Regenesis

by C. J. Cherryh

  BOOK ONE Section 3 Chapter i

  MAY 1, 2424

  2000H

  Eleven weeks, and Giraud, and Abban AB, and Seely AS would each one easily fit in the circle of an adult’s thumb and forefinger, and that was after the latest growth spurt. They didn’t weigh as much as a lab mouse. But their bones were forming, and their teeth were starting. They had the beginnings of a breathing apparatus, that floor of the rib cage, the diaphragm, which prepared them to draw breath. They were transparent, full of blood vessels, paths for the blood which had definite structure. Their fingers and toes were starting to grow in length. Legs grew longer. And they moved their whole bodies. They stretched, widely, and often, asserting their presence in the world.

  BOOK ONE Section 3 Chapter ii

  MAY 1, 2424

  2123H

  I’m different than the first Ari, young Ari, so far as I can figure, in one very major way: it was her Maman who drove her so hard, not Denys Nye, and she never loved her mother. I had Jane Strassen to take care of me, and I loved her very much. I expected to love people. The first Ari didn’t. The first Ari was very much solo throughout her life, but I have my friends, and I even liked Giraud Nye at the last—and he protected me, though I don’t think I’ll ever forgive Denys—my Denys, remember. Don’t let my feelings prejudice yours. Maybe your Denys will turn out nicer. Until I meet him, I won’t know.

  So there are differences. Sometimes I worry about that. I don’t know if I’ve turned out as bright as the first Ari. She was really good with computers and her Florian was, and I’m still not, though I suppose I’ll learn, and I know Florian’s studying, and he’s getting into programming as fast as he has time for. So I’m working very hard to absorb what she knew on a whole lot of fronts at once. I’m studying how Admin works and who’s responsible to whom. The thing the first Ari was incredibly good with, psychsets, I study really hard—I’ve dropped five kilos just from the study this last month, and I can’t eat enough to keep up with the weight loss. But the harder I study, the more I just keep seeing a maze of possibilities, when it comes to fixing a psychset onto a geneset—and I’m starting to do that job for real. I’m confident operating at the gamma level, but I know I’m not ready to mess with an alpha’s sets. And she was capable of that, at my age, which just amazes me.

  Understand, I’ve mostly met the alphas she setted later in her career—the early ones, the older ones, are either dead or assigned out, admin jobs, that sort of thing—except Ollie, who was with Maman. There was Ollie, and he was pretty remarkable—still is: he’s running Fargone Station. Maybe she was just that good, that early. Who knows? Maybe I would be, if Yanni let me have a try at alphas. But I just don’t want to mess one up, so I’m not arguing with Yanni on that point. I’m starting my work with simpler sets.

  I do worry that being overall happier might have taken something vital off my potential. That’s yet to prove. If you never hear this, well, I’m not the model someone wants you to follow. But I think I’m intellectually close to the first Ari, despite some detours, and despite the fact I play off a bit. I’m very close to being up with my studies, at the benchmarks she set for me, so I guess it’s all right; and if I think about it I’m exceeding some of them. I did start study early. I tend to forget I’m younger than I’m supposed to be by a few years. And I’m close to being able to make my own decisions in the labs, and I know I’m going to be capable of Admin, though I just haven’t got the time even to consider actually taking that on, and I really don’t want to. I’m so glad Yanni is running things and I don’t have to. And anything that suggests there’s any problem with Yanni scares me. There’s something right now, just a question about the way he’s handling Jordan Warrick, and I want to trust him, but I’d be a fool to say I’m not thinking about it, thinking hard. If I had to step in and control Reseune, it would be a major setback for my studies. And I don’t want that, and most of all I don’t want to lose Yanni, because, so much he does is good. And he could even be right.

  It’s natural he should keep secrets from me. I haven’t let him see all I can do. And maybe I should just call him here and ask him outright what he’s done or what he thinks he’s doing, but I’m just reluctant to do it while Florian and Catlin are investigating things. I could make everything blow up. And that’s no good.

  For now, Yanni limits what I do, and that’s good. He gets the results of my tests, and he’s my outside checkup. He says he wants me to keep focused on study precisely so I don’t appear in public and disturb people—especially people down in Novgorod—but I think, too, so I don’t scattershot my studies. I can do so many things and I’m interested in so many things I sometimes think I could just fly apart. Strassenburg’s a toy, in one sense. In another, it’s important for me to set that up early, and you’ll see why, if you think about it two seconds. And now I have to think about Reseune itself, and find out who’s doing what, and how the lines of power run.

  I’ve been far too happy in the last couple of months to be entirely safe. Isn’t that a paradox? And I’m frustrated because there are things I can already see skewing off Ari’s plan, and I can’t fix them without taking authority over things and potentially making things worse—because I’m not as good yet as she was when she set up the parameters of what I think might be going wrong.

  Is being able to see trouble coming normal for an eighteen-year-old? It’s not normal for an eighteen-year-old to have the power to do what I can do, that’s for sure—and just in the rules that govern Reseune, I can do anything right now but make an unchecked decision in the labs. I know I could remove Jordan Warrick. I could have him killed and no one would find out. Is that normal for an eighteen-year-old? It’s not supposed to be normal for a civilized being. But I just have to worry if it’s normal for me. I keep thinking—if I got rid of him I could save Yanni, if Yanni’s involved in anything he shouldn’t be.

  And the choice not to do it may be a mistake on my part, but I see real problems down the years if I do remove him.

  Jordan Warrick’s existence may even be important for me. He’s my enemy. And I need one. I need a good, strong enemy to gather up the people who wish I didn’t exist, so I can keep an eye on the lot. I just can’t get distracted from the possibility he’s not my only enemy.

  He wants Justin in his control. He’ll fight me for Justin. That makes me mad every time I think about it.

  But Mad doesn’t think straight. Mad may be honest, but it doesn’t plan well at all.

  So I won’t give way to Mad.

  And I won’t kill him. Or replace Yanni. I really don’t want to do things like that. I wonder who put that reluctance into my psychset. I’m not sure it was ever in the first Ari’s. But I watch impulses like that. I’m telling myself there’s a logical reason I’m reluctant to take extreme measures, as Florian would call it, but I have to be sure it’s a logic structure, and not air castles. Do you know that expression, air castles? I found it in a book. It’s a city without any foundations, a perfect dream without any feet on the ground. And you don’t see the fact there’s no connection between it and solid thinking, because you’re looking at how pretty the towers are, instead of the fact there’s no logic supporting them.

  Pretty is good. But survivable is important, when real people are depending for their lives on your logic. And people do depend on me. I depend on me. I want to live a long time.

  Soon I will have a security unit that will report directly to Catlin and Florian, and they’ll be able to know if there’s any undercurrent anywhere in the world that I need to know about. I can trust them to come to me if there’s anything peculiar going on, anything out of parameters…even in high places.

  They’re going to be very busy for the next while. Soon they’ll be getting a whole lot of files on all our current problems. And maybe I’ll learn things I don’t want to hear once they do start reporting on people I know—I wish I could omit that, but I’ll have to deal with it when it happens. This was Hicks’s idea, Florian te
lls me. He’s the director of ReseuneSec, the post Giraud used to have. And in my worry about people’s loyalty, Hicks is one I’ve wanted to keep an eye on. Now he sends us a gift. Florian says all the people he’s sending are clean, so far as he can tell by the manuals. But I’m going to go over the manuals myself that’s going to be instructive. I have to be sure there’s nothing in them I can’t rely on, once their Contracts are engaged. Yanni won’t let me work above gamma, but these people are higher than that, mostly, and if I make a mistake it could be very bad.

  That means, among other things, if we find these people are reliable, I can actually get out of this wing and go places on a regular basis—for the first time since Denys died, with minor exceptions. I’ll be able to go wherever I want in Reseune, whenever I want, and I’ll be so glad of that. I haven’t ridden Horse for months: his trainer is taking care of him. I haven’t been out to the pond to see the goldfish. I haven’t seen the new construction, just the virtuals. Note maybe I can do all those things. I feel as if I haven’t been able to breathe for weeks, and now I almost think I might—and yet I have all these worries about Yanni, and Hicks, and the very people who are supposed to be helping Florian and Catlin—not to mention new staff coming into the apartment…those are all delayed while we look through their records and check through the tape they’ve had.

  One thing I’m certainly going to do, so when you accede to power, you won’t have to go through what I have, and risk what I’ve risked. My security office may not outlive me—but I’m going to see to it that a security staff inside ReseuneSec is automatically offered to your Florian and your Catlin when you reach your majority, and that you don’t have to fight for it or ask for it or wait until someone offers. I very much suspect Denys ordered Giraud to take the first Ari’s security apparatus apart when she died, under the excuse it was dangerous to his power. I don’t know what circumstances may apply when you’re hearing this. But by the time you’re making your first steps into being an adult in charge, you have to have information and a secure perimeter, and you have to have it fast. I was very lucky to have had Yanni, and not somebody much worse than Denys stepping into control of Reseune, or I might not have survived.

  So as soon as Florian and I can manage Base One the way we need to do, I’ll be making the re-constitution automatic, embedding various provisions that won’t look like they’re working together, the pre-training of certain Contracts, with an instruction that will trigger retraining for personnel on a certain date to be set by your circumstances—meaning they’ll turn up in your life when the time is right, and assemble themselves, because I’m going to have a direct hand in the tape they get. It’s not going to be apparent even to the directors out at the azi facilities that these people and these programs have any connection with each other. On a given trigger, they’ll assemble, and they’ll know what to do.

  And your Florian and your Catlin will run that office, so that’s the explanation of one mystery for you, which you may have already seen in operation. I hope it’s a peaceful transition.

  I was lucky to survive my teens, and I don’t count on luck even once, let alone twice. Thank me for your safety, which will at least be greater than mine, granted I live long enough. And do the same for your successor, and leave notes for her time. Learn how to program Base One, how to really handle it, and get your Florian to. We’re running behind on that. I’m able to do the links that surround the segments I’m recording for you, quite honestly because I’m copying what’s there on the files she gave me; and I’m making notes; but it’s not integrated, yet. It won’t run yet the way Ari I and her Florian made it run because I haven’t linked the whole structure in yet, just made a chain of unerasable files, to make sure you get my thoughts appropriate to the age I am now, and that I can’t edit them, and I really hope you aren’t having to excavate those files the hard way.

  My office hasn’t gotten anything solid for me yet on the ongoing puzzles we’re Working. The questions are all still questions. But at least I’m about to refuse to be confined to the Wing and I intend to start asking questions of my own.

  BOOK ONE Section 3 Chapter iii

  MAY 2, 2424

  1342H

  Florian opened the office door, and Ari slipped into the space where two men, one extravagantly red-haired, one common brown, were busy earning a living.

  Or at least—they’d been trying to.

  “Hello!” she said in her brightest tone, and Grant half-turned and raised an eyebrow. Justin swiveled his chair around, leaned back against its auto-adjust, and crossed a foot over his knee.

  “Well,” he said. “Is it trouble?”

  “Oh, never.” There wasn’t another chair. It wasn’t her scheduled day to be here, and she hadn’t been in this office ever, though Justin and Grant had moved in nearly a week ago. These two didn’t do patient-consultations, and they no longer had staff, nor any room for them, so there was no available chair for a visitor. She had to stand, and simply leaned back against the wall, until Grant, seeing the situation, surrendered his with a small flourish. “You’re so sweet,” she said, and patted Grant on the arm. “We’ve got to get other chairs in here. At least one more.”

  “I’ll arrange that,” Grant said, and as Florian rotated past the door frame and out into the corridor, Grant left, too, leaving the two of them alone to talk, herself and Justin.

  “I so love the idea of your being in the Wing,” she said to him.

  “It seems safer,” Justin said. “So I take it we’re not on the current arrest list.”

  “Don’t joke like that. I’m not Denys. I won’t be Denys.”

  “I know you’re not. Are we revising the schedule for lessons today, or—”

  “We’re keeping to schedule. I’m sorry I haven’t been here this week. I’ve been studying.”

  “I thought we agreed you were going to get some rest.”

  “Well, it’s important. I’m onto something.”

  “What?”

  “What we were talking about. The integrations. But I’ll talk about that later. Monday.”

  “Sure. Good.” Justin made a gesture toward the other counter. “Coffee?”

  “I wouldn’t mind that, thank you.” She watched as he got up and poured a cup. Her stomach suddenly said empty. “You wouldn’t have a biscuit, would you?”

  “As a matter of fact, we do,” Justin said, as he opened a packet and laid a tea-biscuit on a paper saucer. And another for good measure. He gave her that saucer with the coffee. “The place came stocked.”

  “I really hope you like the office.”

  “I’m getting used to it.”

  She regarded Justin’s first office with deep nostalgia. She remembered slipping by and giving him a gift of guppies. They hadn’t lived.

  Those days had seemed so much safer. She’d been out and about, un-watched, or she’d had the illusion she’d been unwatched—and never likely was. And he wasn’t there anymore.

  She washed down a biscuit in two bites and a sip and tried to put the past out of her mind. “Mmm. I had breakfast. But I’ve been studying a lot and I know I’m getting skinny, and you’re right, and I’m reforming. I’m taking on real work this week, just a couple of projects. I’ve told Labs to let me run checks and I’ll actually do a theta design. I’m sure they’re going to have someone go over it. But I don’t think they’ll find mistakes.”

  “I doubt they will.”

  A second biscuit went down. That freed a hand to reach into her jacket pocket. “Here.” She handed him the data stick she’d brought “I’ve looked at it. I want you to.”

  “What?” Justin looked amused. “You can do that. I’ve no doubt you can do it.”

  “Not the theta stuff. These are staff. All sorts of staff. They’ll be mine. I want you to look them over and make sure there aren’t any bombs.”

  His face went sober, thoughtful as he picked up the stick. He gave her a look, like he wanted to ask a question, and maybe thought it wasn’t wise
to ask it at all.

  “I trust you,” she said. It wouldn’t make him easier in his mind. She read him that well. He’d been through too much with Denys. He’d just had the row with his father and he knew Admin was upset. He was in a state of disturbance and flux, unable to settle, either physically or mentally, and he probably wasn’t getting a lot of work done. “I need it really soon.”

  He nodded somberly and laid the data stick atop the books on his desk. “I’ll put it at the top of my list.”

  “I know about the card,” she said, and saw his face suddenly go cold and wary. He wasn’t looking at her. Wasn’t looking at anything in particular. “I’m sorry you got into it,” she said, and he still didn’t look at her. “What do you think your father’s up to?”

  “I haven’t a clue.” He did look her way, and the hard face gave way to the old Justin, the very worried Justin, who had stood off Uncle Denys—confronting her, now, as the prevailing threat in his life, and his hope of tranquility. “I really haven’t.”

  “You know he’s under surveillance. He knows he is. He’s mad about it. I’m really sorry, Justin. I’m sorry he did that.”

  He was upset. And the look was a little less protected, a little more the real Justin, worried, and on his guard. “Do you know what it’s about?” he asked her flat out…maybe a little ashamed to be asking. She read that. Ashamed of the situation with his father. Ashamed of having to ask an outsider to the relationship.

  “My staff is trying to find out,” she said quietly. “I don’t really know what it’s about. He’s not that easy to read. But I’d say he didn’t expect you to keep that card a secret.”

  “I’m sure of that much,” he said.

  She wanted to ask—what do you want me to do with Jordan? But that wouldn’t be fair to ask, and the hurt would outlast the good it would do. Justin would never forgive himself, not inside, if he asked her to send Jordan away. In a technical way, neither of them had had real parents. In an emotional way, they’d both lost the single parent they’d been most attached to. They were alike, on that one emotional sore point. Something had happened, when Jordan handed Justin that card, and they had to patch it up, and try to bring back the even tenor of the lessons, the conferences, the work together. It wasn’t going to happen automatically. Jordan had already had that effect—Jordan, and the twitch of security, proving it was still alive.