“Giraud.”
“Who hated him. And what the Nyes did to him was make him afraid for Paul.”
He stared off across the room, seeing–seeing Giraud, and one of those small nasty rooms. Terror, when he didn’t know where Grant was.
“You think he’s lying about starting work again?”
“He may try. He may be trying. Or he may be trying something else. You’re the great unanswered question to him. More than she is. He thinks he knows what sheis; and he’s likely wrong; and the fact he might actually see that is going to frustrate him more, because he can’t prove what he thinks is true, is actually true. You completely frustrate him. You’re supposed to behim, never mind he took the one step, reining in your very nicely adrenalized temper, that assured you neverwould be him. It’s always amazed me how intelligent born‑men, designers, can flux that far, that they can do something they know absolutely flies in the face of the result they want to get, and never expect it not to work out the way they want. If I designed an azi set like that, what would you tell me?”
“That it’s a conflict.”
“Beyond a simple conflict, born‑man. It’s a roaring great deep set/ psychset mismatch.”
He heaved a breath, found himself mentally shying away from the concept of going after Jordan with the same energy Jordan used on him–because, dammit, he knew that would be a blowup to end all blowups. “It’s beyond a simple conflict. It’s that two Jordans can’t occupy the same space. Neither could two Aris. Psychogenesis works if one of the participants is dead.”
“Please don’t go that far.”
“You’re saying it’s irresolvable.”
“That the temper is there. That you either defuse it so it doesn’t bother you at all, or you and he will continue to go at each other over the most minor of differences.”
“That’s grim.”
“I, however, have faith in you,” Grant said. “You’re betterthan he is and you have no need to prove it to him. Just don’t let him suspect it, is all. He’s competitive, if you’ve missed that.”
“But how can I livewith him?”
“That,” Grant said, “is going to be a lasting problem.”
He didn’t sleep well. He lay staring at the water‑rippled ceiling, trying to find some null point in the fractal patterns, but his mind was awake and racing.
He laid out mental patterns for a living. He cured azi problems, when something had gone wrong. He’d never cured his own, which was that gut‑deep knot that happened when he got into an argument. He’d always assumed, assumed, because that was the watershed point of his life, that the first Ari had set that into him, a flinch away from anger.
But Grant had handed him a key, a memory that hadn’t been that significant, until he recalled–past the towering dark of that night in Ari’s apartment–that Jordan hadtold him that, the day he gave him Grant for his own responsibility.
Responsibility.
Hostage. With the very proper advice that he couldn’t let his temper go again, not with Grant.
Possibly Jordan had given him that responsibility completely cold‑bloodedly, seeing it as a way to win the argument with a matching temper, which had been, admittedly, out of control. Jordan reined it in for Paul. He had to for Grant. It was symmetrical, wasn’t it?
God, he thought. There was a saying in Reseune, that a designer with himself for a patient was a damned fool. There was a reason there was a psych overseeing psych operators. There was another saying among designers, to the effect that CITs were a guaranteed bitch‑up. He’d had Jordan’s temper. He’d traded it for a gut‑deep knot; and Jordan didn’t get mad at Paul–Jordan just made Paul suffer the effects of Jordan’s getting mad at everybody else–of Jordan’s getting mad at himself, very possibly, but mostly just battering himself against anything that opposed him. No compromise with the universe. Jordan was a Special, a certified genius at what he did, but Jordan had reached a point with a seven‑year‑old where he’d couldn’t win the fight. So he’d just shut it down.
And Ari, with her own very active temper, had gotten hold of that situation and jerked it sideways…with much more cold calculation, and more accuracy, maybe, than Jordan had been capable of using. He’d had a brain. His ideas had been fairly well out‑there. Jordan had a habit of getting impatient with his what‑ifs and shutting them down, hard. Damned nonsense, was what Jordan called his ideas. Ari had called them interesting.
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to control the immediate visuals. Trying to shut Ari down and get Jordan in some kind of perspective, as not a bad man–just a hard‑headed one who’d tried to steer him into a Jordan‑esque path.
And God knew what Jordan’s own upbringing had been–a father brusque, emotionally shut down, very much on facts as he interpreted them to be, he had gotten that impression, at least, of the man who was, in a sense, his real father, since he was Jordan’s, mother–there had been, obviously, since Jordan himself wasn’t a clone, but nobody that had stayed; maybe nobody who’d even been there, people who died in the early days–sometimes left legacies in lab. Ended up being the gene donors for the foundational azi lines Jordan’s mother could have been cells in a dish, for all the record he’d ever laid hands on.
Didn’t make him unhappy, in the sense that he’d always been just as content to be like Grant, who was fairly perfect, in his eyes, both motherless and fatherless. He’d always been content to be Jordan’s Parental Replicate. But it was a question, whether if there’d been another influence in Jordan’s growing up, if Jordan would have grown up with a little doubt that one truth covered everything in the universe.
Jordan got the flaw from his father; Jordan tried to replicate himself, that was the damned key. Jordan hadn’t started with the concept of a kid who’d have his own notions–Jordan had tried to trim off any bits that didn’t match him…had fixed him on Grant, the way he’d fixed on Paul, only in that household there’d been room for only one personality, and nobody could argue with it.
CIT. Designer. And thorough bitch‑up. No question. Ari could stand him off temper for temper. But she hadn’t been able to work with him.
She’d conned him, was what. She’d conned Jordan into the whole concept of a psychological replicate, then snatched the result and did a job on it.
He lay there, totally null for a moment, asking if it really hurt as much as it once had. Thinking that–if not for Ari–he’d have made Grant into Paul.
Which couldn’t happen, because Grant wasn’t Paul. And she’d gotten Jordan to accept Grant, because it was so damned hard to getan alpha companion, and the labs had had only one–that she’d created, knowing right then and there what should have been so, so clear to Jordan–that Grant wasn’t Paul. Grant wasn’t compliant. Grant was a fine, fine piece of work, who had taken his own path and already begun to drag a young born‑man sideways. Jordan might have laid down Grant’s early programs, but not his absolute earliest, preverbal ones; and beyond that–Grant had just–self‑directed. Psychologically, endocrine level and all, stable as they came, and an intellect that might well get beyond him.
Ari’s best. Ari’s near‑last project, right along with the design that would replicate herself. Thank God for Grant. Thank Ari.
He just had to think what to do about Jordan.
And maybe he had to be a damned fool, and do a bit of work on himself, try to unwire that clenched‑up anger, and figure out where to send the adrenaline rush Jordan provoked in him. Just thinking about it set him off. And set him to work.
Calm down, first. Take the energy out of it. Find a place to put it. Don’t shut it down. That makes the knot. Find a place to use it.
Create. Think. There’s energy in flux. There’s creative potential in things that don’t match.
Grant turned over. “Are you still awake?”