Regenesis

“Oh, now we run for it. Touched a sore spot, have I?”

“Maybe,” Justin said. “But I’m not staying here to have you twist the knife.” He got a breath, and one clear thought. “I want to go on working with you. If you want it otherwise, you can have that, but don’t answer me tonight.”

“Tell me this,” Jordan said. “How are the flashbacks?”

He’d been plagued by them for years. Flashes of a couch, elder Ari, the taste of orange and vodka. The smell of it. Not of late. And he flashed on the answer, the thing Jordan was really asking. “Not germane here, Dad.”

“They’re better, aren’t they? Not as many as before you had a session with the younger version. Was there sex?”

“Nothing nearly so entertainingas the first time,” he shot back, referencing the fact Jordan had seen the first tape, and he knew he shouldn’t have said that. It was the vodka. Which hadn’t been a good idea. He felt an oncoming wave of heat. “Grant, come on. It’s not friendly in here. I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry for the whole damned thing.”

“They’re spying on us, you know. This whole conversation will go to her.”

“More likely it’ll go to Ya

“She says.”

“She doesn’t have to lie. And you’ve spread enough of my business out for the monitors to see, at whatever level. I’ve had enough of this argument, Dad. I was glad to see you home. I knew there’d be problems…”

“Meaning I wouldn’t fall in line with the compacts you’ve made.”

“Meaning everything, Dad, meaning just about everything.” He had the impulse to say. Meaning you’re frustrated about that license, meaning you’re mad about lost time, mad about the current administration, mad that you’re still under house arrest. Mad about your whole life. But the vodka hadn’t that thorough a grip on him that he should let that fly. He just said. “I love you. Go to bed and sleep it off. Maybe they’ll arrest me in the morning because I was stupid enough to let this carry on this far. Maybe not. Things are generally better now.”

“Oh, the martyr, my suffering son.”

“Have it any way you like. Security is what security is and they’ll do any damn thing they like. I’m used to it and they know I’ll tell them the plain truth. Hear that, Ya

“High time we had it.”

“Sure,” he said, “if you think so. I didn’t have an inkling you were getting that mad about my repeated question. So think about it. And calm down. Come on, Grant.”

This time they did make it out the door. He’d bet there was one more glass of vodka poured tonight, if not drunk, before Paul got Jordan into bed. He deeply regretted the one he’d had.

“I’m going to be hung over,” he said to Grant.

“Glass of orange, another of water, water every hour, and two aspirin,” Grant said. “Sovereign. You were making perfect sense, by the way.”

“Sorry. Very sorry.”

“You couldn’t stop him.”

No security had shown up. They took the open air route across the quadrangle to Wing One, and through the doors, and security checked them through and never said a word.

That much had changed since Ya

BOOK ONE Section 1 Chapter vi

APRIL 22, 2424

2351H

Ya

Ya

She ran through all sorts of records on things Ya

She incidentally found that it was the first Ari who had given Ya

And then she looked just a little too deep: Ya

Then Ya

That hurt. That really hurt, and it really bothered her–she didn’t cry about it, but the information just bored a sore spot in her heart, until finally she psyched herself and said Maman had changed her mind eventually, that it didn’t matter how it had started, she’d finally Gotten her Maman, all unexpected, because Maman had turned out to love her. She wouldn’t believe that wasn’t so.

Well, it was what you got for getting into people’s records and eavesdropping: you caught people saying things you never wanted to hear, and this one, hurtful as it was, taught her that in a major way.

But what she found went on teaching her. She couldn’t leave it where she’d left it. She couldn’t stop looking at it.

She got into Maman’s records, too. She’d never gotten a letter from Maman after Maman had gone away to space, and there were no letters from Maman hidden in the record, but she did find her Maman’s report on her when she was five. She’s a handful. But site’s bright. God, she’s bright, She scares me.

Ari Senior had also said–this turned up in Maman’s letters–Let Strassen choose the second surrogate. And Maman was going to pick Ya

That was worth a Mad, too: Giraud had just overridden Maman, being head of Security. He’d sent Maman to space, then ignored her choice, and ended up choosing Denys, as being a relative closer to her as well as actually being a Special himself, without the Senate declaration that said so. Which Ya

No question where Giraud’s reasoning lay, however. Giraud hadn’t wanted any power edging over into Ya

And of possible candidates to take her on, Giraud wasn’t of the disposition. But Denys had agreed to it. Denys had probably just hated it; but Denys would have done it to get power.

Possibly, too, it was because Denys couldn’t stand not knowing how she was developing. Denys had liked puzzles. And she’d been a puzzle to him–at close range. And by the time he was in it, he’d realized that an azi nurse wasn’t going to keep her from disrupting his life, nor was domestic staff, nor even his own bodyguard.