Regenesis

“Jordan,” Justin said, as Paul looked dismayed.

“I said get me another. There are things I need to say. I didn’t know my geneset could produce a fool.”

Paul got up and shot more vodka into the glass. Twice that, Justin thought, if that’s what it takes…bundle him off to bed and let’s end this evening somewhere short of disaster.

“I hate to point out,” Justin said as Jordan took the glass, “that’s five.”

“Have you been alone with her?”

“Are you asking if I’ve had sex with her?” Justin asked.

“I’m asking if you’ve been alone with her. Grant, has he ever been alone with her?”

“Ser, I’d rather not enter this conversation.”

Grant, damn the situation, wasn’t able to lie, not to a man who’d been his Supervisor as well as his CIT father. In some situations he was thorough azi, and too vulnerable for this fight.

“I’m taking Grant home,” Justin said, and set the glass on the side table. “ ’Til you’re sober. Grant, don’t answer him. You don’t have to answer him.”

“Oh, I’ll imagine the answer, then. Stay put, Grant! I’m not through.”

“ Iam.”

“You sit where you are and you listen to me. I’m seeing things in your work–I’ve been seeing them. I’ve corrected you. You’ve changed things right back–”

“Where it matters.”

“You’ve changed things right back in the same vein as that little item you sent me this afternoon. The same thing you shoved in my face at di

“I was uneasy about the concept, I didn’t get an answer on the others, just a correction with no note. I wasn’t sure why. I was asking your help with a problem, Dad… I’m sorry if it gives you some eetee flashback to your own time…”

“Oh, back to my time, is it? What is my time, can you tell me that, son of mine?”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Pretty clear what people here think. Twenty years out of the current here, twenty years of a real style change in operations here, Ya

“Actually, Jordan, I agreed to it. Clear the family name and all.”

“Oh. Oh, that’s good. I didn’t do it, dammit! Do you need to hear that?”

“I hear you. I just think it’s as well the public–when this goes public–hears it, too. I’d like to see the day–”

“What, the day everything’s sweet again? It won’t come. You want me to work with you? Quit working with her.”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t!”

“Let’s put it this way, Dad. I won’t. I respect you, I respect you tremendously, but you don’t have the right to tell me who I work with. I’m getting something out of this…”

“Oh, it’s clear you’re getting something out of it! And you don’t have the right to take mytheories and hand them on a platter to that little walking memory bank. I had to put up with the last Ari taking my work and putting her name on it and I’m sure as hell not going to see it happen in the second generation.”

“I haven’t given her your work, except as you’ve taught me. After that. Dad, in the way things work in the universe, it becomes mine.”

“The hell it does.”

“It becomes mine. Dad, not because I’m regurgitating it verbatim, but because I’m using mybrain and everybody else’sa input along with yoursto come up with my own ideas.”

“And herinput, it’s very damned clear.”

“Because you didn’t like a two‑line routine I wrote on a cocktail napkin? I gave you a second instance of a similar routine, because my own leap of logic bothered me and I wanted your reaction on it, but do I get a sensible discussion, on this one or the last two weeks? No. First you ignore it–”

“I didn’t ignore it. I corrected it!”

“Twice, without any explanation!”

“I’d think you damned well knew my objection!”

“I’m not reading your mind!”

“So I said something, tonight!”

“In the bar? You didn’t say something in any rational way. You went orbital without a launch, just up there, bang! No preface, no sensible discussion, nothing but a fucking emotional reaction, alcohol‑fueled, and fluxed to the max. You aren’t thinking clearly on this. Dad. If you saw something in my work that triggered a flash of your own–”

“Don’t you go patronizing with me!”

“All right, all right. This is it. We’re going home.”

“Home. Is thatwhat you call it?”

“I live in Wing One! I live there because there was a time, thanks to my trying to find out about yoursituation, that I was apt to be arrested, which was damn near a monthly event in my life, and it was getting serious, about then. I’d have been in lockup. That was my choice.”

“And then things all changed. All right. Level with me. There was a time they wouldn’t trust you. I’m not talking about the little darling. I’m not even talking about Denys. I’m talking about Ya

“Because she told them to. Because Denys Nye is dead, and his apparatus isn’t functioning any more. Because Ya

“ Because she told them to. Because she’d had a chance to work you over, that last time, when Grant was in Planys, and you were here solo, in her reach.”

It was too close to the truth. He didn’t want to lie about it. “She’s a kid. Dad.”

“She’s a monstrosity. And she got her hands on you when Grant wasn’t around. She finished what her predecessor started. Didn’t she?”

“Dad…”

“I’m not hearing you deny it. Is it true. Grant? Did she do that?”

Silence from that quarter. Grant had prior orders, an instruction from his current Supervisor that outranked anything his first Supervisor could order on that topic.

“I draw my conclusion,” Jordan said. “She did. Just you? Or both of you?”

“I have the session tapes,” Justin said, braced for the storm. “And nothing happened. She asked me where I stood on certain matters. I satisfied the questions–that I wasn’t an assassin. That youweren’t. And Grant wasn’t.”

“Let me see the tapes.”

Reasonable request, on one level. But not a good idea. That second thought flashed up, fast and hard: Jordan wasn’t anyfather–Jordan and he twitched off exactly the same impulses: Jordan took a deep breath and he felt as if he had just breathed. Jordan flared off and his own adrenaline surged, mirror‑image. He couldn’t help it. He was a PR, Jordan’s exact replicate, and the resonances were there, every muscle twitch. It was his face, as he’d never be, because he’d started rejuv at thirty‑five and Jordan hadn’t until forty‑five–but it was close enough. Every lift of a brow, every frown, psychologically co

“No,” he said. “No. Those tapes are private.”

“I’ll bet they are.”

“This was a mistake,” Justin said, and this time, in his own moment of temper, reached for the double vodka on the side table and downed it in three gulps, half ice melt, because he was going to need anesthesia to get any sleep tonight. After which he propelled himself to his feet, and Grant got up. “ ’Night, Dad.”