Cyteen: The Betrayal (27 page)

“I don’t know if they’ll let me write to you,” Jordan said.

“I’ll write.”

“I don’t know if they’ll give me the letters.” Jordan managed a small laugh. “They imagine we can pass messages in hello, how’s the weather?”

“I’ll write anyway.”

“They think - they think there’s some damn conspiracy. There isn’t. I promise you that, son. There isn’t anyone who knew and there wasn’t supposed to be anyone who knew. But they’re afraid out there. People think of Ari as political. That’s how she was important to them. They don’t think of her first as a scientist. They don’t understand what it means when someone takes your work and turns it inside out. They don’t understand the ethics that were violated.”

Ethics that were violated. God. He’s playing for the cameras. The first was a speech to the committee but the last was a code to me. If he goes on any longer they’re going to catch him at it.

“I love you,” Jordan said then. “More than anything.”

And held out his arms. It was over. The play was over. The actors had to embrace. It was all right to cry now.

He would not see Jordan after this. Not hear from him.

Maybe forever.

He crossed the little space like an automaton. He hugged Jordan and Jordan hugged him hard, a long time. A long time. He bit his lip through, because the pain was all that helped keep him focused. Jordan was crying. He felt the sobs, quiet as they were. But maybe that would help Jordan’s case. Maybe they had done all right, in front of the cameras. He wished he could cry. But for some reason he was numb, except the pain, and the taste of blood.

Jordan had played it too hard, had sounded too cold-blooded, too dangerous. He should not have done that. They might play that tape on the news. People would be afraid of him. They might think he was crazy. Like the Alphas that went over the edge. Like Bok’s clone. They might stop him from his work.

He almost shouted: He’s lying. My father is lying. But Jordan was holding on to him. Jordan had done exactly what Jordan wanted to do. Jordan had not been locked in a room for a week. He knew what was going on in the world, he had been talking to the investigators. Jordan was playing a part, running psych on all of them, that was what he was doing: Jordan was going to go to that Senate committee and get himself the best deal he could; and maybe that bit would keep the tape off the news, because Jordan’s work was very important to Defense and the military could silence anything it wanted.

“Come on,” Denys said.

Jordan let him go and let him leave. Denys walked him out the door.

Then Justin cried. Leaned against the wall outside after the door had shut and cried until his gut ached.

xii

He had thought there could be no more shocks.

But Petros Ivanov met him at the door of the hospital, took him away from his Security escort and walked with him to Grant’s room.

“How is he?” he asked before they got there.

“Not doing well,” Ivanov said. “I wanted to warn you.” Ivanov said other things, how they had had to put Grant under probe again; and how he had gone into shock; how they took him out to the garden in a chair every day, how they massaged him and bathed him and waited on treatment because Denys had kept telling them Justin was going to come, this day, and the next day and the next-they were afraid to probe Grant again, because he was right on the edge, and they thought there might be illegal codewords, words not in the psych record.

“No,” he said before he pushed Grant’s door open. And wanted to kill Ivanov. Wanted to beat him to a bloody pulp and go for the staff next and Giraud Nye into the bargain. “No. There aren’t any codewords. Dammit, I told him I’d come back. And he was waiting.”

Grant was still waiting. Right now he had his hair combed, looked comfortable enough unless you knew he did not move on his own. Unless you knew he had lost weight and the skin was too transparent and you saw the glassiness in the eyes and took his hand and felt the lack of muscle tone.

“Grant,” he said, sitting down on the edge of the “Grant, it’s me. It’s all right.”

Grant did not even blink.

“Get out of here,” he said to Ivanov, with a glance over his shoulder; and did not try to be polite.

Ivanov left.

He shifted over and gently unfastened the restraints they kept on him. He was calmer than he had thought he could be. He picked up Grant’s arm and laid it across him so he had room to sit, and raised the head of the bed a little. He reached then and with two fingers along Grant’s jaw, turned his face toward him. It was like moving a mannequin. But Grant blinked.

“Grant? It’s Justin.”

Another blink.

O God, he had thought Grant would be gone. He had thought he was coming in here to find a half-corpse that they could not do anything with except put down. He was prepared for that … in five minutes from the front door to Grant’s room he had gone from the hope of recovering Grant to the expectation of losing him. Now it was full circle.

Now he was scared. He was safe if Grant was dead.

O God! Damn me for thinking like that! Where did I learn to think like that? Where did I learn to be that cold?

Is it tape-flash too?

What did she do to me?

He felt like he was coming apart-felt hysteria welling up like a tide; and Grant did not need that. His hand was shaking when he took Grant’s hand in his. And even then he thought of Ari’s apartment, how the room had looked. He began talking to distract himself, not knowing what he was saying, not wanting to think again the thought that had flashed through his mind, like it was somebody else’s. He knew that he could not touch people anymore without it being sexual. He could not hold on to a friend. Or embrace his father. He kept remembering, day and night; and he knew that it was dangerous to love anyone because of the ugliness in his mind, because he was always thinking thoughts that would horrify them if they knew.

And because Ari was right, if you loved anyone They could get to you, the way They had gotten to Jordan. Grant was the way to him. Of course. That was why They had let him have Grant back.

He was not on his own now. Someday Grant was going to lay him wide open to his enemies. Maybe get him killed. Or worse-do to him what he had done to Jordan.

But until then he was not alone, either. Until then, for a few years, he could have something precious to him. Until Grant found out what kind of ugliness he had in him. Or even after Grant found out. Grant, being azi, would forgive anything.

“Grant, I’m here. I told you I’d come. I’m here.”

Perhaps for Grant it was still that night. Perhaps he could go back to that, and pick it up again at the morning after.

Another blink, and another.

“Come on, Grant. No more nonsense. You fooled them. Come on. Squeeze my hand. You can do that.”

Fingers tightened. Just slightly. The breathing rate increased. He shook at Grant slightly, reached up and flicked a finger against his cheek.

“Hey. Feel that? Come on. I’m not taking any of this. It’s me. Dammit, I want to talk to you. Pay attention.”

The lips acquired muscle tone. Relaxed again. The breaths were hard now. Several rapid blinks.

“Are you listening?”

Grant nodded.

“Good.” He was shaking. He tried to stop it. “We’ve got a problem. But I’ve got permission to get you out of here. If you can wake up.”

“Is it morning?”

He drew a quick breath, thought at first to say yes, then thought that disorientation was dangerous. That Grant was wary. That Grant might pull back at a lie. “A little later than that. There was a glitch-up. A bad one. I’ll explain later. Can you move your arm?”

Grant moved it, a little twitch. A lift of the hand, then. “I’m weak. I’m awfully weak.”

“That’s all right. They’re going to take you over in the bus. You can sleep in your own bed tonight if you can prove you can sit up.”

Grant’s chest rose and fell rapidly. The arm moved, dragged over, fell at his side like something dead. He gulped air and made a convulsive move of his whole body, lifting his shoulders barely enough to let the pillow slip before he fell back.

“Close enough,” Justin said.

Food tasted very strange to him. Too strong. Even soggy cereal was work, and made his jaws ache. He ate about half the bowl that Justin spooned into his mouth and made a weak movement of his hand. “‘Nough.”

Justin looked worried when he set the bowl aside.

“It’s a lot for me,” Grant said. Talking was an effort too, but Justin looked so scared. Grant reached out and put his hand on Justin’s because that was easier than talking. Justin still looked at him with all hell in his eyes. And he wished like hell he could take that pain away.

Justin had told him everything last night, poured it on him while he was still groggy and exhausted, because, Justin had said, that’s the way they hit me with it, and I guess it hurts less while you’re numb.

Grant had cried then. And Justin had cried. And Justin had been so tired and so unwilling to leave him that he had stretched himself out on Grant’s bed beside him, still dressed and on top of the covers, and fallen to sleep.

Grant had struggled to throw the bedspread over him, had not had the strength in his arm; so he had rolled over, left the spread with Justin and rolled back again.

And lay there with just the sheet, too cold until Justin woke up midway through the night and got a blanket for him. And hugged him and cried on his shoulder, a long, long time.

“I need you so much,” Justin had said. Perhaps because he was azi, perhaps because he was human, he did not know-that was the most important thing anyone had ever said to him. He had wept too. He did not know why, except Justin was his life. Justin was everything to him. “I need you too,” he had said. “I love you.”

In the dark hours. In the hours before morning. When people could say things that were too real to say by daylight.

Justin had fallen to sleep by his side a second time. Grant had waked first, and lain there a long time, content to know Justin was there. Until Justin had waked and gotten up, apologizing for having slept there.

As if he had not wanted Justin there, all night. As if Justin was not the most important thing in the world to him, who made him feel safe. Who was the one he would do anything for.

Whom he loved, in a way that no woman and nothing he had ever longed for could matter to him.

xiii

“Ari’s set is positive,” the voice from the lab informed Giraud Nye, and he drew a long breath of relief.

“That’s wonderful,” he said. “That’s really wonderful. How are the other two?”

“Both positive. We’ve got a take on all three in all the tanks.”

“Wonderful.”

Schwartz signed off. Giraud Nye leaned back with a sigh.

There were nine womb-tanks active on the Rubin project. Triple redundancy on each of the subjects, over Strassen’s loud complaints. It was rare that Reseune ran any backups at all on a CIT replication; if a set failed to implant or had some problem, the restart just put it a few weeks late, that was all, and the recipient could wait, unless the recipient wanted to pay double the already astronomical cost to have a backup. In the case of a contracted run of azi sets, or somebody’s project, the normal rule was one spare for every pair, the spares to be voided after six weeks.

This one was going to tie up nine tanks for three weeks, and six for six weeks, before they made a final selection and voided the last backups.

Reseune was taking no chances.

Verbal Text from:

PATTERNS OF GROWTH

A Tapestudy in Genetics: #1

Reseune Educational Publications: 8970-8768-1 approved for 80+

Everyone who has ever taken a tape with prescriptive drugs is familiar with the sensor patch. The simplest home-use machines use a one-way cardiac sensor, a simple patch which monitors pulse rate. Any tape, whether entertainment or informational, when taken with a prescription cataphoric, has the potential to produce severe emotional stress where the content triggers memory or empathy. In experiencing the classic play Othello, for instance, a certain individual, viewing a certain performance, and bringing to it his own life experience, may empathize with one or the other characters to an extent no mass-production tape can anticipate.

This viewer is undergoing stress natural to the drama. The heart rate increases. The sensor picks it up and carries it to the machine’s monitor-circuits. If it rises above the level set by the tape-technician the tape will automatically switch to a different program, a small tape-loop that provides only relaxing music and sound.

This young boy has come to a learning clinic to acquire a skill-improvement in penmanship. As he tenses muscles in his hand and lower arm his clinical technician’s skilled fingers locate the muscles and place the numbered patches precisely on the skin. More are added to the muscles about the eye. Others go beneath the arm, over the heart, and over the carotid artery.

These small gray strips have two contacts: this much more advanced machine has a biofeedback loop. The numbers on the patches correspond to the numbers the tape-manual gives to the technician, who need not, for this kind of manual skill tape, be a licensed psychotherapist. Attaching these to the skin above the muscles indicated in the manual makes it possible for the machine to sense the activity of an individual muscle or muscle group and immediately send or cease sending impulses.

This woman, skilled in penmanship, wears identical sensors as she writes the exercise. Her muscle actions are being recorded. This is the actual recording of the tape.

The young student is somewhat anxious as he waits for the cataphoric to take effect. This is his first experience with prescriptive tape. The technician reassures him that this is very little different from the entertainment tapes. The patches are uncomfortable, but only for the moment. The drug takes effect and the technician tests to be sure the boy is ready. The tape begins, and the boy experiences stress as he sees the exercise. The technician quietly reassures him. In a moment, through the output-input function of the patches, the boy feels the muscle action of the skilled penman as she takes up the pen and begins to write. He experiences the success, sees the shape of the letters, feels the small precise movements of the hand and fingers, and feels the relaxation of the calligrapher at her work.