Cyteen

"Son, you'd better wake up to it, Ari was after one thing with you, and you damn well know what that was. Don't go off on some damn mental tangent and fuck yourself up six, eight years later because you're so damn sure you were better at seventeen than you are now. That's crap. Recognize it. You got fucked up in several senses, it's natural you want to try to pick up where you left off, but you'd do yourself a better service if you picked up where you are,son, and realized that it wasn't your ideasthat made Ari invite you into her office and spend all that time with you. All right?"

For a moment he could hardly get his breath. They were private, in Ya

"Fuck you,Ya

"I'm trying to help you."

"Is that your best? Is that the way you deal with your patients? God help them."

He was close to breaking down. He clenched his jaw and held it. You know I've been in therapy, you unprincipled bastard. Get off me.

And Ya

He sat there in silence a while. Bleeding, like Ya

"Have you looked around you? Have you seen the kind of schedules we've been ru

"I'm saying it's solved here. I'm saying I've got it. Youcritique my designs, then. You want to tell me I'm crazy, showme where I'm wrong."

"Dammit,I won't help you wallow in the very thing that's the matter with you!"

"I'm Jordan's son. I was good enough—"

"Was, was, was,dammit! Stop looking at the past! Six years ago wasn't worth shit, son!"

"Prove it to me. Proveit, Ya

"Go to Peterson!"

"Peterson can't prove anything to me. I'm better than he is. I started that way."

"You arrogant little bastard! You're notbetter than Peterson. Peterson pays his way around here. If you weren't Jordan's son, you'd be living in a one-bedroom efficiency with an allotment your work entitles you to, which won't pay for your fancy tastes, son. Grant and you together don't earn that place you're living in."

"What does my father's work pay for, and what does he get? Send my designs to him. He'd find the time."

Ya

"Whatever you want. Everyone else does. Fire me. You're going to get these designs about once a week. And if you don't answer me I'll ask. Once a week. I want my education, Ya

"Dammit—"

He stared at Ya

"I haven't got the time!"

"No one does. So make it. It doesn't take much, if you can see so clearly where I'm wrong. Two sentences are all I need. Tell me where it'll impact the next generation."

"Get the hell out of here."

"Am I fired?"

"No," Ya

So he did two tapes. One for Ya

But he kept turning in the study designs for Ya

"You're a fool," was the best he got. And sometimes a paragraph on paper, outlining repercussions. Suggesting a study-tape out of Sociology.

He cherished those notes. He got the tapes. He ran them. He found mistakes. He built around them.

"You're still a fool," Ya