Part 29 (2/2)

”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 traininga 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 staffnot have him s.h.i.+pped off to Novgorod and have him supering in a factory where I'll lose track of him. 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 staffnot have him s.h.i.+pped 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 sobertheir notion of a wild staff party was a gla.s.s apieceall gazing at her, waiting for her to say somethingor 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 himincluding 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 handthere 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 hadbut once she duped that manual in-house, and began to write changes on that programshe 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 those individuals would see changes very soon that weren't on the lab records. She'd prepare tape of her own creation, and when she was throughthey'd be hers, no one else's, ever. That was the way the system worked.

Justin could pa.s.s 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 inthat 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 worlddeeptaught in those azi mindswithout 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 her azi were destined to become an embedded, dying and miserably poor population on a planet the Alliance was going to claim. Ariane Emory didn't do that sort of thing to her azi, no. She gave them the planet and told them to survive and take care of it. And survive they didbecoming 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, refres.h.i.+ng sessions, with some very specific instruction keyed to their setsinstruction which could make them very devoted, or very dangerous, depending on her skill at intervention.

”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 nodsjust a little resisting flicker from Florian and Catlin, who'd been excluded from that last sentence. Wes and Marco were absorbing it alldeepstate, as azi could do without the deepteach drug, as almost now, she could do: her concentration could go that deep.

And only with 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 thinkI have to. I have no choice, do I? It's life or death. my staff has to be mine. Especially my security.

Chapter v.

June 6, 2424 2122 H.

She had someone to turn down her bed that nightspooky, at first sight. She wasn't used to that, not since Nelly had left her. She a.s.sumed Joyesse had done it, or ordered it. She put on her nightgownunaideddraped 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. 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.” ”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 h.e.l.l 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 s.h.i.+vers. 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.

”a.s.sume the worst case where it regards those possessing what you intend to take. a.s.sume violent resistence or clever resistence. a.s.sume 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.

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