Cherryh, C J - Alliance-Union 08 (70 page)

You've probably figured out by now you can't question the program when it's in this mode. You can stop this tutorial at any point by saying: Ari, wait. You can go out of this mode and ask a question and come back by saying, Ari, go on.

Don't ever think that this program is alive. It's just lines of program like the programs you can write. But it can learn, and it changes itself as it learns. It has a base state, which is like a default, but that's only in the master copy in Archives.

Sometimes this program transcribes what I tell you for your guardian Denys. Sometimes not. It's not doing that now. I'm writing to files only you can access, by telling the Minder you want to hear the file from this session, by hour and date. This is
an example of a Private file. Do you understand how to access it?

AE2: Yes.

B/1: If you make a mistake the program will repeat this information.

Never ask for a Private file in front of anyone but Florian and Catlin. Not even Denys Nye can see the things I tell you in Private files. If he tries to do this, this program will send an order to Security. This program has just sent a message to Denys' Base that says the same thing. Trust me that I have a reason for this.

Sometimes a file will be so Private I will tell you to be totally alone. This means not even Florian and Catlin. Never ask to review those files when anyone else is present. They won't print out either, because they involve things very personal to you only, that not even your friends should know about you.

Many of these things involve your studies and they will simply come out of my own notes.

A lot of times they will come simply because you've asked a question and the computer has found a keyword.

You carry my keycard, my number, and my name. My records exist only in Archives and yours are the current files. Don't worry about my being dead. It doesn't bother me at all at this point. You can call me Ari senior. There isn't any word in the language that says what we are to each other. I'm not your mother and I'm not your sister. I'm just your Older. I assume that word is still current.

Understand, Ari, there is a difference between myself, who say these words into a Scriber, —and Base One. Base One can use a language logic function to talk with you much more like a living person than I can, because it's real-time and I'm not, and haven't been since 2404.

That's the computer accessing my records, understand, to find out that date.

Base One can answer questions on its own and bring up my answers to certain questions, and you can talk back and forth with it.

But never get confused about which one is able to talk back and forth with you directly.

Have you got a question now? Ask it the right way and Base One will start talking to you. If you make a mistake the program will revert to the instruction you missed. Or you can ask for repeat. Good night, Ari. Good night, Florian and Catlin.

AE2: Ari, wait.

B/1: I'm listening, Ari.

AE2: Are you Base One now?

B/1: Yes.

AE2: Who sent my maman Jane Strassen to Fargone?

B/1: Access inadequate. There is a reference from Ari. Stand by.

Ari, this is Ari senior.

This is the first time you've asked a question with a Security block on it. I don't know what the question is. It means something is preventing you from reaching that information in the House computers and your clearance isn't high enough. The most probable reason is: Minority status. End segment.

AE2: Ari, wait.

B/1: I'm listening, Ari.

AE2: Where is Valery Schwartz?

B/1: Access inadequate.

AE2: Where's Amy Carnath?

B/1: Amy Carnath checked into the Minder in U8899. U8899 is: apartment registered to Julia Carnath. There is no record of checkout in that Minder.

AE2: Then she's home.

B/1: Please be specific.

AE2: Then Amy Carnath is home, isn't she?

B/1: Amy Carnath is home, yes.

AE2: Base One: look up Ariane Emory in Library.

B/1: Access limited. Ari has a message. Stand by.

Ari, this is Ari senior.

So you've gotten curious about me. I don't blame you. I would be too. But you're 9 and the program will only let you access my records up to when I was 4. That gap will narrow as you grow older, until you're able to read into my records equal to and beyond your current age. There's a reason for this. You'll understand more of that reason as you grow. One reason you can understand now is that these records are very personal, and people older than 9 do things that would confuse hell out of you, sweet.

Also at 9 you're not old enough to understand the difference between my accomplishments and my mistakes, because the records don't explain anything. They're just things the House computer recorded at the time.

Now that you've asked, Base One will automatically upgrade the information once a week. I'd give it to you daily, because there's going to be a lot of it, but I don't want you to get so involved with what I did from day to day that you live too much with me and not enough in the real world.

You can access anything about anybody you want in Archives through 2287, when I was 4. If the person you want wasn't born by then, you won't get anything.

This gap will constantly narrow as you grow, and as your questions and your own records indicate to Base One that you have met certain criteria. So the harder you study in school and the more things you qualify in, the faster you get answers. That's the way life works.

Remember what you do is your own choice. What I did was mine.

Good luck, sweet.

Now Library will retrieve all my records up to the time I was 4 and store it for your access in a file named BIO.

B/1: Stand by for your Library request.

AE2: Capture.

B/1: Affirmative: document captured; copyrighted: I must dump all data in two days unless you authorize the 20-credit purchase price.

AE2: Scan for reference to horse or equine or equestrian.

B/1: Located.

AE2: How many references?

B/1: Eighty-two.

AE2: Compare data to data in study file: HORSE. Highlight and Tempstore additional information or contradictions in incoming data. Call me when you're done.

B/1: Estimated time of run: three hours.
AE2: Log-off.

B/1: Good morning, Ari. Happy birthday.

AE2: Is this Base One?

B/1: Ari, this is Ari senior. You're 10 now. That upgrades your accesses. If you'll check library function you can access a number of new tapes.

Your test scores are one point better than mine in geography, three points under mine in math, five points under mine in language.
. . .

Uncle Giraud called it the highest priced shop in the known universe, let alone Novgorod, and Ari loved it. She tried on a blouse that would absolutely
kill
Maddy Strassen: it was bronze and brown, it was satin, and it had a scarf around the throat with a topaz and gold pin—real, of course, at
this
place.

And she looked back at uncle Giraud with a calculated smile. It was a very grown-up smile. She had practiced it in the mirror.

The blouse cost two hundred fifty credits. It went into a box, and uncle Giraud put it on his personal card without saying a word.

She signed a picture of herself for the shop, which had a lot of pictures of famous people who shopped there: it had its own garage and a security entrance, and it was an appointment-only place, near the spaceport, where you couldn't just walk in.

Which was why uncle Giraud said it was a place they could go, the only place they could go, because of Security.

There was a picture of the first Ari. It was spooky. But she had seen those before. The first Ari was pretty even when she was almost as old as maman, and she had been a hundred twenty when she died. She had pretty, pretty eyes, and her hair was long and black (but she would have been on rejuv then and she would have dyed it) and parted in the middle the way Ari wore hers. She wanted to wear makeup like Ari senior, but uncle Denys said no, she could have a little, but not that much, and besides, styles changed.

Uncle Denys had given her cologne for last New Year's, that he said had been made especially for Ari by a perfumery in Novgorod. It smelled wonderful, like the greenhouse gardens when the tulips were blooming.

She was growing up, he said, and she knew that. All of a sudden one day a long time back Nelly had said she was getting to old to run around without her blouse on, and she had looked down and realized it was not that she was getting a little fat, but that something was changing.

At the time she had thought it was a damn nuisance, because she
liked
not having to wear a shirt.

By now she
definitely
was getting a shape, and even Catlin was, sort of. Nothing, of course, to match her cousin Maddy Morley-Strassen, who was a year older, transferred in from Planys with her maman Eva, who was aunt Victoria Strassen's daughter, and maman's niece; and a cousin of Amy Carnath through
Amy's
father Vasily Morley-Peterson, who was at Planys.

Maddy was—

An early developer, uncle Denys called it.

Maddy was not anybody she would want to be, but she was certainly not the sort to let get too comfortable.

So she bought a scarf for Maddy and a real gold pin for Amy and a pullover for Sam and one for Tommy, and
insisted
to carry them on the plane, besides the other things she got for everybody. It didn't matter that you could order a lot of it, she told uncle Giraud, it mattered it came from
Novgorod,
where the other kids didn't get to go, and she was too going to take it on the plane. She got a blouse for Catlin, for parties: black, of course, but gauzy; Catlin looked surprised when she saw herself in the mirror. And a shirt for Florian over on the men's side: black and satiny and with a high collar that was sort of like his usual uniform sweaters, but very, very elegant. And then the woman who owned the shop thought of a pair of pants that would fit Catlin, very tight and satiny. So that meant it was only fair Florian should get new pants too. And while they were doing that,
she
found a gunmetal satin pair of pants that just fit her, and that meant the sweater that went with them, which was bronzed lavenders on the shoulders shading down to gunmetal-sheen lavender and then gunmetal-and-black at the bottom. It was elegant. Uncle Giraud said it was too old for her before she put it on. When he saw her in it he said well, she
was
getting older.

She
thought she could sneak some lavender eyeshadow when she wore it at Maddy's next party.

So take that, Maddy Strassen.

They brought so many packages out of
La Lune
that uncle Giraud and Abban had to put a lot of them in the security escort car, and she and Florian and Catlin had to sit practically on top of each other in the back seat.

Uncle Giraud said they were going to be into the next century going through Decon at Reseune.

That was the wonderful thing about Novgorod: because they had the Amity escarpment on the east and the terraforming had piled up the rock and put up towers to make the Curtainwall on the west, and because they had all those people and all that sewage and all that algae and the greenbelt and algae starting out even in the marine shallows, it was one of the few places in the world besides Reseune that people went out without D-suits and the only other airport besides Reseune where you could take your baggage right through without anything but a hose-down and an inspection.

There was an interview to go through, in the lounge at the airport, while Abban was supervising the baggage being loaded. But she knew a lot of the reporters, especially one of the women and two of the oldest men and a young man who had a way of winking at her to get her to laugh; and she didn't mind taking the time.

Ransom, uncle Giraud called it, for being let alone while she got to see the botanical gardens, except for the photographers.

"What did you do today, Ari?" a woman asked.

"I went to the garden and I went shopping," she said, sitting in the middle of the cameras and in front of the pickup-bank. She had been tired until she got in front of the cameras. But she knew she was
on,
then, and
on
meant sparkle, which she knew how to do: it was easy, and it made the reporters happy and it made the people happy, and it made uncle Giraud happy—not that Giraud was her favorite person, but they got along all right: she had it figured uncle Giraud was real easy to Work in a lot of ways, and sometimes she thought he really had a soft place she got to. He would buy her things, lots of things. He had a special way of talking with her, being funny, which he wasn't, often, with other people.

And he was always so nasty every time they had a party or anything in the House.

About Giraud and maman—she
never
forgot that. Ever.

"What did you buy?"

She grinned. "Uncle Giraud says 'too much.'" And ducked her head and smiled up at the cameras with an expression she knew was cute. She had watched herself on vid and practiced in the mirror. "But I don't get to come to the city but once a year. And this is the first time I ever went shopping."

"Aren't there stores in Reseune?"

"Oh, yes, but they're small, and you always know what's there. You can always get what you need, but it's mostly the same things, you know, like you can get a shirt, but if you want one different from everybody's you have to order it, and then you know what you're going to get."

"How are the guppies?"

Another laugh. A twitch of her shoulders. "I've got some green long-tails."