Her predecessor had, for example, prepped a cadre of azi to survive if some Alliance ship had taken out Cyteen Station and dropped a rock on Reseune itself. They were to get to the weathermaker controls and the precip towers, hold them if they could, otherwise go for the safety domes, take over by armed action, and run things, never mind any plan Defense had laid down. There were some alphas seeded into Novgorod, just for leaven in the loaf. They’d have children by now. Children would have CIT numbers, ultimately indistinguishable from the CITs whose ancestors had come down to earth from the station. If the average held true, the children were probably not geniuses. But she could track them down. A little computer work, carefully shielded, would be interesting–if she had the time to do that research. She didn’t. Her schedule said she was supposed to be doing math tape this afternoon. And she sat, muzzy‑headed, wishing she could take a day off from everything on her schedule.
The door to her study opened, quietly She took a sip of coffee and looked up at Florian.
“Sera,” he said. “He was willing. He did very well. Are you able to hear the report?”
That was a mental shift. A serious mental shift. Florian meant Justin. Willing meant Justin had done what they had talked about last night, she and Florian and Catlin. And she’d told him to report as soon as she was awake. She was intensely curious–too wide‑focused at the moment, but curious.
“Did it work?” she asked, shoving population dynamics and all the equations to the rear. What concerned Justin worried her, on a personal basis, and she didn’t like involving him in operations. “Did you learn anything?”
“Patil claimed not to know Jordan Warrick except by reputation. But she accepted the younger Warrick’s advisement that he has influence with you. I have the transcript. –Is this too early, yet, sera?”
She had a second sip of coffee, blinked at the headache between her eyes, and shook her head. “No. I’ll go over it. I want to. What are the details? How do you read it?”
“He invoked an investigation into your predecessor’s death, as if Jordan was seeking a new inquiry to be opened into that matter–his innocence established.”
She didn’t know why. She didn’t quite like the sound of that, granted Justin had had to improvise. Was it because that issuewas riding Justin’s subconscious, and that was what had surfaced in his mind? She was a little surprised, a little off put. But there was Jordan’smotive to question. He was a son of a bitch. But was he tryingto get Admin’s attention?
“Ser Warrick suggested that she and Thieu might be subjects of investigation because of the card and the connection to the elder Warrick.”
Which was even the plain truth, just a large enough dose of it to make it credible.
But the other matter hit her skull and rattled around unpleasantly before heading through her nerves, just an unsettling, undefined malaise. The question of Jordan’s innocence. Justin–the cause cйlиbre in suspicion falling on Jordan…a political firestorm if that case got raked over again in the media, taking public attention away from her before she’d had time to settle the image she wanted in public attention.
Deepstudy drug. Damn it.
“I ama little muzzy yet. I think I need to cut back the doses. Shouldn’t be lasting like this.”
“Forgive me, sera. You said–”
“I said tell me when I waked. And I ought to be awake. I amawake. I’m just a little disturbed by the direction he went.”
“Dr. Patil was about to end the conversation. He used that matter as a wedge.”
“What did she say then?”
“That she had no connection with Warrick Senior. And they concluded politely.”
“Someone provided her address to Jordan. Either he handed on a card the full significance of which he didn’t know, a total coincidence, or he did know.”
“In our opinion, the elder Warrick knew whose number that card was, and that she is currently important.”
“Do you think that is possibly his motive, that he wants vindication? Florian, whoactually sent Jordan to Planys?”
“Our indications are it was Yanni.”
“That’s what my own search turned up. Yanni held the keys. Always. During Denys’s tenure. Yanni held the keys to Jordan’s sentence. And it was primarily Yanni who protected Justin, when Giraud would have taken a harder line. All these things are true?”
“Our indications are that, yes. But, sera–”
She waited.
“If you’re not prepared to talk, sera…”
“I’m thinking quite clearly at the moment.” What the drug did, besides diminish the ability to reject a fact, was to lower the bars on partitioned information–make cross‑connections easier, if there was a shred of connection possible. It was like momentarily seeing the world from a plane window, disconnected from the land, but seeing all of it, every wrinkle, every canyon, every change of strata, how it all, all, all connected, even if it was too wide to remember once one was back on the ground. “I’m thinking quite clearly at the moment, Florian, thank you. I’m just a little deepstate. I’m sure you understand.”
“I do, sera.”
“I need to do something.” She was aware she was staring straight ahead, her eyes wide open. She knew the look: black centered, unfocused, focused everywhere, and nowhere in the real world. “I like him, Florian. I like Yanni. I really do. But I can’t have him running operations he doesn’t tell me about.”
“Should I take orders from you at this point?”
She was perfectly collected. She slowly moved her head from side to side. “No. You should not. I need about fifteen more minutes to get my head clear, Florian. I need a cold drink. Would you mind going and getting that? That’s a request, not an order.”
“Are you safe to leave alone, sera?”
“Perfectly safe. I’ll sit here and think. I’d like that drink, thank you. Something sugary.”
“Fifteen minutes, sera.”
She wasn’t surprised when, hardly a moment behind Florian’s leaving, Catlin quietly opened the door and came in.
“Sit down,” Ari said, still not focusing on anything but infinity. “I’m thinking a moment, Catlin. I know you’re there.”
Catlin subsided into a chair without a word. And Ari stared off into her thoughts.
Yanni. Yanni was a resource, and a problem. What he had done said nothing about his motives in doing it. Yanni had intervened in the past to prevent further assassinations, of the Warricks, in specific.
Yanni said he had concerns about Jordan in her bringing him back, and was searching for involvement in leaks in Planys, which had gotten to Corain and possibly to others, possibly by the same conduit. One man was relieved of his position. That didn’t mean there wasn’t another.
And possibly Yanni had put challenges in front of Jordan before this to find out how he might react. Possibly he was testing Patil herself, who had at least some connections to Jordan, through Thieu. He talked about putting the woman in charge of a world in its transformation, in the most Centrist‑friendly decision Reseune had taken in years: the woman had Centrist backing, a lot of Centrist backing, the same party that had taken up the cause of the Warricks’ plight as a case of political persecution–and called it a power grab by the Nyes.
True. It had been exactly that.
But the Centrists had, after Giraud’s death, attempted a brief but cuddly relationship with Denys Nye, seeing that Denys was not, after all, going to push the Expansionist agenda Giraud had espoused–not because Denys was Centrist, but because Denys Nye was on his own agenda and wouldn’t spend a cred on Ariane Emory’s projects.