Cyteen: The Betrayal (33 page)

“Spit it out, Grant!”

“-You’re not-not like you would have been if it hadn’t happened. Who could be? You learn. You adjust.”

“That’s not what I’m asking. Did they do anything?”

“I don’t know,” Grant said. All but stammered. “I don’t know. I can’t judge CIT psychsets.”

“You can judge mine.”

“Don’t back me into a corner, Justin. I don’t know. I don’t know and I don’t know how to know.”

“I’m psyched. Is that what you see? Come on. Give me some help, Grant.”

“I think you’ve got scars. I don’t know whether Petros helped or hurt.”

“Or knocked me the rest of the way down and did it to me like Ari did. The kid-” It had been a jolt. A severe jolt. Time-trip. I’m afraid of the tape-flashes. I shut them out. I warp myself away from that time. That in itself is a decision, isn’t it?

Petros: “I’m going to close it down.”

Wall it off.

God. It’s a psychblock. It could be.

They weren’t my friends. Or Jordan’s. I know that.

He drew a deep, sudden gulp of air. I’m blocking off everything I learned from her. I’m scared stiff of it.

“Justin?”

The kid’s shaken it loose. The kid’s thrown me back before Petros. Before Giraud. Back when there was just Ari.

Back when I didn’t believe anything could get to me. I walked in her door that night thinking I was in control.

Two seconds later I knew I wasn’t.

Family is a liability, sweet.

What was she telling me?

“Justin?”

Would she want what Reseune is becoming? Would she want that kid in Giraud’s hands? Damn, he was in Art’s pocket while she was alive. But after she died-

“Justin!”

He became aware of Grant shaking at him. Of real fear. “I’m all right,” he mumbled. “I’m all right.”

He felt Grant’s hand close on his. Grant’s hand was warm. The wind had gone through him. What he was looking at, he did not know. The garden. The pond. “Grant, -whether or not that kid’s Ari reincarnate, she’s smart. She’s figured out how to psych them. Isn’t that what it’s all about? She’s figured out what they want, isn’t that what you say about Hauptmann’s subjects? She’s got them believing all of it. Denys and Jane and Giraud and all of them. I don’t have to believe in it to believe what can happen to us if Giraud thinks we’re a threat.”

“Justin. Let it alone. Let’s go. It’s cold out here.”

“Do you think they ran a psychblock on me?” He dragged himself back from out-there; looked at Grant’s pale, cold-stung face. “Give me the truth, Grant.”

A long silence. Grant was breathing hard. Holding back. It took no skill to see that.

“I think they could have,” Grant said finally. The grip on his hand hurt. There was a tremor in Grant’s voice. “I’ve done whatever I could. I’ve tried. Ever since. Don’t slip on me. Don’t let them get their hands on you again. And they can-if you give them any excuse. You know they can.”

“I’m not going under. I’m not. I know what they did.” He took a deep breath and drew Grant closer, hugged him, leaned against him, exhausted. “I’m doing all right. Maybe I’m doing better than I have been in the last six years.”

Grant looked at him, pale and panicked.

“I swear,” Justin said. He was beyond cold. Frozen through. Numb. “Damn,” he said. “We’ve got time, don’t we?”

“We’ve got time,” Grant said. And pulled at him. “Come on. You’re freezing. So am I. Let’s get inside.”

He got up. He threw the rest of the food to the fish, stuffed the napkin into his pocket with numb fingers, and walked. He was not thoroughly conscious of the route, of all the automatic things. Grant had no more to say until they got to the office in Wing Two.

Then Grant lingered at the door of his office. Just looked at him, as if to ask if he was all right. “I’ve got to run to library.”

He gave Grant a silent lift of the chin. I’m all right. “Go on, then.”

Grant bit his lip. “See you at lunch ”

“Right.”

Grant left. He sat down in the disordered little office, logged on to the House system, and prepared to get to work. But a message-dot was blinking on the corner of his screen. He windowed it up.

See me first thing, my office, it said. Giraud Nye.

He sat there staring at the thing. He found his hand shaking when he reached to punch the off switch.

He was not ready for this. Psychprobe flashed into his mind; all the old nightmares. He needed all his self-control.

All the old reflexes were gone. Everything. He was vulnerable. Grant was.

He had whatever time it took to walk over there to pull himself together. He did not know what to do, whether to route himself past the library and try to warn Grant-but that looked guilty. Every move he could make could damn him.

No, he thought then, and bit his lip till it bled. It flashed back to another meeting. A taste of blood in his mouth. Hysteria jammed behind his teeth.

It’s started, he thought. It’s happened.

He turned the machine on, sent a message over to Grant’s office: Giraud wants to see me. I may be held up on the lunch. -J. It was warning enough. What Grant could do about it, he had no idea.

Worry. That was what.

He shut down again, got up, locked the office, and walked down the corridor, still tasting the blood. He kept looking at things and people with the thought that he might not be back. That the next thing he and Grant might see might be an interview room in the hospital.

ix.

Giraud’s office was the same he had always had, in the Administrative Wing, the same paneled and unobtrusive entry with the outside lock-more security than Ari had ever used. Giraud was no longer official head of Security. He was Councillor Nye these days-for outsiders’ information. But everyone in the House knew who was running Security-still. Justin slid his card into the lock, heard it click, set for his

CIT-number. He walked into the short paneled hall and opened the inside door, on the office where Giraud’s azi Abban was at his accustomed desk.

That was the first thing he saw. In the next split-second he saw the two Security officers and Abban was rising casually from his chair.

He stopped cold. And looked at the nearer of the azi officers, eye to eye, calmly: Let’s be civilized. He took the next quiet step inside and let the door shut at his back.

They had a body-scanner. “Arms out, ser,” the one on the left said. He obliged them, let them pass the wand over him. It found something in his coat pocket. The officer pulled out the paper napkin. Justin gave him a disparaging look in spite of the fact that his heart was going like a hammer and the air in the room seemed too thin.

They satisfied themselves he was not armed. Abban opened the door and they took him through it.

Giraud was not the only one there. Denys was. And Petros Ivanov. He felt his heart trying to come up his throat. One of the officers held him lightly by the arm and guided him to the remaining chair, in front of Giraud’s desk. Denys sat in a chair to the left of the desk, Petros to the right.

Like a tribunal.

And the Security men stayed, one with his hand on the back of Justin’s chair, until Giraud lifted a hand and told them to leave. But Justin’s ears told him someone had stayed when the door had shut.

Abban, he thought.

“You understand why you’re here,” Giraud said. “I don’t have to tell you.”

Giraud wanted an answer. “Yes, ser,” he said in a muted voice.

They’ll do what they damned well please.

Why have they got Petros here? Unless they’re going to run a probe.

“Have you got anything to say?” Giraud asked.

“I don’t think I should have to.” He found a tenuous control of his voice. Dammit, get a grip on things.

And like a wind out of the dark: Steady, sweet. Don’t give everything away.

“I didn’t provoke that. God knows I didn’t want it.”

“You could have damn well left.”

“I left.”

“After.” Giraud’s face was thin-lipped with anger. He picked up a stylus and posed it between his fingers. “What’s your intention? To sabotage the project?”

“No. I was there like everyone else. No different. I was minding my own business. What did you do, prime her for that show? Is that it? A little show? Impress the Family? Con the press? I’ll bet you’ve got tape.”

Giraud had not expected that. He gave away very little. Denys and Petros looked distressed.

“The child wasn’t prompted,” Denys said quietly. “You have my word, Justin, it wasn’t prompted.”

“The hell it wasn’t. It’s a damn good show for the news, isn’t it-just the sort of thing that makes great fodder for the eetees out there. The kid singles out the killer’s replicate. God! what a piece of science!”

“Don’t bother to play for a camera,” Giraud said. “We’re not being taped.”

“I didn’t expect.” He was shaking. He shifted his foot to relax his leg, to keep it from trembling. But, God, the brain was working. They were going to haul him off for another session, that was what they were working up to; and somehow that shook the fog out of his mind. “I imagine you’ll work me over good before I get to the cameras. But it’d be sloppy as hell to have me on the tape in that party and dropping right out again. Or turning up dead. Makes a problem for you, doesn’t it?”

“Justin,” Petros said, a tone of appeal. “No one’s going to ‘work you over.’ That’s not what we’re about here.”

“Sure.”

“What we’re about,” Giraud said in a hard, clipped voice, “is one clear question. Did you cue her?”

“You find your own answers. Write down whatever you want. Look at the damn tape.”

“We have,” Giraud said. “Grant had eye contact with her. So did you, right before she moved.”

Attack on a new target. Of course they got around to Grant. “What else were people looking at? What else were we there to look at? I looked at her. Did you think I’d come there and not! You saw me there. You could have told me to leave. But of course you didn’t. You set me up. You set up the whole thing. How many people in there knew it? Just you?”

“You maintain you didn’t cue her.”

“Dammit, no. Neither of us did. I asked Grant. He wouldn’t lie to me. He admits the eye contact. He was looking at her. ‘I got caught at it,’ was the way he put it. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t mine.”

Petros stirred in his chair. Leaned toward Giraud. “Gerry, I think you have to take into account what I said.”

Giraud touched the desk control. The screen tilted up out of the surface; he typed something with his right hand, likely a file-scan. Dataflow reflected off the metal on his collar, a flicker of green.

Manipulation of more than data. Orchestrated, Justin told himself. The whole play. A little moment of suspense now. Secrets.

And he still could not keep himself from reacting. Giraud read or mimed reading. His breathing grew larger. His face was no friendlier when he looked up. “You don’t like tapestudy. Odd, in a designer.”

“I don’t damn well trust it. Can you blame me?”

“You don’t even do entertainment tapes.”

“I work hard.”

“Let’s not have that kind of answer. You skipped out on your follow-ups with Petros. You don’t take tape more than once every month or so. That’s a damned strange attitude in a designer.”

He said nothing. He had used all the glib answers. “Even Grant,” Giraud said, “doesn’t go into the lab for his. He uses a home unit. Not at all regulation.”

“There’s no rule about that. If that satisfies him, it satisfies him. Grant’s bright, he’s got good absorption-“

“It’s not your instruction to do that.”

“No, it’s not my instruction.”

“You know,” Petros said, “Grant’s self-sufficient, completely social. He doesn’t need that kind of reinforcement as often as some. But considering what he’s been through, it would be better if he took it deep. Just as a checkup.”

“Considering what you put him through? No!”

“So it is your instruction,” Giraud said.

“No. It’s his choice. It’s his choice, he’s entitled, the same as I am, the last I heard.”

“I’m not sure we need a designer-team that’s phobic about tape.”

“Go to hell.”

“Easy,” Denys said. “Take it easy. Giraud, there’s nothing wrong with his output. Or Grant’s. That’s not at issue.”

“There was more than one victim in Ari’s murder,” Petros said. “Justin was. Grant was. I don’t think you can ignore that fact. You’re dealing with someone who was a boy when the incident happened, who was, in fact, the victim of Ari’s own criminal act, among others. I haven’t wanted to press the issue. I’ve been keeping an eye on him. I’ve sent him requests to come in to talk. Is that true, Justin?”

“It’s true.”

“You haven’t answered, have you?”

“No.” Panic pressed on him. He felt sick inside.

“The whole situation with the Project,” Petros said, “has bothered you quite a bit, hasn’t it?”

“Live and let live. I’m sorry for the kid. I’m sure you’ve got all the benefit of Security’s eavesdropping in my apartment. I hope you get a lot of entertainment out of the intimate bits.”

“Justin.”

“You can go to hell too, Petros.”

“Justin. Tell me the truth. Are you still getting tape-flashes?”

“No.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“You felt a lot of stress when you walked into the party, didn’t you?”

“Hell, no. Why should I?”

“I think that’s your answer,” Petros said to Giraud. “He came in there stressed. Both of them did. Ari had no trouble picking up on it. That’s all there is to it. I don’t think it was intended. I’m more disturbed about Justin’s state of mind. I think it’s just best he go back to his wing, and show up at family functions, and carry on as normally as he can. I don’t think anything useful is served by a probe. He’s carrying enough stress as it is. I do want him to come in for counseling.”

“Giraud,” Denys said, “if you believe young Ari’s sensitivities, bear in mind she wasn’t afraid of Justin. Stressed as he was, she wasn’t afraid of him. Quite the opposite.”

“I don’t like that either.” Giraud drew a breath and leaned back, looking at Justin from under his brows. “You’ll take Petros’ prescription. If he tells me you’re not cooperating, you’ll be tending a precip station before sundown. Hear me?”