"He certainly did. Access to Abban. Probably to Seely. Access to Yanni's office, right now, while he's in Novgorod. Every time he's been in Novgorod. d.a.m.n it! Florian, do you think Abban would have betrayed Giraud? Killed, contrary to Giraud's wishes?"

That drew a rapid blink of Florian's eyes. A rapid a.s.sessment. "Sera, no, I don't."

"Abban was upset as h.e.l.l when Giraud died. Denys took him in. But Abban stayed upset. Denys didn't do anything to help him. Or Denys couldn't. That's what I think. And maybe Abban continually supplied Denys with what somebody wanted Denys to know. Or think. Denys was only half paranoiduntil Giraud died, and Abban moved in."

"Were we mistaken to kill Denys, sera?"

"No," she said definitively, and then amended that: "I don't think so. I don't think there was anything to save, once Giraud died. He'd have killed us."

"I believe he would have, sera. I know Seely would have."

"Seely was always Abban's partner & out in green barracks. The way you and Catlin are partners."

"He probably was that, yes, sera. It makes sense that he was."

"But it's not in his manual, nor is it in Seely's. That's just d.a.m.ned odd. A subsequent generation wouldn't guess that relationshipbased on that manual. A spy wouldn't. It was just in their heads. And Giraud's. And whoever really, really knew them. Bring me a cup of coffee, Florian. Call Catlin. We need to talk about this."

"Yes, sera."

She didn't need the coffee, so much as the time. When they were there, Florian or Catlin, she had a range of possibilities that might be too wide, too drastic.

Call Yanni home, now, urgently? That might protect Yannia.s.suming Yanni wasn't aiding and abetting Hicks. With access to alpha-level personal manuals in Giraud's office. Giraud had been a real Alpha Supervisor. On the record Denys had an alpha license. But Seely and Abban both, once they'd been solely in Denys' care, hadn't had expert handling. They'd both given her cold chills, but it had always been true, Giraud was the one who'd have had those manuals, Giraud was the person that could make the world make sense to Abban, and to Seely & and when he'd died, Denys couldn't handle them.

Giraud, dammit, should have found it out if somebody had gotten to Abban. He'd known Abban that well. He'd lived with him that closely. How did anybody get to Abban and Giraud not know it?

But everybody's been upset for weeks after the first Ari had died. Giraud more than most. Giraud hadn't been at his best & Giraud had been emoting, leaning on Abban, not the other way around. And Abban had taken care of Giraud. An alpha could. An alpha could end up being the support for his CITeven if it meant hiding a truth, and lying, and not getting caught at it. That was the h.e.l.l of working with alphas. Given the collapse of the CIT they relied on, they so, so easily ended up doing all the navigation on a map they didn't wholly understand, and satisfying their internal conditions by the nearest available subst.i.tutethe satisfaction of coping well, and rescuing their CIT, and keeping him going. You couldn't have an emotional meltdown and stay in charge, not with an Abban type.

Abban might have killed the first Aribut working with the security sets as she had, she knewshe knew in a way she hadn't been able to acceptthat scary as Abban was, Abban hadn't been doing the steering. Abban hadn't been to blame. And she'd gotten over it when she'd made up her mind that she wouldn't abort Giraud, and more particularly wouldn't abort the Abban and Seely Denys had made to keep him company.

Pyramids in the desert. The immortality of the ancients, the burial with worldly goods, with attendants, with all the panoply of kings. Offerings to the dead, for the rebirth. She'd had that thought, when she'd first known Denys had activated all three genesets.

All three. Even while Abban and Seely were still alivethey'd been reconceived. Were weeks along, when Denys and Abban and Seely had died.

The sarcophagus and the womb-tank.

She gave a little shiver. Knew exactly the same decision had attended her birth, and Florian's, and Catlin's, though they'd all been dead.

Who'd given the order to terminate Florian and Catlin? Not likely Denys. Giraud. Giraud.

Full-circle, now. Absolutely full-circle.

Hicks betrayed you, Uncle. Betrayed all of you. Jordan had been conniving with Defense. He was going to break it all open and bring Reseune downbut that wouldn't have served Defense. If there d been no Reseune in those years, Defense would have been desperate to have one. So Defense just wanted to control Reseune, not bring it down. They already had their man inside Reseuneand they wrote their own script, not Jordan's. They knew about the psychogenesis project. They knew it, probably, from Jordan, who'd tried it with Justin, and Jordan would have warned them not to go along with itwarned anybody who'd listen, if they'd asked.

But the warnings wouldn't mean a thing to Defense. They just saw a way to have a re-start on Ari Emory, a quieter, merely potential Ari Emory, who wouldn't bother them for years, while Reseune kept their contracts, Reseune did the work for Defense, gave them what they wanted & But, d.a.m.n! who just authorized Defense to move in on Planys? Who authorized that military base built right next to our labs?

She leaned over the computer and posed the question: 2404. The year the first Ari died. The year Jordan Warrick became the man in the iron mask, the prisoner at Planys.

The military moves in, to keep him quiet. Cooperatesaids and abetsin keeping Ari's so-called killer and their agreed ally in Reseune & away from any communication with the outside world.

Wasn't that a window on their real set of priorities?

The first Ari safely dead. The second in planning.

Jordan & silenced.

Their installation set up at Planys, with Giraud's consent.

And their own man, Hicks, or Abban, with easy, constant access to Giraud's office.

But there was a problem with that line of reasoning. Hicks himself had been a victim.

Somebody put a Rafael type in Hicks's officeand Hicksor somebodyput an identical into my security organization.

So whose were they to start with?

Hicks didn't have the wherewithaldidn't have the knowledge to create them. He had the authority to order it done. But how did he get it past Giraud?

And how old is that set? When was the first one setted?

2373. Fifty-one years ago.

Fifty-one years ago. On the first Ari's staff. An azi named Regis. And who could have done that?

How to excavate that much history? Who'd been in a position to do that in those days?

Jordan? Not old enough. Giraud himself & when he first started Operating. He could have. She'd been down this track before, but mostly She'd been down this track before, but mostly Not old enough Not old enough kept coming round and round and round, troubling any conclusion aiming at the people she'd like to blame. Chi Prang, head of alpha aziholding that position a long, long time & that was the best candidate to have created someone to infiltrate the first Ari's staff. kept coming round and round and round, troubling any conclusion aiming at the people she'd like to blame. Chi Prang, head of alpha aziholding that position a long, long time & that was the best candidate to have created someone to infiltrate the first Ari's staff.

But why? Whose? Chi Prang had never done a thing on record but do her job.

Shoot off a letter to Chi Prang and just ask; did you infiltrate the first Ari's staff, and Hicks' staff, and now mine? It just didn't make sense. And it kept coming down to & One who had been alive, and in office a h.e.l.l of a long time. One who played his own side of the board, consistently, and generally not too quietly.

In between the outbursts, you tended to forget.

Yanni. Yanni was what he was, one of the best.

Not necessarily a bad set of motives. But worth questioning.

Maybe Hicks had somehow figured out there was a double agent in his officeone he daren't touch. But he could bestow the same gift elsewhere. As Giraud had been doing. Spying on the station. Spying on the military.

Two games had been going simultaneously. The military moving in on Planys, and getting a hold on Hicks; and Hicks knowing his own Director, Giraud, was spying on him, but Hicks moving very carefully to get at manuals in that office, so Giraud hadn't known.

h.e.l.l. There was one contrary possibility in that scenario.

"Sera." Catlin came in. Florian was right there with the coffeethree coffees. Florian knew her.

"Sit down," she said. "Wait. I'm thinking."

She hit the keyboard again. Pulled up Hicks's age as 102. Not that old. But old enough fifty years ago. He'd taken his alpha certs when he'd acquired his a.s.sistant, who'd been from Giraud's office AK-36, Kyle, alpha, for G.o.d's sake & military alpha. She stared at the history on the screen.

Could she be so blind? Contracted first at eighteen to the military, military intelligence, no information available, reverted to Reseune, a.s.signed to ReseuneSec after restructuring. The law said decommissioned alphas had to come home to Reseune. This one had come to the most natural home for his abilities. Straight from the War, year of the Treaty of Pell being 2353, to Reseune, with the decommissioning of his unit in 2358.

Put into labs at Reseune for retraining. The routine was supposed to require the axe code, partial wipe, re-Contracting. She looked for that specific date, that specific session.

Didn't turn up until 2362.

G.o.d.

Who hadn't given the code early on? Why not?

Somebody wanting to debrief Kyle AK-36, and learn what he'd been into, and what he'd done for the military? Somebody who thought they'd just ask questions and mine him for all kinds of informationsomebody who was an expert interrogatorand who might have reason to suspect the military?

Somebody who wouldn't leave traces and records in the system? Base One could do that. Up to a certain limit, Base Two or Three could do it.

The first Ari could do that. So could Yanni. So could Giraud. So could Jane Stra.s.sen and Wendy Peterson, in those days & when the relationship with Defense, in the last days of the War. with the whole Gehenna situation, had been going quietly unpleasant.

AK-36 himself had specialized in security. And he was alpha. He was one of those the military had used to a.n.a.lyze azi behaviors, to actually serve as Supervisors, before Reseune had pitched a fit about the practice and demanded that mentally damaged azi be taken out of action and returned to Reseune, no matter the inconvenience to the military In 2350 Ari had gotten that measure through Council and s.n.a.t.c.hed back azi who were routinely being mentally and physically patched together and sent back into combat. She'd had a famous row with Admiral Azov. But she'd won, which had outraged the military and set the stage for years of uneasy relations between Science and Defense & so long as Azov was in office.

And Kyle AK-36 had been with the military for a number of years after the Treaty of Pell. Served in a cla.s.sified function from which there were no records accessible. Then in 2358, by law, all remaining alpha and beta azi had come back to Reseune. Reseune, namely Giraud, must have tried to unravel him for four more years after that, learning things, maybe, maybe just trying to understand what his history really was. It was worth looking for those sessions, of which there was no readily available record. That period had ended in 2362.

After the axe-code that ended his Contract to the military, Kyle AK-36 had been with Giraud, a skilled psych operator, skilled interrogator, trusted aide untilaround 2404, when Ari died, Giraud had pa.s.sed the ReseuneSec office to Adam Hicks & and pa.s.sed Kyle along with it, as the one, maybe, to keep the office on an even keel under a much weaker administrator & and who could keep on reporting to Giraud.

And who had ordered production on the Rafael types from the outset, in those years between 2358 and 2404? Search failed. But one of them had ended up in Ari's household. And another in Hicks's staff.

Who'd setted the other B-28's? No signature. That could mean Ari herself. It could mean anybody down to Giraud & or somebody working for him. Once AK-36 had finally had the axe code and become, allegedly, a Reseune azi, he'd been Giraud's specialist a.s.sistant, between 2362 and 2404. The axe code, designed to revoke a Contractcould be a wide-ranging wipe, but wasn't, if the azi was well setted. Ideally it just reset the Contract to None and erased specific areas of knowledge and belief, an organized amnesia. You wanted an azi to know things he could later completely forget: you linked them to the axe code. But the military theoretically couldn't do that on his levelbecause they theoretically didn't have military Supervisors at his level.

An axe code was rough, emotionally rough, physiologically rough on an azi. And without operators like AK-36 to manage it, the military couldn't do that anymore, and when AK-36 was sent home, he certainly couldn't do it for himself, could he?

So he'd have held the last secrets the military hadn't erased. And he'd have waited, waited four years for somebody to do it for him. Giraud didn't even try to do itfor several years of a miserable limbo, and finally did, maybe with help from Prang.

Nice safe azi after that. So Giraud must have thought. An alpha, recovered from the military, and so helpful that Giraud had him doing things he'd used to do, skilled things. She'd bet on it.

Or maybe Prang hadn't been in on the actual operation & because of Giraud's own paranoia. She wouldn't be allowed that much window into security psychsets.

Did the creation of the B-28's fit into Kyle AK's term of service? One of them had arrived on the first Ari's staff, young, good-lookingthe first Ari liked good-looking young men, no fault, as her successor saw it.

And that one, Regis, had arrived, oh, some two decades on. So had the one in what was, at the time, Giraud's office, in ReseuneSec. And others, elsewhere.

Not Giraud's doing. Kyle's. Reporting to him him, just conceivably; or, in the case of those outside Reseune, reporting to anybody who had the key.

Oh, Uncle. You created me a h.e.l.l of a mess. Was AK-36 actually doing all the work with alphas that I forever was a little surprised you could really do?

And when the B-28 went into your own staff and the other into Ari's, was it AK-36 who was running him? Or was it you, ordering all of it?

Spying on Ari. Spying on your own staff. On people outside Reseune, out at Beta, up on Alpha Station. That would he like you. And you left ReseuneSec, and left the B-28, and AK-36 was still running him. AK-36 was probably still reporting to youjust to keep you happy.

Maybe for the same reason, you let AK-36 go with Hicks every time he went to Novgorod, every time he visited. Defense, just the silent presence, your nice, trustable azi who remembered things like a human recorder.

And of course he was all yours, all the time, all yours.

Did you run the axe code without Prang's help? Maybe you did. And it didn't d.a.m.ned well work, Uncle, and you didn't spot itbecause you weren't that good and you shouldn't have been operating like that on an alpha. Terrible thing, vanity. Your mother wanted to make you a genius. Maybe it still stungthat you weren't all that good, never mind the license.

Who killed my predecessor? You did. You didn't ever plan it. Yon didn't want it to happen. You really loved her. But it didn't take Abban going to Novgorod to have his head restructured. You could have been as careful as you liked where Abban was when you were visiting Defense but you weren't so careful where AK-36 was, or what he was doing at home, were you?

Defense planted Kyle on you. A Trojan horse. An axe code that didn't work, possibly because they'd messed with it, or possibly because they'd just forged the personal manual & and everything in it was right except that code. Is it possibleis it remotely possible you didn't crosscheck that manual with the original set, or look up that axe code in archive? That would have been unconscionably careless, Uncle. Maybe you did everything right, and somewhere in the military system they messed with that code and somehow kept him sane.

With you, he had total office access, access to Abban's personal manual, probably Seely's, too, since I'll bet you were supervising Seely; definitely to as much kat as he needed, on any day of the week. Abban might have made one mistake in his life, just one mistake, and taken a cup of coffee in the lunchroom. Easy at certain hours to have a little seclusionand if AK-36 was really good, he wouldn't have, conflicted Abban at all, would he, or taken too long to do the job? Nothing you could spot. Just one h.e.l.l of a deep initial dose, rea.s.surance, need to contact him again regarding a problem. Then verbal work. Everything couched in benefitting Giraud. Doing good. Giraud being secretly threatened by spies inside the office & Abban could help. Abban could protect him. Abban could get Seely's manual. They could go on protecting Giraud if they just worked together.

Who else, besides you and Denys, could operate Base Two with authority? Abban. Abban could tiptoe through System with not a trace left. Azi could he created. Setted. Records forged without a trace. Any of those things. When Hicks took over, and when Hicks went with Giraud to Novgorod, AK-36 went with Hicksand ultimately got more specific instructions, didn't he?

AK-36's still in Hicks's office, the whole reason Hicks has a provisional alpha certificate. AK-36 is 122 years old.

Kinder if we killed him. A hundred and twenty-two is old to be given an axe code. Real old. And especially if the military messed with it and put a block in that we'll have to break.

If we give it, he could die on the table. Then we lose all he might know.

It won't be pretty, what needs to be done. We can try to be kind. But we have to move on it, don't we?

G.o.d, all that, all that, because the first Ari p.i.s.sed off Defense & was that it? She'd gotten power enough to start calling the shots, not just with aziwith a lot of the things where Reseune cooperated with Defense. The terraforming of Cyteen she got voted down. The Eversnow business, that Yanni's agreed to provided we get a base down there, which for some reason maybe they really, really don't want & check that item at first convenience.

Ari was powerful in Council, and she d gotten Trade and Information on her side, and there was no real way Citizens was going to set up a Bloc with Defense: they're not natural allies. So she was getting pa.s.sed just about anything she wanted pa.s.sed; she was creating the Arks; she was negotiating with Earth at times when State couldn't even get a message through & And Jordan & Jordan made a deal with them. He wanted to bring Reseune down, but it wasn't Reseune they wanted to bring down at all: it was Ari. They'd found out she was dying. They'd found out about the psychogenesis project, and they weren't appalled about Ari being rebornthey were interested. Her genius was an a.s.set to Union. But her political power was hurting them. They made their deal with Jordan to get more informationthey were using him all the way. And they got the notion they could have a tame Reseune, under a more amenable leadership, and still have an Ari, who could go on being born, and dying, unless the system really, really needed her brain again & while tamer people ran Reseune and didn't have her power in the legislature, and Defense got its way again.

But here I am growing up, and I'm not easy to get at, and oh, they'd like to run me. They'd like to. But they can't do that, where I am. I've fortified myself inside Alpha Wing. I've controlled all access. I've gotten my own azi staff, my own circle of CIT advisors. I trust very, very few people, and some people can't get close to me anymore. Rafael was their best try, and I have him.

So who are "they"?

Who's the Enemy?

It wasn't Gorodin. I don't think it ever was Gorodin. Maybe it wasn't even Azov, though I never knew himmaybe it was some force inside Defense that we never even saw. Not Jacques, who's just a chair-warmer, and more a symptom of how Defense can't come up with leaders, past its own internal politics.

And then there was Spurlinhe was clearly on somebody's bad list. He put his head up: he nearly got into control of Defense. And now he's dead.

Say there's two factions in Defense, at least. And one of them is the side Spurlin was on, which is pro-Reseune; and moderate; and then there's Khalid and his backers.

Khalid didn't like it when I took him on when I was a little kid. I nearly finished him in politics. The head of Intelligence wasn't used to public appearancesand he looked the fool. But note he's back. And he won't be my friend. He'll have the notion, I'm pretty sure, that Reseune won't be his to manage if I take over, and I'm very, very close to doing that. It's personal, for him. It's emotional; and he is an emotional manhe showed that, back when I Got him. And he's fast running out of time to stop me from growing up and taking overit could be weeks, or a couple of years. It could be next week, and he and his know it. All of a sudden they're thinking they've bargained with the devil, like the old story, and it's not looking like such a good deal for them.

That's where Khalid's getting his support, isn't it? He doesn't have enough support on his own or he'd have won the election, but there are people inside Defense who see me coming up fast, and they're worried all of a sudden. The rank and file of Defense, the electorate, they went for somebody who hadn't gotten embarra.s.sed by a fourteen-year-old on national vidAnd Giraud warned me about that at the time, that I might be sorry. But I was right. I may have kept Khalid from being elected again. The electorate went for Spurlin; and another defeat would about do for Khalid permanentlyso Khalid and everybody invested in him has no way to get back in without using some really unorthodox methods.

Like murder. They'd already done that, inside Reseune, to take out my predecessor. What's one more? What's two murders, and three more?

There's this Anton Clavery business. Patil dying. Thieu dying. They both had Defense Bureau work, lots of contacts, so they were easy to get toand then Patil was joining Reseune, and at the same time Yanni was demanding to set a Reseune base down on Eversnow, right down next to their military base. Somebody in Defense possibly didn't like that.

We've been thinking about Anton Clavery as a Paxer. Paxers have been our noisiest problem. But did the Paxers blow up the tower at Stra.s.senberg? There are those that could blow something up, a lot, lot easier.

Attacking Stra.s.senberg doesn't make sense as a political move, except to expose what I'm doing, except to divert our attention to what isn't their real objective.

It's me they really want dead. And they'll take down Reseune's power one piece at a time, anything to slow me down. You can only do so many murders without leaving evidence. So they have to ration those. Just peel away the really critical pieces.

But I'm not playing their game. And when I do move against Defense, I'll have to move fast, and be ready for anything. They're not going to let Jacques name the Proxy we want: they'll kill him, or they'll force him to name Khalid; and then Jacques will die, and Khalid, who couldn't get in by a fair election, will he Councillor, just plain Councillor, in complete charge of the military.