Regenesis

by C. J. Cherryh

  “What?”

  “The drink. Did Callie do it right?”

  Jordan just looked at her.

  “You surely,” she said, “can’t think I’d pull something as silly as that.”

  “You did on my son.”

  Wide eyes. “What did I do?”

  “You know what your predecessor did.”

  Lowered lashes, a nod to the correction. “I know what she did. I’m sorry for that.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “I don’t like what she did, understand. I don’t like what happened to you, either. Let me tell you the truth. Uncle Denys thought he was going to make me into his own model. But he didn’t. I came out something else, and not liking him much at all, especially for what he did to Justin. And the way you couldn’t work with the first Ari, I can work with Justin. I don’t ever want it otherwise. I just wish you could be part of that arrangement.”

  A sardonic smile. “Is that so?”

  She drew in a breath. “You’re going to see it doesn’t work, aren’t you?”

  “That’s your conclusion? You have us bugged, you have my office bugged, you have our apartment bugged, including the bedroom. And that’s the best guess you can manage? I’d have thought you understood us inside out.”

  “Who’s Dr. Patil to you?”

  Ah. He didn’t control that look, not well at all. She’d got him mad, and she got a reaction.

  “Friend of a friend. Someone I’d like my son to know, outside the cloistered halls of Reseune. Is that a crime?”

  Florian walked into the dining room. That was the arranged cue: Justin was arriving.

  She smiled. “Denys would have thought it was a crime. He was your enemy. He set you up. He blamed you and made your son’s years here—and mine—more difficult than you know. I doubt Justin’s told you the half of it. You should ask him.”

  The front door opened, a hall away.

  “When,” Jordan asked, “am I going to get that chance?”

  “Not over tonight’s dinner, I hope.” She put on her warm smile again. “Let’s make peace, just for the hour. I can’t offer you explanations on everything, but I’d like to see things work themselves out. I’d like to know the things you know about my grandmother. I can’t call the first Ari my mother, really not the way Justin can call you his father. It wasn’t, obviously, that kind of relationship.”

  “Being posthumous, you mean? Have it straight: she had it coming. I didn’t kill her, but I’d like to have.”

  Oh, good shot. Just as Justin and Grant showed up at the dining room door. She smiled at Jordan and laid a hand on his arm.

  “You are everything I expected. Hello there, Justin, Grant. Delighted you could make it. Would you like a drink?”

  “Vodka on ice,” Justin said with a worried glance at Jordan. “H’lo, Dad.”

  “You’re late,” Jordan said.

  “Am I?” It was a question whether Justin would come out with his version of the time he’d been told to arrive; but he was a survivor of the secretive Nye years, and he simply said, “I guess so.”

  “Grant?”

  “The same, thank you, sera,” Grant said. “Ser. Paul.” Paul had come into the room with Catlin. “Good evening.”

  “Good evening,” Jordan said darkly.

  “Why don’t we sit down?” Ari suggested with a wave at the table. There were flowers, and the lit candles. Staff had done their best on very short notice. She took the host’s seat at the end, and let her guests sort things out—Grant and Paul would settle farthest away. There was no endmost seat, just the service cart for the drinks, and that left Justin and Jordan one on a side—Florian and Catlin stayed standing, and Callie, who was being bartender, offered the requested cocktails, and prepared a bottle of wine and another of water, while staff hurried around in the hall beyond—a little unpracticed in formal service, but doing their best.

  “How do you like your office?” Jordan asked Justin.

  “More convenient to the apartment,” Justin answered, stepping neatly around that one.

  “And how are you liking being back in your office?” Ari asked, as if she were completely oblivious to the undercurrent. “It won’t have changed much, will it?”

  “A little barren,” Jordan said. “But I’m sure the walls are well-populated.”

  “Jordan,” Justin said under his breath.

  “I really don’t blame your father for missing you,” Ari said. “But it’s regulations, Jordan. Justin’s on restricted projects. No one’s objecting to his being; there, or you, but it’s the stuff he works with. I don’t know if he felt clear to explain that, but that’s a fact. You could apply for a security clearance.”

  “There’s a waste of time,” Jordan muttered. He was at the bottom of his Collins, nursing the last out of the ice. “Let’s go back to honesty. There’s not going to be a clearance granted. There’s already an investigation going on. —You gave her that card, didn’t you?”

  The last sailed across the table, at Justin, as Callie set the requested vodka down by his hand.

  “It was a little obvious, Dad. I don’t know what else you expected.”

  Ari smiled tightly. “Of course it was. And I’m sure it’s an inconvenience to Dr. Patil, whoever she is. I’m sure you know that.”

  “And I’m sure,” Jordan said, “you know damned well who she is.”

  “I’m learning,” Ari said. “She must have really annoyed you.”

  Jordan rotated his empty glass, frowning at Justin.

  “And why do you assume,” Ari asked, “that you’re not going to get your clearance back? Don’t you want it back? Or is your whole aim to assure you don’t? There could certainly be several reasons for that.”

  “And we aren’t even to the first course yet,” Justin said. “Can we save this for dessert?”

  “It’s not my choice,” Jordan said.

  “Many things are,” Ari said, and smiled, and signaled the servers. “But Justin’s right. Let’s enjoy dinner.”

  “We may not need dessert,” Justin said, as the salad course went down. “Nice.”

  “Let’s love each other for at least three courses,” Ari said, smiling at Jordan. “How is your work going, Jordan? I think you and I are about at the same stage—deepstudy until our eyes cross. I’m trying to get started and you’re trying to span the gap.”

  “It’s not that big a gap,” Jordan said defensively, and had a bite of salad, while service poured the first wine.

  “Of course there’s a lot I have to learn. Justin’s going to cross-check me on my theta sets. Would you like to, just to get back in the game?”

  Jordan frowned, probably looking for a stinger somewhere in that offer. “Might be interesting.”

  Curiosity, curiosity. He couldn’t turn down actual information, and seeing how she worked, compared to her predecessor, was a question. “Delighted,” she said. “I’ll be interested in any criticism.”

  “I’ll imagine you’re quite precocious.”

  “I’ve been told so from the start. I’m really trying to make peace, here. And I really am interested in your input.”

  “I’ll bet you are.”

  “Dad…”

  “Oh, I know she is. She still can learn some things. I’m sure she’s no more omniscient than the first model. She hasn’t gotten as argumentative yet, by half. But that will come, I’m sure.”

  “It might come earlier if she has to deal with too many disagreeable dinner guests.”

  “Oh,” Jordan said, “are we taking sides now?”

  “Neighbors,” Ari said with a smile. “Thank you, Justin. But don’t worry. Good minds make interesting conversation. And I think Jordan is very interesting.”

  They made it through the salad, even into the main course, which was pasta and imported sausage, with marinara and real cheese.

  “Must say the food’s better here than Planys,” Jordan said.

  “I’ll relay the compliment,” Ari said.
“Thank you. —Were you able to get out of the labs there, Jordan? Did you see anything of the countryside at all?”

  “Damn barren,” Jordan said in his conversation-stopping way. “No, we weren’t offered tours. There weren’t even views. One window in the main office, for the secretaries. None for the rest of your favored guests.”

  “There’s no reason for that,” Ari said. “There ought to be views. I don’t know why there weren’t.”

  “Maybe they thought giving us a view of the landscape would guide us when we made a break for it.”

  Across desert where there weren’t even precip stations. Where the waste of the labs and residences had to be carefully processed, every iota of foreign life eradicated, so it wouldn’t destroy the native micro-fauna, and contaminate the other continent. When planes flew between the main continent and Planys, they decontaminated the landing gear and the hulls and sprayed down the inside…because they had a world where, unlike old Earth, unlike Pell, there were two distinct ecologies, two landmasses that hadn’t drifted close enough to mix for eons, where there were two circulating currents either side of a high oceanic ridge, and where the only thing that flew was vegetative, most of which wouldn’t survive in the opposing environment—what floated or swam could get there, but that was all. Massive ankyloderms cruised the subsurface, occasionally making a nuisance of themselves; over here it was the other kind of subsurface creature, the platythere, and both of them turned their feeding-grounds to desert.

  “So you never did see an anklyoderm,” she said, ignoring the barb.

  “Never did,” he said.

  “I’d like to,” she said.

  “They don’t surface as often as the platytheres,” Jordan said. “So I understand. In great detail. The ankyloderm guy there is a complete spacecase. You should have to listen to him on the topic. And we did, interminably. They had a guest lecture program. We were all supposed to get to understand each other. All damn useless.”

  “Who did you associate with?” Ari asked.

  The habitual frown went a shade deeper. “You want other targets for your people to investigate?”

  “Dr. Thieu?”

  “Thieu’s a murderer.”

  “That’s how you got Patil’s card, isn’t it? Is that the friend you referenced?”

  Jordan went as hard as deep ice.

  “They corresponded,” Paul said, out of the quiet.

  “You with Patil?”

  “Thieu with Patil,” Jordan snapped. “And I’m sure security knows it. Why is everyone in such a flap?”

  “Security just hates it when their compartments leak,” Ari said. “Especially where it threatens the biosphere. Especially when it’d be so easy for some lunatic to contaminate, say, the Planys reserve. Nanisms could run riot—if they were tailored for it. The Centrists would get their way completely…no reason, then, to stop their pet project.”

  “Not my field,” Jordan said with a shrug. “Ask Thieu. Nanisms have nothing to do with me.”

  “Except the card.”

  “I thought we were waiting for dessert.”

  “I think we’re ready for dessert,” Ari said, laying her fork down. “Are you?”

  “I think I’ve had enough.”

  “Dad.”

  “Damn it,” Jordan said, banging his fork down and looking straight at Justin. “Pick your side and stay with it.”

  “Politics doesn’t mean a thing to you,” Justin said. “You used to say it was all nonsense. Pick your side, you said, and use it for all the use it can be to you.”

  “Thank you,” Jordan said, “for that reminder of basic principles.”

  “Dessert,” Ari said cheerfully, and waved a signal at service. Florian and Catlin hadn’t moved from where they stood, facing her, a perfect, black-clad and elegant set, Florian the dark one, Catlin the bright, and neither face ever showing an expression. Dessert came through the door between them, a confection of light pastry and egg cream.

  “Looks good,” Grant said, as cheerfully—and doubtless wishing he could get himself away from the argument. Things hadn’t been said, outright. Yet.

  “Coffee, ser?” Callie was back, bearing a silver pot, making the rounds. It was a good, rich coffee, not synthetic, which complimented the egg cream—real egg cream, too. They got the best from the AG unit. Chickens, the one bird allowed onworld, were a definite plus, bred for centuries to be plump, nonseasonal, and flightless.

  “Nice,” Justin said, after a bite.

  “So did that card come from outside,” Ari asked, “or was it printed from transmission?”

  “Transmission, far as I know,” Jordan said. “But I could be wrong. Thieu gave it to me and said contact the woman, give her his regards, old colleagues and all—I told you he’s a dodderer. His rejuv is going. He’s sometimes on, sometimes not.”

  Transmission suggested no physical card had gotten to Planys…or broken quarantine. Hence nothing more sinister had gotten to Planys, either, or had gotten from Planys to the larger continent. It indicated that Jordan had done what he’d done solely as a means of agitating security and his son. She was sure Justin could add that equation. The remaining question was whether the reassuring story was the truth at all.

  “I knew damned well I’d make trouble for Patil if I called her,” Jordan said, after a bite. “Or if I mentioned her name while I was sure we were bugged. So I just handed the card on to my thoughtful son, who created a hell of a lot of trouble.”

  “Bugged and watched, Dad. We always are. For our protection, our legal protection as well as physical.”

  “It wasn’t that way in my time here. But you’ve gotten used to it. Adapted, clearly. Nice dessert.”

  “Thank you,” Ari said, taking another, delicate spoonful. So they at least had a story to explain the card, true or half-true or no relation to the truth at all—and truthers were running. They had the card, physically, which had either come, illegally, from Planys, or which had gone, illegally, from Novgorod to Planys before coming to them. Contaminants of the sort Patil worked on could use a small, small vector. Protecting the eco-sphere was, very unfortunately for the ecosphere, still a political debate. Centrists might not like the idea of wholesale adaptation of the human psyche to other worlds, but they still wanted to obliterate all native life on this one, and being human, wouldn’t ultimately stop with one world, no matter what they argued, if they turned out to need something just out of current reach. It wasn’t just a debating difference. It was a profoundly different future in that debate.

  And Jordan had said to Justin, once in the long ago, choose the side that’s useful…while the first Ari had said, in her tapes—watch out for Jordan.

  “So you don’t take any side but your own,” Ari said to Jordan. “When everybody else has a theory about what humanity should be, you’re completely without opinion.”

  “I’m not God,” Jordan shot back. “And I don’t theorize from that vantage. Let events and biology decide.”

  “That’s sort of a Centrist opinion.”

  A bite. “This week, it is,” Jordan said. “Stand by. It’ll change.”

  “You’re interesting,” Ari said.

  “I’m so flattered.”

  Justin just gave an exasperated sigh and stabbed the pastry.

  “I think we should do this from time to time,” Ari said. “You’re sort of family, you know.”

  “In what possible sense?” Jordan shot back. “Family, in the sense you’ve gone to bed with my son?”

  “No,” Justin said shortly. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

  “Denys was my family after he exiled Maman,” she said. “Yanni sort of is, now. But I don’t know what to do without a disagreeable uncle. So I pick you. You can succeed Denys.”

  “I’m not honored,” Jordan said, and ate the last bite of his dessert.

  “You don’t have to be like Denys, you know.”

  That got a dark, naked stare, all the way to the bottom. “You little devil,” Jordan s
aid. “You little devil.”

  Got to him. Found a button.

  “I’m not,” she said. “I’m just Ari. The new model. You were almost partners, you and the first Ari. Justin and I already are, at least as much as you two ever were. You’re my disagreeable uncle, whether or not you’re Denys.”

  “Denys killed her.”

  “I’m pretty sure he did,” she said. “And he as good as killed you. The question is whether you can recover from that. Maybe you can. We’ll see.”

  “The devil,” he said, and drank the last of his coffee. “I think we’ve had the discussion. I trust I can leave this place.”

  “Of course you can.” she said. “Paul. I’m glad you came.” She pushed back from the table. Justin and Grant did. She wondered if they would leave the apartment with Jordan and Paul and walk them to the doors of Wing One, or make a maneuver so as not to leave in that company.

  “Thank you, sera,” Paul said, pro forma. Trust azi manners to try to force a calm over the situation.

  “Thank you for the evening,” Jordan said with a small, tight smile. “It was very informative.”

  “It was, very,” she said, and offered her hand. “I’m so glad you could come.”

  “Nothing much better to do.” He took her hand briefly, as chill a grip as before, nothing like Justin’s. “Good night.” And to Justin, a look shot past her to the other door: “I suppose you’re staying.”

  “No,” Justin said, “but good night, Jordan.”

  Letting Jordan walk out with Paul and the door shut, Justin put on his coat very slowly, while Grant waited.

  “I needed to know,” she said in that artificial pause. Toward Justin and Grant, she felt an impulse of remorse. “I’m terribly sorry. I hoped, not too rationally, that it might go better than this.”

  “You gave us different arrival times,” Justin said. “You set the tone.”

  “I tried to set it better than it turned out,” she said.

  “I don’t think anything was ever out of control,” Justin said darkly, implying, she read it, that things had gone just the way she wanted. She shook her head to that.

  “Remember he’s somebody the first Ari couldn’t Work,” she said. “She couldn’t handle him, or everything would have gone better than it did. She really did want him to work with her. But he wouldn’t share, and she couldn’t change him.”