Текст книги "Regenesis"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 38 (всего у книги 45 страниц)

“If you’re right and it is true, we’ll find it out in the process, and we won’t stress Kyle at all; if I’m right, there will be stress. There’ll be a block; and we’ll have to go after it before we can apply the axe code and get him back.”

“He’s not young, for any of this.”

“And you’re worried I’ll botch it. But you’re really, extremely worried it could possibly be true.”

“I’m worried an eighteen‑year‑old kid is going to start messing with his psychsets and upsetting him, and he’s not young.”

“Would you like to be there?”

“I wouldn’t liketo be there. But I want to be there, yes.”

“He’s very strong, considering–he put up a hell of a physical fight. But you’re quite right: if there is a block, this is going to hit his endocrine system like a hammer, and at his age, it could have an impact on rejuv. So what my studies tell me is that he should have complete medical support. Everything to safeguard him. But mostly, you should be there. He’s your companion. You arehis Supervisor, at least one of his Supervisors, though I’m betting there’s another in Defense. I hope he’ll respond to you. And I do want him to come through this all right, not just because I want the truth from him.”

“ You’resaying he’s guilty of everything in the book. That he killed your predecessor. What reason do you have to want him to be all right?”

“ Youdon’t think it’d be his fault, do you? I don’t either.”

“If it were true in the first place,” he said, “no, it’s not his fault.”

“I’m calling in Chi Prang. And Justin Warrick.”

“Oh, that’s a help.”

“You know you’re not his favorite human being, no more than Giraud was. But I know Justin as well as I know anybody outside my personal staff; and he’s very good. He’s professional. He’d never hold a grudge against an azi. And you should also know I’m consulting Jordan. Jordan’s mad at me, no question. He’s probably mad at you and at Kyle. But I don’t think that would ever extend to his work on a case.”

“Then you’re a fool.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Jordan’s actually written an important paper on this kind of operation–what they learned about blocks, both creating and undoing. I read it. He’s probably the best authority on it of anyone still alive.”

“I’m saying he has a grudge, and he’s the man who’d hold it. I’m saying I knew your predecessor, and she was a bitch. She’d lie with a straight face, when it suited.”

“Most people will,” she said quietly, “in a good cause. But she was exactly what you say, sometimes. And I won’t say I haven’t had a little trouble unwiring my own feelings about Abban. It got personal, about him. It never should have, because my feelings misled me. I’ve asked myself how I feel about Kyle, because I don’t think I could work if I were ambivalent on this. So I tell myself he’s been in a hell of a position for a long, long time, and I wish for a lot of reasons that Giraud hadn’t made a mistake in handling him. I wish Giraud had told Ari he had a potential problem, instead of testing his own ability to handle it. But Giraud didn’t want Ari to start paying attention to his psych operations, and particularly to Denys, whose certificate to run Seely was an outright lie–and Giraud had run the certification… I found that little detail. Youhad no reason to think Kyle had a problem, since you got him from Giraud. Kylecouldn’t tell you; and you weren’t going to spot it–being a provisional Super–but frankly, I know you’re better than Denys. Denys wasn’t really doing any direct Supering until Giraud died; and then he was handling both Abban and Seely and you could just watch the stress pile up on both of them. I saw it. I didn’t know at the time what I was seeing–particularly in Abban. I learned a lot from that. Is Kyle happy?”

“I think he has been.”

“Particularly in recent years?”

“Maybe.”

“I’ve asked that of people he worked with, your office people–other azi who’ve worked with him. He used to be tense, with Giraud; calmed down, after Giraud died and he shifted over to you. Tight‑focused on his job. Zealous. All good things. He’d laugh.”

“He can.” Hicks said…feeling better, perhaps, with the implied positives.

“Abban couldn’t,” she said, fast, like a knife cut. “So you’re better than Denys. You’re a lot better than Denys. Reports say you’re real good with the betas. So I think you know that you’re the one that can help him–or really hurt him. And he’ll be safer if you’re there. Let him focus on you. And stay steady. Stay absolutely steady.”

Hicks’ face was quite, quite pale. He kept gnawing at his lip. “What happens if you do find a block?”

“It’s usually very simple. It’s usually just like at beta or gamma level, something hooked right to the deep sets. We give him a lot of kat, we convince him to let it go, and we give the axe code, because we want to redo everything fast. He’ll need a Contract very quickly. That’s you, if you want to take it on. That would be the easy thing.”

“A block–” Hicks said, “can stop a heart.”

“I know it can,” she said. “And we’ll support him, with everything we have available, the best in Reseune. I’m not blithely optimistic on this. I know the danger to him. It’s why I want you there. I know, whatever your opinion of me, you’ll support him.”

“I will,” Hicks said.

“Good,” she said. And rested her arms on the table. “There’s one other, unrelated matter I want to ask you about.”

Immediately defensive. Suspicious. Very justifiably so.

“Anton Clavery,” she said. “What do you know about that name?”

“We don’t,” he said. “We’ve investigated, connected it to the Paxers. But that’s all.”

“So you haven’t solved that one.”

Hicks shook his head, relaxing a little, deciding, maybe, that it was a change of topics. “Why Patil used that name, she died knowing. We’ve been all through her affairs. And we have nothing to show for it.”

“She knew one other thing we don’t,” she said. “She knew what Defense knew about the project she was going to work on. She knew all sorts of things Defense knows, and we don’t. It could have to do with what Defense is doing. I was just curious.” She got up and offered her hand.

Hicks took it with a peculiar look, as if wondering if there had been a connection between the two topics after all; and maybe after an hour or two he’d begin to see there was. His hand was cold. Probably it would be good to have Wes have a look at him, just in case. If they lost Hicks, they lost Kyle, almost certainly, and she didn’t want to lose either one: Hicks, for Yanni’s sake, and Kyle, because if they lost him, they’d likely never know what he’d done and what he knew and what he could say…or if he’d been contacted recently, with new orders.

So she did what she could with what she could reach.

Meanwhile Kyle, besides being on a suicide watch, was pretty deeply under, for as long as they thought it safe or good, and she wasn’t going to trouble him with an inquiry he’d only have to resist. The less apprehension he carried into the session the better, and the greater the chance they could keep him from crisis.

Put him and Hicks on ice for the duration and concentrate only on Novgorod? She thought about that, about her whole list of priorities. She thought about going down to the capital in person–which would draw media attention, maybe draw other things, but it would get attention–planetwide and up in orbit.

She thought about how the first Ari had let Reseune matters slide, and trusted Giraud to handle what he was certified to handle, when she went up to Novgorod–her mistake, her very big mistake, a long time ago. And that was the bottom line. Ari had trusted Giraud to handle what Giraud said he could handle, a simple matter for somebody with that level of certification–if Giraud hadn’t been dealing with the best Reseune could turn out, with the bollixed‑up psychtech Defense could manage, exactly the kind of thing that couldfool somebody who, being a by‑the‑book operator himself, only expected what was in the books.

So, faced with a choice of going to Novgorod before she had the requisite years behind her, she trusted Yanni not to make a mistake–with something not simple, either. Sometimes you just had to let things go in the hands of people who were expert at what they did. Yanni had been talking to Council for years. He knew them. He knew his contacts.

Meanwhile she had to figure out what a spy inside Reseune could have told Defense, and what kind of an organization their enemies had been building, from the War years when Reseune and Defense had had a tight, tight relationship.

Jordan, she thought…when Ari yanked back the azi from the combat zones, they’d been dealing with the old Contracts, and undoing what had been done and undone around the time of the War. Jordan, a junior in the labs in those days, must have heard the first Ari fight her battles with Defense…and when Ari was old, and he was in his prime, he’d gone to Defense with an offer to betray Reseune. Defense, who already had a man inside, had double‑crossed him–why?

Because they weren’t interested in what Jordan had offered them. They’d heard what he said and drew some other conclusion. Hadn’t they? Jordan hadn’t proposed murdering Ari. Had he?

One thing seemed evident, Jordan had written that paper. He’d at least met the problem of the military sets, post‑War, and analyzed the security measures Defense had set into its azi soldiers, a self‑destruct if captured, in some instances–Defense work cobbled into Reseune’s clean psychsets. Involving Jordan was a risk–to Kyle AK, mentally; to Justin, emotionally; in all respects, to himself–and to Reseune, if he was still bent on revenge.

But if you wanted to dig up the things that lay buried in Reseune, Jordan Warrick was one who knew, and who’d been in a position to know. Yanni, who also knew, was in Novgorod, out of reach. There was Ivanov. There was Wendy Peterson. Neither of them had been involved in the labs the way Jordan had.

It might be a big mistake. If he said yes instantly, it was time to worry.

But he might also be their best asset.

BOOK THREE Section 5 Chapter xv

AUG 9, 2424

0808H

Prang was her first visit. Chi Prang, Alpha Supervisor, another of the old hands, met her with a notion of what the case was about. Ari had told her that in a letter sent along with the file; and Prang didn’t have much encouragement. Prang said if she had ever been notified the code had had any questionable outcome she would have taken AK‑36 in immediately. She said that she had, yesterday evening, checked records that Giraud had sent and the notation was simply that AK‑36 had had the code administered, that he was “doing well,” and that he was under Giraud’s Supervision.

Giraud had, Prang added, maintained an ironclad and prickly secrecy about his department, his operations, and his personnel; she recalled he had had arguments with the first Ari on that topic.

The first Ari, Ari thought to herself, hearing that, had isolated herself, had set everybody at distance, didn’t read the people she was living with as well or as impartially as she read everybody else she dealt with.

Read a stranger? Absolutely. Instantly.

Read a group of people? Easily.

Read the Nyes? Not well enough. The first Ari had grown up with them; been a child with them. Of courseshe knew them. If you stared at a thing a long time, after a while you weren’t really seeing it. Your mind started being busy, and you knew what you were staring at hadn’t moved, but maybe you didn’t see every detail. You didn’t notice when it blinked or its eyes dilated. You didn’t know when it changed its mind. You didn’t notice when loyalty to something else had gotten to the surface and started to move its thoughts in another direction. You didn’t notice that, the older Giraud got, maybe, the more Giraud was being run by his younger brother–who was the real Special, as Ari knew, and brilliant in azi psych, but who wasn’t a damned good Supervisor. Do this for me. Do that. Don’t let them know. Don’t let them inquire. Giraud, fix it for me. Giraud, keep them out. Giraud, she’s dangerous. She’ll be rid of us…

Major blind spot. Giraud loved her, not many had, but Giraud had, and of course she could trust Giraud’s motives.

Put thatin the notes to her successor: mind her own relationships.

Like Justin. Like Amy. Like Yanni. It was scary. It was one thing to say the first Ari should have done it; it was another, to think of doing it with Florian, with Catlin, Justin, and Amy…

“He won’t come through it,” Prang said bluntly, regarding their chances of dealing with Kyle at this point. “He won’t likely survive it.”

“Is the block likely in the deep sets?” she asked. “Did Defense have anybody that could do it that way?”

“The fact that they didn’t have anybody who could,” Prang said solemnly, “doesn’t mean they didn’t try. They had a high failure rate. There were azi we never saw again. Killed in combat. Always killed in combat. Alphas, no less.”

“How many were lost?”

“Twelve. None that belonged in combat. None psychologically fit for it. They didn’t want usenabling combat in an alpha. They wanted their career officers to run them, not have an azi taking combat command. They were clear on that score. Ari–your predecessor–worked to get them all back, and it took the turning point in the War and a slowdown in our production to bend them.”

“Betas lost?”

“I don’t recall the numbers. High hundreds. Gammas. God. Near four thousand.”

That made her mad…mad, and she thought she’d lie awake tonight thinking about it. That attitude in Defense, and then Prang’s little shrug, as if–what could we do? What could anyone do?

She’d spent a very little time with Prang, which put her on the edge of furious.

Then she wanted to go ask Jordan about what he remembered, but that wasn’t going to work, if she went in on a frontal assault.

So she went to Justin’s office instead–went just with Florian, and asked him and Grant if they’d reached any results in the case she’d given them.

Justin said, “I can’t tell you where any block is. I can tell you, if I were good, where I’d put it, if I were working on the psychset in the original manual. Grant agrees.”

She sat down by them and let them show her, just where; and it was where she thought.

But then she asked, “What if you were a total fool? If you weren’t that good, and you just wanted to go ahead anyway, and you weren’t that smart?”

They both frowned, even Grant, who rarely did. And then Grant said, “If you were a fool, maybe,” and searched the file and showed where you could put it in the secondary sets, and it made sense to her–secondaries was where ethics went, and they played off the deep sets, but they were shifty things, and interrelated, and they mutated considerably over a lifetime. It was whyazi went back time and again for refresher tape.

Ethics…and emotional needs.

“Could be,” Justin said, and added: “Kyle was a cold bastard, whenever I had to deal with him. I can’t say my opinion’s entirely clinical. I’ve tried to get past that. I’ve asked myself if it was partially null‑state, on his part. And it could have been. I could have misinterpreted it.”

“You mean when you were arrested.”

“He was there, during some unpleasant sessions. I knew him. I can’t say I know him lately–I can’t say I can do an impartial assessment on him, at all. Except–the azi this original manual should have produced–would have had some emotional reaction. He didn’t. That’s why I say, subjectively, it could have been a partial shutdown.”

“He could have done that,” Grant said. “Justin and I have talked about it. We think it’s not just that the axe code didn’t take. He’s self‑adjusted, possibly even to the point of being his own reason the axe code didn’t take. He’s been running internal adjustments, whatever situation he’s in. If he takes tape, which I’m sure a provisional Supervisor would want him to do, he takes it surface‑level, absorbs it as a behavioral guide. It steadies him down, re‑teaches him what his responses ought to be in order to fool everybody. He has an emotional capability: that’s currently completely engaged with his Supervisor. He gets pleasure out of doing the best he can, but he probably knows how messed up he really is. He knows, constantly, that he’s lying to the one he’s attached to, except when he’s dealing with his Supervisor in Defense, whoever that is–and whether it’s been the same person all along, or whether that’s changed, he’ll be loyal, and emotionally engaged, and if what they ask him to do throws his deep sets into confusion, his actions will still be clear, even through the conflict. I’ve studied the military sets. Actions are the real loyalty. That’s the mantra way deep in what they used to set. Do what you’re told.”

She could see it, in what Grant pointed out, the ethic to follow instructions and do no harm until one could get to a Supervisor, the sort of thing you’d set in for somebody who had to survive where Supervisors weren’t going to be as close as the nearest office. It was a beta kind of setting. Grant was more complex on that issue. Florian–

Florian, right beside her, was capable of intense argument: you had to know how to get him to do what he didn’t want to, and you had to make it clear to him it really was an order.

And then he’d do anything. Absolutely anything. Catlin would do it even faster, and not need advice and sympathy after; Florian did.

So what sort was AK‑36?

By all she’d read, he’d have been a Catlin sort. Point him at an enemy. He was setted for headquarters security, and that was what he’d been intended to be, in the purest form of his psychset.

But somebody had done something with the secondaries, and he had become, to all intents and purposes, self‑steering ever since, and they’d flung him into Supering combat betas and other alphas. Surviving. Trying to comply with his deep sets. Everybody did. Even born‑men did that, in their own chaotic way.

Ask Florian? There was a level at which she didn’t mess with her security’s working mindsets. Theory was a designer question, and she wasn’t as good yet as she would be. It was, more specifically, a Grant kind of question, if you were going to ask an alpha.

It was a Justin or a Jordan kind of question, if you were going to ask a designer.

She left, thinking about it, and she went into the security office and, in a small conference room with Florian, she called Jordan.

“It’s Ari,” she said. “Do you have a moment, ser?”

No answer, for a long time. Florian had been standing, and in the quiet and the privacy; sat down opposite her, signing, He’s there.

“Jordan? I really need to talk to you. Please answer.”

“Please? There’s a foreign word. Do I recognize that?”

“I need your help. Would you mind if I dropped by?”

“Oh, now this is familiar. ‘Would you mind?’ Try telling the truth and see if I mind!”

“Are we talking about the manual I sent you?”

“I haven’t got time for games.”

“I want your opinion, ser. I need your opinion. You’re one of the few who might know, and I urgently want to talk to you about that manual.”

“Go to hell and take my son with you.”

“That’s not very nice.”

Laughter from the other end. “Fuck you!”

Florian’s face went dangerous. She held up a hand. “Do I take it, ser, that you recognize the case?”

“What is this, a fucking test? I told you, I’m too old for games.”

“Old enough to remember what everybody else has forgotten. I thought you were. I wasn’t sure. Now I know for certain I want you in on this.”

“On what? This isn’t a modern design. This is old history. This is old history; from before I was born, let alone working.”

“You’re good. You just proved that. And I still want you on this case.”

“The hell! It’s a damned trick, and I’m not going with it!”

He broke the contact.

Florian looked at her, questioning, perhaps, whether they were about to do something.

“I can’t force his opinion out of him,” she said. “Not in any useful way. But he knewwhat he was looking at. It made him mad that I didn’t tell him who it was.”

“Many things make Jordan mad,” Florian said. “He’s not that much like Justin, is he?”

It was a good question. She knew things that could make Justin mad. She’d done some of them. But the one that would Get him, above all else, was something happening to Grant; and the one that would Get him, just him, personally–

–if he were in Jordan’s place–

He’d know he’d put his companion in a hell of a place with his actions opposing Ari, that was one; and he’d be damned upset in his career if he was on the outs with Ari.

It was an interesting thought, too, what Jordan would have been, if he’d been lovers with the first Ari long‑term. But that had gone very, very wrong–not because Jordan hadn’t ever loved Ari, she was fairly sure of that, and not because Ari hadn’t likely loved him. What Jordan wanted was being partners with her, learning things, doing things, having that. It wouldn’t have mattered, if he were Justin, whose name was on a published paper; or whether he got official credit; but it had mattered very, very much to Jordan, because–

Switch personae dramatis again–because Jordan was driven, all his life, to be number one, the best, the one who ran things–

And he wasn’t the best. In his view, Ari had turned on him. But she’d seen a danger in him. Seen how thoroughly one hell of a sex drive overlying a god‑complex had blinded what otherwise really was a great mind…

She’d fixed it in the next generation, hadn’t she?

This is it. This is all there is. This is all there’ll ever be.

All there is.

He’d been seventeen, Justin had, and that had to have hurt, because Jordan had always taught him not to trust Ari; but Justin’s own ambition to be the best had driven him to Ari; and afterward–

Afterward he’d had that mantra echoing in his skull, and Grant was the one he could trust, forever after, the way Jordan trusted Paul. Justin had come, finally, to a point he could like her. Just– likeher; and that was a long, long way for that mindset to come.

She’d met Justin on the same territory, hadn’t she? She’d been half afraid of him. And then targeted him for her first adult conquest. And shied off again, bluff called. He’d been scared of her. Grant had been willing to fling himself between. But that had been a dose of ice water, and she’d thought about it later and thought–thank God they hadn’t. Wouldn’t that have made a mess of things?

Liking was good enough.

Jordan hadn’t been that lucky. Neither had the first Ari.

I’ve found two of your mistakes, she thought, addressing Ari. One was ever sleeping with Jordan; the other was letting Giraud run and never just having the fight it would have taken and looking into his competency to do what he was certified to do.

You knew about Denys, didn’t you? Knew damned well he was a genius, and knew Giraud was almostbright enough to handle things. Giraud really wasan Alpha Supervisor. He just wasn’t the best one on the planet. When an alpha gets messed up, it’s a question of who canunwind the tangle he can make of his sets, and that’s probably just very, very few, even among those with the license, isn’t it? It’s hard for me to judge–because I’m good; it was probably hard for you to judge. I wonder how often you ever ran into Kyle, or if you ever looked twice at him.

She looked at Florian, pocketed the com, reached across the table, and laid her hand on his, a little calm‑down.

“I’m not worried about Jordan,” she said. “I’ll Get him. I’ll Get him and not lose Justin in the process. They’ve had a fight about something. But we’ll fix it.”

“We’re worried about Defense,” Florian said somberly. “Sera, we don’t have resources there.”

“We don’t,” she said, “but we’re smarter.”

“They have weapons andnumbers.”

Here and now, Florian meant. Here and now didn’t always figure when she set her thoughts ranging; but trust Florian to pull her back to the real world. Defense, she thought, was her enemy and consequently all Reseune was in danger. Defense was, in the terms of their childhood game, the Enemy, and Vladislaw Khalid…was its modern face.

What have they got? was one thing to ask.

And it was always, always smart to ask–How does what we did play out in their eyes? What do they thinkwe did?

Overthrowing Denys…who had agreements with them.

Bringing Jordan back.

Bringing Jordanback, where Jordan, if he weren’t Jordan, might have been moved to tell her things. A lot of things. Jordan had been dealingwith Defense before Kyle turned Abban into a weapon aimed at the first Ari.

She’d assumed Jordan was innocent. But if there was one person inside Reseune besidesAri in those days who could have run a timebomb like Kyle, it wasJordan. Giraud damned sure couldn’t, and Prang didn’t think she could crack what Defense had done and an alpha had worked over for decades…

Jordan had taken one look at that psych manual and exploded…not because there was anything in it of what Defense had done, but possibly because he knew exactly what Kyle was, and where he had been, if not where he was now.

“Sera?” Florian asked. The real world. The immediate threat.

“We’ve got to take measures to defend Reseune,” she said. “We can’t assume we’re safe from physical attack. And not just me. Everybody. The labs. Everything. We don’t know how crazy things can get.”

“Good,” Florian said, the way he’d used to say when they’d laid plans in the storm shelters. “That’s good.”

They went up to her office then. They called in Catlin, and Wes and Marco, and they said maybe they should talk to green barracks as well as the ReseuneSec senior officers–who weren’t happy about having a very young azi like Rafael down there in charge of them; but, Catlin said, after Wes and Marco, old green barracks instructors, had gone down and explained there was a danger, and that Rafael BR was under expert advice and orders, then ReseuneSec’s seniors had been a lot happier.

There were cases spilling over to Alpha Wing’s attention, a fight between two CITs at the port, over a lover in the town. It was the sort of thing Hicks had used to handle, and that Ari would have gladly given him back, but they couldn’t trust him yet with communications, and Rafael had no idea what to do with CIT fools who were themselves warehouse managers and assistant managers.

So she wrote a letter to the offenders: All of Revenue is in danger right now and Director Schwartz is trying to straighten things out in the capital. You have violated a number of community laws, and if Director Hicks were in charge at the moment you might both be doing community service for months. It’s stupid to fight when it’s the other person’s choice which of you she sleeps with, or neither. A ReseuneSec officer will ask her how she wants things to be. Her word will he final. If I read any of your names again on reports, including hers, regarding this matter, you’ll be in front of a judge and this as well as the next offense will go to trial. Sincerely, Ariane Emory.

It put herin a fighting mood, and she wrote another letter to all department heads: Regarding the recent call to review atmosphere breach procedures with all employees and all persons under your charge: we will be conducting unannounced drills. Conditions in Novgorod and recent sabotage upriver have made this review’ imperative. Places of public assembly, likewise review your procedures and be prepared. We cannot he sure the first call will not be a real emergency.

She was just out of deepstudy the next morning when she received, via Yanni’s Chloe, an exasperated message from the birthlabs:

We hope that Administration is aware that we risk losing work in progress due to security drills. We wish to he made an exception in all except an actual emergency.

She considered it, looked up the rules, considered lives at stake and wrote, to the labs: Actual emergency is by regulation announced as such. Labs will conduct unannounced internal drills once daily in lieu of ReseuneSec drills. –Ariane Emory.

She wasn’t in a good mood about that. She wasn’t in a good mood today about a number of things, and her head was muzzy from the deepteach drug, which probably argued she shouldn’t be writing to departments. She asked Florian, via com, “Has Yanni checked in? Has Amy?” and being told that neither had, she keyed up the night’s news. It was the fourteenth of August. And Lao was at death’s door.

That continued, Lao was rumored to be on life support, which could cover almost anything. Her Proxy was still missing. Other Councillors had declined interviews. The mayor of Novgorod had declined an interview, except that he had canceled all police and fire service leaves. The news services reported panic buying of foodstuffs and water. Parents were keeping children from youth activities.

Rafael reported, from ReseuneSec, that there had been two robberies overnight in Novgorod, four muggings, one hundred eighteen incidents of public intoxication, fourteen resolved cases of missing persons, one that hadn’t been resolved, some cases of panic buying of foodstuffs, a break‑in and looting at a liquor dealer’s, and a case of vandalism in the subway, where someone had painted Free Jordan Warrickon a subway car. The latter had gone through ten stations without being reported, and three more stations before the car had been taken out of service for cleaning.

Rafael said that older officers called it an uncommonly quiet night. Her own experience, slight as it was, said the night’s activities were usually ten times that, except in a few categories.

“People are afraid,” she reported back to Rafael. She put thatin her population dynamics equations and it came out very simply, that the azi‑born weren’t causing any trouble they could avoid and that the CIT‑born were worried and expressing it in liquor consumption.

She twisted her hair up, skewered it, asked herself if she could bear deepstudying Ari One’s notes on military psych one more time, and thought she’d done it enough.

Com went off. She punched in.

“Sera.”Catlin. “The scheduled 0800 flight from Novgorod has taken off an hour late. It will land here rather than Moreyville. We’re not getting a passenger list, sera. ReseuneSec has taken notice. We are insisting. They’re just saying they have a Council order.”