Regenesis

Hell, that was dangerous. It was sweeping, it had no exceptions, it was potentially troublesome, and the first Ari had dared embed that in the tape, high and wide, which was the way she worked. Half a million Novgoroders kept voting against terraforming, and, azi‑originated as they were, and doggedly devoted to work for validation–they had deep suspicions about CIT‑descended Centrists and about proposals for terraforming, and were increasingly inclined in the last ten years to favor red‑brown architecture, one might note–the color of Cyteen’s outback.

Was that significant?

Was that going to produce a problem integrating into Union ethic as a whole–where her predecessor had done other interesting tweaks in local mindsets?

“Sera?” Catlin asked, and she blinked. That was how she was lately. That was the territory where her own thoughts wandered, and the choice of protective and service staff–essential to her safety–became just part of the overload.

“I think it’s likely very fine what you’ve done.” She brought herself to short‑focus on it, and try to integrate it into her concept of her household, and how it was all going to work, and Catlin was right to persist in getting an answer out of her. You couldn’t make mistakes with azi. You couldn’t just Contract them and throw them away.

And it was scary, thinking of all the changes racketing around her.

She had two people in all the world–Florian and Catlin–that she trusted to be competent and devoted to her–an array of people like Sam and Ya

They reported to her. They made choices–in this case, they’d made one that affected the household around her.

And more security. Her life, certainly–maybe Union’s survival–depended on her bodyguards’ judgement.

“I have no doubt of you,” she said briskly to Catlin, totally focused for the moment on the here and now, and Catlin’s fair demand for her to back them or not. “Do what you see fit to do. Did Justin stay in the Wing today?”

“Working in his office, since a late breakfast, sera. So is Grant. Perfectly cooperative. Jordan called him; Justin left the office and went to breakfast. There was, however, no contact between them beyond that. Justin and his companion spoke only to the waiters at the restaurant and to each other. And he of course communicated with me. Jordan staved in his new office with Paul and rearranged things. He found two bugs. It wasn’t all.”

Ari gave a perfunctory laugh, not whole‑hearted, more wistful. “It would be so much nicer if Jordan weren’t an enemy. Does Justin like his life, I wonder? Is he mad at me, do you think?”

“Grant is content,” Catlin said. The azi, she could judge quite well. The born‑man, she didn’t attempt.

And that was, of course, a correct answer.

“I wish I could turn things around with Jordan,” she said. “I wish I could figure how to Work him. But he’s stubborn. And he knows all the tricks.” She gave a sigh and got up from the console. Paused, then, looking directly at Catlin, a second time sharply focused on the present, and on Catlin’s and Florian’s problems. “Sending Jordan back to Planys wouldn’t be good, would it, if he has a network there? I’d pla

Catlin shook her head. “I’m sure I don’t know any answer, sera.”

“Unfortunately I don’t, either,” she said, and went to her bedroom, and her private bath, and took a headache remedy before she took another deepstudy pill and went back to her bed, leaving everything to them, going back to what she had to do.

There’d been a garden once in legend, a perfect garden. But there’d been a snake in it. The woman hadn’t known what to do about him. And every problem of humankind had started from that. The snake had done a Working, about knowledge, and pride, and the woman had gone off her path and taken all her descendants with her.

She had her own snake under close watch. And she couldn’t let concern about Jordan disrupt her concentration, not when things were starting to gel, not when her essential job for the next few months was absorbing the sum of several sciences, dosing down with kat so often she could almost go deep‑state the way Catlin or Florian could learn, just by thinking hard, and become only the thing she was absorbing, without objection, without question, just wide open to unquestioned knowledge.

You had to trust the tapes, you had to really trust them to dose down that far, or to go that open. You had no resistence when you did that. You had no way to say no. You had no extraneous thoughts. You just recorded, embedded the knowledge as fast as possible, burning it into the brain’s pathways, strong, strong, strongpathways.

There was only one source of tapes she’d trust like that: the first Ari’s tapes, stored in Base One, tapes recording Ari I’s thoughts, her opinions on technical questions, her data, her projects, her working life.

If there was any personal prejudice embedded in those records, any Working her predecessor had designed for her beyond the obvious, it was going into her head, too.

If she’d had the choice, if she’d had the leisure, if the world hadn’t been as high‑pressure as it was, and if the legislature wasn’t boiling with important decisions Ya

But in Denys Nye’s fall, Union had gone quietly into crisis, and civilization could make some serious missteps while she lazed her way through, learning at an ordinary pace.

So she took the dose she did, on her off days, and gave up critiquing her predecessor. She wasn’t giving up her conscious mind in the long run–she banked on that. She was strong‑willed, she was psychologically knowledgeable, she knew the tricks a person used in Working another, and she had a good memory for where and when she’d learned something, right down to the session. If she ran up against an ethical problem, she’d do her own thinking–eventually. She had tags on all of it.

Was it her own thinking, for instance, that had let her matter‑of‑factly consider Catlin’s matter‑of‑fact offer simply to kill Jordan Warrick? She might have been shocked a few months ago. But maybe not. Denys had been trying to kill her. Ultimately they’d killed him. That was a lesson life had given her.

Was it her own thinking, still, that said doing away with Jordan might still be the better, safer answer, that said there might be a way to do the deed quietly, and that Justin might not stay too long in mourning if she did it very cleverly?

She said no. Shesaid no. That was the one mentality in the transaction she could entirely identify. That was her, saying no, and not clearly knowing whether it was the first Ari’s pragmatic sense or her own soft‑hearted inexperience behind that answer.

It was scary. Two days ago she’d taken Poo‑thing out of his drawer and set him on the dresser, so she could see him from this bed. She’d been too old for him. Now she was old enough to want contact with childhood years he represented. Poor’ battered bear. He’d been through a lot. Denys, in the main. But never discount her predecessor’s intentions, battering her mind into a pattern she was supposed to follow for all her life.