Текст книги "Cyteen "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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"Sheer fantasy."

"Your son tried to blackmail Ari. It was really quite a scheme. You thought he'd held Ari off. You let him run with it. But when Ari hauled Grant home, Ari had all the cards. Didn't she? Allof them. Your son went to Ari for help, not to you. And your son got a favor out of her you couldn't get for all your threats. I wonder how."

"You have a hell of an imagination. I never suspected it of you."

"You confronted Ari, Ari either told you or you already knew—what your boy'd been doing for his tuition. And you killed her. You jammed a valve and turned a pump on, nogreat amount of time involved. Everyone in Wing One knew about that door. It was supposed to be an accident, but then you had to improvise."

Jordan said nothing for a moment. Then: "It doesn't work."

"Why not?"

"Let me tell you who else knew I was going down there. You knew. I left. Ari and I talked and I left. Check the Scriber."

"She didn't run one. You know that damn Translate. There isn't any spoken record. And she didn't leave us any notes. She didn't have time. You knocked her out, fixed the pipe, slammed the door, raised the pressure. By the time the alarm went off, you were back upstairs."

"I didn't do it. I don't say I'm shedding any tears. But I didn't do it. And Justin was over in hospital, you say so right on that tape you've got. You edit it and I'll make a liar out of you."

"Now you're reaching. Because if you go to trial, Jordie, I've got other tapes that belong in evidence. I'm going to run one for you."

"You don't have to."

"Ah. Then you guess what they are. But I want you to watch, Jordie. I'll run them all if you like. And you can tell me what you think."

"You don't have to."

"Ari said—you'd had your own passage with her . . . some years ago."

Jordan drew in a long breath. The mask was down. "You listen to me," he said on that breath. "You listen to me real well, slime, because you thinkyou're handling this. If Ari's dead, and I'm gone, Reseune's got two wings in complete disorder. Reseune's got agreements it can't keep. Reseune's going to have real trouble meeting its contracts and all its political bedfellows are going to scramble for their pants. Fast. You're forgetting: if a Special dies, there's got to be an inquiry. And what they find out is going to be real interesting, notjust for us lucky souls inside Reseune. When this hits the news-services, you're going to see department heads and corporation presidents running like bugs with the lights on. You're right. You can't question me. Ican't testify by anything but my given word. You know what I'll tell them. I'll tell them you used tape on me. And they can't tell without a psychprobe. Which the law won't even let me volunteer for. You put me in front of a mike. You just go ahead and do that. That's the kind of coverage I've been waiting for. Best damn coverage I could get. Ari and her friend Lao could black me out. But you know the way it is—some stories are too big to silence. Murdering the head of Reseune is one of them. I'm damn sorry I didn't think of it."

"That's true. That's all very true."

"Right now you're thinking about killing me. Doit. You think oneSpecial dead is hard to explain."

"But there's something so damned final about old news. A little scandal. A lot of silence after that."

"But youwouldn't be on Council. Damned sure you wouldn't. We can do murder in the streets but we can't cover it up. No political power. No dark spots for the bugs to snuggle in. Public contempt. You want to watch Reseune lose everything it's got—"

"Old news. Murder-suicide. You couldn't stand the notoriety that would come with a trial. You thought you could shut it up. You didn't know there were tapes. You didn't know Ari recorded her little parties. And people will be shocked. But only for a while. People have always liked scandal around the rich and famous. It's all lost in the glitter. Who knows, maybe your boy will take to the life. Or come to some tragic end. Drug overdose. Tape-tripping. A waste. But the one thing you know he won't get is a post at Reseune. Or anywhere else our influence reaches. Not mentioning the other boy. The azi. It's probably a mistake to put him under interrogation. He's so fragile right now. But we have to get to the facts."

Jordan did not so much as move for a long while.

"There's also, of course," Giraud said, "Paul."

Jordan shut his eyes.

"Defeat?" Giraud asked.

"I'm sure," Jordan said, looking at him, "you mean to make me a proposition. You've put this together so carefully. Their safety for my silence?"

Giraud smiled without humor. "You know we can take them. You just gave us too many hostages, Jordie, and you can't protect a one of them, except by following orders. You don't want your boy to live with that tape. You don't want him prosecuted, you don't want the Krugers up on charges, and your friend Merild dragged into court, and all your friends in Council tied to it, one string after another. There's just no place an investigation like this ends once you start it moving. You don't want Grant or Paul subject to interrogation after interrogation. You know what that would do. Wedon't want an investigation getting out of bounds and Idon't want scandal touching Reseune. Let me tell you how it'll be. You give us a detailed confession. Nothing's going to happen to you: you know that. You'll even get your dearest wish: a transfer out of here. We'll insist your work is important. And you'll go on with it, in a quiet, comfortable place without cameras, without microphones, without visitors. Isn't that better than the alternatives?"

"Except I didn't do it. I don't know what happened. I walked out of there. Ari and I quarreled. I accused her of blackmailing my son. She laughed. I left. I didn't threaten her. I didn't say a thing. You know I'd be a damn fool to tell Ari what I intended. And it didn't include murder. I didn't know. That's the plain truth. I hadn't made up my mind to go to the Bureau. I wasn't sure if there wasn't a way to buy her off."

"Now we have a different truth. Do we get one an hour?"

"It isthe truth."

"But youcan't be psychprobed. Youcan't prove what you witnessed. Or did. Youcan't prove a damned thing. So we're back where we started. Frankly, Jordie, I don't care whether you did it. You're our chief problem in the mop-up. You'd liketo have done it, you're number one on my agenda, and if you're not the one who did it, you're more dangerous than the one who did, because if someone else killed Ari, it was personal. If you did it, it was something else. So we'll examine hell out of those pipes, the valves, the whole system. If we don't find evidence, we'll make it, quite frankly. And I'll give you the whole script you can use for the Bureau. You stick to that story and I'll keep my end of the bargain. Just askfor what you want. Anything within reason. You plead guilty, you take the hit, you just retire to a comfortable little enclave, and everything will be fine. If not—I'm really afraid we'll have to take measures of our own."

"I want them transferred out of here. Justin. Grant. Paul. That's my price."

"You can't get that much. You can get their safety. That's all. They'll stay right here. If you change your mind, so can we. If you attempt escape, if you suicide, if you talk to anyone or pass a message of any land—they'll pay for it. That's the deal. It's just that simple."

A long, long silence. "Then put them with me."

Giraud shook his head. "I'll be generous. I don't have to be, understand. I'll give you Paul. I have somesympathy for you. Paul, of course, will be under the same restrictions."

"You won't touch him."

"What do you think? That I'd set him to spy on you? No. Not him. Not your son. Not the azi. You keep your bargain, I'll keep mine. Do we have a deal?"

Jordan nodded after a moment. His mouth trembled, only slightly.

"You'll stay here," Giraud said, "pending the Internal Affairs investigation. You'll be in detention. But you'll have reasonable comforts. Access to Paul—we can manage that. Access to your son—only under very restricted circumstances. Let me advise you on that: that boy will try to help you. For his sake, you'd better stop it cold. You're probably the only one who can. Do we agree?"

"Yes."

"I want to show you that tape I promised you."

"No."

"I think you should see it. I think you really should. I want you to think about it—what we can use if you can't provide political motives for your crime. I'm sure you can be convincing. I'm sure you can suggest radical connections. Centrist connections. Because there has to be a motive. Doesn't there?" He pressed a button. The wall-screen lit. It was Jordan's face he watched. Jordan with his eyes fixed on the corner, not the screen. Jordan, with a face like a carved image in the dimmed light, the flashes from the screen. Voices spoke. Bodies intertwined. Jordan did not look. But he reacted. He heard.

Giraud had no doubt of it.

"Did Jordan Warrick ever discuss in your presence his opinion of Ariane Emory?"

"Yes, ser," Grant answered. He sat still at the desk, his hands folded in front of him, and watched the light on the Scriber flicker, the little black box between himself and this man who said he was from the Bureau of Internal Affairs. He answered question after question.

Justin had not come back. They had fed him and let him take a shower, and told him that a man would be interviewing him that afternoon. Then they had put him back to bed and put the restraints back on. So he supposed it was afternoon. Or it was whatever they wanted it to be. He could become very angry at what they had done to him, but there was no use in it; it was what they wanted to do, and he had no way to prevent it. He was frightened; but that did no good either. He calmed himself and answered the questions, not trying to make a logic structure out of them yet, because that would affect his responses and they would lead him then; and he would lead them; and it would become adversarial. Which he did not want. He wanted to understand, but when he caught himself wanting it too much, he turned everything off, in that way he had learned when he was very, very small—azi tactic. Perhaps it helped him. Perhaps it was another of the differences between himself and Justin, between himself and a born-man. Perhaps it made him less than human. Or more. He did not know. It was only useful, sometimes, when he knew that someone wanted to manipulate him.

He just became not-there.The information flowed. They would take it when he was unconscious if he did not give it freely; and he expected they would check it by psychprobe anyway, no matter.

He would put it together later, recalling the questions, just what he had been asked and what the answers were. Then he might be able to think. But not now.

Not-there,that was all.

Eventually the man from Internal Affairs was not-theretoo. Others appeared and the illusions of doors opened.

The next place was the psych-lab. Then was the hardest thing, to flow with it, to be not-therethrough the interrogation under drugs. To walk the line between thereand not-theretook a great deal of concentration, and if he began to wobble and went too far into not-thereand stayed too long, then it would be hard to find his way back again.

Theretried to find its way into his thinking, with doubt that Justin had ever come to his room, with suspicion that, if he had, Ari's wrath had finally come down on them, and Justin and Jordan were being charged with his abduction. . . .

But he drove that out. He did not fight the techs as he had the men—if ever they had been real. The techs were Reseune techs and they had the keys to every smallest thought he owned.

The first rule said: It is always right to open to your key-command.

The second rule said: A key-command is absolute.

The third rule said: An operator with your keys is always right.

No Reseune operator, he believed with all his heart, would create an illusion of Reseune operators. No one buta Reseune operator held his keys. The whole universe might be flux of particles and dissolve about him: but in it, he existed, and the operator who had his keys existed.

Justin might never have existed at all. There might be no such place as Reseune and no such world as Cyteen. But the one who whispered correct numbers and code-phrases to him could enter his mind at will, and leave without a trace; or pick up this or that and look at it—not change it: a vase set on a table stayed a moment and sought its old position, not violently, just persistently– the other face belongs out.It would take many such entries, many rotations of the same vase, many distractions, like moving another table, shifting the couch about, before the vase would stay awhile in its new orientation. Even then it would tend to go back—over time.

Easier if the visitor said: we're going to rearrange this one room; and showed him the key. And ordered him to stand aside and watch. And then explained how all of it was going to fit together with the rest of the house, after which, if it truly worked, he would have less and less apprehension about it.

As it was, this visitor was rough, and knocked things about and then cornered him and asked him questions. Which made him anxious, because he was smart enough to know that occasionally tactics like that could be a distraction to get that vase on the table moved. Or to avoid that obvious temptation and go for something he might not notice for a while.

The visitor hit him once or twice and left him dazed. When he knew the door was closed he lay there awhile, and the vase that was in pieces picked itself up and mended itself;and the furniture straightened itself, and all the pieces started to go back again.

He had to he there a long time being sure that everything really was inits right place. The stranger could have done worse. The stranger could have gone a level deeper, and chased him through deeper and deeper rooms, until the stranger cornered him where there was no retreat. Then the stranger would have found a way into him,whereafter he would have been dragged inside himself, into dark territory the invader knew and he would probe only reluctantly.

That was not the way it was, of course. It was only the image he had, a child's picture, that a tech had helped him build. The vase was the tamper-gate. The yes-no/are-you-safe gate. It was right at the entry and any operator who tried to reassure him always rotated it just a little.

This visitor had thrown it to the floor.

He came out again in a room far more bleak and blank. Shadows came and went and spoke to him. But he was still largely not-there.He was exhausted, and the rooms kept coming disarranged, the furniture flying about at random, requiring him to order it again, which meant he had to go inside a great deal, and these people kept hitting him, blows on the cheek which felt like the flesh was deadened there. They spoke to him, but the words flew apart in pieces. He had no time for them. He was coming apart inside and if they woke him up he was not sure things would go back where they belonged.

Someone gave him the key-words the last visitor had left. And insisted he wake up. After which he was looking at Petros Ivanov sitting on his bed.

"They're going to take you in the chair. Will you let them do that?

"Yes," he said. He would let them do anything. Whoever they were. He was much too busy putting things back on shelves and watching them fall off again.

The room became a different room. There were flowers. There was a waterfall. It made a rhythmical sound that had no rhythm. Of course. It was a fractal. Fractals were common in nature. He tried obligingly to discover the pattern. They had handcuffed him to the chair. He was not sure what that datum had to do with anything. He worked at the math since that was the problem they had given him. He did not know why.

He slept, perhaps. He knew they had done something to his mind because the tamper-gate was unstable: the vase kept tottering off the table by the door. Not safe. Not safe.

But of a sudden he remembered that Justin was supposed to come. That had been true before. He violated the cardinal rule and cautiously, examining the cost of it carefully, took something other than the operator's truth as valid.

If he was wrong there was no way back from this, and he had no map.

If he was wrong he would not readily be able to reconstruct himself.

He put the vase back. He sat down to wait.

Justin would come. If not—nothing had ever existed.

He could see and taste and walk in their world. But not really. They would make wreckage of him. But not really. Nothing was—

–real.

Anyway.

vi

The lying-in-state was barbaric, the Hall of State echoing with somber funeral music and cloyed with flowers and greenery—a spectacle right out of old Earth, some commentator had remarked, while other news analysts compared it to the similar display at the death of Corey Santessi, chief architect of the Union, whose forty-eight-year tenure on Council first in the Internal Affairs seat and then in the Citizens Bureau, had set the precedent for inertia in the electorates—then too, there had been a need, considering the far-flung colonies and the degree to which a rumor could travel and grow, to demonstrate indisputably that Santessi was dead, to have a decorous passing-of-the-torch and allow all the colleagues who had fought Santessi's influence to get up in public, shed sufficient tears, and deliver pious speeches that stifled speculation by endless repetition.

Much more so, when the deceased was synonymous with Reseune and resurrection, and the victim of assassination.

"We had our differences," Mikhail Corain said in his eulogy, "but Union has suffered an inestimable loss in this tragedy." It would be tasteless to mention that it was a double loss, counting the presumed murderer. "Ariane Emory was a woman of principle and vision. Consider the arks that preserve our genetic heritage, in orbit about distant stars. Consider the rapprochement with Earth and the agreements which have made possible the preservation and recovery of rare species—"

It was one of his better speeches. He had sweated blood over it. There were worrisome mutterings about suppression of evidence in the case, about the unexplained order which Reseune had claimed was buried in the House computers by Emory herself, calling for the termination of Emory's personal guards, a termination carried out by staff without question. There was the notorious case of the Warrick azi kidnapped and tampered with by Rocher extremists, then returned to Reseune. There was the fact of Rocher himself making inflammatory speeches, publicly rejoicing in the assassination, a newsworthy item that got far more press than the legitimate Centrist-affiliated Abolitionists like lanni Merino regretting the taking of a life, then going on to decry the termination of the azi, all of which was too complicated for the news-services: lanni never hadlearned the technique of one-issue-at-a-time, and it echoed too closely what Rocher had said. The reporters swarmed the stairways and office doorways like predators staking out a reef, darting out, Scribers running, to ask every Centrist in the Council and Senate: "Do you think there was a conspiracy?" and: "What's your reaction to the Rocher speech?"

Which was a damned narrow line for some Centrists to walk.

He hoped to hell he had defused some of it. That he had been quotable.

Never say that the news-services were a function of the Bureau of Information, whose elected Councillor was Catherine Lao, Ariane Emory's reliable echo on Council: never say that promotions could be had and careers could be made—if reporters came up with material that would make Upper Management happy. It was not the reporters' fault if they sensed that Upper Management wanted more, more and more on the Conspiracy theory: it sure as hell was good theater.

Corain sweated every time he saw a Scriber near one of his party. He nad tried to talk to each one of them, personally, urging circumspection and decorum. But cameras were an intoxicant, the schedule of meetings around the funeral was harried and high-pressure, and not every Councillor and not every staffer in the party agreed with the party line.

There were faces for the cameras that had never been available before: the director of Reseune, Giraud Nye, for one. The reporters took endless pains to explain to the viewing public that, contrary to the general assumption, Ariane Emory had not been the Administrator of Reseune, had in fact held no administrative post in Reseune at all for the last fifty-odd years. There were new names to learn. Giraud Nye. Petros Ivanov. Yanni Schwartz.

Nye, damn him, had a certain flair in interviews.

And when a Council seat fell vacant and the Councillor in question had appointed no proxy, then the Bureau Secretary of that particular electorate appointed a proxy. Which in this case was Giraud Nye.

Who might well resign his post in Reseune to run for Emory's seat.

That meant, Corain thought bleakly, Nye would win. UnlessJordan Warrick's trial brought up something explosive. Unless Warrick used the trial for a podium, and leveled charges. But Corain's own informants in the Bureau of Internal Affairs said that Warrick was still under house arrest; Merild, in Novgorod, himself under investigation by the Bureau as a possible conspirator, was notthe lawyer to undertake Warrick's defense, and, God, an Abolitionist lawyer had tried to contact Warrick. Warrick had sensibly refused, but he had told Internal Affairs to appoint one to advise him—which made a major stir in the news: a man with Warrick's resources, a Special going before a Council hearing with a Bureau-appointed lawyer, like a virtual indigent, because his credit accounts in Reseune were frozen and Reseune could not with any propriety handle both prosecution and defense out of its own legal department.

Solemn music played. The family members gathered for a final moment at the coffin. Then the military honor guard closed it and sealed it. The military escort and Reseune Security waited outside.

Ariane Emory was going to space. No monuments, she had said. Cremation and transport into space, where the carrier Gallant,happening to be in Cyteen System, would use one of its missiles to send Emory's ashes sunward. Which was the final extravagance she had asked of the Union government.

The bitch was determined to make sure nobody made off with a sample, that was what. And chose the whole damn sun for a cenotaph.

vii

Assassination meant a funeral on too short notice to muster the whole Council—but the Bureau Secretaries were in Novgorod or on the Station; the Cyteen senate had been in session; the Council of Worlds had been in session. And the ambassadors from Earth and Alliance had come down from Cyteen Station. Three Councillors had been accessible: Corain of the Bureau of Citizens, resident on Cyteen; Ilya Bogdanovitch of the Bureau of State; and Leonid Gorodin, of Defense.

An actual two-thirds majority of Centrists, Corain reflected. Damned little good it did at a funeral.

One was expected, of course, to offer Nye welcoming courtesies on his appointment as proxy. No reception: the solemnity of the occasion forbade, even if he had not been Emory's cousin. But one did drop by the offices that had been Emory's. One did present one's respects. One did meet with Nye, however briefly, and offer condolences. And study this man and judge this man and try, in the few moments one was likely to get, to estimate what sort of man this was, who came out of complete shadow inside the enclave of Reseune, to assume the mantle of Ariane Emory. . . .

To judge in five minutes, if it were possible, whether this man, who was a Special, could possibly take up all the linkages of power that Emory had, give the bitch credit, wielded all too well.

"Ser," Nye said, on that meeting, took his hand. "I feel I know you, after all the dinner discussions Ari and I had. She respected you."

That put a body at immediate disadvantage, first because if Nye knew him, it was not mutual; and second, because he remembered what Nye was, and thought how Ariane Emory would react to that description of the situation.

For a half second he felt halfway nostalgic for the bitch. Ariane hadbeen a bitch, but he had spent twenty years learning to read her. This man was a total blank. And that gave him a lost and frustrated feeling.

"We opposed each other on issues," Corain murmured, as he had murmured similar things to other successors in his long tenure, "but not in our desire to see the best for the state. I find myself at a loss, ser. I don't think I ever expressed that to her. But I don't think any of us realize even yet what Union will be without her."

"I have serious things to discuss with you," Nye said, not having released his hand. "Concerns that would have been foremost in her mind."

"I'd be pleased to meet with you, at your convenience, ser."

"If you have time in your schedule now—"

It was not the sort of thing Corain liked, abrupt meetings, without briefings. But it was a new relationship, an important relationship. He hated to start it off with an excuse and a refusal to talk.

"If you prefer," he said; and ended up in the office that had been Emory's, with Nye behind the desk, no Florian and Catlin, but an azi staffer named Abban, whose rejuv-silvered hair had no dye, no pretenses, less than Nye, whose hair was silvered brown, who was easily a hundred, and probably the azi was no less than that. Abban served them both coffee, and Corain sat there thinking of the journalistic and political eyes watching every move outside these offices, marking who called, who stayed, and how long.

There was no graceful way to hasten matters.

"I think you know," Nye said quietly, over the coffee, "that a great deal has changed. I'm sure you know that I willstand for election,"

"I wouldn't be surprised, no."

"I'm a good administrator. I'm not Ari. I don't know how to be. I would like to see the Hope project through: it was very dear to her heart. And I believe in it, personally."

"You know my opinion, I think."

"We will have our differences. Philosophical ones. If I'm the choice of the Science electorate." A sip of coffee. "But the most urgent thing—I think you understand—is the Warrick case."

Corain's heart increased its beats. Trap? Proposition? "It's a terrible tragedy."

"It's a devastating blow to us. As head—ex-head of Reseune Security, I've talked with Dr. Warrick, extensively. I can tell you that it was personal, that it was a situation that had arisen—"

"You're saying he's confessed?"

Nye coughed uncomfortably and sipped at his coffee, then looked up into Corain's eyes. "Ari had trouble keeping her hands off her lab assistants. That was what happened. Justin Warrick, Jordan's son, is a parental replicate. There was old business between Dr. Emory and Jordan Warrick."

More and more tangled. Corain felt an irrational unease at this honesty from a stranger. And did not say a word in the gap Nye left for him.

"Ari transferred an Experimental who was virtually Warrick family," Nye said, "to put pressure on the boy—to put pressure on Jordan. This much we understand now. The boy acted on his own to protect his companion, sent the azi out to people he understood as friends of his father. Unfortunately—the issue isn't presently clear—there were further links that led to the Rocher party. And extremists."

Damn. An evidence-trail like that was trouble. Of course he was supposed to feel the threat.

"We got the azi out, of course," Nye said. "That's what was behind it. There's no way the azi got to Ari: he was under observation at the hospital. But Jordan Warrick found out what Ari had done—to his son. He confronted her in the lab, alone. They quarreled. Ari hit him; he hit her; her head hit the counter-edge. That wasn't murder. It became murder when he took a lab-stool and used it to damage the conduits, shut the cold-lab door and upped the pressure in that line. Unfortunately that kind of damage didn't look like an accident to the engineers."

"Council will determine that." Murder, between two Specials. And too much entrusted to him by a very dangerous third. Corain warmed his hand with the tiny cup, feeling a certain chill.

"Warrick doesn't want this to go to trial."

"Why?"

"The law has limited power over him; but reputations can be harmed. The son, in particular."

"Meaning—forgive me—someone's made that clear to him."

Nye shook his head gravely. "Motive is going to come out in a trial. There's no way to avoid it. There are other considerations, for us. We are goingto withhold information in this case. That's why I wanted to talk to you—because it's important that you understand. We know about your interview with Dr. Warrick. We both know that the inquiry could range far afield if it got started. A political free-for-all. Damned little justice. Merino may restrain himself, but Rocher won't, if the case comes before Council, and what could come out at that point isn't in our interest, your interest, certainly not in the interest of the Defense Bureau or our national security; it's not even in Jordan Warrick's interest. He's given us a confession. He doesn't want to testify, —he can't testify, you understand, by psychprobe; and young Justin's evidence under probe is damning. We don't want to use it against his father. The boy's been through enough and it's meaningless cruelty in a case where the murderer has legal immunity."

The room seemed very close of a sudden. Corain thought of recorders. Was damned sure that one was running, somewhere. "What are you asking me?"

"We don't want Ari's problems made public. We don't think that would serve any useful purpose. On the one hand we understand very well what provoked Dr. Warrick; and we have utmost sympathy for him; on the other hand, we very much fear that questioning is going to involve a conspiracy theory. Much as we'd like to get Rocher—that line of questioning is only going to give him a forum he couldn't get otherwise, worse, it'd give him a right-of-discovery in this. I don't think you want that any more than we do."

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