud died; Lynch had become Councillor for Science by succession, with the right to appoint a new Proxy Councillor: Yanni. So Yanni sat and voted in sessions, even though Lynch was in the city: it was a valid vote unless Lynch should rise up and repudiate it, which Lynch wasn’t going to do, being a timid sort; and the office staved, de facto, in Reseune, where it had always been.
And being Director of Reseune as well as Proxy Councillor–Yanni wielded a certain power as head of the Expansionist Party, which meant what he did politically was usually policy‑setting in that party.
That was why, if any of the reporters outside the building had seen him meeting with Sandi Patil, it would have drawn notice–Dr. Patil being a particular darling of the Centrist cause, adored by the radical fringe of that group, though the majority of those registered in Science were Expansionist. She had voted against Giraud Nye, that was a near certainty. Now she arrived and proceeded as if she had business somewhere in the mundane administrative offices downstairs, some matter of records or certifications…then took the lift straight up to the administrative third floor, where a good Centrist was decidedly in foreign territory.
Yanni entered the conference room: his azi companion, Frank, was with him, but Frank went on through to the foyer. He had no other security present, unusual, in itself, for a Director of Reseune. His visitor, upward bound, didn’t have a wire or a bug: the moment she walked into the lift, Frank had made sure she was clean. She likely would expect someone like Frank to sit in on the meeting, but she had seemed skittish of this dealing, Yanni was forewarned of that, so he stationed Frank in the anteroom and settled alone at the head of the conference table, waiting–about, he trusted, to find out what Patil thought of the offer she’d gotten three months ago.
I need time to think, she’d told the Reseune aides who’d initially contacted her. They’d warned her that any indiscretion would cancel the offer. And for three months she hadn’t talked to anyone–not that they’d been able to track. That was encouraging.
Are the papers I have still valid? she’d asked, via the same contacts, after Denys Nye’s assassination.
Yes, she’d been told. She’d asked for a meeting with other aides last week–which was too much potential for noise: Yanni had insisted she meet with him this week, face to face. The Council of Nine was in session. The vote on a critical bill was at hand. So she came to the Science offices, and hadn’t talked to any reporters.
That cooperation didn’t surprise him. Patil had lived very quietly, avoided the news so far as she could, had gone silent when controversy had tried to attach to her name–and she’d been one around whom political storms could very easily have formed. She had common sense. She was an expert in her field. Centrists backed her. He had everything arranged to make it a bipartisan deal, if the interview went well. It was just the reporters and the public they didn’t want informed.
The woman who entered the conference room–Frank showed her in and left again–was fortyish in appearance, but the record said she was past a century: on rejuv, clearly. She was blonde, wore a chignon of braids–which might be her own–wore a stylish brown tweed suit and high black heels. Fashion plate. Compulsive in that regard. He’d heard that about her.
“Dr. Patil,” Yanni said pleasantly, rising to offer his hand. “Have a seat. Coffee?” Staff had provided a carafe, with two cups. Yanni poured one, for an opener.
“Thank you,” Patil said, and he poured another for himself.
“Quarterly break for you, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Patil said in a flat tone, and took the coffee he handed her.
Straight to business, then, with the warmth of a desert night. Yanni had a fortifying sip of his cup and sat down.