If he wasn't withthe Enemy in the first place. Things were getting more and more complicated.
"Florian and Catlin are going for sure?"
"Yes."
"The judges can't just take them, can they?"
"Dear, the law can do anything; but the law won'ttake what belongs to you. You have to prove you're you,that's the whole problem. That's what you're going there for, and if you don't, nothing is safe here either."
So Ari sat in a leather seat in RESEUNE ONE,a seat so big her feet hardly reached the floor; and Florian and Catlin sat in the two seats opposite her, taking turns looking out the windows, only she had one right beside her, with the real outback under them for as far as you could see.
They would land at Novgorod, they would land at the airport there, but before they landed they were going to see the city from the air; they would see the spaceport, and the Hall of State and the docks where all the barges went, that chugged past Reseune on the Novaya Volga. They were going to see Swigert Bay and the Ocean. The pilot kept telling them where they were and what they were looking at, which right now was the Great West Sink, which was a brown spot on the maps and a brown place from the air with a lake in the middle. She could talk back to the pilot if she pushed a button by her seat.
"We're coming up on the Kaukash Range on the right side," the pilot said.
They had let her go up front for a little while. She got to see out past the pilot and the co-pilot, when they were following the Novaya Volga.
The pilot asked if she liked flying. She said yes, and the pilot told her what a lot of the controls were, and showed her how the plane steered, and what the computers did.
That was the best thing in days. She had him show Florian and Catlin, until uncle Giraud said she had better sit down and study her papers and let the pilot fly the plane. The pilot had winked at her and said she ought to, they were spilling uncle Giraud's drinks.
She wished she had her arm out of the cast, because that was a nuisance; and gave uncle Giraud an excuse to tell her she ought to stay belted-in in her seat. .
Most of all she wished they were all through the court business and the reporters, and they could get to the things uncle Denys told her they were going to get to see while they were in Novgorod. That would be fun. She was going to have her birthday in Novgorod. She wanted to prove everything and then get to that part of it.
Most of all she was worried what would happen if uncle Denys was wrong.
Or if uncle Giraud couldn'tprove who she was.
The court couldn't make a mistake, uncle Denys said, over and over. Not with the tests they had, and the law was the law: they couldn't take what belonged to somebody without suing, and then it was going to be real hard for them to sue a little girl. Especially because Giraud had a lot of friends in the Defense Bureau, who would classify everything.
That meant Secret.
The reporters are going to be a bigger problem than the court,uncle Denys had said. The reporters will pull up a lot of the old pictures of the first Ari. You have to expect that. They'll talk about a little girl Reseune birthed a long time ago, a PR off Estelle Bok. It didn't work right. You've beaten all that little girl's problems. If they say you're like that other little girl they're being nasty, and you answer them that you're you, and if they doubt that they can wait and see how you grow up. I've no doubt at all that you can handle that sort of thing. You don't have to be polite if reporters start being nasty, but you can get a lot more out of them if you act like a nice little kid.
It sounded like a fight. That was what it sounded like. She figured that. It was one of the only times uncle Denys had ever talked to her about Working people, but uncle Denys was good at it, and she was sure he knew what was what.
The Enemy cheats, Catlin always said.
It worried her, about whether the Court ever did.
"Sera," Catlin had come to whisper in her ear that night when they were all going to bed, Florian and Catlin on their pallets, and herself in her own bed with her arm propped up again, "sera, who's our side in this?"
Florian was usually the one who asked all the questions. That was one of Catlin's best ever.
And Catlin waited while she thought about it, and motioned Catlin up close and whispered back: "I am. I'm your side. That's all. You never mind what anybody says, that's still the Rule. They can't say I'm anybody else, no matter what."
So Catlin and Florian relaxed.
She looked at the papers uncle Giraud had given her to study about what the reporters and the judges could ask, and wished shecould.
iii
There was very little work getting done in Wing One, or likely anywhere else in Reseune on this morning, and if there was a portable vid no matter how old not checked out or rented anywhere in the House and the Labs, it was well hidden.
Justin and Grant had theirs, the office door shut—some of the junior designers were clustered together in the lounge downstairs, but the ones in some way involved with the Project sealed themselves in offices alone or with closest associates, and nothing stirred, not even for phone calls.
The cameras were the official ones in the Supreme Court, no theatrics, just the plain, uncommentaried coverage the Supreme Court allowed.
Lawyers handed papers to clerks, and the Court proceeded to ask the clerk if there were any absences or faults in the case.
Negative.
There was a very young girl sitting with her back to the cameras, at the table beside Giraud, not fidgeting, not acting at all restless through the tedium of the opening.
Listening, Justin reckoned. Probably with that very memorable frown.
The news-services had been right on it when the plane landed, and a single news-feed from the official camera set-up at the airport reception lounge had given the news-services their first look at Ari Emory, no questions allowed, until after the ruling.
Ari had stood there with her good hand in uncle Giraud's, the other arm in a cast, wearing a pale blue and very little-girl suit, with black-uniformed Florian and Catlin very stiff and looking like kids in dress-up, overkill in mimicking elder Ari—until a piece of equipment clanked, and eyes went that way and bodies stiffened like the same muscle moved them.
"That'll send chills down backs," Justin had muttered to Grant. "Damn. That is them, no way anyone can doubt it. No matter what size they are."
The news-services had done archive filler after, brought up split-screen comparisons between the first and second Ari and Catlin and Florian, from old news photos; and showed a trio so much like them it was like two takes in slightly different lighting, Ari in a different suit, standing beside Geoffrey Carnath instead of Giraud Nye.
"My God, it's right down to mannerisms," he had murmured, meaning the frown on Ari's face. On both Ari-faces. The way of holding the head. "Have they taughther that?"
"They could have," Grant had said, unperturbed. "All those skill tapes. They could do more than penmanship, couldn't they? —But a lot of usdevelop like mannerisms."
Not in a CIT,had been his internal objection. Damn, they'vegot to have done that. Skill tapes. Muscle-learning. You could get that off a damn good actress.
Or Ari herself. No telling what kind of things Olga recorded. —Are they going that far with the Rubin kid?
He watched that still, attentive little girl at the table, in front of the panel of judges. They had not let Florian and Catlin sit with her. Just Giraud and the team of lawyers.