It didn’t matter. Denys Nye and his personal guard were dead and past. They guarded against Jordan, knowing he couldhave killed the first Ari–that he had wanted to kill her, that was the salient point. They didn’t altogether understand Jordan Warrick: his actions sat deep in a very complex CIT psychology, a man so brilliant he was a Special, all but immune to the law. Sera said the long exile had made him angry, and the focus of that anger might be her existence, which had defined the term of his exile.
For their part, not understanding the man simply meant being on their guard against him. And they constantly were.
They didn’t understand Justin Warrick, either, though they knew him better–knew, for instance, that Justin Warrick had initially welcomed his father back to Reseune, and had disagreements with him. Justin himself had not been the one to apply for Jordan’s release from detention. It had been, in fact, sera herself who had brought Jordan back from exile, which brought a very dangerous man back into a place where he could be more dangerous, in their estimation. But sera had moved fast to get Jordan out of military reach, and out of the reach of any dissident attempt to contact him. There was a leak in Planys: they knew that. A leak could turn into an access for all sorts of mischief, from assassination to rescue: sera had been right.
But letting Jordan stay in Reseune now that things were tranquil had taken turns into CIT politics: a decision on sera’s part, possibly to avoid upsetting Justin.
Just wait, Ari had said, in discussing the matter. He’s not Justin. It’s the same geneset, but the first Ari changed Justin’s psychset. Jordan hated her for that.
Jordan had hated the first Ari well before she’d taken Justin. That was true, too. Jordan had briefly been the first Ari’s working partner, sharing ideas, sharing power.
Except, sera had said further, that neither of those two was of a nature to share anything. So the partnership had dissolved into a feud–more bitter on Jordan’s side than on Ari’s, in terms of overt anger, sera said; but not in terms of who had gotten in the first strike. The first Ari had converted Justin to her own design, appropriated Grant along with him.
Jordan wanted Justin and Grant back–two assets their own Ari very much wanted for herself.
That implied that there would inevitably be trouble in that quarter. And their Ari had chosen to live right beside Justin–kept him in her wing, all except his office staff, which he had clung to, and that was the reason Justin maintained his office over in Education.
Well, as of now, sera’s wing had Justin’s office, too, and the staff was gone. Now there was no actual reason for Justin ever to leave her highly secure perimeter and cross Jordan’s path…unless Justin chose to do that, which would be many fewer opportunities, and ones they could watch.
First on the list, they had to be sure Justin was comfortable in his new office, to keep him and sera happy.
And they could expect that Jordan was going to be furious when he found out in the morning that that office was shut and empty–and it could be all his, for what they cared. They had even left a request for Hicks to officially allow Jordan possession of that office, with staff, if he asked, a request it was likely for several reasons might go through. They smoothed things over, not willing to provoke the man by their own action: sera might not approve that.
Catlin keyed a screen up, saw Jordan and Paul standing in the living room of their apartment, Jordan with a drink in hand. There would be a record of that conversation. She could scan it visually faster than she could listen to it.
“ They’ve gotten to him,” was the only thing that truly leapt out of the current transcript. She took the reference as applying to Justin, and understood “they” to mean sera and her whole apparatus.
It was true. There was also nothing Jordan could do about it.
There was no reference to the card with the Novgorod number. Florian had set the card on the console and looked at the screen.
“Patil,” he said. “Dr. Sandur Patil, University at Novgorod.”
Catlin focused in on that. Sharply. “One of Yanni’s meetings in Novgorod‑was with that person. Sera has a list. I have Patil’s CIT number. I asked System for a bio.”
“Call it.”
She located the file.
Professor of Science, but under the Defense Bureau’s Secrecy Act. Lecturer in the Franklin Series, whatever that was. Expert in nanistics, and Catlin did know about that. It meant micro tags, stable and self‑mutating nanostructures. It meant a whole class of contraband for customs, and it was a bioweapon, besides its commercial uses in medicine and manufacture, which she had never looked up, but she sent out a search.
“Nanistics. I’m calling up references.”
Florian copied her screen to his console.
Nanistics, the information came back, was a course of study not banned from theoretical research or commercial use on Cyteen’s surface and on Cyteen Alpha Station, but all actual experimental work was done out at Beta Station, at the deep end of the solar system. There was a lab at Beta serving both Defense and Science. The science was used on Cyteen, in Reseune, mostly in medical or agricultural research, or in the manufacture of carefully selected exotics, particularly in replication of Earth or Pell goods.
And a cross‑search with Patil involved university offerings, lectures, Paxer and Abolitionist attendance. Nanistics and Patil had been a major part of the terraforming project, now canceled: the Preservation Act had excluded certain types of bionanistics from Cyteen surface. Bionanistics and Patil wound through the list.
The inquiry rapidly developed side branches. A lot of them.
Right now the words of interest were clearly nanistics, Patil, Planys, and Warrick, any two of those words in association, and that search had produced one other warning flag:
More information is available from 1381 sources requiring higher base. 142382 sources are in Library behind gateway access. Proceed? Y/N…
Base One, sera’s base, could cross that threshold. It warned when it was about to go somewhere securitied, and it didn’t leave footprints in System. But it would draw a lot of securitied information into their office, and that was worth a little hesitation.
No, Catlin decided. But: “Interesting,” Catlin said. “Patil is someone Yanni was talking to. He told sera they were going to terraform a world called Eversnow, and it’s not public knowledge. He was talking to Dr. Patil.”
And Florian asked: “How did Jordanknow Yanni was meeting with her?”
BOOK ONE Section 2 Chapter i
APRIL 26, 2424
0500H
Giraud and his two companions grew fast this week.
The organs were present–just barely starting to function inside the body cavity, largely visible through transparent skin. Fingers had discernable nails. The yolk sac had gone. Blood functioned to feed the cells.
The babies were mostly head at this point, because brains–very high order brains–were developing fast. Nerves were growing out from the spine. Arms had wrists and elbows. Underdeveloped legs kicked, a function of those newly active nerves. Giraud and his two companions weighed only a quarter of an ounce apiece, but they had some distinction as human.
They were becoming, was what. They were becoming what they could be.
BOOK ONE Section 2 Chapter ii