Part 48 (1/2)
”That must have hurt.”
She swung her feet and felt better and better: she Had them. She liked it better when they didn't write the questions. It was easier to Work them. ”Just a bit. It hurts worse now, sometimes. But I get my cast off in a few weeks.”
But they went back to the written ones. ”Do you have a lot of friends at Reseune? Do you play with other girls and boys?”
”Oh, sometimes.” Don't be nasty, Giraud had said. ”Mostly with Florian and Catlin, though. They're my best friends.”
”Follow-up,” somebody said. ”Ser Giraud, can you tell us a little more about that?”
”Ari,” Giraud said. ”Do you want to answer? What do you do to amuse yourself?”
”Oh, lots of things. Finding things and Starchase and building things.” She swung her feet again and looked around at Florian and Catlin. ”Don't we?”
”Yes,” Florian said.
”Who takes care of you?” the next question said.
”Nelly. My maman left her with me. And uncle Denys. I stay with him.”
”Follow-up,” a woman said.
Giraud read the next question. ”What's your best subject?”
”Biology. My maman taught me.” Back to that. News got to Fargone. ”I sent her letters. Can I say h.e.l.lo to my maman? Will it go to Fargone?”
Giraud didn't like that. He frowned at her. No. No.
She smiled, real nice, while all the reporters talked together.
”Can it?” she asked.
”It sure can,” someone called out to her. ”Who is your maman, sweet?”
”My maman is Jane Stra.s.sen. It's nearly my birthday. I'm almost nine. h.e.l.lo, maman!”
Because nasty uncle Giraud couldn't stop her, because Giraud had told her everybody clear across Union would be on her side if she was a nice little girl.
”Follow-up!”
”Let's save that for the next news conference,” uncle Giraud said. ”We have questions already submitted, in their own order. Let's keep to the format. Please. We've granted this news conference after a very stressful day for Ari, and she's not up to free-for-all questions, please. Not today.”
”Is that the Jane Stra.s.sen who's director of RESEUNEs.p.a.cE?”
”Yes, it is, the Jane Stra.s.sen who's reputed in the field for work in her own right, I shouldn't neglect to mention that, in Dr. Stra.s.sen's service. We can provide you whatever material you want on her career and her credentials. But let's keep to format, now. Let's give the child a little chance to catch her breath, please. Her family life is not not a matter of public record, nor should it be. Ask her that in a few years. Right now she's a very over-tired little girl who's got a lot of questions to get through, and I'm afraid we're not going to get to all of them if we start taking them out of order. -Ari, the next question: what do you do for hobbies?” a matter of public record, nor should it be. Ask her that in a few years. Right now she's a very over-tired little girl who's got a lot of questions to get through, and I'm afraid we're not going to get to all of them if we start taking them out of order. -Ari, the next question: what do you do for hobbies?”
Uncle Giraud was Working them, of course, and they knew it. She could stop him, but that would be trouble with uncle Giraud, and she didn't want that. She had done everything she wanted. She was safe now, she knew she was, because Giraud didn't dare do a thing in front of all these people who could tell things all the way to her maman, and who could find out things.
She knew about Freedom of the Press. It was in her Civics tapes.
”What for hobbies? I study about astronomy. And I have an aquarium. Uncle Denys got me some guppies. They come all the way from Earth. You're supposed to get rid of the bad ones, and you can breed ones with pretty tails. The pond fish would eat them. But I don't do that. I just put them in another tank, because I don't like to get them eaten. They're kind of interesting. My teacher says they're throw-backs to the old kind. My uncle Denys is going to get me some more tanks and he says I can put them in the den.”
”Guppies are small fish,” uncle Giraud explained.
People outside Reseune didn't get to see a lot of things, she decided.
”Guppies are easy,” she said. ”Anybody could raise them. They're pretty, too, and they don't eat much.” She s.h.i.+fted in her chair. ”Not like Horse.”
v There was a certain strange atmosphere in the restaurant in the North corridor-in the att.i.tude of staff and patrons, in the fact that the modest-price eatery was jammed and taking reservations by mid-afternoon-and only the quick-witted and lucky had realized, making the afternoon calls for supper accommodations, that thoroughly extravagant Changes Changes was the only restaurant that might have slots left. Five minutes more, Grant had said, smug with success, and they would have had cheese sandwiches at home. was the only restaurant that might have slots left. Five minutes more, Grant had said, smug with success, and they would have had cheese sandwiches at home.
As it was, it was c.o.c.ktails, hors d'oeuvres, spiced pork roast with imported fruit, in a restaurant jammed with Wing One staff spending credit and drinking a little too much and huddling together in furtive speculations that were not quite celebration, not quite confidence, but a sense of Occasion, a sense after hanging all day on every syllable that fell from the mouth of a little girl in more danger than she possibly understood-that something had resulted, the Project that had monopolized their lives for years had unfolded unexpected wings and demonstrated-G.o.d knew what: something alchemical; or something utterly, simply human.
Strange, Justin thought, that he had felt so proprietary, so anxious-and so d.a.m.ned personally affected when the Project perched on a chair in front of all of Union, swung her feet like any little girl, and switched from bright chatter to pensive intelligence and back again- Unscathed and still afloat.
The rest of the clientele in Changes Changes might be startled to find the Warrick faction out to dinner, a case of the skeleton at the feast; there were looks and he was sure there was comment at Suli Schwartz's table. might be startled to find the Warrick faction out to dinner, a case of the skeleton at the feast; there were looks and he was sure there was comment at Suli Schwartz's table.
”Maybe they think we're making a point,” he said to Grant over the soup.
”Maybe,” Grant said. ”Do you care? I don't.” Justin gave a humorless laugh. ”I kept thinking-”
”What?”
”I kept thinking all through that interview, G.o.d, what if she blurts out something about: 'My friend Justin Warrick.'”
”Mmmn, the child has much too much finesse for that. She knew what she was doing. Every word of it.”
”You think so.”
”I truly think so.”
”They say those test scores aren't equal to Ari's.”
”What do you think?”
Justin gazed at the vase on the table, the single red geranium cl.u.s.ter that shed a pleasant if strong green-plant scent. Definite, bright, alien to a gray-blue world. ”I think-she's a fighter. If she weren't, they'd have driven her crazy. I don't know what she is, but, G.o.d, I think sometimes, -G.o.d, why in h.e.l.l h.e.l.l can't they declare it a success and let the kid just grow up, that's all. And then I think about the Bok-clone thing, and I think-what happens if they did that? Or what if they drive her over the edge with their d.a.m.n hormones and their d.a.m.n tapes-? Or what if they stop now-and she can't-” can't they declare it a success and let the kid just grow up, that's all. And then I think about the Bok-clone thing, and I think-what happens if they did that? Or what if they drive her over the edge with their d.a.m.n hormones and their d.a.m.n tapes-? Or what if they stop now-and she can't-”
”-Integrate the sets?” Grant asked. Azi-psych term. The point of collation, the coming-of-age in an ascending pyramid of logic structures.
It fit, in its bizarre way. It fit the concept floating in his mind. But not that. Not for a CIT, whose value-structures were, if Emory was right and Hauptmann and Poley were wrong, flux-learned and locked in matrices.
”-master the flux,” he said. Straight Emory theory, contrary to the Hauptmann-Poley thesis. ”Control the hormones. Instead of the other way around.”
Grant picked up his wine-gla.s.s, held it up and looked at it. ”One gla.s.s of this. G.o.d. Revelation. The man accepts flux-theory.” And then a glance in Justin's direction, sober and straight and concerned. ”You think it's working-for Emory's reasons?”
”I don't know anymore. I really don't know.” The soup changed taste on him, went coppery and for a moment unpleasant; but he took another spoonful and the feeling pa.s.sed. Sanity rea.s.serted itself, a profound regret for a little girl in a h.e.l.l of a situation. ”I keep thinking-if they pull the program from under her now- Where's her compa.s.s, then? When you spend your life in a whirlwind-and then the wind dies down-there's all this quiet-this terrible quiet-”
He was not talking about Ari, suddenly, and realized he was not. Grant was staring at him, worriedly, and he was caught in a cold clear moment, lamplight, Grant, the smell of geranium, in a dark void where other faces hung in separate, lamplit existence.
”When the flux stops,” he said, ”when it goes null-you feel like you've lost all contact with things. That nothing makes sense. Like all values going equal, none more valid than any other. And you can't move. So you devise your own pressure to make yourself move. You invent a flux-state. Even panic helps. Otherwise you go like the Bok clone, you just diffuse in all directions, and get no more input than before.”