C. Cherryh - Cyteen

At 0745 he left his apartment and took the lift down to the main hall; passed Wing One security, walked to his own office, unlocked the door, turned on the lights, everything as he usually did.

He walked down the corridor where Jane Strassen was already in her office, and nodded a good morning to her. He rounded the corner and took the stairs down to the lab-section at the extreme end of the building.

He used his keycard on the security lock of the white doors and entered a corridor of small offices, all closed. Beyond, the double doors gave onto the dingy Wing One lab, with its smell of alcohol and chill and damp that brought back his early student days in this place. The lights were on. The big cold-room at the left had its vault door standing wide, brighter light coming from that quarter.

He let the outer doors shut and heard voices. Florian walked out from the vault-door of the lab.

Not unusual for a student to be here, not unusual for techs to be in and out of here: Lab One was old, outmoded by Building B's facilities, but it was still sound. Researchers still used it, favoring it over the longer walk back and forth to the huge birthlabs over in B, preferring the old hands-on equipment to the modern, more automated facilities. Ari had been down here a lot lately. She kept a lot of her personal work in the old cold-lab, as convenient a storage for that kind of thing, he had figured, as there was in Wing One.

Rubin project, he thought. Earlier her presence down here had puzzled him, when Ari did not need to do these things herself, when she had excellent techs to do the detail work. It no longer puzzled him.

I'll be wanting to oversee the process myself—just a desire to have hands-on again. Maybe a little vanity. . . .

It was also private, the kind of situation with her that he had spent weeks trying to avoid.

"Sera is expecting you," Florian said.

"Thank you," he said, meticulously ordinary. "Do you know what about?"

"I would hope you do, ser," Florian answered him. Florian's dark eyes said nothing at all as he slid a glance toward the cold-lab door. "You can go in. —Sera, Justin Warrick is here."

"All right," Ari's voice floated out.

Justin walked over to the open door of the long lab where Ari sat on a work-stool, at a counter, working at one of the old-fashioned separators. Damn," she complained without looking up. "I don't trust it. Got to get one out of B. I'm not going to put up with this." She looked up and the hasty lift of her hand startled him as his hand left the vault door. He realized he had moved the door then, and caught it and pushed the massive seal-door back, steadying it in frustration at his own young awkwardness, that rattled him when he most wanted composure.

"Damn thing," Ari muttered. "Jane's damn penny-pinching—you touch it, it swings on you. That's going to get fixed. —How are you this morning?"

"All right."

"Where's Grant?"

His heart was already beating hard. It picked up its beats and he forced it to slow down. "I don't know. I thought he was with you."

"Of course you did. —Grant stole a boat last night. Sabotaged the other one. Security tracked him to Kruger's. What do you know about it?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all."

"Of course not." She turned on the stool. "Your companion planned the whole thing."

"I imagine he did. Grant's very capable." It was going too easily. Ari was capable of much, much more; of spinning it out, instead of going straight to the point. He held himself back from too much relief, as if it were a precipice and the current were carrying him too quickly toward it. Florian was still outside. There were no witnesses to what she said—or what she ordered. There was a lock on the doors out there. And there might well be a recorder running. "I wish he had told me."

Ari made a clicking with her tongue. "You want to see the security reports? You both went out last night. You came in alone."

"I was looking for Grant. He said he was going to borrow a carry-bag from next door. He never came back."

Ari's brows lifted. "Oh, come, now."

"Sorry. That's what I was doing."

"I'm really disappointed in you. I'd expected more invention."

"I've told you everything I know."

"Listen to me, young friend. What you did is theft, you know that? You know what happens if Reseune files charges."

"Yes," he said, as calmly, as full of implication as he could make it. "I really think I do."

"We're not Cyteen."

"I know."

"You're very smug. Why?"

"Because you're not going to file charges."

"Do you want to bet on that?"

He was supposed to react. He smiled at her. He had himself that far under control, not knowing, not at all knowing whether or not Grant was in her hands. "I'm betting on it," he said, and held his voice steady. "You've got me. You haven't got Grant. As long as things go right with me and my father, Grant keeps his mouth shut and we're all just fine."

"That's why you stayed behind."

That had bothered her. The irrational act.

He smiled wider, a thin, carefully held triumph, alone, in her territory. "One of us had to. To assure you we'll keep quiet otherwise."

"Of course. Did Jordan plan this?"

He did react then. He knew that he had. It was an unexpected and offhanded praise.

"No," he said.

"You did." Ari gave a breath of a laugh; and he did not like that, even when all the movements of her body, her rocking back against the back of the lab-stool, her rueful smile, all said that she was surprised.

Ari played her own reactions the way his father did—with all her skill, all the way to the end of a thing.

So must he. He gave a matching, deprecatory shrug.

"It's really very good," Ari said. "But you have to put so much on Grant."

He's dead, he thought, bracing himself for the worst thing she could say. She might lie about that.

"I trust him," he said.

"There's one flaw in your set-up, you know."

"What would that be?"

"Jordan. He's really not going to like this."

"I'll talk to him." His muscles started to shake, the cold of the cryogenics conduits that ran overhead seeming to leach all the warmth from him. He felt all his control crumbling and made a profound effort to regroup. It was a tactic his father had taught him, this alternate application of tension and relief she was using, watching cues like the dilation of his eyes, the little tensions in his muscles, everything fallen into a rhythm like a fencer, up, down, up, down, and then something out of the rhythm the moment he had discovered the rules. He saw it coming. He smiled at her, having gotten command of himself with that thought. "He'll be amused."

He watched a slow grin spread over Ari's face, either his point or a deliberate dropping of the shield for a moment to make him think it was.

"You really have nerve," Ari said. "And you aren't at all cocky, are you? Damn, boy, the edges are ragged, you're not real confident you've got all the pieces in your hands, but I'll give it to you, that's a damned good maneuver. Harder than hell to do twice, though."

"I don't need to leave till my father does."

"Well, now, that is a problem, isn't it? Just how are we going to disengage this little tangle? Have you thought it all the way through? Tell me how it works when it comes time for Jordan to go off-world. I'm interested."

"Maybe you'll make me an offer."

Ari flashed a bright smile. "That's marvelous. You were so quiet. What did you do, try to throw those test scores?"

"You're supposed to be able to figure that out."

"Oh, cheek!" She outright laughed. "You are bright. You've taught me something. At my age, I value that. You're very fond of Grant, to give up your camouflage for him. Very fond of him." She leaned against the counter, one elbow on it, looking soberly up at him. "Let me tell you something, dear. Jordan loves you—very much. Very, very much. It shows in the way you behave. And I must say, he's done a marvelous job with Grant. Children need that kind of upbringing. But there's a dreadful cost to that. We're mortal. We lose people. And we really hurt when they hurt, don't we? —Families are a hell of a liability. What are you going to tell Jordan?"