Текст книги "Cyteen "
Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh
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I think so, he had said. But that had been a lie. Till now, that it jumped into clear focus. I'm free,he thought. Out here, between here and the Krugers, I'm free, on my own, the first time in my life.And then he thought: I'm not sure I like it.
Fool. Wake up. Pay attention. O my God, is that the plane coming back?
As a light showed suddenly behind him.
A boat. O God, O God, it's a boat back there.
He shoved the throttle wide. The boat lifted its bow and roared along the Kennicutt. He turned the lights on. They shone on black water, on water that swirled with currents, on banks closer than the Volga's, banks overgrown with the gangling shapes of weeping willies—trees that tended to break as they aged and rot worked on them, trees which shed huge gnarled knots of dead wood into the Volga, navigation hazards far worse than rocks, because they floated and moved continually.
The lights were less risk now, he figured, than running blind.
But there would be guns back there, maybe. Maybe a boat that could overpower the runabout. He would be surprised if Moreyville had had something that could outrun him; damned surprised, he thought, with a cold knot of fear at his gut, watching the light wink out around a turning of the river; and then reappear in his rearview mirror.
A boat out of the precip station, maybe; maybe that end of Reseune had boats. He had no idea.
He applied his attention forward after that brief glance; center of the channel, Justin had warned him. Justin at least had taken the boat back and forth to Moreyville and down to precip ten; and he had talked to people at Moreyville who had gone all the way to Novgorod on the river.
Justin had done the talking; and Grant had paid attention mostly to the Novgorod part, because that had been what he was curious about. He and Justin—talking together about taking a boat that far someday, just heading down the river.
He steered wildly around a snag floating with one branch high.
A whole damned tree,that one. He saw the root-mass following like a wall of tangled brush in the boat's spot; and swerved wider, desperately.
God, if one of those came floating sideways—if the bow caught it—
He kept going.
And the light stayed behind him until he saw the lights Justin had promised him shining on the right, out of the dark– Ambush, he thought in the second heartbeat after he had seen them, because everything had become a trap, everything was an enemy.
But they were too high, they were too many: lights that twinkled behind the screen of weeping willies and paperbarks, lights that were far too high for the river, lights blinking red atop the hills, warning aircraft of the obstacles of precip towers.
Then his knees began feeling weak and his arms began shaking. He missed the light from behind him when he looked to see; and he thought for the first time to put Justin's note in his pocket, and to take the paper that had been under it, in the case someone returned the boat to Reseune.
He throttled back, seeking some dockage, alarmed as the spotlight showed up a low rusty wall on the riverside, and another, after that—
Barges, he realized suddenly. Kruger's was a mining settlement. They were ore barges, not so big as the barges that came down from the north; but the whole place was a dock; and there was a place for a little boat to nose to, there was a ladder that went up from a lower dock to an upper one, which meant he was not in the wild anymore, and he could breach the seals: but he did not do that. He did not think he ought to use the radio, since Justin had not told him anything about it; and he was not sure how to work it in any case. He just blew the horn, repeatedly, until someone turned the dockside lights on, and people turned out to see what had come to them from the river.
v
"You have a phone call,"the Minder said, and Justin started out of what had become sleep without his knowing it, lying as he had all night curled up on the living room couch; the sound brought him up on his elbow and onto his arm and then, as the Minder cut in and answered it, to his feet– "I'm here," he said aloud, to the Minder, and heard it tell the caller:
"Justin is in. A moment, please."
He rubbed a face prickly with the faint stubble he could raise, eyes that refused to focus. "I'm here," he said, his heart beating so hard it hurt, and waited for bad news.
"Good morning,"Ari said to him. "Sorry to bother you at this hour, Justin, but where is Grant?"
"I don't know," he said. Time. What time?He rubbed his eyes and tried to focus on the dim numbers of the clock on the wall console. Five in the morning. He's got to be at Kruger's by now. He's got to."Why? Isn't he there?" He looked beyond the arch, where the lights were still on, where Grant's bed was unslept-in, proof that everything was true, Grant hadrun, everything he remembered had happened.
Wecan't have gotten away with it.
"Justin, I want to talk with you, first thing when you get in today."
"Yes?" His voice cracked. It was the hour. He was shivering.
"At 0800. When you get in. In the Wing One lab."
"Yes, sera."
The contact went dead. Justin rubbed his face and squeezed his eyes shut, jaw clamped. He felt as if he was going to be sick.
He thought of calling his father. Or going to him.
But Ari had given him plenty of latitude to do that; and maybe it was what he was supposed to do, or maybe it was Ari trying to make him think it was what he was supposed to do, so that he would shy away from it. Trying to out-think her was like trying to out-think his father.
And he was trying to do both.
He made himself a breakfast of dry toast and juice, all he could force onto his unwilling stomach. He showered and dressed and paced, delaying about little things, because there was so much time, there was so damned much time to wait.
It was deliberate. He knew that it was. She did everything for a reason.
Grant might be in the hands of the police.
He might be back at Reseune.
He might be dead.
Ari meant to drop something on him, get some reaction out of him, and get it on tape. He prepared himself for anything she could say, even the worst eventuality; he prepared himself, if he had to, to say: I don't know. He left. I assumed he was going to you. How could I know? He's never done anything like this.
At 0745 he left his apartment and took the lift down to the main hall; passed Wing One security, walked to his own office, unlocked the door, turned on the lights, everything as he usually did.
He walked down the corridor where Jane Strassen was already in her office, and nodded a good morning to her. He rounded the corner and took the stairs down to the lab-section at the extreme end of the building.
He used his keycard on the security lock of the white doors and entered a corridor of small offices, all closed. Beyond, the double doors gave onto the dingy Wing One lab, with its smell of alcohol and chill and damp that brought back his early student days in this place. The lights were on. The big cold-room at the left had its vault door standing wide, brighter light coming from that quarter.
He let the outer doors shut and heard voices. Florian walked out from the vault-door of the lab.
Not unusual for a student to be here, not unusual for techs to be in and out of here: Lab One was old, outmoded by Building B's facilities, but it was still sound. Researchers still used it, favoring it over the longer walk back and forth to the huge birthlabs over in B, preferring the old hands-on equipment to the modern, more automated facilities. Ari had been down here a lot lately. She kept a lot of her personal work in the old cold-lab, as convenient a storage for that kind of thing, he had figured, as there was in Wing One.
Rubin project,he thought. Earlier her presence down here had puzzled him, when Ari did not need to do these things herself, when she had excellent techs to do the detail work. It no longer puzzled him.
I'll be wanting to oversee the process myself—just a desire to have hands-on again. Maybe a little vanity. . . .
It was also private, the kind of situation with her that he had spent weeks trying to avoid.
"Sera is expecting you," Florian said.
"Thank you," he said, meticulously ordinary. "Do you know what about?"
"I would hope you do, ser," Florian answered him. Florian's dark eyes said nothing at all as he slid a glance toward the cold-lab door. "You can go in. —Sera, Justin Warrick is here."
"All right," Ari's voice floated out.
Justin walked over to the open door of the long lab where Ari sat on a work-stool, at a counter, working at one of the old-fashioned separators. Damn," she complained without looking up. "I don't trust it. Got to get one out of B. I'm not going to put up with this." She looked up and the hasty lift of her hand startled him as his hand left the vault door. He realized he had moved the door then, and caught it and pushed the massive seal-door back, steadying it in frustration at his own young awkwardness, that rattled him when he most wanted composure.
"Damn thing," Ari muttered. "Jane's damn penny-pinching—you touch it, it swings on you. That'sgoing to get fixed. —How are youthis morning?"
"All right."
"Where's Grant?"
His heart was already beating hard. It picked up its beats and he forced it to slow down. "I don't know. I thought he was with you."
"Of course you did. —Grant stole a boat last night. Sabotaged the other one. Security tracked him to Kruger's. What do you know about it?"
"Nothing. Nothing at all."
"Of course not." She turned on the stool. "Your companion planned the whole thing."
"I imagine he did. Grant's very capable." It was going too easily. Ari was capable of much, much more; of spinning it out, instead of going straight to the point. He held himself back from too much relief, as if it were a precipice and the current were carrying him too quickly toward it. Florian was still outside. There were no witnesses to what she said—or what she ordered. There was a lock on the doors out there. And there might well be a recorder running. "I wish he hadtold me."
Ari made a clicking with her tongue. "You want to see the security reports? You both went out last night. You came in alone."
"I was looking for Grant. He said he was going to borrow a carry-bag from next door. He never came back."
Ari's brows lifted. "Oh, come, now."
"Sorry. That's what I was doing."
"I'm really disappointed in you. I'd expected more invention."
"I've told you everything I know."
"Listen to me, young friend. What you did is theft,you know that? You know what happens if Reseune files charges."
"Yes," he said, as calmly, as full of implication as he could make it. "I really think I do."
"We're not Cyteen."
"I know."
"You're very smug. Why?"
"Because you're not going to file charges."
"Do you want to bet on that?"
He was supposed to react. He smiled at her. He had himself that far under control, not knowing, not at all knowing whether or not Grant was in her hands. "I'm betting on it," he said, and held his voice steady. "You've got me. You haven't got Grant. As long as things go right with me and my father, Grant keeps his mouth shut and we're all just fine."
"That's why you stayed behind."
Thathad bothered her. The irrational act.
He smiled wider, a thin, carefully held triumph, alone, in her territory. "One of us had to. To assure you we'll keep quiet otherwise."
"Of course. Did Jordan plan this?"
He did react then. He knew that he had. It was an unexpected and offhanded praise.
"No," he said.
"You did." Ari gave a breath of a laugh; and he did not like that, even when all the movements of her body, her rocking back against the back of the lab-stool, her rueful smile, all said that she was surprised.
Ari played her own reactions the way his father did—with all her skill, all the way to the end of a thing.
So must he. He gave a matching, deprecatory shrug.
"It's really very good," Ari said. "But you have to put so much on Grant."
He's dead,he thought, bracing himself for the worst thing she could say. She might lie about that.
"I trust him," he said.
"There's one flaw in your set-up, you know."
"What would that be?"
"Jordan. He's really not going to like this."
"I'll talk to him." His muscles started to shake, the cold of the cryogenics conduits that ran overhead seeming to leach all the warmth from him. He felt all his control crumbling and made a profound effort to regroup. It was a tactic his father had taught him, this alternate application of tension and relief she was using, watching cues like the dilation of his eyes, the little tensions in his muscles, everything fallen into a rhythm like a fencer, up, down, up, down, and then something out of the rhythm the moment he had discovered the rules. He saw it coming. He smiled at her, having gotten command of himself with that thought. "He'll be amused."
He watched a slow grin spread over Ari's face, either his point or a deliberate dropping of the shield for a moment to make him think it was.
"You really have nerve," Ari said. "And you aren't at all cocky, are you? Damn, boy, the edges are ragged, you're not real confident you've got all the pieces in your hands, but I'll give it to you, that's a damned good maneuver. Harder than hell to do twice, though."
"I don't need to leave till my father does."
"Well, now, that is a problem, isn't it? Just how are we going to disengage this little tangle? Have you thought it all the way through? Tell me how it works when it comes time for Jordan to go off-world. I'm interested."
"Maybe you'll make me an offer."
Ari flashed a bright smile. "That's marvelous. You were so quiet. What did you do, try to throw those test scores?"
"You're supposed to be able to figure that out."
"Oh, cheek!" She outright laughed. "You arebright. You've taught me something. At my age, I value that. You're very fond of Grant, to give up your camouflage for him. Veryfond of him." She leaned against the counter, one elbow on it, looking soberly up at him. "Let me tell you something, dear. Jordan loves you—very much. Very, very much. It shows in the way you behave. And I must say, he's done a marvelous job with Grant. Children need that kind of upbringing. But there's a dreadful cost to that. We're mortal. We lose people. And we really hurt when they hurt, don't we? —Families are a hell of a liability. What are you going to tell Jordan?"
"I don't know. As much as I have to."
"You mean, as much as will let him know he's won?"
Break and reposition. He only smiled at her, refusing a debate with a master.
"Well," she said, "you've done Jordan proud in this one. I don't say it's wise. The plan was very smart; the reasons are very, very stupid, but then, —devotion makes us fools, doesn't it? What do you suppose Jordan would do if I charged you with this?"
"Go public. Go to the Bureau. And you don'twant that."
"Well, but there's a lot else we can do, isn't there? Because his son really isguilty of theft, of vandalism, of getting into files that don't concern him– And there's so much of that that doesn't have to happen. Jordan can make charges, I can make charges; you know if this breaks, that appointment he wants won't make it, no matter what interests are behind it. They'll desert him in a flash. But you know all that. It's what makes everything work, isn't it—unless I really wanted to take measures to recover Grant and prosecute those friends of yours. That's what you've missed, you know. That I can do just exactly what you did, break the law; and if someone brings out your part in this, and if your father has to listen to your personal reasons, our little private sessions, hmmn? —it's really going to upset him."
"It won't do you any good if I go to court, either. You can't afford it. You've got the votes in Council right now. You want to watch things fall apart, you lay a hand on Grant—and I talk. You watch it happen."
"You damned little sneak," she said slowly. "You think you understand it that well."
"Well enough to know my friends won't use a card before they have to."
"What have you got on the Krugers, that they'd risk this kind of trouble for you? Or do you think the other side won't use you? Have you taken that into account?"
"I didn't have much choice, did I? But things ought to be safe as long as the deal for Jordan's transfer is going to hold up and you keep your hands off Grant. If they put meunder probe they'll hear plenty—about the project. I don't think you want outsiders questioning anyone in Reseune right now."
"Damned dangerous, young man." Ari leaned forward and jabbed a finger in his direction. "DidJordan map this out?"
"No."
"Advise you?"
"No."
"That amazes me. It's going to amaze other people too. If this goes to court, the Bureau isn't going to believe he didn't put you up to this. And that'sgoing to weigh against him when it comes to a vote, isn't it? So we'll keep it quiet. You can tell Jordan as much as you want to tell him; and we'll call it stalemate. I won't touch Grant; I won't have the Krugers arrested. Not even assassinated. And yes, I can. I could arrange an accident for you. Or Jordan. Farm machinery—is so dangerous."
He was shocked. And frightened. He had never expected her to be so blunt.
"I want you to think about something," she said. "What you tell your father will either keep things under control—or blow everything. I'm perfectly willing to see Jordan get that Fargone post. And I'll tell you exactly what deal I'll strike to unwind this pretty mess you've built for us. Jordan can leave Reseune for Fargone just as soon as there's an office there for him to work in. And when he ships out from Cyteen Station, you'll still be here. You'll arrange for Grant to follow him as soon as the Hope corridor is open and the Rubin project is well underway. You can take the ship after his. And all of that should keep your father—and you—quiet long enough to serve everything I need. The military won't let Jordan be too noisy—They hate media attention to their projects. —Or, or, we can just blow all of this wide right now and let us fight it out in court. I wonder who'd win, if we just decided to pull Rubin back to Cyteen and give up the Fargone facility entirely."
I've fallen into a trap,he thought. But how could I have avoided it? What did I do wrong?
"Do you agree?" she asked.
"Yes. So long as you keep your end of it. And I get mytransfer back to my father's wing."
"Oh, no, that's notpart of it. You stay here. What's more, you and I are going to have an ongoing understanding. You know—your father's a very proud man. You know what it would do to him, to have to choose whether to go to the Bureau and lose everything over what you've done, or keep his mouth shut and knowwhat you're involved in to keep that assignment for him. Because that's what you've done. You've handed me all the personal and legal missiles I need—if I have to use them. I've got a way to keep your father quiet, an easy way, as it happens, that doesn't involve him getting hurt. And all you've got to do is keep quiet, do your work, and wait it out. You've got exactly the position you bargained for—hostage for his release; and his good behavior. So what I want you to do, young man, is go put in an honest day's work, give me the BRX reports by the time your shift's over, and let me see a good job. You do what you like: call your father, tell him Grant's gone missing, tell him as much as you like. I certainly can't stop you. And you come to my Residency, oh, about 2100, and you tell me what you've done. Or I'll assume it's gone the other way."
He was still thinking when she finished, still running through all of it, and what she meant; but he knew that. He tried to find all the traps in it. The one he was in, he had no trouble seeing. It was the invitation he had dreaded. It was where everything had been going.
"You can go," she said.
He walked out past Florian in the outer lab, out into the hall, out through the security doors and upstairs into the ordinary hallways of Wing One operations. Someone passed him on the way to his office and said good morning to him; he realized it half the hall further on, and did not even know who it had been.
He did not know how he was going to face Jordan. By phone, he thought. He would break the news by phone and meet his father for lunch. And get through it somehow. Jordan would expect him to be distraught.
Ari was right. If Jordan got involved in it, everything that was settled became unsettled, and for all that he could figure, Jordan had no hand to play.
At best, he thought—go along with it till he could get control of himself enough to think whether telling Jordan the whole story was the thing to do.
Whatever the time cost.
vi
"What we did . . ." Justin turned the stem of his wine-glass, a focus to look at, anything but Jordan's face. "What we did was what we always planned to do, if one of us got cornered. Her taking Grant—was to pressure me. I know—I know you told me I should come to you. But she sprang that on us, and there wasn't time to do anything but file a protest with the Bureau. That'd have been too late for Grant. God knows what she might have put him through before we could get any land of injunction, if we could get one at all—" He shrugged. "And we couldn't win it, in the long run, the law's on her side and it would foul everything up just after everything was settled on the Fargone deal, so I just—just took the only chance I thought would work. My best judgment. That's all I can say."
It was a private lunch, in the kitchen in Jordan's apartment. Paul did the serving, simple sandwiches, and neither of them did more than pick at the food.
"Damn," Jordan said. He had said very little up to that point, had let Justin get it out in order. "Damn, you should have told me what was going on. I toldyou—"
"I couldn't get to you. It'd make everything I did look like it was your doing. I didn't want to lay a trail."
"Did you? Did you lay one?"
"Pretty plain where I'm concerned, I'm afraid. But that's part of the deal. That's why I stayed here. Ari's got something on me. She's got me to use against you, the way she planned to use Grant against me. Now she doesn't need him, does she?"
"You're damn right she doesn't need him! My God, son—"
"It's not that bad." He kept his voice ever so steady. "I called her bluff. I stayed around. She said– She said that this is the way it's going to work: you get your transfer as soon as the facility is built, earnest of her good faith. Then I get Grant to go out there to you, earnest of mine. That way—"
"That way you're left here where she can do anything she damn well pleases!"
"That way," he reprised, calmly, carefully, "she knows that she can hold on to me and keep you quiet until her projects are too far advanced to stop. And the military won't let you go public. That's what she's after. She's got it. But there's a limit to what she can do—and this way all of us get out. Eventually."
Jordan said nothing, for a long, long while, then lifted his wine glass and took a drink and set it down.
And still said nothing, for minutes upon minutes.
"I should never, never have kept Grant," Jordan said finally, "when things blew up with Ari. I knew it would happen. Damn, I knew it would, all those years ago. Don't ever, evertake favors from your enemies."
"It was too late then, wasn't it?" Justin said. The bluntness shocked his nerves, brought him close to tears, an anger without focus. "God, what could we do?"
"Are you sure he's all right?"
"I haven't dared try to find out. I think Ari would have told me if she knew anything different. I set everything up. If the number I gave him doesn't answer, Krugers will keep him safe till it does."
"Merild's number?"
Justin nodded.
"God." Jordan raked his hair back and looked at him in despair. "Son, Merild's no match for the police."
"You always said—if anything happened– And you always said he was a friend of the Krugers. And Ari's not going to call the police. Or try anything herself. She said that. I've got all the ends of this. I really think I have."
"Then you're a damn sight more confident than you ought to be," Jordan snapped. "Grant's somewhere we're not sure, Krugers could have the police on their doorstep—Merild may or may not be available, for God's sake, he practices all over the continent."
"Well, I couldn't damn well phone ahead, could I?"
Jordan's face was red. He took another drink of wine, and the level in the glass measurably diminished.
"Merild's a lawyer. He's got ethics to worry about."
"He's also got friends. Hasn't he? A lot of friends."
"He's not going to like this."
"It's the same as me coming to him, isn't it?" He was suddenly on the defensive, fighting on the retreat. "Grant's no different. Merild knows that, doesn't he? Where's ethics, if it turns Grant over to the police?"
"You'd have been a hell of a lot easier to answer for. If you'd had the sense to go withhim, for God's sake—"
"He's not ours! He belongs to the labs! My being with him couldn't make it legal."
"You're also a minor under the law and there're extenuating circumstances—you'd have been outof here—"
"And they'd bring it to court and God knows what they could find for charges. Isn't that so?"
Jordan let go a long breath and looked up from under his brows.
He wanted, he desperately wanted Jordan to say no, that's wrong, there is something– Then everything became possible.
But: "yes," Jordan said in a low voice, dashing his hopes.
"So it's fixed," Justin said. "Isn't it? And you don't have to do anything unless the deal comes unfixed. I can tell you if I'm getting trouble from Ari. Can't I?"
"Like this time?" Jordan returned.
"Better than this time. I promise you. I promise. All right?"
Jordan picked at his sandwich, sidestepping the question. It was not all right. Justin knew that. But it was what there was.
"You're not going to end up staying here when I transfer," Jordan said. "I'll work something out."
"Just don't give anything away."
"I'm not giving a damned thing away. Ari's not through. You'd better understand that. She doesn't keep her agreements longer than she has to. Grant's proof of that. She's damned well capable of cutting throats, hear me, son, and you'd better take that into account the next time you want to bluff. She doesn't think any more of you or me or anyone than the subjects in her labs, than the poor nine-year-old azi down there in the yards that she decides to mindwipe and ship off to some damn sweathouse because he's just not going to work out; because she needs the space, for God's sake! Or the problem cases she won't solve, she won't even run them past my staff—she's not going to use that geneset again anyway and she damned well put three healthy azi down last month, just declared them hazards, because she didn't want to take the time with them, the experiment they were in is over, and that's all she needed. I can't prove it because I didn't get the data, but I know it happened. That's who you're playing games with. She doesn't give a damn for any life, God help her lab subjects, and she's gotten beyond what public opinion might make of it—that's what she's gotten to, she's so smart they can't figure out her notes, she's answerable only to Union law, and she's got that in her pocket—she just doesn't give a damn, and we're all under her microscope—" Jordan shoved his plate away and stared at it a moment before he looked up. "Son, don'ttrust there's anything she won't do. There isn't."
He listened. He listened very hard. And heard Ari saying that accidents at Reseune were easy.
vii
His watch showed 2030 when he exited the shower and picked it up to put it on ... in an apartment entirely too quiet and depressingly empty.
He was halfway glad not to spend the night here, with the silence and Grant's empty room, glad the way biting one's lip did something to make a smashed finger hurt less, that was about the way of it. Losing Grant hurt worse than anything else could, and Ari's harassment, he reckoned, even became a kind of anodyne to the other, sharper misery she had put him to.
Damned bitch, he thought, and his eyes stung, which was a humiliation he refused to give way to on her account. It was Grant had him unhinged, it was the whole damned mess Grant was in that had his hands shaking so badly he had trouble with the aerosol cap and popped it a ricocheting course around the mirrored sink alcove. It infuriated him. Everything conspired to irritate him out of all reason, and he set the bottle down with measured control and shaved the scant amount he had to.
Like preparing a corpse for the funeral, he thought. Everyone in Reseune had a say in his future, everyone had a mortgage on him, even his father, who had not asked his son whether he wanted to grow up with a PR on his name and know every line he was to get before he was forty, not, thank God, a bad sort of face, but not an original, either, —a face carrying all sorts of significances with his father's friends—and enemies; and Ari cornering him that first time in the lab storage room—
He had not known what to do, then; he had wished a thousand times since he had grabbed hold of her and given her what she was evidently not expecting out of a seventeen-year-old kid with a woman more than twice old enough to be his grandmother. But being seventeen, and shocked and not having thought through what his choices were before this, he had frozen and stammered something idiotic about having to go, he had a meeting he had to make, had she got the report he had turned in on a project whose number he could not even remember—
His face burned whenever he thought about it. He had gotten out that door so fast he had forgotten his clipboard and the reports and had to rewrite them rather than go back after them. He headed toward this appointment of Ari's, this damnable, no-way-out-of-it meeting, with a carefully nurtured feeling that he might, maybe, get something of his self-respect back if he played it right now.
She was old, but she was not quite beyond her rejuv. She looked—maybe late forties; and he had seen holos of her at twelve and sixteen, a face not yet settled into the hard handsomeness it had now. As women six times his age went, she was still worth looking at, what she had was the same as Julia Carnath's in the dark, he told himself with a carefully held cynicism—and better than Julia, at least Ari was up front with what she was after. Everybody in Reseune slept with everybody else reasonable at some time or another, it was not totally out of line that Ari Emory wanted to renew her youth with a replicate of a man who would have been three times too young for her when hewas seventeen. The situation might have deserved a real laugh, if things were not so grim, and he were not the seventeen-year-old in question.
