C. Cherryh - Cyteen

That's what it is when somebody throws light on what you've got all the pieces of.

His father is at Planys.

That's first.

Then there are all these other things—like him being my teacher. Like—we're best friends. But it's like Amy. Amy's my best friend but Florian and Catlin. And we couldn't get along till Amy knew I could beat her. Like she was going to have to do something about me until she knew she couldn't. Then we're all right.

Power stuff. Ari was right about that too—about us being territorial as hell, only territory is the wrong word. Territory is only something you can attach that idea to because we got used to the root concept when we were working with animals.

That's what Ari called science making itself a semantic problem. Because if you think territoriality you don't realize what you're really anxious about. We're not bettas.

The old Greeks talked about moira. Moira means lot in Greek. Like your share of things. And you can't grab somebody else's—that's stealing; you can't not do your own; that's being a coward. But figuring out what yours is would be a bitch, except other people and other animals help you define what your edges are when they react back: if they don't react back or they don't react so you can understand them you get anxiety reactions and you react with the fight or flight bias your psychset gives you, whether you're a human being or a betta. I got that from Sophocles. And Aristotle. And Amy Carnath and her bettas, because she's the first CIT friend I ever had I worked that out with, and she breeds fighting fish.

It's not territory. It's equilibrium. An equilibrated system has tensions in balance, like girders and trusses in a building.

Rigid systems are vulnerable. Ari said that. Equilibrated systems can flex under stress.

The old Greeks used to put flex in their buildings, moving joints, because they had earthquakes.

I'm leading up to something.

I think it has to do with me and Justin.

I don't trust too much flex any more than too little. Too much and your wall goes down; too little and it breaks.

I'm saying this for the record. If I was talking to Justin or Yanni or uncle Denys I'd say:

Non-looping paths don't necessarily have to be macro-setted on an individual level.

Except then—

—then you have to macro-set the social matrix, which you can do—

—but the variables are real killers to work out—Justin's proved that.

God, talking with yourself has some benefits.

That's what Ari meant by macro-values. That's what she was talking about. That's how she could be so damned careless about the random inputs with her designs. They all feed into a single value: the flux always has to reset off the central sets. That's what Justin was trying to explain to me: flux re-set functions.

Gehennans identify with their world. That's the whole center of what Ari did with that design. And no flux-thinking can get at that.

But where does that go?

Damn! I wish I could tell it to Justin. . . .

Define: world. There's the worm. God! It could be one, if you could guide that semantic mutation.

Pity we have to input words instead of numbers. Into a hormone-fluxed system.

Justin says.

Justin says semantics is always the problem; the more concrete a value you link the sets to, the better off your design is with the computers—but that's not all of it. The link-point has to be a non-fluxing thing—Justin says—

No! Not non-flux. Slow-flux. Flux relative or proportional to the rest of the flux in the sets—like a scissors-joint: everything can move without changing the structure, just the distance down the one axis—

No. Not even that. If the flux on the macro-set has a time-lag of any kind you're going to increase the adaptive flux in the micro-sets in any system. But if you could work out that relevancy in any kind of symbological matrix—then you can get a numerical value back.

Can't you?

Doesn't that do something with the Field Size problem? Isn't that something like a log, if the internal change rates in the sets could be setted; and then—

No, damn, then your world is fine until it gets immigrants; and the first random inputs come in and give you someone who doesn't share the same values—

Immigration—on Gehenna—

Could change the definition of world . . . couldn't it?

Damn, I wish I could ask Justin about these things. Maybe I know something. Even if I am sixteen. I know things I can't tell anybody. Especially Justin. And they could be terribly dangerous.

But Gehenna's quarantined. It's safe—so far. I've got time. Don't I?

Justin resents what I did, when I made him be my teacher. I know he does. He frowns a lot. Sometimes Grant looks worried about the situation. Grant's mad at me too. He would be. Even if both of them try to be nice. And not just nice. They are kind. Both. They're just upset. Justin's been arrested every time I got in trouble. A lot of things that weren't fair at all. I know why they did it. Like what my uncles did to me. But they were never fair to him.

So it's not like I blame him for his mad. And he keeps it real well: I can respect that. I have one of my own that I'll never forgive. Not really. He knows it's not my fault about his father and all. He knows I'm not lying when I say he and Grant can both go see his father when all this political mess clears up, and I'll help him every way I can.

But he's still hurting about his father. Maman was clear away on Fargone and I never even heard from her again, but she was far away, out of reach, and after a while it didn't hurt so awful much. His father is on Cyteen, and they can talk, but that's bad too, because you'd always have to be thinking about how close that is. And now they can't even talk by phone and he's worried about his father, I know he is.

Then I go and tell him he's going to give me his research, that he's been working on with his father and he hopes could help his father—that's something I did, me. People have been terrible to him all his life and everything he's got he's fought to have, and some kid comes in and wants everything he's done—and I'm the one who gets him in trouble– That's my fault, I know it is, but I've got to have his stuff. It's important. But I can't tell him why and I can't tell him what I want. So he just goes azi on me. That's the only way I can describe it—just very cool and very proper.

We work in his office mostly. He says he wants witnesses when he's around me. The Warricks have had enough trouble, he says.

He gives me some real work, because he says I'm not bad, and I can do the frameworks. And then I catch him sometimes, because when I'm really, really doing my best, and especially when I come up with something all the way right, he forgets his mad for a second or two and he loosens up and something shines out of him, that's a hell of a precise description, isn't it? But he gets interested in what we're doing and the ice thaws a bit, and he's just—all right with me. For about two or three minutes, until he remembers that everything he teaches me is going away from him and into me. And I think he thinks I'm going to rob him of everything. And I wish I could make him understand I'd like to help him.