I'll take your advice,he had messaged back. Thank you. I know you have a lot to take care of right now. I don't think our presence at the services would be appropriate, or welcome to his friends; but if there should be anything Grant or I can do in the wing to take care of details, we're certainly willing to help.
She had not asked anything of them—had more or less forgotten them, Justin reckoned, small wonder with the pressure she was under. The news was full of speculations about Denys' health, about the political consequences of Reseune yielding up the seat Reseune had held on Council since the Founding—about whether the Centrists could field a viable candidate inside Science, or whether Secretary and now Proxy Councillor Lynch had the personal qualifications to hold the party leadership which Giraud had held.
"There's nothing wrong with Denys' health," Grant objected, the two of them watching the news in the living room.
"I don't know what he's about," Justin said. And trusting then to the freedom Ari swore they had from monitoring: "But losing Giraud is a heavy blow to him. I think it's the only time I've ever felt sorry for Denys."
"They're doing that PR," Grant said; then: "Denys had to get Ari's backing, isn't that ironic as hell?"
"He's what—a hundred twenty-odd?—and that weight he carries doesn't favor him. He'd be lucky to see ten, fifteen more years. So he hasto have Ari's agreement, doesn't he?"
"It's not going to work," Grant said.
Justin looked at Grant, who sat—they hadfound a scattering of red and blue pillows—in a nest at the corner of the couch, his red hair at odds with half of it.
"Denys hasto set the pattern," Grant said, "has to give him that foundation or there's no hope for Giraud. I firmly think so. Yanni may have known their father in his old age, but Yanni's much too young to do for Giraud what Jane Strassen did—not mentioning how they've treated him—"
"He owes them damned little, that's sure enough."
"And there's always the question what's in and not in those notes Ari-younger got from her predecessor," Grant said. "I think Ari knows a lot she's not putting in those notes. I think ourAri is being very careful what she tells her guardians."
"Ari says sometimes—not everything was necessary."
"But whatever isnecessary—is necessary," Grant said. "And Denys can't know—isn't in a position to know, that's what I think; and she's keeping it that way."
"The Rubin boy's going into chemistry, isn't he?"
"Fine student—test scores not spectacular, though."
"Yet."
Grant made a deprecating gesture. "No Stella Rubin. No one to tell him when to breathe. Hell is necessary for CITs, do we make that a given? You warned them not to let up on him too much—but the project is still using him for a control. Put the whole load on Ari; go easy on Ben Rubin; see what was necessary. ... I'll bet you anything you like that Denys Nye had more to do with that decision than Yanni Schwartz did. Yanninever went easy on anyone."
"Except—Yanni's got a family attachment in the way. Rubin's suicide really got him, and Jenna Schwartz, remember, had some little thing to do with that. It could well be Yanni's going easy."
"But Rubin's still a control," Grant said. "And what he's proving—"
"What he's proving is, A, you can't do it with all genesets; B, some genesets respond well to stress and some don't—"
"Given, given, but in the two instances we have, —"
"And, C, there's bad match-ups between surrogate and subject. Don't discount the damage Jenna Schwartz did and the damage the contrast between Jenna Schwartz and Ollie Strassen did to the boy."
"Not to mention," Grant said, holding up a finger, "the fact Oliver AOX is male, and Alpha; and Stella Rubin is female and not that bright. I'd liketo do a study on young Rubin. No edge to him, not near the flux swings. The instability goes with the suicide, goes with the brilliance—Among us, you know, they call it a flawed set."
"And do a fix for it."
"And lose the edge, just as often. —Which brings us back to young Ari, who's maybe given the committee all she knows—which I don't believe, if she's as much Ari as she seems, and our Ari—doesn't take chances with her security. I very much think access to those programs is a leverage of sorts—and do you know, I think Denys would have begun to guess that?"
Justin considered that thought, with a small, involuntary twitch of his shoulders. "The committee swears no one can retrieve from Ari's programs without Ari's ID. And possibly it's always been true."
"Possibly—more than that. Possibly that Base, once activated—can't be outmaneuvered in other senses. Possibly it's capable of masking itself."
"Lying about file sizes?"
"And invading other Bases—eventually. Built-in tests, parameters, —I've been thinking how I'd write a program like that ... if she were azi. The first Ariane designed me. Maybe—" Grant made a little quirk of his mouth. "Maybe I have a—you'd say innate, but that's a mistake— in-builtresonance with Ari's programs. I remember my earliest integrations. I remember—there was a—even for a child— sensualpleasure in the way things fit, the way the pieces of my understanding came together with such a precision. She was so very good. Do you think she didn't prepare for them to replicate her? Or that she'd be less careful with a child of her own sets, than with an azi of her design?"
Justin thought about it. Thought about the look on Grant's face, the tone of his voice—a man speaking about his father ... or his mother. "Flux-thinking," he said. "I've wondered— Do you love her, Grant?" Grant laughed, fleeting surprise. "Loveher."
"I don't think it's impossible. I don't think it's at all unlikely."
"Reseune is my Contract and I can never get away from it?"
"Reseune is my Contract: I shall not want? —I'm talking about CIT-style flux. The kind that makes for ambivalences. Do you love her?"
A frown then. "I'm scared of the fact this Ari ran a probe. I'm scared because Ari's got the first Ari's notes—which include my manual, I'm quite sure. And what if—what if—This is my nightmare, Justin: what if—in my most fluxed imaginings, Ari planned for her successor; what if she planted something in me that would respond to her with the right trigger? —But then I flux back again and think that's complete nonsense. I'll tell you another nightmare: I'm scared of my own program tape."
Justin suffered a little sympathetic chill. "Because Ari wrote it."
Grant nodded. "I don'twant to review it under trank nowadays. I know I could take enough kat to put me flat enough I could take it—but then I think—I can handle things without it. I can manage. I don't need it, God, CITs put up with the flux and they learn from it. And I do—learn from it, that is."
"I wish to hell you'd told me that."
"You'd worry. And there's no reason to worry. I'm fine—except when you ask me questions like that: do I love Ari?God, that's skewed. That's the first time I ever wondered about it in CIT terms. And you're right, there's a multi-level flux around her I don't like at all."
"Guilt?"
"Don't do that to me."
"Sorry. I just wondered."
Grant shifted position in the nest of pillows, against the arm. "Have you ever scanned my tape for problems?"
"Yes," Justin said after a little hesitation, a time-stretch of hesitation, that felt much too long and much too significant. "I didn't want to make it evident—I didn't want to worry you about it."