It was the son of official protection, he thought, that must have attended Giraud Nye in these troubled years. He sat between the hard-muscled bodies of two of Reseune's senior House Security, with another, armed, in the front-seat passenger side, and one driving. He watched the road unfold to the river, the bridge and the drive—he remembered it—which led up to the government center, green crops growing in the interstices, a handful of trees which had prospered in the years since he had ridden this road at Jordan's side, taking the tour—
The Hall of State loomed up around a turn, suddenly filling the windshield; and he felt a chill and a sense of panic. "Aren't we going to the Bureau?" he asked his guards quietly, calmly. "I thought we were going to the Science Bureau."
"We follow the car in front of us," the one on the left said.
He figured that much. Damn, he thought, and sat and watched, wishing he had Grant's ability to go Out awhile. He wanted this day done with. He wanted—
God, he wanted to go home.
He wanted a phone, and a chance to talk to Jordan, and to find out the truth, but the truth, Ari had said it, was the least important thing.
He was numb, in overload, total flux. He tried to find answers and there was no information to give them to him, except the ones Ari herself led him through, bringing order where none existed—or finding the only way through, he did not know any longer. He had found himself agreeing to lie to the press, agreeing to deny his father's innocence—to which he himself could not swear—
He found himself doubting Jordan, doubting Jordan's motives, Jordan's love for him, everything in the world but Grant. Doubting his own sanity, finally, and the integrity of his own mind.
Not even Giraud did this to me. Not even Giraud.
Flux of images, the older Ari, the younger; flux of remembered panic, interview in Ari's office:
. . . You make my life tranquil, sweet, and stand between me and Jordan, and I won't have his friends arrested, and I won't do a mindwipe on Grant, I'll even stop giving you hell in the office. You know what the cost is, for all those transfers you want. . . .
. . . I told Denys you're mine, that I ran a major intervention, that Grant is far more of a hold on you than your father is; that you'd choose him over your father if it came to a choice. . . .
The convoy drew up under the portico at the side of the Hall of State. He moved when his guards flung the door open and hastened him out and through the doors—not so roughly this time: this time there were news cameras.
Ari stopped and took his arm. The thought flashed through his mind that he could shove her away, refuse to go farther, tell the cameras everything that had happened to him, shout out the fact that Reseune was holding Grant hostage, that they had worked on him to divide him from his father, that Jordan might well have spent twenty years in confinement for a lie—
He hesitated, Ari tugging at his arm, someone nudging him from behind.
"We're going to meet with Secretary Lynch," Ari said, "upstairs. Come on. We'll talk to the press later."
"Is your father innocent?"someone shouted at him out of the echoing chaos.
He looked at that reporter. He tried to think, in the time-stretch of nightmare, whether he even knew the answer or not, and then just ignored the question, going where Ari wanted him to go, to say whatever he had to say.
"You do this one alone," Ari told him when they reached the upstairs, turning him over to Bureau Enforcement. "I'll be getting the hearing on monitor, but nobody from Reseune will be there. The Bureau wants you not to feel pressured. All right?"
So he walked with blue-uniformed strangers still of Reseune's making, taught by Reseune's tapes—who brought him into a large conference room, and brought him to a table facing a triple half-ring of tables on a dais, where other strangers took their seats in a blurred murmur of conversation—
Strangers except Secretary-now-Proxy for Science Lynch: Lynch he knew from newscasts. He settled into his chair, grateful to find at least one known quantity in the room, at the head of the committee, he supposed. There was a pitcher of water in front of him, and he filled a glass and drank, trying to soothe his stomach. Ari's staff had offered him food on the plane, but he had not been able to eat more than the chips and a bite of the sandwich; and he had had another soft drink after the whiskey. Now he felt light-headed and sick. Damn fool, he told himself in the dizzying buzz of people talking in a large room, quit sleepwalking. Wake up and focus, for God's sake, they'll think you're drugged.
But the flux kept on, every thought, every nuance of everything Jordan had last said to him; everything Ari had said that might be a clue to what was going on or whether the threat was threat or only show for Denys and Security.
Secretary Lynch came up to the table where he was sitting, and offered his hand. Justin stood up and took it, felt the kindness in the gesture, saw a face that had been only an image on vid take on a human concern for him; and that small encouragement hit him in the gut, he did not know why.
"Are you all right?" the Secretary-Proxy asked.
"A little nervous," he said; and felt Lynch's fingers close harder on his. A little pat on his arm. Giraud's career-long associate, he suddenly remembered that with a jolt close to nausea, and felt the whole room go distant, sounds echoing in his skull in time with the beating of his heart. Where does Ari stand with him? Is this choreographed?
"You're inside Bureau jurisdiction now," Lynch said. "No Reseune staff is here. Three Councillors are in the city: they've asked to audit the proceedings: Chairman Harad, Councillor Corain; Councillor Jacques. Is there any other witness you want? Or do you have any objection to anyone here? You understand you have a right to object to members of the inquiry."
"No, ser."
"Are you all right?" It was the second time Lynch had asked. Justin drew in a breath and disengaged his hand.
"Just a little—" Light-headed. No. God, don't say that.He thought his face must be white. He felt the air-conditioning on sweat at his temples. "I was too nervous to eat. I don't suppose I could get a soft drink before we start. Maybe crackers or something."
Lynch looked a little nonplussed; and then patted his shoulder and called an aide.
Like a damned kid, he thought. Fifteen minutes, a pastry and a cup of coffee, that little time to catch his breath in an adjoining conference room, and he was better collected—was able to walk back into the hearing room and have Secretary Lynch walk him over to Mikhail Corain and to Simon Jacques and Nasir Harad one after the other, faces he recognized in what still passed in a haze of overload, but a less shaky one: God, he was fluxed. He had had nightmares about publicity, lifelong, felt himself still on the verge of panic—still kept flashing on Security—the cell—the Council hearings. . . .
Giraud's voice, saying things he could not remember, but which put a profound dread in him.
Wake up,dammit! No more time for thinking. Do!
"Dr. Warrick," Corain said, taking his hand. "A pleasure to meet you, finally."
"Thank you, ser."
When did that message actually come from my father?That was what he wanted to ask.
But he did not, not being a fool. Audit,Lynch had said: then the Councillors were not here to engage in questions.
"If you need anything," Corain said, "if you feel you need protection—you understand you can ask for it."
"No, ser. —But I appreciate your concern." This is a man who wants to use Jordan. And me. What am I worth to him? Where would his protection leave me?
Out of Reseune. And Grant inside.