Текст книги "Cyteen "
Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh
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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 61 страниц)
But there was a danger-feeling. Maman wasn't happy. Ollie wasn't. Ollie was being azi as hard as he could, and maman and Ollie didn't shout at each other anymore. Maman didn't shout at anybody. Nelly just looked confused a lot of the time. Phaedra went around being azi too.
Ari was scared and she wanted to ask maman why, but she was afraid maman would cry. Maman always had that look lately. And it hurt when maman cried.
She just held on to maman.
Next morning she went to playschool. She was big enough to go by herself now. Maman hugged her at the door. Ollie came and hugged her too. He had not done that in a long time.
She looked back and the door was shut. She thought that was funny. But she went on to school.
iii
RESEUNE ONEleft the runway and Jane clenched her hands on the leather arms of the seat. And did not look out the window. She did not want to see Reseune dwindle away. She bit her lips and shut her eyes and felt the leakage down her face while the gentle acceleration pressed her into the seat.
She turned her face toward Ollie when they reached cruising altitude. "Ollie, get me a drink. A double."
"Yes, sera," Ollie said, and unbelted and went to see to it.
Phaedra, sitting in front of them, had turned her chair around to face her across the little table. "Can I do something for you, sera?"
God, she needs to, doesn't she? Phaedra's scared."I want you to make out a shopping list. Things you think we'll need on-ship. You'll have to place some orders when we make station. There's an orientation booklet in the outside pocket. It'll review you on procedures."
"Yes, sera."
That put a patch on Phaedra's problems. Ollie was walking wounded. He had asked her for tape. He—had asked her for tape, azi to Supervisor; and she had refused him.
"Ollie," she had said. "You're too much a CIT. I need you to be. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"Yes," he had said. And held up better than she had.
"One for yourself too," she yelled at him, over the engine noise; and he looked around and nodded understanding. "And Phaedra!"
Peggy came up to Ollie's side at the bar, wobbled as the plane hit a little chop and then ducked down and took out a pair of glasses.
For Julia. Back in the back. Julia and Gloria.
"You've ruined my life!" Julia had screamed at her in the terminal. Right in front of Denys, the azi, and the Family that had come to see them off. While poor Gloria stood there with her chin quivering and her eyes running over. Not a bad kid. A kid who had had too much of most things, too little of what mattered, and who stared at the grandmother she had hardly ever seen and probably looked for signs of ultimate evil about her person. Gloria had no idea in the world what she was going to. No idea in the world what ship discipline meant, or the closed steel world of a working station.
"Hello, Gloria," she had said, nerving herself, trying not—God, not ever—to compare the kid against Ari—against Ari, who might hear a plane take off and might look up and realize it was RESEUNE ONE.Nothing more than that.
Gloria had run over to her mother. Who was about to hyperventilate. Who managed, atop it all, to impart a sense of the ridiculous to their departure. It was probably just as well they were traveling with Reseune Security. There was no trusting Julia not to bolt and run in Novgorod.
Irrationally afraid of the shuttle, the void, the jumps, all the things that involved a physics Julia had never troubled herself to learn and now decided she could not personally rely on.
Too bad, kid. I wish I could make a bubble for you where things work the way you want. I'm sorry it all overwhelms you.
It did from the moment you were born. Sorry, daughter. I'm really sorry about that.
Sorry you're going with me.
Ollie brought back the drinks. He was pale, but he was doing quite well, considering. She managed to smile at him when he handed her hers, and he looked at her again when he sat down with his own drink in hand.
She had taken half of hers down without noticing it. "I'll be all right," she said, and lifted the glass. "Skoal, Ollie. Back where I came from. Going home, finally."
And on her second double: "It feels like I was twenty again, Ollie, like nothing of Reseune ever happened."
Or she had gotten that pain of hers numb for a while.
iv
Phaedra was not at the playschool. Nelly was. Nelly was easy to get around. Sam could push her in the swing really high. Nelly worried, but Nelly wasn't going to stop them, because she would be mad at Nelly and Nelly didn't like that.
So Sam pushed her and she pushed Sam. And they climbed on the puzzle-bars.
Finally Jan came after Sam and Nelly was walking her home when uncle Denys met them in the hall.
"Nelly," Denys said, "Security wants to talk to you."
"Why?" Ari asked. Of a sudden she was afraid again. Security and Nelly were as far apart as you could think of. It was like everything else recently. It was a thing that didn't belong.
"Nelly," Denys said. "Do what I say."
"Yes, ser," Nelly said.
And Denys, big as he was, got down on one knee and took Ari's hands while Nelly was going. "Ari," he said, "something serious has happened. Your maman has to go take care of it. She's had to leave."
"Where's she going?"
"Very far away, Ari. I don't know that she cancome back. You're going to come home with me. You and Nelly. Nelly's going to stay with you, but she's got to go take some tape that will make her feel better about it."
"Maman can too come back!"
"I don't think so, Ari. Your maman is an important woman. She has something to do. She's going—well, far as a ship can take her. She knew you'd be upset. She didn't want to worry you. So she said I should tell you goodbye for her. She said you should come home with me now and live in my apartment."
"No!" Goodbye.Goodbye was nothing maman would ever say. Everything was wrong. She pulled away from Denys' hands and ran, ran as hard as she could, down the halls, through the doors, into their own hall. Denys couldn't catch her. No one could. She ran until she got to her door, her place; and she undipped her keycard from her blouse and she put it in the slot.
The door opened.
"Maman! Ollie!"
She ran through the rooms. She hunted everywhere, but she knew maman and Ollie would never hide from her.
Maman and Ollie would never leave her either. Something bad had happened to them. Something terrible had happened to them and uncle Denys was lying to her.
Maman's and Ollie's things were all off the dresser and the clothes from the closet.
Her toys were all gone. Even Poo-thing and Valery's star. She was breathing hard. She felt like there was not enough air. She heard the door open again and ran for the living room. "Maman! Ollie!"
But it was a Security woman who had come in; she was tall and she wore black and she had got in and she shouldn't have.
Ari just stood there and stared at her. The woman stared back. The uniformed woman, in her living room, who wasn't going to leave.
"Minder," Ari said, trying to be brave and grown-up, "call maman's office."
The Minder did not answer.
"Minder? It's Ari. Call maman's office!"
"The Minder is disconnected," the Security woman said. And it was true. The Minder hadn't said a thing when she had come in. Everything was wrong.
"Where's my mother?" she asked.
"Dr. Strassen has left. Your guardian is Dr. Nye. Please be calm, young sera. Dr. Nye is on his way."
"I don't want him!"
But the door opened and uncle Denys was there, out of breath and white-faced. In maman's apartment.
"It's all right," Denys panted. "Ari. Please."
"Get out!" she yelled at uncle Denys. "Get out, get out, get out!"
"Ari. Ari, I'm sorry. I'm terribly sorry. Listen to me."
"No, you're not sorry! I want maman! I want Ollie! Where are they?"
Denys came and tried to take hold of her. She ran for the kitchen. There were knives there. But the Security woman dived around the couch and caught her, and picked her up while she kicked and screamed.
"Careful with her!" Denys said. "Be careful. Put her down."
The woman set her feet back on the floor. Denys came and took her from the woman and held her against his shoulder.
"Cry, Ari. It's all right. Get your breath and cry."
She gasped and gasped and finally she could breathe.
"I'm going to take you home now," Denys said gently, and patted her face and her shoulders. "Are you all right, Ari? I can't carry you. Do you want the officer to? She won't hurt you. No one's going to hurt you. Or I can call the meds. Do you feel like you want me to do that?"
Take you homewas not her home anymore. Something had happened to everyone.
Denys took her hand and she walked. She was too tired to do anything else. She was hardly able to do that.
Uncle Denys took her all the way to his apartment, and he set her down on his couch and he had his azi Seely get her a soft drink.
She drank it and she could hardly hold the glass without spilling it, she was shaking so.
"Nelly is staying here," uncle Denys said to her, sitting down on the other side of the table. "Nelly will be your very own."
"Where's Ollie?" she asked, clenching the glass in her lap.
"With your maman. She needed him."
Ari gulped air. It was a good thing, she thought, if maman had to go somewhere, maman and Ollie ought to be together.
"Phaedra's gone with them," Denys said.
"I don't care about Phaedra!"
"You want Nelly, don't you? Maman left you Nelly. She wanted Nelly to go on taking care of you."
She nodded. There was a large knot in her throat. Her heart was ten times too big for her chest. Her eyes stung.
"Ari, I don't know much about taking care of a little girl. Neither does Seely. But your maman sent all your things here. You'll have your very own suite, you and Nelly, right in there, do you want to go see where your room is?"
She shook her head; and tried not to cry. She tried to get a good mad. Like maman.
"We won't talk about it now. Nelly's going to be here tonight. She'll be a little upset. You know she can't take much upset. Promise me you'll be good to her, Ari. She's your azi and you have to be kind to her, because she really ought to stay in the hospital, but she's so worried about you, and I know you need her. Nelly's going to come home every night between her sessions—they're going to give her tape, you know, they have to, because she's terribly upset; but she loves you and she wants to come take care of you. I'm afraid it's you who'll have to take care of her. You understand me? You can hurt her very, very badly."
"I know," Ari said, because she did.
"There you are. You're a brave little girl. You aren't a baby at all. It's very hard, very hard. —Thank you, Seely."
Seely had brought her a glass of water and a pill, and expected her to take it. Seely was a nobody. He wasn't like Ollie. He wasn't nice, he wasn't mean, he wasn't anything but azi all the time. And he took her glass and put it on his tray and offered her the water.
"I don't want any tape!" she said.
"It's not that kind of pill," uncle Denys said. "It'll make your head stop hurting. It'll make you feel better."
She didn't remember telling him her head hurt. Maman always said don't take other people's pills. Never, never take azi-pills. But maman was not here to tell her what this one was.
Like Valery. Like sera Schwartz. Like all the Disappeareds. Maman and Ollie had gotten caught too.
Maybe I can Disappear next. And find them.
"Sera," Seely said. "Please."
She took the pill off the tray. She put it in her mouth and drank it down with the water.
"Thank you," Seely said. He was so smooth he wasn't there. He took the glass away. You would never notice Seely.
Uncle Denys sat there so fat he made the whole chair go down, with his arms on his knees and his round face upset and worried. "You won't have to go to playschool for a few days. Until you want to. You don't think you can feel better. I know. But you will. You'll feel better even tomorrow. You'll miss your maman. Of course you will. But you won't hurt as much. Every day will be a little better."
She didn't want it to be better. She didn't know who made people Disappear. But it wasn't maman. They could offer her whatever they wanted. It wouldn't make her believe what they said.
Maman and Ollie had known there was trouble. They had been terribly upset and kept hiding it from her. Maybe they thought they could take care of it and they couldn't. Shehad felt it coming and hadn't understood.
Perhaps there was a place people went to. Perhaps it was like being dead. You got in trouble and you got Disappeared somewhere in some way even maman couldn't stop it happening.
So she knew she couldn't either. She had to push and push, that was what, and get in trouble until there wasn't anybody. Maybe it was her fault. She had always thought so. But when they ran out of people to Disappear she had to find out what was going on.
Then maybe she could go.
She was Wrong, of a sudden. She couldn't feel her hands or her feet, and she felt a burning in her stomach.
She was having trouble. But Seely picked her up in his arms and the whole room swung and became the hall and became the bedroom. Seely laid her gently on the bed and took her shoes off, and put a blanket over her.
Poo-thing was beside her on the bedspread. She put out her hand and touched him. She could not remember where she had gotten Poo-thing. He had always been there. Now he was here. That was all. Now Poo-thing was all there was.
v
"Poor kid," Justin said, and poured more wine into the glass. "Poor little kid, dammit to hell,couldn't they let her come down to the airport?"
Grant just shook his head. And drank his own wine. He made a tiny handsign that warned of eavesdroppers.
Justin wiped his eyes. He never forgot that. Sometimes he found it hard to care.
"Not our problem," Grant said. "Not yours."
"I know it."
That for the listeners. That they never knew, one way or the other, whether they were there. They thought of ways to confound Security, even thought of devising a language without cognates, with erratic grammar, and using tape to memorize it. But they were afraid of the suspicion their using it might raise. So they went the simplest route: the tablet. He reached for it and scrawled: Sometimes I'd like to run off to Novgorod and get a job in a factory. We design tape to make normal people. We build in trust and confidence and make them love each other. But the designers are all crazy.
Grant wrote: I have profound faith in my creators and my Supervisor. I find comfort in that.
"You're sick," Justin said aloud.
Grant laughed. And Grant went serious again, and leaned over and took hold of Justin's knee, the two of them sitting cross-legged on the couch. "I don't understand good and evil. I've decided that. An azi has no business tossing words like that around, in the cosmic sense. But to me you're everything good."
He was touched by that. And the damned tape-flashes still bothered him. Even after this many years, like an old, old pain. With Grant it never mattered. That, as much as anything, gave him a sense of comfort. He laid his hand on Grant's, pressed it slightly, because he could not say anything.
"I mean it," Grant said. "You hold a difficult place. You do as much good as you can. Sometimes too much. Even I can rest. You should."
"What can I do when Yanni loads me down with—"
"No." Grant shook at his knee. "You can say no. You can quit working these hours. You can work on the things you want to work on. You've said yourself—you know what he's doing. Don't let them give you this other thing. Refuse it. You don't need it."
There was a baby in process on Fargone, replicate of one Benjamin Rubin, who lived in the enclave on the other side of an uncrossable wall, and worked in a lab Reseune had provided.
It provided something visible for Defense to hover over. And Jane Strassen, when she arrived, would find herself mother to another of the project's children.
He knew. They gave him Rubin's interviews. They let him do the tape-structures. He had no illusions they would run them without checks.
Not, at least, these. And that was a relief, after running without them for a year.
"It's a degree of trust, isn't it?" His voice came out hoarse, showing the strain he had not wanted to show.
"It puts another kind of load on you, a load you don't need."
"Maybe it's my chance to do something worthwhile. It's a major project.
Isn't it? It's the best thing that's happened in a long time. Maybe I can make Rubin's life—better or something." He leaned forward to pour more wine. Grant moved and did it for him. "At least Rubin had some compassion in his life. His mother lives on-station, he sees her, he's got something to hold on to."
Give or take the guards that attended a Special. Justin knew all these things. A confused, remote intellectual whose early health problems had been extreme, whose attachment to his mother was excessive and desperate; whose frail body had made health a preoccupation for him; whose various preoccupations had excluded adolescent passions, except for his work. But nothing—nothing of what had shaped Ari Emory.
Thank God.
"I can do something with it," he said. "I'm going to take some work in citizen psych. Do me some good. It's a different methodology."
Grant frowned at him. They could talk work at home, without worrying about monitors. But their line of conversation had gotten dangerous, maybe already gone over the line. He was not sure anymore. He was exhausted. Study, he thought, would take him off real-time work. Study was all he wanted. Grant was right, he was never cut out for trouble-shooting real-time situations. He cared too damn much.
Yanni had yelled at him: "Empathy is fine in an interview. It's got no place in the solution! Get it straight in your head who you're treating!"
Which made sense to him. He was not cut out for clinical psych. Because he never could get it straight, when he felt the pain himself.
By Yanni's lights, even, he thought, by Denys'—because there was no way this could have come to him without Denys working at Giraud—it was the most generous thing they could have done for him, putting him back in work that took a security clearance, re-establish his career in a slightly different field, in work very like Jordan's, let him work on a project where he could gain some reputation—CIT work was something the military would notice without actually giving the military an excuse to move on him, and it might clear him and do some good for Jordan. That was at least a possibility.
It was a kind of ultimatum, he thought, a kindness that could go entirely the other way if he tried to avoid the honor. That was always what he had to think about. Even when they were doing him favors.
vi
Ari woke with someone close to her, and remembered waking halfway through the night when someone got into bed with her, and took her in her arms and said in Nelly's voice, "I'm here, young sera. Nelly's here."
Nelly was by her in the morning, and maman was not, the bedroom was strange, it was uncle Denys' place, and Ari wanted to scream or to cry or to run again, run and run, until no one could find her.
But she lay still, because she knew maman was truly gone. And uncle Denys was right, she was better than she was, she was thinking about breakfast in between thinking how much she hurt and how she wished Nelly was somewhere else and maman was there instead.
It was still something, to have Nelly. She patted Nelly's face hard, until Nelly woke up, and Nelly hugged her and stroked her hair and said:
"Nelly's here. Nelly's here." And burst into tears.
Ari held her. And felt cheated because she wanted to cry, but Nelly was azi and crying upset her. So she was sensible like maman said, and told Nelly to behave.
Nelly did. Nelly stopped snuffling and sniveling and got up and got dressed; and gave Ari her bath and washed her hair and dressed her in her clean blue pants and a sweater. And combed and combed her hair till it crackled.
"We're supposed to go to breakfast with ser Nye," Nelly said.
That was all right. And it was a good breakfast, at uncle Denys' table, with everything in the world to eat. Ari did eat. Uncle Denys had seconds of everything and told her she and Nelly could spend the day in the apartment, until Nelly had to go to hospital, and then Seely would come and take care of her.
"Yes, ser," Ari said. Anything was all right. Nothing was. After yesterday she didn't care who was here. She wanted to ask Denys where maman was, and where maman was going. But she didn't, because everything was all right for a while and she was so tired.
And if Denys told her she wouldn't know the name of that place. She only knew Reseune.
So she sat and let Nelly read her stories. Sometimes she cried for no reason. Sometimes she slept. When she woke up it was Nelly telling her it would be Seely with her.
Seely would get her as many soft drinks as she wanted. And put on the vid for her. And do anything she asked.
She asked Seely could they go for a walk and feed the fish. They did that. They came back and Seely got her more soft drinks, and she wished she could hear maman telling her they weren't good for her. So she stopped on her own, and asked Seely for paper and sat and drew things.
Till uncle Denys came back and it was time for supper, and uncle Denys talked to her about what she would do tomorrow and how he would buy her anything she wanted.
She thought of several things. She wanted a spaceship with lights. She wanted a new coat. If uncle Denys was going to offer, she could think of things. She could think of really expensive things that maman never would get
But none of them could make her happy. Not even Nelly. Just when they were going to give you things, you took them, that was all, and you asked them for lots and lots to make it hard for them, and make them think that was important to you and you were happier with them, —but you didn't forget your mad. Ever.
vii
Grant sweated, waiting in Yanni Schwartz's outer office, with no appointment and only Marge's good offices to get him through the door. He heard Yanni shouting at Marge. He could not hear what he said. He imagined it had to do with interruptions and Justin Warrick.
And for a very little he would have gotten up and left, then, fast, because from moment to moment he knew he could bring trouble down on Justin by coming here. He was not sure that Yanni would not shake him badly enough to make him say something he ought not. Yanni was the kind of born-man he did not like to deal with, emotional and loud and radiating threat in every move he made. The men who had taken him to the shack in the hills had been like that. Giraud had been like that when he had questioned him. Grant sat there waiting and not panicking only by blanking himself and not thinking it through again until Marge came back and said: "He'll see you."
He got up and made a little bow. "Thank you, Marge." And walked into the inner office and up to the big desk and said: "Ser, I want to talk to you about my CIT."
Azi-like. Justin said Yanni could be decent enough to his patients. So he took the manner and stood very quietly. "I'm not in consultation," Yanni said.
Yanni gave him no favors, then. Grant dropped the dumb-annie pose, pulled up the available chair and sat down. "I still want to talk to you, ser. Justin's taking the favor you're doing him and I think it's a bad mistake."
"A mistake."
"You're not going to let him have anything but the first-draft work, are you? And where does that leave him after twenty years? Nowhere. With no more than he had before."
"Training. Which he badly needs. Which you should know. Do we have to discuss your partner? You know his problems. I don't have to haul them out for you."
"Tell me what you think they are."
Yanni had been relaxed, mostly. The jaw clamped, the chin jutted, the whole pose shifted to aggression as he leaned on his desk. "Maybe you'd better have your CIT come talk to me. Did he send you? Or is this your own idea?"
"My own, ser." He was reacting, dammit. His palms were sweating. He hated that. The trick was to make the CIT calm down instead. "I'm scared of you. I don't want to do this. But Justin won't talk to you, at least he won't tell you the truth."
"Why not?"
The man hadno quiet-mode. "Because, ser, —" Grant took a breath and tried not to pay attention to what was going on in his gut. "You're the only teacher he has. If you discard him, there's no one else good enough to teach him. You're like his Super. He has to rely on you and you're abusing him. That's very hard for me to watch."
"We're not talking azi psych, Grant. You don'tunderstand what's going on, not on an operational level, and you're on dangerous personal ground—it's your own mindset I'm talking about. Don't identify. You know better. If you don't, —"
"Yes, ser, you can recommend I take tape. I know what you can do. But I want you to listen to me. Listen!I don't know what land of man you are. But I've seen what you've done. I think you may be trying to help Justin. In some ways I think it has helped. But he can't go on working the way he is."
Yanni gave a growl like an engine dying and slowly leaned back on the arm of his chair, looking at him from under his brows. "Because he's not suited to real-time work. I know it. You know it. Justin knows it. I thought maybe he'd calm down, but he hasn't got the temperament for it, he can't get the perspective. He hasn't got the patience for standard design work, repetition drives him crazy. He's creative, so we put him in on the Rubin project. Denys got him that. I seconded it. It's the best damn thing we can do for him—put him where he can do theoretical work, but not that damn out-there project of his,and he won't concentrate on anything else, I know damn well he won't! He's worse than Jordan with an idea in his head, he won't turn it loose till it stinks. Have you got an answer? Because it's either the Rubin project or it's rot away in standard design, and I haven't got time on my staff to let one of my people take three weeks doing a project that should have been booted out the door in three days, you understand me?"
He had thought down till then that Yanni was the Enemy. But of a sudden he felt easier with Yanni. He saw a decent man who was not good at listening. Who was listening for the moment.
"Ser. Please. Justin's not Jordan. He doesn't work like Jordan. But if you give him a chance he is working. Listen to me. Please. You don't agree with him, but he's learning from you. You know that an azi designer has an edge in Applications. I'm an Alpha. I can take a design and internalize it and tell a hell of a lot about it. I've worked with him on his own designs, and I can tell you—I can tell you I believe in what he's trying to do."
"God, that's all I need."
"Ser, I know what his designs feellike, in a way no CIT can. I have the logic system."
"I'm not talking about his ability. He's fixed his rat-on-a-treadmill problems. He's got that covered. I'm talking about what happens when his sets integrate into CIT psych. Second and third and fourth generation. We don't want a work-crazy population. We don't want gray little people that go crazy when they're not on the assembly line. We don't want a suicide rate through the overhead when there's job failure or a dip in the economy. We're talking CIT psych, and that's exactly the field he's weakest in and exactly what I think he ought to go study for ten or twenty years before he does some real harm. You know what it feelslike. Let me tell you I know something about CIT psych from the inside, plus sixty years in this field, and I trust a junior designer can appreciate that fact."
"I respect that, ser. I earnestly assure you. So does he. But his designs put—put joyinto a psychset. Not just efficiency. The designs you say will cause trouble are their own reward tape. Isn't it true, ser, that when an azi has a CIT child, and he teaches that child as a CIT, he teaches interpretivelywhat he understands out of his pyschset. And an azi with one of Justin's small routines somewhere in his sets, even if he was never as lucky as I am, to be socialized as I am, to be Alpha and have one lifelong partner, would get so much sense of purpose out of that, so much sense of purpose, he would think about his job and get better at it. And have pride in that, ser. Maybe there are still problems in it. But it's the emotional level he reaches. It's the key to the logic sets themselves. It's a self-programming interaction. That's what no one is taking into account."
"Which create a whole complex of basic structural problems in synthetic psychsets. Let's talk theory here. You're a competent designer. Let's be real blunt. They tried this eighty years ago."
"I'm familiar with that."
"And they hung a few embellishments onto the psychsets and they ended up with neuroses. Obsessive behaviors."
"You say yourself he's avoided that."
"And it's self-programming,do you hear yourself talking?"
"Worm," Grant said. "But a benign one."
"That's just about where that kind of theory belongs. Worm. God! If it is self-programming, you havecreated a worm of sorts, and you're playing with people's lives. If it isn't, you've got a delayed-action problem that's going to crop up in the second or third generation. Another kind of worm, if you want to put it that way. Hell if I want to give research time to it. I've got a budget. You two are on my departmental budget and you're a hell of an expense with no damned return that justifies it."
"We have justified it this last year."
"Which is killing Warrick. Isn't that your complaint? He can't go on outputting at that level. He can't take it. Psychologically he can't take it. So what are you going to do? Carry it by yourself, while Justin lives in the clouds somewhere designing sets that won't work, that I'm damned well not going to let him install in some poor sod of a Tester. No!"
"I'll do the work. Give him the freedom. Lighten the load. A little. Ser, give him the chance. He has to rely on you. No one else can help him. He is good. You know he is."
