Regenesis

by C. J. Cherryh

  There was space for shops, besides the security quarters and wing admin—little hole-in-the wall shops where she and all the people who had a right to be here, and their staffs, could do something she didn’t ever get to do in the tight security Reseune had now, and just go shopping—well, at least they could order something to be in one of these shops and go down and look at it before they bought it off catalog: that was almost like shopping.

  There’d be a nice little snack shop and breakfast place, which would turn into a nice evening restaurant. It would cater, too, with special attention to security. That was all planned.

  There’d be a men’s shop, for Yanni and Frank, and Justin and Grant, and Sam and Pavel, when they got back from Strassenberg, and Amy’s Quentin, what time Quentin wasn’t, like Florian and Catlin, in uniform. And there’d be a few conference and gathering rooms for anybody that needed them.

  They could use one of those conference rooms for displays—for art, she thought suddenly.

  “We can have a museum in Alpha Wing,” she decided. “We can have our own museum. A little one, for some of the paintings. We can have another over in the Admin Wing, where they’ll be safe. I think that’s a good thing. Sam, you can do it—”

  “A museum?”

  “The first Ari knew people who’d seen the world built. They’re all dead, now. We’re the first generation that doesn’t know anything about Cyteen before there were people here. And all their things, if they aren’t in archive, are just going away, thrown in the cycler. A virtual museum’s a good thing. You can look that up any time you want, but you have to ask for the displays—and you have to know to ask. You need to know what you’re looking for in the first place to look something up, and that necessarily slants it, doesn’t it?”

  “Slants it, too,” Sam said, “if somebody picks out what you’ll see.”

  “Someone’s always picking for us. But the people who painted those paintings did their own picking about what to paint. You can see the virtuals. You can get any repro you want, if you want to put your hands on it, but if you want to get surprises, that you didn’t ask to be face to face with, maybe that’s the idea. You’re right. Maybe I should look at what I don’t expect. It’s why I decided I want the first Ari’s stuff. Maybe it ought to be like that for other people. They need to be surprised. And we need to haul some of the stuff out of the warehouses before it goes into the cyclers and just have it for people to look at. We’re the generation that doesn’t remember the beginning. Maybe we need to look hard.”

  Sam stopped still and looked at her a long moment. “Sometimes you don’t make thorough sense, but you always seem like you do.”

  She laughed. Not many people would tell her she babbled. She knew she did. She saw things in her head, saw things she didn’t have vocabulary for. The first Ari, people said, had been very spare with words. The first Ari had had ideas in her head, too, which didn’t have words. The first Ari didn’t habitually let those things out. She, on the other hand, tried to talk to the people she thought would understand. And she babbled thorough nonsense, and amused Sam.

  “You see through me,” she said to Sam.

  “I try to see into your head,” Sam said. “You’re awake all the time, you know that. You’re the most incredibly awake person I know. You want a museum in Admin, sure, you get Yanni Schwartz to agree and give me space, and I’ll figure how to do it. I have to go the slow way and look up things like a regular guy, but you’ll get your museum.”

  “I’m not about museums,” she said, “I’m not supposed to be, at any rate. It’s just a side thought. I have to do so many other things. God, Sam. I’m studying. I’m studying all day long. I’m learning the things I’m supposed to, psych, and design, and genetics, and I spend so long at deepstudy I’m starting to go into deepstate without the damn pills, sometimes so I don’t even know I’m doing it. But when I have thoughts that aren’t on-topic I have to shed them, I just have to turn them loose and shed them or go crazy, because I haven’t got time to do them, and my museum is a thought like that. I had it. I want to get rid of it but I don’t want to lose it, and I’m going to be busy, so you do it, Sam.”

  “Ari.” He reached out and gripped her shoulders—a contact Florian and Catlin would allow very few people—and kissed her on the forehead. “Take a break, Ari. Take a day off and take a break.”

  She sighed, rested her hands on his arms, looked him closely in the eyes. “You’re a genius, you know it. You really are.”

  “That’s a laugh.” He dropped the contact. “That’s the last thing I am.”

  “I know it when I see it. You are. Always were. Sam, Take care of yourself. I mean that.”

  “Is there any special reason you should say that?”

  “Selfishness. I need you. I’ll always need you. I’ll think of you when I’m studying that wretched population equation till my eyes cross.”

  Second kiss, this one on the cheek. Like a brother, if she’d been born with one. She’d never had sex with Sam. Never would. That wasn’t the way they were with each other. “You just take care of yourself, Ari, hear me? You’re going too hard, again. But what’s new about that?”

  She was so tired, she felt tears start in her eyes, but she wouldn’t shed them. She laughed, instead. “I’m paying for this place,” she said, “or I will. I’m starting real work. High time I earn my keep, I say. You’ll see.”

  “Good for you,” Sam said and let her go. And he probably did see the dampness of her eyes and had the common sense not to fuss over it.

  It was a rare morning. The bash and clatter of hollow forms and the whine of cutters was hundreds of workers and bots busy keeping Sam’s promises. She made her own promises as they walked back to the exit, and the runabout: that by summer and move-in, she was going to be in a position to take care of Sam.

  Pay for it, indeed. Her whole life paid for it.

  Just watch, she said to Yanni, in absentia. Just watch. The first Ari developed most of what we do—what every lab in the wide universe does. I’m starting where she finished. I’ve run through the teaching tapes in three months: everything but this last couple of weeks was basic, and I’m into her notes, and I’m doing integrations. I’ll be working on gammas soon. Alpha sets before New Year’s. Strassenberg population sets by next year. I’ll be able. I’ll know what I’m doing, Yanni.

  And that’s not empty bragging. That’s the truth.

  BOOK TWO Section 1 Chapter iii

  MAY 10, 2424

  1328H

  Information, encouragingly abundant, in Florian’s opinion, had begun flowing along new channels. The new security team, and the domestic staff, were finally due to arrive for duty in Wing One. The security team was ready as of now, since ReseuneSec had finished their documentation—but they weren’t setting foot in Wing One, and neither were the domestics, until Justin and Grant finished their report, which they said would take longer than they thought.

  And there’d been a problem. Justin was waiting on getting general manuals from Library indefinitely postponed, as they found out, because Justin’s inquiry had triggered security alerts, and Justin hadn’t been aware that lower ReseuneSec levels were investigating his request and stalling it purposefully until the probe had gotten high enough in the ReseuneSec system—namely Hicks’ office—to contact sera’s office—as the ones with their finger on Justin.

  That was a mistake on their own part, as Florian saw it: they should have foreseen that Justin’s inquiry might have raised a flag—considering his connections. Sera had called Yanni, Yanni had called Hicks, and Hicks had sent out an order to free those items up, so they’d finally gotten to Justin…days late, but ten minutes after sera had found it out.

  Catlin had requested a few more rounds of tape-study on protocols for the security group, to keep them busy until Justin could do his work. The new domestic staff, meanwhile, had finished their preparation and passed sera’s final scrutiny, and they might be brought in once their manuals cleared
—much simpler than the ReseuneSec lot, so, given Justin’s prior problems with clearance, Florian called up Hicks’ office and made his own personal request, firmly—which got other manuals liberated, to him, at least, who couldn’t read them—and who had no permission on file to have them. He took them personally to Justin’s office, solving one more bottleneck, and stacking more work on Justin and Grant, who were working extra hours and taking computer time running interface studies among sera’s staff. Most household staffs didn’t get that degree of lookover, but sera’s wasn’t the sort that could ever discharge a member and have them easily plugged in elsewhere. There was too much special knowledge: there were too many security issues.

  So they delayed that, too, and by now Justin and Grant were running short of sleep.

  But today their own promised ReseuneSec authorization clearances had come through, an apparently earnest demonstration of Hicks’ good will, a pass alleged to give them access to anything in ReseuneSec files, inside Reseune itself—and to ride ReseuneSec access through any door in the outside world—well, any door ReseuneSec itself could pass.

  Any door? They tested their new access, just running through local files…not using Base One, but a system-free set of computers they used for handling any outside contact. They could display the second-system content on the same set of screens as Base One, they could keyboard to the alternate system from the same station, or switch back and forth between operating systems in absolute security—Florian was rather proud of that finesse. He’d done a fair amount of set-up, connecting up what would be the new security facility downstairs, so that all of it, the new office and residency as yet unoccupied, and the outpouring of ReseuneSec’s version of classified material via their new link, came smoothly into their office via the same secure pipe—a pipe that flowed both ways, but didn’t ever breach Base One’s isolation.

  Everything from those two sources, ReseuneSec and their own upcoming security office, once it had staff, would dump to the system-free computers in their office, to be carefully gone over before anything touched a Base One computer. Base One could reach out to it, read-only, would compare what ReseuneSec files contained against what it could find internally, and deliver that daily report, too.

  There were, on the daily sheet from ReseuneSec, no current takedown operations anywhere in Reseune.

  There was a tolerably serious matter involving stolen meds from a pharmacy…case solved. They’d argue that one in court. Base One had interesting information on that: the pilferer was an employee with previous security issues. That would stop.

  The list went on, including actionable adultery, minor theft, public nuisance, and other CIT misbehaviors. Azi were rarely involved in any such goings-on, and if they were, the motives tended to be very different.

  “Quiet day,” Catlin remarked.

  Real-time access to ReseuneSec’s daily logs provided them a window on a level of ordinary misdeed they hadn’t hitherto investigated. It was interesting, to pick up the pulse of the house. The town itself, down the hill, had its own brand of mischief: the drunken theft of a tractor, and the destruction of a piglot fence down in AG—the individual was charged the repairs. There had been minor pilferage in the food production unit, solved with a reprimand.

  Far from the focus of their interest. Too much concentration on CIT actions could be, for one thing, stultifying, things over which an azi simply had to shake his head in slight puzzlement, never grasping the nature of the fault—except to say it broke rules by which born-men in responsible jobs and relationships were supposed to abide.

  Policing the labs and town was part of the job ReseuneSec did, generally CIT and azi pairs doing that: but none of these things affected Ari’s safety…and their very access of these items, using ReseuneSec’s access, not Base One, left a trail which might interest Hicks—that was actually desirable, so Hicks would see them using the connection. What was intriguing was not the data, which they could always get via Base One, but the extent of the data which Hicks afforded them, which was a test of Hicks and his staff, not the data.

  Reseune’s ordinary tenor of domestic life was, in fact, most often quiet—a collection of scientists, administrators, some businessmen, shopkeepers, builders, and service people all observing the law, give or take their personal idiosyncrasies—that was the expected daily event. The largest national upheaval of the afternoon was an ocean storm that had rolled in on Novgorod and taken down three coastal precip towers at the river port, surely a bit of excitement to their south. There was redundancy for that situation, and three towers lost on a web that size was by no means a crisis, though a regional collapse of the shield was certainly newsworthy. The temporary reliance on backup was delaying flights and river cargo out of Novgorod, and disruption in anything—a bargeload of supply orders for Reseune and Big Blue, for instance—could afford an opportunity for dishonest efforts to slip in and do harm.

  It was nicely organized data. Tabular, it was certainly easier to read than the absolute flood of information Base One could deliver in a full spate—Base One didn’t sort outstandingly well. Sera said that sorting, in itself, was a bias, best done in your head, if you scanned well.

  They were aware of that, they did scan well, at a speed nearly up to sera’s, and Florian wondered what ReseuneSec was hiding from its low-level agencies by providing them these nicely organized things to look at.

  All sorts of things could lie between and behind those neat tables.

  “They think they’ll be shipping again by 1800h,” Catlin remarked, from her station.

  “1800,” Florian echoed, mildly absent. Me was already chasing down another, much more adventurous track on their shiny new authorizations, one that took him into Planys systems: Hicks had noted their interest in the Patil case and had flagged an item for their attention.

  Florian sent the interesting find, a letter, to Catlin’s screen…again, something Hicks wanted them to see.

  Dr. Raymond Thieu was the sender. The recipient was Dr. Sandi Patil. The letter was a week old. This and other items turned up on a simple Base One search of the professor’s mailbox. Easy to do, and trackless: ReseuneSec probes left no footprints except in ReseuneSec itself and in Base Two, which was Yanni’s Base. Base One left none at all. The Base One search had already turned up nothing from Patil to Thieu within the last month. The other two letters, also from Thieu to Patil, were not interesting.

  “Apparently a mundane letter, which proves Thieu is still writing Patil. This comes from Hicks.”

  “Noted,” Catlin said. “She hasn’t answered any of them. She answered prior letters, but not immediately.”

  It was a chatty letter, advising Dr. Patil to read this article and that in Scientia, offering a little commentary on the dullness of life at Planys, asking about a dues renewal—Dr. Thieu complained he couldn’t remember whether or not he had renewed his professional membership in the teaching fraternity, and he asked Patil whether she had gotten the solicitation for membership yet because he didn’t want to go through the organization office, reason unstated. He also asked whether she happened to have the recall number of a book, the title of which he couldn’t find on the net…

  Odd, since the booklist was a basic function of the scholarly net. Was that some verbal code? Or simply the truth of an old man’s suddenly fading memory?

  And Thieu asked, at the end, whether she had heard from Jordan Warrick. It was probably what had made Hicks flag it to them.

  …He went back to Reseune. He hasn’t written yet. He’s probably busy. You ought to call him. You remember Jordan. Tall, brown hair. Nice manners…

  It went on for two more rambling paragraphs about the too-spicy restaurant fare in Planys and the need for more variety.

  “ ‘Nice manners,’ ” Florian quoted wryly.

  “It seems mundane enough,” Catlin said, “at first glance.”

  “One could wonder if Thieu did provide that card.”

  “He complains about losing a library title
.”

  “Let’s see what ReseuneSec wants to tell us about the rest of his correspondence.”

  Florian searched down the list, flashed thirty-four files up at once, windowed a few up with a scroll through. Compared that to what Base One had. “Looks complete.” Base One had already been through the lot. Base One had an interesting little program that could analyze letters for style. If it found stylistic anomalies in what was certainly from the same hand, it could throw a useful spotlight on verbal code. None found, except the new letter.

  But re the issue of Thieu’s mental condition—Florian slipped a quiet, trackless Base One inquiry into Planys Medical, and what that pulled up on Thieu indicated Dr. Thieu’s rejuv was indeed failing, as Jordan Warrick had described.

  “Failing rejuv and mental lapses. This, from Base One. Maybe the request for the book number is real. He may have entered the wrong title in his search.”

  Catlin, meanwhile, had done a little Base One work on her own, last week: Jordan’s Planys records were there, too, sparse, on the medical front. And those results now popped to screen 4. “Contrast with Jordan Warrick. He seems in excellent health. No self-administered drug use or other complaints.”

  “Note the address,” Florian said, flagging the item on the medical record. Jordan’s physical address was listed as #18G in Pleiades Residency. And that had just rung a bell, against the address from Thieu’s medical records.

  #19G. Pleiades Residency.

  “Next door neighbors, it seems.”

  Catlin probed further. “Moved” was the designation that turned up on screen, regarding Jordan’s records this week. “Jordan’s personal files aren’t there, to the ReseuneSec probe. This is interesting. ReseuneSec can’t reach them.”

  The Base One record didn’t have those same holes in it. “Note. Those files are still there, for Base One—but they’re gone, to our supposedly highest-level ReseuneSec inquiry.”