Cyteen u-2

by Carolyn Janice Cherryh

  This woman, skilled in penmanship, wears identical sensors as she writes the exercise. Her muscle actions are being recorded. This is the actual recording of the tape.

  The young student is somewhat anxious as he waits for the cataphoric to take effect. This is his first experience with prescriptive tape. The technician reassures him that this is very little different from the entertainment tapes. The patches are uncomfortable, but only for the moment. The drug takes effect and the technician tests to be sure the boy is ready. The tape begins, and the boy experiences stress as he sees the exercise. The technician quietly reassures him. In a moment, through the output-input function of the patches, the boy feels the muscle action of the skilled penman as she takes up the pen and begins to write. He experiences the success, sees the shape of the letters, feels the small precise movements of the hand and fingers and feels the relaxation of the calligrapher at her work.

  It may take several sessions, but the improvement is already evident as the boy writes the exercise immediately after waking. He holds the pen easily and comfortably, no longer cramps his fingers with a hard grip, and his entire posture has improved as he has found the proper pivot point on which to rest his hand. He is amazed and delighted at the result. He will practice the exercise several times during the day, to reinforce the pattern. He will do it again just after breakfast, and several times the following day. His enthusiastic practice will set the habit. He may repeat the tape until he and his parents are satisfied with the result.

  This Beta-class azi is assigned to the special forces. He stands patiently tensing muscles in his back at the technician's request. He shuts his eyes, quite evi-aentty bored by the procedure which caused the young student such anxiety. He looks forward to the tape, but the skill he is learning requires the entire body. He has been through this twice a month for much of his life, and the biofeedback patches are more important in his estimation than the cataphoric. He has acquired a skill at tape-learning: his concentration is much more skilled than the student's. He knows the names of the muscles, knows how to attach the patches himself, and does a great deal of optional study in his own quarters, under a cataphoric dose hardly more than you might use in your own home for an entertainment tape, because he has learned now to induce a learning-state without the use of the drug.

  At the end of the month, he receives another kind of tape, which citizens do not receive: it is a very private experience, which he cannot describe in words, because much of it is non-verbal. He calls it good tape. The term frequently heard at Reseune is reward tape.

  The woman who administers the tape is not a technician. She is a Beta-qualified supervisor, and she uses a much more complex machine. This one has a blood-chemistry loop: it analyzes the blood it receives and injects natural mood-elevators—a procedure used in the general population only when psych-adjustment is called for.

  For the azi, who has taken this sort of tape all his life, it is a pleasant experience, which he values more than the other rewards the service provides. This one is internal, and profound.

  Unlike an intervention in a citizen patient, which depends heavily on the psychologist's investigative skills to tailor a tape, this tape is precisely targeted, prepared by the same designers who prepared the azi's psychset. It has an accuracy virtually impossible with a non-azi patient whose life has been shaped by unrecorded experiences in a random world. This azi, cloistered from birth and given his psychset by tape, is a much more known quantity, even after he has served in the armed forces and lived with naturally born citizens.

  Everyone who has ever held authority over him has had special training in dealing with azi. No azi Supervisor is permitted to raise his voice with his charges. Reward or the withholding of reward is the rule of discipline; and the trust between this man and any psychologist-supervisor is more profound than that between parent and child. That this is a different Supervisor than last month does not trouble him. He has absolute confidence in her once he is sure that she is licensed.

  People who have had their first experience working with unsocialized azi generally comment first that they feel they have to whisper; and then that they find themselves overwhelmed by the emotional attachment the azi are instantly ready to give them.

  They trust me too much, is the almost universal complaint.

  But this man is a soldier and works regularly with unlicensed citizens. He has developed emotional defenses and interacts freely with his citizen comrades. His commanding officer has had a training course and passed a test that qualifies him to deal with azi, but he holds no license and does not treat this man any differently than the others in his command. The commanding officer is only aware that a request from this man to undergo counseling has to be honored immediately, and if the azi requests the intervention of a Beta-supervisor, he must be sedated and sent to hospital without delay, because while problems in azi are very rare and a socialized azi's emotional defenses are generally as strong as any citizen's, an azi's psychset is not built by experience, but by instruction, and the defenses are not a network of social reliances as they are in a normal human mind. An azi who feels that shield weakened is vulnerable to everyone around him. He has entered something very like a cataphoric-induced learning-state, in which he is less and less capable of rejecting stimuli that impinge on him. The result is very like taking a cataphoric in a crowded room, intensely uncomfortable for the azi and potentially damaging.

  The tape this man is enjoying is more than pleasurable for him. It is also reaffirming his values and reinforcing his self-esteem. His trust right now is absolute. He experiences what no citizen will experience in a random world: he is in touch with absolute truth and agrees perfectly with what he is.

  This is Reseune, where our soldier was born. This three-year-old azi, much younger than our student, is preparing himself for what is commonly called deep-tape. He is anxious not about the procedure, which he has had before, but about the machine, which he has finally begun to notice as significant in the room. The psychsurgeon hugs him and reassures him, and finally makes a face and gets a laugh from him. He helps the surgeon attach the patches.

  The dosage of cataphoric he receives is very heavy. His thresholds are completely flat and his blood chemistry is constantly monitored.

  The tape is reinforcing his value-sets in words he is capable of understanding.

  It tells him how to win approval. It tells him what his talents are and what his strengths are.

  It may remind him that he has tendencies to avoid, much in the same way a parent may tell a child he must mind and not sulk. But the tape dwells continually on positive things and praise, and always ends that way.

  As it closes the Supervisor tells him a word he must lock this up with; and he will remember it. The next time the Supervisor will access that set of instructions with that particular key, which is recorded in the azi's file, with his tapes. As he grows, his deep-tape will become more abstract. The verbal keys will be integrated into larger and larger complexes as his psychstructures are merged into complete sets, and he will accept the values he is given with an azi's complete openness to a licensed Supervisor.

  Because the child has shown distress at the machine the Supervisor remembers to reassure him about the equipment while he is still receptive to instruction. Any distress the azi may feel with any of these procedures, no matter how minor, is carefully traced for cause and dealt with seriously. At no time does a Supervisor wish one of his charges to fear these procedures.

  All the azi tape is designed here, in these ordinary-looking offices, by designers some of whom are azi themselves. Much of it is done with the help of computers, which analyze the extremely meticulous physiological testing done on azi types .. . such things as hand-eye coordination in a particular azi geneset, reaction time, balance, vision, hearing, physical strength, hormonal activity, Rezner scores, reaction to stress. The designer takes all of these things into account in making a tape specifically for that geneset, tailored precisely to that genes
et's strengths and weaknesses, and linking into a particular pyschset.

  It is a designer who consults Reseune's library to select a geneset which can be given the special skills necessary to a new technology.

  It is a designer who attends an azi returned to the labs by his Supervisor for what the report calls severe problems. It is a designer who will order the tests and interview the azi to discover whether the problem lies with the Supervisor or the azi. It is a designer who will prepare a tape to cure the problem—or issue a binding order regarding the handling of all azi of that geneset, restricting them from certain duties.

  It is a designer who has destined this boy for civilian security duties, a change from the military training his genotype generally gets. Designers are usually conservative in shifting a genotype into new applications, because they, as much as their subjects, want to assure success. At Reseune, where azi test subjects are used, a keyword procedure creates a retrieval tab on the test set so that a psychsurgeon can maintain it separate for a considerable time before integrating it into the psychset. The few azi who run what are called short-term tests are specially trained in isolating and handling the interventions, and are themselves the judges of whether they should accept a particular test. Reseune's rule is to experiment slowly, and to deal with only one change at a time.

  Occasionally an azi, like any member of the general public, develops severe psychological problems.

  Many of these are sent to Reseune, where designers and psychsurgeons work with them, attempting to devise solutions to the psychological difficulties, solutions which also benefit science and find their way into general psychotherapy.

  In some instances the solution has to be retraining, which necessitates mind-wipe and a long period of recovery. In an azi of proven genotype and psychset a problem of this magnitude is always due to extreme trauma, and Reseune will take legal measures on the azi's behalf in the event of negligence or mistreatment.

  In other instances the solution is only in the genetics wing; Reseune forbids reproduction of a genotype that has met difficulty until the designers working with the afflicted azi can find a fix for the problem.

  In very, very few cases, there is no fix, no remedial psychset to install even with mindwipe, and a panel of qualified staff members can find no humane solution, except to terminate. The azi's quality of life is the main consideration, and Reseune, which has made the rules which forbid a Supervisor to speak sharply to one of its azi in the workplace, likewise must take the decision any next of kin must face when a body functions after reasoning, meaningful life has ceased....

  CHAPTER 4

  i

  The womb-tank tilted, spilled its contents into the fluid-filled receiving tank, and Ariane Emory struggled and twisted, small swimmer in an unfamiliar dim light and wider sea.

  Until Jane Strassen reached down into the water and took her up, and the attendants tied off the cord and took her to a table for a quick examination while Jane Strassen hovered.

  "She's perfect, isn't she?" There was worry in that question. An hour ago it would have been clinical worry, professional worry, anxiety about a project which could go very wrong if there was something wrong with the baby. But there was a certain personal anguish involved of a sudden, which she would not have expected to feel.

  You're the closest match to Olga Emory's tests,her cousin Giraud had said; and Jane had thrown a tantrum, refused, protested that her management of Wing One labs did not include time to take on motherhood at a slightly fragile, overworked one hundred and thirty-two years of age.

  Olga took it on at eighty-three,Giraud had said. You're a strong-minded woman, you're busy as hell—so was Olga—you have Olga's interest in art, you were born in space, and you've got the professional skill and the brains. You're the best match we've got. And you're old enough toremember Olga.

  I hate kids,she had retorted, I had Julia by immaculate conception, and I resent any comparison to that obnoxious nit-picking bitch!

  Giraud, damn him, had smiled. And said: You're on the project.

  Which brought her to this, this room, this hour, agonizing while the medical experts looked over a squirming newborn, and the thoughts of personal responsibility took hold.

  She had never involved herself much with her genetic daughter, who was her personal concession to immortality, conceived with the unknowing help of a Pan-paris mathematician who had made his donation to Reseune, because she had thought a random chance and new blood might be preferable. Too much planning, she had maintained, made bad gene pools; and Julia was the result of her personal selection, not bad, not good either. She had entrusted Julia mostly to nurses, and dealt with her less and less as Julia proved a sweet, sentimental space-brain—no, bright,in any less demanding environment, but overwhelmed right now by the discovery of her own biology and as feckless in her personal life as one of the azi.

  But this,Ari's replicate, this end-of-life adopted daughter, was what she had hoped for. The ideal student. This was a mind that could take anything she could throw at it and throw it back again. And she was forbidden to do it. She had done tape of Olga with the child. Hand on Ari's shoulder. Sharp tug at Ari's sweater, straightening it. Ari's angry, desperate wince. That was the pair she damned well remembered. It brought back everything.

  For eighteen years of her life she had listened to that voice. Olga had carped at everyone on staff. Olga had carped at the kid, what time Olga had had time, till it was a wonder the kid was sane, in between which the kid had been totally on her own with the azi. Olga had taken all those damned blood-samples and psych-tests and more psych-tests, because Olga had theories that led to theories Ari had worked on. Olga had gotten Ari's earliest Rezner tests, which damned near hit the top of the scale, and from that time on it had been a case of blood in the water: Olga Emory, with her pet theories of scientific child-rearing, had believed that she had an Estelle Bok on her hands, destined for centuries of immortality via Reseune labs. And every other kid in Reseune's halls had heard that Ari was brilliant and Ari was special because mothers and fathers on staff knew their professional heads would roll if their kid blacked the deserving eye of Olga's precious Ari.

  In those pioneering days on Cyteen, when intellectuals running from the Earth Company visa laws had gathered at what had then been the far end of space and founded Cyteen Station, renegade political theorists, famous physicists, chemists and legendary explorers had been thicker in the station mess hall than people who could fix the toilets; rejuv was a new development, Reseune was being founded to work with it, Bok's physics was rewriting the textbooks, and speculations and out-there theories had possessed people who should have known better. And Olga Emory had been a brilliant intellect with an instinct for cross-disciplinary innovation, but she had entertained some real eetees in her mental basement.

  Never mind James Carnath, who had more of them, and determined he and Olga were going to make a baby to outdo Bok the day he found out he was terminal.

  Which had led them all to this room and this project.

  So she had to do everything Olga's way. Straighten up, Ari. Stand still, Ari. Do your homework, Ari—Twitch and bitch.

  Between that and throwing Ari at azi nurses, the same way she had done with Julia. She had considerable remorse for that, in retrospect.

  Changing that parental disinterest would change Ari. Benign neglect. It was a terrible thing to recognize her own personal mistakes retroactively. Studying up on Olga had been like looking in a too-revealing mirror. Giraud had been right. A hell of a thing to find out, at a hundred and thirty-two.

  To this day she had no more maternal feeling for Julia than for any other product of the labs ... or for the two azi the attendants were busy birthing over on the other side of the room. In the case of Ari, never mind the experience with one daughter and fifty-two years' experience with students, it had to be a question of following program. For the kid's own good. She had respectedAri Emory, and dammit, if she failed with her, that was all the r
eputation she was going to leave in Reseune. At a hundred and thirty-two. She hatedfuck-ups. She hated personal indulgence and fuzzy thinking.

  It was still damned hard to look at Julia and see what a meek thing she had come to be—constantly fouling up at work, spoiling her new baby beyond bearing, dependent on an endless succession of lovers—and know that it was partly genes and partly her fault. The same neglect, the same carping she had now to admit she had done with Julia, was part and parcel of what made Ari run. Psychsets and genetics at work.

  Wrong kid, right parent, maybe. And vice versa.

  Hell of a hand nature dealt out.

  ii

  "They're all in good shape," Petros Ivanov said.

  "That's wonderful. Really wonderful." Denys took a bite of fish and another one. Private lunch, in the executive dining room, with the curtains back on the seal-windows of the observation deck. The weather-makers were giving them a rain, as requested, a major blow, water sheeting down the windows. The atmosphere was going to be compromised for a day or so. "Damn Giraud. Of courseit'll go all right, he says, and runs off to the capital. And damn if he's called!"

  "Everything's right on the profile so far. The azi are absolutely norm. They're already on program."

  "So's Ari."

  "Strassen's bitching about the head nurse."

  "What else is new?"

  "Says she's opinionated and she upsets her staff."

  "An azi is opinionated.That means the azi is going exactly down the instructions and Jane's mad because she's got new staffers in her apartment. She'll survive." He poured more coffee. "Olga's azi is still a damn worry. Ollie's younger, he's a hell of a lot tougher-minded than that poor sod Olga had, by all accounts, and Jane's got a good point: run tape on Ollie to soften him up and Jane's temper will crack him. Her style with the kid she can manage; changing Ollie and changing the way she deals with him is further than Jane's going to go without exploding. If that kid's got even an ordinary baby's instincts she'll pick up on adult tensions right from the cradle. Figuring she's got Ari's sensitivity, God knows whatshe can pick up on. So what do you do?"