"Nor for Defense, ser," Lao said sharply. The gavel came down.
She lay flat on the bed in the hotel, limp, while Florian and Catlin rubbed the kinks out, and she went to sleep that way, unexpectedly, just out, pop,
She woke up under the covers and Florian and Catlin had the light down very low, Catlin was stretched out on the other bed, and Florian was sitting in the chair in the corner.
"God," she said, which woke Catlin instantly. "Get to sleep.There's battalions of Security in the hall, aren't there?"
"Yes, sera," Florian said. Catlin said: "There are twenty-seven on duty."
"Well, go to sleep."
Which was short, for people who loved her enough to stay awake after a day like this one, but she was still falling-over tired, and she did, just grabbed the pillow with her arm, tucked her head down and burrowed until she had a dark place.
Florian turned out the lights anyway; and she heard him cross the room and sit down on the other bed and start undressing.
She headed out again, then, a slow drift. Tomorrow morning was uncle Giraud's turn to testify. Then Secretary Lynch, of Science; Secretary Vinelli of Defense; Adm. Khalid—O God, Khalid, then her again, as soon as they got through. She hoped Giraud and Lynch did all right. But when Vinelli got up there, and Khalid, Giraud could cross-examine like everybody else.
Not saying, of course, that Khalid wouldn't go over uncle Giraud and Secretary Lynch the way he had headed at her.
It was going to be a long week.
Or two. We're going to win about the quarantine, Giraud had predicted at the outset. There's no way Union can do anything like move in on Gehenna without bringing in warships, and there's no way we're going to go to war with the Alliance to get access to Gehenna. What we can lose is what position Union takes about those people on Gehenna—whether they regard them as Union citizens and use that as a lever with the Alliance; or whether they negotiate a joint protectorate with the Alliance; and the hawks have a real stake in that: it's Khalid's political clout that's at issue here—
The Centrist and the Expansionist coalitions were exactly that: coalitions. The hawks were trying to pull something different together by breaking off bits of both, thatwas what had surfaced in Khalid's rise. They were too high-up in the government to call them eetee-fringes. They were real,the whole thing that Ari senior had been worried about had come true, the old Earth territorial craziness had found itself an issue and a time to surface—And here she was holding Ari senior's argument in both hands behind her back— You know what it would do to Union if they found out what I've done,Ari senior had said. So she couldn't tell them: she couldn't get the things about Sociology even Sociology didn't know they had done—for Ari senior. She couldn't tell Council about the deep-set work Ari had done, or the fact that Ari had been planning—and installing—imperatives in the azi work crews, in the military, in a whole lot of places—including the deep-sets of the Gehenna azi.
The thing was already going on. By design, thirty percent of the azi Ari senior had designed and turned out of Reseune, and thirty percent of all the azi everywhere who used Reseune tape, would have kids and teach them, all across Union. A certain number of those azi had gotten their CIT papers as early as 2384, on Fargone, then in other places. A lot of them were in Science, a whole lot were in Defense: the Defense azi couldn't get CIT papers till they retired—but they were mostly male and they could still have kids or bring tank-kids up. A lot would do that, because thatwas in the deep-sets. The rest of those azi were scattered out through the electorates, heavy in Industry and Citizens, just exactly where the Centrists were strongest—a mindset that was biased right in its deep-sets, toward Ari senior's way of things.
And even other psych people wouldn't likely see what she had done—unless they were onto it—or unless they were as good as Ari senior, simply because what she did was a very accepted kind of program, a very basic kind of azi mindset. She had showedCouncil, she had even told them the program—and they couldn't see what it did with all those military psychsets, because the connections were so wide and so abstract—except when a living azi mind integrated them and ran with them in the social matrix.
That was what had scared Ari senior so bad.
There were thousands and thousands by now: not a whole lot yet proportionate to all of Union, but the program was running, and those tapes were still turning out azi. Even out of Bucherlabs and Lifefarms, in the simpler, gentle types they trained—there were attitudes designed to mesh with the psychsets of Reseune azi in very special ways.
Look up the wordpogrom, Ari had said, in her notes to her. And see why I am afraid for the azi if people find out too soon what I have done.
Or too late.
I don't know what I have done. But the Sociology computers in my time can't see beyond twenty of our generations. I do. I've tried to devise logarithmic systems—but I don't trust them. The holes in my thinking could be the holes in the paradigms. Field Too Large is what the damned thing spits back on my wide runs.
I'm becoming emotional about those words.
I'll tell you: if anyone threatens to access these files but you—there is a program that will move them and re-key them in such ways that they will look like a whole lot of different kinds of recordsand continually lie about file sizes and other data so that searchers will play hob finding them.
But for God's sake don't use it until they're breaking the door down: it's terribly dangerous. It has defensive aspects.
I will give you the keywords now to disorganize the System.
It has three parts.
First keyword: the year of your birth.
Second keyword: the year of mine.
Third keyword: annihilate.
Then it will ask you for a keyword to re-integrate Base One. Have one in mind and don't panic.
It was a little comfort, knowing that was in there. Knowing she could hide what was going on.
But shewouldn't have had just one answer in the computer, to protect something that important.
She didn't think Ari had.
She tossed over on her other side and burrowed again.
And finally she said: "Florian. . . ."
vii
Ari stepped off the plane and into the safeway, and walked the long weary way to the terminal, to get her baggage. Just the briefcase and her carry-bag, that Florian and Catlin had.
Night-flight again, with the escort. Which was a news story unto itself, but all Giraud would say was 'precautions.'
And all the public got was: 'quarantine justified.'
There were people going to be filming here, too—Reseune Information gave a live feed to Cyteen Station, and the station distributed it everywhere. Ships were on their way, the whole of Cyteen commerce was moving again, and the world took a collective breath.
Not knowing all of it, but feeling things were steadier. They were. The markets were up on bargain-hunting and in some ways healthier, because there had been a lot of built-up war-scare that just burst like a bubble, Defense stocks were taking a beating, but diversifieds were doing fine, shipping stocks were soaring again, the futures market was shifting: the Cyteen market believed in peace again after a bad scare, and there was a lot of anti-hawk feeling coming to the surface in the Information polls, which encouraged the shyer voices to speak up and dragged the undecideds back to the peace camp.