"Ser," the guard said.
"Sorry," Jordan said, and sighed, staring at Justin for a long while with somber emotions playing freely across his face.
Not free here, not as free as seems on the surface.
Succeed and gain protection; and absolutely protected, become an absolute prisoner.
He felt a lump in his throat, part grief, part panic. For a terrible moment he wanted to leave, now, quickly, before the dawn. But that was foolishness. He and Jordan had so little time. That was why they stayed awake and drove themselves over the edge, into too much honesty.
Dammit, he left a kid, and I'm not sure how he sees me. As a man? Or just as someone grown? Maybe not even someone he knows very well. I know him and he knows so little what I am now.
Damn them for that.
There's no way to recover it. We can't even say the things to each other that would lei us know each other. Emotions are the thing we can't give away to our
He looked away, he looked at Paul, sitting silent at the table, and thought that their life must be like his with Grant—a pressured frustration of things
It's no different from Reseune, here,he thought. Not for Jordan. Not really, no matter what the appearance they put on it. He can't talk. He doesn't dare. Nothing, for us, is different from Reseune.
ii
"Working late?" the Security guard asked, stopping in the doorway, and Grant's heart jumped and kept up a frantic beat as he looked up from his desk.
"Yes," he said.
"Ser Warrick's out today?"
"Yes."
"Is he sick?"
"No."
WhereJustin was fell under Administrative need-to-know. That was one of the conditions. There were things he could not say, and the silence was irritating to a born-man. The man stared at him a moment, grunted and frowned and continued on his rounds.
Grant let go his breath, but the tension persisted, the downside of an adrenaline rush, fear that had only grown from the time Justin had told him he was going to Planys.
Justinwas going—alone, because that was one of the conditions Administration imposed. He had brushed off Justin's worry about him and refused to discuss it, because Justin would go under whatever conditions, Justin had to go: Grant had no question about it.
But he was afraid, continually, a fear that grew more acute when he saw the plane leave the ground and when he walked back into Reseune alone.
It was partly ordinary anxiety, he told himself: he relied on Justin; they had not been apart since the incidents around Ari's death, and separation naturally brought back bad memories.
But he was not legally Justin's ward. He was Reseune's; and as long as Justin was not there to obstruct Administration and to use Jordan's leverage to protect him, he had no protection and no rights. Justin was at risk, traveling completely in the hands of Reseune Security—which might arrange an incident; but much more likely that they might take an azi down to the labs where they could question him or, the thing he most feared, run tape on him.
There was no good in panic, he told himself, since there was nothing, absolutely nothing he could do about it, nowhere he could hide and nothing he could do, ultimately, to stop them if that was what they intended.
But the first night that he had been alone with all the small lonely sounds of a very large apartment and no knowledge what was happening on the other side of the world, he had shot himself with one of the adrenaline doses they kept, along with knock-out doses of trank, in the clinical interview room; and taken kat on top of it.
Then he had sat down crosslegged at the side of his bed, and dived down into the innermost partitions he had made in himself, altering things step by step in a concentration that slicked his skin with sweat and left him dizzy and weak.
He had not been sure that he could do it; he was not sure when he exited the haze of the drug and the effort, that the combination of adrenaline and cataphoric would serve, but his heart was going like a hammer and he was able to do very little more after that than fall face down on the bed and count the beats of his heart, hoping he had not killed himself.
Fool was the word for a designer who got into his own sets and started moving them around.
Not much different, though, from what the test-unit azi did, when they organized their own mental compartmentalizations and controlled the extent to which they integrated new tape. It was a question of knowing one's own mental map, very, very thoroughly.
He turned off the computer, turned off the lights and locked the office door on his way out, walking the deserted hall to go back to that empty apartment and wait through another night.
Azi responses, dim and primal, said go to another Supervisor. Find help. Take a pill. Accept no stress in deep levels.
Of course doing the first was extremely foolish: he was not at all tempted. But taking a pill and sleeping through the night under sedation was very, very tempting. If he sedated himself deeply enough he could get through the night and go meet Justin's plane in the morning: it was only reasonable, perhaps even advisable, since the trank itselfwould present a problem to anyone who came after him, and if they were going to try anything at the last moment—
No, it was a very simple matter to delay a plane. They could always get more time, if they suddenly decided they needed it.
Mostly, he decided, he did not trank himself because he felt there was some benefit in getting through this without it; and that thought, perhaps, did not come from the logical underside of his mind—except that he saw value in endocrine-learning, which the constantly reasonable, sheltered, take-a-tape-and-feel-good way did not let happen. If it were an azi world everything would be black and white and very, very clear. It was the grays of flux-thinking that made born-men. Shaded responses in shaded values, acquired under endocrine instability.
He did not enjoy pain. But he saw value in the by-product.
He also saw value in having the trank in his pocket, a double dose loaded in a hypospray, because if they tried to take him anywhere, he could give them a real medical emergency to worry about.
iii
Nelly, Ari reflected, was still having her troubles.
"We have to be careful with her," Ari said to Florian and Catlin, in a council in Florian and Catlin's room, while Nelly was in the dining room helping Seely clean up.
"Yes, sera," Florian said earnestly; Catlin said nothing, which was normaclass="underline" Catlin always let Florian talk if she agreed. Which was not to say Catlin was shy. She was just that way.
And Nelly had taken severe exception to Catlin showing Ari how to do an over-the-shoulder throw in the living room.
"You'll hurt yourself!" Nelly had cried. "Florian, Catlin, you should have better sense!"
Actually, it was Florian who was the one with the complaint coming, since Florian was the one on the floor. He was being the Enemy. Florian was all right: he could land and come right back up again, but Catlin wasn't teaching her what to do next, just first, and Florian was lying down being patient while Catlin was showing her how to make sure he wouldn't get up.
Nelly had heard the thump, that was all, and come flying in after Florian was down in the middle of the rug. Catlin was demonstrating how to break somebody's neck, but she was doing it real slow. If Catlin was really doing it and pulling it, she was so fast you could hardly see what she did. Catlin and Florian had showed her how to fall down and roll right up again. It was marvelous what they could do.