“Thinking,” he said.
“Thinking good things or bad things?”
“I’m working on that,” he said. “I’m not going to let Jordan bring himself down. How long has it been since Paul took tape, I wonder?”
“Probably not in a long while.” Grant set a hand on his shoulder. “Justin. Mess with Paul and you’re taking a very large chance. He’s not stable. And you’re not his Supervisor.”
He shook his head. “I’m not. And he won’t trust me. But Paul’s storing tension the way a battery stores power. Paul’s not right. So Jordan’s not right. Jordan’s Worked Paul. But the conditions Jordan imagines to exist, don’t, so the world he’s made Paul live in–doesn’t exist. And Paul sees it. I think Paul sees it, and doesn’t know how to fix it.”
Grant considered that a moment. “That could be.”
“You have a sense of him.”
“I have an azi’s sense of him, which I think is accurate. Storing tension, very much so. But the wrong Intervention could do damage. Might lead to shutdown.”
Grant had been there. Grant had been through that. It was Grant’s own watershed experience, more so even than the sojourn with the Abolitionists.
“It’s a plan, at least. Jordan’s wound tight, protecting Paul. But he’s only adding to the tension. There’s a hell of a lot wrong in that relationship. They’re wound up together. I don’t know where to take hold of it. I don’t know I should, until the chance happens, until I know what Paul’s mental state is.”
“I can’t read him well enough,” Grant said. “The other night, the first night they were in the black and white apartment, Paul was dipping in and out of shutdown, just skimming it. Creating his own calm‑down.”
He remembered it. He’d taken it for overload–max stress, even on an alpha. Listening. But Grant intimated Paul hadn’t been listening, hadn’t been processing, hadn’t been recording, at certain intervals.
“That’s information,” he said. “Watch him. Watch him. See what you can figure.”
“I will,” Grant said. “Just–be careful with him.”
“I will,” he said.
He didn’t know if he could do anything, that was the thing. Real‑time work froze him up. It was a problem that Jordan might have given him, right along with the genes. The stress of it might even be Jordan’s problem, which Paul had absorbed. It was a damn interlock.
But he had to try. And, God, if Jordan caught him at it–
Hell didn’t half describe it. He wasn’tas important to Jordan as Paul was. He’d accepted that fairly unemotionally, since, in point of fact, Jordan wasn’t as vital to him as Grant was, and he knew which he’d choose.
Maybe he ought to–choose, that was. Go to Ari, tell her it wasn’t working, couldn’t work. Put Jordan back in Planys, give him something to do there, let him and Paul live their lives.
But he couldn’t do it. That was the hell of it. He was like Jordan, stubborn on an issue, and he had to try.
BOOK THREE Section 4 Chapter iv
JULY 20, 2424
1722H
The item alert was blinking on the screen, and Ari clicked it.
Mail alert,it said…some sender she’d specifically tagged to trigger the alert flasher, and that was a very, very short list.
She clicked again.
And her breath quickened. Cyteen Station in the sender line, Fargone Station as home address, via the merchanter Candide, docking in the last two minutes–a ship’s black box had just dumped its contents to Cyteen Station in orbit over their heads, and a longed‑for letter, at least one letter, had flown down the datastream to Reseune. Via protocols established in Alpha Wing, a reply to herletter opened the gateway, straight to Base One.
Click. Threeletters. One from Oliver AOX Strassen. Ollie was still alive.
One from Valery Schwartz. Her heart danced.
One from Gloria Strassen. That wasn’t so welcome. But she’d had to write to Gloria and to Julia just to be fair.
Discipline. Ollie outranked everybody. She read his letter first.
Dearest Ari,it said. Nobody called her dearest, but Ollie could. I received your invitation and very sympathetically understand the frame of mind in which you sent it, I do think. I remember you as Jane’s daughter, and with the utmost affection. But I must decline your kindness on several accounts.
First and most of all, Fargone is home, now. It was Jane’s home and mine, my best memories are here, and I have responsibilities that fill my time very usefully–ultimately useful to you, I hope.
Second, if things are going well for you, your direction is no longer Jane Strassen’s, but Director Finery’s, and you will be more comfortable in that role if I am not close by to prompt you to be that little girl again. I know you will be as intelligent as the great Dr. Emory, I hope you will be at least as wise, and I hope you will be good, but the meeting cannot satisfy me, or you. If I were still azi, that statement of logic would cause me no pain; but since I have become CIT, it has to pain us both. Let us remember those days as happy as they were, and keep that happiness in our mutual past, unchanged.
I must add one other matter: I know you have invited the Schwartzes and the Strassens to Reseune. I hesitate to be so blunt, but use caution. Jane’s relatives have been outspokenly bitter about their forced residency on Fargone: Valery Schwartz has grown up in close association with the Strassens. His mother is deceased, eleven years ago: a drug overdose which is inexplicable as an accident. Young Schwartz may or may not elect to accept your invitation: he is known here in the art community and has a reputation in deeptape experientials–an art which I have only lightly sampled, given my own character and origins. I am advised there are psychological considerations to prolonged exposure to these arts. Please use caution. I enclose files, in hopes you are surrounded by competent security–you surely must be, and I hope I know by whom.
Ollie had never met Florian and Catlin. He couldn’t have. Except the originals.
I do hope you are well, dear Ari. I hope the very best for you. I knew about love before I ever had the final tape, and I have been a very lucky man, to have loved Jane and to have loved you, as still I do.
It hurt. It stung her eyes, that last. She did understand why he said no. She expected a refusal from him, for many of the reasons he’d just given. But not–not quite that she was, in one sense, just an episode of his life, and that he’d valued a life where she just hadn’t been.
And she wasn’t too surprised about Gloria, who had been a brat, and who was still probably a petulant brat. And Julia–Julia was the one who’d had real reason to hate her, for displacing her and her baby and getting them both exiled to Fargone. That Julia had hated her and talked against her was no surprise, and not even unfair, in the balance of things. Ollie was just worried about her, was all, because he still loved her. It wasn’t as if Julia Strassen was going to launch some interstellar conspiracy against Reseune.
But the business about Valery’s mother, and Valery growing up with Gloria, of all people–that was just upsetting. She’d never heard that Valery’s mother had died. And he’d become an artist, of all things. She’d never guessed that, either. She’d never searched him up on the web, not wanting to go down that path and go longing after someone she couldn’t get back, and she’d never imagined he was halfway famous. It was the first she’d ever heard of who he’d become…and you needed clearance and funds to do a Universal Search, which Florian and Catlin hadn’t had when she’d sent those letters. She hadn’t asked Yanni, who could have done it–Valery was Yanni’s nephew, sort of, but so far as she knew, Yanni hadn’t ever bothered searching his niece up. Yanni had never said, for that matter, how he felt about having his relatives sent off to Fargone, all to bring Ariane Emory up in a bubble free of Valery Schwartz.
Had Yanni resented it?