Cyteen: The Betrayal (25 page)

“You imply you intend to do this-whether or not you have official support.”

“I’m seeking that support. I want to save Warrick. I want to cooperate fully with the military. We need the kind of security and cover you can provide us-at least until the new Ari can surface. Then it appears as a Reseune project-a thoroughly civilian project. That’s useful, isn’t it?”

“God.” Gorodin drank down the other half of his coffee. And held out his cup to the azi.

“Abban,” Nye said. The azi came and filled the cup-while Gorodin used the delay to do some fast adding.

“What,” he said then, carefully, “does this have to do with Warrick?”

“We need him. We need him to go on with his work.”

“Him? To reconstruct her! Working on her tapes?”

“No. That wouldn’t be wise. I’m talking about Reseune. Remember-we have to think in twenty-, fifty-year terms.

He’s still young. He’s only now showing what he can do. His own research interlocks with Ari’s. Let me be honest with you: Ari’s notes are extremely fragmentary. She was a genius. There are gaps of logic in her notes-sort of an of course that Ari could bridge and didn’t need to write down. We can’t guarantee success: no program of this sort can. We only know that we have a better chance with Ari, that we knew intimately, than with a stranger that we don’t. She coded a great deal. Her leaps from point to point, the connections … in a field she damned near built… make her notes a real maze. If we lose the principals of Ari’s life-if we can’t recover something like the life Ari lived-if certain people aren’t available to consult, then I think our chances of seeing this project work go down and down. Ultimately Ari’s notes could become meaningless. The matrix becomes lost, you see, the social referent irrecoverable. But we have it now. I think we can do it. I know we can do it.”

“But what damn use is all of this, then-beyond recovering Emory herself? How many people are we going to have that kind of record on? What can it apply to? It can’t get us Bok.”

“Emory herself is not negligible. Emory able to take up her work where she left off-but at about age twenty. Maybe younger. We don’t know. We’ll find out. Understand: what we learn doing this will tell us how much data we have to have with other projects. Like Bok. We just have to be damned careful this round. Because if the worst-case holds, every precaution is necessary: every influence is irreplaceable. Getting Ari back is step one. If there’s going to be an amplification of her work on personality formation-Ari is the key to it. We have a chance with her. We know her. We can fill in the gaps in the information and make corrections if it looks necessary. We don’t know Rubin to that extent. We don’t have the headstart even with him we do with her, do you see? Rubin has become a luxury. Retrieving Ari Emory is a necessity. We can try it on our own, but it would be a hell of a lot easier-with Defense Bureau support.”

“Meaning money.”

Nye shook his head. “Cover. The ability to hold on to Warrick. The ability to shield what we’re doing. The authority to protect our research-and our subject-from Internal Affairs.”

“Ah.” Gorodin drew a deep breath. “But money-it always comes to money.”

“We can bear our end of it if you fund the Rubin project. But the necessity to protect our subjects is absolute. Success or failure hinges on that.”

Gorodin leaned back in his chair and chewed his lip. And thought again about recorders. “Have you talked to Lu?”

“Not yet.”

“You haven’t mentioned this to anyone outside Reseune.”

“No. I don’t intend to. We had one security breach-with the azi. We’ve covered it. There won’t be another.”

Gorodin thought about it-civilians running their own affairs under military cover. One breach and God knew what else. Too many amateurs.

Reseune wanted to start a close cooperation, on a project Gorodin, dammit, saw shifting the balance of power irrevocably toward Union—

Ariane Emory experimenting with a kid on Fargone had seemed a hell of a lot safer. Reseune trying to raise the dead seemed-

-hell, go for the big gain. Go for everything.

It was a pittance, to the Defense budget.

“I don’t think there’s much problem,” Gorodin said. “We just appropriate the Fargone facility. We invoke the Military Secrets Act. We can cover any damn thing you need.”

“No problem,” Nye said. “No problem in that. As long as it stays classified.”

“No problem with that,” Gorodin said.

“So we stamp everything Rubin project,” Nye said. “We build the Fargone facility; we work the Rubin project under deep secrecy out there; we get deeper cover for our work on Cyteen.”

“Two for the price of one?” It struck Gorodin after he had said it that the expression was a little coarse, on the day of Emory’s funeral. But, hell, it was her resurrection they were talking about. Not identity, Warrick had said. Ability. That was close enough.

He was damned sure Giraud Nye had the inclination to keep Reseune’s control over the project. The Project, meaning an embryo in a womb-tank and a kid growing up in Reseune. Twenty years.

He suddenly added that to his own age. He was a hundred twenty-six, ground time. A hundred forty-six by then. And Nye-was not young.

It was the first time it had ever really hit him-what Warrick had meant about the time factor in Reseune. He was used to time-dilation-in a spacer’s sense: that hundred forty-six ground-time would lie far lighter on him, who lost months of ground-time in days of jump. But Reseune’s kind of time meant lifetimes.

“We’d like that second project full-scale,” Nye said. “Having a comparative study could save us in a crisis, and we’re beyond any tentative test of theories. Comparison is going to give us our answers. It’s not a luxury.”

Part of the Rubin project at Fargone meant part of the data within easy reach. And meant a fail-safe. Gorodin always believed in fail-safes-in equipment; or in planning. Spacer’s economy. Two was never too many of anything.

“Do it,” he said. “Makes cover a hell of a lot easier.” There was the matter of clearing it with Lu, and the chiefs of staff. But Lu and the chiefs of staff would go with anything that promised this kind of return and put Emory’s work at the disposal of Defense.

Defense took a lot of projects under its wing. Some were conspicuous failures. Those that worked-paid for all the rest.

ix

Steps passed the door continually. More than usual. There were voices. Some of them Justin thought he knew; someone had stopped outside the door, a group of people talking.

Please, he thought. Please. Somebody stop here. He hoped for a moment; and feared. He listened, sitting on the sleeping mat that was all the furniture in the room. He clenched his hands together in the hollow of his crossed legs.

“Call Ari,” he kept saying to anyone who dealt with him. “Tell her I want to talk with her.”

But they were azi. They had no authority to go above their Supervisor. And as many times as he asked, the Supervisor never came.

It was a suicide cell he was in, padded walls and door, just a sink and the toilet and the sleeping mat. The light was always on. Food came in water-soluble wrappers little more substantial than toilet paper, without utensils. They had taken his clothes and given him only hospital pajamas, made of white paper. They had not questioned him any more. They had not spoken to him again. He did not know how much time had passed, and his sleeping was erratic with depression and lack of cues from lights or activity outside. And the tape-flashes, seductive and destructive. He refused to let the flashes take hold in the isolation. He refused it even when it would have been consolation.

Not me, he kept thinking, keeping himself awake, away from the dreams. Not my choice. I’m not hers. I won’t think her thoughts.

Ari was holding him hostage, he thought. She was holding him and maybe Grant against some threat of Jordan’s to go to the Bureau with charges. Maybe she had arrested Jordan too. Maybe Jordan could not help him. But in any case-the police would come. And they had not psychprobed him again; they could not psychprobe Jordan.

It was Grant who was vulnerable. She would use Grant against Jordan-and use him too. He had no doubt of it.

He hoped for the police to come. Internal Affairs. Science Bureau. Anyone.

He hoped that was the small commotion outside. But he had hoped that-time after time. Grant would have been waiting for him to come back; but instead it was security that would have come in on him, hauled him off for more questions-He heard the electronic lock tick. The door opened. “Ser Nye wants to talk to you,” one of two azi said; both Security. “Please come.”

He got up. His knees went to jelly. He walked out into the light, knowing it was another psychprobe session; but at least he would get a chance to say something to Giraud, at least he would have a chance for a half-dozen words before they put the drug into him.

That they just let him walk loose was the last thing he was prepared for. He felt himself dizzy, his knees aching and shaking so it was hard to navigate. Tape-flash again. And Florian—

Down the hall to the barren little interview room he had seen before. He reached the open door and stopped, dazed and disoriented by the realization it was not Giraud Nye at the table. It was a stout round-faced man that for a bewildered second his mind insisted to make into Giraud’s lean form.

Not Giraud.

Denys Nye, rising from his chair with a distressed look.

“Where’s Grant?” Justin demanded. “Where’s my father? What’s going on?” His voice gave way on him. His legs shook as he reached the narrow table and leaned on it in Denys’ face. “I’ve got the right to talk to my family, dammit! I’m a minor! Remember?”

“Sit down,” Denys said, fluttering a hand. “Sit. Please. -Get him something to drink.”

“I don’t want anything! I want to know-“

“Please,” Denys said in his quiet, distressed way, and made a second appeal with his hand. “Please sit down. -Get him something. -Please, sit down.”

Justin fell into the chair, feeling a crying jag coming on. He clamped his jaw and drew breaths until he had it under control; and Denys sank into his seat, folded his hands on the table in front of him and let him calm down while one of the azi brought back a soft drink and set it down on the table.

“What’s in it?”

“Nothing. Nothing. Poor boy. Damn this all anyway. Have they told you about Ari?”

It was a strange thing to say. It made no sense. It fluttered like a cold chill through his nerves. “What about Ari? Where’s my father?”

“Art’s dead, Justin.”

It was like the world jolted sideways. For a moment everything went out of focus. Then where he was came crashing in on him. Where he was and what they were doing and the silence all around him.

Dead. Like not-natural-dead. Like-

-the plane crashed?

-some crazy person-in Novgorod?

“Jordan found out what she was doing to you,” Denys said in the gentlest voice Justin had ever heard him use, “and he killed her. Locked her into the cold-lab and killed her.”

He just sat there a moment. It was not true. It was not true.

Jordan had no idea what Ari had done. He had covered everything. And Ari was not dead. Ari could not be-dead.

“Jordan admits it,” Denys said in that quiet tone. “You know they can’t do anything. Legally. The law can’t touch him for-questioning, or anything like that. Not psychprobe. Certainly not mindwipe. Jordie’s all right. He’s safe. I promise you.”

He was shaking. He picked up the cup and slopped it carrying the drink to his mouth. He slopped it again setting it down. The icy liquid soaked his knee. There was no sense to things. He could not get his mind to function. “What about Grant? I told him I was going to come back. I didn’t come back-“

“Grant’s still in hospital. He’s safe. Jordan’s been to see him. Jordan’s flying to Novgorod this afternoon. They’re working out an arrangement for him to leave Reseune.”

“That’s a damned lie!” They were starting to work psych games with him. He saw it coming. He flung himself up and came face to face with the two azi that moved to stop him. He froze. They froze.

“Boy. Justin. Please. Please, sit down. Listen to me.”

“Ari’s not dead!” he yelled at Denys. “It’s a damned lie: What are you trying to do? What is she trying to do?”

“Oh, God, boy, sit down. Listen to me. Your father won’t have much time. Please. Damn that brother of mine! So damned afraid of putting you in hospital-Look. Sit down.”

He sat. There was nothing else to do. They could do anything they wanted to.

“Listen to me, Justin. Internal Affairs has been questioning Jordie; Jordie begged Giraud to keep you out of it. He didn’t want the story out, do you understand? He didn’t want them psychprobing you. Giraud just flat refused them permission. Jordie backed him on it. But my damn brother went off to the capital and kept the lid on, and they kept saying you were all right-” Denys drew a small breath, reached across and laid his hand on Justin’s on the table. “You’re not all right. Dammit, it wasn’t like Giraud’s was the first psychprobe you’d had in the last few weeks, is it?”

He jerked his hand from under Denys’. “Let me alone!”

“Do you want a sedative?”

“I don’t want anything. I want out of here! I want to talk to my father!”

“No. You don’t. Not in that tone of voice. Understand me? He’s leaving. He won’t be back.”

He stared at Denys. Not be back-

“Council’s drawn up a plan,” Denys said, “to allow him a facility over in Planys. He won’t be able to travel. He won’t be able to call you-for quite a while. I don’t want you to upset him, son. He’s got to meet with a Council inquiry tomorrow. He’s got to get through that in one piece. Are you understanding me? It’s very important.”

It was real. It had happened. He stared into Denys Nye’s worried eyes with the feeling that the whole world was chaos, except it was going to sort itself out again in some terrible new shape no one he loved lived in.

“Do you want the sedative? No tricks, Justin. I promise you. Just enough to let you rest awhile before you talk with him.”

He shivered. And controlled it. “No,” he said. “Let me get dressed. Let me clean up.”