“Sera,” Callie said, and bowed. Her eyes sparkled–that last bit was all keywords, deepset, key to this staff’s feelings of accomplishment, resonating specifically off deepsets like an affectionate caress, and Callie was empowered to pass it on. “Shall I guide the new staff, sera?”
“Do,” Ari said, letting Callie, for her last time, function as chief of staff. She stood quietly for a moment with Mato and Corey “Well done,” she said to them. “Very well done.”
Bows. The spark of pleasure, the little reserve of beta azi very, very secure in their posts and their place in the house. “Sera,” Corey said, for the both of them.
Florian and Catlin–no need to reassure them at all. But she smiled at them simply because she washappy. It felt like walking a tightrope, selecting new staff, taking Contracts, trying to be sure the incomers, totally vulnerable, felt an instant connection and sense of place. She made eye contact with each and every one, saw their expressions, read them, far easier than reading any CIT in their current state.
“In and safe, sera,” Florian said.
She laid a hand on Florian’s arm, and on Catlin’s, not a calm‑down, just gratitude. She felt physically tired, as if she’d given off an energy that outright exhausted her, poured it into those wide‑open faces on whom she’d rely for her comfort and her safety.
Or perhaps it was the immediate letdown of having been absolutely On all day, waiting for these people, her people, picking what she’d say, and planning the way she’d ease staff about their arrival–those things, and the plain fact it was suppertime.
Callie’s tour would end in the kitchens, Wyndham’s new domain, where Gianni had been working on one of his tour de force desserts to impress the new master chef. They’d have supper together, the new staff and old; and meanwhile she found herself ravenous, a good sign. She’d arranged all the staff to be attending the dinner: the fare otherwise was cold cuts and sandwich makings, and that, with two bottles of imported champagne, was waiting for her and her security staff.
Florian and Catlin, too, had worn themselves out trying to be all things and everywhere for months. Now they wouldn’t have to turn a hand to make a bed or find a midnight snack. Anything they wanted, at any time, always, would arrive, double‑quick. They’d never experienced that situation, not since they were all children together, and they’d had Uncle Denys’ staff waiting on them.
“I’m happy,” she said, hugging their arms tight. “I’m starved. Let’s go have supper.”
“Marco and Wes are on duty,” Florian said.
“They can have champagne, too,” she said. “They can come. It’s not as if our enemies will stage a raid.”
“When better?” Florian asked soberly, but she squeezed his arm a second time.
“I love you both, but let’s take the risk, shall we? Champagne, strawberries, and cold sandwiches. It’s a security picnic in the conference room.”
They were bound to worry. It was what they did. And in the end, they called in Marco and Wes, cued the conference room screen to display the security station main screen, and had their champagne and strawberries.
It was mostly for their sake, for the staff. They’d taken care of her through so much, and they did things that weren’t their duty, doing it.
It was one more step toward that apartment. They’d be crowded for a while, but that wouldn’t last long.
Then things began to be Real.
She didn’t want to think about that tonight.
There was a baby, she recalled, a boy named Auguste GYX, the first baby she’d ever seen in the labs, the first time she really began to think about what Reseune did, and she’d said to herself a long time ago that she wanted to be sure that baby turned out all right…that when his Contract came up, she wanted to take it. And he was something around thirteen, still in training–a gamma, clever at a lot of things. And for some reason, with staff coming in, she thought of him and thought: I want to know what they’re prepping him for. I’ve got the power to do that now. I can write a set for him. I can take the thirteen years and just bend it in a direction I choose, something I can eventually use, something to put him on staff–not have him shipped off to Novgorod and have him supering in a factory where I’ll lose track of him.
I can work with a gamma set. I’m going to call in his manual tomorrow. I can write a program for him. It’d be nice if he liked fish.
Things had gotten quiet. She looked at four faces, Florian and Catlin, Wes and Marco, all quite sober–their notion of a wild staff party was a glass apiece–all gazing at her, waiting for her to say something–or to really look at them.
“This,” she said, “is a point of change. From now on out, we don’t depend on Yanni for many things we now ask of him–including my study tape. Wes, tomorrow I want you to walk over to Library and physically pull a manual for me.”
It involved printout. “Shall I call it first?” Wes asked, meaning should he call Library and have it prepared for him to pick up.
“No. Ask there and wait for it.”
At very least, she didn’t want a request on file before she had the GYX general manual in hand–there could well be more than one GYX in progress, and even Wes didn’t need to know which GYX she was interested in until she had that particular file in hand. It wouldn’t remove it from Library, and anyone interested could still get it, with the sort of clearance, for instance, that Hicks or Yanni had–but once she duped that manual in‑house, and began to write changes on that program–she would have her GYX’s particular record, and Yanni wouldn’t. He could find out what tape they’d run down in labs, but he couldn’t find out any oral Working she’d done, and he wasn’t good enough, she’d bet on it, to look at the tape list and immediately know what structure she was building or what her GYX was destined to be.
She had the individual manuals on Theo and Jory and the rest. Those came with them. And thoseindividuals would see changes very soon that weren’t on the lab records. She’d prepare tape of her own creation, and when she was through–they’d be hers, no one else’s, ever. That was the way the system worked.
Justin could pass on that, too, but she’d done more than population dynamics in recent weeks. She’d studied set‑alteration and deep inhibition as well as integrations. And she’d taken a look at some of the first Ari’s set designing, on the Gehenna project.
It wasn’t just history of that project she’d been after. She hoped she could spot a deepteach bug in the azi she’d taken in–that she could spot it, correct it, and have that azi absolutely trustable. It wasn’t brain surgery. In many cases it was plain language, like what the first Ari had instilled at Gehenna: this is your world. Your world–deeptaught in those azi minds–without any reference to the born‑men the military had sent out there deliberately to fail, mess up the planet, and die.
The military had thought they were simply giving Alliance a poison pill, knowing they’d take Gehenna and Union wasn’t in position to. But the poison pill the military hadn’t counted on, in their own planning, had been letting the first Ariane Emory know that herazi were destined to become an embedded, dying and miserably poor population on a planet the Alliance was going to claim. Ariane Emory didn’t dothat sort of thing to herazi, no. She gave them the planet and told them to survive and take care of it. And survive they did–becoming foreign and odd in the reckoning of what was human, but they lived. They succeeded.
The first Ari had, as best she’d ever been able to discover, given her Florian and Catlin, and Yanni had given her Wes and Marco, and she’d taken Callie and all the rest.
There were going to be, very soon, some deep‑sessions for certain staff, not for Florian and Catlin. They would be quiet, refreshing sessions, with some very specific instruction keyed to theirsets–instruction which could make them very devoted, or very dangerous, depending on her skill at intervention.