Something like a pound of coffee. He would like that and he wouldn't care it didn't come from Novgorod.
Besides, she got to have some of that too.
So she told Base One to buy it and send it to his office when she got in, easy as talking to the Minder.
Amy and Tommy were real impressed.
They were real happy with their presents. She brought them out of her room and didn't show off the other things—it's not nice, uncle Denys would say, to advertise what you've got and others don't.
Uncle Denys was right. Also smart.
Tommy loved his sweater. He looked good in it.
Amy looked a little doubtful about the tiny box, like a little box like that wasn't going to be as nice a gift, until she opened it.
"It's real," she told Amy, about the pin. And Amy's face lit up. Amy was not a pretty girl. She was going to be tall and thin and long-faced, and she had to take tape to make her stop slouching, but for a moment Amy looked pretty. And felt pretty, she guessed, which made the difference.
She wished Amy had the allowance she did, to buy nice things.
Then she got an idea.
And made a note to ask uncle Denys if Amycould take over the guppy project, Amy knew all about it, and she was sharp about what to breed to what, and very good with numbers.
She had enough to do with the filly, and she wanted to go back to just having a few pretty fish in the aquarium in her bedroom, and not having to do in the ugly ones.
iii
Justin dumped his bags in the bedroom and went and threw himself facedown on the bed, aware of nothing until he realized he had a blanket over him and that he was being urged to tuck up onto the bed. "Come on," Grant's voice said to him. "You're going to chill. Move."
He halfway woke up then, and rolled over and found the pillow, pulling it up under his head.
"Rotten flight?" Grant asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.
"Damn little plane; they had a hell of a storm over the Tethys and we just dodged thunderheads and bounced."
"Hungry?"
"God, no. Just sleep."
Grant let him, just cut the lights, and let him lie.
Which he dimly remembered in the morning, hearing noise in the kitchen. He found himself in his clothes, unshaven.
And the clock saying 0820.
"God," he muttered, and threw the cover over and staggered for the bath and the kitchen, in that order.
Grant, in white shirt and plain beige pants, looked informally elegant, was having morning coffee at the kitchen table.
Justin raked a hand through his hair and fumbled a cup out of the cabinet without dropping it.
Grant poured him half his cup.
"I can make some," he protested.
"Of course you can," Grant said, humoring the incompetent, and pulled his chair back. "Sit down. I don't suppose you're going in today. —How's Jordan?"
"Fine," he mumbled, "fine. He really is." And sat down and leaned his elbows on the table to be sure where the cup was when he took a drink, because his eyes were refusing to work. "He's looking great. So is Paul. We had a great work-session—usual thing, too much talk, too little sleep. It was great."
He was not lying. Grant's eyes flickered and took on a moment's honest and earnest relief. Grant had already heard the word last night, at the airport, but he seemed to believe it finally, the way they always had to doubt each other, doubt every word, without the little signals that said things were what they seemed.
And then Grant looked at the time and winced. "Damn. One of us had better make it in. Yanni's hunting hides this week."
"I'll get there," Justin said.
"You're worthless. Stay here. Rest."
Justin shook his head. "I've got a report to turn in." He swallowed down the last of the coffee at a gulp. "God. You go on first. I'll get the papers hunted down. I'll get there. Message Yanni I'm coming, I just have to get the faxes together, they messed everything up in Decon."
"I'm going." Grant dumped the last of his coffee into Justin's cup. "You need it worse. It seems to be a vital nutrient for CITs."
Damn. He had crashed incommunicado last night when Grant had been waiting days for news, and now he stole Grant's coffee at breakfast.
"I'll make it up to you," he called to Grant in the next room. "Get a rez at Changesfor lunch."
Grant put his head back in. "Was it that good?"
"Sociology ran the TR design all the way past ten generations and it's still clean. Jordan called it clean as anything they're running."
Grant pounded the doorframe and grinned. "Bastard! You could have said!"
Justin raised an eyebrow. "I may be a son of a bitch, friend, but the very one thing I can't possibly be is a bastard. And now even Giraud will have to own up to it."
Grant hurled himself out into the living room again, crying: "Late, dammit! This isn't fair!"
In a moment the front door opened and shut.
There flatly was no time to go over things in the morning, even working back to back in the same office. Grant ticked away at the keyboard with occasional mutters to the Scriber-input, a constant background sound, while Justin ran the fax-scanner on his notes and Jordan's and the transcription of the whole week's sessions, punched keys where it was faster and sifted and edited and wrestled nearly fourteen hundred hours of constant transcription into five main topics with the computer's keyword scanning. Which still might miss or misfile things, so there was no question of dumping it: he created a sixth topic for Unassigned and kept the machine on autoTab, which meant it filed the original locations of the information.
He had four preliminary work-ups and one report nearing turn-in polish before Grant startled him out of a profound concentration and told him they had ten minutes to get to the restaurant.
He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, saved down and stretched and flexed shoulders that had been rigid for longer than he had thought.
"Nearly done on the Rubin stuff," he said.
But that was not what he and Grant talked about all the way downstairs and across to North Wing, through the door at Changesand as far as their table—small respite for ordering drinks, more report, another break for ordering lunch, and into it again.
"The next thing," he said, "is getting Yanni to agree to test."
Grant said: "I'd take it."
"The hell you will."
Grant lifted a brow. "I wouldn't have any worry about it. I d actually be a damned goodsubject, since it couldn't put anything over on me I couldn't identify—I understand the principles of it a hell of a lot better than the Test Division is going to—"
"And you're biased as hell."
Grant sighed. "I'm curious what it feels like. You don't understand, CIT. It's quite, quite attractive."
"Seductive is what I'm worried about. Youdon't need any motivation, friend, —a vacation, maybe."
"A tour of Novgorod," Grant sighed. "Of course. —I still want to seethe thing when you get through with it."
Justin gave him a calculated, communicative frown. They stillhad to worry about bugs; and telling Security how skilled Grant was at reading-absorption of a program was something neither one of them wanted to do.
That look said: Sure you would, and if you internalize it, partner, I'll break your fingers.
Grant smiled at him, wide and lazy, which meant: You smug CIT bastardy I can take care of myself.
A tightening of his lips: Dammit, Grant.
A wider smile, a narrowing of the eyes: Discuss it later.
"Hello," a young voice said, and Justin's heart jumped.