Regenesis (v1.2)

by C. J. Cherryh

  Base One, sera’s base, could cross that threshold. It warned when it was about to go somewhere securitied, and it didn’t leave footprints in System. But it would draw a lot of securitied information into their office, and that was worth a little hesitation.

  No, Catlin decided. But: “Interesting,” Catlin said. “Patil is someone Yanni was talking to. He told sera they were going to terraform a world called Eversnow, and it’s not public knowledge. He was talking to Dr. Patil.”

  And Florian asked: “How did Jordan know Yanni was meeting with her?”

  Section 2

  Chapter i

  April 26, 2424

  0500 H

  Giraud and his two companions grew fast this week.

  The organs were present—just barely starting to function inside the body cavity, largely visible through transparent skin. Fingers had discernable nails. The yolk sac had gone. Blood functioned to feed the cells.

  The babies were mostly head at this point, because brains—very high order brains—were developing fast. Nerves were growing out from the spine. Arms had wrists and elbows. Underdeveloped legs kicked, a function of those newly active nerves. Giraud and his two companions weighed only a quarter of an ounce apiece, but they had some distinction as human, they were becoming, was what. They were becoming what they could be.

  Chapter ii

  April 26, 2424

  0744 H

  Damn. Staff had been busy last night.

  Florian had taken direct action, the morning’s messages informed Ari while she dressed: Florian had gotten Justin and Grant out of range of Jordan’s machinations—well, that was good. She’d been trying to accomplish that for six weeks. There’d been the chance, the very real chance, that Jordan might resort to snatching one or the other—likely Grant—for a few hours of therapy. Her staff had been watching nonstop for just such a move. Now they could all relax a bit.

  But the next line of Florian’s report suggested otherwise.

  A contact number? Yanni’s Dr. Patil. Yanni’s transcript had included that interview. She’d initially ignored that part of the schedule as probably just one of Yanni’s frequent meetings with ranking scientists, and university professors were thick on his usual list. But Patil was clearly a significant name, and Ari did know the content of Yanni’s talk with her.

  And it wasn’t the first time she’d heard the name. Dr. Patil had had a set-to with Uncle Denys about a paper last year. Denys had gotten mad. He’d threatened to send Patil to Planys, except Yanni had talked him out of it.

  And Jordan handed Justin a card with that name on it? Damn! was her immediate reaction.

  Florian suggested Jordan might want to signal Yanni he knew something about Yanni’s business in Novgorod. Or maybe there was some connection with the fight Jordan and Yanni had had before Yanni left… which made a certain sense.

  Jordan wasn’t in official communication with anybody but Yanni, had no social contact but Justin, and he had no security clearance beyond Library, not all of that, and not even the most basic access to System.

  That posed a question.

  A possibly scary question.

  She keyed a message back to her security, whoever was at the desk: “Find out how Jordan got that card. Do anything that furthers that investigation.”

  Then she pushed back from the desk and got up.

  It was probably safest not to talk to Justin until the immediate irritation of the disarrangement had gone away—he was bound to be adrenaline-high, and that never improved communication, did it?

  Yanni, Florian’s message had said, was already notified—about the move, at least. Yanni wouldn’t object to whatever she did regarding Justin Warrick.

  But Yanni hadn’t heard about this Dr. Patil being linked to a mysterious card Jordan knew they were going to question.

  That was a matter worth telling Yanni, and getting his reaction. And since she’d officially read the transcript and it jibed with what she’d gotten from Base One, she could at least take that caution out of her thinking and ask some questions.

  If Jordan had found out that Yanni was talking to Patil, how had he known that? He didn’t get mail. He had no way to get a business card. Maybe Yanni himself had dropped information, making the move to rattle Jordan out of his cover. In that case she had better find out about it. And the worst thing she could do would be to start giving blind orders to put Florian and Catlin in the middle of it.

  She put on her sweater, searched her closet for a pair of pants, herself— she managed her own wardrobe lately.

  There was a leak somewhere. Maybe Yanni had arranged it, just to see where information flowed. She didn’t like to be caught by surprise.

  And she didn’t want Justin involved in any investigation of his father. He wasn’t involved in Jordan’s business: she’d stake everything on that. And did.

  But she still didn’t want to trip up anything Yanni was doing.

  Meanwhile Justin was probably mad as hell about being moved, and upset about the business with the card, and probably under-informed, over all. Justin without enough information was going to wonder about it, and wonder, and build his own hypotheses in private, and just stew for hours.

  Maybe it was better to send a simple friendly message to Justin, just a deliberately naive welcome-in. Justin wouldn’t believe she was innocent of ordering this disruption of his life.

  Or he might: this time he had Jordan to blame. She might be able to turn the frustration in that direction.

  She lapped her hair into three quarters of a braid and let it go—it would be hanging loose in ten minutes; but she put on makeup, at least, and took care about it.

  Grant had to be considerably relieved, this morning, to know they weren’t going to be working up close with Jordan daily, where it was oh, so easy for Jordan to get at him. Justin had to be relieved, at least, that Grant wasn’t involved. Justin would certainly focus his irritation on Jordan, unless she stepped in the line of fire and created an issue and a target. So any message she sent into that ferment of vexation had to be cautious.

  She sat down at the keyboard and tapped into the secure, local net. It wasn’t my order, she typed, which was the truth. But I think it’s a good idea. He can have the office all to himself. It was bugged anyway.—Ari.

  Justin might think that was funny.

  Or maybe he wouldn’t.

  She sighed.

  And typed a postscript: Justin, don’t be upset with me. Phone, if you have a problem with this.

  Not that she was going to back down from what Florian had done. It was only moving the schedule up, regarding the move to her wing for both residency and office space. Justin didn’t know that, but it was the truth.

  She went back to the console and keyed one more message. Yanni didn’t do it either.

  Then she put on her boots and went to gather up Florian and Catlin.

  Straight to Yanni’s office, over in Admin, before she did anything else, and she did that, with Florian—Catlin was busy with some research. By the time she got there it was 0840h, and Yanni’s foyer was already full of problems.

  She didn’t go through the foyer. She took the side entry, the one Yanni himself used, and Yanni’s secretary, Chloe, looked up in startlement.

  “Sera?”

  “Tell Yanni take a restroom break. I need to talk to him.”

  “Sera,” Chloe said respectfully, and pushed a button on the console. Chloe didn’t even talk to Yanni. Yanni came through the door fairly promptly.

  And stopped cold.

  “I need to talk,” Ari said. “Now.”

  So Yanni immediately opened the door behind Chloe, and went in. Florian walked in, to stand behind her, while she sat down at one end of the conference table—it was a big one—and Yanni did, at the other end.

  “A problem?” Yanni asked. “I had a report this morning—that there was some goings-on involving Justin. That you moved him out of the Education Wing altogether, fired his staff, and gave Jordan
an office. Is this the sudden problem?”

  “Jordan is the problem. Jordan wants an office of his own.”

  “And you apparently gave him one.”

  “I did. ser,” Florian said, behind her. “It was done at my level.”

  “I stand by it,” Ari said, “if it doesn’t actually hurt anything. It didn’t seem to me it does.”

  Yanni remained as he was, just looking at her, and thinking—clearly-thinking. “Jordan asked me for an office before I left. Evidently he thought he could get away with going around me.”

  “He didn’t ask me. He said he was going to move in on Justin. So Florian moved Justin to my wing.”

  “Except his staff, ser,” Florian said.

  “Are you going to talk at me from two different levels?” Yanni asked, looking from her, seated, to Florian, standing. “Sorry, ser,” Florian said.

  “If you want Jordan out of that office,” Ari said, “you can tell him that. Meanwhile Florian says he had no place to put Justin’s staff, but they’re good people and Florian promised they’d be taken care of. Admin should hire them.”

  Yanni was silent a moment. Then nodded. “All right. It can happen. I’ll make a note for Chloe.”

  “Good. Justin will feel a lot better about it.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he will. And Jordan’s got what he wanted… this week. Hell if that’ll content him for two days. Damn the man!”

  “That’s not all he did,” Ari said. “He dropped a business card into Justin’s pocket. Justin didn’t like it. He gave it to Florian. I have it in my apartment. It was from a Dr. Sandur Patil.”

  “Patil.”

  He didn’t say anything but that. Not after a long wait. So she said, “I brought Jordan here from Planys. It seemed a good idea at the time. I hoped he’d do better than this.”

  “He’s a damn maniac.”

  “I thought you were his friend.”

  “With Jordan? Being Jordan’s friend requires fireproof gloves.”

  “So did this Patil figure somehow with why you’re mad at him? I’ve read your transcript. I know who she is. Is Jordan somehow connected with this?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “So what does it mean?”

  “Let me drop another name,” Yanni said. “Thieu. Dr. Raymond Thieu.”

  It didn’t ring any bell. She was genuinely puzzled, and shook her head. “I don’t know him.”

  “Nanotech,” Yanni said. “Biologicals. Former head of the Planys remediation project.”

  So. There. Biological nanisms, living nanomachines, anathema on Cyteen, except under strictest conditions. Patil’s expertise. Beta Station was where they worked on that, where you had to have all sorts of clearance to get in, and where nothing could escape. Nanobiologv applied in the remediation areas out in the Planys death zones, where Cyteen microbes met Terran ones. But when they loosed something into the biosphere they did it with great, great caution—not the wholesale dumping the terraforming plan had involved; not the extent of what they were likely to do at Eversnow.

  “So he’s no longer head of that program? Why?”

  “Retired. He’s lived at Planys since the War was at its height. He’s elderly, came from Beta labs, was head of Research in that discipline, taught at the University in Novgorod for two years, moved to Planys when the terraforming project got canceled, managed the remediation program there until he retired, five years ago. Distinguished career, bit of a prick.”

  “He knows Jordan, I take it.”

  “They were socially acquainted at Planys. Understand, the Planys lab doesn’t have the facilities to have done anything of an anagenetic nature, not in the most esoteric sense.” That was the ten-cred word for terraforming, where there was already life. “Let’s just say terraforming has been a hot topic behind certain closed doors, including Denys’, including the military’s, and it’s been hot for months. ReseuneSec is currently taking the whole Planys lab apart, and using Jordan’s departure as a plausible excuse to look into every nook and cranny of Planys operations—which has made Thieu madder than hell. Thieu and Jordan socialized—only twenty-three primary researchers in the place, off and on, so everybody socializes, you can figure that. But Thieu has retained very close ties to the military at Planys and to the University in Novgorod. Terraforming Cyteen was going to be his big program. He spent decades laying out all the details for his project, right along with Patil—and Council vetoed it just before it launched, then shifted him out to Planys, threw him the sop of an applied project out there, because he was madder than hell and not keeping his mouth shut, frankly. When the nanolabs shifted their focus to remediation, it was mostly to maintain the careers of people who specialized in that field—Defense didn’t want to lose them: but it also gave us the chance to get Thieu away from the media.”

  “Because we stopped terraforming in its tracks,” she said, shaken out of any sort of complacency. “But the military kept the research going. And the crazier Centrists still want it applied here.”

  “We’re giving them Eversnow. But a lot of old business exists out there at Planys. Part of the black projects in the military wing we can’t get at, and we don’t like, are nanistics of a nature I don’t like. Officially the nanistics program slowed to a stop when he retired, no other personnel was brought in out there, and what remediation uses is very carefully regulated, but lately, with the Eversnow matter—it’s back, this time in Novgorod. There’s an inherent problem with research labs, you know. They contain knowledge you’d like to have just in case your enemies have it, but that you’d just as soon not have on the public market. And when people who know military things retire, they still know things and they have opinions—unless you want to mindwipe a Special, which wouldn’t attract too many people into the program.”

  “So you think he’s been talking to people? Including Jordan? It’s not Jordan’s field.”

  “Politics is. Jordan’s always been a political animal. And we know there’s been a leak to Corain.”

  “One we found,” she said. “You think there’s more?”

  “Oh, I think we brought a major item of it here, with Jordan.”

  “My fault, you’re saying.”

  “Having him sucked up by the military wouldn’t have helped at all.”

  It wouldn’t. She’d prevented that. That was true.

  “Thieu arrived at Planys during the War,” Yanni said, “quietest retreat he could have. We’d moved a major part of the lab there, in point of fact, because we didn’t want to risk a raid on Beta, and that research falling into Alliance hands. The staff moved back to Beta when the War ended—but he’d already gotten on the wrong side of your predecessor in an absolute fury over the cancellation of his programs. So there he was, just quietly aging, still within the Planys labs, not the man he had been, but still—still within the structure, still doing some work on biologicals for Defense, supposedly doing some side work on the rejuv sensitivity issue—he either wasn’t allowed to work on the remediation as of two years ago, or he refused to work on it any further: it’s not totally clear how that happened, and we’re quietly asking at this moment. The man has a temper that doesn’t always serve him.”

  “But he still has his security clearances.”

  “He still has some clearance—though he carried on correspondence with a few people in the University in Novgorod, not all of whom we were quite comfortable with: people who’d gotten burned in the program cancellation; people who leaned just a little to the Centrist fringes— ReseuneSec found it useful to let it continue, to see where the lines of communication led, granted nothing classified got out. Meanwhile he met Jordan Warrick… when Jordan moved out there, not, of course, voluntarily. They weren’t close for the first ten years, didn’t even speak; but in the last few, as Thieu tended toward retirement, they started up a friendship. We can’t prove a damned thing, except our quiet in-house inquiry about resurrecting a nanistics project—the Eversnow project, which we didn’t say at the time, no
r mentioned Patil’s name—got Thieu very exercised. He breached security, at least within that close community of academics, and contacted a student of his currently teaching in Novgorod, qualified in the field, security clearance, to be sure, but not a contact he was authorized to make.”

  “Patil.”

  “Patil. He’d corresponded with her for years, but all those letters were innocuous, two scientists talking about programs, and definitely subject to censors who actually can read in that field. Recall there’s a strong Centrist bent in Novgorod University, through the social studies department and into some very shady nooks of the rebel chic. Patil’s work has a cult following. She doesn’t encourage the radicals. But they get excited when she publishes. When she lectures, they show up at her lecture series. If we revive the old studies for use at Eversnow, I want to be sure it doesn’t get used here on Cyteen by some lunatic with a lab vial. Let me tell you, with Thieu retired and Patil’s whole operation off at Eversnow we’re actually safer—barring something coming back by ship. All of which I mention to you just in the case I should fall down the stairs and break my neck—”

  “Please don’t!”

  “—in case, I say, I’m telling you verbally. There is that one very untidy and roundabout link to Jordan Warrick that we don’t like, the elderly and sometimes erratic Dr. Thieu, who connects with Patil, who’s the person we want to use at Eversnow, partly for very political reasons. But while we’re going ahead with the Patil nomination, we’re also going through the establishment on Planys with a microscope right now on the excuse of investigating Jordan, and it’s why we shouldn’t roundtrip Jordan right back to Planys at first excuse. If fire and fuel can meet, we just want to be very sure the bottles are secure. Once we ship Patil out to Fargone, we’ll feel a lot safer.”

  “But you’re saying it’s possibly all innocent.”

  “Patil’s a natural candidate for the Eversnow post. But hauling her from the Centrist party to the Expansionist side of the slate is going to mightily annoy some people. It’s possible certain factions will be more interested in the politics of it than in the actual science, which is years off. Short-term, it’s very likely to be political.”