Cyteen: The Betrayal (30 page)

“You don’t either! Who saw the conflict in the 78s? I didn’t!”

Grant shrugged. “That’s because born-men make most of their mistakes by rationalizing a contradiction. I don’t make that leap without noticing it.”

“You read me with no trouble at all.”

“Not always. I don’t know what Ari did to you. I know what happened. I know I wouldn’t have been affected the same way.” They could talk about that now. But rarely did. “She could have restructured me. She was very good. But she couldn’t do that to you.”

“She did a damn lot.” It hurt. Especially tonight. He wanted off the topic.

“She couldn’t. Because you don’t have a psychset that only fills one book. You’re too complicated. You can change. And I have to be very careful of change. I can see the inside of my mind. It’s very simple. It has rooms. Yours is Klein bottles.”

“God,” Justin snorted.

“I’m drunk.”

“We’re drunk.” He leaned forward and put his hand on Grant’s shoulder. “And we’re both Klein-spaced. Which is why we’re back where we started and I’m willing to bet my | psychset is no more complicated than yours. You want to work it out?”

“I-” Grant blinked. “You want an example? My heart just skipped. That embarrasses hell out of me. It’s that Supervisor trigger. I don’t want to do that because I don’t think it’s

smart to mess with your mind; and I jump inside like it was an order.”

“Hell, I hate it when you go self-analytical. You don’t want to do it because you don’t know when Security is listening; and it’s personal and you’ve got manners. All your deep-sets just describe the same thing I feel. Which is why I stay out of your head.”

“No.” Grant held up a finger. Earnest. A near hiccup. “The profound reason why we’re different. Endo-endo-hell! hormones work-in learning-Blood chemistry reacts-to the environment. A given stimulus-sometimes adrenaline is up-sometimes down—sometimes some other thing-shades of gray. Variability-in a random environment. You remember some things right, some wrong, some light, some heavy. We-” Another near hiccup. “-start out from the cradle-with cataphorics. Knock the damn thresholds flatter than anything in nature. That means-no shades in our original logic set-up. Things are totally true. We can trust what we get. You take your psychset in through your senses-. Through natural cataphorics. You get your informational learning through tape and your psychset through senses. Chancy as hell what you get out of anything you see or hear. You learn to average through the flux because you know there’ll be variances. But we’ve had experts eliminate all logical incon-inconsistencies. We can take in every detail; we have to, that’s the way we process-right. That’s why we’re damn good at seeing specific detail. That’s why we process faster on some problems you can’t hold in your head. We go learning-state without kat and our early memories didn’t come from endocrine-learning; we have no shades of truth. You’re averaging and working with a memory that has a thousand shades of value and you’re better at averaging shades than you are at remembering what really happened, that’s how you can process things that come at you fast and from all sides. And that’s what we’re worst at. You can come up with two contradicting thoughts and believe both of them because there’s flux in your perceptions. I can’t.”

“Oh, we’re back to that again! Hell, you work the same as I do. And you forget your keycard more than I do.”

“Because I’m processing something else.”

“So do I. Perfectly normal.”

“Because I have a dump-reflex just like you: I can go through ac-actions that are purely body-habit. But I’m socialized, I rarely take tape, and I’ve got two processing systems. The top level I’ve learned in the real world; endocrine system learning. The bottom, where my reactions are, is simple, damn simple, and merci-mercilessly logical. An azi isn’t a human lacking a function. He’s got the logical function underneath and the random function on top. And you’re backwards. You get the random stuff first.”

“I’m backwards.”

“Whatever.”

“God. An Emoryite. You test that way because the cataphorics engrave the pathways they establish so damn deep they’re the course of least resistance and they’re so damn structured they trigger the endo-en-docrine system in Pavlovian patterns that experience alone wouldn’t. For every test that supports Emory there’s another one that supports Hauptmann-Poley.”

“Hauptmann was a social theorist who wanted his results to support his politics.”

“Well, what in hell was Emory?”

Grant blinked and took a breath. “Emory asked us. Hauptmann socialized his subjects till they’d figured out what he wanted them to say. And how he wanted them to test. And an azi always wants to please his Supervisor.”

“Oh, shit, Grant. So would Emory’s.”

“But Emory was right. Hauptmann was wrong. That’s the difference.”

“Tape affects how your endocrine system responds. Period. You give me enough tape and I’ll jump every time you tell me to. And my pulse will do exactly what yours does.”

“I’m one hell of a tape designer. When I’m old as Strassen I’ll be damn good. I’ll have all this endocrine learning. That’s why some old azi get more like born-men. And some of us get to be real eetees. That’s why old azi have more problems. Wing Two’s going to be damn-damn busy with a yardful of annies on rejuv.”

Justin was shocked. They were words staff meticulously avoided using. Born-men. Annies. The Yard. It was always CITs; azi; the Town. Grant was pronouncedly drunk.

“We’ll see whether it makes any difference,” Justin said, “whether Ari Emory had whitefish or ham for breakfast on her twelfth birthday.”

“I didn’t say I thought the Project would work. I say I think Emory’s right about what azi are. They didn’t start out to invent us. They just needed people. Fast. So start with tape in the cradle. Perfectly benign accident. Now we’re eco-economic.”

Back in the pre-Union days.

“Hell.”

“I didn’t say I minded, ser. We already outnumber you. Soon we’ll establish farms where people can grow up like weeds and commune with their glands. There’s bound to be a use for them.”

“Hell with you!”

Grant laughed. He did. Half of it was an argument they had had a dozen times in different guises; half of it was Grant trying to psych him. But the day fell into perspective finally. It was only a memory tick-over. A jolt backward. Done was done. There was no way to get those damned blackmail tapes out of Archive, since they were Ari’s and Ari was sacred. But he had learned to live with the prospect of all of it turning up someday on the evening news.

Or finding that no bargains held forever.

Jordan had killed a dying woman for reasons the Project was going to immortalize in the records anyway-if it worked. If it worked, every hidden detail of Ari’s personal life was going to have scientific significance.

If it worked to any degree, and the Project went public, there was the chance Jordan could seek a re-hearing and release maybe to Fargone-after twenty years or so of the Project itself; which would mean all the people who had conspired to cover what Ari had done and all the Centrists who had been embarrassed by potential connections the case had had to the radical underground-were going to resist it. Reputations were going to be threatened all over again. Merino and the Abolitionists. Corain. Giraud Nye. Reseune. The Defense Bureau, with all its secrets. There might be justice in the courts, but there was none among the power brokers that had put Jordan where he was. The walls of secrecy would close absolutely, to keep silent a man they could no longer control. And his son-who had set everything in motion by a kid’s mistake, a kid’s bad judgment.

If the Project failed it would be a failure like the Bok clone, which had done nothing but add a tragic and sordid little footnote to a great woman’s life-a very expensive failure, one Reseune would never publicize, the way to this day the outside world had heard a totally different story about the murder, heard a different story about the changes at Reseune, and knew nothing about the Project: administrative reorganization, the news-services said, in the wake of Ariane Emory’s death.

And went on with some drivel about Ari’s will having laid out far-reaching plans and the lab being beneficiary of her considerable investments.

If it failed-it had political consequences, particularly between Reseune Administration and the Defense department, which was inside the wall of secrecy. Then there was no predicting what Giraud Nye would do to protect himself: Giraud had to carry this off to prove himself, and in the meanwhile dangling the Project in front of Defense let Giraud grab power in some ways greater than Ari had had. Power to silence. Power to use the covert agencies. If Giraud was halfway clever, and if the Project did not fail conspicuously and definitively, he was going to be older than Jane Strassen before he had to admit the Project was not working. He could even restart, and run the whole scam again, at which point Giraud was certainly going to be looking at the end of his need for any kind of power. After Giraud, the Deluge. What should Giraud care?

Justin only hoped it failed. Which meant a poor kid who only happened to have Ari’s geneset ended up a psych case, mindwiped or worse. Maybe an endless succession of babies. A power as big and a man as smart as Giraud would not fail all at once. No. There would be studies of the study of the study. Unless there was a way to make sure it failed in public.

Sometimes he had thoughts that scared him, like finding some article of Ari’s lying on his bed. He would never in his life be able to know if certain thoughts were his, just the natural consequence of a deep-seated anger, of himself growing older and harder and more aware how business was done in the world; or whether it was Ari still in control of him.

Worm was an old joke between him and Grant. He had to go on making nothing of it. Because that was all that kept it isolated.

iv.

“Get down from there!” Jane snapped, startled into a snarl, and her gut tightened as the two-year-old trying for the kitchen countertop leaned and stretched, reckless of her light weight, the tile floor and the metal-capped chair legs. Ari reacted, the chair slipped a fraction, she snatched the box of crackers and turned; the chair tipped and Jane Strassen grabbed her on the way down.

Ari yelled with outrage. Or startlement.

“If you want the crackers you ask!” Jane said, tempted to give her a shake. “You want to ouch your chin again?”

Hurt-Ari was the only logic that made a dent in Ari-wants. And a universally famous genetic scientist was reduced to baby-babble and a helpless longing to smack a small hand. But Olga had never believed in corporal punishment.

And if Olga had been human Ari had picked up rage and frustration and resentment in the ambience with her the same as a genetic scientist who wanted to take her out to the river and drown her.

“Nelly!” Jane yelled at the nurse. And remembered not to shout. In her own apartment. She left the chair on the floor. No. Nit-picking Olga could never have left a chair on the floor. She stood there with her arms full of struggling two-year-old waiting on Nelly, who had damn well better have heard her. Ari struggled to get down. She set Ari down and held on to her hand when Ari wanted to sit down and throw a tantrum. “Stand up!” Holding a small hand hard. Giving an Olga-like jerk. “Stand up! What kind of behavior is that?”

Nelly showed up in the doorway, wide-eyed and worried.

“Straighten that chair up.”

Ari jerked and leaned to reach after the cracker box that was lying with the chair, while adults were busy. Damned if she was going to forget what she was after.

Does she or doesn’t she get the cracker? No. Bad lesson. She’d better not get away with it, she’ll break her neck.

Besides, Olga was a vengeful bitch.

“Stand still. Nelly, put those crackers up where she can’t get them. Shut up, Ari. -You take her. I’m going to the office. And if there’s a scratch on her when I come back I’ll-“

Wide azi eyes stared at her, horrified and hurt.

“Dammit, you know. What am I going to do? I can’t watch her every damn minute. Shut up, Ari.” Ari was trying to lie down, hanging off her hand with her full weight. “You don’t understand how active she is, Nelly. She’s tricking you.”

“Yes, sera.” Nelly was devastated. She was out-classed. She had had all the tape showing her what a two-year-old CIT could do. Or get into. Or hurt herself with. Don’t stifle her, Nelly. Don’t hover. Don’t not watch her. The azi was on the verge of a crisis. The azi needed a Supervisor to hug her and tell her she was doing better than the last nurse. It was not Olga’s style. Jane-type shouts and Olga-type coldness were driving the more vulnerable azi to distraction. And she was spending half her time keeping the kid from killing herself, half keeping the azi from nervous collapse.

“Just get a lock installed on the damn kitchen,” Jane said. Ari howled like hell if she was shut into the playroom. She hated the playroom. “Ari, stop it. Maman can’t hold you.”

“Yes, sera. Shall I-“

“Nelly, you know your job. Just take Ari and give her a bath. She’s worked up a sweat.”

“Yes, sera.”

The azi took Ari in hand. Ari sat down and Nelly picked her up and carried her.

Jane leaned back against the counter and stared at the ceiling. At the traditional location of God, no matter what the planet.

And Phaedra came in to say that daughter Julia was in the living room.

A second time Jane looked ceilingward. And did not shout. “Dammit, I’m a hundred thirty-four and I don’t deserve this ”

“Sera?”

“I’ll take care of it, Phaedra. Thank you.” She pushed herself away from the counter. “Go help Nelly in Ari’s bathroom.” She wanted to go to the office. “No. Find Ollie. Tell him calm Nelly down. Tell Nelly I shout. It’s all right. Get!”

Phaedra got. Phaedra was one of her staff. Phaedra was competent. Jane walked out of the kitchen, down the hall in Phaedra’s wake, and took the left turn, the glass-and-stone walk past the dining room and the library to the front living room.

Where Julia was sitting on the couch. And three-year-old Gloria was playing on the long-pile rug.