Oh, to be sure. Sit in the damned sandbox and I’ll lend you my shovel, Valery. Damn your presumption. My patronage!Bloody hellif I’ll be used!
At first blush, she was just mad, damned mad, as Justin would put it. And then just generally upset.
Was that thing, that grinning devil gone to black in her vision–was thatthe experiential artform? Was thatwhat Valery was now?
And connected to Gloria?
It wasn’twho she’d thought she was inviting back to Reseune, to do justice for, and about.
They’d had lives out there, at a place that wasn’t quite real to her. All these years of her life and theirs had gone by, and Ollie might be the same, and maybe Julia was, but they weren’t, not Gloria and not Valery, and in directions she hadn’t anticipated. She’d made a mistake.
But ships took months in passage–her letters to them had taken months in passage; their replies had taken months coming back, and by the time the reply got to her–her three invitees were already on a ship on the way here.
Damn!
BOOK THREE Section 4 Chapter v
JULY 22, 2424
0834H
It was a luxurious office. It had the view from the cliffs on a windowlike screen–Justin liked it; Grant liked it. They were glad it was a feature. There was a little guppy tank in the corner–they’d had to laugh about that. It made this move, the last move, they hoped, a little more thoughtful. And their wall had a seascape, a strange thing to contemplate, sunlight through a breaking wave, vastly different colors than the yellow froth and desolate sands of Novgorod’s shoreline–which nobody wanted to visit.
“It’s from Earth,” Grant had surmised.
It could even have been Novgorod’s shore, when they first landed. Getting back to that would take the native microlife eating all the terrestrial microlife–and native life had a chance of doing that, now. In their own lifetime, one really good thing Denys had done was join Moreyville and Novgorod in cleaning up the Novaya Volga, building the coffer‑dam and the treatment plant–probably it had taken the form of a deal, but Reseune stayed cleaner, and the river did, each in their own way. Some things did get better. He liked to think of the picture that way. Grant said he liked it.
So he could say yes, they loved it, when Ari asked the question. “Very nice.”
She wanted her lessons, as she called it, which consisted now of their working over sets. And she brought him things, her designs, her questions–good questions, that, if there were no Jordan anywhere on the horizon, would have kept him happily working for days.
As it was–
“Ari,” he said, when she arrived for her lesson today, and settled in with them, supplied with coffee and a morning cookie, and the tranquility of the room notwithstanding, his heart was beating overtime, doubt about what he wanted to do, doubt about how she’d take it–doubt about what sort of mess he was opening up to her.
But he couldn’t get what he wanted on his own. And he knew everything it could provoke, if it got back to Jordan, and everything it could provoke if Ari got too interested in it.
“Ari, I want a particular manual. Say it’s an actual current personal manual. It was once confiscated in security, in a computer. Can you get it?”
She held the coffee mug like a little kid with a cocoa, in both hands, and brought it down when he asked that question.
“We’re not talking about my getting Grant’s.”
“No,” he said. In point of fact, he was sure she had that.
“Paul’s?” she asked, straight to the mark, in a very limited range of likely manuals he’d be interested in, and he nodded.
“I can crack his storage,” she said. “No question. I haven’t, lately. I havethe manual.”
Chilling confession. Honest, absolutely honest with him. He hadn’texpected the last, and realized he should have expected it. Probably ReseuneSec had its own supposedly current copy. Yanni had. Hell, there must be half a dozen copies floating about various offices.
“It’s mostly done in hand‑notes,” he said carefully. “I’d be surprised if not.”
“Not surprisingly,” she said, “I’ve skimmed it. A lot of cryptic notes, a personal code.”
“Not surprisingly,” he agreed.
She didn’t ask the obvious question. She was being very good. HisAri…was being very good. And had several questions, likely, questions that would set her on her own quiet search.
“We’re worried about Paul,” he said. “Grant is worried about Paul.”
She looked from him to Grant. Grant said, “I’ll let Justin do the talking.”
“I want a copy of the manual,” Justin said, “and I want Jordan and Paul not to know it.”
“You’ll have it ten minutes after I get home. Now, if you really want it.”
“It’s possible I can read his notes,” he said, feeling ashamed of himself the whole way, going behind Jordan’s back, offering to open up a system that might reveal other things. “I used to be able to.” If he gave her the translation of the notes, and she might demand them–it would be a Rosetta stone for the rest, for anything he’d encoded. Total key, to anything ReseuneSec currently couldn’t read. And he didn’twant to know the rest, and he didn’t want to betray Jordan, and he wantedto ask the best mind of this age and the last one what he could do to fix what was the matter with Paul–but doing that would open up everything to her. Not just the manual. All the notes. All Jordan’s work.
And Jordan was hellishly protective of his ideas, his work–and her getting her hands on Paul–it was Jordan’s nightmare.
“I’m going to ask you for it,” he said to her, “and let me see if I can read it. And I’m going to ask you–not to ask me for the shorthand he uses.”
A little silence ensued. Ari thought about it, and had another sip of coffee, one‑handed, this time, the other hand idle, elbow on chair arm…an attitude so, so like the first Ari that it chilled.
Eyes flicked up to his, and broke contact, self‑protective, keeping thoughts private, as she nodded. “All right.”
“Ari, it’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s what I owe him.”
“I won’t ask you another question,” she said. “And you know that’s hard for me.”
“If I can’t make sense of it,” he said, “I may come back to you.”
“You’re good.” she said, and oh, those eyes flickered like the activity‑LEDs on a processor. She was. Processing. “If you do need me, ask. But it’s all yours.”
“You’re a–”
“Justin, if you say ‘good kid,’ all bets are off.”
“A good human being,” he amended that, unspoken. “You are.”
“I like that.” She smiled somberly. “I take that one. Grant, am I a good human being?”
“You’re a fine sample of the born‑man sort,” Grant said, not too somberly. “Or you seem so to me. It’s beyond me to critique, beyond that.”
She smiled. The moment passed. She finished off the cooling coffee, and rotated her chair and poured herself another cup. “It’s a two‑cup morning. I’ve been so damn busy with the move I haven’t got a thing done on the last set. I read the last of it this morning. But I’ve got one I want you to look at.”
“It wouldn’t be Jordan’s, would it?” Justin asked.
She had her sip. “Actually, it is. He told you about it?”