Regenesis

She tagged certain things to her just‑finished voice recording, then issued another command to autocheck and report on bugs and mandatory halts, a caution, before locking that little bit–and everything ever to be chained to it–firmly into Base One’s files.

That was how she wrote program for her successor…cautiously. She had put her half‑finished creation under a brand new heading, whimsically, as ariagain. It was almost ready to go permanent. Electrons ported themselves where they needed to go and changed what needed changing, creating a new, self‑defending thread…but only in that folder.

It ran and reported clean.

Final button‑push. She handed it to Base One for System trial. More electrons checked it through and did whatever Base One did to protect its own programming. She didn’t know. She just knew how to make it work. Someday she’d learn what the first Ari had known about System–but someday wasn’t this day. She just wanted momentary distraction from Ya

And the little file was only one of a set of files, all linked, all for some day when she would be dead–cheerful thought, but she had to plan for it.

She pla

On the vid screen at her elbow, a thunderstorm built and broke above the sprawling establishment that was Reseune, thunder that vibrated through the building around her. The tall precip towers that rimmed the cliffs above the river had talked to the weathermakers in orbit, and between them they’d loosed a lair‑sized storm, taking the potential that was up there and making the spate of rain happen now rather than later, when the scheduled flight was due.

Just a small convenience. The weathermakers did nothing in this instance but hurry things a few hours and make sure that Ya

Reseune was tiny on the surface of the world that was Cyteen–a white dot from the perspective of Cyteen Station, seat of the Union Senate, which dealt with the wide universe. She’d seen her world–well, half of it–well, at least the mid‑continental Novaya Volga valley, which was the highway down to Novgorod, to Swigert Bay, and the wide ocean.

Mostly the world outside the human zones was desert. The native life saw to that.

Excepting woolwood forests, which loosed deadly strands human lungs never wanted to meet.

Excepting the mud flats and ocean beaches near human habitation, which frothed with an unwholesome stew of dieoff–you really didn’t want to smell it.

Terran stuff had early on gotten into the oceans, a bright idea that the modern generation was working to remediate. Purer Reseune water flowed down to the oceans on this continent these days–gone were the days when raw sewage had run down the river, deliberately loosed into Swigert Bay and outward, killing native life, breeding wildly, and creating that lovely yellow dieoff froth on the beaches.

In the early days, the driving colonial notion of how to manage Cyteen had been changing air and land, ridding the world of native species, creating a new Earth for humankind. Then they’d found that the native life–or part of it–could prolong a human life for decades. Now, the plan was carefully managed enclaves, and in a small program–too small a program, in Ari’s view–PlanysLabs and ReseuneLabs alike tried to save what they’d begun too hastily to destroy.

The first Ari had had a lot to do with that change of purpose…and the growth of the rejuv industry. Through that, and control of the azi system, she’d built the economic power of Reseune, and, using its dominance in the Bureau of Science, gained immense political power.

Ya

Sheobjected. And she was pissed as hell.

Ya

The remediation budget was dead until the next session, and meanwhile how were they going to keep the team of scientists on that project doing something creative? Reseune was going to have to fund their salaries solo, or have them break apart and go onto other projects, momentum lost, knowledge scattered.

Session was over. Ya

Nothing argumentative, she decided. A nice, quiet welcome home. Nothing to let on how much she knew about the secret meetings. If Ya

“Staff memo,” she shot out, via house minder. “Ya

That order flew to staff, and, give or take the emotional fragility of the staff cook, she dismissed di

BOOK ONE Section 1 Chapter viii

APRIL 25, 2424

1652H

Ya

Florian got the message in the apartment’s security station at the same moment Catlin did, at the console next to him, and they exchanged hardly more than a flicker of the eyes before Florian turned to make the supper arrangements. He keyed. A message flew to Ya

None. Unless Ya

He had one now, and Ya

Florian fired off a done, advised their own skittish kitchen of formal di

The two of them, Ari’s personal bodyguard, were sera’s absolute top‑level staff. Second in rank were Marco and Wes, who ran night shift, and protected the household any time he and Catlin were both off premises–they were older, much older, and ca

Then there was Gia