Regenesis

“Pig.” She envisioned the ones that sniffed native life that got onto the grounds.

Sam’s eyes danced. They were brown, unpretentious as the rest of him. He so loved knowing something technical that she didn’t. “A machine‑pig. A cleaner bot. Same as they use for regular water‑systems, standard piece of equipment, actually. That’s what they call it. It ought to work.”

“Pig.” She liked that word. It conjured the working pigs that patrolled the grounds and kept them safe. “Do it, if you think it’ll work. I like your river, Sam. I love it!”

“It just came to me when I was walking through here. We can have a pump at the top of the loop, right where the waterfall is, keep the water really moving.”

“Oh, don’t tell me everything! I just want to be astonished when I see it!”

They toured the downstairs bathroom, a modern installation that played a little off the waterfall concept, with sealed stone, but the fixtures were all modern. And there was a second scissor‑lift to take them up to the second floor–a scary little step across vacant space, and onto solid foamcrete.

At one end of that hall, beside the as yet rail‑less balcony, was Florian and Catlin’s suite, which was going to have a gym, and a workshop, and a library of its own. Other staff quarters would be right below it.

“Much more convenient,” was Florian’s only comment. But their eyes were bright. They were happy and easy with Sam. They always had been.

And then her room, her huge bedroom, with a cozy nook for a bed, and a living‑sky ceiling, and a glassed‑in area for the divider from her office, where her terrarium would be, and her wardrobe, and herbath, which had an in‑floor tub, and a mister, and its own little salon, plus a little exercise room of her own…it was everything, all in one. It was all her imagination wrapped up in a design of white plaster at the moment, and she went out onto the unrailed balcony–Florian and Catlin were there in a heartbeat–but not too far toward the edge, just looking down at all of the living and dining area below.

She might have to take over Reseune early. She might not have the years she wanted.

But she was going to have all her friends, all the people she most wanted. Ya

Maybe it was dangerous to think of directing Reseune and still hoping to be as happy as she wanted to be in this castle in the air; but this place was all light and optimism. It cost. But it was where she could keep safe what her existence threatened, make an iron‑hard core that wouldn’t be vulnerable to threat.

Maybe it was the stupidest, most dangerous thing in the world, to surround herself with the people she was fondest of. The first Ari would have warned her it was, that it was setting herself up to get them killed, or to get herself hurt.

Weak is dead. The first Ari had said that, too.

And the first Ari hadn’t hadanybody she was that fond of, except Florian, except Catlin. The first Ari had told her her own nightmares of guilt…the discovery she’d enjoyed inflicting pain, and yet did it, when she did it, purely for a reason. The first Ari had warned her, as best she rationally knew how, that the path she was on went further and further into solitude, and into the dark.

She’d had hormones shot into her deliberately to make her mad and had moan things done to make her miserable, all because she was supposed to live the first Ari’s life, the way Ari’s life, under her own mother, had been one long lab‑test, intimately recorded, and full of Ari’s mother’s orders.

It was just everything, everycruel thing justified for the Project, until Denys died and the Project stood on her own two feet.

Well, she wason her own two feet, with her own walls rising around her. And she’d always been smart. All it took for her to learn something was for her to get her head in the right mode, and she’d been quick enough to take in what they wanted–once they’d gotten her scattershot mind both mad and focused…because Mad was always part of it. She could still be the genius her geneset could make her, without her being as cold as the first Ari–couldn’t she? Controlling the Mad was the important thing.

It was what this place was for.

She could love people. Now that she knew the whole scheme, she could try to set things right. Ya

Sam would live here in the wing, Sam, the one in their group who’d just been so reliable, so sensible, in their growing up, that if Sam hadn’t existed, they might have all gone at each other’s throats and nothing would ever have worked. Though, when he got through with her wing, Fitzpatrick wanted him up at Strassenberg, which was a big thing for Sam, the height of his childhood ambitions. It would be hard to have him gone that long, but Sam would be her eyes and ears on that site–Sam and the high‑level security team Florian and Catlin would pick out to keep him safe. So Sam’s apartment would be vacant for a while. Maybe a couple of years.

Maddy and Amy, at least, would be living in the wing with her, right from the start.

And when Sam got back from Strassenberg, all the old gang would be here, all of them. She was going to have Justin, too, though he was twice their age. She had a place for him and Grant, a beautiful apartment, where nobody would ever threaten him again.

There’d been her playmate, Valery. In her mind he was still a little, little boy with a mop of dark hair. He was out at Fargone, like Ollie. Early on she’d sent a letter, inviting them all back this summer, all the exiles, when Alpha Wing was finished. It took six months to get an answer, even; but she had started it, on the last day she’d held absolute control of Reseune, before she’d turned the directorship over to Ya

There was Julia, and Gloria Strassen, who never had liked her when she was little, but she could patch that up. She’d been a baby when Denys had sent them away.

She could set some of Denys’ injustices right. And she could use the power she had to protect what her existence jeopardized.

It was scary to think how dead set the first Ari had been against trusting people.

The ones you trust most, the first Ari had said, watch most.

And the ones who’d had their lives torn apart because she was born? They were dangerous because they had a real reason to be mad at her.

But she could try to fix it.

And the first Ari hadn’t lived in a prison, not half so much as she did. The first Ari had been absolutely free to run around the halls and go where she wanted and do what she wanted. The first Ari hadn’t been afraid of anything. But everybody but Giraud had hated that Ari. She’d begun to realize that, and it was a hard truth to live with.

She was different than that Ari. Some people hated her. But a lot of people loved her. And a lot more people knew they needed her. They’d all protected her so much, so devotedly, they’d made her afraid of people. Most of all, afraid of people.