Regenesis

by C. J. Cherryh

  Their employers, however, didn’t enjoy the luxury of such precise hours—especially not on teaching days.

  Justin reached for his keycard, but Grant beat him to it and opened the door—walked in through the foyer that was Em’s office, into their own slightly less tidy inner sanctum. Grant disposed his long frame in his own office chair, legs extended at grand leisure, while Justin opened his briefcase and extracted the desired folder. He fed sheets into the reader, which spat them out again. He returned each to the folder in the briefcase, not to mingle them with the piles of paper on the desk.

  Fifteen sheets, file done, and the program asked him what program should apply.

  He used his keycard again and told it, aloud, “Code Y10, Class alpha through mu. Read to D3, run Integrations. Output results to Base One, code Y10.”

  “Voiceprint accepted.”

  For about a second, thanks to his keycard and that spoken code, it hadn’t been his own computer talking: that had been Base One itself, in a significantly different tone. It always sounded so human.

  Then it was gone. His own computer, with far lower clearances, said, “Done.”

  “Thanks, computer, endit.”

  “Well,” someone said. It was his own voice. Or nearly so. He turned, his heart giving a little thump, and saw his father standing in the inner doorway.

  “Hey, we’re closed for the day.” Half a joke. His father wasn’t supposed to be here. It took a security clearance to get through that door, in an office that dealt with actively working psychsets and one special student’s study projects. Jordan Warrick’s security clearance was entirely nuked. Gone. Non-existent. And Em would have stalled, held him in the outer office. Nobody being there but them, they’d just left the inner door open and the outer door unlocked.

  “I figured you were.” It wasn’t only Jordan who’d come in, it was, of course, his companion Paul as well, whose accesses had also been nuked. Jordan walked all the way through into their inner office and looked around. “My old digs.”

  It had been. Before the first Ari died.

  “You changed the paint,” Jordan observed.

  Justin was still off-balance. He looked around him, foolishly, remembered it had once been a slightly different shade. Twenty years ago. “I suppose it is different. Still green. I didn’t even question it.”

  “Probably security took the walls apart.” Jordan gave a look around him, and Justin snapped the briefcase shut, sealing up the last item exposed. “Probably a whole new set of bugs.”

  “Possibly,” Justin said. He worked with his father in off hours since Jordan’s return, in the living room of Jordan’s apartment. He brought a different briefcase with him when he did.

  Jordan asked him: “What are you working on?”

  “Today’s a teaching day.” He used his handprint to open the safe, and put the briefcase into it.

  “Her.”

  “She’s the only student I’ve got.” He shut the door and sealed it, feeling much more comfortable after that door was shut. Grant, meanwhile, had gotten to his feet as Paul came all the way into the office. “I hate to say it, but you know you two are pushing it with security right now.”

  “What’s life worth without a little excitement?” Jordan sat down on Grant’s desk edge. “You look tired.”

  “I am, I think.”

  “Want to go out for a coffee?”

  “I’ve had way too much coffee today. Bar?”

  “Sure,” Jordan said. “Got an idea?”

  “Abrizio’s.” It was downstairs in Ed A, it had been there forever, never mind the new decor, and he thought Jordan would be comfortable in his old habitat.

  “Great,” Jordan said, entirely cheerful, and cast a wistful look around. “A lot’s changed. I’ve been to that bar. I liked the old color. Red. You remember.”

  “Everything changes.” His memory had holes in it, back then. Significant ones. He didn’t mention that. He’d shed the briefcase. He picked up one that didn’t matter.

  “Have you got to take that thing?”

  “I suppose I don’t.” He set it back on the floor, and nodded toward the door, anxious to clear the room and lock up before they drew down a set-to with Security.

  He didn’t quite make it. Three agents were standing outside, ReseuneSec, black-uniformed and somber. Just standing. Watching.

  Offer a guilty excuse? Security knew where he’d come from, who’d walked into his office, and by way of the bugs Jordan predicted existed, they’d know exactly where they were going next. He could ignore them. But it wasn’t in his constitution to do that.

  “Off work,” he told them cheerfully, “off to the bar.”

  “Ser,” one said, stony-faced and solemn.

  It didn’t make him feel any better and it wouldn’t stop them from reporting. The report to their headquarters had likely been simultaneous with Jordan’s arrival in the office. But it didn’t make him feel worse.

  “I dropped by, actually, to invite you to dinner,” Jordan said as they walked. “Tomorrow night. Paul’s cooking.”

  “Sounds good,” Justin said, not mentioning the known fact that he couldn’t reciprocate—living where he did. Jordan didn’t mention it either.

  “That design question you posed Friday,” Jordan said, “I think I’ve got an answer for you.”

  “I’ll be interested.” They’d collaborated long-distance while Jordan was over on Planys, a cooperation permitted and not permitted by turns, largely by the whims of the Nyes. Now the papers flew back and forth much faster, and they traded notes on the house system, sometimes hourly, when he was in his Education Wing office.

  “I sent you a memo this morning,” Jordan said.

  “Sorry. I didn’t pick up my mail.”

  “That’s all right. You’ll get it tomorrow. This is a therapeutic break.”

  Another turn in the hall. They took the escalator down among a handful of clericals and educators. A scatter of noisy kids, likely residents from upstairs, played tag in the planted garden below the escalator, down among the stone benches. Beyond, on the right side of the mall, a small cluster of neon lights advertised a bakery, a florist, a shoe shop, a casual clothing store, and, farthest in the limited view, Abrizio’s Bar and Grill. The little mall was at storm tunnel level: it formed the commercial underpinnings of the Education Wing, a cozy little place, hardly wider than it had to be, frequented at noon mostly by academics, clericals and the occasional tradesman from the adjacent shops, but in the evening, mostly by residents from upstairs—Abrizio’s offered a better menu then.

  Inside the little bar was dark, neon, and had a reasonable level of music and conversation—one table was left, midway down, and they claimed it, pulled back the worn, still-comfortable chairs that had given up all pretense of authentic wood, and sat down.

  Dog-eared menus stood on the table in a cluster of seasoning and condiment bottles. Justin and Grant didn’t bother: their regular was a standard choice. Jordan took a perfunctory look. And it wasn’t the sort of place where you input your choice with button pushes. An actual waitress—her name was Sonia—came over, asked for orders, and served ice water for starters.

  They’d come in just for drinks. Justin and Grant ordered a large plate of chili over chips with real cheese, which was usually supper enough on its own, Jordan agreed, and they talked about integrations and deepsets between chips. It was a slightly high-end conversation for Abrizio’s evening crowd, where the more likely conversation was administrative and domestic woes, or the current soccer scores. It was quiet enough for a reasoned argument, at least, and a disposable napkin went the circuit of the table, increasingly blue with the hieroglyphs of psych structure notation—not the sort of item they’d leave behind them, but not the sort of conversation that posed a security problem, either: the items he regularly brought Jordan weren’t under security lock. Pleasant evening. Uncommonly pleasant.

  “That’s interesting,” Paul said, regarding Justin’s latest insert
into the set they described. “Nice.”

  Jordan snatched the napkin back from Paul. “Ease off. Thought you’d know better. Don’t you dare take that in.”

  It was a little feel-good Justin had added, the sort of routine that had once had him going round after round with Yanni. He tinkered with this design—had flown it past Jordan several times without comment. He’d slid it past him again in a moment of mellow curiosity, part of a larger structure he was working on, his own little foray into macrosets. And perhaps it was a due warning: they’d all had, somewhere between the first glass and the chili and salty chips, perhaps just enough vodka to take the edge off their cautions.

  “No intention of taking it in,” Paul said defensively.

  Jordan shook his head. “Worm-ish little bastard. Don’t trust it. Whose is this crap?”

  Justin didn’t, personally, agree that it posed that order of problem, or that it was crap. He checked himself short of saying so. The fact was, Jordan was right to check Paul if he had a doubt: being alphas and skilled in psych operations, both Paul and Grant were used to taking a small item in on a look-see, sending some little routine all the way to their own deep-sets and hauling it out again without ever letting it plant any roots—and producing some good commentary. The only danger lay in something that hit their deepsets and felt good at the time, that tempted even an alpha to hold it, secretly. And it was, in fact, deepsets, that little piece, but he didn’t think what he’d handed Jordan was in any sense harmful.

  “That’s not one of yours,” Jordan said.

  “Actually, yes.” He’d written it. And—perhaps it was a little stinginess, or just that he wasn’t quite through refining it yet—he hadn’t laid that little routine on the table for Ari to sop up and run with, the way she sopped up and used whatever else he gave her. A conversation with her had sparked the idea a few weeks back, off his own notions of reward and gamma tapes, and Grant had thought it was good, but chancy, rule-wise. So he’d put it out for Jordan’s comment. Paul hadn’t at all flinched.

  But Jordan had a contrary opinion. That could be useful.

  “This,” Jordan said, “is aimed at group dynamics.”

  “It is,” he said, impressed that his father had laid his finger right on it, and added, “macroset, yes. But that’s not the important thing.”

  “You’re meddling with deep sets and it’s ‘not the important part.’ I hate to tell you who that sounds like.”

  The waitress showed up with a bottle and refilled all the glasses while their attention was on the piece of paper. Which was probably, for people parsing psychsets, one glass too many. Jordan took his forthwith and knocked back a large gulp of it before he returned his close attention to the scrap of napkin.

  Justin had a sip of his own, read in that gesture of Jordan’s a degree of anger that filled in only one name.

  So, well, maybe the kid had been doing a little research in elder Ari’s notes—she had them. She’d said she did. And, though it would be a disappointment to him if she’d pulled those items straight from elder Ari and not from her own intellect, he shouldn’t be surprised. She had a clerical staff, had an office. She could get any access, God knew. She’d been putting out masses of design work in recent weeks. Certain people in Admin—Yanni in particular—had warned him about Ari One’s notes, to be just a little alert for Ari cribbing off her predecessor.

  But she’d been arguing with him—and, dammit, she’d argued her points with understanding. There was no mistaking that. They’d had fun with it. And, no, dammit, he didn’t think she was cribbing: she was too fast on the response, give or take today’s performance. He worked back and forth with the kid. She produced things that were downright elegant—and scarify wide—while he watched her work. He’d listened to that simplicity and simultaneous broad sweep, admired it, and this one was his flight of inspiration, dammit.

  But it evidently sounded to Jordan like his Ari.

  So maybe he had more of the original Ari’s notes in that briefcase in the safe than he knew he had… God knew what classified programs that could dip into. Gehenna was only what this generation knew about. Or—worse thought—one that sent a cold rush through his veins—could he be remembering the original Ari’s lessons with him, from way back? Could repressed thoughts have woken up, lately, having, finally, found something in her successor to tie onto?

  That was an eetee thought, one he really didn’t like. He didn’t remember the study sessions with the first Ari. Not all of them.

  “So you did this?” Jordan asked him bluntly.

  “Yes.”

  “Wide as hell. Feed this to a population with a disposition to take it deep and it’ll set hooks. You won’t ever get it out.”

  “It doesn’t seem to do any harm. That’s what I’m asking you about.”

  “The breadth is the harm. That little routine won’t stop. It’ll mutate in ways you don’t know and the computers can’t track.”

  “Are you sure it will, in the gamma sets?”

  “I’m saying it will.”

  “Where will it intersect? I’ll admit I don’t know. That’s why I brought it to you.”

  Another slug from the glass. “You don’t know, I don’t know, she doesn’t know. You don’t let something loose that mutates as it integrates. That’s exactly the kind of thing Ari loosed—when she loosed it. You know that? The damn woman wouldn’t listen—she’d just go eetee and say it didn’t matter what you thought. She understood it, sorry you don’t, it’s going operational next week. Damn her.”

  A small silence. Grant quietly retrieved the napkin and pocketed it, conversation over, at least on that topic, that might have grazed oh so close to things security wouldn’t want discussed in a neighborhood bar.

  “Well, you’re likely right about the routine,” Justin said, and got a smouldering flash of eye contact from Jordan, a stare that locked, hard. “Probably it’s too wide.”

  “You’re in it up to your neck.” Jordan said. “You’re teaching the brat. Be careful she doesn’t teach you. Do you know what I mean?”

  “That this is an example of it?” Justin said. “I don’t think so. It’s just a mind-stretch. A thought problem.”

  “And she’s coming up with stuff like this on her own?”

  “It’s mine, for God’s sake. Believe me. But this isn’t the place. Let’s not discuss it.”

  “Let’s go to our place,” Jordan said, “because I’ve got some things to say.”

  He didn’t want to. That had been three glasses already, counting before and during dinner, and now after, and they were generous glasses, fie hadn’t taken more than a sip of his third. Jordan tossed off the rest of his and shoved back from the table, then intercepted the waitress and handed her his card.

  Justin threw a look at Grant. Grant’s face didn’t react, but his eyes moved in a quick warning reaction.

  “Probably.” Justin said when Jordan had paid out, “we really had better get on home. I’ve got—”

  “I have some things to say,” Jordan said brusquely, “and I’ve had alcohol enough to say them.”

  “Maybe too much.”

  “Come on.” Jordan said, and he could have a fight now, try to corner Paul and get Paul to quiet the situation, if only by handing Jordan enough alcohol to shut him up, maybe even hitting the bar down the row, where the music was too loud for coherent conversation. It had been pleasant until then. It wasn’t, now. And Jordan’s tolerance with security was already paper-thin, as it was.

  He opted for going to Jordan’s apartment, exchanging a few words in a venue where they could name names, and then going home, before the naming got too specific. Jordan in this mood would only brood about a cutoff from the bar, and get madder, and there was nothing productive in that, not at all. Jordan was frustrated: he wasn’t employed any longer, not since his return from Planys. He had nothing to do but sit and read and work on the low-level problems Justin handed him, output which Justin read, remarked on, and passed on to C
linical under his or Grant’s name—it gave him a better output on his record, and kept Peterson happier than he would have been, but it wasn’t doing anything for Jordan’s mood or his bank account. Jordan drew a stipend from Yanni’s office, the size of which he wouldn’t name, but it wasn’t large. He had the rent and utilities paid. That was all.

  And Justin didn’t want another round on that score. Jordan’s situation was on hold until the Reseune board met, that was that. Jordan wouldn’t get his clinician’s certification and his security clearance back until Yanni and Jordan were talking again.

  There’d been some sort of blowup right before Yanni headed for Novgorod, and what Jordan had said in that office or what Yanni had said wasn’t in his need-to-know, apparently, because neither of them had been willing to talk about it, but it certainly hadn’t advanced the cause of Jordan getting his security clearance back.

  And it wouldn’t be helped by a public scene tonight.

  They took the escalator up one, walked over to Education B, where Jordan’s apartment was—not a word spoken until they’d gotten inside and into the living room.

  Jordan immediately went to the bar, filled four glasses with ice, and poured healthy shots of vodka. Justin frowned and didn’t say a thing. He took his when it was offered, and went and obligingly sat down in the conversation pit, with Grant on the other end of the couch; Jordan and Paul took the other side.

  “So,” Justin said. His plan for a quick exchange and exit was evaporating, but, well, predictably Jordan’s anger would probably give way to a complaint about the certification issue, and the clearance issue, which then would go into known territory—not pleasant, but he owed it to his father to sit through another rehearsal of grievances. “What can’t we say in the bar?”

  “That you’re making some bad choices.”

  “Professionally, or personally?”

  “Both.”

  “They’re my choices. Bad or not.”

  “You bring me these piddling clinicals…which you get paid for. In effect, I’m working for you.”

  “If that’s a bother to you, I won’t bring them.”