His eyes, completely colorless as yet, had begun moving, simple languid muscle twitch, behind sealed lids.
When he was born he would have a restless blue gaze, noting this, noting that, until those eyes fixed, and then one had better take care, even when he was a little boy.
He was nearly halfway to birth, which was scheduled for November 20.
But right now Giraud didn’t see a thing.
BOOK THREE Section 3 Chapter ii
JULY 1, 2424
0928H
I went to see Giraud today. He’s at twenty weeks, and about halfway toward, his birthdate. I don’t know why I went–or I’m reluctant to admit it, but things in the house have changed so drastically that I just wanted to get him in view again and use my brain about him, not my emotions.
He’s just a baby. He’s even gotten to look pretty well like a human being, and I halfway felt guilty about stopping Denys. I’m sure someday he’ll ask about his brother.
And I worry about what I’ll have say to him to explain it. He’ll feel a sense of loss, even for something he didn’t have.
It wasn’t Giraud who really shaped me, after alclass="underline" it was Denys. It was definitely Denys that tried to kill me, and I’m reasonably sure he killed the first Ari, but I’m still trying to prove that, and I don’t know what the balance is.
Do I have to do to them what they did to me. Do I have to create a mess of an infant’s life to create a man to make a mess of your early life? I’d rather not.
And what if I live as long as the first Ari or longer, and the Giraud I created gets too old and dies, and they have to start over with a new baby Giraud right before you’re born? It’s all crazy. Making everybody all match is going to be impossible if they go on replicating people whenever they die, and so far they’re not saving us all up and starting the eldest first, so it’s going to get all scrambled about the timeline. Giraud might drown in the river before he’s forty. And then where will we be? Again, a total mismatch.
It’s absolutely crazy–and I’m the one–and you’re the one–the universe has to have continually at work, fast as we can.
So I officially give up trying to make things as exact as I was. I know it’s not possible. I don’t think it’s altogether necessary: I hope that it isn’t. The medics were going in blind when they used to take the first Ari’s constant tests and bloodwork and make mine fit her profile in any given week I was due for a major new tape–shooting me full of hormones. Now we have me for a test subject, and Dr. Peterson is writing up the work they did, matching my learning with what I was working on, and with what I needed to be working on. So that will tell us some relevance between hormonal state, particular tape, and test scores.
With Giraud, we know what he studied, and when he studied it, and we’ll still play games with his blood chemistry to make sure he has his brain on line when he studies certain things, but I don’t honestly think it has to be week by week, and I don’t think it has to be that tightly on schedule or sequence: I think the main thing is whether the brain is going to be totally fluxed and doing freethinking with, say, art, or whether it’s going to be absorbing facts on a given tape where facts, fast and exact, are what you want.
Besides, I’m not going to do to Giraud Two what Giraud One’s mother did, which was bear down on Giraud hard to be a genius. Denys was, Giraud wasn’t, and she couldn’t change that. I’m pretty sure she didn’t do Denys any good by coddling him: he could be as odd as he liked and she excused it. She was always hard on Giraud. And when she died he took over being hard on himself. That is a key to what he was, and I’ve got to think about that one in his setup.
I’ve arranged for Yanni to take Giraud: he hasn’t exactly said yes, but I just don’t see him refusing at the last moment, and it’s just a few months to go. And Yanni didn’t say anything when I said I’d backed out of creating Denys. I know he thinks something about it, but he’s not easy to read. I’ve found that out. I don’t think he really wants either of them. He knows he’s going to get Giraud. But I think he feels something about Denys and I can’t get a straightforward answer out of him. He says I know’ what others don’t and I’ll make up my own mind.
Well, I still have seven years to talk to Yanni about it. I don’t want to have Denys back and forth, but I didn’t destroy his geneset. I just sent it back to deep storage.
Maybe it would be a little less crazy if I just threw up my hands and declared everything had to follow program as close as possible, and Denys had to become a thorough bastard and have a maman who was as‑crazy as the originals’ was.
If I admitted that it’s entirely nurture, or the lack of it, that wakes up the genes, then everything and anything is justifiable.
But I’ve gone off my program, marginally, and I’m still pretty good.
And Giraud helped in that: the first Giraud did. He turned downright fatherly with me, warning me, trying to guide me toward survival, even while Denys was probably telling himself if I got too close to taking over too soon, he’d kill me without a qualm. I have to wonder if Giraud picked up on that, and tried to hit some middle ground between Denys killing me and my killing Denys. And instead, Giraud died.
It probably wasn’t all sweetness and fatherly feeling on Giraud’s part. He’d probably been worried about Denys doing something to foul up everything Reseune had worked for, for very selfish reasons. Denys could be selfish like that, if Giraud didn’t step in and fix things.
And if I create Denys, Denys could be like that again, if he turned out to be really Denys: utterly disagreeable, and utterly self‑centered, lost in his own world. It may be there’s something in Denys’s brain that made that happen, and it could be genetic, essential to what made him a genius.
Poor Giraud was just Giraud and I don’t think a little kindness will really hurt him. His end‑of‑life change of mind very likely was sincere–I figured that out, trying to plan for a maman for Giraud, and I just can’t come up with one. There was that critical a difference between the two brothers.
And Denys, if he had had one strong emotion in his head, wanted him reborn, wanted, himself reborn, so, so much–wanted himself with Giraud. Not because he loved Giraud, I’ve come to think, because so much about him was sociopathic, but because, to him, Giraud was part of himself, part of his all‑important existence. One of the things that drove Denys to try to kill me might have been a fear that, when I took over, I might abort Giraud, in one sense or the other–either physically or psychologically.
And, oh, Denys knew by then he hadn’t won any favors of me, and I suppose I should, have kept my feelings a little more secret. Denys had wanted. Giraud back so desperately.
But Giraud had never been just for Giraud. That was the difference a little love had made, and Giraud might have interpreted their mother’s hammering away at him as a kind of love–in his own way, he might have taken it for that. Giraud was, of the two, far more the wild card. Giraud would attach, sooner or later.
If I knew I had a sister who wasn’t reproduced, I’d feel deprived, wouldn’t I? And knowing it would fester, and turn toxic in the process…so maybe I’m wrong. I won’t know. I won’t know for a few years. I’ll see if Giraud asks the question.