C. Cherryh: Cyteen

"We're not talking about labs, admiral." "What are we talking about?"

"Rubin's going to be working there. Mostly it'll be his lab." You have enormous faith in this young man." Trap. My God, where is it? "He's a very valuable young man." I'd like to discuss the security aspects of this. Before the vote this afternoon. Can we talk?"

"Dammit, I've got a luncheon appointment."

"Dr. Emory, I honestly don't want to send this to committee. I'm trying to be cooperative. But I feel this is going through much too fast. I have other concerns that I don't think you want me to mention here."

Someone's talked. He's gotten to someone.

But aloud, to Florian: "Tell Yanni I'm caught in a crisis. Tell him to sit in for me. I'll get there when I can." She looked at the admiral, calmer, reckoning that it sounded like bargaining, not a torpedo from the flank. "Your place or mine?"

"Thank you," Ariane said, taking the coffee from Florian, who knew how she liked it. It was her office, her conference room, and her bodyguards present, the military aides staying outside, the admiral's own offer.

Conciliation, perhaps.

The admiral took his coffee black. Most did, who got a taste of it on special occasions. It was rare and real, imported all the way from Sol, Earth's southern hemisphere. It was one of Ariane's cultivated vices. And she took hers white. Real milk. A second extravagance.

"AG is still working on this," she said. "Someday." Cyteen had been a silicate-polluted hell when they started agriculture in the low-lying valleys, where domes and the precipitators could create mini-climate.

Another small flash: so much brown, so much blue-green on the hills. The lines spun above the valley like a webfly's work. The big mirrors caught light from space and flung power down from the hills. And the weathermakers in orbit raked the land with storms, terrible storms– We're safe, Ari, maman would say. It's only noise. It's weather, that's all—

Leonid Gorodin sipped his coffee with a tranquil look. And smiled. And said: "The rumor inside the Bureau is that this Rubin project is yours. Personally. There's nothing you do that doesn't change the balance between us and Alliance, us and Sol. I've talked to Lu. We have a lot of anxiety about this."

"We manage our own security. We've always managed it."

"Tell me this, Dr. Emory. Is the project you're undertaking . . . going to have any strategic significance?"

Trap. "Admiral, I suspect the development of a new toilet seat has strategic significance with some of your advisers."

Gorodin chuckled politely, and waited.

"That's fine," she said calmly. "We'll appreciate a vote of support from your Bureau. You want us to move the facility, we'll move it, even to Cyteen Station. We're very accommodating. We just don't want to lose Rubin."

"That important?"

"That important."

"I'll make a proposition to you, Dr. Emory. You've got an agenda. You want it passed. You want these things to go through, you want them to go through with a clean bill from Finance, you certainly don't want any long delays. You want to get back to Reseune. I want to get back to my command. I've got business out there, and between you and me, I'm allergic as hell to something around here and I hate the socializing."

"I'm also anxious to get home," she said. It was a dance. It would get where it was going in Gorodin's own time.

"You level with me," Gorodin said, "about the Fargone project."

"Say it's genetics. It's experimental."

"Are you going to have advanced labs out there?"

"No. Medical wing. Analysis. Administrative work. None of the classified equipment."

"Meaning you're following-up, not creating."

"In practical terms, yes. No birth-lab."

Gorodin looked at the empty cup, and at the two azi, and held his out.

"Florian," Ariane said, and the azi, with a quiet nod, took the pot from the sideboard and filled it. Gorodin followed Florian's moves with his eyes, thoughts proceeding.

"You can rely on their discretion," Ariane said. "It's quite all right. They're not sensitive to discussion. Reseune's best work. Aren't you, Florian?"

"Yes, sera," Florian said, preparing her second cup. He offered it.

"Beauty and brains," Ariane said, and smiled with the mouth, not the eyes. "Alliance won't develop birth-labs. They have no worlds to fill."

"Yet. We have to think about that. —Who's going to manage that facility at Fargone?"

"Yanni Schwartz."

Gorodin frowned, and sipped slowly at the incongruously tiny cup.

Ah, Ariane thought. Now, now, we get closer to it.

"I'll tell you, Dr. Emory. A lot of my people rely on the psych hospital at Viking. For reasons which are only politics—I'd like to have a facility a lot closer to that Hope Station route you're promoting. I'd like to have a place to send some of my worse cases—where Cyteen won't take them through the station facility."

"Any particular reason for that?"

"We're talking about special operations. People whose IDs change. People whose faces—you understand—I don't want seen. These are people who live anxious lives. They feel exposed at the big stations. They'd feel a hell of a lot better if there were a way to get to a Reseune facility—not on Cyteen."

Ariane frowned, not bothering to hide her perplexity. It sounded halfway sane.

"What I want," Gorodin said, "is access. A facility where my people feel—safe. Where I know they are. I want to throw some of the covert budget in there. Some of my staff."

"No military."

"We're talking about unanimous support for that facility. I can deliver that."

"No military. Reseune staff. And it better be a damn large contribution. You'll force a redesign. I'm not having my project compromised by your people strolling through Reseune boundaries. There'll be a total separation between any military hospital and our offices."

"We can go with that. But we want a liaison between our side and yours that we have confidence in. Someone we've worked with."

The thought hit like ice water. It was hard not to react, to keep the fingers relaxed on the fragile handle of the cup. "Who did you have in mind?"

"Dr. Warrick. He designed the training tapes. We want him, Dr. Emory."

"Does he want you?" Calmly. Very calmly.

"We can ask him."

"I think I know your source, admiral. I'm damned sure I know your source. What else did he tell you?"

"I think you're jumping to conclusions."

"No, I'm not. I was afraid of something like this. You want him, do you? You want a man in charge of your highest security operations, who quite readily betrayed my interests."

"I've told you my sources."

"Of course you have. You're quite willing to have some Hayes employee's head on the block, some poor sod of an engineer, no doubt, that they'll find a way to blame if I come down on them. You want Jordan Warrick. Did he tell you why?"

"He didn't tell me anything."

"Admiral, you're a damn good poker player, but remember how I make my living. Remember how he makes his. What's he done? Offered to go public with his opinions? Is that how you'll guarantee me Corain?"

"Dr. Emory, you know I can deliver what I promise."

"Of course you can. And Jordan Warrick promises you my head on a platter. He promises you he can swing votes in Science. I'll tell you what I'll do. You can have him. I'll transfer him and his whole damned staff. If you want to put him over a top-secret facility, go right ahead. If he wants to make speeches and write papers against my policies, fine." She set the cup down. "Do we have a deal, admiral? We can get out of this damned city days early, if that's the case. You support me in a request to let us leave sealed ballots on the Hope bill, and if you can guarantee they'll be unanimous, none of us will have to show up here to call a question. Deal?"