"I am aware what specific arrangement the first Ari had with Giraud Nye, ser, and your offer is acceptable if sera is their Supervisor of record."

"Her youth"

"My partner and I are alphas, ser, and she's our our Supervisor." Supervisor."

"Technically"

"In actuality, Ser. She has been capable of directing us for a cla.s.sified length of time, but you may at least conclude it wasn't yesterday" Hicks regarded him at some length. "You're still eighteen."

"I'm very good at what I do, Ser."

That got a smile. The best Supervisors could be like that, able to appreciate an azi's humor. And one had to be wary, not to get sucked in and set too much at ease.

"No b.u.t.tons available, Ser. She has all mine well-catalogued."

The smile persisted. "I'd expect that."

"I add one more qualification: these agents: their Contracts go to her. Specifically."

Not outright refusal, but wariness. "That's not not what was." what was."

"That chain-of-command may have killed her predecessor. Certainly it was a weakness. My partner and I have studied that arrangement very closely. Their Contracts will be solely to her, ser, or we can't accept. Also, should we find a problem in any mindset, that agent will be directly dismissed and sent to retraining."

Hesitation. "I can understand your reasoning. But you weren't ready to ask for it. You have a lot of responsibilities inside the walls. Yet you don't feel ready to deal with this increase in scope?"

Supervisor's question.

"I personally find no great advantage in declining your offer, ser, under the terms I name. You see a need: you made the offer. Should we decline it, we run risks we both foresee, regarding sera's safety. Should the offer turn out to involve less cooperation than we know we need, we will have to decline it, also for security reasons."

"You think this office has problems?"

"I have some reservations, knowing a leak of information happened somewhere. We know our own staff. We don't know yours, Ser. Does the offer stand?"

"It stands."

"She'll require their Contracts and their manuals."

"Pending her approval of this arrangement."

"If I approve here and now, and I do, the deal is done. Sera will agree."

A frown. "Irregular transfer of Contracts."

"My predecessor had similar power. You knew him, you say."

"Your predecessor was very much older when I knew him."

"He's dead now," Florian said. "My partner and I intend to do better than that."

A moment of silence. "Quite," Hicks said. "Quite. Done, then." He turned to the console, entered a program, and a stick popped up. He pa.s.sed it across the table. "Valid for every individual in the file. You can reach their Contracts and their personal manuals with this clearance. They're yours."

"They're Sera's," he amended that. For a born-man, Hicks was very easy to work withplain, direct, and saying what he meant, at least on the surface. Hicks would have the job fairly securely for the next twenty-odd yearsuntil the next Giraud came of ageif he succeeded in the next few. His office might have problems; so might any office in Reseune, at this point. Sera wasn't in charge. Other, lesser people made decisions.

And within those twenty years of Hicks' office, they were going to face the same threats their predecessors had consistently faced, namely a fair number of people wanting power, or having power and intending to hold onto it. Yanni was intent on holding power on sera's behalf: there was less likely an indication of treachery there, but there were questions, and minds could change, over a decade. The security breach at Planys and Yanni's dealings with Patil were very likely a case of Yanni trying to ferret out the known problems of a prior generation before Ari had to inherit them, rather than a born-man trying for power of his own.

But that was an inquiry he planned to make, via the resources which this expanded staff would give him.

At very least Hicks and Yanni and the rest were on their guardand motivated. If anything adverse did happen in Reseune in the next twenty years, life expectancy for the chief of ReseuneSec would be commensurately shortlikewise, the Director's.

Sera's life was at issue. Primarily sera's, most clearly. Any enemy getting power would immediately want a new Ari-clone to work with, or see all Union s.p.a.ce thrown into a power struggle. Certain enemies might think they would like that event. But only the most fringe elementsor Alliance agents from outside Union s.p.a.cecould benefit from losing Ari altogether. Domestic enemies, sensibly bent on unified power, would need to have people on-staff at Reseune to make sure there was a third Ariane Emory.

Those were the ones to worry about most acutely: their ambitions were far more local. Some individuals with those well-targeted motives might be inside their perimeters, and Jordan was only the visible problem, the most likely focus of trouble.

"A pleasure to cooperate with you, ser," Florian said, and took the datastick, got up and gave a little bow. "If I have the requisite materials in this. I'll handle the other details."

"Done," Hicks said. "And that stick is clean, by the way."

"Of course, ser," Florian said pleasantly, with every intention of pa.s.sing it through protocols, even considering it came directly from the man who saw to the safety of all Reseune. "We can't say that about the card's data-strip. But we'll look forward to the information."

"Pleasure," Hicks said, and looked as if he meant it.

So that was that. Kyle AK was waiting to show him out. Florian walked out of that hall, out through a reception area where the number of waiting CITs had nearly doubled.

Elsewhere in the system, in other offices, a number of security-trained azi were about to hear a keyword to disturb them to the depths. They'd be notified of rea.s.signment to new specific operations, with special training.

They'd be excited, anxious at the same time, vulnerable as their professions never let them be for any other reason.

It was his job and Catlin's, and Wes' and Marco's, to settle the new security staff in their duty and handle the logistics. They'd have residency in Wing One: they needed to have it. But, unlike their own hand-picked domestic staff, they'd never come into direct contact with sera, not until he knew them specifically and by experience, and until sera had had a close look at their files.

Patil was a useful first question for them to try their new ReseuneSec access on. The quality of the information that query produced would tell them more about Hicks than about Patil.

Hicks himself might be the more vital question. When people gave things gratis, looking into the origin of the impulse was a good idea.

And when rumor said there was more than one authority inside the office, and that Hicks wasn't the strongest administrator ReseuneSec had ever hadthat fact was worth noting.

In the meanwhile, Florian thought, pa.s.sing the outside door... in the meanwhile, and with their own careful examination of what Hicks handed them, ReseuneSec's close cooperation with sera's staff might prove useful.

Chapter v.

April 26, 2424 1538 H.

After brunch was an extended but less than productive day trying to arrange the backwards-feeling officein which they waited, continually on edge, for another call from Jordan. d.a.m.n it.

But at least their current cases had arrived in the paperwork ported over from the Education Wing.

Justin doggedly slogged away at a routine check of a psych record, a fifteen-year-old azi up at Big Blue who'd had extraordinary scores in work-study, a cheerful looking girl with freckles on her nose and a quite amazing ability to troubleshoot problems in a handful of aging bots. It was a mechanical apt.i.tude that had never manifested in the ThT-382s possibly because no ThT-382 had been faced with a broken bot and a looming production deadline. Strong ethic to succeed, strong bond with her CIT Supervisor, who was about as old as the bots, and a deadline.

It was a good combination. Create those desires and skills in the ThT-382 path and they had a new training route with a fairly complex technical slant. Reseune liked to keep a strong theta presence in a given genepool, good practical sense, good hand-eye, ability to fix the plumbing before the water rose, as the first Ari used to put itbut more than that, it was a diverse, adaptable geneset. All sorts of things cropped up in the ThT-382s that were good traits in a population. The mechanical ability was a revelation.

Alpha typesmentally top-end and having more delicate psychological needs, in order to function at maximumfound employment mostly inside Reseune, very few outside, until a settlement reached a need for higher-end management, and then only a few, specialized in admin, usually, very few in science, went to that a.s.signment. An alpha closely paired with a born-man Specialthe CIT equivalent of an Alphathose sets were all at Reseune, or at Planys, or at installations like Reseune s.p.a.ce. His pairing with Grant, Jordan's with Paul G.o.d, there was one mortal waste in his father's situation. Paul and Jordan hadn't done a d.a.m.ned thing useful in twenty years, and the stagnation had to be killing both of them.

There wasn't a thing he could do about it. Jordan and Paul were sitting over in his office by now, stewing, not getting anything done not only because they were so far behind it was going to take years to catch up, but because Jordan wasn't ready to get started catching up. And Paul, who was totally innocent of anything but loyalty to Jordan, was suffering right along with him.

Maybe, if he could could find a way to work with Jordan, he could fix the situation, get Jordan moving again on something creative. find a way to work with Jordan, he could fix the situation, get Jordan moving again on something creative.

And maybe that was at the core of what Jordan wantedcome bring me up to speed, give the old man a hand, put us back where we were . . . before Denys Nye framed me for murder. . . .

The revenge part of it. . . that wasn't going to go away so readily. That That, he didn't know how to cure.

Jordan had tried working with Ari Emory. That didn't work. Jordan could work with Paul, but Paul didn't work at all while Jordan was emoting, and if Paul was currently trying to deepstudy his own way back to what he himself had been, it was under impossible conditions: Jordan was scattershot at the moment and mad as h.e.l.l, and Paul was suffering.

Paul was still functioning tolerably well in the crisissocially speaking. Jordan, being a born-man and a Special, was not that well-organized. Jordan was d.a.m.ned p.i.s.sed, and intent on everyone around him knowing it, intent on everyone acknowledging he'd been wronged, whatever it was that would satisfy him . . . and by all evidence, nothing ever would satisfy Jordan. His enemies were deadand rebornand twenty years of his life were gone. Meanwhile his son, his personal rebirth, had gotten entirely pragmatic about those missing years, and had stayed current with his work, and was living under the current Ari Emory's thumb.

That was what was eating Jordan alive.

Well, he couldn't help it. Couldn't change it. He wasn't going to change it at Grant's expense, no matter what kind of pseudo-filial impulses surged in his gut whenever Jordan pulled one of his pity-fests, d.a.m.n him. No, no, and no, he wasn't going to divert himself and Grant from a comfortable career doing useful work to go join his father in self-destruction. Selfish, maybe. But this version of Ari had a certain hold on him, too, and it wasn't hate.

Memory of the first Arieven that had had its good spots. One really bad one, but some good ones, too.

Memory of the seconda kid with a gift of guppies, a teenager upset as h.e.l.l because her first attempt at seduction hadn't at all worked The two weren't the same. Opposite ends of the age spectrum, for sure, but they weren't the same.

Isn't that what the whole program is about? Jordan had asked him.

Yes and no. If and maybe. The kid was brilliant. The kid was sopping up deepteach on science at a phenomenal rate. He didn't know precisely at what rate: he supposed Yanni knew, but he didn't, justher questions were getting scarily top-level. Her integrations challenged him, taught him things in a field he'd not had contact with in years. A little love of guppies hadn't blunted the great genius into uselessness. It might even have unwound some knots and let that phenomenal mind work at full capacity. But you couldn't tell that to Jordan, who was still dealing with his own devil, his own Ari, and couldn't see that anything had changed.

Stop everything he personally was doing, detour for a year or so to rescue Jordan from his twenty-year-gap?

Maybe he was a selfish ingrate. Maybe he should spare a couple of years, out of a long life.

And every time he thought about doing it his stomach knotted up.

A couple of years couldn't make Jordan happy. He could take Jordan off to the wilds up by the new lab they were building and do dedicated deepstudy until he could get Jordan factually up to date, and Grant could meanwhile work on Paul in that isolationhe'd actually thought about itbut what would they have at the end of it? An up-to-date Jordan who was never going to accept Reseune the way it waswho'd given him that card, d.a.m.n him, knowing they were being watched.

Jordan had done it deliberately, knowing he was going to run his son and Grant straight into an inquiry, ifh.e.l.l, if!he'd done it because someone in security would have spotted that cardJordan would have been disappointed if they hadn't.

It was bait, was what. It was Jordan stirring the pot, seeing what would happenmaybe hoping his son would be stopped, hara.s.sed, that the card would be confiscated and gone over by securityand so would his son be, which would throw him into a funk where Jordan could psychologically get at him; or maybe bring Grant running, in distress, right into Jordan's hands, or maybe get him severed from Ari's company and put under equal suspicion.

And what was the number? What in h.e.l.l was Jordan doing? The thing was radioactive. You didn't want to touch it. The room they were in was bugged beyond a doubt.

He couldn't stand it.

He couldn't stand it a moment longer.

"Grant."

Keystrokes stopped. "Mmm?"

"Did you chance to look at that card?"

"It wasn't chance."

Heartbeat b.u.mped. Leave it to Grant. "What was on it?" he asked. "A number."

"What number?"

"It had the form of a personal number. I recall it. Do you want me to find out?" Grant asked.

"No," he said, and made a sudden decision: he didn't want Grant involved, didn't want to be on record doing anything furtive. "No, I will."

He windowed up the message function and shot a query out straight to Ari's security office address. What was on the card Jordan gave me?Do you know? What was on the card Jordan gave me?Do you know?

The answer came back fairly quickly. A contact number at the University in Novgorod. A woman named Sandi Patil. Do you know that person? A contact number at the University in Novgorod. A woman named Sandi Patil. Do you know that person?

He typed: Not a clue. Not a clue.

The answer came back, under Ari's household ID, no further name telling who he was talking to: Senior lecturer with a speciality in bionanistics. there is no apparent connection with Jordan. What is your theory? Senior lecturer with a speciality in bionanistics. there is no apparent connection with Jordan. What is your theory?

His heart began a series of labored beats, old familiar fear, of a flavor he'd known for all the bad years, the twenty years when the Nyes had run Reseune. He typed: Is this Florian? Is this Florian?

Catlin, ser. My question?

I have no idea why he would give me that number. I don't know this woman. I have nothing to do with her field. her field has nothing to do with my father's, either, as I'm sure you're well aware.

Grant had gotten out of his chair, and leaned over to see the screen. Set a hand on his shoulder. His heart beat harder and harder, the old instincts awake and alert.

We don't know the reason of this contact, ser, or of his giving it to you. but the restricted military nature of the professor's research urges caution.

Bionanistics. G.o.d. Manufacturing? Genetic machines? Experimental, self-replicating life life? Military secrecy?

I have no idea, he typed. He's never mentioned any such contact to me.

What would you have done with the note if you were well-disposed to obey your father at the time?

Thump. Thump-thump. I suppose I would have looked up the number. Maybe I'd have called this person in Novgorod if I were a total fool and wanted to know what it meant or where it led. I'm not a fool. And I'd hope my father knows I'm not. I'm not interested in his old business, whatever it is, and I think he knows that, too. I suppose I would have looked up the number. Maybe I'd have called this person in Novgorod if I were a total fool and wanted to know what it meant or where it led. I'm not a fool. And I'd hope my father knows I'm not. I'm not interested in his old business, whatever it is, and I think he knows that, too. He added that last sentence and felt like a traitor, for reasons not entirely well-defined. He manipulated azi minds for a livingand his own motivations eluded him. There d.a.m.ned sure wasn't any connection of experience with Jordan left for him, nothing but an identical biology. He added that last sentence and felt like a traitor, for reasons not entirely well-defined. He manipulated azi minds for a livingand his own motivations eluded him. There d.a.m.ned sure wasn't any connection of experience with Jordan left for him, nothing but an identical biology. Catlin, I'm entirely upset by this situation. Catlin, I'm entirely upset by this situation.

Understandable, came the answer. came the answer. So you have no inclination to pursue the information. So you have no inclination to pursue the information.

None whatsoever, he answered back. he answered back.

Be aware that information or devices involving Dr. Patil could pa.s.s in forms very difficult to detect. Take precautions in any future dealings with your father, with this in mind.

- I take the warning. thank you.