She shut her bedroom door behind her. Locked it. She felt a Mad coming on, though she wasn’t sure yet at what. Maybe at Yanni: she couldn’t trust him enough. Maybe at the people outside Reseune, who didn’t have the sense to know enough to make themselves safe, and the stupid Paxers who were going to make bombs and kill people because they didn’t have any better plan.
She ought to have ReseuneSec track every one of the Paxer leadership before the news got out that she was taking over.
She could have them killed. Every one. She’d have the power to do that. The first Ari had had it. And hadn’t done it, when the first Ari had done so much that was just–things she didn’t want to think about.
She stood in the middle of her own room and looked around her at a place that was safe. She looked at herthings, that, if she owned the whole world, still mattered, her chair, her bed, her dresser, and what was in it, things she shouldn’t keep.
She walked over to the dresser, picked up Poo‑thing, poor, ignored Poo‑thing. She smoothed the fur around his button eyes, and rubbed his nose into shape. His sweater was all wrinkled. His fat tummy was still fat, and she straightened his feet a bit, and laid him back in the drawer, making room for him. He went on staring. Poo‑thing had no way to blink when she shut the drawer on him and cut out the light.
Shoved it hard the last couple of inches and sat down in her chair and cried. Sobbed, with her face in her hands, trying not to make any sound to bring Florian and Catlin back, or staff, or anybody.
I wanted a childhood,she said to herself over and over. I really wanted a childhood, just a little one, just a year, is that too much to ask? I only wanted a year, and it’s not fair, not fair, not fair! I didn’t ask to be born! I didn’t ask everybody to hate me! I didn’t ask to be anything–I don’t want to be, I want to ride Horse when I want, anywhere in town, and not have to worry about people shooting me or trying to run off with me, and I want to have my friends around me and I don’t want to lose them, I don’t want to get them killed, either, and I don’t want Florian and Catlin to have to kill anybody, ever again, but they will.
I want my Uncle Yanni back. I want Maman not to be dead and Ollie to write me he’s coming back, and Valery, and everybody, I want it back the way it was before I grew up…
But it’s not going to be, is it? It’s never going to be. Ollie, maybe. Maybe Valery. They might come, if I can get them all back, all of them.
But they can’t find a teary, stupid girl when they do, can they? I can’t be stupid, or I’ll be dead, and I’ll get other people killed.
She blotted her eyes, one after the other, with the back of her hand. Sniffed. Got up and examined a reddened, unlovely face in the mirror, and got a tissue from the bath, all with a raw, unhappy feeling inside.
She didn’t quite know the girl that looked back at her, red‑eyed, red‑nosed, just human. It was the first Ari’s girl‑face, but it wasn’t the face of the portraits.
Second try with the tissue. Her makeup was a mess. She blew her nose, blowing away the evil spirits, Maman had used to say that. Maman would take a cold washcloth and wash her face and tell her cold water and a clear head would made a good start on any problem.
She did that for herself, washed her face, fixed her makeup. Sharp pain had gone to leaden hurt, just a weight remaining where the pain had been. And that was stupid. Selfish. She’d had her childhood just now, all ten minutes of it; and maybe she should take a chance and have just a little freedom before the whole load came down on her, go do those relatively safe things she could get away with doing, just because she could, before it was forevermore too late.
BOOK
TWO
BOOK TWO Section 1 Chapter i
MAY 8, 2424
Giraud Nye and his companions were steadily putting on weight. At twelve weeks, having doubled in size in the last seven days, Giraud massed 28 grams, somewhat less than a generous shot of the whiskey he’d one day love.
He had gotten fists, and fingerprints, and his general body shape was a little more human. He’d been drinking in the tank’s biosynthetic amniotic fluid, and routinely pissed it out again–proving his kidneys were starting to work, a process that would never stop, in spite of his future abuses to his body, until he did.
His intestines were growing, and began to fill his abdomen. His nerve cells were proliferating, synapses getting organized enough to react to stimuli, but unaware at any higher level–the nerves had no myelin sheath as yet, and that limited their function considerably. Consciousness was nowhere in the picture. His cells all had other jobs to do, mostly that of dividing like mad, according to the map in their nuclei. If it said cooperate, they cooperated. If it said make skin, they made skin, in its varied layers and detail. If it said make nerves, they made more nerves. There was no higher authority.
BOOK TWO Section 1 Chapter ii
MAY 5, 2424
The clothes that hung at the front of the closet, ready for wear, were appropriate for the house–not a construction site–and Ari delved deeper, on her own quest.
She was going outside. On her own. She was ducking lessons today. She’d warned Justin she would. She hadn’t forewarned anybody in ReseuneSec, however, except Florian and Catlin–hadn’t sent word to Hicks, pointedly so. They hadn’t yet gotten the new Security team–they were still taking tape, but most of all Justin and Grant were still reviewing files, and she didn’t have to worry about trusting them yet, so she wouldn’t.
Just Florian and Catlin, and a fast move, that nobody would be expecting, well, except Sam Whitely.
It was still a scary venture–the first time to be really out in open country It was the very first time since they’d shot their way into Wing One that she’d really gone outside.
The makeup was scant, and the clothes she’d picked out had once served for riding–when she’d been able to get to Horse. The weight she’d lost since Denys died meant she could put her fingers in the waist of the once nicely fitting denims. The seat was a little less than fitted, now, but Sam wouldn’t care, out on the behind‑the‑building construction site, out under the cliffs that ringed Reseune. The sweater, at least, was meant to be loose.
Comfortable, and part of her life when Denys had been her protection, and Denys had fussed over her and worried about her breaking her neck–she’d almost believed the old miser had cared, from time to time. On a day like this, she could almost believe something had just occasionally stirred in Denys’s wizened little heart.
He’d say, if he were here, Don’t be a fool. Stay in.
He’d really say something if he knew the information Florian and Catlin were gathering up, and the net they were beginning to weave through the Wing, and around people whose whereabouts they needed to know, constantly.
But today she was going out on her own, not because it was policy, but because it was her chance to do it and she could do it and she would do it.
She was really going outside the safe bounds. A risk, and worth every minute of it. And she was going to scare hell out of Hicks’ office, and probably Yanni was going to blow up and yell, but she was going to do it anyway…just flexing the constraints, just making sure what her freedom of movement was like. She’d make ReseuneSec twitch, and she’d do it again, and someday, on the day she chose, it wouldn’t be a lark.
It wasn’t as if the new construction wasn’t constantly available to Base One in virtuality: she’d seen the new wing grow, day by day. But this, she’d decided, was theday. The whole site had, for the first month, been an ugly brown flat of disturbed earth, aswarm with bots twenty‑four/ seven, following their preprogrammed dig plan, tearing up the landscape and installing lines and conduits–a secret communion between them and the design specs, with rarely a human involved, except to watch it happen. Yanni had given his agreement– Yanniknew what it was, but if Yanni had kept his word, nobody but Yanni knew, not even ReseuneSec.