Chin on hand, she contemplated that scenario.
ReseuneSec. An azi that had served the first Ari, now with Ollie. Other azi, who had never served Ari, at Beta, in Novgorod. And now she got one, in Hicks’ goodwill gift to her.
If it were the first Ari’s programming, she’d surely have had the finesse to vet the geneset and the psychset of her spies–piece of cake for Ari One. Someone of lesser ability, on the either hand, might have stuck with the first success and built spies like production items…then managed to get his favorite number assigned hither and yon.
Maybe the same person had moved BR‑280 out, fast, with all the others, after the first Ari’s death. To have killed 280 withFlorian and Catlin might have drawn attention to him and his history, and all the others.
She drew in a slow breath.
Hicks could, if he worked at it, reprogram a beta. But Hicks hadn’t been in office, them.
God, this was archaeology. Everything was buried.
First logical query was to be sure the Regis base’ program was identical to Rafael’s, and that all the others were. Base One filched that manual from deep, deep storage–Reseune never erased a manual. Any version of it.
Beyond ten minutes. Joyesse came back, a little diffident.
“I apologize,” Ari said. “This isn’t finished yet. Tell cook I am so sorry. Another twenty minutes. Staff should have their supper.”
Joyesse left. And she let the computer sift through that mountain of material, which took only one of those minutes. It flagged no difference at all.
So BR‑280 was the same as 281. That meant the window for that special routine had always been there in that mindset. And possibly that same routine, which wasn’tin the manual–illegal as hell–had indeed existed in 280. She couldn’t lay hands on 280 to find out, not easily. But she’d bet 280 reported to Hicks…who hadn’t been in charge of ReseuneSec long enough to have set it up that way.
Giraud had been. It had been Giraud’s office.
Oh, lay bets on Giraud. Therewas the mind that might have done it. Hicks had only been number two to Giraud. Hicks might not even have known. But he’d very likely known the special use of the BR‑28 series. And he’d seen to it that one got into her unit.
If that was true, then the Nyes still had tentacles threaded through ReseuneSec, and, through ReseuneSec, into all sorts of places. The dead man’s hand was still on the controls. His programs persisted into the next regime, still on Giraud’s orders.
Thank you, Uncle Giraud. Dear Uncle Giraud. You could so easily have done it to Rafael and all his kind, and the labs are still producing them. You’d do that for Denys, to be sure he got information he wouldn’t know how to chase. You’d do anything for Denys. You set it up so Denys would get his information even if you weren’t there. And the BR‑28s are just the set I know about.
I know one thing, at least. You laid traps you neglected to tell me about. Denys was still alive, and you wouldn’t betray him. I understand that. And I understand Denys was protecting me. But you ended up putting me in danger to give Denys that little advantage in keeping power, because youdidn’t tell me there was anything like this buried in ReseuneSec.
And that makes me just a little mad, Uncle Giraud.
So now I know what you did, and what your mindset is capable of in your next incarnation, toward my successor…all sorts of betrayal, for the one you’re protecting. And I see very well how your own mindset arrived at the notion of this compulsion to report. You made it your own mirror. You so liked information. You never trusted any of your own subordinates. I’ll bet you even planted one on Hicks. On your own second‑in‑command. I’ll bet if I went over his beta assistants, I’d find one with a block very much like that. I bet you did some very special work on that one other azi. And ten of the BR‑28’s?
Oh, that was wicked, Uncle.
But now I do know.
And solving Rafael’s problem, I know what to do about you.
Denys doesn’t need, to be born. Just you do. Just you, to be fixed, on me, Uncle, the way you fixed on Denys.
Denys has just become irrelevant.
Good. That makes me happier. I’m sorry about it, simultaneously, and I wish I didn’t have to, but I think we’re both going to be happier in the long run.
She prepared a letter to Yanni–just in case Yanni had gotten wind of her activity with her new, Hicks‑provided staff. Yanni might be guilty as sin in the first Ari’s death–at least in the cover‑up and blaming Jordan part of it. Yanni might know exactlywhat Giraud had been up to, infiltrating ReseuneSec, ReseuneSpace at Fargone and Beta–and if he did know, and he’d been letting that happen, and not telling her, he was on the verge of becoming irrelevant, too.
Dear Uncle Yanni,she wrote, with a little pain in her heart.
I turned up something. And fixed it, so you know. I think you should be aware. I leave it to you whether to tell Director Hicks his own staff may have a problem. Be discreet. You know what your lines of honest communication are.
Then the stinger:
Please include me in them from now on.
BOOK THREE Section 2 Chapter i
JUNE 11, 2424
2158H
Giraud’s eyes had been changing position slowly. By this seventeenth week they had moved all the way onto the front of his face, so he was much more Giraud than he’d ever been.
He’d gained weight–hadn’t kept up with Abban in size, but was about the same as Seely. He not only twitched to stimuli this week, his bones had begun to harden out of the tough cartilage that earlier comprised his skeleton, and his joints, responding to muscle twitches, had begun to flex and move in a way they would do for the rest of his life.
He’d also gained a new sense: he had actually heard the maternal heartbeat that had timed his life…he heard it when a tech dropped a pan: he couldn’t tell it was different than taste or smell–every stimulus was the same to him, but he reacted, the way a plant might react. His newly functioning joints moved.
His sense of hearing would grow more acute as time passed, but Seely’s would be extraordinary, an asset, in Seely’s future profession.
And something else had changed, radically so, for Giraud. He was solo now. His brother Denys’ sequence number had been active in the birthlab computer until just last week, a soft scheduling that would have let it go to implementation on any given day. That data and that material had gone back to deep storage, the CIT number dumped from lab files, officially disconnected from Giraud’s, so even if he looked, someday, he might find it hard to find his brother until his Base was significantly higher than the lab’s.
Denys might yet be born. There was seven years yet to change that back without deviating from program…seven years had been the gap between the brothers. But for now that data had quietly slipped deep into storage, with no extant string to pull it out. That would have to be rebuilt.
A subsequent generation might change its mind about connecting Denys to Giraud, having both of that set.