Grant lifted his eyes and made a small motion of his fingers. Remember they could have us monitored.
That was always true. They played games with the House monitors, but they had to go outside to have a word or two they did not have to worry about.
"Hell, let them listen. I don't care. I feel sorry for the kid. She didn't ask for this."
"No azi does," Grant said sharply. Then a frown made a crease between his brows. "I guess no one does."
"No one does." The depression settled back over the room. He did not know what was going to happen to them, that was what. Reseune was changing, full of strange faces, assignment shifts, the azi were—unsettled by the rejuv order. Elated by that, elated by the fact that they must have pleased someone, and distressed at the reassignments and the transfers and the arrival of strangers. Not harmfully distressed, just—having more change fall on them than they had ever had to cope with: Supervisors' interview schedules were overcrowded and Supervisors themselves were asking for relief that did not exist.
While over in Wing One residency there was an apartment shut up like a mausoleum. Not dusted, not touched, not opened.
Waiting.
"I don't think they'll have any better luck than they did with Bok," Justin said finally. "I really don't. Jane Strassen,for God's sake. The endo—" Endocrinology was not a thing one could say after a bottle and a half of wine. "Damn chemistry. Works fine on the machines. Just nature's way of getting at the thresholds. Nice theory. But they'll end up driving her crazier than Bok. They'd have better luck if they outright ran deep-tape on her. The creativity factor's a piece of garbage. Bring her up to likeAri's work, deep-tape a little empathy,for God's sake, and turn her loose. The whole project's a damn lunatic obsession. It's not Ari's talent they want, not a nice bright kid, it's Ari! It's the powerthey want back, it's personality! It's a clutch of rejuved relics staring at the great The End and having Reseune's budget to squander. That's what's going on. It's a damn disaster. It's too many people's lives and too damn little caring upstairs, that's what they're doing. I feel sorry for the kid. I really feel sorry for her."
Grant only stared at him a long while. Then: "I think there is something about creativity and tape—that we don'thave it to the same degree—"
"Oh, hell." Sometimes he trod on Grant without knowing he had done it. Sometimes he opened his mouth and forgot with Grant the sensitivity he made his living using with azi down in the Town. And hated himself. "That's a lot of garbage. I damn sure don't believe it when you fix a design a dozen senior designers have been sweating on for a month."
"I'm not talking about that. I am azi.Sometimes I can see a problem from a vantage they don't have. Frank is azi too, but he's not what I am. I can get a little arrogant. I'm entitled. But every time I have to argue with Yanni I feel it right in the gut."
"Everybodyfeels it in the gut. Yanni's a—"
"Listen to me. I don't think you feel this. I can do it. But I know every bit of what makes me tighten up fits right in that book in the bedroom, and what makes you do it wouldn't fit in this apartment. Look at what they're doing with Ari. They had to build a damn tunnel in the mountain to hold what she was."
"So what's it mean that at lunch the day the war started she had fish and she was two days into her cycle? That's crap, Grant, that's plain crap, and that's the kind of thing they built that tunnel to hold." Along with those damn tapes, that's there. Till the sun freezes over. That's what people will remember I was."You choke up with Yanni because he's got a three-second fuse, that's all. It's his sweet nature, and losing the Fargone post didn't improve it."
"No. You're not listening to me. There is a difference. The world is too complicated for me, Justin. That's the only way I can explain it. I can see the microstructures much better than you. My concentration is all on the fine things. But there's something about azi psychsets—that can't cope with random macrostructures. That whole tunnel, Justin. Just to hold her psychset."
"Psychset, hell, it's full of what she did,and who she hurt, and she was a hundred twenty years old! You want to go to Novgorod and buy councillors, you'd fill that tunnel up too, damn fast."
"I couldn't. I couldn't see behind me. That's what it feels like."
"You've lived in these walls all your life. You could learn."
"No. Not the same things. That's what I'm saying. I could learn everything Ari knew. And I'd still focus too tight."
"You don't either! Whosaw the conflict in the 78s? Ididn't!"
Grant shrugged. "That's because born-men make most of their mistakes by rationalizing a contradiction. I don't make that leap without noticing it."
"You read mewith no trouble at all."
"Not always. I don't know what Ari did to you. I know whathappened. I know I wouldn't have been affected the same way." They could talk about that now. But rarely did. "She could have re-structured me. She was very good. But she couldn't do that to you."
"She did a damn lot." It hurt. Especially tonight. He wanted off the topic.
"She couldn't. Because you don't have a psychset that only fills one book.
You're too complicated. You can change. And I have to be very carefulof change. I can see the inside of my mind. It's very simple. It has rooms. Yours is Klein bottles."
"God," Justin snorted.
"I'm drunk."
"We're drunk." He leaned forward and put his hand on Grant's shoulder. "And we're both Klein-spaced. Which is why we're back where we started and I'm willing to bet my psychset is no more complicated than yours. You want to work it out?"
"I—" Grant blinked. "You want an example? My heart just skipped. That embarrasses hell out of me. It's that Supervisor trigger. I don't want to do that because I don't think it's smart to mess with your mind; and I jump inside like it was an order."
"Hell, I hate it when you go self-analytical. You don't want to do it because you don't know when Security is listening; and it's personal and you've got manners. All your deep-sets just describe the same thing I feel. Which is why I stay out of your head."
"No." Grant held up a finger. Earnest. A near hiccup. "The profound reason why we're different. Endo-endo—hell! hormones work—in learning— Blood chemistry reacts—to the environment. A given stimulus—sometimes adrenaline is up—sometimes down—sometimes some other thing—shades of gray. Variability—in a random environment. You remember some things right, some wrong, some light, some heavy. We—" Another near hiccup. "—start out from the cradle—with cataphorics. Knock the damn thresholds flatter than anything in nature. That means—no shades in our original logic set-up. Things are totally true. We can trust what we get. Youtake your psychset in through your senses. Through natural cataphorics. You get your informationallearning through tape and your psychset through senses. Chancy as hell what you get out of anything you see or hear. You learn to average through the flux because you know there'll be variances. But we'vehad experts eliminate all logical incon-inconsistencies. We cantake in every detail; we have to, that's the way we process—right. That's why we're damn good at seeing specific detail. That's why we process faster on some problems you can't hold in your head. We go learning-state without kat and our early memories didn't come from endocrine-learning; we have no shades of truth. You're averaging and working with a memory that has a thousand shades of value and you're better at averaging shades than you are at remembering what really happened, that's how you can process things that come at you fast and from all sides. And that's what we're worst at. You can come up with two contradicting thoughts and believe both of them because there's flux in your perceptions. I can't."