And if not for the first Ari’s intervention, Grant would have been Jordan’s work, entirely.
And if not for the first Ari’s intervention, so, almost undoubtedly, would he.
“I wonder what she’s building out there behind the wing,” Justin said hours later, when he and Grant were in bed, after a long evening and an entertainment vid. The only light was the clock face on the minder. The security force had, as predicted, departed after a precise hour and forty‑five minutes. Headed for the lift. Assigned, signed, and delivered–
And that gave Ari as much protection as any other agency in Reseune.
“Building behind the wing?” Grant asked, half asleep. “What brought that up?”
“She’s accumulating an army–counting service people, that’s a large staff.”
“You think?” Grant rolled over and managed a half‑awake interest. “What are you thinking?”
“I think it’s not a building to replace the old Wing One Lab. I think it’s a huge extension of this whole wing.”
“You can’t really see it on the monitors.”
“Lot of earthmovers going back and forth, makes the ground floor shake. A lot of stuff landed down at the dock and brought up in that direction. It’s going to be big. Everybody’s saying labs to replace the old one they shut down. I’m saying–I don’t know why Ari wants huge labs attached to this wing, unless she’s setting up to do some work.”
“Makes a certain sense she would,” Grant said.
“Physical labs? She doesn’t need it. She’s theory. She’s computers. She doesn’t really need that kind of thing. I’ll bet you–mark me–I’ll bet a month’s pay the lab story is a blind.” He cast a look up at the ceiling in the dark, not sure they were monitored, never sure they weren’t. “Just a guess.”
“So–if it is–does she move out and we stay here?”
“Would she leave her favorite neighbor behind? Dammit, something in me wants to go take back our old digs, with the worn carpet and the balky green fridge, all of it. I miss the place.”
“I don’t know why. We weren’t safe there.”
“We were, for a while.” He let go a long slow breath, and remembered. “No, I suppose we were just ignorant.” He stretched, hands under the pillow, under his head. “Maybe that’s what I want to get back to. Blissful ignorance.”
“I’ve found little blissful about ignorance. Besides, it’s not in my mindset to tolerate that condition.”
“I’m afraid it’s not in mine, either, ultimately” Two or three slow breaths. “Too big a staff, even for a palace. She’s got staff packed into that apartment. And thirty guards? That’s a lot even for Wing One. I think we’re witnessing an expansion. She’s going to move. Get the whole wing into something that wasn’tshot all to hell by a handful of her staff. Make sure it can’t happen again.”
“It’s a lot of building. That’s certain.”
“If she moves us, at least we’ll be rid of the decor.”
The room…if the lights had been on…or even when they weren’t…was a horror of modern decorating, stark white, stark black, and some mitigating grays. Grant avowed he didn’t mind it much. But Grant, being azi, lived more in his mind than he did in his physical surroundings. For himself, having grown up attached to textures and physical sensations, it was absolutely appalling. Admittedly it was a place to be safe. It was a place to be monitored by reasonably friendly agencies, and to maintain an absolutely incontrovertible record, capable of proving to any inquisitive authority that they hadn’t been up to anything, and couldn’t possibly deserve to be arrested. Again.
Warm, soft place to be, however, it was not–only in this bed, with the lights out, with Grant there, safe. Insulated from the world–and Ari. And from whatever she was doing, filling the hall with a godawful lot of Reseune Security.
Making the place echo with boots.
Advancing power. He could hear it coming.
The phone rang.
“Damn.” He jumped. He couldn’t help it. Nothing good made ever made a phone ring at this hour. He shot an arm out, felt after the phone‑set on the nightstand. Didn’t find it, and it was still going off “Minder? Minder, answer the damn phone!”
“Complying.” the robot voice said; the clock face over on the wall brightened as the room light came up a little. A telltale beside that clock went green, and a new voice came through.
“Ser Warrick?” Female. But not Ari.
“This is Justin Warrick.” He never had blocked off calls after midnight. He’d never needed to. But here it was, after midnight. And he didn’t even know any women outside this wing and Admin. “Who is this?”
“Sandi Patil. Dr. Sandi Patil.”
He sat straight up in bed as Grant lay there a heartbeat, then levered himself up on an arm.
“What do you want?” He was rude. He knew it. But so was Patil, calling him out of nowhere at this hour, on business that couldn’t be good.
“Are you alone?” Patil asked.
“I’m as alone as I choose to be.” He didn’t want any part of this. He waved a hand at Grant, mimed recording the conversation, which took a keypush on the console. He got up to do it himself, on the wall panel near the door, but Grant, starting on that side of the bed, beat him to it, and then turned the room lights up full. “Why don’t you call my father?”
“I can’t reach him. Listen to me. Dr. Thieu is dead.”
Dead. Dead wasn’t a metaphor. Not from this source, at this hour. And he didn’t want to ask, but not getting information could be as bad as hanging up, outright, for the monitoring that went on in this place.
“Dead? How?”
“They’re saying heart attack. But I don’t believe it. They’re monitoring my phone, they’re questioning my friends…”
“Look, if you deal with my father it’s a dead certainty they’ll do that, whoever ‘they’ are…”
“Not Reseune,” Patil said. “It’s not Reseune. They have people inside.”
He made a furious gesture at the other wall, in the direction of next door, Ari’s apartment. Grant understood, grabbed a robe on his way and left, running, wrapping the robe about him like a bath towel.
“What do you mean?” he asked meanwhile, trying to keep the tone even and the conversation going.
“They’ve gotten to Dr. Thieu in the heart of Planys, on the other side of the world. They can get to anyone.”
“Look, somebody gave me your card, I haven’t a clue why, I don’t know who ‘they’ are, and I don’t know why you’d be calling me. What are you into, what do you want with my father, and where in hell did you get my number?”
“I got it from Thieu. Look, I’m in the middle of selling my apartment. All my belongings are in boxes, my physical files are in a mess and I can’t find anything. I’m supposed to be going up to the station, and now everything’s stalled, I don’t know why, and I can’t get an answer out of the Director’s office! Thieu said to talk to your father, now Thieu’s just died and I can’t reach him, your number works, you’reon the inside of the agency that’s hiring me and now not talking to me, so here you are, Ser Warrick, and welcome to my situation! Can you just go down the hall or wherever you are and tell your father I urgently need to talk to him? There’ve been people coming through to look at this place I don’t like the look of, they say it’s sold, but someone arrives today and just walks through, and I didn’t know whether to let them in or not. I don’t want to deal with this, and someone I don’t know phones me to tell me Thieu is dead and hangs up. So what am I supposed to do? When I get hold of Schwartz, he’s going to tell me it’s all fine, I don’t need to worry, and just let them handle everything, but that’s what he said the last time. I need to talk to someone who knows what’s going on.”
“Well, it’s not going to be my father. I think you should call Planys Security tonight and ask them what’s going on. You get a call in the night and you assume it’s even true…”