Regenesis (38 page)

So when you sat in the living room, there would be that living wall to watch on one side, and when you were in the entry hall, there was going to be a waterfall, with real rock going down to a stone floor, with a clever trick, an air wall, Sam’s idea, to prevent the spray from getting beyond the rim of the pool.

And upstairs in her office, which was going to be right next to her bedroom, there would be living plants behind glass…she’d wanted real birds. She’d had to reconsider that, because anything you imported down to the planet that was ever capable of reproducing had to be clean, with a natural barrier between it and freedom on Cyteen, and had to be considered for the ecology they’d started to restore. The water and the sea were already a mess, that was one thing, and for another, if the tanks ever breached, the fish couldn’t walk across the lawn to get to the river. So they were all right.

So no birds. Just fish. But she could do real science with what she kept. She could do so many things…she could breed fish and get them to a public aquarium in Novgorod, where people could come and enjoy them, and know something about Earth in the process, and something about living next to an ocean.

And instantly, as they walked beyond the second wall, just short of where the security installation would be, she recognized the recess for the water-pool, just the way she’d drawn it, and saw the straight, bare form for the rock, slanting away and up and up on the left.

Everything was white and dusty from the pour. But a glance all the way up showed a series of white planes, and the sun-shafts and pressurized windows she’d asked for must already be in here, too: real daylight came into the area. There was a balcony above that overlooked it all. There were recesses here and there for the electric lighting that would brighten with a vocal command, once System was in. Beyond, in the open plan dining room, was the section of arched roof for the projection that would show the real sky, just the way it was outside—so when it rained, it would cloud over, and when it was night, there would be stars. She wanted all the contact with the planet she could possibly get, living under the umbrella of the weathermakers and precip towers as they did, and being forbidden windows that really looked out on the world.

It would
feel
open. If it worked, they were going to do the same sky-dome in the big hall of the general public residencies. She was going to fix Reseune. It was going to be a place people wanted to be, before she was done with it. It wouldn’t be the same old utilitarian box-shape and domes, not after her.

It was all Sam again. Sam had taken her rough sketches of years and years ago and played with them in his own computer for years. Sam had lately run it all through the big computers and ended up with real measurements that were going to meet regulations and make design sense, and Sam said he was working with architects who were with him and excited about what he was doing. She’d pulled strings with Yanni to get Sam time on systems at night, and Sam had pulled shift and shift. Give him shapes and he could figure the real building down to the joins and conduits. Give him charge of the logistics, and he had a fine grasp of what had to be scheduled when, right down to dealing with the bot programmers and giving clear orders to the azi workers
and
the CITs.

More, Reseune Construction
wanted
him when he was done. They told him he was already official on staff, never mind the regs and his lack of a degree and his age—he’d done his time in tape-study that hadn’t been recorded, but they wanted him. The head of architectural design in RC, the same architect she’d aimed at Strassenberg itself, she’d hired to do the job here, too, and asked him to mentor Sam; but within the first month, RC’s chief architect had just de facto turned Sam and two of his best people loose to handle everything on-site here while he concentrated on the more esoteric technicalities of the precip towers at Strassenberg.

Fitz Fitzpatrick was the man’s name. Florian and Catlin had investigated him top to bottom, the only CIT besides Yanni to be trusted with the knowledge of what was going on here. He was actually an uncle of Amy’s; and the relationship between Fitz Fitzpatrick and Sam was absolutely the happiest of all the string-pulling she’d ever done.

And here was the result of it. The planes of the walls evolved one into another as they all walked through. “That’s my fish wall!” she exclaimed, spotting the deep recess, delighted, and Sam beamed and blushed a bit.

“The glass is here. That was big. The build for the tank will be among the last. I’ll be looking to experts’ specs on that.”

“I’ve got the data you want,” she said. She was seeing a tank filled with water, where now there was only white. “I want to learn it myself, but I’m going to be Contracting a specialist in salt aquaculture to actually do the running long-term. He’ll help you set it up. His name’s Chris BCN-3. He was supposed to be on the Beta Station production tanks. He’s seventeen, still taking tape, but he’s getting info on Earth exotics and he’s through enough already to help you, this week if you need him: he’s going to be supering all the watery technicals—with a couple of assistants if he turns out to need them.”

“Wouldn’t hurt at all. I’m anxious to get the pumps arranged. Any of your other staff you’ll want to tour through, or consult during the build, you let me know. The kitchens might be an issue.”

“Florian and Catlin are on it. They’ll get you a list of people we might have come here to walk around at certain stages. Security. Operations. Kitchen, in particular. We’re getting staff. They aren’t cleared into the house yet.”

“A few here might be helpful,” Florian said, behind them. “Not many though. We won’t inundate you with advice.”

A laser must be running. A burned stench wafted through. Something metal fell, distant, and the impact of something the size of the runabout echoed off the walls.

Sam tapped his hardhat. “Must’ve dropped a wrench out there. This area’s safe. Down the main corridor, they’re doing some light work in the ceiling today.”

“The supers are all on our list,” Catlin said. It was a question, regarding the CITs onsite.

“Always,” Sam said, unruffled. “Security never lapses. They don’t even take an inside lunch break: the azi crew is deepset against discussing their work off-duty, so damned enthusiastic I have to make them take breaks—
they
all know what they’re doing is unique, and they’re excited. So are the rest of us, to tell the truth. Want to see the latest?” He walked them to a serpentine line marked on the floor, which ran to the edge of the living room. “I want to S-curve a meter-deep channel through the flooring. A water channel, clear top, lighted underneath, with rock.”

“I love it!” Ari exclaimed. “A river.”

“Well, a stream. It’ll share its water source with the waterfall, not the tank. Fresh water. Complete loop. There’s a submersible pig to clean it and zap the algae.”

“Pig.” She envisioned the ones that sniffed native life that got onto the grounds.

Sam’s eyes danced. They were brown, unpretentious as the rest of him. He so loved knowing something technical that she didn’t. “A machine-pig. A cleaner bot. Same as they use for regular water-systems, standard piece of equipment, actually. That’s what they call it. It ought to work.”

“Pig.” She liked that word. It conjured the working pigs that patrolled the grounds and kept them safe. “Do it, if you think it’ll work. I like your river, Sam. I love it!”

“It just came to me when I was walking through here. We can have a pump at the top of the loop, right where the waterfall is, keep the water really moving.”

“Oh, don’t tell me everything! I just want to be astonished when I see it!”

They toured the downstairs bathroom, a modern installation that played a little off the waterfall concept, with sealed stone, but the fixtures were all modern. And there was a second scissor-lift to take them up to the second floor—a scary little step across vacant space, and onto solid foamcrete.

At one end of that hall, beside the as yet rail-less balcony, was Florian and Catlin’s suite, which was going to have a gym, and a workshop, and a library of its own. Other staff quarters would be right below it.

“Much more convenient,” was Florian’s only comment. But their eyes were bright. They were happy and easy with Sam. They always had been.

And then her room, her huge bedroom, with a cozy nook for a bed, and a living-sky ceiling, and a glassed-in area for the divider from her office, where her terrarium would be, and her wardrobe, and
her
bath, which had an in-floor tub, and a mister, and its own little salon, plus a little exercise room of her own…it was everything, all in one. It was all her imagination wrapped up in a design of white plaster at the moment, and she went out onto the unrailed balcony—Florian and Catlin were there in a heartbeat—but not too far toward the edge, just looking down at all of the living and dining area below.

She might have to take over Reseune early. She might not have the years she wanted.

But she was going to have all her friends, all the people she most wanted. Yanni, too, if she could answer the questions she had. She’d been pent in, feeling like a prisoner in the slow ruin of Wing One. When they finished this, they could start repairs, where the search for bugs had literally ripped walls out—repairs much, much beyond a fresh coat of plaster.

Maybe it was dangerous to think of directing Reseune and still hoping to be as happy as she wanted to be in this castle in the air; but this place was all light and optimism. It cost. But it was where she could keep safe what her existence threatened, make an iron-hard core that wouldn’t be vulnerable to threat.

Maybe it was the stupidest, most dangerous thing in the world, to surround herself with the people she was fondest of. The first Ari would have warned her it was, that it was setting herself up to get them killed, or to get herself hurt.

Weak is dead. The first Ari had said that, too.

And the first Ari hadn’t
had
anybody she was that fond of, except Florian, except Catlin. The first Ari had told her her own nightmares of guilt…the discovery she’d enjoyed inflicting pain, and yet did it, when she did it, purely for a reason. The first Ari had warned her, as best she rationally knew how, that the path she was on went further and further into solitude, and into the dark.

She’d had hormones shot into her deliberately to make her mad and had moan things done to make her miserable, all because she was supposed to live the first Ari’s life, the way Ari’s life, under her own mother, had been one long lab-test, intimately recorded, and full of Ari’s mother’s orders.

It was just everything,
every
cruel thing justified for the Project, until Denys died and the Project stood on her own two feet.

Well, she
was
on her own two feet, with her own walls rising around her. And she’d always been smart. All it took for her to learn something was for her to get her head in the right mode, and she’d been quick enough to take in what they wanted—once they’d gotten her scattershot mind both mad and focused…because Mad was always part of it. She could still be the genius her geneset could make her, without her being as cold as the first Ari—couldn’t she? Controlling the Mad was the important thing.

It was what this place was for.

She could love people. Now that she knew the whole scheme, she could try to set things right. Yanni would be here. Most of what Yanni wanted was to get back to his work, his real work. He didn’t ever want to run Reseune. He didn’t really want to fight her for his big project out on the fringe of space. He’d understand, if she just got his hands off the controls and gave him back his labs.

Sam would live here in the wing, Sam, the one in their group who’d just been so reliable, so sensible, in their growing up, that if Sam hadn’t existed, they might have all gone at each other’s throats and nothing would ever have worked. Though, when he got through with her wing, Fitzpatrick wanted him up at Strassenberg, which was a big thing for Sam, the height of his childhood ambitions. It would be hard to have him gone that long, but Sam would be her eyes and ears on that site—Sam and the high-level security team Florian and Catlin would pick out to keep him safe. So Sam’s apartment would be vacant for a while. Maybe a couple of years.

Maddy and Amy, at least, would be living in the wing with her, right from the start.

And when Sam got back from Strassenberg, all the old gang would be here, all of them. She was going to have Justin, too, though he was twice their age. She had a place for him and Grant, a beautiful apartment, where nobody would ever threaten him again.

There’d been her playmate, Valery. In her mind he was still a little, little boy with a mop of dark hair. He was out at Fargone, like Ollie. Early on she’d sent a letter, inviting them all back this summer, all the exiles, when Alpha Wing was finished. It took six months to get an answer, even; but she had started it, on the last day she’d held absolute control of Reseune, before she’d turned the directorship over to Yanni. She couldn’t get Maman back: but Maman’s companion Ollie was still alive. He’d had the CIT tape, and he’d become Director out there. She’d asked Ollie to come home, too, but she’d added, as she hadn’t in Valery’s letter—
only if you want to. There’s a place for you here. But if you’re happy there, then stay. I remember you and Maman every day. But you do what you most feel you should do, for Maman’s sake.
He was azi, or he had been; and
nothing
could shake him from that loyalty and have him be happy, and she knew that.

There was Julia, and Gloria Strassen, who never had liked her when she was little, but she could patch that up. She’d been a baby when Denys had sent them away.

She could set some of Denys’ injustices right. And she could use the power she had to protect what her existence jeopardized.

It was scary to think how dead set the first Ari had been against trusting people.

The ones you trust most, the first Ari had said, watch most.

And the ones who’d had their lives torn apart because she was born? They were dangerous because they had a real reason to be mad at her.