Текст книги "Cyteen "

His watch showed 2105 when he walked up to the door and rang the bell of Ari's apartment—the five because he meant to make Ari wonder if he was going to show or if instead he and Jordan were going to come up with something; and no more than five because he was afraid if Ari thought that, then Ari might initiate some action even she might not be able to stop.

It was Catlin who opened the door, on an apartment he had never seen—mostly buff travertine and white furniture, very expensive, the sort of appointments Ari could afford and the rest of them only saw in places like the Hall of State, on newscasts: and blond, braid-crowned Catlin immaculate in her black uniform, very formal—but then, Catlin always was. "Good evening," Catlin said to him, one of the few times he had ever had a pleasant word from her.

"Good evening," he said, as Catlin let the door close. There was a drift of music, barely intruding on the ears . . . electronic flute, cold as the stone halls through which it moved. He felt a shiver in his bones. He had eaten nothing but that handful of salted chips at lunch and a piece of dry toast at supper-time, thinking that if there were anything in his stomach he would throw up. Now he felt weak in the knees and light-headed and regretted that mistake.

"Sera doesn't entertain in this end of the apartments," Catlin said, leading him through to another hall. "It's only for appearances. Mind your step, ser, these rugs are treacherous on the stone. I keep telling sera. —Have you heard from Grant at all?"

"No." His stomach tightened at the sudden, mildly delivered flank attack. "I don't expect to."

"I'm glad he's safe," Catlin said confidentially, as she might have said how nice the weather was, that same silky voice, so he had no idea whether Catlin was ever glad of anything or ever cared for anyone. She was cold and beautiful as the music, as the hall she led him through; and her opposite number met them at the end of the hall, in a large sunken den, paneled in glazed woolwood, all gray-blue and fabric-like under a sheen of plastic, carpeted in long white shag furnished with gray-green chairs and a large beige couch. Florian came from the hall beyond, likewise in uniform, dark and slight to Catlin's athletic fairness. He laid a companionable hand on Justin's shoulder. "Tell sera her guest is here," he said to Catlin. "Would you like a drink, ser?"

"Yes," he said. "Vodka and pechi,if you've got it." Pechiwas an import, extravagant enough; and he was still in shock from the richness Ari managed inside Reseune. He looked around him at Downer statuary in the far corner beyond the bar, wide-eyed ritual images; at steel-sculpture and at a few paintings about the woolwood walls, God, he had seen in tapes as classics from the sublight ships. Stuck in this place, where only Ari and her guests saw them.

It was a monument to self-indulgence.

And he thought of the nine-year-old azi his father had mentioned.

Florian brought him the drink. "Do sit down," Florian said, but he walked the raised gallery about the rim of the room looking at the paintings, one after the other, sipping at a drink he had only had once in his life, and trying to calm his nerves.

He heard a step behind him, turned as Ari walked up on him, Ari in a geometric-print robe lapped at the waist, that glittered with the lights, decidedly no fit attire to meet business company. He stared at her, his heart hammering away in him in the panicked realization that Ari was very real, that he was in a situation he did not know the limits of, and there was no way out from here.

"Enjoying my collection?" She indicated the painting he had been looking at. "That's my uncle's. Quite an artist."

"He was good." He was off his stride for a moment. Least of all did he expect Ari to start off with reminiscences.

"He was good at a lot of things. You never knew him? Of course not. He died in '45."

"Before I was born."

"Damn, it's hard to keep up with things." She slipped her arm into his and guided him toward the next painting. "That one's a real prize. Fausberg. A naive artist, but a first view of Alpha Cent. Where no human goes now. I love that piece."

"That's something." He stared at it with a strange feeling of time and antiquity, realizing it was real, from the hand of someone who had been there, to a star humankind had lost.

"There was a time no one knew what that was worth," she said. "I did. There were a lot of primitive artists on the first ships. Sublight space gave them a lot of time to create. Fausberg worked in chart-pens and acrylics, and damn, they had to invent whole new preservation techniques up on station—I insisted. My uncle bought the lot, I wanted them preserved, and that's why the Argopaintings got saved at all. Most of them are in the museum at Novgorod. Now Sol Station wants one of the Fausberg 61Cygni's really, really bad. And we may agree—for something of equal value. I have a certain Corot in mind."

"Who's Corot?"

"God, child. Trees. Green trees. Have you seen the Terran tapes?"

"A lot of them." He forgot his anxiety for a moment, recollecting a profusion of landscapes stranger than native Cyteen.

"Well, Corot painted landscapes. Among other things. I should lend you some of my tapes. I should put them on tonight– Catlin, have you got that Origins of Human Artseries?"

"I'm sure we do, sera. I'll key it up."

"Among others. —That, young friend, is one of our own. Shevchenki. We have him on file. He died, poor fellow, of lifesupport failure, when they were setting up Pytho, up on the coast. But he really did remarkable work."

Red cliffs and the blue of woolwood. That was too familiar to interest him. Hecould do that, he thought privately. But he was too polite to say it. He sketched. He even painted, or had, when he was fresh from the inspiration of the explorer-painters. Ground-bound, he imagined stars and alien worlds. And had never in his life expected to get clear of Reseune.

Until it looked like Jordan might.

Florian came up and offered Ari a drink, a bright golden concoction in a cut-crystal glass. "Orange and vodka," she said. "Have you ever tasted orange?"

"Synthetic," he said. Everyone had.

"No, real. Here. Have a sip."

He took a little from the offered glass. It was strange, a complicated, sour-sweet-bitter taste under the alcohol. A taste of old Earth, if she was serious, and no one who had these paintings on her walls could be otherwise.

"It's nice," he said.

"Nice. It's marvelous. AG is going to make a try with the trees. We think we have a site for them—no messing about with genetics: we think the Zones can accommodate them just the way they are. It's a bright orange fruit. Just like the name. Full of good things. Go on. Take it. Florian, do me another, will you?" She locked her arm tighter, steered him toward the steps and down, toward the couch. "What did you tell Jordan?"

"Just that Grant was out of the way and everything was all right." He sat down, took a large swallow of the drink, then set it down on the brass counter behind the couch, having gotten control of his nerves as much as he figured was likely in this place, in present company. "I didn't tell him anything else. I figure it's my business."

"Is it?" Ari settled close to him, at which his stomach tightened and felt utterly queasy. She laid her hand on his leg and leaned against him, and all he could think of was the azi Jordan had talked about, the ones she had put down for no reason at all, the poor damned azi not even knowing they were dying—just some order to report for a medical. "Sit a little closer, dear. That's all right. It's just pleasant, isn't it? You really shouldn't tense up like that, all nervous." She slipped her arm about his ribs and rubbed his back. "There, relax. That feels good, doesn't it? Turn around and let me do something for those shoulders."

It was like when she had trapped him in the lab. He tried to think what to answer to something that outrageous and failed, completely. He picked up the drink and took a heavy swallow and another and did not do what she asked. Neither did her hand stop its slow movement.

"You're so tight. Look, it's a simple little bargain. And you don't have to be here. All you have to do is walk out the door."

"Sure. Why don't we just go into the bedroom, dammit?" His hands were close to shaking. The chill of the ice went right through his fingers to the bone. He finished the drink without looking at her.

I could kill her,he thought, not angrily. Just as a solution to the insoluble. Before Florian and Catlin could stop me. I could just break her neck. What could they do then?

Psychprobe me and find out everything she did? That'd fix her.

It might be the way. It might be the way to get out of this.

"Florian, he's out of orange juice. Get him another. —Come on, sweet. Relax. You really can't do anything like that, you know better and I know better. You want to try it yourself? Is that the problem?"

"I want the drink," he muttered. Everything seemed unreal, nightmarish. In a moment she was going to start talking to him the way she had in the interviews, and that was all part of it, a sordid, duty business he did not know how to get through, but he wanted to be very drunk, very, very drunk, so that possibly he would get sick, turn out incapable, and she would just give up on this.

"You said you never had experimented around," Ari said. "Just the tapes. Is that the truth?"

He did not answer. He only twisted round on the couch to see how long it was going to take Florian to get him the drink, to have any distraction that might turn this in some other direction.

"Do you think you're normal?" Ari asked. He did not answer that either. He watched Florian's back as Florian poured and mixed the drink. He felt Ari's hands on his back, felt the cushion give as she shifted against him, as her hand came around his side.

Florian handed him the drink, and he leaned there with his elbow on the back of the couch sipping the orange drink and feeling the slow, light movement of Ari's hands on his back.

"Let me tell you something," Ari said softly, behind him. "You remember what I told you about family relationships? That they're a liability? I'm going to do you a real favor. Ask me what that is."

"What?" he asked because he had to.

Her arms came around him, and he took a drink, trying to ignore the nausea she made in his gut.

"You think tenderness ought to have something to do with this," Ari said. "Wrong. Tenderness hasn't got a thing to do with it. Sex is what you do for yourself, for your own reasons, sweet, just because it feels good. That's all. Now sometimes you get real close to somebody and you want to do it back and forth, that's fine, and maybe you trust them, but you shouldn't. You really shouldn't. The first thing you have to learn is that you can get it anywhere. The second thing—it ties you to people who aren't family and it mucks up your judgment unless you remember the first rule. That's how I'm going to do you a favor, sweet. You're not going to confuse what we're doing here. Does that feel good?"

It was hard to breathe. It was hard to think. His heart was hammering and her hands did quiet, disturbing things that made his skin all too sensitive, the edge of pleasure—or intense discomfort. He was no longer sure which. He drank a large gulp of the orange and vodka and tried to put his mind anywhere else, anywhere at all, in a kind of fog in which he was less and less in control of himself.

"How are you doing, dear?"

Not well, he thought, and thought that he was drunk. But at the edge of his senses he felt a dislocation, a difficulty in spatial relationships—like the feeling that Ari was a thousand miles away, her voice coming from behind him and not straight back, but aside in a strange and asymmetrical way—

It was a cataphoric. Tapestudy drug. Panic raced through his brain, chaotic, stimuli coming in on him too fast, while the body seemed to lag in an atmosphere gone to syrup. Not a high dosage. He could see. He could still feel Ari tug his shirt up, run her hands over his bare skin, even while his sense of balance deserted him and he felt his head spinning, the whole room going around. He lost the glass and felt the chill of ice and liquid spreading against his hip and under his buttocks.

"Oh, dear. Florian. Get that."

He was sinking. He was still aware. He tried to move, but confusion set in, a roaring muddle of sound and sensation. He tried to doubt. That was the hardest thing. He was quite aware that Florian had rescued the glass and that his head was back in Ari's lap, in the hollow of her crossed legs, that he was gazing up into Ari's face upside down and that she was unfastening his shirt.

She was not the only one unfastening his clothing. He heard a murmur of voices, but none of them involved him. "Justin," a voice said, and Ari turned his head between her hands. "You can blink when you need to," she whispered, the way the tapes would. "Are you comfortable?"

He did not know. He was terrified and ashamed, and in a long nightmare he felt touches go over him, felt himself lifted up and dragged off whatever he was lying on and down onto the floor.

It was Catlin and Florian who hovered over him. It was Catlin and Florian who touched him and moved him and did things to him that he was aware of in a kind of vague nowhere way, which were wrong, wrong and terrible.

Stop this,he thought. Stop this. I don't agree with this.

I don't want this.

But there was pleasure. There was an explosion in his senses, somewhere infinite, somewhere dark.

Help me.

I don't want this.

He was half conscious when Ari said to him: "You're awake, aren't you?

Do you understand now? There's nothing more than this. That's as good as it gets. There's nothing more than this, no matter who it's with. Just biological reactions. That's the first and the second rule. ..."

"Watch the screen."

Tape was running. It was erotic. It blurred into what was happening to him. It felt good and he did not want it to, but he was not responsible for it, he was not responsible for anything and it was not his fault. . . .

"I think he's coming out of it. . . ."

"Just give him a little more. He'll do fine."

"There's nothing can do to you what tape can do. Can it, boy? No matter who it is. Biological reactions. Whatever does it for you. . . ."

"Don't move. ..."

"Pain and pleasure, sweet, are so thin a line. You can cross it a dozen times a minute, and the pain becomes the pleasure. I can show you. You'll remember what I can do for you, sweet, and nothing will ever be like it. You'll think about that, you'll think about it for the rest of your life. . . and nothing will ever be the same. ..."

He opened his eyes and found a shadow over him, himself naked, in a bed he did not know, a hand patting his shoulder, moving to brush hair from his brow. "Well, well, awake," Ari said. It was her weight that pushed down the edge of the mattress, Ari sitting there dressed and he—

His heart jumped and started hammering.

"I'm off to the office, sweet. You can sleep in, if you like. Florian will serve you breakfast."

"I'm going home," he said, and dragged the sheet over him.

"Whatever you like." Ariane got up, releasing the mattress, and walked across to take a look in the wall mirror, demonstrative unconcern that crawled over his nerves and unsettled his stomach. "Come in when you like. —Talk to Jordan if you like."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"Whatever you like."

"Am I supposed to stayhere?" Panic sharpened his voice. He knew the danger in Ari hearing it, acting on it, working on it. It was a threat she had just made. He thought that it was. Her tone was blank, void of cues. Her voice tweaked at nerves and made him forget for a handful of seconds that he had a counter-threat in Grant, upriver. "It won't work."

"Won't it?" Ari gave her hair a pat. She was elegant, in a beige suit. She turned and smiled at him. "Come in when you like. You can go home tonight. Maybe we'll do it again, who knows? Maybe you can tell your father and get him to pass it off, hmmn? Tell him whatever you like. Of course I had a recorder on. There's plenty of evidence if he wants to go to the Bureau."

He felt cold through and through. He tried not to show it. He glared at her, jaw set, as she smiled and walked out the door. And for a long while he lay there cold as ice, sick to his stomach, darts of headache going from the top of his skull through to the nape of his neck. His skin felt hypersensitized, sore in places. There were bruises on his arm, the marks of fingers.

–Florian—

A flash came back to him, sensation and image from out of the dark, and he plunged his face into his hands and tried to shove it out. Tape-flash. Deep-tape. More and more of them would come back. He did not know whatcould come back. And they would, bits of memory floating up to the surface and showing a moment, a drift of words and feeling and vision, before they rolled over and sank again into the dark, nothing complete—just more and more of them. He could not stop it.

He threw the sheets back and got out of bed, unfocusing his eyes where it came to his own body. He staggered into the bathroom, turned on the shower and bathed, soaped himself again and again and again, scrubbed without looking at himself, trying not to feel anything, remember anything, wonder anything. He scrubbed his face and hair and even the inside of his mouth with the perfumed soap, because he did not know if there was anything else to use; and spat and spat and gagged from the sharp, soapy taste, but it did not make him clean. It was a scent he remembered as hers. Now hesmelled like it, and tasted it in the back of his throat.

And when he had chafed himself dry in the shower-cabinet blower and he had come out into the cold air of the bathroom, Florian walked in with a folded stack of his clothes.

"There's coffee, ser, if you like."

Bland as if nothing had happened. As if none of it were real. "Where's a shaver?" he asked.

"The counter, ser." Florian motioned toward the mirrored end of the bath. "Toothbrush, comb, lotion. Is there anything you need?"

"No." He kept his voice even. He thought of going home. He thought of killing himself. Of knives in the kitchen. Of pills in the bathroom cabinet. But the investigation afterward would open everything up to politics, and politics would swallow his father up. In the same moment he thought of subliminals that might have been buried in his mind last night, urges to suicide, God knew what. Any irrational thought was suspect. He could not trust them. A series of tape-flashes ripped past him, sensations, erotic visions, landscapes and ancient artworks. . . .

Then real things, set in the future. Images of Jordan's outrage. Himself, dead, on the floor of his kitchen. He rebuilt the image and tried to make it something exotic: himself, just walking out beyond the precip towers, a body to be found like a scrap of white rag by air-search a few hours later . . . "Sorry, ser, looks like we've found him—"

But that was not a valid test of any suspected subliminal Ari might have put into his tape. When a mind drank in tapestudy, it incorporated it. Tape images faded and resident memory wove itself into the implant-structure and grew and grew in its own way. There was no reliable way to detect an embedded command; but it could not make him act when he was conscious, unless it accurately triggered some predisposition. Only when drugs had the threshold flat, then he would take in stimuli without censoring, answer what he was asked, do whatever he was told—

Anything he was asked, anything he was told, if it slipped past the subconscious barriers of his value-sets and his natural blocks. A psychsurgeon could, given time, get answers that revealed the sets and their configurations, then just insert an argument or two that confounded the internal logic: rearrange the set after that, create a new microstructure and link it where the surgeon chose—

All those questions, those questions in the damned psych-tests Ari had given him, calling them routine for Wing One aides . . . questions about his work, his beliefs, his sexual experiences . . . that he, being a fool, had thought were simply Ari's way of tormenting him . . .

He dressed without looking at the mirrors. He shaved and brushed his teeth and combed his hair. There was nothing wrong with his face, no mark on it, nothing to betray what had happened. It was the same ordinary face. Jordan's face.

She must have gotten a real satisfaction out of that.

He smiled at himself, testing whether he could control himself. He could. He had that back, as long as he was not facing Ari herself. Her azi he could handle.

Correction. Florianhe could handle. He thanked God it was Florian she had left with him and not Catlin, and then a wild flutter of mental panic wanted to know why he reacted that way, why the thought of dealing with Catlin-the-icicle sent a disorganizing quiver through his nerves. Fear of women?

Are you afraid of women, sweet? You know your father is.

He combed his hair. He wanted to throw up. He smiled instead, a re-testing of his control, and carefully wiped the tension of the headache from the small muscles around his eyes, relaxed the tension from his shoulders. He walked out and gave that smile to Florian.

He'll report to her. I can't think with my head splitting. Damn, just let him tell her I was all right, that's all I have to do, keep my face on straight and get out of here.

The sitting room, the white rug, the paintings on the walls, brought back a flash of memory, of pain and erotic sensation.

But everything had happened to him. It was a kind of armor. There was nothing left to be afraid of. He took the cup from Florian and sipped at it, stopping the tremor of his hand, a shiver which hit of a sudden as internal chill and a cold draft from the air-conditioning coincided. "Cold," he said. "I think it's the hangover."

"I'm really sorry," Florian said, and met his eyes with an azi's calm, anxious honesty: at least it seemed to be and probably it was very real. There was not a shred of morality involved, of course, except an azi's, which was to avoid rows with citizens who might find ways to retaliate. Florian had real cause to worry in his case.

–Florian, last night: I don't want to hurt you. Relax. Relax—

The face had nothing to do with the mind. The face kept smiling. "Thanks."

Far, far easier to torment Florian. If it was Ari, he would fall apart. He had, last night. Seeing Florian afraid . . .

. . . pain and pleasure. Interfaces . . .

He smiled and sipped his coffee and enjoyed what he was doing with a bitter, ugly pleasure even while he was scared of what he was doing, meddling with one of Ari's azi; and twice scared of the fact that he enjoyed it. It was, he told himself, only a human impulse, revenge for his humiliation. He would have thought the same thing, done the same thing, the day before.

Only he would not have known why he enjoyed it, or even thathe enjoyed it. He would not have thought of a dozen ways to make Florian sweat, or considered with pleasure the fact that, if he could maneuver Florian into some situation, say, down at the AG pens, far away from the House, on terms that did not involve protecting Ari, he could pay Florian in kind—Florian being azi, and vulnerable in a dozen ways he could think of... without Ari around.

Florian undoubtedly knew it. And because Florian was Ari's, Ari probably fed off Florian's discomfiture in leaving Florian alone with him. It fitted with everything else.

"I feel sorry for you," Justin said, and put his hand on Florian's shoulder, squeezed hard. On the edge of pain. "You don't have a real comfortable spot here, do you? You likeher?"

– The first thing you have to learn is that you can get it anywhere. The second thing—it ties you to people who aren't family and it mucks up your judgment unless you remember the first rule. That's how I'm going to do you a favor, sweet. You're not going to confuse what we're doing here. . . .

Florian only stared at him, not moving. Even though the grip on his shoulder undoubtedly hurt, and even though Florian could break it with a shrug. And maybe his arm, into the bargain. That stoic patience was, Justin thought, what one could expect, in this place, of Ari's azi.

"What does Ari really want me to do?" Justin asked. "Have you got it figured out? Am I supposed to stay here? Am I supposed to go home?"

As if he and Florian were the same thing. Co-conspirators, azi both. He loathed the thought. But Florian was, in a way, his ally, a page he could read and a subject he could handle; and he still could not read the truth in Ari's eyes, not even when she was answering his questions in all sobriety.

"She expects you to go home, ser."

"Do I get other invitations?"

"I think so," Florian said in a quiet, quiet voice.

"Tonight?"

"I don't know," Florian said. And added: "Sera will probably sleep tonight."

As if it were all a long-familiar sequence of events.

A queasiness went through his stomach. They were all caught in this.

Attitude, Jordan would say. Everything is attitude. You can do anything if you're in control of it. You have to know what your profit is in doing it, that's all.

Life was not enough, to trade a soul for. But power . . . power to stop it happening, power to pay it back, that was worth the trade. His father's safety was. The hope someday of being in a position to do something about Ariane Emory—that was.

"I'm going to go home," he said to Florian, "take something for my headache, get my messages, and go on to the office. I don't suppose my father's called my apartment."

"I wouldn't know, ser."

"I thought you kept up with things like that," he said, soft and sharp as a paper-cut. He set down the coffee cup, remembering where the outside door was, and headed off through the halls, with Florian trailing him like an anxious shadow . . . Ari's guard, too polite to show it, and much too worried to let him walk that course through Ari's apartments unwatched.

For half a heartbeat he thought ahead to the safety of his own rooms upstairs and expected Grant would be there to confide in, the two of them would think things out—it was the habit of a lifetime, a stupid kind of reflex, that suddenly wrenched at a stomach ravaged by too little food, too much drink, too many drugs, too much shock. He went light-headed and grayed out, kept walking all the same, remembering the way from here, that it was a straight course down a hall decorated with fragile tables and more fragile pottery.

A triple archway, then, of square travertine pillars. And the reception room, the one Catlin had said was for show. He remembered the warning about the rugs and the floor, negotiated the travertine steps and crossed the room, up the slight rise to the door.

He reached to the door-lock to let himself out, except Florian interposed his hand and pushed the latch himself. "Be careful, ser," Florian said. And meant more, he was sure, than the walk home.

He remembered the nine-year-old. And the azi Ariane had killed. Remembered the vulnerability any azi had, even Grant. And saw Florian's—who had never had a chance since the day he was created and who was, excepting his dark side, gentle and honest as a saint, because he was made that way and tapes kept him that way despite all else Ari made him be.

It was that enigma that dogged him out the door and down the hall, in a confusion of graying vision and weakness, all part of the nightmare that crowded on his senses—tape-flash and physical exhaustion.

Ari had shaped Florian—in both his aspects, with all his capacities—the dark and the light. She might not have made him in the first place, but she maintained him according to the original design . . . from her own youth.

To have a victim? he wondered. Was that all it was?

Test subject—for an ongoing project?

Interface,the answer came rolling up to the surface and dived down again, nightmarish as a drowned body. Crossing of the line.

Truth lies at the interface of extremes.

Opposites are mutually necessary.

Pleasure and pain, sweet.

Everything oscillates... or there's nothing. Everything can be in another state, or it can't change at all. Ships move on that principle. The stars burn. Species evolve.

He reached the lift. He got himself inside and leaned against the wall until the door opened. He walked into a reeling hall, kept his balance as far as his own apartment and managed the key.

"No entries since the last use of this key."

Can't depend on that,he thought, in gray-out, in a sudden weakness that made the couch seem very far away, and nothing safe. Can't depend on anything. She can get into anything, even the security systems. Probably bugged the place while I was out. She'd do a thing like that. And you can't know if the Minder can catch the kind of things she can lay hands on. State of the art. Expensive stuff. Classified stuff. She could get it.