Well, it was clearly a decision, one there was certainly no disputing. And absent Seely AS‑10, all other alphas of Contractable age were already committed to specific programs from infancy. There were a very few others, older, some of those quite concentrated in their own specialty, none of them socialized for a household.
So they were down to three household candidates notquite as good, one a beta, the other two gammas, the highest classification they could find that weren’t designated elsewhere–not optimum, but satisfactory, in their estimation. They’d have to mesh smoothly with Gianni and Callie, not get underfoot of sera’s security, andthe majordomo had to know when to turn a situation over to security.
That put it down to the solitary beta, who was at the top end of beta, but under‑socialized for the job.
It was frustrating. They were both up to their elbows in lists of tapes studied and certifications given, which sera could have read at a glance. But sera was either in deepstudy or, lately, on her computer, and on a motion‑sensitive trigger, so neither of them thought it good to ask sera about it.
There were other experts they could ask: they sat in Wing One, in the heart of ReseuneLabs, where such sources abounded. But that meant exposing the makeup of sera’s potential staff to people outside, which they were more than reluctant to do. The manuals of Contracted azi, containing the alterations made in that specific mindset over a lifetime–those were closely guarded, property of that azi and his Supervisor and not available in Library. But for anybody with a Base access above Three–and they were using a small subset of Base One–they could just walk though any unContracted’s manual there was.
Scary, already, in their way of thinking. They hadn’t known how accessible the unContracteds’ manuals were to people in Wing One and Admin. They were supposed to find new people who were safe. They found instead that the ones they already had hadn’t been as safe as they hoped. Somebody had been sloppy. And they ought to report that to sera–when she was herself again.
But that wouldn’t happen until they had the household running smoothly, and that meant relief in the schedule, freedom for them and Marco and Wes to leave the premises and know the apartment would be safe. That meant a good majordomo who wouldn’t go limp under pressure.
And that brought it down to five paired beta genesets in the security track. And finding out whether Denys or Giraud had ordered any special features in lower‑level, unassigned security was, again, in Florian’s estimation, something sera really needed to do, with her expertise. The best they could do was search the database they could reach for all interventions in the training, any decision that indicated a deviation from that geneset’s initial program.
They learned a bit, doing it. They learned more than they’d planned to know about where to look and what to watch for. Social tapes, sera had said to Florian, half asleep, in bed. Just be careful of those. The skill tapes don’t tend to cause problems. Social tapes are generally what to watch for.That was where spurious instructions could get in, at a very general level.
Well, at least the available betas weren’t long on social training. And they were beta‑smart, meaning they’d take tape fast, and literally, if they had to.
They ran their search from the security office inside sera’s apartment, in premises where the first Florian and the first Catlin had been the authority, in an apartment where the first Ari had lived. Two of the wall screens were the weather and the airport schedule–the Yanni matter. Two more monitored the main concourse of Wing One, downstairs, where the number and manner of people out and about the building seemed ordinary. One monitor covered the upstairs, the hall outside. That was vacant, their immediate surrounds.
A bank of other screens, constantly shifting the view, monitored the riverside, the private boat dock and the big wharves where shipments arrived in the town adjunct to Reseune. Cameras swept the town streets, with its usual traffic of azi and CITs on their own business, a bus, some few runabouts whizzing about to the hazard of pedestrians. Another set of cameras swept the broad fields and pens down in AG, where crops were burgeoning out of winter earth and pigs and chickens lived in long, safe sheds, protected, like all the town and labs, by the ring of tall precip towers that kept the world at bay.
Another screen, to the left of the view of the town, was occupied with the parsing of lines of code, the beta psychset they were currently investigating.
Three screens, on the side console, kept an electronic eye on sera’s friend Sam Whitely, at work on the construction site adjacent to–but not yet accessing–Wing One. Sam’s azi, Pavel, had a camera clipped to his collar and rarely left Sam for more than a brief errand. That afforded them a good constant view of Sam, who was not the sort to get into trouble in the first place.
The cameras gave them a view of everything and everyone they had to protect…a split screen kept an eye on Justin Warrick and his companion Grant ALX‑972, in their small office over in Education, where they were spending the day–it was where they were supposed to be on Thursdays.
They didn’t, however, have one to track Warrick senior–who was on no one’s trusted list, and who was the reason they didn’t want to present the files they were working on to Justin Warrick for review.
JordanWarrick. Therewas the problem that disturbed the whole house–and one reason they were anxious to improve sera’s general security. They weren’t a completely conjoined problem, Justin and Jordan. Jordan and Justin hadn’t met face to face since a notable argument some days ago. Jordan had mostly staved in his own apartment since, and had he attempted to crack a restricted level, the whole of Reseune would have twitched.
As it was, ReseuneSec just logged every keystroke, every request Jordan Warrick made of Library, and passed the collected information on. What the elder Warrick asked to access today were all generally published files two years old, so they raised no alarms. The actual content was for some specialist in Hicks’s office–ReseuneSec–to read, because they involved genetic expression, and for that maybe even ReseuneSec would have to ask one of the scientists.
Harmless? Probably. Not definitely, however.
There was also some indication the argument between the Warricks had abated somewhat: Jordan had sent a message to Justin this afternoon asking him to supper. Justin had refused to come. Another message had followed. Jordan had proposed a restaurant. They’d agreed to meet, so ReseuneSec informed them, via sera’s standing request for information about such contacts.
And if they passed a memo to sera to tell her that was going on, sera, in her current mood, would tell them back off, that Jordan Warrick was not her concern at the moment.
But then ReseuneSec, Hicks’s office, would move in on the meeting all on their own. And sera had told them to protect Justin, had she not?
It was like the other instructions this week–a scheduling problem.
“We could use boththese sets,” Florian said to his partner, regarding the two top candidate pairs. “They could be ready soonest. We could use the extra hands. And one more set than we planned gives us backup to handle a situation at the door. There’s that. Sera won’t mind the cost.”
“Which one should be senior, then?” Catlin asked. “I say BT‑384 and GJ‑2720.”
“Agreed.” BT‑384 and GJ‑2720, at twenty‑one, were younger than the other two, in fact–senior was always in terms of genetics, rank, and training, not birth‑order. But the BT‑384 geneset combined with the 348‑3498 psychset in fact did have an older history: five of that geneset‑psychset combo had been in the military: their complete records had been difficult to get. But by what they did get, all five priors had died in the Company Wars, two sets in the same action, attempting to rescue the company commander. Gallantly devoted and distinguished for courage under fire.
It would have been more commendable to have gotten themselves and their company commander out alive, in Florian’s way of thinking. Still…