“Has sera asked after me?”
“She knows where you’ve been all day. She’s very busy in her studies, but she approves of what we’ve done.”
“Good.” He pulled her close, bestowed a weary kiss on the forehead. She wasn’t thattired, that that didn’t get a reaction. But she stayed tracked, business first. “There was an interesting development on my side today.”
“Oh?”
“Justin called me. Called us. He wanted to know what was on the card. He wanted to distance himself from that inquiry. But he also wanted to know.”
The penalty of interesting information. Florian pushed her back enough to look at her eye to eye. “Curious about the card, is he?”
“Curious and worried. He’s conflicted. He wants to know and he doesn’t want to know. On my own judgment, I told him about the Novgorod doctor to see what his reaction would be, and also to warn him about the nature of the danger. He didn’t know her, not even by name. I ran the clip of his call for sera to hear it.”
“Interesting,” Florian murmured. “And what did she say?”
“Much the same. She found it interesting.”
Hands moved. And stopped. “Do you think sera’s going to call me tonight?”
“Definitely she won’t,” Catlin said. “She skipped supper again and went straight into deepstudy.”
“She shouldn’t do that.”
“I said so, too. She said she’d have a big breakfast in the morning.”
“She’s pushing herself again. It’s not good.”
“It’s not good,” Catlin agreed. “I think she feels we’re in danger. I think she suspects something she can’t identify, the same as us.”
“What’s Unusual?” Florian said. It was the old game, the childhood game. Find the change. Find the anomaly. Find the problem.
“Jordan,” she answered. “Jordan being in Justin’s old office.”
“The card.” He tossed the list of Unusuals back. “Yanni. This Dr. Patil. The new colony. The new wing. The new township. Am I missing anything?”
“I think,” Catlin said, “that the card fits Jordan. Jordan wanting Justin to get caught. Justin giving us the card and being angry at Jordan. Justin calling me this afternoon.”
“Sera studying late,” Florian said, “night after night. She doesn’t feel she’s ready. Or she’s looking for something.”
“Yanni coming to dinner, right after his trip to Novgorod. Talking about Eversnow. Which Patil is going to run. Connection.”
“Hicks suddenly giving us all this staff. Which he was prepared to do before I walked in. Which meant he could have prepared to do it before the card ever came up–or only afterhe knew about the card he didn’t have–yet–until I gave it to him. Does the card show him some specific danger? Or is he trying to plant a spy on us, by giving us this staff?”
“Sera pulling Justin into the Wing,” Catlin said. “She didn’t even exit the Wing to talk to Yanni. Yanni came here to talk to her–so she’s still regarding our warnings–but she pulled Justin inside our perimeters.”
“She may be going out of the Wing more often than the last couple of months, if we have this new security staff,” Florian said. “That exposes her to danger. Would Hicks want that?”
“We’re about to have domestic staff down in prep,” Catlin said. “That’s an exposure.”
“Hicks seemed to relax once he had the card. He seemed more friendly. That’s an emotional assessment. He’s a born‑man. He has authority, despite what we hear about the office. And he is cooperating.”
“So what do we conclude?” Catlin asked. “That something’s moving, one. Jordan’s stirred up, Justin is, ReseuneSec is, that’s two. And we still don’t know what Eversnow and Patil have to do with anybody.”
“Something’s moving,” Florian agreed, “and once we have more staff, sooner or later sera’s going to be going outside the perimeter we’ve established.”
“We’ve just got to watch out for her. It’s all we can do.”
“And follow up on Justin and this card.”
“Sera won’t like it,” Catlin said. “But we have to.”
“Justin Warrick is the one piece we canmove. We have to. Or we have to ask Yanni about Patil and the card, and I don’t think he’ll tell us the truth.”
“Do you think Hicks will tell us the truth, once he has an answer about the card?”
“Emotional assessment. No. Not for free. So I don’t want to ask, officially, not while we don’t know who talked to Jordan, and why he gave Justin that card.”
Catlin heaved a sigh and put her arms around him. He put his around her. They had sex, purely a tension‑reliever, mutual release, mutual pleasure. Afterward Catlin said, side by side on the same pillow:
“At least we’ll have help on staff.”
“We’ll have more to do for a while, watching the watchers. Being sure Hicks isn’t our problem.”
“Good news, if he is being honest. And if his staff is. And we know there’s danger outside. But we’ve been shut in the Wing so long there’s risk of sera losing touch with outside. Isolating herself from Reseune–from Novgorod–she can’t afford that. She has to go outside sooner or later. That’s coming. We just have to be sure of our own staff. That’s basic.”
“True.” He shut his eyes and relaxed with his partner, a long sigh flowing out of him. They could rest, the few hours of someone else’s watch–Marco and Wes took the night shift in the Wing One office. Those two, they could trust.
They did know at least Justin Warrick was safer than he had been, thanks to them getting him into a new office.
The question was whether they might have opened another window for an attack on sera, by letting Justin in–and yet another by accepting Hicks’s offer. There were very many, very skilled people they were letting into the wing.
Catlin objected to things. Catlin was always suspicious, and Catlin had agreed with him in this. He wished she’d seen a major problem up front…because the transition to outside made him very, very uneasy.
BOOK ONE Section 3 Chapter i
MAY 1, 2424
2000H
Eleven weeks, and Giraud, and Abban AB, and Seely AS would each one easily fit in the circle of an adult’s thumb and forefinger, and that was after the latest growth spurt. They didn’t weigh as much as a lab mouse. But their bones were forming, and their teeth were starting. They had the beginnings of a breathing apparatus, that floor of the rib cage, the diaphragm, which prepared them to draw breath. They were transparent, full of blood vessels, paths for the blood which had definite structure. Their fingers and toes were starting to grow in length. Legs grew longer. And they moved their whole bodies. They stretched, widely, and often, asserting their presence in the world.
BOOK ONE Section 3 Chapter ii
MAY 1, 2424
2123H
I’m different than the first Ari, young Ari, so far as I can figure, in one very major way: it was her Maman who drove her so hard, not Denys Nye, and she never loved her mother. I had Jane Strassen to take care of me, and I loved her very much. I expected to love people. The first Ari didn’t. The first Ari was very much solo throughout her life, but I have my friends, and I even liked Giraud Nye at the last–and he protected me, though I don’t think I’ll ever forgive Denys–my Denys, remember. Don’t let my feelings prejudice yours. Maybe your Denys will turn out nicer. Until I meet him, I won’t know.