Текст книги "Cyteen "
Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh
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Not your fault,Ari thought.
"What about you, Ariane Emory PR? Are you going to have me thrown out for saying what the truth is?"
"I'll speak after you, aunt Victoria. Maman taught me manners."
Thathit. Victoria's lips made a thin line and she took a double-handed grip on her black cane.
"My sister was notyour maman," Victoria said. "That's the trouble inthe House. Dead is dead, that's all. The way it works best. The way it's worked in all of human society. Old growth makes way for new. It doesn't batten off the damn corpse. I've no quarrel with you, young sera, no quarrel with you. You didn't choose to be born. Where's Denys? Eh?" She looked around her, with a sweeping gesture of the cane. "Where's Denys?" There was an uncomfortable shifting in the crowd. "Sera," Florian whispered at Ari's shoulder, seeking instruction.
"I'll tellyou where Denys is," Victoria snapped. "Denysis in the lab making another brother, the way he made another Ariane. Denyshas taken the greatest scientific and economic power in human history and damned near run it into bankruptcy in his administration, —never mind poor Giraud, who took the orders, we all know that—damned near bankrupted us all for his eetee notion of personal immortality. You tell me, young sera, do you remember what Ariane remembered? Do you remember her life at all?"
God. It was certainly not something she wanted asked, here, now, in an argumentative challenge, in any metaphysical context. "We'll talk about that someday," she said back, loudly enough to carry. "Over a drink, aunt Victoria. I take it that's a scientificquestion, and you're not asking me about reincarnation."
"I wonder what Denys calls it," Victoria said. "Call your security if you like. I've been through enough craziness in my life, people blowing up stations in the War, people blowing up kids in subways, people who aren't content to let nature throw the dice anymore, people who don't want kids, they want little personal faxes they can live their fantasies through, never mind what the poor kid wants. Now do we give up on funerals altogether? Is that what everyone in the damn house is thinking, I don't have to die, I can impose my own ideas on a poor sod of a replicate who's got no say in it so I can have my ideas walking around in the world after I'm dead?"
"You're here to talk about Giraud," Yanni Schwartz yelled. "Do it and shut up, Vickie."
"I've done it. Goodbye to a human being. Welcome back, Gerry PR. God help the human race."
The rest of the speeches, thank God, were decorous—a few lines, a: We differed, but he had principles,from Petros Ivanov; a: He kept Reseune going,from Wendell Peterson.
It ascended to personal family then, always last to speak. To refute the rest, Ari decided, for good or ill.
"I'll tell you," she said in her own turn, in what was conspicuously her turn, last, as next-of-kin, Denys being exactly where Victoria had said he was, doing what Victoria had said, "—there was a time I hated my uncle. I think he knew that. But in the last few years I learned a lot about him. He collected holograms and miniatures; he loved microcosms and tame, quiet things, I think because in his real work there never was any sense of conclusion, just an ongoing flux and decisions nobody else wanted to make. It's not true that he only took orders. He consulted with Denys on policy; he implemented Bureau decisions; but he knew the difference between a good idea and a bad one and he never hesitated to support his own ideas. He was quiet about it, that's all. He got the gist of a problem and he went for solutions that would work.
"He served Union in the war effort. He did major work on human personality and on memory which is still the standard reference work in his field. He took over the Council seat in the middle of a national crisis, and he represented the interests of the Bureau for two very critical decades—into my generation, the first generation of Union that's not directly in touch with either the Founding or the War.
"He talked to me a lot in this last year: Abban made a lot of trips back and forth—" She looked to catch Abban's eye, but Abban was staring straight forward, in that nowhere way of an azi in pain. "—couriering messages between us. He knew quite well he was dying, of course; and as far as having a replicate, he didn't really care that much. We did talk about it, the way we talked about a lot of things, some personal, some public. He was very calm about it all. He was concerned about his brother. The thing that impressed me most, was how he laid everything out, how he made clear arrangements for everything—"
Never mind the mess Denys made of those arrangements.
"He operated during the last half year with a slate so clearly in order that those of us he was briefing could have walked into his office, picked up that agenda and known exactly where all the files were and exactly what had to be priority. He confessed he was afraid of dying. He certainly would have been glad to stay around another fifty years. He never expressed remorse for anything he'd done; he never asked my forgiveness; he only handed me the keys and the files and seemed touched that I did forgive him. That was the Giraud I knew."
She left it at that.
I have the files.That was deliberate, too. The way she had done with the press.
Not to undermine Lynch, damned sure. Denys refused the seat and someone had to hold it; Reseune was in profound shock. Certain people were urging Yanni to declare for the seat, challenge Lynch.
No, Denys had said, focused enough to foresee that possibility. No challenge to Lynch from anyone. He's harmless. Leave him.
What Yanni thought about it she was not sure. She did not think Yanni wanted that honor.
But Denys' refusal had jerked a chance at Reseune Administration out of Yanni's reach. And that,she thought, however much any of them in Reseune had suspected Denys would refuse the seat, that had to be a disappointment.
She made a point of going over to Yanni after the services, catching his arm, thanking him for his support and making sure the whole Family saw that.
Making sure that the whole Family knew Yanni was not out of the running in future, in her time. "I know what you're doing," she said fervently, careless of just who could hear, knowing some would. "Yanni, I won't forget. Hear?"
She squeezed his hand. Yanni gave her a look—as if he had not believed for a second it was more than a salve to his pride and then caught on that it was altogether more than that, in that subtle way such indicators passed in the Family.
Not a word said directly. But there were witnesses enough. And Yanni was profoundly affected.
Hers, she reckoned, when it came down to the line, in the same way Amy and Maddy and the younger generation were.
And others in the House would see the indicators plain, that she had declared herself on several fronts, and started making acquisitions, not on a spoils system for the young and upcoming, but for a passed-over senior administrator who enjoyed more respect in the House than he himself imagined.
Signal clearly that Yanni was hers and let Yanni collect his own following: Yanni took no nonsense and let himself be taken in by no one. Yannihad stripped his own daughter of authority when she had abused it, and favored no one except on merit: that was his reputation—when Yanni thought of himself as a simple hardnosed bastard.
Yanni had some reassessing to do. Figure on that.
Yanni was not going to be taken in by the bootlickers and the Stef Dietrichs in the House or elsewhere.
He had been one of maman's friends. She thought with some personal satisfaction, that maman would approve.
iv
She took the outside walk back to the House, around the garden wall, toward the distant doors: it was, thank God, quiet, after the pressure of the interviews. Damn Victoria,she thought, and reckoned that Maddy had wanted to sink out of sight.
"Do you wonder why we do such things?" she murmured to Florian and Catlin. "So do I."
They looked at her, one and the other. Catlin said, in Florian's silence: "It's strange when someone dies. You think they ought to be there. It was that way in Green Barracks."
Ari put her hand on Catlin's shoulder as they walked. Memories. Catlin was the one who had seen people die. "Not slowing down, are you?"
"No, sera," Catlin said. " Idon't intend to be talked about."
She laughed softly. Count on Catlin.
Florian said nothing at all. Florian was the one who would have taken in every signal in the crowd; and work over it and work over it to make it make sense. Florian was the one who would worry about the living.
"He's gone," Ari said finally, at the doors. "Damn, that isstrange." And looked at Florian, whose face had just gone quite tense, that listening-mode that said he was getting something attention-getting over the Security monitor. One or the other of them was always on-line.
"Novgorod," Florian said. "Jordan Warrick—has declared his innocence– He says—he was coerced. Reseune Security is issuing orders to place him in detention—"
Ari's heart jolted. But everything came clear then. "Florian," she said while they were going through the doors, "code J Red, go. We're on A; go for Q and we're Con2."
Make sure of Justin and Grant: Catlin and I are going for Denys; get home base secure and stay there; force permitted, but not as first resort.
That, before they were through the doors, while a Security guard whose com would not be set on that command-priority gave them a slightly puzzled look at their on-business split-and-go.
"They're not saying much," Catlin said as they went.
"Out to the news-services?"
"That, first," Catlin said. "Com 14 is loaded with incomings."
Reporters at the airport, at the edge of a major news event and hemmed in by an anxious, noncommunicative Security.
"Damn, is Denys on it? What in hell is he doing?"
Catlin tapped the unit in her ear. "Denys is still in the lab; Base One, relay Base Two transmission? —Affirmative, sera. He's sent word to defer all questions; he's saying the charges are a political maneuver, quote, ill-timed and lacking in human feeling. He says, quote, the Family is returning from the funeral and people are out of their offices: Reseune will have a further statement in half an hour."
"Thank God," she said fervently.
Denys was awake. Denys was returning fire.
Damned well about time.
v
It was a good day to stay home, Justin reckoned—given the situation in the House, given a general unsettled state in Security now that its chief was dead:
I don't want to be alarmist,Ari had said in a message left on the Minder, but I'd be a lot easier in my mind if you and Grant didn't go anywhere you don't have to for the next fewdays– work at home if you can. I'm going to be busy; I can't watch everything; and Security is confused as hell—a little power struggle going on there. Do you mind? Feel free to attend the services. But stay where people are.
I'll take your advice,he had messaged back. Thank you. I know you have a lot to take care of right now. I don't think our presence at the services would be appropriate, or welcome to his friends; but if there should be anything Grant or I can do in the wing to take care of details, we're certainly willing to help.
She had not asked anything of them—had more or less forgotten them, Justin reckoned, small wonder with the pressure she was under. The news was full of speculations about Denys' health, about the political consequences of Reseune yielding up the seat Reseune had held on Council since the Founding—about whether the Centrists could field a viable candidate inside Science, or whether Secretary and now Proxy Councillor Lynch had the personal qualifications to hold the party leadership which Giraud had held.
"There's nothing wrong with Denys' health," Grant objected, the two of them watching the news in the living room.
"I don't know what he's about," Justin said. And trusting then to the freedom Ari swore they had from monitoring: "But losing Giraud is a heavy blow to him. I think it's the only time I've ever felt sorry for Denys."
"They're doing that PR," Grant said; then: "Denys had to get Ari's backing, isn't that ironic as hell?"
"He's what—a hundred twenty-odd?—and that weight he carries doesn't favor him. He'd be lucky to see ten, fifteen more years. So he hasto have Ari's agreement, doesn't he?"
"It's not going to work," Grant said.
Justin looked at Grant, who sat—they hadfound a scattering of red and blue pillows—in a nest at the corner of the couch, his red hair at odds with half of it.
"Denys hasto set the pattern," Grant said, "has to give him that foundation or there's no hope for Giraud. I firmly think so. Yanni may have known their father in his old age, but Yanni's much too young to do for Giraud what Jane Strassen did—not mentioning how they've treated him—"
"He owes them damned little, that's sure enough."
"And there's always the question what's in and not in those notes Ari-younger got from her predecessor," Grant said. "I think Ari knows a lot she's not putting in those notes. I think ourAri is being very careful what she tells her guardians."
"Ari says sometimes—not everything was necessary."
"But whatever isnecessary—is necessary," Grant said. "And Denys can't know—isn't in a position to know, that's what I think; and she's keeping it that way."
"The Rubin boy's going into chemistry, isn't he?"
"Fine student—test scores not spectacular, though."
"Yet."
Grant made a deprecating gesture. "No Stella Rubin. No one to tell him when to breathe. Hell is necessary for CITs, do we make that a given? You warned them not to let up on him too much—but the project is still using him for a control. Put the whole load on Ari; go easy on Ben Rubin; see what was necessary. ... I'll bet you anything you like that Denys Nye had more to do with that decision than Yanni Schwartz did. Yanninever went easy on anyone."
"Except—Yanni's got a family attachment in the way. Rubin's suicide really got him, and Jenna Schwartz, remember, had some little thing to do with that. It could well be Yanni's going easy."
"But Rubin's still a control," Grant said. "And what he's proving—"
"What he's proving is, A, you can't do it with all genesets; B, some genesets respond well to stress and some don't—"
"Given, given, but in the two instances we have, —"
"And, C, there's bad match-ups between surrogate and subject. Don't discount the damage Jenna Schwartz did and the damage the contrast between Jenna Schwartz and Ollie Strassen did to the boy."
"Not to mention," Grant said, holding up a finger, "the fact Oliver AOX is male, and Alpha; and Stella Rubin is female and not that bright. I'd liketo do a study on young Rubin. No edge to him, not near the flux swings. The instability goes with the suicide, goes with the brilliance—Among us, you know, they call it a flawed set."
"And do a fix for it."
"And lose the edge, just as often. —Which brings us back to young Ari, who's maybe given the committee all she knows—which I don't believe, if she's as much Ari as she seems, and our Ari—doesn't take chances with her security. I very much think access to those programs is a leverage of sorts—and do you know, I think Denys would have begun to guess that?"
Justin considered that thought, with a small, involuntary twitch of his shoulders. "The committee swears no one can retrieve from Ari's programs without Ari's ID. And possibly it's always been true."
"Possibly—more than that. Possibly that Base, once activated—can't be outmaneuvered in other senses. Possibly it's capable of masking itself."
"Lying about file sizes?"
"And invading other Bases—eventually. Built-in tests, parameters, —I've been thinking how I'd write a program like that ... if she were azi. The first Ariane designed me. Maybe—" Grant made a little quirk of his mouth. "Maybe I have a—you'd say innate, but that's a mistake– in-builtresonance with Ari's programs. I remember my earliest integrations. I remember—there was a—even for a child– sensualpleasure in the way things fit, the way the pieces of my understanding came together with such a precision. She was so very good. Do you think she didn't prepare for them to replicate her? Or that she'd be less careful with a child of her own sets, than with an azi of her design?"
Justin thought about it. Thought about the look on Grant's face, the tone of his voice—a man speaking about his father ... or his mother. "Flux-thinking," he said. "I've wondered– Do you love her, Grant?" Grant laughed, fleeting surprise. "Loveher."
"I don't think it's impossible. I don't think it's at all unlikely."
"Reseune is my Contract and I can never get away from it?"
"Reseune is my Contract: I shall not want? —I'm talking about CIT-style flux. The kind that makes for ambivalences. Do you love her?"
A frown then. "I'm scared of the fact this Ari ran a probe. I'm scared because Ari's got the first Ari's notes—which include my manual, I'm quite sure. And what if—what if—This is my nightmare, Justin: what if—in my most fluxed imaginings, Ari planned for her successor; what if she planted something in me that would respond to her with the right trigger? —But then I flux back again and think that's complete nonsense. I'll tell you another nightmare: I'm scared of my own program tape."
Justin suffered a little sympathetic chill. "Because Ari wrote it."
Grant nodded. "I don'twant to review it under trank nowadays. I know I could take enough kat to put me flat enough I could take it—but then I think—I can handle things without it. I can manage. I don't need it, God, CITs put up with the flux and they learn from it. And I do—learn from it, that is."
"I wish to hell you'd told me that."
"You'd worry. And there's no reason to worry. I'm fine—except when you ask me questions like that: do I love Ari?God, that's skewed. That's the first time I ever wondered about it in CIT terms. And you're right, there's a multi-level flux around her I don't like at all."
"Guilt?"
"Don't do that to me."
"Sorry. I just wondered."
Grant shifted position in the nest of pillows, against the arm. "Have you ever scanned my tape for problems?"
"Yes," Justin said after a little hesitation, a time-stretch of hesitation, that felt much too long and much too significant. "I didn't want to make it evident—I didn't want to worry you about it."
"I worry. I can't help but worry. It's too basic to me."
"You—worry about it."
Grant gave a small, melancholy lift of the brows, and seemed to ponder for a moment, raking a hand through his hair. "I think she asked something that jolted me—deep. I think I know where. I think she asked about my tape—which, admittedly, I have a small guilt about: I don't use it the way I'm supposed to; I think she asked about contact with subversives; and I dream about Winfield, lately. The whole scene out at Big Blue. The plane, and the bus with those men, and that room. . . ."
"Why didn't you tell me that?"
"Are dreams abnormal?"
"Don't give me that. Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because it's not significant. Because I know—when I'm not fluxed—that I'm all right. You want me to take the tape, I'll take it. You want to run a probe of your own—do it. I've certainly no apprehensions about that. Maybe you should. It's been a long time. Maybe I'd even feel safer if you did. —If,"
Grant added with a little tilt of the head, a sidelong glance, a laugh without humor. "If I didn't then wonder if youweren't off. You see? It's a mental trap."
"Because you got a chance to see Jordan. Because the damn place is crazy!" Of a sudden he felt a rush of frustration, an irrational concern so intense he got up and paced the length of the living room, looked back at Grant in a sudden feeling of walls closing in, of life hemmed around and impeded at every turn.
Not true, he thought. Things were better. Never mind that it was another year of separation from his father, another year gone, things no different than they had ever been—things were better in prospect, Ari was closer than she had ever been to taking power in her own right, and her regime, he sincerely believed it—promised change, when it would come.
They're burying Giraud today.
Why in hell does that make me afraid?
"I wish," Grant said, "you'd listened to me. I wish you'd gone to Planys instead."
"What difference? We'd have still been separate. We'd still worry—"
"What then? What's bothering you?"
"I don't know." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Being pent up in here, I think. This place. This—" He thought of a living room in beige and blue; and realized with a little internal shift-and-slide that it was not Jordan's apartment that had come back with that warm little memory. "God. You know where I wish we could go back to? Ourplace. The place—" Face in a mirror, not the one he had now. The boy's face. Seventeen and innocent, across the usual clutter of bottles on the bathroom counter, getting ready for an evening—
Tape-flash, ominous and chaotic. The taste of oranges.
"—before all this happened. That's useless, isn't it? I don't even want to be that boy. I only wish I was there knowing what I know now."
"It was good there," Grant said.
"I was such a damned fool."
"I don't think so."
Justin shook his head.
"I know differently," Grant said. "Put yourself in Ari's place. Wonder—what you would have been—on her timetable, with her advantages, with the things they did to her– You'd have been—"
"Different. Harder. Older."
"—someone else. Someone else entirely. CITs are such a dice-throw. You're so unintentionally cruel to each other."
"Do you think it's necessary? Can't we learn without putting our hand in the fire?"
"You're asking an azi, remember?"
"I'm askingan azi. Is there a way to get an Ariane Emory out of that geneset—or me—out of mine—"
"Without the stress?" Grant asked. "Can flux-states be achieved intellectually—when they have endocrine bases? Can tape-fed stress—short of the actual chance of breaking one's neck—be less real, leave less pain—than the real experience? What if that tape Ari made—were only tape? What if it had never happened—but you thought it had? Would there be a difference? What if Ari's maman had never died, but she thought she had? Would she be sane? Could she trust reality? I don't know. I truly don't know. I would hate to discover that everything until now—was tape; and I was straight from the Town, having dreamed all this."
"God, Grant!"
Grant turned his left wrist to the light, where there was always, since the episode with Winfield and the Abolitionists, a crosswise scar. "This is real. Unless, of course, it's only something my makers installed with the tape."
"That's not good for you."
Grant smiled. "That's the first time in years you've called me down. Got you, have I?"
"Don't joke like that."
"I have no trouble with reality. I knowtape when I feel it. And remember I'm built right side up, with my logic sets where they belong, thank you, my makers. But flux is too much like dreams. Tape-fed flux—would have no logical structure. Tape-fed flux is too much like what Giraud did in the War, which I don't even like to contemplate—building minds and unbuilding them; mindwiping and reconstruction . . . always, always, mind you, with things the subject can't go back to check; and a lot left to the imagination. I honestly don't know, Justin. If there's a key to taping those experiences– Giraudcould have had some insight into it, isn't that irony?"
It made some vague, bizarre sense, enough to send another twitch down his back, and a feeling of cold into his bones.
"Talking theory with Giraud—" But Giraud was dead. And yet-to-be. "It wasn't something we ever got around to."
"The question is, essentially, whether you can substitute tape for reality. I'm very capable, Justin; but I sweated blood on that flight to Planys, I was so damned helpless during the whole trip. That'swhat you give up: survivability in the real world."
Justin snorted. "You think I don't worry."
"But you could learn muchmore rapidly. Back to the old difference: you flux-learn; I logic my way through. And no aggregate of CITs is logical. Got you again."
Justin thought about it; and smiled finally, in the damnable gray apartment, in the elegant prison Ari appointed them. For a moment it felt like home. For a moment he remembered that it was safer than anywhere they had been since that fondly-remembered first apartment.
Then the apprehension came back again, the great stillness over Reseune, deserted halls, everything in flux.
There was sudden break-up on the vid, the news commentary thrown off in mid-word.
The Infinite Man appeared on screen. Music played. One never worried about such things. Someone kicked a cable, and Reseune's whole vid-system glitched.
Except it was also something Reseune Security did, for selected apartments, selected viewers.
My God,he thought, a sudden rush of worry, lifelong habit. Were they monitoring? Have they gotten through her security? What could they have heard?
vi
"Uncle Denys," Ari had relayed on the way, via Base One and Catlin's com unit, "I need to talk to you right away."
"Lab office," Seely had relayed back.
Shocked looks followed them through the labs from the time they had entered, techs who knew that things were already Odd with Denys, azi who were reading the techs if not the situation, and worried as hell; and now an unexplained break-in of conspicuous Family coming straight from the funeral, in mourning, and headed for lab offices at high speed—small wonder the whole lab stopped and stared, Ari thought; and at least she could freely admit to knowing as much as she knew, excepting what Planys was doing.
Past the tanks, the techs, the very place where she had been born, where likely by now half a dozen Girauds were in progress—up the little stairs with the metal rail, to the small administrative office Denys had commandeered: Seely was evidently keeping a look-out through the one-way glass of the lab offices, because Seely opened the door to let them in before she had made the final turn of the steps.
Denys was behind the desk, on the phone—with Security, by what it sounded. Ari collected herself with a breath. "That's fine," she said, when Catlin whisked a chair to her back; she took off her gloves and her jacket, gave them to Catlin and sat down as Denys hung up the phone.
"Well, sera," Denys said, "we have the result of your baulking Security at Planys."
"Where is Jordan?"
"Under arrest at Planys. He and his companion. Damn him!"
"Mmmn, Justinis accounted for."
"Are you certain?"
"Quite. Justinis the one I want to talk to you about."
"Ser," Florian said when they had let him in, Florian in House uniform and without his coat, so Florian and therefore probably Ari had had time, Justin reckoned, to come in next door first.
But it made him anxious that it was not a call over the Minder, or a summons to Ari's apartment or her offices, just a Minder-call at the door, Florian asking entry.
And the vid still showed nothing on the news channel except that single logo.
"There's been an incident," Florian said, preface, and in the half-second of Florian's next breath: O God,Justin thought, something's happened to Ari;and was bewildered in the same half-second, that the fear included her, her welfare, which was linked with their own. "Your father," Florian said, and fears jolted altogether into another track, "—has gotten a message to the Centrists, claiming innocence."
"Of what?"Justin asked, still tracking on incident,not making sense of it.
"Of killing Dr. Emory, ser."
He stood there, he did not know how long, in a state of shock, wanting to think so, wanting to think—
– but, my God, during Giraud's funeral—what's he doing? What's going on?
"We don't know all the details yet," Florian said. "Sera doesn't want to admit to ser Denys just how far her surveillance extends, please understand that, ser, but she does know that your father is safe at the moment. She's asking you, please, ser, understand that there's extreme danger—to you, to her, to your father, no matter whether this is true or false: the announcement has political consequences that may be very dangerous, I don't know if I need explain them. ..."
"God." Art's safety. Everything—He raked a hand through his hair, felt Grant's hand on his shoulder. Florian—seemed older, somehow, his face utterly without the humor that was so characteristic of him, like a mask dropped, finally, time sent reeling. . . . Could it be true?
"She wants you to pack a small bag, ser. Sera's interim staff is on the way up to this floor, and sera asks Grant to stay here and put himself under their orders. . . ."
"Pack for where?"
Separate us? God, no.
"Sera wants you to go with her to Novgorod—to defuse this matter. To speak to the press. She wants to take the politics out of the question—for your father's sake, as much as her own. Do you understand, ser? There'll be a small question-and-answer at Reseune airport; that's safest. She's asking a meeting with Councillor Corain and Secretary Lynch. She earnestly hopes you won't fail her in this—"
"My God. God, Grant—" What do I do?
But Grant had no answers. CITs are all crazy,Grant would say.
Ari's out of her mind. Takeme to Novgorod? They don't dare.
Theyneed me. That's the game. My father under arrest. They want me to call him a liar.
Reseune Security doesn't need to kill him. They can use drugs. It takes time.
Time I can buy them to operate on him– Would Ari—do this to us? Would Florian be here without her orders?
In front of those cameras—if I get that far– How can they stop me from any charges I can make?
Grant.
Grant—being here, in Ari's keeping. That's what they're offering me– Grant's sanity—or my father's.
He looked up into Grant's face—far calmer, he thought, than his own, Grant's un-fluxed logic probably understanding there was no choice in his own situation.
I have faith in my makers.
"Grant comes with me," he said to Florian.
"No, ser," Florian said. "I have definite instructions. Please, pack just the essentials. Everything will be inspected. Grant will be safe here, with sera Amy. There will be Security: Quentin AQ is very competent, and sera Amy will have her friends for help here. No way will any general Security come onto this floor or interfere with the systems. No way will sera Amy do anything to harm Grant."
