“She’s becoming Ari,” he said. “We’re seeing it now. This may be the beta version, but this is power, not just wealth. This wing isn’t just decorated. If somebody did it for her, they know her. They painted herin this place. This is power. This just hits you in the gut.”
“In some ways,” Grant said, “she’s alpha azi–but with an emotional dimension I certainly don’t understand.” Grant’s eyes traveled up and around. “Then I see this place. The ceilings, way off scale. The way colors hit you. The waterfall in the living room–” His voice trailed off. Justin made the little caution sign. If they’d been bugged before, they were surely bugged now. “The waterfall is CIT. Pure CIT. But it’s pleasant.”
“The sky arch in the foyer. Like being outside. That’s a psychological difference, isn’t it?” He took the warning, took a deep breath. “Maybe a big difference in our Ari. Who knows?”
“I’m sure we’re going to find out,” Grant said.
“Are you all right here?” Grant asked him then, quietly. “Are you all right with this?”
Sometimes Grant functioned as hisSupervisor. He did a mental check. “I think so,” he said. It didn’t feel like home. It wouldn’t, for a while. “We had apartment design A. apartment design B, and C. And pick one of three, over in Ed. This is certainly something else, isn’t it?”
“It’s not black and white,” Grant said.
“You know what bothers me here? The black and white place was a place where we stayed. This one–this one just gets right under your skin, doesn’t it? I like the colors. Like the look. She read me. Read both of us, didn’t she? She did, or somebody sure did.”
“I’m not that difficult,” Grant said.
“That’s what you think,” he said, and thought about their growing up together, and thought about Jordan, who never, ever could get in here to see where his son lived.
Jordan. Step by step, he won’t like this, he won’t live with it, he’s going to blow, sooner or later.
He’s doing those sets knowing she’s going to check them, and there’ll be something wrong, because he’ll find out about this place, and it’ll eat him alive. He doesn’t like unknowns. Doesn’t like anything that’s been happening. And when she does take over–
“What are you thinking?” Grant asked.
“That Jordan’s going to be pissed about this arrangement.”
“We can’t fix it.”
“May be. But I’m a stupid, emotional born‑man and I want to fix it. And he’s a damned fool. He’s writing those sets. He’ll foul them in some particularly subtle way to try her. Just to try her. And if she bounces them back with no comment, he’ll just try again.”
“At least he has a focus,” Grant said, and that was true.
“I don’t think she’s shown anybody yet what she can do,” he said absently. “I don’t think she knows herself what she can do. Jordan’s going to try the limits. Hell, maybe it’s good for both of them.”
“Maybe,” Grant said.
“All those other numbers up and down the hall. And this is the third floor. Who else has she targeted, do you think? Who else decorates her universe?”
“Amy Carnath,” Grant said. “Sam Whitely. Probably Madelaine Strassen. –Maybe Yanni.”
“The kids. Yanni. And us. Oh, that’s going to be a well‑matched social set.”
“Yanni won’t want to move from where he is,” Grant said. “Yanni always seems to like things to stay the way they are.”
“Yanni’ll hit the roof if he gets home and she’s moved him. If he gets it. If he doesn’t get in on this–Yanni could be on his way back to the labs. God knows. I honestly hope not. He doesn’t deserve that kind of dealing.”
Upheaval in the whole world could be going on and they wouldn’t know. Except Ari had said they could know anything if they just asked. It didn’t seem that easy from here.
He got up off the bed and opened a closet. Their own plain clothing hung there, mostly brown, casual, out of place, looking lonely, a little worn and tired outside the offices they’d worked in.
What did they do for a living now? Where did they go from here? They had a new office downstairs, near, he supposed, a restaurant that was going to exist next week.
Where did they sit in the evening, in a living room with running water and no vid that he’d spotted with any casual glance?
What did they have in the fridge?
Probably what they’d had in it before, a saner thought informed him. The automations were probably loaded. He remembered the coffee dispenser in the Wing One office.
That would be good. Now they just had to find the damned kitchen.
BOOK THREE Section 3 Chapter v
JULY 3, 2424
1728H
Just cocktails, Ari had said, inviting the new residents for the evening reception in her apartment, and she knew if Sam and Justin and Grant were there it wasn’t going to be a wild evening, certainly not in the sense that the youngers had used to have wild evenings. They were all grown up now. They had outside interests. It was just a quiet drink shared among new neighbors, canapes and not even a very late evening.
And it went well. Amy showed up with Quentin– theywere a couple, everyone knew it, even if Quentin hung out with Grant and Sam’s Pavel and Yanni’s decidedly older Frank. Maddy’s Samara stood out like a fashion doll in that company; well, but so did Maddy, who’d arrived in a verypricy azure blue bodysuit with just the tiniest hint of white sparkle‑lights running at cuffs and collar. Maddy looked fabulous. Amy wore a nice black suit with an electric blue blouse, shocking and stylish contrast to her companion. Quentin, in his black uniform–bet that Maddy had had something to do with that, too. Patrick Emory showed up–he looked fairly cheerful, for cousin Patrick. He’d already spilled a drink on his coat, and had two more, and was getting a little loud, but he was family, and Ari felt responsible for him, not to leave him outside the way everyone had, even the first Ari. He had worked in Admin, in records, just quietly, forever, the same job, every day, and he did pretty well, by all she knew, though he had no relationships and never seemed to get any enjoyment out of life. His obsession was vids, and he would talk about them if you wanted to; and he always came to family parties.
Aunt Victoria Strassen hadn’t moved in: Aunt Vickie had her apartment over in Residential A. She sent a precisely written, neatly folded note that informed her niece that she appreciated the offer, but that she preferred her current residence and her old neighbors, and sent along a little box, which she called a housewarming gift. For Aunt Victoria, that was very, very considerate. It proved to contain a small carved plaque, which said, between sprigs of carved leaves, Family Matters. Probably Aunt Vickie had taken a bit of effort picking that out, to mean absolutely anything one wanted it to–particularly whatever Aunt Vickie meant, which might not be entirely polite, considering Vickie’s opinion of her origins. But Ari had Spessy hang it on the inner wall of the dining room, where it nearly matched the stone.
Justin and Grant showed up in brown knit and tweed–it set off Grant’s red hair and did absolutely nothing good for Justin. Set Maddy on him, was Ari’s wicked thought.
But she held back. She thought probably she’d pushed Justin just a little too far all in one day as it was, and figured if he’d wanted to stand out in the crowd, he might really have picked something other than that medium‑beige sweater and Harris tweed coat.
Truth was, he didn’t look particularly happy in being here, and mostly, nursing one drink, and surrounded by people twenty years younger than he was, he stayed close to Yanni, who himself stayed close to the cluster of azi–social, all of that lot of azi, more even than Florian and Catlin. The olders seemed more comfortable there, and with each other.