She dragged Florian real close and whispered right into his ear between her two hands, the way you had to do if you really wanted something to be secret, because of the Minder—and if they were talking about an Enemy, you didn't know where you were safe. "I think it might be Giraud. But he's not a regular Enemy. He can give you orders. He can give Security orders. "
Florian looked real upset. Catlin elbowed him and he leaned over and whispered in Catlin's ear the same way.
Then Catlin looked scared, and Catlin didn't do that. She pulled Catlin close and whispered: "That's the only one I know could have Got my maman. "
Catlin whispered in her ear: "Then you have to Get him first. "
"He might not be it!" she whispered.
She sat and she thought, while Catlin passed it to Florian. Florian said something back, and then leaned forward and said to her: "We shouldn't be talking about this now. " She looked at Florian, upset.
"An Older is real dangerous, " Florian said. And in the faintest whisper of alclass="underline" "Please, sera. Tomorrow. Outside. "
They understood her, then. They believed her, not just because they were azi. What she said made sense to them. She tucked up her legs in her arms and felt shaky and stupid and mad at herself; and at the same time thought she had not put a lot of things together because she hadn't had any way of making it make sense. She had thought things just happened because they happened, because they had always happened and the world was that way. But that was stupid. It wasn't just things that happened, people made things happen, and Florian and Catlin knew that the way she should have known it if it hadn't always been there, all the time.
What's unusual?was a game they played. Florian or Catlin would say: What's unusual in the living room? And they timed how long it took you to find it. Once or twice she beat Catlin and once she beat Florian at finding it; a couple of times she set things up they had to give on. She wasn't stupid about things like that. But she felt that way about this.
The stupid part was thinking things had to be the way they were. The stupid part was that she had thought when maman went away, that someone had made her go, but then she had just fitted everything together so that wasn't so important—if maman had had to go without her, it was because she was too young and it was too dangerous. And thatwas what she had been looking at, when the Something Unusual was sitting right in plain sight beside it.
The stupid part now was the way she still didn't want to think all the way to the end of it, about how if there was an enemy and he Got maman, she didn't really know whether maman was all right; and she was scared.
She remembered arguing with uncle Denys about the party last year. And her not wanting Giraud to come; and uncle Denys said: That's not nice, Ari. He's my brother.
That was scary too.
That was scary, because uncle Giraud might get uncle Denys to do things. Uncle Giraud had Security; and they might get into her letters. They might just stop the letters going to maman at all.
And that tore up everything.
Stupid. Stupid.
She felt sick all over. And she couldn't ask uncle Denys what was true. Denys would say: He's my brother.
iv
Giraud poured more water and drank, tracking on the reports, bored while the tutors argued over the relative merits of two essays, one out of archives, one current.
Denys, Peterson, Edwards, Ivanov, and Morley: all of them around a table, discussing the implications of vocabulary choice in eight-year-olds. It was not Giraud's field. It was, God help them, Peterson's.
"The verbal development, " Peterson said, in the stultifying murmur that was Peterson in full display, "is point seven off, the significant anomaly in the Gonner Developmentals.... "
"I don't think there's any cause for worry, " Denys said. "The difference is Jane and Olga, not Ari and Ari. "
"Of course there is some argument that the Gonner battery is weighted away from concept. Hermann Poling maintained in his article in—"
It went on. Giraud drew small squares on his notepaper. Peterson did good work. Ask him a question, he had a pre-recorded lecture. Teacher's disease. Colleagues and strangers got the same as his juvenile subjects.
"In sum, " Giraud said, finally, when the water was at half in his glass, and his paper was full of squares. "In sum, in brief, then, you believe the difference was Olga. "
"The Poling article—"
"Yes. Of course. And you don't think corrective tape is necessary. "
"The other scores indicate a very substantial correspondence—"
"What John means—" Edwards said, "is that she's understanding everything, she knows the words, but so much of her development was precocious, she had an internal vocabulary worked out that for her is a kind of shorthand. "
"There may be a downside effect to insisting on a shift of vocabulary, " Denys said. "Possibly it doesn'tdescribe what she's seeing. She simply prefers slang and her own internal jargon, which I haven't tried to discourage. She does know the words, the tests prove that. Also, I'm not certain we're seeing the whole picture. I rather well think she's resisting some of the exams. "
"Why?"
"Jane, " Denys said. "The child hasn't forgotten. I hoped the letters would taper off with time. I hoped that the azi could make a difference in that. "
"You don't think, " Edwards said, "that the way that was handled—tended to make her cling to that stage; I mean, a subconscious emphasis on that stage of her life, a clinging to those memories, a refusal—as it were, to leave that stage, a kind of waiting. "
"That's an interesting theory, " Giraud said, leaning forward on his arms. "Is there any particular reason?"
"The number of times she says: 'My maman said—' The tone of voice. "
"I want a voice-stress on that, " Denys said.
"No problem, " Giraud said. "It's certainly worth pursuing. Does she reference other people?"
"No, " Edwards said.
"Not family members. Not friends. Not the azi. "
"Nelly. 'Nelly says. ' When it regards something about home. Sometimes 'my uncle Denys doesn't mind' this or that.... She doesn't respect Nelly's opinions, she doesn't respect much Nelly says, but she evidences a desire not to upset her. 'Uncle Denys' is a much more respectful reference, but more that she uses the name as currency. She's quite willing to remind you that 'my uncle Denys' takes an interest in things. " Edwards cleared his throat. "Quite to the point, she hints her influence with 'uncle Denys' can get me a nicer office. "
Denys snorted in surprise, and laughed then, to Edwards' relief. "Like the party invitation?"
"Much the same thing. "
"What about Ollie?" Giraud asked.
"Quite rarely. Almost never. I'm being precise now. I'd say she used to mention Ollie right after Jane left. Now—I don't think I've heard that name in a long time. Maybe more than a year. "
"Interesting. Justin Warrick?"
"She never mentions him. I did, if you recall. She was quite anxious to quit the subject. That name never comes up. "
"Worth the time on the computers to run a name search, " Denys said.
On all those tapes. On years of tapes. Giraud let his breath flow out and nodded. More personnel. More time on the computers.
Dammit, there was pressure outside. A lot of pressure. They were prepared to go public finally, to break the story; and they had an anomaly; they had a child far less serious than the first Ari, far more capricious and more restrained in temper. The azi had not helped. There was a little more seriousness to the child lately, a little gain in vocabulary: Florian and Catlin were better at essay than she was, but the hard edge was not there, maman was still withAri in a very persistent sense, and the Warrick affair, Yanni's sudden revelation that young Justin had handed them something that stymied the Sociology computers—