C. Cherryh - Cyteen

God, what's going on with me?

She tasted blood, realized she had bitten her lip, and unfocused.

She pressed her hands against her forehead, leaning back in the chair, shut her eyes . . . thinking about that tape, Justin's tape, thinking—

God, no. Not when she was fluxing this bad. Not when she could think of it as surrogate. Leave the damn thing in the cabinet, locked up, safe. Let it be.

It was—oh, God! not for entertainment—

Dammit, Ari, get off it!

Watch the damn fish. Watch the fish procreate and breed and spawn and live their very short lives, back and forth, back and forth in the tank beside the desk.

Sex and death. Breeding and devouring their own young if god did not take precautions and intervene with the net. How long can an ecosystem survive, inputting both the biomass of its own dead and its own births, and the artificial sunlight?

If you put them with big fish there won't be any blue fish at all. . . .

Do you know whether a fish sees colors? . . .

Breathing grew more even. Time reached a slower pace. Eventually she could sigh, bring the emotional temperature down, and postpone thinking. She got up and logged off and went to her bedroom, quietly, not to draw Florian and Catlin's notice.

She just wanted bed, that was all. But she sat staring at the dresser-top corner, where Poo-thing rested, well-worn and disreputable. No condemnation there.

She thought about putting him in the drawer. What if she had brought Justin to her room while he was here; and there was poor Poo-thing to laugh at?

That was the whole trouble—that there were no more games, there was no more give-and-take with friends, no more throwing a dart to see if it got one back, and having uncle Denys come back at her, hard-edged wit, a little sting to put her in her place. She tried to get a rise out of him and there was no bounce-back, no humor, nothing but the wary fencing of an old man who was no longer the power—just the threatened.

Floating-in-black-space.

Welcome to the real world. Poo-thing's worn out. Denys is a scared old man. And you're what he's scared of. People won't argue with you: who wants to lose all the time?

I could do any damn thing I want in Reseune. Like take anybody, anything, teach them what I could do—in one day, I could scare hell out of this place, make them understand I'm holding in—

Everybody'd love me then, wouldn't they?

Poo-thing stared, with wide black eyes.

I ought to take you to work, set you on the desk. You're the best conversationalist in Reseune.

Dammit, someone pull a prank on me, someone make me laugh, someone for God's sake answer me.

I can see all the star-stations, all the azi-sets, the whole thing in slow flux, so damned slow, and so dangerous—

Where's the advice, Poo-thing?

Amy, and Maddy and Tommy and Sam. Florian and Catlin. Justin and Grant. Yanni. And Andy down in AG.

It's talking, fool. The whole universe is talking. Listen and be amazed.

Nelly. Maman and Ollie. Denys. Giraud-present and Giraud-soon-to-be.

The static of the suns.

"... Sera?"

She drew a long breath.

Short-focused again, black-clad figure in the doorway, tall and blond. Worried.

"I'm fine," she said; and discovered her legs asleep. Foolish predicament, gratefully foolish. She rubbed her aching thighs and levered herself up with absolute gracelessness, leaning on the headboard.

When she could stand she went over to the dresser, picked up Poo-thing and put him in the drawer.

Catlin looked at her strangely for that too. But she doubted Catlin had ever understood Poo-thing in the first place.

Punch and sugary cookies. Ari nipped one off the table herself, ignoring the kitchen's more elaborate confections, savored the plain flavor, and took a drink of the green punch which she preferred, thank you, from the nonalcoholic bowl.

A little girl slipped up through the crowd of Olders and snatched a handful; and a second. Fast escape. That was Ingrid Kennart, aged six. Ari chuckled to herself, on a fleeting memory. And frankly could not recall for a second whether it was a flash off some Archive tape or out of her own past.

New Year's, God, of course it had been a New Year's. The music changed, live this year—a handful of the techs had a band, not bad, either. But the glitter was the same. And maman and Ollie—

She caught a flash of silver jewelry out of the corner of her eye and for a second saw a ghost—but it was only Connie Morley, who was tall and thin and wore her dark hair upswept and elegant—

She had a second of triste, no reason, just looked away across the floor where Olders were sitting—Denys: Giraud was in Novgorod this season. Petros Ivanov. Dr. Edwards. He could, she swore, never be John to her, no matter how old she got. And old Windy Peterson and his daughter, out dancing, Peterson trying to learn the new step.

Maddy Strassen was beautiful, really beautiful in silver-blue satin—no shortage of partners for her or 'Stasi, her faithful shadow. And Amy Carnath—Amy was out on the floor with a very correct, very confused-looking young azi who was, however, doing quite well with the step—blond, crewcut, and terribly handsome: Security, stiff as they came when Amy had gotten her hands on him, but loosening up a bit, to the amusement of all of them and the evident disquiet of Amy's mother. The lad was Alpha, and social as far as Green Barracks went—yes, sera! with a real snap in the voice. Quentin, his name was: Quentin AQ-8, who just might have ended up being Contracted to House Security or RESEUNESPACE, or outside, if any of a small handful of qualified agencies had wanted to pay the million and a quarter for his Contract, for an azi who had to be Supered directly from Reseune, and whose reflexes were dangerously fast. Quentin AQ would have found himself in someone's employment in another year.

Quentin was, Florian and Catlin reported, a very happy, if very overanxious young man. And Amy was—

–in love, probably described it. At least it was a very healthy dose of infatuation, which made Amy Carnath insist Quentin was her partner, Quentin was going out onto the floor, fashions and customs changed, and people were forgetting why the old rules existed with the earliest azi: it had gotten to have completely different reasons, and it was going to stop. The youngers did it at their parties; the Olders could just accept it, so there: thus Amy Carnath.

Florian, Ari had said then, so Amy and Quentin were not out there alone.

And after a while there were a few others.

But mostly Florian and Catlin shadowed her very closely, and Florian refused 'Stasi with an earnest: I'm terribly sorry. I'm on duty.

That was the way the world changed. In the House, Florian and Catlin were shadowing her with the attention they had used in Novgorod.

No relaxing. No let-down.

The Novgorod authorities were scared out of their minds about the New Year's crowds and the chance of an incident.

Hell of a thing. The Paxers were not Ari's design, she was more and more convinced. A cultural inheritance, an ugly little side-trip in the independence-prioritied mindsets that had founded Union. The grandsons and granddaughters of rebel scientists and engineers—blew up kids in subway stations, and wanted to run the government.

They talked about potential Worms in Justin's designs twenty, thirty generations down. Union had a few after three generations, real serious ones, and she was scared going into a controlled situation like New Year's with Family and staff, with Florian and Catlin to watch with a trained eye for anything Unusual. To have a Novgorod citizen's choice—kilometers of walking in ped-tunnels or twice daily percentaging the headlines and the mood of politics to decide whether to risk a ten-minute subway ride—not mentioning the chance of some ordinary z-case putting the push on you for your keycard– hell of a way to live. But Novgorod citizens hated the idea of a master-system for keycards: a danger to their freedom, they argued.