Regenesis (52 page)

“Defense was still managing her,” Wes said, “even if she was publicly switching to Reseune payroll. She remained under Defense rules.”

“Seems so,” Florian said. “If they’d wanted her silenced, they could have done that with a phone call. So they didn’t object at all to the farewell parties, or she didn’t listen. Maybe it leaked to the Paxers—maybe through office staff, someone she confided in.”

“Defense is in elections,” Wes said. “Jacques is in office, Spurlin and Khalid are running. There are two strong factions in Defense. Only Jacques has the say, Spurlin is generally with Jacques; Khalid—Khalid is a problem. What his feelings are on the Eversnow project, we have no idea.”

“Somebody certainly silenced Patil for good,” Catlin said. “That’s one. And also assured she won’t take that appointment, which Yanni offered her, which at least half of Defense wanted, which Citizens, Information, and Trade all wanted, and which Reseune was funding. She was evidently the most universally acceptable candidate. Her death doesn’t need a card from Planys to threaten Yanni’s interests. One who might, on the surface, have motive, is sera herself. It slows a program she doesn’t favor. But that’s nowhere in question, and we know she didn’t.”

“Suppose someone inside Reseune opposes Yanni, or Eversnow, or the agreement Yanni made,” Florian said. “They could pose a danger. Someone violently opposes Yanni’s program.”

“A problem,” Marco said, “an outsider, can come into Reseune Township on a barge out of Novgorod, with a load of fertilizer. Can live there, if he’s good at blending in. There’s a lot of people in town that don’t need a keycard to survive.”

Wes said, “I don’t think sera is in imminent danger. Taking out Yanni or Hicks would be a safer move, to stop Eversnow…unless they have extraordinary penetration. Sera’s become too hard a target.”

“And the elder Warrick said he knew about Eversnow,” Catlin said. “If that’s true, where did he get his information?”

“I remain worried about sera’s safety,” Marco said. “Certain people might like to have her gone, and Warrick to blame. Again. Even if supporting Jordan Warrick against Reseune Admin is part of the Paxer cause. It’s good cover—to support the innocence of the man they’ve framed.”

“Or maybe,” Wes said, “they want confusion. Patil’s double-crossed them, in their view. They kill her. And they set up something to stir up trouble and make Warrick an issue again—by getting him arrested for his connection to her assassination. But that requires that card be found in his possession, and it wasn’t…because he wouldn’t have it; he’d given it to Justin. He’s smart; he saw the chance of something aimed at him. He didn’t want to be tagged with it. He got rid of it as fast as he could, in a way that has ReseuneSec and sera’s staff quarreling over it.”

“That part makes sense,” Florian said. The rest of the world didn’t know that sera herself had begun to move on Yanni, and that everything was bound to change soon; and if that leaked and became public, it was going to cause agitation in many quarters. It wasn’t even to be mentioned to Wes and Marco, yet. “We’ve got a safe copy of the code on the card. It didn’t contain anything but Patil’s academic vita…on the surface, no slink or ferret. Hicks’ office has sent the card over to the experts. They’re having their own go at it, just to see if there’s a code in the apparent content. ReseuneSec has their report coming. I want our own done, with a copy of the analysis, directly to us.”

“I’ll let
you
port it to that wing,” Catlin said to Florian. “
You
talk to them.”

Florian smiled absently. The dedicated experts, azi, were odd beyond all reason, monofocused alphas who’d rather deal with code than eat or sleep or do most anything. A couple of sensible betas sat as directors over the lot, the human Supervisor, himself a specialist, being almost as eetee as the azi he supervised. “Should have done before now, anyway.” He punched the recording on again.

“I was surprised it was a large plane,”
Jordan Warrick said.
“I was surprised we weren’t being sent to some even more remote hellhole. I was surprised when we crossed the ocean. I was moderately surprised we ended up landing at Reseune. And I was surprised to learn Yanni was somewhat in charge despite the little darling. Life was just a chain of surprises that week. I still remain surprised we’re alive. That could always change. We’re here. One of Thieu’s connections tried to get me involved with his pet pupil. I declined. She’s dead. He’s dead. I’m here, and I’ll be here for the rest of time. I’m not involved, but nobody’s going to believe it. What more can I do?”

And Justin Warrick,
“Just don’t antagonize Admin, for God’s sake, Dad, just settle in, forget the damn card, just answer any questions they ask—”

“The hell!”

“Answer them, dammit! Leave it for Security. Live your life. Ask Yanni for a few cases, and get busy, high-level, low-level, it doesn’t matter. I’ll go to him…”

“But you haven’t done it, have you? I seem to remember you were going to do that.”

“I’ve been a little busy. Never mind how. Just—I will.”

“You really don’t get the picture, do you? They won’t let me write sets. They’re paranoid. And, no, I’m not going to get any work.”

“Jordan, don’t explode.
She’d
check them over. If she passed them, ultimately, they’ll be passed.”

“That’s not even worth a comment.”

“Because you’re too fucking proud.”

“Because I’m not going to deal with her. I’m not going to her begging.”

“Then I will,”
Justin said.
“She’ll get you through this. Nobody’s going to pin anything on you. No more frame-ups.”

“Forget it.”
Rattle of ice in a glass, and a thump, a glass set down. Hard.
“They’ll do what they want to anyway.”

“I’ll find a way,”
Justin said.

“Stubbornness,”
Jordan said,
“runs in the family.”

“So Justin offered sera’s help,” Catlin said.

It was curious, considering where Justin’s loyalties lay. It was worth bringing to sera, who understood born-men infinitely better.

“Sera should definitely hear this,” Florian said.

Reaching to her own keyboard, Catlin said, “I’ll send the transcript to her queue. She may not like that part.”

J
UNE
12, 2424
0602
H

Sleep hadn’t come early, but Ari was up and dressed before Joyesse had a chance to show up…she’d fallen asleep before she’d heard how things had gone, and trusted Catlin to wake her if they’d gone spectacularly badly.

There
was
a note in System from Catlin. And files for her.
Interesting
, Catlin’s note said. There was a flag on a section of note, but she started skimming the file from the top, choosing rapid-audio over script—she wanted the nuances.

And it was interesting, right from the start. Jordan tended to be that.

“…So my own appeal couldn’t get you through my door, but you don’t mind bringing the little dears guards to burgle my apartment.”

A little odd to hear oneself snarled at in absentia. She had a pet name. How sweet.

“I was concerned for your safety.”
That was Justin, a little further from the pickup, talking about Patil, and she slowed the audio down.
“She was talking about somebody inside, Dad. Who would that be?”

Then,
“How was Patil involved? Why were you carrying her card around? And why in hell did you dump it on me?”

There was a nice list of questions. She didn’t expect answers from Jordan, but it was a good fight, very much the same as at her dining table.

“…the fact I got close to Ari,”
Justin fired back at one point.
“Who, outside of being the incarnation you deplore, is a pretty good little kid in her spare time.”

The audio went on. And on. Her heart had begun picking up its beats. Gotten harder and harder. And she got Mad. As Mad as she’d ever been. And that was all she could hear.
A pretty good little kid. A pretty good little kid.
That wasn’t Justin putting on an act. That was Justin defending her.
A pretty good little kid.

Damn
him! Damn him!

She shook, she was suddenly so mad. And her breath came short, and her eyes stung, suddenly swimming with tears.

Well,
that
was interesting. She’d just had a heavy hit of adrenaline, and a rush of hormones, and she kept hearing those same five words, over and over, and she wanted to cry. She wanted to cry so badly she burst into sobs and buried her face in her hands. Which was just damned stupid. She wiped her eyes, and kept wiping, smearing tears all over her face, and hiccuping, which just finished it—she hadn’t had a tantrum like that since she was three.

God!

The audio had just gone on, far past, and the worst part was, she had to run it back to find her place and hear it again.

Little kid.

Dammit all. She wondered what else she’d hear that would send her over the edge. Or break her heart. She really, really didn’t want to go on listening.

But it was what one got for eavesdropping on somebody else’s conversation, and he probably hadn’t even thought twice about saying it. That was the problem. He was, face it, older. A lot older. And that was exactly how he saw her. And that was where he was, her Justin, forever out of reach.

She had to hear it to the end. She had to know, about Justin, of all people, what he was thinking and saying. It was her job to know, if she was going to take over Reseune, if she was going to go on trusting him as a major asset.

And it was an interesting reaction. Her heart was still beating hard. She wasn’t thinking straight. Jordan was saying important things about where the card could actually have come from and how he’d reacted, and she couldn’t analyze anything. They used to shoot her full of hormones so she’d react in certain ways. This was like that. She was still shaken, and still feeling sorry for herself, and actually
jealous
of the first Ari, for having had, just once, a physical chance at Justin. And simultaneously, she was ashamed of that thought; and knew, still, that the first Ari hadn’t won Justin’s heart. Or she had, but not in the way anybody would want to—she’d taken him, shaken him, and then died, leaving him to suffer the consequences of being under Denys Nye’s regime and tangled somewhere in the first Ari’s involvement with Jordan. So it had kept him safe, but it had made him a target. Not mentioning what Ari had done to him, deliberately, as an act of policy.

That
had
to be part of Justin’s reaction to her…as long as she was
a pretty good little kid
, he had her in a safe place in his mind. Sex, in Justin, wasn’t going to go her way and she had to face it, was all. No other woman ever seemed to interest him; and she seemed to be
the
female he reacted to, but it wasn’t the reaction she wanted—or that at least part of her wanted. When she thought about it logically—or as logically as she could manage—she knew it was one thing to imagine having sex with Justin; but it was a damned scary prospect to contemplate really doing it. It scared him; it scared her. And—the real stinger—it inevitably had a morning after, which just wouldn’t be good for either of them.

So maybe she was
the little kid
for now. As they aged, the difference in their ages would get less. He’d be more like Jordan was now, she’d be more like Ari was then—

And it just wouldn’t get any better, would it? Forget the thought.

She just had to prevent it all going nova, was all. She couldn’t lose him, the way Ari had lost Jordan. That was the important thing.

She wondered what sort of answer she’d get from Jordan, if she asked him if he and the first Ari had ever had sex. She hadn’t found it in the records, and she wondered about it. He’d be shocked at the question, she thought, probably disturbed, given that the relationship had gone the way it did—and then he’d twist it around and ask her if she aimed at Justin. Only he’d probably put it more bluntly—to shock her.

If she took the old war with Jordan into the realm of sexual innuendo, it could divert it away from the real issues—sex being, even with people who weren’t
kids
, a short-circuit in the logic process.

So she didn’t want to ask him, or get into that dialogue, because he wouldn’t answer. He didn’t have to answer anything, ever, and he used that fact like a weapon, challenging them, outright
challenging
them to break their own law and go after him, because then they’d be what he’d always said they were.

Maybe that was what went on in his head—just a spaghetti code of a thought process that hoped someday he could break them before they broke him…

And, dammit, she’d let the recording get away from her again. She remembered the place, sent it back to the precise number, and ran it the third time—this time hearing that
little kid
remark with a lot more logic functioning. It was sad, it was hurtful, but her pulse rate had settled and she had her brain working again.

The recording ran on. There wasn’t anything else…down to the bit Catlin had flagged.

“Answer them, dammit! Leave it for security. Live your life. Ask Yanni for a few cases, and get busy, high-level, low-level, it doesn’t matter. I’ll go to him…”

“But you haven’t done it, have you? I seem to remember you were going to do that.”

“I’ve been a little busy. Never mind how. Just—I will.”

“You really don’t get the picture, do you? They won’t let me write sets. They’re paranoid. And, no, I’m not going to get any work.”

“Jordan, don’t explode. She’d check them over. If she passed them, ultimately, they’ll be passed.”

“That’s not even worth a comment.”

“Because you’re too fucking proud.”

“Because I’m not going to deal with her. I’m not going to her begging.”

“Then I will. She’ll get you through this. Nobody’s going to pin anything on you. No more frame-ups.”