Текст книги "Regenesis"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 45 страниц)

She had to laugh ruefully for a microsecond, and grew sad after, thinking about herself and Justin, and swearing to herself it never would happen to them that way. “What did Paul think about it?”

Yanni looked at the door, as if measuring the distance to the conference room, and said, quietly, “Poor Paul. Always, poor Paul. Paul puts up with him. That’s got to be a ferociously strong mindset, Paul’s. God knows Jordan’s tinkered with it over the years. But Paul loves him.”

“That’s what Paul gets out of it, at least. Did the first Ari ever try to do anything with him?”

Yanni shook his head emphatically. “No. That would have really torn it worse than what she did with Justin. Paul’s where Jordan lives, that’s all. Justin just happenedone year–a project that ran for a couple of decades, and blew up when Ari intervened. Became a permanent reminder of a quarrel he’d had with Ari. That’s one way to look at it, on Jordan’s scale of things.”

“That’s sad, too. Justin loves him.”

“A lot of people have tried,” Yanni said with a second shake of his head. “God knows. If you have an altruistic bent, young lady, take it from me on this one. Don’t try kindness, not with him. He’s just what he is. Let him be.”

“I wish I could Get him, all the same,” she said, and set to work at the dish again. “Yanni, Uncle Yanni, you keep being Director for a while. I’ll wait. Just don’t you be my Jordan, and let’s be friends. I’ll respect your opinion, you respect mine, and don’t hold out on me anymore.”

“I’ll take a good deep look at your theory on Novgorod,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “I’ll be interested.”

“Eversnow,” he said, “stays.”

“Through anything I can foresee at the moment,” she said, wishing otherwise–but it was necessary, right now.

So was keeping her word, if she didn’t want to make honest people mad at her. And she had always thought Yanni was honest. “I’ll really try to make it work, Yanni.”

She signaled for the next course. Gianni had made a really beautiful dessert, showing off, she was sure. It was layered, and oh, so good. Yanni ate his and ended up being persuaded to another half slice, and a little glass of liqueur to top the evening off. She couldn’t eat another bite. Her stomach was a little upset by the time she saw Yanni to the door.

But it hadn’t gone that badly.

Yanni said he still trusted Hicks. That was a problem.

She didn’t anymore, not until Hicks really proved himself.

She could take Hicks out, put someone she really trusted into that post–like Amy Carnath. Amy had the brains and she’d be fair. But she’d absolutely hate running ReseuneSec. Besides, she was only eighteen, same as the rest of them, and that was the problem–in a post like Hicks’, history mattered. Yanni knew all sorts of things, just a long, long memory, and so did Hicks, and you didn’t just replace a memory like that with a new appointment and hope to have anything like the prior performance in a job involving information.

She could take Admin herself, and put Yanni into Hicks’ job, but he’d really hate that, and that wouldn’t improve matters.

So they were stuck, temporarily, with Hicks.

The good part was, so far, she still had Yanni. They could work with each other, until things had to be different.

BOOK THREE Section 2 Chapter ix

JUNE 17, 2424

1008H

“Hello,” Ari said, opening the door to Justin’s office, and he spun his chair around.

Grant turned more slowly.

She came in solo. They hadgotten the extra chair, which they used in her lessons, since they’d folded their other Wing One office into this one, and she turned it around and sat down, primly proper.

“Coffee, sera?” Grant asked.

“Please. Thank you. I need to talk to both of you.”

“Is there a problem?” Justin asked.

“Yes and no.” She waited until Grant had handed her a cup of coffee in a pretty gilt mug, and just held it in her lap, not to delay or draw this out. “The sets you did that I snatched back. Thank you for that. I came to tell you you were right, there was a problem.”

“Which set?”

“The one you delayed on.”

Justin gave out a long, long breath.

“That set was tampered with,” she said. “I think I’ve fixed it. I’m sure I’ve fixed it. Sure enough to have him in charge of my own guard.”

“That’s very sure,” Justin said.

“His name is Rafael,” she said, “and now he’s under my orders. I think he was under Hicks’, and I think Giraud’s before that.”

“He’s too young,” Grant said.

“He is, but he’s not the first of his number. I think there was some off‑record done with his whole type…no, I don’t just think. I know. There was. I’m quitting being the kid as of this week.”

Zap.

“I didn’t get that out of it,” Justin said, frowning, so her bow‑shot had gone right past him. “I should have. I assumed. Never assume. You certainly beat me on this one.”

She shrugged lightly. “I had a head start. I knowgreen barracks programming.” With a shift of her glance toward the hall where Catlin waited. “And you wouldn’t have that experience. Still, you had something spotted. That’s what warned me to look twice. You had your finger pretty well on it.”

“What did it do?”

“He conflicted like hell when I took the Contract. He had a nice little reservation built in and I blitzed it. Not as good as an axe code, what I did, but close.”

Grant made a face. Grant knew.

“Anyway,” she said, “you deserved to know.”

“Thanks,” Justin said.

“I have it set up with Yanni: Jordan will get to work; I’ll check. If he blows up, maybe he and I will eventually have to talk about it. But we’ll just see how it goes. Let him calm down first.”

“Thank you,” Justin said.

“You’re still bothered about the BR set.”

“It bothers me that I missed it.”

“It bothers you. That’s why you’re good. Besides being Special‑level smart.”

He laughed silently at that. Didn’t say a thing. But self‑doubt was major in him.

“I’m sorry I’ve missed lessons lately,” she said.

“I think you’re getting beyond them, aren’t you?”

“I don’t think you’re at all through teaching me. I learn all sorts of things. You were spotting that conflict from the microset side of things; I was looking at the large picture, and I fixed it by yanking at the deepsets. You’re kind, is what. Grant knows what I mean.”

“Sera is right,” Grant said quietly.

“It’s why you want to rehabilitate your father. You’re just soft‑hearted. I need somebody who teaches me what soft‑hearted is.”

“I don’t know that it’s so valuable a commodity these days.”

“Because Reseune isn’t safe?” she asked. “It isn’t. Neither is Planys. Neither is here, granted Jordan got that card the way he says he did. We could have a problem at Planys that we never spotted. We could, here. Something like a Rafael type. Nothing of his geneset is there. One is in Hicks’ office, probably with nobody to report to now that Giraud is dead, but I’m going to put a tag on him–I’ll know every contact he has.”

“Ari,” he said, and cast a look up, at the over head.

She smiled sadly. “It’s only Catlin listening. We know about this office. We have our own protections around it, and if it’s leaky, they’ve gotten past all my bodyguards and nothing is safe. Just figure: there are three hundred fifty‑one azi at Planys. And somebody killed Thieu. And somebody killed Patil. I’m betting they got a professional in to take out Patil, somehow, maybe azi, maybe not.”

“An azi didn’t originate the idea,” Grant said.

“I agree with you,” Ari said. “An azi didn’t. But I’d be interested to hear your thinking on motivation. You’re not green barracks.”

“I’m house,” Grant said. “And I hardly remember when I wasn’t. I absorbed my values from tape, from instruction, and from being part of the household.”

“That changed,” Ari said.

“Ari,” Justin said, a warn‑off.

“Grant, you don’t have to answer me. I’m not being a Supervisor, I’m just curious where your focus is.”

“Classified,” Justin said.

Grant shrugged. “Not hard to guess it’s you, born‑man. Ari doesn’t scare me.”

“I really don’t want to,” Ari said. “I’m sorry, Grant, but I don’t want to ask my own staff, and I want an azi viewpoint on this question. In your psychset, could anybody get you to kill?”

An easy shrug. “ Hecould.”

“Ari, leave it!”

“I’m not at all conflicted about it,” Grant said. “No more than Florian would be, under a hypothetical. I just ran your question through my deepsets and there’s no prohibition against it, no great emotional charge to compare with my attachment to your orders, Justin.”

“Well, then, shut up, for God’s sake! Quit answering her damned questions!”

“I have a strong attachment to questions, too,” Grant said with a little tilt of the head, with humor. “Can’t resist them, if they’re hypothetical. Or I’ll think about it all night.”

“Don’t, if you please.”

“Now I’m conflicted,” Grant said, “because it’s actually an interesting question. You’re saying some azi out at Planys murdered Thieu simply because some born‑man asked him to.”

“Might have. Abban probably murdered the first Ari.”

“That’s my prime candidate,” Justin said. “That’s what I believe.”

“I don’t think I’d botch it, however,” Grant said, “if I was asked to do a murder. I’d look up techniques and pick one I knew I could carry out.”

“Now I’m angry,” Justin said. “It’s not damned funny, Ari.”

“I know it’s not,” she said, “and I won’t run a calm‑down on Grant. That’s your job. He’s just the closest alpha I could ask who’s not Security; and a beta couldn’t. I’m sorry, Grant. Justin’s concerned about you, and I haven’t been entirely nice.”

“I’d leave the office,” Grant said, “if it weren’t an interesting question. And I’ve thought about it–what I would do. What I coulddo, if someone threatened him. I told myself I could, and would. I actually take a certain comfort in that.”

“Same,” Justin said, “on this side.”

She nodded. “It’s nice to have somebody that close,” she said. “I do. I’m glad you both do.” She took something from her coat pocket, which turned out to be two com units, and she laid them on the nearest table. “Those are exactly the same as Florian’s, as Catlin’s–a few limitations: they only call Base One, they can only get voice contact if someone calls you back, and if you hit the red button, they’re going to bring down the ceiling, so don’t use that unless you have to. Just carry them and don’t for God’s sake lose them. If you see anything suspicious around you, if you want someone to show up quietly and intervene, hit any button but the red one. If you hit the red one, figure you’re going to get an armed response. Understood?”

“Understood,” Justin said, looking a little mollified.

“I hope you’ll never need them,” she said, “but I’m carrying my own.” She touched the door. “And don’t put yourselves in situations. Please.”

“Like visiting my father?”

“You’ll protect Grant,” she said, “and he’ll protect you. You do what you want to do.”

She left, then.

She’d made Justin mad for a few minutes, and she hadn’t wanted to, but she felt better, knowing Grant wasn’t limited in Justin’s defense. She’d suspected the answer she’d get: but she’d not been entirely sure she’d believe it. Now she did.

And that was good.

BOOK THREE Section 3 Chapter i

JUNE 26, 2424

1528H

Giraud, at nineteen weeks, had bones instead of cartilage, and those bones shaped a face increasingly distinctive from, say, Abban, or Seely. For all of them it was the same story: arms and legs finally matched in proportion. They made urine: kidneys were working.

Giraud’s heart, which one day might betray him, functioned well enough now, on a steady beat. He was just starting to grow the sandy hair that would characterize him in life. His lungs weren’t at all developed, so nothing but the artificial womb could sustain him at this point. His lungs lacked their life‑giving minor passages, and breathing any substance as rarified as air was impossible for him; but he was already getting vocal cords. His brain wasn’t cognitively active, and had nothing like its destined size, but it was acquiring a little organization. Areas of his brain made the most rudimentary start at sensing a touch, tasting, and smelling, though stimuli were much the same right now, and until that organization happened he couldn’t differentiate between touch or smell or sound: it was all the same to him, just a stimulus that got on his nerves.

He’d be a little insomniac throughout his adult life–but he’d begun to have periods of quasi‑sleep, or at least quiet. That, again, was the brain, organizing. And his nerves, which had lacked a myelin sheath, had begun to acquire it, which would be a process not limited to his stay in the womb. As that coating formed, finer and finer organization would become possible. As yet, it was very basic.

His eyes, completely colorless as yet, had begun moving, simple languid muscle twitch, behind sealed lids.

When he was born he would have a restless blue gaze, noting this, noting that, until those eyes fixed, and then one had better take care, even when he was a little boy.

He was nearly halfway to birth, which was scheduled for November 20.

But right now Giraud didn’t see a thing.

BOOK THREE Section 3 Chapter ii

JULY 1, 2424

0928H

I went to see Giraud today. He’s at twenty weeks, and about halfway toward, his birthdate. I don’t know why I went–or I’m reluctant to admit it, but things in the house have changed so drastically that I just wanted to get him in view again and use my brain about him, not my emotions.

He’s just a baby. He’s even gotten to look pretty well like a human being, and I halfway felt guilty about stopping Denys. I’m sure someday he’ll ask about his brother.

And I worry about what I’ll have say to him to explain it. He’ll feel a sense of loss, even for something he didn’t have.

It wasn’t Giraud who really shaped me, after all: it was Denys. It was definitely Denys that tried to kill me, and I’m reasonably sure he killed the first Ari, but I’m still trying to prove that, and I don’t know what the balance is.

Do I have to do to them what they did to me. Do I have to create a mess of an infant’s life to create a man to make a mess of your early life? I’d rather not.

And what if I live as long as the first Ari or longer, and the Giraud I created gets too old and dies, and they have to start over with a new baby Giraud right before you’re born? It’s all crazy. Making everybody all match is going to be impossible if they go on replicating people whenever they die, and so far they’re not saving us all up and starting the eldest first, so it’s going to get all scrambled about the timeline. Giraud might drown in the river before he’s forty. And then where will we be? Again, a total mismatch.

It’s absolutely crazy–and I’m the one–and you’re the one–the universe has to have continually at work, fast as we can.

So I officially give up trying to make things as exact as I was. I know it’s not possible. I don’t think it’s altogether necessary: I hope that it isn’t. The medics were going in blind when they used to take the first Ari’s constant tests and bloodwork and make mine fit her profile in any given week I was due for a major new tape–shooting me full of hormones. Now we have me for a test subject, and Dr. Peterson is writing up the work they did, matching my learning with what I was working on, and with what I needed to be working on. So that will tell us some relevance between hormonal state, particular tape, and test scores.

With Giraud, we know what he studied, and when he studied it, and we’ll still play games with his blood chemistry to make sure he has his brain on line when he studies certain things, but I don’t honestly think it has to be week by week, and I don’t think it has to be that tightly on schedule or sequence: I think the main thing is whether the brain is going to be totally fluxed and doing freethinking with, say, art, or whether it’s going to be absorbing facts on a given tape where facts, fast and exact, are what you want.

Besides, I’m not going to do to Giraud Two what Giraud One’s mother did, which was bear down on Giraud hard to be a genius. Denys was, Giraud wasn’t, and she couldn’t change that. I’m pretty sure she didn’t do Denys any good by coddling him: he could be as odd as he liked and she excused it. She was always hard on Giraud. And when she died he took over being hard on himself. That is a key to what he was, and I’ve got to think about that one in his setup.

I’ve arranged for Yanni to take Giraud: he hasn’t exactly said yes, but I just don’t see him refusing at the last moment, and it’s just a few months to go. And Yanni didn’t say anything when I said I’d backed out of creating Denys. I know he thinks something about it, but he’s not easy to read. I’ve found that out. I don’t think he really wants either of them. He knows he’s going to get Giraud. But I think he feels something about Denys and I can’t get a straightforward answer out of him. He says I know’ what others don’t and I’ll make up my own mind.

Well, I still have seven years to talk to Yanni about it. I don’t want to have Denys back and forth, but I didn’t destroy his geneset. I just sent it back to deep storage.

Maybe it would be a little less crazy if I just threw up my hands and declared everything had to follow program as close as possible, and Denys had to become a thorough bastard and have a maman who was as‑crazy as the originals’ was.

If I admitted that it’s entirely nurture, or the lack of it, that wakes up the genes, then everything and anything is justifiable.

But I’ve gone off my program, marginally, and I’m still pretty good.

And Giraud helped in that: the first Giraud did. He turned downright fatherly with me, warning me, trying to guide me toward survival, even while Denys was probably telling himself if I got too close to taking over too soon, he’d kill me without a qualm. I have to wonder if Giraud picked up on that, and tried to hit some middle ground between Denys killing me and my killing Denys. And instead, Giraud died.

It probably wasn’t all sweetness and fatherly feeling on Giraud’s part. He’d probably been worried about Denys doing something to foul up everything Reseune had worked for, for very selfish reasons. Denys could be selfish like that, if Giraud didn’t step in and fix things.

And if I create Denys, Denys could be like that again, if he turned out to be really Denys: utterly disagreeable, and utterly self‑centered, lost in his own world. It may be there’s something in Denys’s brain that made that happen, and it could be genetic, essential to what made him a genius.

Poor Giraud was just Giraud and I don’t think a little kindness will really hurt him. His end‑of‑life change of mind very likely was sincere–I figured that out, trying to plan for a maman for Giraud, and I just can’t come up with one. There was that critical a difference between the two brothers.

And Denys, if he had had one strong emotion in his head, wanted him reborn, wanted, himself reborn, so, so much–wanted himself with Giraud. Not because he loved Giraud, I’ve come to think, because so much about him was sociopathic, but because, to him, Giraud was part of himself, part of his all‑important existence. One of the things that drove Denys to try to kill me might have been a fear that, when I took over, I might abort Giraud, in one sense or the other–either physically or psychologically.

And, oh, Denys knew by then he hadn’t won any favors of me, and I suppose I should, have kept my feelings a little more secret. Denys had wanted. Giraud back so desperately.

But Giraud had never been just for Giraud. That was the difference a little love had made, and Giraud might have interpreted their mother’s hammering away at him as a kind of love–in his own way, he might have taken it for that. Giraud was, of the two, far more the wild card. Giraud would attach, sooner or later.

If I knew I had a sister who wasn’t reproduced, I’d feel deprived, wouldn’t I? And knowing it would fester, and turn toxic in the process…so maybe I’m wrong. I won’t know. I won’t know for a few years. I’ll see if Giraud asks the question.

A lot of things will change in Reseune. Or maybe I’m deluding myself…trying to change some things back to what they were twenty years ago.

My letter’s had time to get to Fargone. An answer could be coming back to me as I write this. Maybe even the people I invited have gotten on a ship and they’re coming here. I’ll know, before Giraud is born, what the answer is from all those people I wrote to.

We aren’t making any progress to speak of on the Patil investigation. They’ve hauled in some Paxer elements, the usual. The investigation at Planys is slow: there are two CITs from Big Blue, and before that, from Novgorod: they’d been in the University. Hadn’t everybody, when Centrists, Abolitionists, and Paxers were the radical chic? They passed a questioning under trank. Patil’s still dead, and likely to stay that way–but we have her geneset on file. So never bet on it.

There haven’t been any other cards turning up in people’s pockets.

We still assume the two events, the card with Patil’s name, and Patil being murdered, were connected.

And the rest of it just boils down to a lot of police work, sifting hundreds of records of people who were put into Planys during the War, because of radical connections or Defense‑connected projects–wasn’t that a brilliant mix? Everybody’s background has suspicious connections, because Defense used to shove anybody called “essential to the war effort” into Planys. And then Reseune, in Yanni’s time, moved in Jordan, who’s not the sort to be quiet or suffer fools.

The same with the University: Expansionist professors and Centrist professors, some that Defense moved down‑world for protection, and the ones they taught, and then those that couldn’t take the pressured environment and just got jobs out in the city. It’s an odd, odd network in the University, not like Reseune at all: most of the professors have contacts in the city, and they live all over, some in the University neighborhood and some clear over in the port area, and it’s very hard to track what their contacts are. There’s just no information in Novgorod that isn’t tangled.

We have too many suspects, not too few. Patil hadn’t socialized with the radicals, but they clustered around her.

And Thieu was connected to her and Jordan. And he worked for Defense.

I wish I knew who’d pushed that card on Jordan. It almost makes me think Jordan is innocent of involvement. He’s innocent of an unusual number of things he was almost involved in. I find that odd enough to constitute a watch‑it.

But I’m taking measures to protect everyone I can. And when I set up the new wing, I have to decide who’s in, and who’s out, the way it was when we were kids.

There’s Stef Dietrich. He’s been on the outs with us for a long time. He used to be one of us, but he’s a troublemaker when it comes to sex, and he can’t settle with anybody–people just don’t trust him. I don’t think I want to bring him in.

There’s Amy and Maddy and Sam, them first; Justin and Grant; Yvgenia Wojkowski’s in a relationship that won’t pass muster: if she asks, I’ll tell her that–it won’t make her happy, but at least she’ll know what her choice is. There’s Tommy and Mika Carnath; they’re definitely in; there’s Stasi Ramirez–she’s in; Will Morley: he’s all right, but his girl friend isn’t–another Yvgenia case. Pity Yvgenia’s boyfriend and Will’s girlfriend aren’t interested in each other. And there’s Dan Peterson–he’s got an azi companion, a beta, who’s all right: I checked. And there’ll be Valery, if he comes home, and there’s room for Gloria Strassen, who probably hates me; and Julia, who’s Maman’s real daughter; but she’ll probably tell me go to hell. That’s all right: I hope she does and she won’t be my responsibility.

I suppose I’m going to move in poor old Patrick Emory. He’s not that old, he’s just dull and a little odd, but then he’s my only living real relative but one, so for once in his life somebody’s going to be nice to him. And my aunt… God, my Aunt Victoria. She’s probably going to refuse to move, but there’s room if she wants to. I won’t leave her out. Nobody would dare do that. But I hope she’ll tell me go to hell, too. She’s still offended I exist, and she’d gladly pull the plug on Giraud, never mind Denys. And I think she’s immortal.

I hope Valery comes. I so much want to see him.

But there’ll be room, too, in that wing, for people that aren’t born yet.

You, maybe. I’ve no idea who’ll bring you up. Amy would be one of the best. But that’s, I hope, a long, long time from now.

BOOK THREE Section 3 Chapter iii

JULY 3, 2424

1405H

There wasn’t much to pack, and staff handled most of it. For herself, Ari just put together a bag that held her essential makeup, her current notebooks, her study tapes, anything security‑sensitive, and Poo‑thing–poor raggedy Poo‑thing couldn’tmake the transition to a new life in the bottom of some box.

She took her bag on her shoulder. She met Florian and Catlin, who had also packed their personal items–many of them lethal, she was quite sure, or at least classified, and this time when they went out to go to the new wing, they didn’t take the runabout. They took the ordinary mid‑hall lift down, the three of them, and walked into the ell that had always been a dead end, keyed their way through a door that had only opened this morning, to a reception by her security–Rafael himself was on duty–and then to a lift that you had to have a key for.

The lift took them up to the upstairs hall of the new wing.

And it was marvelous. A gray carpeted floor had a ribbon of bright blue rippling down the middle and along the edges–weaving and interweaving not so much that one wanted to follow that path, but providing a hint of cheerful whimsy she would lay bets was Sam’s personal notion, not Maddy’s.

She hadn’t seen it in its final preparation. She deliberately hadn’t seen it in the month and a half Maddy and Sam had been doing all the work here. Her paintings–the first Ari’s–stayed where they were, in Ari’s apartment, to wait there until her successor made a decision, and by the time it was her successor’s successor in question, the first Ari’s apartment would probably become irrelevant, to that centuries‑from‑now world, its content just scattered where it made sense to go.

But the artwork on the first Ari’s walls had been only a fraction of the collection. Paintings in the modern mode were spaced along the walls of this corridor, turning the gray and white expanse into segments you could say belonged to the green painting, or the red one–nothing of the sterile black and gray and white surrounds of Wing One. Alpha Wing, still smelling of paint and plaster and the attendant moisture, was a different world, a profound change from where she’d always lived. Very, very unlike anything Denys would approve.

And the double doors that each gave access to various apartments down the hall–they weren’t black, or beige, or one of twenty variations on white: one pair of doors, apartment 10, was red, 9 was blue, and 8 was bright green.

Her own doors, at the end of the hall, were as blue‑green as new Cy‑teen leaves, and when Florian unlocked them, they gave way silently onto her waterfall, bubbling and flowing down a wall that could have been natural rock, and making a soft sound to welcome them.

The miniature brook, lighted underneath the glass, ran right across under the stonework hall floor, and meandered off into the living room. She followed it there, and just stopped and set down her bag, and looked around her and up at the tank, the immense tank that sparkled with ripples and moved with small living fish and shadowed with living rocks and waving sea life. That watery wall reflected off the unbreakable glass that topped the cross‑floor river, so that the river underneath her feet was brown rock and flowing fresh water, and when she looked across the room, the glass top of the river reflected the Earth‑ocean that was the wall.

The ocean suddenly vanished. It was directional glass, and Florian demonstrated the wall control, “if sera wants to have it plain,” Florian said, “it will vanish. The light is still on, on the other side. Sam sent us the instructions.”

She looked away, turning slowly. Paintings. Framed colors, on the severe stone walls. The master artisans of Earth.

Part of the living room wall was garden behind glass–the wall that divided the living room from the dining room turned out transparent, with that kind of glass, just like the other. It could turn opaque at the flick of a switch, making the wall something else, making the dining room or the living room a private, undistracted area at need.

And the living room, even with the furniture, was big enough for several large sets of people to sit and talk at once–in some privacy. The water‑sound permeated the space, luxurious, and peaceful. Florian switched both walls back to transparency, and the ocean and the garden were instantly back.

It was everything Sam had promised. It was magical, top to bottom. She’d wanted to be surprised, and she was overwhelmed. Florian and Catlin looked around as she did, their own baggage left in the foyer.

Catlin asked:

“Are you happy with it, sera?”

“Very. Very.”

And there was no Sam. She’d thought he might be here to meet her, but he wasn’t, which was like him–just to have his work make its own declaration. He’d done it all: everything was going to be fresh, from the dinner plates in the dining room–rose‑colored pottery, mostly–to the couches, blue, just as she’d asked, but they turned out a grayed blue that went better with the stonework and the water and the plants behind the glass.

It all just fit, a harmony of sound and color that reached right into the senses. It was hers, in a way no place she had ever been had been hers. Maddy had helped do this. So had Amy, in the organizational sense, finding all the pieces Sam wanted. They’d given her this wonderful place, and she loved them. And Yanni was going to talk about the cost, but she’d told them–do it with their own places. Do it everywhere. Make it right.

She was happy, she decided. Really, really happy. She’d been so scared it wouldn’t feel right to her, and it wouldn’t behome.