Catlin lifted a pale eyebrow, that was all. He suddenly wondered if that last statement was even true, or if for some unfathomed reason, Patil had specifically wanted to go through him—and just gave a wave of his hand.
“It’s all recorded. It’s what she said. I don’t know if she was telling the truth. She was upset. I guess she had reason.” He wanted to ask if Thieu had died of natural causes, curiosity being as natural to him as breathing; but no, he didn’t want to know that. He didn’t want to know anything about it.
Grant showed up with three drinks, poured the fast way, from the autobar unit. It was rescue. He presented the first to Ari, and only then it occurred to him that Ariane Emory didn’t drink things handed to her by people who’d just occasioned a midnight security alert.
But this Ari did, with only a little lift of her own brow. “Can we sit in your front room? It seems we’re all in the way here. It’s become ops. I do apologize for that.”
“Certainly,” he said, and showed her in, past Grant, at the small bar. “Sorry to have waked the whole house.”
“Thieu and Patil. What do you think?”
Sideways jolt. She was good at that.
And two new thoughts hove onto the horizon, desperate and little likely. “Maybe someone’s trying to involve my father. Maybe he thought that card somehow involved me in the first place. I don’t know what went through his mind.”
“Would he be honest with you if you asked?”
Because they couldn’t legally use anything but truthers on Jordan, and Jordan could beat those.
“I don’t know. He’s not speaking to me at the moment. Not since—not since that dinner.”
“I think it’s a good moment for you to talk to him. I think it’s a logical moment.”
One thing Ari had was a sense of timing. He could appreciate it—even if he had rather walk barefoot into the wilderness. “I won’t go there with Grant.”
“Grant won’t stay here,” Grant said.
“Dammit, Grant.”
“I take it I have leave to defend myself.”
“Absolutely,” Ari said.
“Ari.” Justin rounded on her with no hesitation. “If anything happens to him—I will never forgive it.”
“If anything happens,” she said “Florian will be through, that door faster than you can blink.”
“And if I go there with your entourage, he won’t say a thing.”
“Try,” she said.
Try. He looked at Grant, not at all liking it. He set the drink down, scarcely touched: he was going to need all his mental resources.
“Sorry to desert you,” he said, pro forma, and went back down the hall to the bedroom, righted the damaged table. Grant followed him.
“Sorry,” Grant said, “but you’re no safer in that apartment than I am. Two of us—”
“My own father,” he said bitterly. “You know, among born-men, that’s actually supposed to count for something.”
“Two CITs are dead,” Grant said somberly. “And, I repeat, you’re not safe.”
“Damn,” he said, and grabbed random clothes from the closet.
BOOK THREE Section 2 Chapter iii
JUNE 12, 2424
0211H
Press of the button. Possibly the minder was set to ignore commotion at this hour. Justin knocked at the door. Forcefully.
“Ser,” Florian said, and reached past him with a keycard. The door opened, and Florian pushed the door open, but Justin put out an arm, barring his way.
“My father. Let me handle it alone. Please. There’s nothing wrong. Reasonable people are asleep at this hour.”
“Call out to him,” Florian said, not giving an inch.
“Dad?” he called out. “Jordan?”
Lights came up suddenly, throwing the apartment into brightness—an apartment like the one they’d had, once, much the same design, dining counter, kitchen, living area, all together…it evoked nostalgia every time he entered it.
“Go,” he said to Florian. “Wait outside. I’ll get better answers.”
“Block the door open until you’re sure,” Florian said, and went outside, leaving him, and Grant, Grant’s foot blocking the door from automatically shutting.
Paul came out first, in his nightrobe, Paul, looking as well-groomed and civilized as usual. Jordan followed, much the same.
“Dad,” he said, “there’s an alarm on. You know that card you gave me? Patil’s dead. Thieu’s dead.”
Jordan stood there, raked a hand through his hair, didn’t say anything except, “Come in.”
Grant drew his foot from the door. It shut. Jordan was on his way to the couch. Paul was on his way to the bar.
“No drinks, thanks,” he said, and he and Grant sat down.
“I’ll have one,” Jordan said. “How did you get in?”
“Florian,” he said. Leveling with Jordan was the best policy, if it was something that obvious. “Sorry about that, but if they’re killing off people on Thieu’s social list, I wanted to be sure you were all right. What in hell’s going on?”
He had Jordan at rare disadvantage. And with a clank of glasses and two fast jets from the dispenser behind the bar, Paul was rapidly preparing a distraction.
“Dad.”
“Oh, cut the ‘Dad,’ boy.”
“Well, I try. I’m here. Patil called me before she died.”
“Florian’s out there?”
“I figured he wouldn’t add to the social setting. Yes, damned right I called security. Dr. Patil was upset. She wanted me to go down the hall and get you. She said she had my number and called me because she couldn’t get through to you.”
“Nice.” Jordan took the drink Paul handed him, had a sip. “So my own appeal couldn’t get you through my door, but you don’t mind bringing the little dear’s guards to burgle my apartment.”
“I was concerned for your safety. She was talking about somebody inside, Dad. Who would that be?”
“The possibilities are endless. Ari, some CIT—getting an azi past Reseune Supervisors wouldn’t be easy, but with inside help, who knows? Are we worried about assassins?”
“I’m worried for your safety. I’m worried for Grant’s and Paul’s. They didn’t ask to get involved in whatever crazy mess you’re in. Planys is a small place. Everybody knows everybody. Who would have killed an old man who didn’t have long to live anyway?”
“A long list of volunteers,” Jordan said, and took a drink of what looked like vodka. “The man was an insufferable egotist.”
Justin sat back against the couch, crossed one leg over the other. “I thought you were friends.”
“Society there is sparse.”
“Come on, Jordan. Tell me. What happened? I know you didn’t kill Ari. Everybody knows it. You were bitter, you wanted to strangle Denys, that didn’t happen, and you spent nearly twenty years in the company of a doddering old guy with an ego. That, I understand. But if this guy had associates that were getting to him past the security screen at PlanysLabs, where were they? How was Patil involved? Why were you carrying her card around? And why in bloody hell did you dump it on me?”
“So Ari’s got you asking her questions, has she?”
“I’m asking my own damn questions. I wouldn’t have, if you hadn’t shoved that card off on me, and if Patil hadn’t called me in the middle of the night a few minutes before someone shoved her out a twelfth-story window—I call that involvement. I call that a damned mess, and if you’ve got any key to Thieu’s goings-on at Planys, I want it!”
“What? Afraid your nice career’s getting tarnished?”
“I’m afraid my father’s trying to tarnish it, thanks. I’m afraid my father’s decided to carry on a stupid war with a dead woman and can’t figure out what year it is!”
“Justin,” Grant said, a calm-down.
Jordan grinned. “Got to you, did I?”
“It’s not a damn game!”
“Isn’t it? I don’t get out much lately. I need som
e amusement.”
“At my expense.”
“Anyway I can, son, anyway I can.”
“Oh, poor Jordan. Poor Jordan. I never thought you were a sympathy sponge. But that’s what you want. You want me to feel so sorry for you I’ll ask you what I can do to help you out. Well, hell!”
“You could ask Florian in for a drink.”
“Somehow I don’t think he will. He’s here to protect us both. And there will be guards. I’ll be real damned surprised if there aren’t guards dogging you down the halls, after this. So that’s what you won with this stupid stunt.”
“What stunt? The card? Did I pull the bandage off Reseune’s old sores’? Maybe they deserve airing.”
“Twenty years ago! Normal people don’t carry on a feud with a dead woman for twenty years, normal people don’t blame her daughter, normal people don’t try to get their own sons arrested for a damn joke!”
“You live with her. You never leave her.”
“She’s just a nice kid. You don’t give her a chance. No, you’ve got to play politics, and dead politics, at that. What have the Paxers got, since the War ended? Their war stopped, we’ve got the peace they wanted, and they’re still running around in back halls passing cryptic notes to each other and pasting up posters, what time they’re not blowing up children. The Centrists, hell, the law won’t let them mess up this planet—” Air went rarified. He didn’t do real-time work, but a woman had died tonight while she was talking to him, and he and Jordan were going to be closely guarded for the rest of their natural lives. So what the hell did it matter if Jordan got a year’s jump on what was going to go public anyhow? “You want the truth, Dad? I’m going to breach security right now and give you a name. Eversnow.”
“Actually no surprise. I know about your little secret.”
“Knew about it when you gave me that damned card?”
“I don’t think I want to tell you. Let ReseuneSec figure what to do about it.”
“Patil was your source.”
Jordan shrugged. “Or not.”
“So you know about it. All right. And certain Centrists know, but that doesn’t make them happy, because they’d have to go off in the deep dark and actually build their new Earth, which means no nice, warm offices and no influence in Novgorod, doesn’t it, so some of them aren’t as happy as they could be.”
“That could be true.”
“And then there’s the Abolitionists, oh, ask Grant about them. They know what’s moral for everybody but them. The world is going along pretty much on course, and the War’s over, so it’s unemployment for radical types…everybody’s too comfortable. They’re sending Patil out to handle Eversnow, and now somebody’s killed her. You know, but you don’t want to say how you know, and that doesn’t look damn good, Jordan, it doesn’t. You had your little fling with the Paxer element, which damn near got Grant killed… So what in hell are you involved in this time?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
“Dad. Talk to me.”
“So how do you know?”
“You can figure how I heard about it. From Ari.”
“From the little dear. Who keeps you from unemployment until the bills come due and your pretty, safe world blows up in your face. You know what your precious Ari is, son of mine? The same as the first one—a damn self-contained genius with the power to run mindsets on the whole human species. You get all bothered about terraforming a planet we weren’t born to, oh, the poor microbes—the damn stupid megafauna that’s been turning this planet to desert for twenty million years: we’ve got to save them so they can go on desertifying the planet. We get all worked up about that, and never mind this one woman is imposing her mental design on the whole human species, dictating the social ratios from one end of space to the other, dictating the attitudes, the thoughts, the philosophies, of every single azi that gets his CIT status and turns into a breeding, proliferating citizen of this planet and everywhere else we reach! Every freedman on every station in Union space is teaching his kids the sacred dogma Ari Emory embedded in their psyches. Every planet we ever occupy and every station in Union space is going to be populated with just the right ratio of brilliant to moderately stupid that Ariane Emory decided is just fine and right for humanity. We don’t need a god. We’ve got one!”
“The Bureau of Defense was the one that landed a colony on Gehenna. The first Ari modified it so as not to create a human timebomb.”
“Do we know that?” Jordan fired back. “Seems it did pretty well at being a bomb. Alliance is still trying to figure out how to get the locals out of the bushes.”
“Good question. I’m sure I don’t know what she’s thinking and I don’t know what your Ari thought. But I’m even more sure the Defense Bureau doesn’t know what they’re doing from one campaign to the next, and if you want somebody to blame for this mess, Jordan, blame the people you were dealing with when it all went wrong. They wanted a weapon. A poison pill. They didn’t care how it got mopped up so long as Alliance had to do it, and now we’re not at war with Alliance, and you’re right when you ask what do we do now, sterilize the planet? It’s not going to happen, Dad. It’s what we’ve got to live with. It’s going to be this Ari’s problem.”
“We’ve got a whole new branch of the human species out there, thanks to her. What are we going to do with that, when it wants off its planet? Is it going to like us? We don’t fucking know, do we?”
“We’ll learn from it. And we’ll deal with it.”
“Oh, I’m sure we’ll learn. And I hope your little dear keeps her hands the hell off it before it gets worse. That’ll come back to make us sorry, no way it won’t.”
Deep breath. “So Gehenna worries you. Fine. Meanwhile your precious Centrists want to play god with Cyteen’s ecosystem. Populate the world. Turn it into Earth. And Eversnow’s not going to be good enough for most of them and now Patil’s dead. What do they want, Dad?”
“Well, tonight they haven’t got Thieu and they haven’t got Patil. I wonder how that benefits them. I don’t think it does.”
He shut his mouth. For several seconds. He really didn’t want to know the next answer. “So who does it benefit? Do you know?”
“The short answer is, it doesn’t benefit them. Ergo it wasn’t the Centrists who did it.”
“A split in the Centrists? Centrists who were willing to have Eversnow be the project—versus those that aren’t? Yanni just made a deal with their leadership. I think you know that. I think maybe you’ve even discussed it with him.”
“So let these mythical asymmetrical Centrists all go play at Gehenna. There’s a nice lab. It bites back. They can’t make it worse than it is.”
“You gave me Patil’s card, Dad. What in hell was I supposed to do with it?”
“Take it to the little dear. What else would an upstanding lad like yourself do, who wants to keep his precious career spotless? Mine’s done. What do I care?”
“Your career isn’t done. It doesn’t need to be done.”
“My own son won’t work with me! What’s left?”
“For God’s sake don’t try pity, Jordan. I’ve got my own problems. You want my help, take it, or quit whining!”
Silence on the other side. Jordan spread his arms along the back of the other couch, feet extended and crossed. “Dear boy. Whining, is it?”
Somehow that posture conveyed threat. Justin became just a shade cautious. “I’d help you, Dad, I would. But everything I try to do for you is a risk. Not from her. From you. Every time I try to make a gesture, you slap it down. Every time I try to do anything for you, you do something to make me sorry I even tried.”
“Now who’s whining?”
“You dodged the question.”
“Ask it.”
“What was I supposed to do with Patil’s card? What were you doing with it? Why involve yourself with her? And why is she dead?”
Jordan sat unmoving for a moment, then leaned forward and took a sip of the vodka. “Shoved
her out a window, you say? That would account for it.”
“Don’t take that tone with me.”
“The little dear can’t question me under drugs, so you volunteered.”
“I’m worried about you, dammit. Cooperate! You’re not guilty of anything.”
“Thank you,” Jordan said, with a salute of the glass. “Thank you. I appreciate that.”
“Well, then don’t act the part. Tell me what in hell you meant with the card.”
“Thieu talked a lot about her. A lot. Brilliant woman. Going to save the Centrist cause. Ad nauseam. Nothing’s going to save the Centrist cause. Never was a chance of it from the moment they passed the law that put Cyteen off-limits for terraforming—of course, that was after we had ReseuneLabs and Novgorod and PlanysLabs already down here, not to mention Big Blue—here we were in the middle of a war, and with the no-terraforming law that hampered us protecting ourselves, it got downright dicey trying to keep civilization going down here. But on-world settlements suddenly seemed a good backup in case somebody got a strike in at the station. Military ne-cess-i-ty. So we enacted the Habitation Zones Act—incidentally what I assume the little dear is relying on for this spurt of building I hear she’s indulging in upriver. Turns out she’s the best ally the Centrists have got. One little slip, one breach of quarantine, and they’ll have to designate another big slice of land into the Zones…wouldn’t that be ironic?”
“Do you know some specific threat? Somebody planning—”
“Hell if I know. Construction here. Construction upriver. Accidents happen. So Patil’s dead. Thieu’s dead. And Thieu wanted me to call Patil, as if I was a total fool. No, he didn’t give me the card. I didn’t even get it there. Turned up in my coat pocket the day I gave it to you.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. How should I know?”
“How do you think it got there?”
A shrug. “Library, restaurant—breakfast and lunch—I’d been in public places all day. I found it. I figured it for a set-up like the last set-up. I routinely leave my coat on my chair, all right? Paul’s usually there. At one point we both went to the salad bar. Possibly I’d left it at a table in Library and we were both off at another station. I do it every day. I don’t even know it happened that particular day. I don’t keep things in my coat pockets. I don’t put my hands there, as a rule. I felt something when I straightened the pocket flap. There was that damned card, like a visit from Thieu. But not. And I didn’t the hell like it. So I just returned it to ReseuneSec. I knew it would get there.”
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