“You are my first staff,” she said, “and the core of my staff. What you say, I will always hear. And I rely on you for loyalty and intelligence.”
Heads dipped. Eyes fixed on her. Supervisor. They heard that as they’d hear tape, and they drank it in.
“You are special,” she said, “and your decisions matter. The secrets of this house stay in this house. This is for Marco and Wes: if you have to trust someone and you have to make a judgement outside this house, trust Justin Warrick.”
Again, solemn nods–just a little resisting flicker from Florian and Catlin, who’d been excluded from that last sentence. Wes and Marco were absorbing it all–deepstate, as azi could do without the deepteach drug, as almost now, she could do, her concentration could go that deep. And onlywith their Contracted supervisor would azi accept instruction at that level. She looked at Wes and Marco, saw their pupils dilated, a sign of deepstate, which said something on its own.
They were hers. About Florian and Catlin, she had no question at all, never had.
She’d doubted herself at times, which, she thought, was only healthy to do, but now that she’d begun to focus on real things, on taking over, she began to think–I have to. I have no choice, do I? It’s life or death. My staff has to be mine. Especially my security.
BOOK THREE Section 1 Chapter v
JUNE 6, 2424
2122H
She had someone to turn down her bed that night–spooky, at first sight. She wasn’t used to that, not since Nelly had left her. She assumed Joyesse had done it, or ordered it. She put on her nightgown–unaided–draped yesterday’s clothes over the chair and started to go to bed.
But the computer in her room suddenly showed a unique flasher on an otherwise dark screen, a flasher that lit the adjacent wall red, and her heart picked up its beats.
Not a mail notification that blipped quietly in a corner. Log On, it said, across the screen.
She sat down at the counter and did that, no question. And the screen blinked, and became text.
“So you’re making a move toward power,”Base One said in the first Ari’s voice. “And you wonder how I can guess that. Wonder instead who else can guess it, and act appropriately.”
It wasn’t really Base One doing the thinking. It was the first Ari, who’d set certain criteria, and when she met them, things turned up. This one had. And it sent a chill down her back. No good trying to talk to it. It had something to say, and it would say it come hell or high water.
“Correctly identify your allies and your enemies, young Ari. I don’t say friends, because that word is misleading and it can deliver you into a serious mistake. Some people you don’t like are allies and some people you do like are enemies once you choose a certain course of action, and by now you should understand that.”
She did. She had understood it. But Ari Senior put it into words in a particularly cold way that did nothing for the shivers. She wore a thin nightgown in a room cooled for nighttime, and she hugged her arms about herself, because Base One wouldn’t stop once it started, wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t pause, didn’t care about her weaknesses or her excuses.
“Rely on Florian and Catlin. No others.”
There was Justin. Marco. Wes. But, she thought, Elder Ari didn’t know them. But if elder Ari had intended to leave a loophole she would have left it.
“Particularly be cautious about trust. Trust stops reasoning. Look carefully at those you trust. Taking offense stops reasoning, too. You may find a certain person has betrayed you. Limit the offending person so his misdeed cannot possibly repeat itself. Waste no time in regret or sympathy.”
I’m about to do that. I’m ahead of you here, older Ari.
“Assume the worst case where it regards those possessing what you intend to take. Assume violent resistence or clever resistence. Assume sabotage. Once you move, move decisively and pitilessly to protect your own allies. If you have pity, bestow it appropriately, on those helping you. Reward compliance and you’ll be surrounded by the compliant.”
That’s not necessarily a good thing, older Ari.
“…which is not necessarily a good thing, young Ari.”
That was spooky. That was just downright scary.
“You’ll need complete control of ReseuneSec to protect yourself. For the rest, rely on Base One. At need, you can lock anyone out of communication. Your codeword is CannaeCannaeCannae. Input that and the Base you target will only respond to you. You will at that point be able to dispense other codewords, so have them ready, but hand a Base access only to those who are both friends and allies.”
Control on a platter. Elder Ari had set it all up for her, the way elder Ari had had Base One assemble itself out of bits and pieces and come alive. She’d triggered something without intending it or even knowing it existed, and possibly it would just roll on like a juggernaut, without her being able to stop it.
She thought: I don’t know if I want this. I don’t know if I want to lock Yanni out. I’m not ready to do that. Hicks’ people–they could start shooting. Hicks is Yanni’s man, I’m pretty sure. What am I supposed to do about that?
“Key your receipt of this message so the program is sure you heard it. It will replay on demand, should you need to review it. I recommend that.”
She keyed her login. Said yes to the question. And the screen went dark again, shut down.
She hugged her arms around her and stared at it, feeling the cold go numb, the mind–the mind traveling its own starless space.
Joyesse found her that way some time later, and hovered by her, saying, “Sera? Sera? Are you well?”
She knew it was Joyesse. The surface mind still took account of things, but the deeper thoughts didn’t want to be interrupted. She got up, and walked toward the bed, and got in, letting Joyesse draw the covers over her. She shut her eyes, but she wasn’t asleep, wouldn’t sleep, not while her thoughts were going over the dynamic that was Reseune, and the legislature, and the necessity of appropriating ReseuneSec.
She didn’t want to pull the trigger. She didn’t wantto lose Yanni. She didn’t wantto treat Yanni as an enemy, but Hicks had told Florian they were going to have top‑level access and either Yanni was hiding things from ReseuneSec, or ReseuneSec was hiding things from them.
And that wasn’t good.
Hicks was giving them a gift. Did they trust the thirty agents they were getting?
Assume the worst case where it regards those possessing what you intend to take.
I do have to do something. And something we’ve done put Base One on alert. It had a trigger tripped. Something I did, or that Florian or Catlin did, tripped it, and that means Yanni may figure it out, too, or Hicks might.
If it wasn’t us that tripped the alarm–if Yanni’s moved…
It was the middle of the night. She couldn’t call Justin. She shouldn’tcall Justin and ask him to hurry in his assessments on the security sets. That wasn’t the way to get the best results.
Base One, however, could find out how he was doing. Base One could get into any computer in the Wing.
She got up, grabbed a robe from the closet this time, and said, “Base One, on.”
Base One asserted itself in the computer, and turned the terminal on. She sat down. She searched up computers that were active in the Wing and found Justin’s office net with no trouble at all. It was listed as secure, probe‑proof. That meant nothing to Base One, which ran System in the Wing. She simply had a look into the files, and ran a search for recent files involving betas.
There they were, in a folder labeled goddess1.
Goddess, was it? Sarcastic, maybe. Justin could be that. It was certain he had no interest in her thatway. He’d made that clear when she was, oh, much, much too young. And he was settled with Grant. She’d be a fool to mess with that attachment, a really great fool.