"Nelly's in hospital again," uncle Denys said. "Ari, you know it hurts her when you put her out and call somebody else."
"Well, I can't help it. Nelly fusses."
"Nelly doesn't know what to do with you anymore. I think it might be a good idea to let Nelly go work down in the Town, in the nursery. You think about that. But that's for you to decide."
She could not lose maman and Nelly in one week. Even if Nelly drove her crazy. She looked at the table and tried not to think about that.
"You think about it," uncle Denys said. "Nelly's the happiest when she has a baby to take care of. And you're not a baby. So you're making her unhappy—especially when you give her orders. But you just think about it. It's not like you couldn't see Nelly again. Otherwise she's going to have to take tape to re-train her and she'll have to do house management or something."
"What does Nelly want?"
"She wants you to be three years old. But that won't work. So Nelly's got to move or Nelly's got to change."
"Can Nelly have a job down in the baby lab? And live here?"
"Yes, she could do that. It's not really a bad idea." Uncle Denys set his cup down for Seely to pour more coffee, then stirred it. "If that's what you want."
"I wantHorse."
Uncle Denys' brows came together. "Ari, you can't have what'll hurt you."
"Florian says there's a baby."
"Ari, horses are big animals. Nobody knows anything about riding them, not on Cyteen. We have them for research, not to play with."
"You could give me the baby one."
"God," uncle Denys said.
"Florian knows all about horses."
Uncle Denys looked at Florian and Florian went azi, all blank.
"No," uncle Denys said flatly. Then: "Let me talk to AG about it, Ari, all right? I don't know about horses. When you grow a bit, maybe. When you show me you're grown up enough not to sneakdown there and break your neck."
"That's nasty."
"It's true, isn't it? You could have broken your neck. Or your back. Or your head. I don't mind if you do things: you'll fly a plane someday. You'll do a lot of things. But for God's sake,Ari, you don't sneak off and try to fly one of the jets, do you? You have to study. There's no second chance when the ground's coming at you. You have to know what can go wrong and how to deal with it, and you have to be big enough; and if you want to deal with a horse, you'd better be big enough to hold on to it, and you'd better show me you're grown up enough to be smarter than the horse is."
That was nasty too. But it was probably true.
"He surprised you," uncle Denys said, "because you didn't know what you were doing. So I suggest you study about animals. They're not machines. They think. And he thought: there's some fool on my back. And he was bigger and he got rid of her. Figure that one out."
She frowned harder. It sounded too much like what had happened. Only uncle Denys had gotten down to a Maybe about giving her Horse. That was something.
"I needed a saddle and a bridle."
"All right. So how do you make the horse wear it, hmmn? Maybe you'd better do some advance study. Maybe you'd better look some things up in library. Maybe you'd better talk to some people who might know. Anyway, you prove to me you know what you're doing and you prove to me you're responsible. Then we'll see about seeing about it."
That was halfway, anyway. For about two seconds she had forgotten how much she hurt, which threw her off for a moment when it all came back again, and she thought how she had been when maman went away to Fargone, and how she got over that.
It was awful to get over maman dying. But that was starting to happen. She felt it start. Like things were trying to go back the way they were, and uncle Denys was getting short with her and she was going to have to go back to classes and everything was going to be the way it was again.
She felt sad about feeling better, which was stupid.
She wished she could have told maman about Horse.
And then she still wasn't sure if maman had ever gotten her letters at all, no matter what they said, or if Ollie had. Thinking that made her throat swell up and the tears start, and she scrambled down from the table, ran for her hall and shut the door.
Then she stood there by Florian and Catlin's room and cried and pounded her fist on the wall and kicked it, and went in their room and got some tissue to wipe her eyes and blow her nose.
They came in. And just stood there.
"I'm all right," she said. Which probably confused hell out of them, maman would say.
"Ari," she heard uncle Denys calling her from the other room. The door was open. "Ari?"
She had given uncle Denys a hard morning. But that was all right, uncle Denys said; it was like getting well from something, sometimes you had aches and pains, and they got better, eventually. He wasn't mad at her.
"I've talked to AG," uncle Denys said at lunch. "As soon as they can schedule a tank, they're going to do a run for you."
"You mean a horse?"
"Don't talk with your mouth full. Manners."
She swallowed. Fast.
"Here's the work part. You have to go over all the data and write up a report just the way the techs do. You have to do it on comp, and the computer will compare your work against the real techs' input. And where you're wrong you have to find out why and write up a report on it. You have to do that from start to birth and then keep up with all the other stuff and all your other studies. If you want something born, you have to work for it."
That wasa lot of work. "Do I get him, then?"
"Her, actually. We need another female anyway. Two males tend to fight. Some animals are like that. We're going to do another just like the one we have, instead of a new type, so we won't risk losing her. But if you don't keep up the work, you don't get the horse at all, because you won't have earned her. Understood?"
"Yes, ser," she said. Not with her mouth full. Horses grew up fast. She remembered that. Real fast. Like all herd animals. A year, maybe?
"They're real delicate," uncle Denys said. "They're a bitch to manage, frankly, but your predecessor had this notion that it was important for people to have them. Human beings grew up with other lifeforms on the motherworld, she used to say, and those other lifeforms were part of humans learning about non-humans, and learning patience and the value of life. She didn't want people on Cyteen to grow up without that. Her maman Olga was interested in pigs and goats because they were useful and they were tough and adaptable for a new planet. Ari wanted horses because they're a high-strung herd ungulate with a lot of accessible data on their handling: we can learn something from them for some of the other, more exotic preservation projects. But the other important reason, the reason of all reasons for having horses, she said, is that working with them does something to people. They're exciting to something in our own psych-sets,' those are her exact words: 'I don't want humans in the Beyond to grow up without them. Our ancient partners are a part of what's human: horses, cattle, oxen, buffalo, dolphins, whatever. Dogs and cats, except we can't support carnivores yet, or tolerate a predator on Cyteen—yet. Earth's ecology is an interlocking system,' she used to say, 'and maybe humans aren't human without input from their old partners.' She wasn't sure about that. But she tried a lot of things. So it's not surprising you want a horse. Shecertainly did, although she was too old to try riding it—thank God. —Does it bother you for me to talk about her?"
"No." She gave a twitch of her shoulders. "It's just—funny. That's all."
"I imagine it is. But she was a remarkable woman. Are you through? We can walk back now."
xi
Florian did the best he could. He and Catlin both.