"Never did," he said.

"I'd like to," she said.

"They don't surface as often as the platytheres," Jordan said. "So I understand. In great detail. The ankyloderm guy there is a complete s.p.a.cecase. You should have to listen to him on the topic. And we did, interminably. They had a guest lecture program. We were all supposed to get to understand each other. All d.a.m.n useless."

"Who did you a.s.sociate with?" Ari asked.

The habitual frown went a shade deeper. "You want other targets for your people to investigate?"

"Dr. Thieu?"

"Thieu's a murderer."

"That's how you got Patil's card, isn't it? Is that the friend you referenced?"

Jordan went as hard as deep ice.

"they corresponded," Paul said, out of the quiet.

"You with Patil?"

"Thieu with Patil," Jordan snapped. "And I'm sure security knows it. Why is everyone in such a flap?"

"Security just hates it when their compartments leak," Ari said. "Especially where it threatens the biosphere. Especially when it'd be so easy for some lunatic to contaminate, say, the Planys reserve. Nanisms could run riotif they were tailored for it. The Centrists would get their way completely ... no reason, then, to stop their pet project."

"Not my field," Jordan said with a shrug. "Ask Thieu. Nanisms have nothing to do with me."

"Except the card."

"I thought we were waiting for dessert."

"I think we're ready for dessert," Ari said, laying her fork down. "Are you?"

"I think I've had enough."

"Dad."

"d.a.m.n it," Jordan said, banging his fork down and looking straight at Justin. "Pick your side and stay with it."

"Politics doesn't mean a thing to you," Justin said. "You used to say it was all nonsense. Pick your side, you said, and use it for all the use it can be to you."

"Thank you," Jordan said, "for that reminder of basic principles."

"Dessert," Ari said cheerfully, and waved a signal at service. Florian and Catlin hadn't moved from where they stood, facing her, a perfect, black-clad and elegant set, Florian the dark one, Catlin the bright, and neither face ever showing an expression. Dessert came through the door between them, a confection of light pastry and egg cream.

"Looks good," Grant said, as cheerfullyand doubtless wishing he could get himself away from the argument. Things hadn't been said, outright. Yet.

"Coffee, ser?" Callie was back, bearing a silver pot, making the rounds. It was a good, rich coffee, not synthetic, which complimented the egg creamreal egg cream, too. They got the best from the AG unit. Chickens, the one bird allowed onworld. were a definite plus, bred for centuries to be plump, nonseasonal, and flightless.

"Nice," Justin said, after a bite.

"So did that card come from outside," Ari asked, "or was it printed from transmission?"

"Transmission, far as I know," Jordan said. "But I could be wrong. Thieu gave it to me and said contact the woman, give her his regards, old colleagues and allI told you he's a dodderer. His rejuv is going. He's sometimes on, sometimes not."

Transmission suggested no physical card had gotten to Planys ... or broken quarantine. Hence nothing more sinister had gotten to Planys, either, or had gotten from Planys to the larger continent. It indicated that Jordan had done what he'd done solely as a means of agitating security and his son. She was sure Justin could add that equation. The remaining question was whether the rea.s.suring story was the truth at all.

"I knew d.a.m.ned well I'd make trouble for Patil if I called her," Jordan said, after a bite. "Or if I mentioned her name while I was sure we were bugged. So I just handed the card on to my thoughtful son, who created a h.e.l.l of a lot of trouble."

"Bugged and watched, Dad. We always are. For our protection, our legal protection as well as physical."

"It wasn't that way in my time here. But you've gotten used to it. Adapted, clearly. Nice dessert."

"Thank you," Ari said, taking another, delicate spoonful. So they at least had a story to explain the card, true or half-true or no relation to the truth at alland truthers were running. They had the card, physically, which had either come, illegally, from Planys, or which had gone, illegally, from Novgorod to Planys before coming to them. Contaminants of the sort Patil worked on could use a small, small vector. Protecting the eco-sphere was, very unfortunately for the ecosphere, still a political debate. Centrists might not like the idea of wholesale adaptation of the human psyche to other worlds, but they still wanted to obliterate all native life on this one, and being human, wouldn't ultimately stop with one world, no matter what they argued, if they turned out to need something just out of current reach. It wasn't just a debating difference. It was a profoundly different future in that debate.

And Jordan had said to Justin, once in the long ago, choose the side that's useful . . . while the first Ari had said, in her tapeswatch out for Jordan.

"So you don't take any side but your own," Ari said to Jordan. "When everybody else has a theory about what humanity should be, you're completely without opinion."

"I'm not G.o.d," Jordan shot back. "And I don't theorize from that vantage. Let events and biology decide."

"That's sort of a Centrist opinion."

A bite. "This week, it is," Jordan said. "Stand by. It'll change."

"You're interesting," Ari said. "I'm so flattered."

Justin just gave an exasperated sigh and stabbed the pastry.

"I think we should do this from time to time," Ari said. "You're sort of family, you know."

"In what possible sense?" Jordan shot back. "Family, in the sense you've gone to bed with my son?"

"No," Justin said shortly. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

"Denys was my family after he exiled Maman," she said. "Yanni sort of is, now. But I don't know what to do without a disagreeable uncle. So I pick you. You can succeed Denys."

"I'm not honored," Jordan said, and ate the last bite of his dessert.

"You don't have to be like Denys, you know."

That got a dark, naked stare, all the way to the bottom. "You little devil," Jordan said. "You little devil." Got to him. Found a b.u.t.ton.

"I'm not," she said. "I'm just Ari. The new model. You were almost partners, you and the first Ari. Justin and I already are, at least as much as you two ever were. You're my disagreeable uncle, whether or not you're Denys."

"Denys killed her."

"I'm pretty sure he did," she said. "And he as good as killed you. The question is whether you can recover from that. Maybe you can. We'll see."

"The devil," he said, and drank the last of his coffee. "I think we've had the discussion. I trust I can leave this place."

"Of course you can." she said. "Paul. I'm glad you came." She pushed back from the table. Justin and Grant did. She wondered if they would leave the apartment with Jordan and Paul and walk them to the doors of Wing One, or make a maneuver so as not to leave in that company.

"Thank you, sera," Paul said, pro forma. Trust azi manners to try to force a calm over the situation.

"Thank you for the evening," Jordan said with a small, tight smile. "It was very informative."

"It was, very," she said, and offered her hand. "I'm so glad you could come."

"Nothing much better to do." He took her hand briefly, as chill a grip as before, nothing like Justin's. "Good night." And to Justin, a look shot past her to the other door: "I suppose you're staying."

"No," Justin said, "but good night, Jordan."

Letting Jordan walk out with Paul and the door shut, Justin put on his coat very slowly, while Grant waited.

"I needed to know," she said in that artificial pause. Toward Justin and Grant, she felt an impulse of remorse. "I'm terribly sorry. I hoped, not too rationally, that it might go better than this."

"You gave us different arrival times," Justin said. "You set the tone."

"I tried to set it better than it turned out," she said.

"I don't think anything was ever out of control," Justin said darkly, implying, she read it, that things had gone just the way she wanted. She shook her head to that.

"Remember he's somebody the first Ari couldn't Work," she said. "She couldn't handle him, or everything would have gone better than it did. She really did want him to work with her. But he wouldn't share, and she couldn't change him."

That got a thoughtful look, a long and thoughtful look. "I wasn't so hard a target."

"For her? No. You were young. You were as young as I am now."

"I don't think you've had the chance to be," he said, "not that young. Not that stupid. I was, once. At an absolutely emotional pitch, caught between her and him. I don't like that territory. I don't intend to go there again."

"I don't want you to," she said, and kept her hand off his arm. much as the urge was there to touch, to plead, even, for a kinder look. "Justin, I asked you here because I didn't want to meet him and have any question in your mind what we said."

"And because he'd have exploded if I wasn't here. A whole complex of reasons. I get them."

"I hope you get all of them," she said, "because they add up to my doing this because I'd like to stop this upset, and I don't want you ever having to do things like give Florian that card."

He looked at her a long moment. "I'd be as glad not to have to. I'd be as glad to live under a regime where that's not an issue."

"I'm trying. I'm honestly trying. Those sets you're going overa lot of those arc my security. Or they're going to be."

"I had an idea they were, from the skill-sets involved."

"Don't give me anybody I can't rely on. Help me set this up right this time."

"As if you can't read them yourself."

"I do. I have. But I want a partner. I want backup. A double-check. I do." This time she did touch him, gently, briefly. "Justin, I need you. Maybe the first Ari didn't need your father as much: she didn't need people. But I do. I want people. I like people. I don't even mind people who argue with me. Jordan's all right, Justin. He really is, or he would be, if he could just stop short of trying to take over."

Justin's expression grew very somber. "You said it. The first Ari couldn't work with him. Are you better than she was?"

"I don't know," she said. "I know I'm not, yet."

"Good night," he said firmly, cutting off any hope of longer conversation. "Good night, Ari."

He was upset with her and with Jordan. She was sorry for that. But she'd had the truthers running, the while, and she had a load of data for Florian and Catlin to sift, before they gave any instructions to the new people.

Questions remained. Doubts didn't. Justin had firmly stepped to her side. He just had to reconnoiter a bit, and settle his stomach about it. He was upset. But he stayed hers.

JordanJordan was still Jordan. That hadn't changed. But she knew him better because of this evening. And that was also very useful.

Chapter v.

May 3, 2424 1003 H.

It was more home than it had been, the new office, with the quasi-window showing a rainy day and blue flowers brightening up the corner. The color-sorted cabinet still grated on the nerves, but the annoyance was fading.

Mostly the phone stayed quiet this morning. And for that, Justin found himself very grateful, considering the scene last night.

But it worried him. Jordan had more than one way to work on his nerves.

"Coffee?" Grant asked. Grant rose from his own desk to pour a cup. Justin held his out mutely, swivelled his chair around, and received it back when Grant had poured it.

"No phone call," he said.

"Enjoy it," Grant said.

"She's trying to make peace with him. It's not going to work."

"It won't, likely. But that's his choice, isn't it?"

"They've been fair with him," Justin said. "Sometimes I just want to shake sense into him."

"I'm only content he doesn't try his version of that with you," Grant said, and sat down with his own cup. He leaned back, crossed long legs in front of him. "Young sera, however, trusts you. And this, frankly, is a better thing. This is, mind you, a logical judgement. Or I believe it is."

"Believe it is."

"Convincing Jordan of her isn't likely," Grant said. "Young sera remains somewhat flexible."

"No matter if she deviates from what she was born, she can't deviate from what she was born to. She's going to be what Jordan flatly won't accept, that's the bitter truth. Any director of Reseune is in his way, I'm afraid that's the sum of it, and that's what she's going to be. So it's a chimera we're chasing, peace with Jordan. Doesn't exist." He thought of the monitoring and looked at the ceiling. Grant's eyes traveled the same direction, and met his, and he shrugged. "Doesn't matter. I said it last night. I said it all last night."

"We live in a gla.s.s box," Grant said with a shrug of his own. "But it's quieter for it."