Regenesis

by C. J. Cherryh

  Within two years, a child named Ariane Emory was born at Cyteen.

  BOOK

  ONE

  BOOK ONE Section 1 Chapter i

  MARCH 27, 2424

  1328H

  Hundreds of babies floated in their vats, in various stages, in Reseune’s largest birthlab—azi babies, CIT babies, much the same. Azi were in one section. CIT babies—for Citizen mothers who for physical reasons, job reasons, or personal preference, didn’t want to handle pregnancy the old-fashioned way—occupied another section of the same lab. The only difference between the two groups at this stage was a doorway, and whether a number or a CIT name tagged the vat. The data of real pregnancies bathed all the fetuses in a perpetual sea of appropriate chemistry and sound. The machinery of artificial wombs rocked them, moved them, kept them close and safe and warm.

  There was, on one side of that doorway, Abban AB-688, an azi. It would take a look to see him floating in his tank. At six weeks, Abban AB was about pea-sized, though growing fast. He’d be tall, someday. He’d be dark-haired, and very, very clever, and cold as ice.

  In the tank beside him was Seely AS-9, who had been conceived in the same hour. He would be of a slighter build, pale blond, eyes fair blue, and, like Abban, he would be an alpha, and very, very smart. The 9 should have meant he was the ninth of his exact geneset and psychset combination: in fact he was the tenth.

  The ordinary naming conventions did fall by the wayside at times, especially among highly socialized alphas, whose Supervisors named them whatever they liked, or among very old, foundational sets, whose numbers and alphabetics didn’t always conform to modern usage. Abban, for instance: his personal alphabetic was B. But he had been given a name starting with both his letters—someone’s whimsy, perhaps.

  That was the first thing that was odd about Abban AB. Another was that, just like Seely AS, this Abban reused a sequence number: 688.

  And that, all other conventions aside, should never happen.

  On the other side of that doorway, Giraud Nye, conceived within minutes of the others, would be born a CIT, Citizen class, for no other reason than that he had a CIT number and came with no manual, no set course to take him through his first years. He would learn in chaos, being a born-man; and after he reached adulthood he would become responsible for himself. In his sixth week, just like Abban AB and Seely AS, he had just the start of a bloodstream. Last week he’d been nothing but a tube, the beginnings of a backbone and a spinal cord. This week he had a tail, had spots for eyes, had the beginnings of a heart, and the faintest discernable buds for arms and legs. He didn’t have a brain yet. He didn’t have eyelids because he didn’t really have eyes. Any of the three of them could have been almost any mammal: Giraud could have been a piglet, as easily, or a horse. He could have been Abban or Seely. He could just as well have been a little girl, for that matter. But the DNA in his cells and the tag on his vat both said he was Giraud Nye, a CIT, and he’d be a square-built man with sandy hair, large bones, and cold blue eyes. Going on rejuv at age forty or so, give or take how well he took care of himself, he’d live to be around a hundred and thirty-three Earth Standard years before the drug played out on him, and then he’d probably die of a heart attack.

  That was the blueprint of the last Giraud Nye, and this one was destined for the old Giraud Nye’s power, someday, unless someone threw the switch and stopped him.

  Ari Emory visited him today, out of curiosity, and with mixed emotions. She came with her two bodyguards, Florian and Catlin, and she created a stir in the labs. Even at eighteen, she had power, and she could throw that switch.

  She could also create Giraud’s brother Denys, completing the set, on any given day. She still had seven years’ leeway in which to do that, that span of time having been the gap between the brothers. In her own untested opinion, any day would do. But doing it at all was, personally, a very hard decision.

  For one thing, psychogenesis wasn’t going to be a sure thing in the Nyes’ case. ReseuneLabs didn’t have the data on the Nyes that they’d had on her, whose predecessor’s every living day had been documented down to the hormones, the chemistry, the actions and the reactions, for at least her formative years. The first Ariane Emory had been her own mother Olga Emory’s living lab, and all her predecessor’s data was out there in a vault under a grassy hill, just beyond the sprawling city-sized complex that was Reseune, with ReseuneLabs and its adjacent town.

  This Ariane Emory was the second of her own geneset. And all her data was being saved under another such hill, so she was already pretty sure there’d someday be a third of her set. Like an azi, she supposed she could view continuance of her geneset as a vote of confidence by those who made such decisions. But whether they’d clone the original, or her, well—that was still to determine, wasn’t it?

  Successful cloning was a given for ReseuneLabs, an easy job. Cloning human beings or rare animals, with gene-manipulation tossed in for variety, or, more to the point, for good health—that was what Reseune and other labs did every day of the month, for the whole star-spanning state that was Union.

  You wanted a child of your own genotype, or just a roll of the dice, the old-fashioned way? If you passed the psych exams, male or female, you could have a child, two children, as many as you liked—or as many as your local law allowed. You wanted a genetic problem fixed? Reseune could do that. Embryos shipped constantly, shuttled up to station, dispersed as far as Union reached…even, though rarely, to Earth. It was a huge industry. Reseune had the largest of the CIT birthlabs…but it had competition.

  Psychogenesis, however, replicating a mind—that was a whole new twist on an old process…and only Reseune had done that.

  It was the year 2424, and this Ariane Emory was the first success of that kind.

  She could create Denys, if she wanted to.

  She’d killed Denys—at least her bodyguard had.

  Giraud and Denys had created her, right after they had, perhaps, killed the first Ari Emory.

  Turn about, fair play.

  BOOK ONE Section 1 Chapter ii

  APRIL 21, 2424

  1509H

  “If you do exist, third Ariane, and if you’re hearing my record, with or without the first Ariane’s, be warned that I intend to shape the world that you will inhabit, but be warned too—I can never utterly guarantee the outcome of what I do, or the outcome of what I am. Fixing anything that’s wrong will be your job, the same way the first Ari created me to fix her mistakes.

  “So I give you this advice: you have my geneset, and you may be shaped by many of my experiences, as I was shaped by the first Ariane’s. But remember you’re no more me than I am you. You’re no more me, than you—or I—can ever be the first Ariane Emory, no matter how carefully they pattern us. Why? Because we don’t live in her time. We can’t live her life exactly as she lived it, and we shouldn’t try, because then we wouldn’t fit into the world we live in. You don’t live in my time, and should never try to.

  “This I do have in common with her: mine is not a peaceful time. Not all the decisions she made were the best ones, and she knew that long before she died. In many cases we both did as we could, too late for good sense.

  “But I am certainly more the first Ariane than you can be, since the times in which I exist are directly linked to her time. The times I’ll shape, with whatever power I can get into my hands, will link me to your time. I don’t know how I’ll feel decades from now, but it’s my opinion that you’ll ultimately need to hear from both of us—because the first Ari invented herself and I’m the bridge between.

  “Do the math. The first Ari died twenty years ago. I’m eighteen, I’ve been living on my own since I was twelve, because they preferred me to any other alternatives they had, most of which were bad. And, never mind that your records may insist I was fourteen when I set out on my own, I was twelve. The program just wasn’t ready for me, so it said I was fourteen and I had to scramble to catch up.

  “I owe my current situation
to Dr. Yanni Schwartz, who saw Reseune through difficult years—and who followed the program laid out in the first Ari’s systems. If you know the records, the first Ariane came to adult rights early. So did I. Both events were driven by legislators who feared their alternatives far more than they feared a child…or her overseers.

  “Mine is still not an unlimited power, in my eighteenth year. I wasn’t born with a Parental Replicates rights. I didn’t even have my CIT number. I had to prove genetic identity before I got possession of Ari’s old CIT number and became the owner of everything attached to it—everything the first Ari owned. And I got it primarily because Reseune wanted those rights to stay in Reseune. So Reseune backed my claims.

  “But it didn’t prove in all senses that I was Ariane Emory. I’m still doing that, and people still question. Yanni Schwartz is Director of Reseune as well as Proxy Councillor of Science for Union, a situation which won’t last forever—possibly not much beyond two years, or maybe longer. You’ll know by your own lifetime how that transition of power played out—what I had to do, what I chose to do, and whether it was the best thing to have done. I’m pretty sure you’ll get the CIT number attached before you’re born: I’ll try to see to that, since I fought that battle and there’s no longer an issue. But no matter how much I can smooth the way for you, you’ll likely face your own crisis of maturity, because money and power in the hands of a child make for powerful politics. Just say that right now my uncles are both dead and I’m alive.

  “This, too, you should know. The Council of Nine always preferred me over the alternatives—one of which was for the Council to actually make a decision and plot a course away from the world that the first Ariane created. They didn’t do that. Possibly that lack of initiative was planned into them: you know that Reseune had a hand in Novgorod’s population. I’ve not gotten anything from my predecessor that gives me a specific clue about that theory…but then I don’t have access to all of the records that exist, even if I’m told I have it. One can’t prove a negative, and if I haven’t got it, it’s hard to know if it exists—but I’m still searching. My best theory says the Council might have hated the first Ariane, but they were scared of life without her. And getting her back, in me—that felt much safer for them. At least the court voted to give me my identity, even if they couldn’t give me control of Reseune: Denys was responsible for pushing that; nobody knew it then, since Giraud was the face they saw, but don’t believe the histories: it was a combination of Giraud and Denys who really ran things, and Denys was brighter, but he was, let me say, a little odd.

  “When Uncle Denys died, I overcame his Base in the house systems. I’d already opened up all of Base One—Ari’s computer system—and gotten it to give me its records. I investigated all sorts of things that Denys had put under seal.

  “Denys wasn’t the one who’d walled me off from knowing things. Base One had done that, But when it was tune, Base One was really his downfall. He couldn’t seal the things the first Ariane had done, when Base One was ready to tell me: the little surprises in the computer system, the sudden appearance of which to this hour I can’t predict, just happen, and they began happening years before Denys died. That’s how she got past Denys, posthumously, by installing the program that taught me step by step what she wanted me to know. She created areas of the house system no one knew existed, and she did it so that, after she was dead, Base One would wait, intact, never letting Base Two rename itself. Then when I reached the right age and the right circumstances, Base One assembled itself. In my case, I suspect the trigger was not my birthday, as I used to believe, but a combination of moves by my caretaker.

  “I’m pretty sure Denys thought he could, turn me into a useful but much safer version of my predecessor. But that didn’t happen. Understand: Base One isn’t a computer. It’s always a moving target within the software of the main house system—and there’s no knowing what it will be by the time you inherit it. Denys’ experts couldn’t find, its parts, they couldn’t shut it down without consequences, and it self-heals and adapts. So far as I know, it will still go on triggering things in your time—and I don’t think that Uncle Denys’ experts could do anything on their own that ever matched it, but I’m never sure—so I am careful, and so must you be. Never take Base One entirely for granted. You have to ask it very good questions to get its best and truest answers. And never assume the other Bases won’t maneuver to get past it.

  “Evidently Base One has opened some of my files to you, so I assume you have reached a birthday or a crisis of some kind, and that your own accession to power is very near. Are you, in fact, eighteen as you read this? I have no way to know. At this stage I can’t govern the age at which you get this, because I can’t create the complexity of program that the first Ari wrote into Base One. I’ll learn. For now, I just make the records.

  “So maybe you’re twelve. Maybe you’re out on your own. Maybe not. I do assume that I’m dead by this time in your life, and that I have been since before your life began—by a few days, or maybe by some few months. It may have been my murder that brought about your birth, I shouldn’t actually he surprised at that. And if that is what did happen to me, consider your own safety. They may have decided to create you—thinking they can control you, and Reseune’s money—and when they find out to the contrary, they’ll change their minds fast. Uncle Denys certainly did.

  “Look around you. Ask who profited by my death, whether or not it was natural causes. I’m still asking that question about Ari One. Someone killed her. Someone ordered the termination of the first Florian and the first Catlin, too, and curiously that makes me madder than someone killing my predecessor. If you don’t feel much the same on that matter, we’re different, and you should think really carefully about that. You have the intelligence to see why it should be dangerous, or we are very, very different indeed, and something critical to our nature has failed.

  “Whoever killed Ari One, the plan to create me was already far advanced when she died, and my life went forward, in one sense, with the push of a button. You may know a lot about that by now, and likely you’ll hear more about me as the years pass. You may know how I grew up, and you may know how I reacted to what they did. I learned to play their games. I was cute at the right moments—Uncle Denys saw through that, because cuteness was completely wasted on him. He was a very inward person pretending to be a good, sweet uncle. He relied on me for his power, because he couldn’t hold it without someone to do the public things, and for a long time that was Giraud and at the last it was me. He didn’t know how to be nice, just how to act nice, and people believed he cared, but he didn’t. When I figured that out, things changed.

  “When Uncle Giraud died, I think that was when Denys really began to be scared, because Giraud had always been his protection and his public face. I’m sure Denys was more and more afraid of me as I grew. He was so afraid of me—and, I think, of Yanni—that he never found a way to kill me in time…and I think that was his game. I think he wanted to have me get the first Ari’s CIT number; I think he wanted me to get everything I could, and convince everybody I was real, which put a lot of money and power into his hands. When I nearly broke my neck, he was really, really upset. But he always planned I’d die before I got smarter than he was. He never knew when the right moment was, because he could judge how to make people trust him, but he couldn’t do that so well once they got older and began to pretend to trust him. That was a very, very great weakness. And if the Denys I create grows up to be Denys the way he was, he might or might not be better at his games. So be careful.

  “I do have ultimately to make a decision about Uncle Denys. Brilliant as he was in his field, he’s not essential to the universe. But I’m nearly certain Uncle Giraud may need him, once he’s born. Giraud is important to us, and it might be important that my Giraud have a brother he can take care of, speak for, and protect obsessively. Not to have Uncle Denys born might change Giraud, maybe not for the better…though I have as long as seven years
before I make the ultimate decision on that. I won’t prejudice your thinking about Giraud, supposing my version of him is in your life—or maybe a third is, who knows? He could outlive me, and you might well have to deal with the Giraud I created. How I create him and whether I ultimately create Denys for him to focus on has bearing on what, kind of Giraud you’ll have. So pay close attention to what I say on that subject. If you’re not in power yet, you need to start taking measures to protect yourself and stay alive. Giraud can be pleasant, but he’s capable of killing you.

  “So I am leaning toward yes on the matter of Denys. Ultimately, I liked Giraud. I didn’t like him most of the time he was alive, really, not as much as I like him in retrospect. One thing I know: I have to keep myself somewhat distant from the Giraud yet to be born, and not let my feelings for the old one enter into his upbringing He has to oppose me: that’s what his use is.

  “The first Giraud always wanted to belong to something. Or he wanted something to belong to him. He had to serve something. He wasn’t inclined, like me, like you, like the first Ari, to covet a solitary eminence. He had an azi’s need to serve, in a certain sense—in his case, he served Denys—and I find that need fascinating…proving, I suppose, that one of the most universal and limiting traits we instill into the azi we create is actually a profoundly human one.

  “Giraud served his brother long before I existed. And after Giraud died, Denys was, I think, a sad and very unbalanced man. Denys began to take actions, being afraid of me, and not having Giraud any longer to keep the world away from him. That was what Denys most feared, you should know. Not me. Not even dying Denys was afraid of the world outside his world. And when Giraud died, Denys started having to do things for himself. He had very good azi: Abban, of course, who had belonged to Giraud first, and he had Seely, but they weren’t Giraud, Worse, Denys didn’t ever respect azi, not even alpha azi, and that lack of respect colored everything he ever did with them. They were loyal to him; they wanted to serve him; they did everything for him; but Denys couldn’t respect anybody but Giraud. Born-men, CITs: they were even more of a cipher to him, and he knew it. He had the program manuals for Abban and Seely; he could read them very well, so he knew them as well as he knew any azi, and I’m sure he thought he understood them, the way he thought he understood me.