Текст книги "Cyteen "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 61 страниц)

With a lot of doors.

"We're looking for 22," Catlin said.

That was two more. Catlin opened the door and let them into a plain little room with a double bunk.

"Top or bottom?" Catlin asked.

"I don't care," he said. He had never thought about a room all his own. Or even half his. There was a table and two chairs. There was a door.

"Where does that go?"

"Bathroom," Catlin said. "We share with the room next door. They're Olders. You knock before you go in. That's their Rule. If they're Olders you take their Rules."

"I'm lost," he said.

"That's all right," Catlin said, emptying her pockets onto the table. "I've been here five days. I know a lot of the Rules. The Olders are pretty patient. They tell you. But you better remember or they'll tell the Instructor and you're in trouble."

"I'll remember." He looked at her emptying her pockets and thought how his stuff was right where he wanted it. "Do we have to change clothes for the Room?"

"In the morning, always."

He emptied his pockets, but he put everything together the way he wanted it. Catlin looked at what he was doing.

"That's smart," she said. "You always know where all that stuff is."

He looked at her. She was serious. "Of course," he said.

"You're all right," she said.

"I think you must be pretty good," he said.

"They don't Get me often," she said. And pulled back the chair and sat down with her arms on the table while he was emptying his pockets. "Do they you?"

"No," he said.

She looked quite happy in her sober way. And picked up the gun and flipped up the panel on the grip and snapped it shut again. "The gun's real," she said. "But the charges aren't. You still have to check, though. Rounds can get mixed up. Once somebody's did. You always think about that. The Enemy could have mixed-up rounds. And blow you to bits. The practice rounds have a big black band. The real ones don't. But these can still kill you if you get hit close up. You have to be careful when you're working partners. More people get killed with practice rounds than anything else in training."

Catlin knew more stories about how people got killed than he had ever heard in his life. He felt his stomach upset.

But Catlin wanted to know all about the traps, all about the things he had seen. She was full of questions and with everything he said he saw her strange eyes concentrate in the way people would if they were smart and they were going to remember. So he asked about Ambushes, and she told him a lot of things she had seen.

She wassmart, he thought. She sounded like she could do the things she said. He had never planned to be in Security. He had never planned to have a girl for a partner and he never imagined anyone like Catlin. She did sort of smile. It lit up her eyes, but her mouth hardly moved. She made him so nervous he was gladder when she did that than when most people smiled wide open. A smile out of Catlin was hard to get. You had to really tell her something that impressed her. And when you got one you wanted another one because in between there was just nothing.

They went to mess, which was what they called the dining hall here. They all had to stand and wait till they could sit, and they were years younger than anyone. Most were boys, very tall, a few were girls, all of them were in their teens and everybody was on strict manners. He would have been terribly nervous if Catlin had not known when to stand and when to sit and tugged at his sleeve to cue him. But it was very good food, and as much as you wanted, and when the near-grown boys around them talked they were polite and didn't act annoyed that they were there. Who's your partner? one asked Catlin, and she said: Florian AF, ser. Like talking to a Super.

Welcome in, that boy said. And they made him stand up so people could see him. He was nervous. But the boy stood up beside him and introduced him as Florian AF, Catlin's partner, a tech. He wasn't sure he was, but it was something like; and they all looked at him a moment, then they gave a land of Welcome In and he could sit down. It was not too different from a dorm, except there they never made you stand up at table, because your dining hall was a whole lot of dorms. Green Barracks had its own kitchen, and there were seconds and thirds if you wanted them, you didn't have to have a med's order.

The Instructor said they had two hours for Rec then and then they had to have lights out by 2300.

But Catlin thought they ought to go back to their quarters—that was what they called it in Green Barracks—and figure out about the Room, because the Instructor said they could do that; and they asked each other questions about the Room until just before their lights-out.

He was anxious about undressing. He had never undressed around girls, just the meds and the techs, and they had always been careful to give him something to put on and to turn their backs or leave the room till he had. Catlin said it was all right if they were roommates, everybody else did; so she took off her shirt and pants, he took off his, and she went to take a shower first. She came back in her clean underwear and threw the duty clothes in the hamper.

She was like he thought she would be under her clothes, all bones and skinny muscle that would have made him think they didn't feed you much in Security, except he had just had one of their meals. She was shaped different, all right, thinner around the chest—her ribs showed—and flat where boys weren't. He had never seen a girl in her underwear. It was thin and didn't hide much, and he tried not to stare or to think about her staring at him. He wasn't sure whyit was bad, it still didn't feel right. But that was the way it had to be, because sleeping in their clothes would make them a mess.

So they had to be polite with each other and get along with the situation.

He took his shower fast, like Catlin said, because the Olders would want it soon; and he put on his clean underwear and came and got in the bottom bunk, because Catlin had the top. He got in fast, because she was under her covers and he was out there all alone in his underwear.

"Last one," Catlin said from up above, "has to turn the lights out. It's myRule. All right?"

He looked for the switch from where he was lying. He had never been in a place where the lights didn't just go out at the right time. He had never slept anywhere but a barracks with fifty or so boys in the same room. He slithered out of the covers again and dived over and hit the switch and dived back again, remembering the straight line to the bunk, so hard it made the bed shake.

He realized he had shaken up Catlin too. "Sorry," he said, and tried to be quieter getting under the covers again. He was very conscious he was with a stranger, who might be a seven, but they were different from each other, she was Security and Security was very stiff and cold. He didn't want to do wrong or make her annoyed with him. He lay there in the dark in a place with only one person in it, worse than being in a new dorm, very much worse. He felt cold and it was only partly because the sheets were. All the sounds were gone, except one of the Olders starting up the shower.

He wondered where Catlin had lived before this. She didn't seem nervous. Somebody had told her everything that would happen. Or she was just able to doeverything. Having a boy for a partner didn't bother her.She was glad about him being good at traps. He hoped he was as good as she expected. He would be terribly embarrassed if he got them Blown Up in the first doorway.

And he was terribly afraid he was going to have to do Traps in the dark, which was the hardest, and that meant he was going to need the penlight. Catlin said he could hide that with his coat, they usually let you have one. Because working against the light he was a target for sure.

Don't make noise, she had said. I'll watch your back; you just work; but noise is going to help the Enemy. We can try to Get one that way, but that depends on how much time we have. Or whether it's a speed run or a kill run. They'll tell us that.

What's a kill run? he had asked.

Where you get most of your points for Getting the Enemy.

Like where you have to setthe Traps, he had said, relieved he understood. Sometimes we do it both ways—you have to take one apart and leave one for the Enemy following you. You get extra points if he misses it. Sometimes they make you go back through right away, and you don't know whether it's your Trap or his or whether he got stopped. The blow-ups show, but you can't trust those either, because he could touch it off and set another one.

That's sneaky, she had said, her eyes lighting the way they could. That's good.

He wanted to go blank so that he could go to sleep: there was a Room to do in the morning; and he knew he had to rest, but that was hard to do, his mind was so full of things without answers.

The Room did not make him half so anxious as this place did.

Why are they doing this?he wondered. And thinking of the gun on the table and about the too-quiet mess hall and all of Catlin's stories about people shooting each other in the Game: Are they sure I belong here?

It's not a Game, Catlin had said sternly when he had called it that. A game is what you do on the computers in Rec. This is real, and they cheat.

He really wanted to go back to AG. He wanted to see the Horse. He wanted to feed the baby in the morning.

But you had to survive the Room to do that for just four hours.

From now on.

He really tried to go blank. He tried hard.

Why don't they give me tape? Why don't they make it so I know what to do?

Why don't they make it so I feel better about this?

Has the Computer forgotten about me?

x

Ari thought every night how her letter was on its way now and she figured out where it had to be if it took so many months. Maman and Ollie would be at Fargone now. She felt a lot better to know where they were. She looked at pictures of Fargone and she could imagine them being there. Uncle Denys brought her a publicity booklet for RESEUNESPACE that had maman's name in it. And pictures of where maman would be working. She kept it in her desk drawer and she liked to look at it and imagine herself going there. She wrote another letter every few days, and she told maman how she was doing. Uncle Denys said he would have to save up a packet of her letters and send them in a bundle because it was awfully expensive and maman wouldn't care if she got them all at once, all in one envelope. She wanted to address it to maman and Ollie, but uncle Denys said that would confuse the postal people, and if she was going to write to Ollie, maman would give it to him: the law said an azi couldn't receive any mail except through his Supervisor, which was silly for Ollie, nothing could upset him; but it was the law.

So the address had to be:

Dr. Jane Strassen

Director

RESEUNESPACE

Fargone Station

And her return address was:

Dr. Denys Nye

Administrator

Reseune Administrative Territory

Postal District 3

Cyteen Station

She wanted to put her own name on the letter, but uncle Denys said she would have to wait until she was grown up and had her own address. Besides, he said, if it was from the Administrator of Reseune to the Director of RESEUNESPACE it looked like business and it would get right to maman's desk without anybody waiting.

She was in favor of that.

She asked why their address was Cyteen Station when they lived on Cyteen, and he said mail didn't go to planets without going through stations; and if you wanted to write to somebody on Earth the address was always Sol Station, but because there was Mars and the Moon you had to put Earth, then the name of the country.

Uncle Denys tried to explain what a country was and how they started.

That was why he got her the History of Earthtape. She wanted to do that one again. It had a lot of really strange pictures. Some were scary. But she knew it was just tape.

She went to tapestudy. She studied biology and botany, and penmanship and history and civics this week. She got Excellent on her exams and uncle Denys gave her a nice holo that was a Terran bird. You turned it and the bird flapped his wings and flew. It came all the way from Earth. Uncle Giraud had got it in Novgorod.

But there was only Nelly for playschool. And it was boring doing the swings and the puzzlebars with just Nelly. So she didn't go every day anymore. She got tired of going everywhere with Nelly, because Nelly worried about everything and Nelly was always worrying about her. So she told uncle Denys she could go to tapestudy by herself, and she could go to library by herself, because people knew her, and she was all right.

She took a lot of time getting back from tapestudy. Sometimes she stopped and fed the fish, because there was a Security guard right at the door and uncle Denys had said she could do that. Today she went down the tunnel because there had been a storm last night and you had to stay indoors for a few days.

So she got to thinking how she and maman had come this way once when she went to see ser Peterson. You took the elevator. Dr. Peterson was boring as Seely was; but that hall was where Justin's office was.

Justin would be interesting, she thought. Maybe he would at least say hello. And so many people had Disappeared that she liked to check now and again to see if people were still there. It always made her feel safer when she found they were. So if she got a chance to see an old place, she liked to.

She took the lift up to the upstairs hall, and she walked the metal strips she remembered: that was nice too, like once upon a time, when maman had been down the hall in that very office; but it made her sad, too, and she stopped it and walked the center of the hall.

Justin's office door was open. It was messy as the last time. And she was happy of a sudden, because Justin and Grant were both there.

"Hello," she said.

They both looked at her. It was good to see someone she knew. She really hoped they would be glad to see her. There weren't many people who would talk to her that weren't uncle Denys's.

But they didn't say hello. Justin got up and looked unfriendly.

She felt lonely all of a sudden. She felt awfully lonely. "How are you?" she asked, because that was what you were supposed to say.

"Where's your nurse?"

"Nelly's home." She could say that now about uncle Denys's place without it hurting. "Can I come in?"

"We're working, Ari. Grant and I have business to do."

"Everybody's working," she complained. "Hello, Grant."

"Hello, Ari," Grant said.

"Maman went to Fargone," she said. In case they hadn't heard.

"I'm sorry," Justin said.

"I'm going to go there and live with her."

Justin got a funny look. A real funny look. Grant looked at her. And she was scared because they were upset, but she didn't know why. She sat there looking up and wishing she knew what was wrong. Of a sudden she was real scared.

"Ari," Justin said, "you know you're not supposed to be here."

"I can be here if I want. Uncle Denys doesn't mind."

"Did uncle Denys say that?"

"Justin," Grant said. And gently: "Ari, who brought you here?"

"Nobody. I brought myself." She pointed. "I came from tapestudy. I'm taking a shortcut."

"That's nice," Justin said. "Look, Ari. I'll bet you're supposed to go straight home."

She shook her head. "No. I don't have to. Uncle Denys is always late and Nelly won't tell him." She kept getting this upset-feeling, no matter how she tried to be cheerful. It was not them being bad to her. It was not a mad either. She tried to figure out what it was, but Grant was worried about Justin and Justin was worried about her being there.

Hell with Them, maman would say. Meaning the Them that kept things messed up.

"I'm going," she said.

But she did it again the next day, sneaked up and popped sideways around the doorframe and said: "Hello."

That scared them good. She laughed. And came out and was nice then. "Hello."

"Ari, for God's sake, go home!"

She liked that better. Justin was mad like maman's mad. She liked that a lot better. He wasn't being mean. Neither was Grant. She had got them and they were going to yell at her.

"I did Computers today," she said. "I can write a program."

"That's nice, Ari. Go home!"

She laughed. And tucked her hands behind her and rocked and remembered not to. "Uncle Denys got me a fish tank. I've got guppies. One of them is pregnant."

"That's awfully nice, Ari. Go home."

"I could bring you some of the babies."

"Ari, just go home."

"I have a hologram. It's a bird. It flies." She pulled it out of her pocket and showed how it turned, and came inside to do it. "See?"

"That's fascinating. Please. Go home."

"I'll bet you haven't got one."

"I know I don't. Please, Ari, —"

"Why don't you want me here?"

"Because your uncle is going to get mad."

"He won't. He never knows."

"Ari," Grant said. She looked at him.

"You don't want us to callyour uncle, do you?" She didn't. It wasn't very nice. She frowned at Grant. "Please," Justin said. "Ari."

He was halfway nice. And she was out of tricks. So she went outside, and looked back and smiled at him.

He was sort of a friend. He was her secret friend. She wasn't going to make him mad. Or Grant. She would come by just a second every day. But they were gone the next day: the door was shut and locked. That worried her. She figured they had either figured out she was coming at the same time every day or they were truly Disappeared.

So she sneaked over on her way to tape the next morning and caught them. "Hello!" she said. And scared them.

She saw they were mad, so she didn't laugh at them too much. And she just waved them goodbye and went on.

She caught them now and again. When her guppy had babies she brought them some in a jar she had. Justin looked like that made him feel better about her. He said he would take care of them.

But when she took the lid off they were dead. She felt awful. "I guess they were in there too long," she said. "I guess they were," Justin said. He smelled nice when she leaned on the desk near him. A lot like Ollie. "I'm sorry, Ari."

That was nice anyway. It was the first time he had really been just Justin with her. Grant came and looked and he was sorry too.

Grant took the jar away. And Justin said, well, sometimes things died.

"I'll bring you more," she said. She liked coming by the office. She thought about it a lot. She was leaning up by Justin's desk now and he had stopped having that bad feeling. He was just Justin. And he patted her on the shoulder and said she had better go.

He had never been that nice since a long, long time ago. So she was winning. She thought he would be awfully nice to talk to, but she wasn't going to push and make everything go wrong. Not with him and not with Grant. He was her friend. And when maman sent for her she would ask him and Grant if they wanted to go with her and Nelly.

Then she would have all the special people and she would be all right on the ship, because Justin was a CIT and he was grown-up and he would know how to do everything you had to do to get to Fargone.

She had a birthday coming. She had not even wanted a kids' party. Just the presents, thank you.

Even that hadn't made her happy. Until now.

She skipped down the hall, playing step-on-the-metal-line. And got Nelly's keycard out of her pocket and used it on the lift. Because she knew how Security worked.

xi

"You damn fool," Yanni yelled, and threw the papers at him. And Justin stood there, paralyzed in shock as the sheets of his last personal project settled on the carpet around them. "You damned fool!What are you trying to do? We give you a chance, we do everything we fucking canto get you a chance, I sweat my assoff on my own fucking timeworking up critiques on this shit you dream up to prove to a hardheaded juvenile-fixated foolthat his brilliant junior study project was just that, a fucking junior study projectthat Ari Emory would have dismissed with a Thanks, kid, but we tried that,if she hadn't been interested in getting her hands on your juvenile body and fucking over your father,son, which you've just done all by yourself, you damned fool! Get this shit out of here! Get yourself back to your office, and you keep that kid out, you hear me?"

It hit him in the gut, and paralyzed him between wanting to kill Yanni and believing for a terrible moment that it was over, that a little girl's spite had ruined him, and Jordan, and Grant.

But then he heard it all the way to the end and realized it was not entirely that, it was not doomsday.

It might as well be.

"What did she say?" he asked. "What did she say about it? The kid brought me a damn jar of fish, Yanni, what am I going to do, throw her out of the office? I tried!"

"Get out of here!"

"What did she say?"

"She asked her uncle Denys to invite you to her fucking birthdayparty. That's all. That's all. You've got yourself a situation,son. You've got yourself a real situation. Seems she's been coming by the office a lot. Seems she's been dodging Security through the upstairs, seems she's been using her azi's keycard to get up and down the lift, seems she's just real attracted to you, son. What in hell do you think you're doing?"

"Is this a psych? Is that it? Denys asked you to run a psych and see what falls out?"

"Why didn't you report it?"

"Well, hell, I have a few reasons, don't you think?" He got his breath back. He got his balance back and stared at Yanni hard and straight. "It's your security she outflanked. How am I to know Reseune Security can't track a seven-year-old kid? I'm not going to be rude to her. No, thanks. I don't want any part of it. Idon't want to be the one to ring up Denys Nye and tell him he's lost track of his ward. You want a kid to get determined about something, you just tell her I'm forbidden territory. No, thanks. Denys said be polite, make nothing of it, avoid her where I can—hell, I started shutting my office when I knew she was due back from tape, what else can I do?"

"You could report it!"

"And get in the middle of it again? Get myself yanked in for another inquisition? I followed orders. I figured you were bugging my office. I figuredSecurity knew where she was. I figuredyou knew exactly what I said, which was nothing. Nothing,Yanni, except Go home, Ari. Go home, Ari. Go home, Ari.And I got her out. It's a juvenile behavior. She's found an adult to tease. She's being an ordinary brat kid. For God's sake, you make something out of this, you'll fixit, Yanni, does a damned juvenile-fixated foolhave to tell you calm down with this kid and just let her pull her little prank? She can read you. She can read the tension you're pouring on her, I know damned well she can, because I have to fight like hell to keep her from reading me inthe two or three minutes she comes past and says hello, and you and Denys must be doing real well, the way you're coming through to me. Get off her! Just let the whole thing alone,for God's sake, or what in hell are you trying to do,push her at me till it takes?"A second pause for breath, while Yanni just stood there and stared at him in a way that raised the hair on his neck. "Is that what you're trying to do?Is that what's behind this? Are you helping her do this?"

"You're paranoid."

"Damned right. Damned right,Yanni. What are you trying to do to me?"

"Get out of here! Get the fuck out of here! I got you off. I got you off with Administration. I spent the fucking morning on you, Petroswasted a day covering your ass, and you're damn right this is a psych and you just flunked it, son, you just flunked it! I don't trust you. I don't trust you further than I can see where you are. You walk a tight line, a damned tight line. If she shows up again you get her out of there and you phone Denys before her steps are cool!"

"What about Jordan?"

"Now you want favors."

"What about Jordan?"

"I don't hear anything about them cutting the phone calls. But you're playing with it, son. You're really playing with it. Don'tpush. Don't push any further."

"What are you putting in that report?"

"That you're not real casual around that kid. That you've got yourself some real hostilities about that kid."

"Notabout that kid! About the lousy things you're doing to her, Yanni, about your whole damned program,your whole damned project!You're going to drive her crazy, shooting her full of stuff and jerking everything human away from her, Yanni. You're not a human being any longer!"

"And you've lost your perspective, boy, you've damned well lost your professional perspective! You're feeding your own damn insecurities into the situation. You're interpreting,son, you're not observing, you're not functioning, you've lost your objectivity, and you're off the project, son, you're off the projectuntil you come back here with your head back together. Now get out of here! And don't bother me with these damn play-time projects of yours until you getyour problem fixed. Get out!"

"I don't know what I could have said."

He was shaking. He was shaking all over again when Grant came over to the couch and handed him a glass. The ice rattled. He drank a gulp, and Grant settled down beside him with the tablet.

Give it a few days. Yanni explodes. He calms down.

He shook his head. Made a helpless gesture with the glass and rested his eyes against his hand a moment while the whiskey hit his bloodstream and the cold hit his stomach. "Maybe," he said finally, "maybe Yanni's right. Maybe I'm what he said, an assembly-line designer making an ass out of myself."

"That's not so."

"Yanni ripped me to shreds the last two designs. He was right,dammit, the whole thing would have blown up, they'd have had suicides."

Grant grabbed the tablet next to him, and wrote:

Don't give up.And went on writing: Denys said once Ari didn't fake your Aptitudes. You've taken it as an article of faith that she did. You've always thought you belonged in Education. You do. But Ari wanted you in Design. I wonder why.

His gut went queasy when he read that.

Grant wrote: Ari did a hell of a lot to you. But she never refused to look at your work.

"I'm off the project," he said. Because that was no news to Security and their eavesdroppers. "He says I hate the kid. It's not true, Grant. It's not true. It's not true."

Grant gripped his shoulder. "I know it. I know it, they know it, Yanni knows it, it's what he does—he was psyching you. He was getting you on tape."

"He said I flunked, didn't he?"

"For God's sake, that's part of it, that's part of the psych-out, don't you understand it? You know what he was doing. The test wasn't over yet. He wanted a reaction, and you gave it to him."

"I'm still pulling up what I said." He took a second drink, still shaking. "I can remember what I meant. I don't know if I can figure Yanni well enough to know what he heard."

"Yanni's good. Remember that. Remember that."

He tried to. He wrote: The question is, whose side is he on?

xii

Horse dipped his head and took grain from Florian's palm. "See," he said to Catlin, "see, he's friendly. He just worries when it's strangers. You want to touch him?"

Catlin did, very carefully. Horse shied back.

Catlin outright grinned as she jerked her hand back. "He's smart." The pigs and chickens had not impressed Catlin at all. She had just looked at the chicks in disgust when they piled up against the wall, and retreated from the piglets in some alarm when they rushed up to get the food. Then she had said they were stupid, and when he explained how smart they were about what they ate, she said they wouldn't be bacon if they were smarter about where they got what they ate.

The cows she said looked strong, but she was not very interested.

But Horse got the first real grin Florian had ever seen from Catlin, and she climbed up on the rail and watched while Horse played games with them and snorted and threw his head.

"We aren't going to eat Horse's babies," Florian said, climbing up beside her. "He's a working animal. That means they're not for food."

Catlin took that in the way she took a lot of things, with no comment, but he saw the nod of her head, which was Catlin agreeing with something.

He liked Catlin. That took a lot of deciding, because Catlin was hard to get hold of, but they had been through the Room a lot of times, and only once had he been Got and that was because they had Got Catlin first, and there had just been a whole lot of the Enemy, all Olders. Catlin had been Got twice in all, but the second time she had yelled Go! and given him time to blow a door and get through, which was his fault: he had been slower than he ought; so she Got all the Enemy but the one that Got her, and he Got that one, because hehad a grenade, and the Enemy didn't expect him to have because he was a tech with his hands full. Catlin had been real proud of him for that.

He was just glad it was a game, and he told the Instructor it was his fault, not Catlin's. But the Instructor said they were a team, and it didn't matter.

He gave them half their Rec time.

Which was enough time to come over here. And this time he talked Catlin into coming with him and meeting Andy and seeing all the animals.

He was not sure Andy and Catlin got along. But Catlin said Horse was special.

So he got Andy to show Catlin the baby.

"She's all right," Catlin said, when she saw the girl Horse, and it played dodge with them, her tail going in a circle and her hooves kicking up the dust of the barn. "Look at her! Look at her move!"

"Your partner's all right, too," Andy said, with a nod of his head toward Catlin.

Which was something, coming from Andy. Florian felt happy, really happy, because all things he liked fell into place that way, Catlin and Andy and everything.

He remembered then, though, that they had to get back before curfew, which meant they had to hurry.

"Time," he said, and to Andy: "I'll be back as soon as I can."

"Goodbye," Andy said. "Goodbye," Florian said with a little bow, and: "Goodbye," Catlin said, which was very unusual, Catlin usually letting him do the talking when they dealt with anybody but Security.

They had to walk fast. He had showed Catlin the shortcuts on the way and she knew all of them on the way back, which was the way with Catlin.

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