Ari’d died…and it wasn’t suicide. He’d never liked the suicide notion. Too much had been left unfinished.
If it hadn’t been Jordan, it had been Abban. Basic question of opportunity.
Giraud wouldn’t have ordered it. Without Giraud, Abban wouldn’t have done it–that part of the equation had never made sense to him. But it had never made sense, either, that Jordan had done it. Abban was the one with capability andopportunity.
Abban had been upset. Giraud had been upset. Upset had been contagious in the halls in those days after Ari had died. The whole universe had been in upheaval, and for several months after Ari had died, Giraud had been on a hair trigger and so had Abban. You didn’t question Giraud in those days. Secretaries had run scared and Denys himself had said, “Don’t talk to him. He doesn’t want to talk.”
In days when they’d had the vital job of getting the psychogenesis project going and they’d desperately neededto talk… Giraud hadn’t been outstandingly well‑composed.
Settling into the new job, he’d thought. And mourning a woman he’d greatly regarded. Giraud had been loyal to Ari, he’d stake his life on that.
So Abban couldn’t have done it–could he?
But if Abban had done something that hurt Giraud–there was a little reason for upset in that household, wasn’t there? Abban’s own origins were in green barracks, never shipped out, never left Reseune: hehad no questionable background. He’d been with Giraud from childhood. Giraud had changed offices; taken Abban with him into Admin; Hicks had already taken over Kyle.
Everything changed when Ari died. He saw it like a chessboard, all the pieces suddenly, massively, shifted on the board: white had castled‑up, and young Ari had been a mote in a womb‑tank for a whole, mostly peaceful nine months. Once that had happened, Giraud had settled–as if the universe was right again.
“What are you thinking?” Frank asked him finally.
“That Abban never could have killed Ari,” he said, “no more than Jordan could. Unless.”
“Unless,” Frank said.
“Unless he believed it was in Giraud’s interest.” he said. “Maybe somebody told him that. And then, in the aftermath, maybe he knew it wasn’t as true as he thought it was–at least in the immediate effects. Giraud’s upset would have been hard for him to take. A very, very upsetting thing.”
“He was an alpha,” Frank said. “He could put himself back together.”
“And he had a rationale. Giraud was walking wounded. But he’d protected Giraud from some unspecified danger. Now he had to take care of Giraud. So he did that, didn’t he? But nobody ever took care of Abban. Abban couldn’t tell Giraud what he’d done. And the week Giraud died he went into Denys’s care, and nobody ever took care of Abban.”
Frank looked upset. They’d known one another, Frank and Abban, worked together. They’d remarked, oh, more than once, how it was a damned lie that Denys was capable of handling Seely, let alone Abban, when Abban came over to him. They both knew about Denys’ alpha certificate, which was fake as they came. Abban had needed immediate help when Giraud died, and Denys–Denys had gotten notions in his head about staying in power and nobody touched Abban.
He’d sent Abban after Ari, and Abban was already messed up. “Killing the same woman twice,” he said to Frank, “and the first having been a mistake, that’s got to have rung clear to his deep sets. Nasty, nasty piece of business.”
“Nobody ever felt sorry for Abban,” Frank said. “But he wasn’t right, then. He really wasn’t right when he did that.” A moment later Frank said, “All those years with Denys–Seely wasn’t in that good shape, either.”
“More than that,” Yanni said, “if Giraud didn’t order Abban to kill Ari–Abban wouldn’t go out on his own. He had orders. And if they weren’t from Giraud, maybe they weren’t from Denys, either. That notion’s always bothered me. Denys wasn’t ableto order that, not while Giraud was alive. That order came from somewhere else…a decision that Ari had been around long enough. Knowledge that she was already dying. That it would only shorten her life a year…and notlet her finish arranging things herself. It would throw the decisions all to Giraud.”
“Kyle,” Frank said.
“Kyle, and the ones directing him,” Yanni said. “Defense. She’d yanked Jordan out of negotiations with them and brought him home, she was working just maybe too close to sensitive areas, on the verge of finding out just who’d been exacerbating Jordan’s discontent–setting him up, if you want my opinion, to land on the radical side of things. He’d been corresponding with the Paxers. With the Abolitionists, as it turned out, though I think it came as a shock to him when he found it out. And Ari took measures to be sure Justin didn’t go down his father’s route. I think she was on the track of something that could have become very uncomfortable for Kyle’s managers… I think they knew she was close to dealing with it. And Hicks went on meeting with Defense; and Kyle was right with him.”
“Kyle got his instructions there,” Frank said.
“Exactly. Tell me. Would youtake instruction from another azi?”
“I don’t know,” Frank said. “I can say I wouldn’t, but if the keys were there…who could say he wouldn’t.”
“And Abban was Giraud’s,” Yanni said. “And Kyle was, at the time. Totally inside the walls. Damn, that’s a nasty scenario.”
“In a way, Ari caught it,” Frank said. “It took the next Ari to do it. Suppose there was something in the first Ari’s notes–suppose the first Ari put her onto it? Or did she figure it out?”
Yanni thought about it, thought about the way things had been going, and slowly shook his head. “I think if the first Ari had known, she’d have moved on Kyle faster than you could blink and she’d have had Giraud’s help doing it. I think our little Ari has come up with this one on her own. Damned clever of her. There’s only one thing wrongwith her scenario.”
“That being?”
“She’s just told Defense she knows what their game is. She just stopped it.” Yanni looked toward the gray view again, the towers beside the sea, the towers that were Science, and Defense, Trade, and State. The other five–Citizens, Information, Industry, Internal Affairs and Finance–were just out of view. So was the tower that constituted the capitol itself, Cyteen’s Senate Building, and the tower that held the Council of Nine, the Senate, and if the dividing wall were folded back, the Council of Worlds.
He could call down the heavens. If he wanted to let havoc loose, he could gather all his evidence of assassination and espionage and take it to the Nine and lay it before the Council of Worlds–but Ari was right: it was getting dangerous. As things stood, it was a major risk for him just to take a car to the airport, and he wasn’t sure he’d survive to get there. It was a risk to go to Science, a risk for Jacques to come here. Damn the girl, she’d upset the whole government at a critical moment, maybe because it seemed to the kid like a good move–
Or maybe because she wasn’t the little girl any longer. She might be doing everything precisely to get a jump ahead of the opposition because she had reason to think there was diminishing time to do it. What had she said, that the explosion might have been a signal, to those who knew, that it was time to move?