Regenesis

“You have to trust me.”

And nowwas he going to bring up those secret meetings? “Oh. I do, but I’d really like to know, and you know I’d like to know.”

“Well, I agreed with Corain on a compromise. Fargone’s hurting for jobs. His constituency atFargone is extremely important to him getting re‑elected if he’s challenged for the seat. So we put in a new lab wing. We get Centrist Party support on a rider tacked onto that bill, becauseit helps Corain’s constituency at Fargone, and, here’s the core of it: the Eversnow project gets underway.”

“Eversnow!” That hadn’t been part of the report.

“Eversnow.”

“It’s a dead project.”

“Not dead. We get a station at Eversnow, a full blown research station onEversnow, and a new lab at Fargone that’s very quietly aimed at terra‑forming, exactly as originally pla

Her pulse rate was getting up. Her blink rate would be. And he’d read that in a second. “So we’re suddenly friends with the Centrists and we’re terraforming Eversnow, of all things. And producing alpha azi at Fargone.”

“A few.”

“We havea lab at Fargone. The Rubin Project was at Fargone.”

“Mostly terraforming research…a clearing house for what we learn on Eversnow. Ultimately–ultimately azi, yes.”

“Alpha production has never left the planet!”

“Our perso

The Eversnow deal had been dead as long as the first Ari. And Reseune had allowed a prerogative of exclusivity to lapse, enabling labs that high‑end, that capable, to run out at Fargone–with the possibility of somebody outside Reseune staff laying hands on the manuals? Bad enough they’d licensed out military thetas to BucherLabs and had thoseproblems to mop up for the next forty years of the first Ari’s career–they’d never done anything like this.

And terraforming? That was a dead issue.

“None of this is in the news,” she said calmly.

“None of it is going to be in the news. It’s under deep cover, disguised as that azi lab.”

“But, damn it, Ya

“It’ll wait a year.”

“While we create a terraforming lab out at Fargone?”

“Yes,” Ya

“The first Ari isn’t alive now. I am. And I have an opinion. You didn’t ask me. Where are my budget items, Ya

“Next year.”

“We have two labs full of scientists we’re going to have to fund till next year and I’m making a heavy hit on budget as it is!”

“I know that.”

“So you could have talked about this. Eversnow, for God’s sake! And an alpha lab! What else?”

“We manage the lab, top to bottom. Our perso

Ya

That thought settled her heart rate a tick or two. She didn’t want that, yet.

And she thought about what he was doing. He’d been meeting with Corain, of all people. Corain didn’t meet with Science.

“So.” she said, “and Citizens voted for it.”

“Jobs,” Ya

“They know, and they voted for this.”

“Everybody but Internal Affairs and State. Two nays. I’m sure you know.”

She knew. Corain had gone along. Jobs, Ya

And then peace had happened, and the project had stalled–people elsewhere hadn’t thought terraforming anything was a good idea; and then the first Ari had died, and it had stayed a dead issue for twenty years.

But the Eversnow collapse hadhad an effect, politically. Fargone Station’s independence tilt, voting sometimes with the Expansionists, sometimes with the Centrists, and bargaining hard for its vote, had been a factor in the Defense election that had put Vladislaw Khalid in–her least favorite Bureau head in her own lifetime.

And that unrest, of people feeling trapped and dead‑ended, was still out there at Fargone and Pan‑Paris, in the electorate of Citizens, in Defense. It spread even through the Science Bureau, out there: the Expansionists had just squeaked through its traditional majority in the last election Science had had.

That was dangerous, even if it was just one star‑station.

She had an inkling all of a sudden where Ya

And Corain was going along with it? She felt her week‑long Mad cool off just a degree. Defense still had a strong interest in Eversnow. It was going to be a problem to pry their fingers off it, and Ya

“We set up an alpha‑capable lab at Fargone,” Ya

The damned thing was an appalling daisy chain of favors exchanged. She suddenly had a much wider window into the content of the mysterious meetings, and here was Ya

In Ya