Cyteen

And for a very little he would have gotten up and left, then, fast, because from moment to moment he knew he could bring trouble down on Justin by coming here. He was not sure that Ya

He got up and made a little bow. "Thank you, Marge." And walked into the i

Azi-like. Justin said Ya

Ya

"A mistake."

"You're not going to let him have anything but the first-draft work, are you? And where does that leave him after twenty years? Nowhere. With no more than he had before."

"Training. Which he badly needs. Which you should know. Do we have to discuss your partner? You know his problems. I don't have to haul them out for you."

"Tell me what you think they are."

Ya

"My own, ser." He was reacting, dammit. His palms were sweating. He hated that. The trick was to make the CIT calm down instead. "I'm scared of you. I don't want to do this. But Justin won't talk to you, at least he won't tell you the truth."

"Why not?"

The man hadno quiet-mode. "Because, ser, —" Grant took a breath and tried not to pay attention to what was going on in his gut. "You're the only teacher he has. If you discard him, there's no one else good enough to teach him. You're like his Super. He has to rely on you and you're abusing him. That's very hard for me to watch."

"We're not talking azi psych, Grant. You don'tunderstand what's going on, not on an operational level, and you're on dangerous personal ground—it's your own mindset I'm talking about. Don't identify. You know better. If you don't, —"

"Yes, ser, you can recommend I take tape. I know what you can do. But I want you to listen to me. Listen!I don't know what land of man you are. But I've seen what you've done. I think you may be trying to help Justin. In some ways I think it has helped. But he can't go on working the way he is."

Ya

He had thought down till then that Ya

"Ser. Please. Justin's not Jordan. He doesn't work like Jordan. But if you give him a chance he is working. Listen to me. Please. You don't agree with him, but he's learning from you. You know that an azi designer has an edge in Applications. I'm an Alpha. I can take a design and internalize it and tell a hell of a lot about it. I've worked with him on his own designs, and I can tell you—I can tell you I believe in what he's trying to do."

"God, that's all I need."

"Ser, I know what his designs feellike, in a way no CIT can. I have the logic system."

"I'm not talking about his ability. He's fixed his rat-on-a-treadmill problems. He's got that covered. I'm talking about what happens when his sets integrate into CIT psych. Second and third and fourth generation. We don't want a work-crazy population. We don't want gray little people that go crazy when they're not on the assembly line. We don't want a suicide rate through the overhead when there's job failure or a dip in the economy. We're talking CIT psych, and that's exactly the field he's weakest in and exactly what I think he ought to go study for ten or twenty years before he does some real harm. You know what it feelslike. Let me tell you I know something about CIT psych from the inside, plus sixty years in this field, and I trust a junior designer can appreciate that fact."

"I respect that, ser. I earnestly assure you. So does he. But his designs put—put joyinto a psychset. Not just efficiency. The designs you say will cause trouble are their own reward tape. Isn't it true, ser, that when an azi has a CIT child, and he teaches that child as a CIT, he teaches interpretivelywhat he understands out of his pyschset. And an azi with one of Justin's small routines somewhere in his sets, even if he was never as lucky as I am, to be socialized as I am, to be Alpha and have one lifelong partner, would get so much sense of purpose out of that, so much sense of purpose, he would think about his job and get better at it. And have pride in that, ser. Maybe there are still problems in it. But it's the emotional level he reaches. It's the key to the logic sets themselves. It's a self-programming interaction. That's what no one is taking into account."

"Which create a whole complex of basic structural problems in synthetic psychsets. Let's talk theory here. You're a competent designer. Let's be real blunt. They tried this eighty years ago."

"I'm familiar with that."

"And they hung a few embellishments onto the psychsets and they ended up with neuroses. Obsessive behaviors."

"You say yourself he's avoided that."

"And it's self-programming,do you hear yourself talking?"

"Worm," Grant said. "But a benign one."

"That's just about where that kind of theory belongs. Worm. God! If it is self-programming, you havecreated a worm of sorts, and you're playing with people's lives. If it isn't, you've got a delayed-action problem that's going to crop up in the second or third generation. Another kind of worm, if you want to put it that way. Hell if I want to give research time to it. I've got a budget. You two are on my departmental budget and you're a hell of an expense with no damned return that justifies it."

"We have justified it this last year."

"Which is killing Warrick. Isn't that your complaint? He can't go on outputting at that level. He can't take it. Psychologically he can't take it. So what are you going to do? Carry it by yourself, while Justin lives in the clouds somewhere designing sets that won't work, that I'm damned well not going to let him install in some poor sod of a Tester. No!"