And Valerywho wasn't even part of our familythe Project directors couldn't have me getting attached to a friend, or have me that happy, so they had to find a way to get Valery away from me. There just wasn't much of anywhere to send his mother, Andrea, because she was doing cla.s.sified work. So off they went to Reseunes.p.a.ce at Fargone, where they could be in a sealed research community, involved with trying to clone another personality. Look up Rubin, if you're curious.

Denys was probably the one who ordered Valery to go awaybecause at a certain pointyou understand better than anyoneit was just time for life to get harder for me.

So for starters, they sent Valery away, and Julia and Gloria, and then when I was seven, they sent Maman away. And that was because the first Ari's mother died at that precise age, and it was time, in the Project, for Jane Stra.s.sen to go awayalong with Ollie, which was kind of Denys, at least, that Ollie went with her & but I think Denys never even thought about that. They just wanted everybody I loved to leave, and Denys took charge of me one day and told me Maman was gone forever and I had to move in with him, and that was the way things had to be.

I was upset. I was terribly upset. Everything had been good, and then it wasn't, and he really hated having a child around. He made that clear, fast.

Worse, he particularly hated the first Ari. Or at least what he felt about her was tangled and complicated. If what I think is right, he may be the one who killed her. Or his azi did, to protect him from her. And Abban and Seely are both dead, so n.o.body can ask them what the truth was, not that it matters, now, anyway.

I hope, I really do, that you don't have to go through that kind of separation from people you love. But probably you've already had to, and maybe you hate me as part of all of it, but likely by now you probably realize why you had to go through it, so I hope you forgive me along with the rest of them. I know I might not have survived my coming of age if I hadn't been through the fire.

So maybe the first Ari was right, and if I'd had no stress on me I'd be like that poor clone of Estelle Bok: I'd guess you still study that case, along with Rubin, or if you don'tdo. They gave Bok Two the best of everything, and that genius brain just floundered around with no boundaries, until it went way, way off into miserable territory, and became none too sane. Rubin wasn't a great success, either, or isn't, so far. He's just a pretty good chemist. And his predecessor, with every luxury in the world, committed suicide right in the middle of the program. Didn't that throw my keepers into a fit?

So you are whatever you are, and I am what I became, because they were suddenly hard on me at the right time. The first Ari had had her mother telling her when to breathe in and out, until her life changed suddenly and her mother died and she was just Ari, trying to survive in Reseune and not to have anybody murder her. She suddenly had to fight. So did I. Maybe so do you.

So even at eighteen years old, I'm still sorting out what the Project did to me, and I can say I'm all right and I'm glad I learned to defend myself. But I'm not satisfied with just finding out I'm all right. Now is my time to try to sort out what the Project did to other peoplepeople the Project didn't give a d.a.m.n if it hurt. Maybe it will work. Maybe it's beyond recovery. But I intend to try.

I hope all those people will find a way to love me after all. It's selfish. But I do hope so. Is that a vulnerability? Maybe. But it's me.

Chapter iii.

June 1, 2424 1540 H.

Ari shoved back from the console. Replayed the last bit. Struck it out, disturbed by what had come out of her in that rambling account, not sure it was good for her successor to hear that much honesty, whether that it was too stupid, that badly written, too naive to say, or whether it revealed too muchit was embarra.s.sing, was what. It revealed a trigger. A touch-point. That was worth considering. It was just too personal.

But her successor had to know her. It could be life or death. And she recalled that section, reviewed it, then entered the code that made it, with all the other entries, uneraseable.

Chapter iv.

June 6, 2424 1657 H.

It ought to be suppertime, but it wasn't, yetthe new domestic staff was finally arriving. Ari had put on a favorite rose sweater and a nicer pair of pants, plus a little jewelry, anxious to have the new people have the best impression of her and the household.

Catlin and Florian had missed their dinnertime, toothere was never a time she met strangers that they weren't right beside her. Marco and Wes were in the security station, it being their shift as of an hour ago, but the rest of staff was stirring about in the kitchen, getting ready with a nice little party, sandwiches and refreshments for the incomers.

Herselfshe was thinking of that pile of sandwiches when the word came that the group had pa.s.sed building security, presented their IDs, and been logged in. That was about a three-minute process to reach upstairs via the lift, another to reach her apartment.

Deep breath.

And a group of people exited the lift and approached the apartment. Corey was on duty there, with his partner Mato, the two Marco and Wes identicals. They were spit and polish for the occasion.

And, no question, the group on the other side of the door would be all nerves: they were just Contracted. It was birthdays, weddings, and first jobs all rolled into one bundle and presented to themand they were Contracted not just to any client, mind, butshe could think so without overmuch egotismto her. With all she meant to make that mean to them, every advantage, every comfort for her staff. She'd do well for them, and they'd help her run the new place, once they moved over.

She stood in the hallway, hands folded. Corey opened the doors to the newcomers, a handsome lot, mostly male, all wearing the typical azi barracks issue. Her domestics, like Corey and Mato, wore dark blue, her securitylike Florian and Catlin, plain black. These wore, at the moment, gray.

The group stopped, shuffled a little, making room for the lot of them in the foyer. They eyed her respectfully.

"I'm Ariane Emory," she said, and that name would resonate off their Contracts, which was much, much more than paper. The whole group bowed, as if one nerve ran through them all. "I expect," she said, "that you're Theo."

"Theo BT-384, sera," the foremost identified himselfa dark, squarefaced man with a cleft in his chin.

"Theo, you're our new majordomo."

"Yes," Theo said cheerfully, and drew forward the woman at his side, a thin-boned blonde with fine features. "My partner, Jory."

"Jory will be your direct a.s.sistant in your post. Pro tem major domo has been Callie. You'll work with her to get settled in. Callie will be household administration and chief of supply, hereafter, and answer to you, but no other on staff."

Theo bowed. Jory did.

"Very satisfactory," she said. "I'm very pleased with you." Meeting new Contracts, as their Supervisor, she found it was of utmost importance to offer rea.s.surance, confirmation: they were pyschologically exposed, as never in their lives, and so much hung on her expressions and her tone.

"And who is Wyndham?" she asked.

Wyndham stepped to the fore, one of the most antic.i.p.ated of arrivals, their new cook, with his partner Hiro. That meant that Gianni, who did excellent desserts, could concentrate on his specialty and give the running of the kitchen over to someone who could orchestrate dinner for eight and take great delight in showing off.

Logan, Haze, Tomas, Spessy: they were general work, domestic and repair. The two remaining women, Del and Joyesse, were solely to attend her personal needs, do her hair, handle her wardrobe, and double-check her appointments and calendar.

And Callie showed up, nodded very respectfully to Theo and Jory when introduced.

"Very well done," Ari said to Callie, because it was important, too, that the original household staff feel appreciated and by no means diminished in the arrival of more specifically trained individuals. "You've all done extremely well, under very trying circ.u.mstances. Nothing supplants your respect, and you retain a special place in my regard, for being with me longest and managing everything. I have a special affection for my senior-most staff: I have every confidence in you in this transition. Understand, this arrival frees you of any extraneous duties, and you will repeat this, verbatim, to all the staff: you are needed and much respected."

"Sera," Callie said, and bowed. Her eyes sparkledthat last bit was all keywords, deepset, key to this staff's feelings of accomplishment, resonating specifically off deepsets like an affectionate caress, and Callie was empowered to pa.s.s it on. "Shall I guide the new staff, sera?"

"Do," Ari said, letting Callie, for her last time, function as chief of staff. She stood quietly for a moment with Mato and Corey "Well done," she said to them. "Very well done."

Bows. The spark of pleasure, the little reserve of beta azi very, very secure in their posts and their place in the house. "Sera," Corey said, for the both of them.

Florian and Catlinno need to rea.s.sure them at all. But she smiled at them simply because she was happy. It felt like walking a tightrope, selecting new staff, taking Contracts, trying to be sure the incomers, totally vulnerable, felt an instant connection and sense of place. She made eye contact with each and every one, saw their expressions, read them, far easier than reading any CIT in their current state.

"In and safe, sera," Florian said.

She laid a hand on Florian's arm, and on Catlin's, not a calm-down, just grat.i.tude. She felt physically tired, as if she'd given off an energy that outright exhausted her, poured it into those wide-open faces on whom she'd rely for her comfort and her safety.

Or perhaps it was the immediate letdown of having been absolutely On all day, waiting for these people, her people, picking what she'd say, and planning the way she'd ease staff about their arrivalthose things, and the plain fact it was suppertime.

Callie's tour would end in the kitchens, Wyndham's new domain, where Gianni had been working on one of his tour de force desserts to impress the new master chef. They'd have supper together, the new staff and old; and meanwhile she found herself ravenous, a good sign. She'd arranged all the staff to be attending the dinner: the fare otherwise was cold cuts and sandwich makings, and that, with two bottles of imported champagne, was waiting for her and her security staff.

Florian and Catlin, too, had worn themselves out trying to be all things and everywhere for months. Now they wouldn't have to turn a hand to make a bed or find a midnight snack. Anything they wanted, at any time, always, would arrive, double-quick. They'd never experienced that situation, not since they were all children together, and they'd had Uncle Denys' staff waiting on them.

"I'm happy," she said, hugging their arms tight. "I'm starved. Let's go have supper."

"Marco and Wes are on duty," Florian said.

"They can have champagne, too," she said. "They can come. It's not as if our enemies will stage a raid."

"When better?" Florian asked soberly, but she squeezed his arm a second time.

"I love you both, but let's take the risk, shall we? Champagne, strawberries, and cold sandwiches. It's a security picnic in the conference room."

They were bound to worry. It was what they did. And in the end, they called in Marco and Wes, cued the conference room screen to display the security station main screen, and had their champagne and strawberries.

It was mostly for their sake, for the staff. They'd taken care of her through so much, and they did things that weren't their duty, doing it.

It was one more step toward that apartment. They'd be crowded for a while, but that wouldn't last long.

Then things began to be Real.

She didn't want to think about that tonight.

There was a baby, she recalled, a boy named Auguste GYX, the first baby she'd ever seen in the labs, the first time she really began to think about what Reseune did, and she'd said to herself a long time ago that she wanted to be sure that baby turned out all right & that when his Contract came up, she wanted to take it. And he was something around thirteen, still in traininga gamma, clever at a lot of things. And for some reason, with staff coming in, she thought of him and thought: I want to know what they're prepping him for. I've got the power to do that now. I can write a set for him. I can take the thirteen years and just bend it in a direction I choose, something I can eventually use, something to put him on staffnot have him shipped off to Novgorod and have him supering in a factory where I'll lose track of him. I want to know what they're prepping him for. I've got the power to do that now. I can write a set for him. I can take the thirteen years and just bend it in a direction I choose, something I can eventually use, something to put him on staffnot have him shipped off to Novgorod and have him supering in a factory where I'll lose track of him.

I can work with a gamma set. I'm going to call in his manual tomorrow. I can write a program for him. It'd be nice if he liked fish.

Things had gotten quiet. She looked at four faces, Florian and Catlin, Wes and Marco, all quite sobertheir notion of a wild staff party was a gla.s.s apieceall gazing at her, waiting for her to say somethingor to really look at them.

"This," she said, "is a point of change. From now on out, we don't depend on Yanni for many things we now ask of himincluding my study tape. Wes, tomorrow I want you to walk over to Library and physically pull a manual for me."

It involved printout. "Shall I call it first?" Wes asked, meaning should he call Library and have it prepared for him to pick up.

"No. Ask there and wait for it."

At very least, she didn't want a request on file before she had the GYX general manual in handthere could well be more than one GYX in progress, and even Wes didn't need to know which GYX she was interested in until she had that particular file in hand. It wouldn't remove it from Library, and anyone interested could still get it, with the sort of clearance, for instance, that Hicks or Yanni hadbut once she duped that manual in-house, and began to write changes on that programshe would have her GYX's particular record, and Yanni wouldn't. He could find out what tape they'd run down in labs, but he couldn't find out any oral Working she'd done, and he wasn't good enough, she'd bet on it, to look at the tape list and immediately know what structure she was building or what her GYX was destined to be.

She had the individual manuals on Theo and Jory and the rest. Those came with them. And those individuals would see changes very soon that weren't on the lab records. She'd prepare tape of her own creation, and when she was throughthey'd be hers, no one else's, ever. That was the way the system worked.

Justin could pa.s.s on that, too, but she'd done more than population dynamics in recent weeks. She'd studied set-alteration and deep inhibition as well as integrations. And she'd taken a look at some of the first Ari's set designing, on the Gehenna project.

It wasn't just history of that project she'd been after. She hoped she could spot a deepteach bug in the azi she'd taken inthat she could spot it, correct it, and have that azi absolutely trustable. It wasn't brain surgery. In many cases it was plain language, like what the first Ari had instilled at Gehenna: this is your world. Your worlddeeptaught in those azi mindswithout any reference to the born-men the military had sent out there deliberately to fail, mess up the planet, and die.

The military had thought they were simply giving Alliance a poison pill, knowing they'd take Gehenna and Union wasn't in position to. But the poison pill the military hadn't counted on, in their own planning, had been letting the first Ariane Emory know that her azi were destined to become an embedded, dying and miserably poor population on a planet the Alliance was going to claim. Ariane Emory didn't do that sort of thing to her azi, no. She gave them the planet and told them to survive and take care of it. And survive they didbecoming foreign and odd in the reckoning of what was human, but they lived. They succeeded.

The first Ari had, as best she'd ever been able to discover, given her Florian and Catlin, and Yanni had given her Wes and Marco, and she'd taken Callie and all the rest.

There were going to be, very soon, some deep-sessions for certain staff, not for Florian and Catlin. They would be quiet, refreshing sessions, with some very specific instruction keyed to their setsinstruction which could make them very devoted, or very dangerous, depending on her skill at intervention.

"You are my first staff," she said, "and the core of my staff. What you say, I will always hear. And I rely on you for loyalty and intelligence."

Heads dipped. Eyes fixed on her. Supervisor. They heard that as they'd hear tape, and they drank it in.

"You are special," she said, "and your decisions matter. The secrets of this house stay in this house. This is for Marco and Wes: if you have to trust someone and you have to make a judgement outside this house, trust Justin Warrick."

Again, solemn nodsjust a little resisting flicker from Florian and Catlin, who'd been excluded from that last sentence. Wes and Marco were absorbing it alldeepstate, as azi could do without the deepteach drug, as almost now, she could do: her concentration could go that deep.

And only with their Contracted supervisor would azi accept instruction at that level. She looked at Wes and Marco, saw their pupils dilated, a sign of deepstate, which said something on its own.

They were hers. About Florian and Catlin, she had no question at all. never had.

She'd doubted herself at times, which, she thought, was only healthy to do, but now that she'd begun to focus on real things, on taking over, she began to thinkI have to. I have no choice, do I? It's life or death. my staff has to be mine. Especially my security.

Chapter v.

June 6, 2424 2122 H.

She had someone to turn down her bed that nightspooky, at first sight. She wasn't used to that, not since Nelly had left her. She a.s.sumed Joyesse had done it, or ordered it. She put on her nightgownunaideddraped yesterday's clothes over the chair and started to go to bed.

But the computer in her room suddenly showed a unique flasher on an otherwise dark screen, a flasher that lit the adjacent wall red, and her heart picked up its beats.

Not a mail notification that blipped quietly in a corner. Log On, it said, across the screen.

She sat down at the counter and did that, no question. And the screen blinked, and became text.

"So you're making a move toward power," Base One said in the first Ari's voice. Base One said in the first Ari's voice. "And you wonder how I can guess that. Wonder instead who else can guess it, and act appropriately." "And you wonder how I can guess that. Wonder instead who else can guess it, and act appropriately."

It wasn't really Base One doing the thinking. It was the first Ari, who'd set certain criteria, and when she met them, things turned up. This one had. And it sent a chill down her back. No good trying to talk to it. It had something to say, and it would say it come h.e.l.l or high water.

"Correctly identify your allies and your enemies, young Ari. I don't say friends, because that word is misleading and it can deliver you into a serious mistake. Some people you don't like are allies and some people you do like are enemies once you choose a certain course of action, and by now you should understand that."

She did. She had understood it. But Ari Senior put it into words in a particularly cold way that did nothing for the shivers. She wore a thin nightgown in a room cooled for nighttime, and she hugged her arms about herself, because Base One wouldn't stop once it started, wouldn't stop, wouldn't pause, didn't care about her weaknesses or her excuses.

"Rely on Florian and Catlin. No others."

There was Justin. Marco. Wes. But, she thought, Elder Ari didn't know them. But if elder Ari had intended to leave a loophole she would have left it.

"Particularly be cautious about trust. Trust stops reasoning. Look carefully at those you trust. Taking offense stops reasoning, too. You may find a certain person has betrayed you. Limit the offending person so his misdeed cannot possibly repeat itself. Waste no time in regret or sympathy."

I'm about to do that. I'm ahead of you here, older Ari.

"a.s.sume the worst case where it regards those possessing what you intend to take. a.s.sume violent resistence or clever resistence. a.s.sume sabotage. Once you move, move decisively and pitilessly to protect your own allies. If you have pity, bestow it appropriately, on those helping you. Reward compliance and you'll be surrounded by the compliant."

That's not necessarily a good thing, older Ari.