There was a lot about Justin that said azi, but she knew that he wasn't. He was just Justin. And he was a puzzle that came and went and no one ever wanted kids around.
"Maman's down there with ser Peterson," she said conversationally, also because she wanted him to know she was not running around where she had no business to be. So this was Justin's office. It was awfully small. Papers were everywhere. She leaned too far and caught her balance on the door. Fool, maman would say. Stand up. Stand straight. Don't wobble around. But Justin never said much. He left everything for her to say. "Where's Grant?"
"Grant's down at the library," Justin said.
"I'm six now."
"I know."
"How do you know that?"
Justin looked uncomfortable. "Isn't your maman going to be wanting you pretty soon?"
"Maman's having a meeting. I'm tired of being down there." He was going to ignore her, going back to his work. She was not going to have him turn his shoulder to her. She walked in and up to the chair by his desk. She leaned on the arm and looked up at him. "Ollie's always working."
"So am I. I'm busy, Ari. You go along."
"What are you doing?"
"Work."
She knew a go-away when she heard one. But she did not have to mind Justin. So she leaned on her arms and frowned and tried a new approach. "I go to tapestudy. I can read that. It says Sub" She twisted around, because it was a long word on the screen. "Sub-li-min-al matma-trix."
He turned the screen off and turned around and frowned at her.
She thought maybe she had gone too far, and oughtn't to be leaning on her elbows quite so close to him. But backing up was something she didn't like at all. She stuck out her lip at him.
"Go back to maman, Ari. She's going to be looking for you."
"I don't want to. What's a sub-liminal matrix?"
"A set of things. A special arrangement of a set." He shoved his chair back and stood up, so she stood up and got back. "I've got an appointment. I've got to lock up the office. You'd better get on back to your mother."
"I don't want to." He was awfully tall. Like Ollie. Not safe like Ollie. He was pushing her out, that was what. She stood her ground.
"Out," he said, at the door, pointing to the hall.
She went out. He walked out and locked the door. She waited for him. She had that figured out. When he walked on down the hall she went with him.
"Back," he said, stopping, pointing back toward where maman was.
She gave him a nasty smile. "I don't have to."
He looked upset then. And he got very quiet, looking down at her. "Ari, that's not nice, is it?"
"I don't have to be nice."
"I'd like you better."
That hurt. She stared up at him to see if
She could not figure him. Everybody, but not him. She just stared.
"Can I go with you?" she asked.
"Your maman wouldn't like it." He had a kind face when he talked like that. "Go on back."
"I don't want to. They just talk. I'm tired of them talking."
"Well, I've got to go meet my people, Ari. I'm sorry."
"There aren't any people," she said, calling his bluff, because he had not been going anywhere until she bothered him.
"Well, I still have to. You go on back."
She did not. But he walked away down the hall like he was really going somewhere.
She wished she could. She wished he would be nice. She was bored and she was unhappy and when she saw him she remembered the glittery people and everybody being happy, but she could not remember when that was.
Only then Ollie had been there all the time and maman had been so pretty and she had played with Valery and gotten the star that hung in her bedroom.
She walked back to ser Peterson's office very slow. Kyle didn't even notice. She sat down and she drew a star. And thought about Valery. And the red-haired man, who was Grant. Who was Justin's.
She wished Ollie and maman had more time for her.
She wished maman would come out. And they would go to lunch. Maybe Ollie could come.
But maman did not come anytime soon, so she drew lines all over the star and made it ugly. Like everything.
vi
The documents show, the report came to Mikhail Corain's desk, the operation involved a clandestine military operation and the landing of 40,000 Union personnel, the majority of them azi. The mission was launched in 2355, as a Defense operation.
There was no further support given the colony. The operation was not sustained.
The best intelligence Alliance has mustered says that there are thousands of survivors who have devolved to a primitive lifestyle. Beyond question they are descended of azi and citizens. The assumption is that they had no rejuv and that after sixty years the survivors must be at least second and third generation. There are ruins of bubble-construction and a solar power installation. The world is extremely hospitable to human life and the survivors are in remarkably good health considering the conditions, practicing basic agriculture and hunting. The Alliance reports express doubt that the colonists can be removed from the world. The ecological damage is as yet undetermined, but there is apparently deep penetration of the colony into the ecosystem, and certain of the inhabitants have retreated into areas not easily accessible. It is the estimate of Alliance that the inhabitants would not welcome removal from the world and Alliance does not intend to remove the colony, for whatever reason.
The estimation within the Defense Bureau is that Alliance is interested in interviewing the survivors. Defense however will oppose any proposal to retrieve these Union nationals as an operation which Alliance will surely reject and which would be in any case counter-productive.
The azi were primarily but not exclusively from Reseune military contracts.
See attached reports.
The majority of citizens were military personnel.
Nye will offer a bill expressing official regret and an offer of cooperation to the Alliance in dealing with the colonists.
The Expansionist coalition will be unanimous in that vote.
Corain flipped through the reports. Pages of them. There was a sub-sapient on the world the colonists called Gehenna. There were a great many things that said Defense Bureau, and Information Unavailable.
There was no way in hell Alliance or Union was going to be able to retrieve the survivors, for one thing because they were scattered into the bush and mostly because (according to Alliance) they were illiterate primitives and Alliance was going to resist any attempt to remove them, that much was clear in the position the Alliance ambassador was taking.
Alliance was damned mad about the affair, because it had been confronted with a major and expensive problem: an Earth-class planet in its own sphere of influence with an ecological disaster and an entrenched, potentially hostile colony.
So was Corain angry about it, for reasons partly ethical and partly political outrage: Defense had overstepped itself, Defense had covered this mess up back in the war years, when (as now) Defense was in bed with Reseune and gifted with a blank credit slip.