Cyteen: The Betrayal (9 page)

iii.

“A moment,” the azi Florian said, when Justin and Grant started out the door after Jordan and Paul, in the general mill of family and azi headed their separate ways.

“Later,” Justin said. His heart began to pound, the way it did anytime he came near Ari or her bodyguards on anything but coldest business, and he took Grant by the arm and tried to get him out the door as Florian blocked Grant’s path.

“I’m very sorry,” Florian said, looking as if he were. “Sera has said she wants Grant. He’s assigned to her now.”

For a moment Justin did not realize what he had heard. Grant stood very still in his grip.

“He can retrieve his belongings,” Florian said.

“Tell her no.” They were blocking the Schwartzes from exit. Justin moved confusedly into the hall, drawing Grant with him, but Florian stayed with them. “Tell her-tell her, dammit, if she wants my cooperation in anything, he stays with me!”

“I’m terribly sorry, ser,” Florian said-always soft-spoken, soft-eyed. “She said that it was already done. Please understand. He should get his things. Catlin and I will watch out for him the best we can.”

“She’s not going to do this,” Justin told Grant, as Florian slipped back into the dining hall, where Ari delayed. He cold through and through. His supper sat uneasy at his stomach. “Wait here.” His father was waiting with Paul a lit down the hall, and Justin crossed the distance in a half-dozen strides, face composed, showing no more, he hoped, than understandable annoyance; and please, God, not as pale as he was afraid it was. “Something’s come up with a project,” told Jordan. “I have to go see about it.”

Jordan nodded, had questions, perhaps, but the explanation seemed to cover it; and Justin walked back again to the doorway where Grant stood. He put a hand on Grant’s shoulder in passing, and went inside where Ari lingered talking to Giraud Nye.

He waited the few seconds until Ari deliberately passed her eye across him, a silent summons; she seemed to say something dismissing Giraud, because Giraud looked back too, then left.

Ari waited.

“What’s this about Grant?” Justin asked when he was face to face with her.

“I need him,” Ari said, “that’s all. He’s a Special geneset, he’s relevant to what I’m working on, and I need him now, that’s all. Nothing personal.”

“It is.” He lost control of his voice, seventeen and facing a woman as terrible as his father. He wanted to hit her. And that was not an option. Ari, in Reseune, could do anything. To anyone. He had learned that. “What do you want? What do you really want out of me?”

“I told you, it’s not personal. Nothing like it. Grant can get his things, he can have a few days to calm down-You’ll see him. It’s not like you’re not working in that wing.”

“You’re going to run tape on him!”

“That’s what he’s for, isn’t it? He’s an experimental. Tests are what he pays for his keep-“

“He pays for his keep as a designer, dammit, he’s not one of your damn test-subjects, he’s-” My brother, he almost said.

“I’m sorry if you’ve lost your objectivity in this. And I’d suggest you calm yourself down right now. You don’t have your license to handle an Alpha yet, and you’re not likely to get it if you can’t control your emotions better than this. If you’ve given him promises you can’t keep, you’ve mishandled him, you understand me? You’ve hurt him. God knows what else you’ve done, and I can see right now you and I are due for a long, long talk-about what an Alpha is, and what you’ve done with him, and whether or not you’re going to get that license. It takes more than brains, my lad, it takes the ability to think past what you want, and what you believe, and it’s about time you learned it.”

“All right, all right, I’ll do what you want. He will. Just leave him with me!”

“Calm down, hear? Calm down. I’m not leaving him with anyone in that state. Also-” She tapped him on the chest. “You’re dealing with me, dear, and you know I’m good at getting my own way: you know you always lose points when you show that much to your opposition, especially to a professional. You get those eyes dry, you put yourself in order, and you take Grant home and see he comes with everything he needs. Most of all you calm him down and don’t frighten him any further. Where are your sensibilities?”

“Damn you! What do you want?”

“I’ve got what I want. Just go do what I tell you. You work for me. And you’ll show up polite and respectful in the morning. Hear me? Now go take care of your business.”

“I_”

Ari turned and walked out the door that led to the service area and a lift upstairs; Catlin and Florian barred his way, azi, and without choice.

“Florian,” she called from some distance, impatient, and Florian left Catlin alone to hold the doorway-the worse, because Catlin had no compunction such as Florian had, Catlin would strike him, and strike hard, at the next step beyond her warning.

“Go the other way, young ser,” Catlin said. “Otherwise you’ll be under arrest.”

He turned abruptly and walked back to the other door, where Grant stood, very pale and very quiet, witness to all of it.

“Come on,” Justin said, and grabbed him by the arm. Ordinarily there would be a slight, human resistance, a tension in the muscles. There was none. Grant simply came, walked with him when he let him go, and offered not a word till they were down the hall and in the lift that took them up to third level residencies.

“Why is she doing this?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. Don’t panic. It’s going to be all right.”

Grant looked at him, a fragile hope that hit him in the gut, as the lift stopped.

Down the hall again, to the apartment that was theirs, in a residential quiet-zone, only a handful of passersby at this hour. Justin took his keycard from its clip on his pocket and inserted it with difficulty in the slot. His hand was shaking. Grant had to see it.

“No entries since last use of this key,” the monitor’s bland voice said, and the lights came on, since that was what he had programmed his Minder to do for his entry at this hour, all the way through the beige and blue living room, to his bedroom.

“Grant’s here,” he mumbled at it, and more lights came on, Grant’s bedroom, visible through the archway leftward.

“I’ll get my things,” Grant said; and, the first sign of fracture, a wobble in his voice when he asked: “Shouldn’t we call Jordan?”

“God.” Justin embraced him. Grant held on to him, trembling in long, spasmodic shivers; and Justin clenched his own arms tight, trying to think, trying to reason past his own situation and the law inside Reseune which said that he could not protect the azi who had been a brother to him since he could remember.

Grant knew everything, knew everything that he knew. Grant and he had no difference, none, except that damning X on Grant’s number, that made him Reseune property as long as he lived.

She could interrogate him about Jordan, about everything he knew or suspected, test systems on him, put him under tape with one structure and another, put sections of his memory under block, do any damned thing she wanted, and there was no way he could stop it.

It was revenge against his father. It was a hold on him, who, the same way Grant had just been transferred, had been Aptituded into Ari’s wing. Let her, he had said to his father. Let her take me into her staff. Don’t contest it. It’s all right. You can’t afford a falling-out with her right now, and maybe it’s a good place for me to be.

Because he had had a notion then that his father, harried with plans (again) for getting a transfer, could lose too much.

You tell me, Jordan had said with the greatest severity, you tell me immediately if she makes trouble for you.

There had been trouble. There had been more than trouble, from his second day in that wing-an interview with Ari in her office, Ari too close and touching him in a way that started out only friendly and got much too personal, while she suggested quietly that there was more reason than his test scores that she had requisitioned him into her wing, and that he and Grant both could … accommodate her, that others of her aides did, and that was the way things were expected to be on her staff. Or, she had hinted, there were ways to make life difficult.

He had been disgusted, and scared; and worst of all, he had seen Ari’s intention, the trap laid-slow provocations, himself the leverage she meant to wield against Jordan, a campaign to provoke him to an incident she could use. So he had gone along with it when she put her hands on him, and stammered his way through reports while she sat on the arm of his chair and rested her hand on his shoulder. She had asked him to her office after hours, had asked him questions, pretending to fill out personnel reports, and he mumbled answers, things he did not dwell on, things he did not want even to remember, because he had never even had a chance to do the things she asked him about, and never wanted in his life to do some of the things she talked about; and suspected that without tape, without drugs, without anything but his own naiveté and her skill, she was in the process of twisting his whole life. He could fight back-by losing his capacity to be shocked, by answering her flippantly, playing the game-

-but it was her game.

“I’ll think of something,” he said to Grant. “There’s a way out of this. It’ll be all right.” And he let Grant go off to his rooms to pack, while he stood alone in the living room in the grip of a chill that went to his bones. He wanted to phone Jordan, ask advice, whether there was anything legal they could do.

But it was all too likely Jordan would go straight to Ari to negotiate Grant free of her. Then Ari might play other cards, like tapes of those office sessions-

-O God, then Jordan would go straight to the Science Bureau, and launch a fight that would break all the careful agreements and lose him everything.

Query the House computers on the law-but there was nothing he dared use: every log-on was recorded. Everything left traces. There was no way that Reseune would not win head-on challenge. He did not know the extent of Ari’s political power, but it was enough that it could open new exploration routes, subvert companies on distant star-stations and affect trade directly with old Earth itself; and that was just the visible part of it.

Beyond the archway, he heard the sounds of the closet door, saw Grant piling his clothes onto the bed.

He knew suddenly where Grant was going-the way they had dreamed of when they were boys, sitting on the banks of the Novaya Volga, sending boats made of old cans floating down to Novgorod, for city folk to marvel at. And later, on a certain evening when they had talked about Jordan’s transfer, about the chance of them being held until Jordan could get them out.

It was that worst-case now, he thought, not the way they had planned, but it was the only chance they had.

He walked into Grant’s room, laid a finger on his lips for silence, because there was Security monitoring: Jordan had told him it went on. He took Grant’s arm, led him quickly and quietly out into the living room, toward the door, took his coat from the closet-no choice about that: it was close to freezing outside, people came and went from wing to wing in the open, it was ordinary enough. He handed Grant his, and led him out into the hall.

Where to? Grant’s worried look said plainly. Justin, are you doing something stupid?

Justin took his arm and hauled Grant along, down the hall, back to the lift.

He pushed T, for the tunnel-level. The car shot downward. God, let there be no stops on main-

“Justin-“

He shoved Grant against the wall of the lift, held him there, never mind that Grant was a head taller. “Quiet,” he said. “That’s an order. Not a word. Nothing. Hear?”

He did not speak to Grant that way. Ever. He was shaking. Grant clamped his jaw and nodded, terrified, as the lift door opened on the dingy concrete of the storm-tunnels. He dragged Grant out, backed him against the wall again. Calmer this time.

“Now you listen to me. We’re going down to the Town-“

“I_”

“Listen to me. I want you to go null. Deep-state, all the way. Right now. Do it. And stay that way. That’s an order, Grant. If you never in your life did exactly what I said, -do it now. Now! Hear me?”

Grant took a gulp of air, composed himself then, expressionless in two desperate breaths.

No panic now. Steady. “Good,” Justin said. “Put the coat on and come on.”

Up another lift, to the Administration wing, the oldest; back to the antiquated Ad wing kitchens, where the night shift staff did dinner clean-up and breakfast prep for the catering service. It was the escape route every kid in the House had used at one time or another, through the kitchens, back where the ovens were, where the air-conditioning never was enough, where staff from generation to generation had propped the fire-door with trash-bins to get a breeze. The kitchen workers had no inclination to report young walk-throughs, not unless someone asked, and Administration never stopped the practice-that routed juvenile CIT truants and pranksters past witnesses who would, if asked, readily say yes, Justin Warrick and his azi had gone out that door-

-but not until they were missed.

Shhh, he mimed to the kitchen azi, who gave them bewildered and anxious looks-the late hour, and the fact they were older than the usual fugitives who came this way.

Past the trash-bin, down the steps into the chill dark.

Grant overtook him by the pump shed that was the first cover on the hill before it sloped rapidly to the road.

“We’re going down the hill,” Justin said then. “Taking the boat.”

“What about Jordan?” Grant objected.

“He’s all right. Come on.”

He broke away and Grant ran after him, pelted downslope to intercept the road. Then they strolled at a more ordinary pace down through the floodlit intersections of the warehouses, the repair shops, the streets of the lower Town. The few guards awake at this hour were on the perimeters, to mind the compound fences and the weather reports, not two boys from the House bound down toward the airport road. The bakery and the mills ran full-scale at night, but they were far off across the town, distant gleam of lights as they left the last of the barracks.