"Well?" sera asked.
"They send you away," sera Carnath said. Her teeth were chattering. "If anybody gets in trouble with you, they can send them to Fargone."
"Whodoes?"
"Your uncles."
"Giraud," sera said.
Sera Carnath nodded. There was sweat on her face, even if it was cold in the tunnels. She was crying, tears pouring down her cheeks, and her nose was running.
"All the kids?" sera asked.
Sera Carnath nodded again.
Sera came closer and took sera Carnath by the shoulder, not rough. Sera Carnath thought sera was going to hit her, but sera patted her shoulder then and had her sit down on the steps. Sera got down on one knee and put her hand on sera Carnath's knee.
"Amy, I'm not going to hit you now. I'm not going to tell you told. I want to know if you know anything about why my maman got sent away."
Sera Carnath shook her head.
"Whosent her?"
"Ser Nye. I guess it was ser Nye."
"Giraud?"
Sera Carnath nodded, and bit her lips.
"Amy, I'm not mad at you. I'm not going to be mad. Tell me what the other kids say about me."
"They just say—" Sera Carnath gulped. "—They just say let you have your way, because everybody knows what happens if you fight back and we don't want to get sent to Fargone and never come back—"
Sera just sat there a moment. Then: "Like Valery Schwartz?"
"Sometimes you just get moved to another wing. Sometimes they take you and put you on a plane and you just have to go, that's all, like Valery and his mama." Sera Carnath's teeth started chattering again, and she hugged her arms around her. "I don't want to get sent away. Don't tell I told."
"I won't. Dammit, Amy! Who said that?"
"My mama said. My mama said—no matter what, don't hit you, don't talk back to you." Sera Carnath started sobbing again, and covered her face with her hand. "I don't want to get my mama shipped to Fargone—"
Sera stood up, out of the light. Mamanand Fargonewere touchy words with her. Florian felt them too, but he kept the light steady.
"Amy," sera said after a little while, "I won't tell on you. I'll keep it secret if you will. I'll be your friend."
Sera Carnath wiped her face and looked up at her.
"I will," sera said. "So will Florian and Catlin. And they're good friends to have. All you have to do is be friends with us."
Sera Carnath wiped her nose and buttoned her blouse.
"It's the truth, isn't it, Catlin?"
"Whatever sera says," Catlin said, "that's the Rule."
Sera got down beside sera Carnath on the steps, her casted arm in her lap. "If I was your friend," sera said, "I'd stand up for you. We'd be real smart and not tellpeople we were friends. We'd just be zero. Not good, not bad. So you'd be safe. Same with the other kids. I didn't know what they were doing. I don't wantthem to do that. I can get a lot out of my uncle Denys, and Denys can get things out of uncle Giraud. So I'm a pretty good friend to have."
"I don't want to be enemies," sera Carnath said.
"Can you be my friend?"
Sera Carnath bit her lip and nodded, and took sera's left hand when sera reached it over.
They shook, like CITs when they agreed.
Florian stood easier then, and was terribly glad they didn't have to hurt sera Carnath. She didn't seem like an Enemy.
When sera Carnath got herself back together and stopped hiccuping, she talked to sera very calm, very quiet, and didn't sound at all stupid. Catlin stopped being disgusted with her and hunkered down when sera said, and rested her arms on her knees. So did Florian.
"We shouldn't be friends right off," sera Carnath said. "The other kids wouldn't trust me. They're scared."
As if sera Carnath hadn't been.
"We get them one at a time," sera said.
xii
"Shut the door," Yanni said; Justin shut it, and came and took the chair in front of Yanni's desk.
Not hisproblem this time. Yanni's. The Project's. It was in those papers on Yanni's desk, the reports and tests that he had notscanned and run on the office computer, but on a portable with retent-storage.
He had not signed his write-up. Yanni knew whose it was. That was enough.
"I've read it," Yanni said. "What does Grant say, by the by?"
Justin bit his lip and considered a shrug and no comment: Yanni still made his nerves twitch; but it was foolish, he told himself. Old business, raw nerves. "We talked about it. Grant protests it's a CIT question—but he says the man doesn't sound like he's handling it well at all."
"We're six months down on this data," Yanni said. "We don't have a ship-call from that direction for another month and a half, we don't have anything going out their way till the 29th. Jane was worried about Rubin. If our CIT staff kept off Ollie he'll have tried to work on it, I'm sure of that, but he's azi, and he's going through hell, damnmy daughter's meddling—she's a damn expert, shehas to know CIT psych better than Ollie does, right?"
"No comment."
"No comment. Dammit, I can tellyou what they've been doing these last few months. My daughter and Julia Strassen. I neverwanted those two on staff. So they get a harmless job ... on the Residency side, of course. With Rubin. Jane gets out there and gets a look at the Residency data and Jane and my daughter go fusion in the first staff meeting. I think it contributed to Jane's heart attack, if you want my guess."
Justin felt his stomach unsettled—Yanni's pig-stubborn daughter, thrown out to Fargone on an appointment she never wanted. . . and probably thought she would get promotion from, setting up RESEUNESPACE labs and administration along with Johanna Morley; then Yanni's old adversary-sometime-lover Strassen the Immovable suddenly put in as Administrator over her head the same as over her father's; hisstomach was upset, and he figured what was going on in Yanni.
Dammit, Administration is crazy.
Crazy.
"I'd trust Strassen," he said quietly, since Yanni left it for him to say something.
"Oh, yes, damn right I'd trust Strassen. Jenna might be a good Wing supervisor, but hell if she's got her own life sorted out, and she's Alpha-bitch when she's challenged. So Jane dies. That means someone has to run things. Jenna listens to her staff, all right. But Rubin's mother is a complicated problem. A real power-high when Rubin got his Special status, a real resentment when Rubin got the lab facilities and a little power of his own. Rubin's psychological problems—well, you've got the list: depressions over his health, his relationship with his mother—all of that. Rubin acts like he's doing fine. Happy as a fish in water. While his mother wants to give network interviews till Jenna hauls her in. Stella Rubin didn't like that. Not a bit. That woman and the Defense Bureau go fusion from the start ... and Rubin's situation has been an ongoing case of can't live with her or without her.Rubin plays the psych tests we give him, Rubin's happy so he can keep peace, that'swhat Jane estimated—not an honest reaction out of him since the Defense Bureau put the lid on mama. Six months ago, spacetime. That's why I wanted you to look at the series. And the bloodwork—"
"Considering what's going to arrive out there in another six months or so."
"Ari's interviews, you mean."
"He's a biochemist. He's aware they're running some genetic experiments on him. What if someone picks up on it?"
"Especially—" Yanni tapped the report on his desk. "This shows a man a hell of a lot more politically sophisticated than he started. Same with his mother."