C. Cherryh - Cyteen

Denys gazed at her a long time without speaking. "I am very much the woman you knew," she said. "Never mind the kid's face. Or the fact my voice hasn't settled yet. There is a kind of fusion. Only I'm already working on Ari's final notes, not her starting hypotheses. Psychogenesis is a given with me. I'll do much more, much more than she did. Isn't that what you wanted?"

"Much—more than we expected."

She laughed. "Which way do I take that?"

"That we're very proud of you. I—personally—am very proud of you."

"I'm glad. I'm very glad. I'm very grateful to you, uncle Denys. And to Giraud. I always will be. You see: Ari was such a cold bastard. She learned to be, for very good reasons. But that part didn't have to be exact. I can love my uncles, and I can still be a cold bastard when I have to be, just because I'm very self-protective—because no matter what the advantages I've had, I'm a target and I know it. I won't be threatened. I'll be there first. That's the way I am. I want you to know that."

"You're very impressive, young sera."

"Thank you. So are my uncles. And you're both dears and I love you. I want you to think about what I want to do—about Giraud; and talk to Giraud, and tell me how he feels about it."

Denys cleared his throat. "I don't think—I don't think he'll turn you down."

Is there identity?

She knew damn well that Denys was asking for himself.

What's it like?

Will—I—remember? That was the really eetee one, which a sane man knew better than to wonder. So she flirted it right past him now; and made him sweat.

"I'll tell you where an interesting study might be, uncle Denys. Getting me and Giraud together someday and letting us compare notes. I have the illusion of memory. I wonder if he will."

Denys had not taken a bite in a half a minute. He sat there a helpless lump.

Shame on you, she thought to herself. That's awful, Ari.

But something in her was quite, quite satisfied.

What in hell's the matter with me?

I'm madder than hell, that's what. Mad that I'm young, mad that I'm dependent, mad that I'm trapped here and Denys is being Denys, and mad that Giraud's timing is so damn lousy, leaving me no way to get that seat. Dammit, I'm not ready for him to die!

Denys' fork rattled, another bite. He was visibly upset.

How can I enjoy doing that? My God. He's an old man. What's gotten into me?

Her own appetite curdled. She poked at the salad, extracting a bit of tomato.

She thought about it that night, listlessly dividing attention between a light sandwich Florian had made her, the evening news, and doing a routine entry on the keyboard—which she preferred to the Scriber when she was listening to something: the fingers were output-only, and what they were out-putting was in a mental buffer somewhere. Pause. Tick-tick-tick. Pause. While the visual memory played out lunch and uncle Denys and the logical function worked on the politics of it. Is there identity? —An eetee kind of question in the first place, never mind that she had eetee feelings about it—she knew how to explain them, in perfectly solid and respectable terms: she was used to deep-study, she could lower her threshold further by wanting to than most people could on E-dose kat, the tapes involved a person identical to her in the identical environment, and the wonder would be if the constant interplay of tape-flash and day-to-day experience of the same halls, the same people, the same situations—did not muddle together in a flux-habituated brain.

Denys understood that, surely, on the logical level.

People surely understood that.

Damn, she was not dealing well with that aspect of it. She dealt with massive movements in the populace. Microfocus failed her.

The average, harried, too-busy-for-deepthink Novgorod worker.

Listen and learn, Ari, sweet: ordinary people will teach you the truest, the most sane things in the world. Thank God for them.

And beware anyone who can turn them all in one direction. That one is not ordinary.

People were aware . . . of Reseune's power, of the power her predecessor had wielded.

IN PRINCIPIO was a phenomenon, Ariane Emory's basic theories and methodologies and the early character of Reseune, set almost within the most educated laymen's grasp, so that there was, in the public mind, at least the glimmering of what no demagogue could have made clear before that book aroused such strange, such universal interest in the popular market.

It had spawned eetee-fringe thinkers of its own, a whole new and troublesome breed who took Emory for their bible and practiced experimental so-called Integrations on each other, in the idea it would expand their consciousness, whatever that was. There were already three cases down in the Wards, Novgorod CITs who had all drug-tripped their way to out-there on massive overdoses, run profound interventions on each other and now outraged staid old Gustav Morley by critiquing his methodology. A handful of admirers had outraged Reseune Security, too, by trying to leave the lounge down at the RESEUNEAIR terminal and hike up toward the House, proclaiming that they had come to see Ariane Emory—with the result that Reseune was urgently considering building a new terminal for commercial flights, far down from the old one where, in the old days, Family and ordinary through travelers using RESEUNEAIR had once mingled with casual indifference. A handful of would-be disciples had turned up over in Moreyville looking for a boat, until wary locals, thank God, had figured out what they were up to and called the police.

My God, what do I do if I meet one of these lunatics? What are they after?

It's a phase. A fad. It'll go. If it weren't this they'd be getting eetee transmissions on their home vids.

Why didn't we see this?

But of course we saw it. Justin saw it. There's always the fringe. Always the cheap answer, the secret Way—to whatever. Novgorod's in chaos, Paxers threatening people, wages aren't rising to meet spot shortages—

Danger signs. People yearning after answers. Seeking shortcuts.

Seeking them in the work of a murdered Special—

In the person of her replicate, as the Nyes fade, as the unstable period after that assassination births more instabilities, elections upon elections, bombings, shortages, and the Child—the Child verges on womanhood and competency in her own right, announcing herself with the recovery of Ari senior's legendary lost notes—

Damn well what I expected Science to understand—

But Novgorod's understanding it at a completely different level . . .

The children of azi's children—the constituency of Reseune: Ari's own creation, no theory in a Sociology computer. It's there. It's ready.

And Giraud, damn him, can't hold on to that seat long enough for me.

"Vid off," she said, and leaned back and shut her eyes, feeling that general pricklishness that meant her cycle was right on schedule.

Tomorrow I should work in, stay away from people.

I hurt Denys today. I Had him, I didn't need to take that twist. Why in hell did I do that?

What am I mad about?

Adrenaline high, that's what's going on. Not mentioning the rest of the monthly endocrine cocktail.

Damn, that was an underhanded shot I took. Denys didn't deserve that.

I know what Ari came to. Her temper, her damnable temper—the anger she was always afraid to let out—

Frustration with the irrational—with a universe moving too slow for her mind—