Regenesis (20 page)

“He didn’t, exactly. Or he actually may have, but the deal probably saved Jordan’s life. But the fact those responsible are dead now is only one more frustration for him. A slice of his life is gone in those two decades. He could live a hundred years more, on rejuv. But all he sees is the twenty years he lost. And the fact he’s been robbed of a fight about it. And what he really wants—what he really wants, between you and me, is no Reseune.”

Several more paces in silence. “What would take its place?” Grant asked. “Does he know that?”

“I didn’t say it was a reasonable attitude.”

“He’s as intelligent as either of us.”

“That’s no guarantee of rationality.”

“I’ve observed that occasionally,” Grant said dryly. It was worth a dry laugh, even under the circumstances.

“What I’ve said still holds,” Justin said. “You’re not to go anywhere near him without me, and you’re not to occupy a room with him or Paul without me, and you’re not to take seriously anything he tells you privately, not even if he tells you I’m dying. Just—no matter how finely you dice it—stay away from him.”

“He Created me. Reseune forever holds my Contract and you’re my Supervisor. I know what’s right.”

“Contract, hell. Protect yourself.”

“Protecting myself, I protect you. That’s logical, isn’t it?”

“Very. I’m glad you see it that way.”

“Someone is by the pond,” Grant remarked. And it was true. A shadow stood near the small fishpond ahead of them, where quadrangle walks crossed. Four benches offered seating there, to anybody who wanted to contemplate the water—a pleasant place to sit and think, on a sunny summer day. It was still April, it was long after dark, and the wind was up. Their ordinary coats were barely enough to make a walk to the other wing bearable. And somebody was standing there in the dark, somebody in dark, close-fitting clothing.

The shadow watched the water. It might be a despondent lover, someone wanting solitude. It might have nothing to do with them.

But fear had been a constant, in the Nye years. Fear of arrest. Fear of being tampered with, of having Grant tampered with—Ari was their only protection. And Ari wasn’t going out of her Wing lately.

The figure had been intent on the water. Now the head turned. The whole body turned to stand confronting them.

“Ser,” the shadow said politely as they met, and recognition revised the shadowed vision into familiar detail, the black elite Security uniform, dark curly hair, light build.

Florian. Ari’s personal bodyguard. A youth no older than Ari herself, with absolute power—to arrest. To kill, without a second’s warning. And he had that damned card in his pocket.

“Jordan proposes to share your office,” Florian said.

“I told him no.” Surely Ari’s security knew he had. He’d bet his life they’d heard every word of it. And it was better than other alternatives.

“Let him have it. Your materials will go to another office.” Florian held out a keycard, offering it.

He took it. He had no choice but take it, in a hand growing chill through. “But our personnel—”

“Sorry, ser, they’ll have to find other employment. They aren’t cleared for Wing One.”

“They’re our people.”

“No longer.”

“And the computers, our files…we have notes, handwritten notes—the order they’re in—in delicate position. Stacks that can’t be disrupted without losing information—we’re not that neat. Things we can’t have just anybody rifling through, for God’s sake. It’s a mess, but we know where things are. Things in the safe. Look, if we have to do this, we can go over there tonight. We need to do this ourselves…we’re
willing
to do it ourselves.”

“We’re aware of the state of your office,” Florian said—dark humor at his expense, he had no idea. “And qualified personnel will perform the transfer.”

“We need to go over there.”

“Best you don’t, ser, so the persons moving it can do so with the greatest attention to detail. All the items will be there in the morning, in their original order, and new equipment will be in place in your former office by 0500.”

“For him.
Bugged
equipment.”

“Absolutely.”

“He’ll think I arranged this. No matter how you explain it, he’ll think I had something to do with this.”

“Unfortunate if so, ser, but your notes will be safe, and your staff will be safe, in other employ, at a priority. They’ll be given employment, no problem. Just not Wing One.”

At least they wouldn’t miss a paycheck, Em, and the others. They’d be all right. But they were the ones that knew his work. They’d been his people.

“No wipe.”

“No wipe, ser. Nothing of the sort.” This with a slight shift of the shadowed gaze toward Grant, and back. “We ask you to accept this arrangement and not attempt to circumvent it in any fashion. Grant, you’re not to go there, either.”

“My father won’t take this well at all,” Justin said. “I’m afraid he’ll be in Yanni’s office in the morning.”

“We’ll advise the Director. It’s not your problem, ser.”

“I appreciate your concern.” The cold of the night had penetrated his dinner jacket. He felt a shiver coming on. “I’m freezing, at the moment. Can you tell me—I take it, it was Ari ordered this?”

“Sera has retired for the evening. We’re operating on our own discretion, on sera’s general instruction. We’ll inform sera in the morning. You won’t need to.”

“And where is this new office?”

“Downstairs, ground level, and a right turn from your apartment. More convenient, and a better office, I believe. There’s room for staff. But it will be Wing One-approved staff.”

Yanni Schwartz
didn’t maintain an office in that high-security territory. He had one, already, a cubbyhole he used for Ari’s lessons. Downstairs—those rooms—they had a historic connection with the old Wing One lab, where the first Ari had died. That lab had been decommissioned now. And he didn’t know how up to date the offices in that area were, these days, whether they were still tied into System. But Florian said their computers were coming over. They must be.

“Do go on, ser,” Florian said. “You’re chilled. Good night to you.”

“Thank you,” he said, and started on his way, Grant attending without a word.

Then he thought of Jordan’s card in his pocket, wondered, all in a rush, what sort of trouble he could bring down on Jordan’s head; and considered the fact that Florian hadn’t asked him for it.

Florian didn’t know? Something had slipped past Ari’s staff? It had been a surreptitious handoff.

But Reseune Security surely knew. Florian might let him go his way. But someone inside Ari’s wing might confront him yet.

Maybe Catlin. Maybe, worse thought, someone he didn’t know, out of ReseuneSec, and that was more trouble than he wanted. He’d been fluxed by the office matter. He had an excuse for having forgotten.

But an azi of Florian’s bent didn’t flux. Not for two seconds running. Florian damned well hadn’t forgotten it.

He stopped, turned, reached into his pocket. Pulled out the thin card. “Florian.”

Florian had walked the other direction—was a diminished figure in the dark. But he heard, and stopped.

“I’ll take it to him,” Grant said.

He surrendered it without a word. Grant knew. Grant had seen Jordan’s action. Grant knew his reasoning the way Grant knew their situation from the inside out.

Grant crossed the dark distance between them, delivered the card, and walked back again. Florian stood there a moment, until Grant reached him, took the card, then turned and pursued his way back to Admin, where they had come from, and maybe on to the Education Wing beyond it, where their office was—or had been.

“Damn,” he said when Grant joined him. “Damn it. Grant.”

“Do you know what was on the card?” Grant asked.

“I haven’t the faintest, It may be a joke, for all I know. I don’t want to know. Damn him!”

“I intend to evade Jordan’s company, in private,” Grant said. “I’m relatively confident I could, even if we shared an office. But it seems the question is settled for now.”

“Settled,” Justin found himself saying, and realized it was impossible the second the word came out of his mouth. “It isn’t settled—not with him. Whatever quarrel he had with his Ari isn’t mine. It wasn’t
my
choice to support young Ari against him. But—”

“But?”

“He’ll keep it going. And maybe he’s justified. Maybe he’s pure and right and just my living here put me on the other side. I’ve missed him all these years. But here I am, living on the other side, in
her
wing, working in
her
wing…”

“A different Ari. A very different Ari.”

“We don’t know how different she’ll become, as time passes.”

“Even azi,” Grant said, “aren’t identical.”

“But her interests are the same as the first Ari’s.”

“The people who pursued us are dead.”

“And all being reincarnated.” He reached the door. And stopped there, in the wind and the dark, in the last haven before they went into heavily monitored Wing One. “Maybe that concept ought to bother me more than it does.”

“You think that constitutes Jordan’s motive in this? That he believes she’ll eventually become his enemy?”

“I think it’s personal. I think it’s him against Ari. All the traits that make her and him. My immortality—if they do that to us—won’t be his. I don’t know if he’ll see it that way, but we’re
not
, thank God, psychological twins. I’m myself. I’m the first of myself. The only.”

“I understand that,” Grant said, who was also the first and only of his kind…so far.

“Thinking about it makes me a little crazy.”

“You’re
not
crazy. Your actions have been completely logical, given the flux.”

“Including giving her security that card? Jordan’s going to land in trouble for it, and I set him up for it.”

“No. He set
you
up for it. You simply returned the favor.”

Cool, clear, utterly reasonable. He shivered in the cold wind. “Sometimes I don’t understand him. I just don’t understand him. Or I don’t want to.”

“Your father is intelligent. He
is
capable of staying out of trouble. He simply declines to do that.”

“And it’s what you always said. CITs have their logic sets installed late. Emotions on the bottom, logic on the top. Sometimes it’s a complete bitch-up.”

“Apparently.”

“I wish I could talk to him. Damn, I wish I could talk to him. Sensibly. Logically. You see how it goes. You saw how it went Sunday night.”

A moment passed. “I have a question.”

“Ask.”

“Should we be physically afraid of him?”

He had to think about that. There was one fair answer, one answer that would protect both of them. “Yes,” he said, and slid his apartment key-card into the outside door lock. The door opened, letting them into the foyer for a dozen other id programs to work over. “Maybe we should be.”

A
PRIL
25, 2424
2039
H

Justin and Grant had reached their apartment. The door shut and locked. The light on the console showed green, safe. They were in, and their conversation on the way had been scant, and worried. Tracking had flicked from one station to the next, and surveillance had been hard pressed to keep up with the two parties, homeward bound in opposite directions.

Justin and Grant weren’t the problem. Jordan was. And
he
, with Paul, had gone home, too, talking about Library access and his intention of calling Yanni Schwartz in the morning.

Catlin flicked a switch, passing the watch back to the senior Reseune-Sec team that watched over Wing One, entry by entry, movement by movement. Florian was on his way back. So was Marco, from Education, having ascertained that Jordan had made no detours.

She and Florian had one paramount interest in their action tonight: protecting Ari, which was to say, keeping certain individuals away from An, tracking the activities and interactions of absolutely everyone who even casually crossed into her security zone.

Secondary was protecting Justin. That was sera’s explicit and standing order. And third priority was a general and constant surveillance: keeping abreast of a list of individuals outside Reseune whose whereabouts and safety could impact Reseune’s operations. ReseuneSec, under Security Director Hicks, had numerous agents solely dedicated to that purpose, and that office informed them of what Hicks deemed necessary to tell them.

But, occasionally crossing Hicks’s office—they had their own watch-list of troublesome individuals
inside
Reseune. It wasn’t the first time they’d mounted their own surveillance, no matter what Hicks did or didn’t do—as tonight, when Hicks had wanted to bug the restaurant; but they had done it themselves, told Hicks to stay out, and fed the information to Hicks as it came available…promising that, for Hicks’s promise to stand back.

Yanni’s coming for dinner in Wing One, for instance, aroused no particular alarms. The Director’s contacts, the ones he himself chose, were either clean, or they were obligations he dealt with for ascertainable reasons, even if sera had been angry with him for matters she’d declined to mention to them. Yanni came into Wing One with no large security contingent, and sent no orders to Hicks. But she and Wes had been in position. If sera had indicated Yanni should be detained or otherwise dealt with, it would have happened, and a very specific code would have flashed to Florian, triggering yet other actions, as best they could manage, as fast as they could manage.

But there had been no such outcome. Yanni’s companion azi, Frank AF, shadowed Yanni everywhere, as closely and as obsessively as they followed Ari. Frank was out of green barracks, like themselves, and while Frank was, like Yanni, a little reticent on Yanni’s personal business, he was certainly a solid type, and absolutely loyal, not only to Yanni, but to the entity Yanni served—which was Reseune itself. So Frank was a watch-it, but no great worry.

What clustered around Justin Warrick, however, was a different matter, and dealing with him was not simple. Justin and Grant had not a single close contact except Yanni that they
did
trust on that level. It was a constant worry that those two personally had sera’s clearance, residing right next door. But sera maintained they were important to her and insisted that they were securely hers—so they took measures, sera being unavailable for consultation. They had had to improvise tonight and move fast, and in such a way that what they did could be amended, if sera ordered.