Cyteen: The Betrayal (51 page)

She brushed her hair fast. She opened the door and walked down the hall of her suite past Nelly’s room. She opened the door to the main apartment and walked on into the sitting room.

Uncle Denys was at the table beyond the arch. She walked in, clipping her keycard on, and uncle Denys said she should sit down and have breakfast.

“I don’t want to. What’s the matter with Nelly?”

“Sit down,” uncle Denys said.

So she sat. She wasn’t going to learn anything till she did. She knew uncle Denys. She reached for a muffin and ate a nibble dry. And Seely came and poured her orange juice. Her stomach felt upset.

“There,” uncle Denys said. “Nelly’s in hospital because she’s getting some more tape. Nelly’s not really able to keep

up with you, Ari, and you’re really going to have to be careful with her from now on. You’re getting bigger, you’re getting very clever, and poor Nelly thinks it’s her duty to keep up with you. The doctors are going to tell her it’s not her fault. There’s a lot Nelly has to adjust to. But you do have to remember not to hurt Nelly.”

“I don’t. I didn’t know the bug was going to scare her.”

“If you’d thought, you would have.”

“I guess so,” she said. It was a lonely morning without Nelly. But at least Nelly was all right. She put a little butter on her muffin. It tasted better.

“One of the things Nelly has to adjust to,” uncle Denys said, “is two more azi in the household, because there will be.”

She looked at uncle Denys, not real happy. Seely was bad enough.

“They’ll be yours,” uncle Denys said. “They’re part of your birthday. But you mustn’t tell them that: people aren’t birthday presents. It’s not nice.”

She swallowed a big gulp of muffin. She wasn’t at all happy, she didn’t want any azi but Nelly to be following her around, and if it was like a present, she didn’t want to hurt uncle Denys’s feelings, either, for a whole lot of reasons. She thought fast and tried to think of a way to say no.

“So you don’t have to go to tapestudy today,” uncle Denys said. “You go over to hospital and pick them up. And you can spend your day showing them what to do. They’re not like Nelly. They’re both Alphas. Experimentals.”

A large gulp of orange juice. She didn’t know what to think about that. Alphas were rare. They were also awfully hard to deal with. She was sure they were supposed to be watching her. That sounded an awful lot like uncle Denys was going to make it really hard for her to do anything she wasn’t supposed to. She wasn’t sure whether this present came from uncle Denys, or uncle Giraud.

“You go to the desk,” uncle Denys said, “and you give your card to Security, and they’ll register them to you. Effectively, you’re going to be their Supervisor, and that’s quite a lot different than Nelly. I’m Nelly’s Supervisor. You’re only her responsibility. This is quite different. You know what a Supervisor does? You know how responsible that is?”

“I’m a kid,” she protested.

Uncle Denys chuckled and buttered another muffin. “That’s all right. So are they.” He looked up, serious. “But they’re not toys, Ari. You understand how serious it is if you get mad at them, or if you hit them the way you hit Amy Carnath.”

“I wouldn’t do that!” You didn’t hit azi. You didn’t talk nasty to them. Except Ollie. And Phaedra. For different reasons. But they were both special, even Phaedra.

“I don’t think you would, dear. But I just want you to think about it before you hurt them. And you can. You could hurt them very, very badly, a lot more than you can Nelly-the way only I could hurt Nelly. You understand?”

“I’m not sure I want them, uncle Denys.”

“You need other children, Ari. You need somebody your own age.”

That was true. But there wasn’t anybody who didn’t drive her crazy. And it was going to be awful if they did, because they were going to live-in.

“The boy is Florian, the girl is Catlin, and it’s their birthday too, well, just about. They’ll live in the room next to yours and Nelly’s, that’s what it was always for. But they’ll have to go back to the Town for some of their lessons, and they’ll do tapestudy in the House, just like you do. They’re kids just like you, and they have Instructors they have to pay attention to. They’re very quick. In a lot of things they’re ahead of you. That’s the way with azi, especially the bright ones. So you’re going to have to work to keep up with them.”

She was listening now. No one had ever said she wasn’t the best at anything. She didn’t believe they could be. They wouldn’t be. There was nothing she couldn’t do if she wanted to. Maman always said so.

“Are you finished?”

“Yes, ser.”

“Then you can go. You pick them up and you show them around, and you stay out of trouble, all right?”

She got down from table and she left, out into the halls, past Security and the big front doors and across the driveway and along the walk to the hospital. She ran part of the way, because it was boring otherwise.

But she was dignified and grown-up when she passed the hospital doors and gave her card to hospital Security at the desk.

“Yes, sera,” they said. “Come this way.”

So they brought her to a room.

And they left and the other door opened. A nurse let in two azi her own age. The girl was pale, pale blonde, with a braid; the boy was shorter, with hair blacker than their uniforms.

And uncle Denys was right. Nobody ever looked at her that way when she had just met them. It was like friends right off. It was more than that. It was like they were in a scary place and she was the only one who could get them out of it.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m Ari Emory.”

“Yes, sera.” Very softly, from both, almost together.

“You’re supposed to come with me.”

“Yes, sera.”

It felt really, really strange. Not like Nelly. Not like Nelly at all. She held the door button for them and she took them out by the desk and said that she was taking them.

“Here are their keycards, sera,” the man at the desk said. And she took them and looked at them.

There were their names. Florian AF-9979 and Catlin AC-7892. And the Alpha symbol in the class blank. And the wide black border of House Security across the bottom.

She saw that and a cold feeling went through her stomach, a terrible feeling, like finding the Security guard in maman’s apartment. She never forgot that. She had nightmares about that.

But she didn’t let them see her face right then. She got herself straight before she turned around and gave them their cards, and they put them on.

And they had different expressions too, out here, very serious, very azi: they were listening to her, they were watching her, but they were watching everything.

You had to remember how they had been in the room, she thought. You had to think how they had looked in there, to know that that was real too, and that they were two things.

They were Security and they were hers, and it was other people they were watching like that, every little move that went on around her.

I wanted an Ollie, she remembered, but that was not what uncle Denys had given her. He gave her Security.

Why? she wondered, a little mad, a little scared. What do I need them for?

But they were her responsibility. So she took them out and down the walk to the House and checked them in with House Security. They were very correct with the officer on duty. “Yes, sera,” they said very sharply to the officer, and the officer talked fast and ran through the rules for them in words and codes she had never heard. But the azi knew. They were very confident.

Uncle Denys hadn’t said they had to come straight home, but she thought they should. Except she went by uncle Denys’s office and uncle Denys was there. So she took them in and introduced them.

Then she took them home and showed them where they would live, and their own rooms; and explained to them about Nelly.

“You have to do what Nelly says,” she said. “So do I, most of the time. Nelly’s all right.”

They were not quite nervous; it was something else. Especially Catlin, who had this way of looking at everything real fast. Both of them were very tense and very stiff and formal.

That was all right, they were respectful and they were being nice.

So she got out her Starchase game, set it up on the dining table and explained what the rules were.

None of the other kids ever listened the way they listened. They didn’t tease or joke. She passed out the money and dealt out the cards and gave them their pieces. And when they started playing it got real tense.

She wasn’t sure whether it was a fight or a game, but it was different than Amy Carnath, a lot different, because nobody was mad, they just went at it; and pretty soon she was leaning over the board and thinking so hard she was chewing her lip without knowing it for a while.

They liked it when she did something sneaky. They were sneaky right back, and the minute you got your pieces where you could get Florian in trouble, Catlin was moving up on the other side.

Starchase was usually real fast to play. And they were at it a long time, till she could get enough money to get enough ships built to keep Catlin off till she could get Florian cornered.

But then he asked if the rules let him join Catlin.

No one had ever thought of that. She thought it was smart. She got the rulebook out and looked.

“They don’t say you can’t,” she said. And her shoulders were tired and she was stiff from sitting still so long. “Let’s go put the board in my room so Seely won’t mess it up and we’ll have lunch, all right?”

“Yes, sera,” they said.

They had. a way of doing that to remind her they weren’t just kids, every time she tried to make them relax.

But Florian carried the board in and he didn’t spill it. And she thought she had rather go have lunch in North wing: uncle Denys let her go to the restaurant there, the little one, where the azi and the manager all knew her.

So that was where she took them, to Changes, down next to the shops, at the corner, where mostly Staff had lunch. She introduced them, she sat down and told them to sit down, and she had to order for them: “Sera,” Florian whispered, looking awfully embarrassed after a moment of looking at the menu, “what are we supposed to do with this?”

“Pick out what you want to eat.”

“I don’t know these words. I don’t think Catlin does.”

Catlin shook her head, very sober and very worried-looking.

So she asked them what they liked, and they said they usually had sandwiches at lunch. She ordered that for them and for herself.

And thought that they were awfully nervous, and kept looking at everything and everyone that moved. Somebody banged a tray and their eyes went that way like something had exploded.

“You don’t have to be worried,” she said. They made her nervous. Like something was going to happen. “Calm down. It’s just the waiters.”

They looked at her, very sober. But they didn’t stop watching things.

Just as serious and just as sober as they were in the game.

The waiter brought their drinks and they looked at him, all over, real fast, so fast it was hard to see them do it, but she knew they were doing it because she was watching.

Nothing like Nelly.

Uncle Denys talked about being safe in the halls. And got her two azi who thought the waiter was going to jump them. “Listen,” she said, and two serious faces turned toward her and listened, azi-like. “Sometimes we can just have fun, all right? Nobody’s going to get us here. I know all these people.”

They calmed right down. Like it was magic. Like she had psyched them exactly right. She let go a little breath and felt proud of herself. They sipped their soft drinks and when the sandwiches came with all the extra stuff that came with them they were real impressed.

They liked it. She could tell. But: “I can’t eat this much” Florian said, worried-like. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right. Quit worrying about things. Hear?”

“Yes, sera.”

She looked at Florian, and looked at Catlin, and all that seriousness; and thought of ways to un-serious them; and then remembered that they were azi, and it was their psychset to be like that, which meant you couldn’t do a lot of things with them.

But they weren’t stupid. Not at all. Alphas were like Ollie. And that meant they could take a lot that Nelly never could. Like in the game: she pushed them with everything she had, and they didn’t get mad and they didn’t get upset.

They were a big job. But not too big for her.

Then she thought, not for the first time that morning, that they were a Responsibility. And you didn’t take on azi and then just dump them, ever. Uncle Denys was right. You didn’t get people for presents. You got somebody who wanted to love you, and you couldn’t ever just move away and leave them.

(Maman did, she thought, and it hurt, the way it always hurt when that thought popped up. Maman did. But maman didn’t want to. Maman had been worried and upset for a long time before she went away.)

She would have to write and tell maman about them, fast, so maman would know she had to tell uncle Denys to send them with her. Because she couldn’t just leave them. She knew what that felt like.

She wished she had gotten to pick them out, because her household was getting complicated; she would much rather have an Ollie for hers, and one and not two. She could have said no. Maybe she should have said no, and not let uncle

Denys give them to her. She had thought she could sort of go along with it. Like everything else.

Till they looked at her that way over at the hospital, and they just sort of psyched her, not meaning to, except they wanted to go with her so much; and she had wanted somebody to be with her, just as bad. ,

So now they were stuck with each other. And she couldn’t leave them by themselves.

Not ever.