“That also happened to coincide with the War they were protesting.”

“True. But there’s no War now, and they’re still protesting. They’re not real clear whatthey’re protesting, except the planet isn’t what they want it to be, and they clearly think they can dispense with us.”

“Nothing psychotic about that. Humanity did without us for thousands of years. Alliance and Earth, somehow, still do.”

“That’s not it, though. It’s not that they can do without us, it’s that somebody wants to be us. What if that’sthe viral idea, Yanni? That somebody’s always going to beus, and that’s where the power is situated, and maybe somebody’s little kid, or several people’s little kids, were turned into something that’s angrier about us than the parents were. Maybe that’s why they’re still protesting a war that’s been over for decades, and why it’s only gotten worse and crazier. I mean, the first Paxers blew up buildings at odd hours when people weren’t likely to be there, and now they’re just trying to cause the worst casualties they can. It’s accelerated. They’re sucking in mental cases their violence created, and giving thembombs and sending them out–but you don’t think the leaders of this movement are ever going to carry the bombs. They’ll sit back pretending to be us, congratulating themselves that they’ve becomeus.”

“So do you see a fix, short of a mass mindwipe of every CIT in Novgorod?”

“I see Paxers proliferating like crazy, once Eversnow goes public. That worries me, Yanni.”

“Why would they proliferate?”

“Because it’s change. Because it scares the followers. Because change changes the balance of power and that’s going to agitate their leaders. Some people won’t want the whole terraforming question shunted out to the edge of space: they want it here. Some people won’t want it anywhere. Some people will agree with me that it’s too much too soon. It’s going to be like yeast in a bowl, it’s just going to froth up and make a hell of a mess.”

“In your theory you could change the national polling hours and they’d bomb subways over it.”

“They probably would,” Ari said. “It would all become some Reseune plot.”

“So there’s a monster in the walls. What’s his name, Anton Clavery?”

“You’re making fun of me.”

“Not exactly. Your theory would say the Paxers took out Patil and Thieu. The one’s easy, the other’s hard. You need sane people to get into Planys and then go insane.”

She shook her head. “You need a killer. Money’s a motive, too. When you need something delicate done, you hire an expert.”

Yanni sat and thought about that a moment. “Nasty theory, young lady.”

“It’s scary. So’s your Eversnow, but I said I’d support it. You know what else worries me in the whole issue? Jordan worries me.”

“Regarding the Paxers?”

“ He’san issue with them. If he’s as self‑interested as you say, he’ll do whatever benefits him. He’s the embodiment of the disaffected, the third‑gen problem. You can’t makehim care. And he doesn’t.”

“Interesting analysis.”

“Am I right?”

“Jordan’s an old issue with the Paxers: they thinkthey’d like to see him out in public–they think he’d blast Reseune in the media if he gets his chance, and they’d really love that. He doesn’t personally give a rat’s ass whether we terraform or don’t. And if you want somebody who’s got the skill to be a real operator, your bogeyman in the CIT sector, that’s Jordan. But–” Yanni said, “there’s one thing against it. Jordan is entirely for himself. He’d fry the Paxers quicker than he’d fry Reseune. Stupid people bother him. He’d turn on them in a heartbeat, the moment they cross him.”

“And he designs azi sets.”

“Damned good ones,” he said.

“So have you ever worried what he put into them?” she asked. “Back when he was working, and mad at Ari? I say it’s probablyCITs that are the cause. But we had the War, we had the military running interventions on their own azi, who later decommissioned and went civilian, a lot of them in Novgorod. And we had Jordan designing azi sets for decades and decades. I don’t think he could have gotten anything past my predecessor, but that may just be my own ego. We never had the handle on military sets I wish we had.”

“We had people blowing up subways forty years ago,” Yanni said. “Well before Jordan became the ass he is.”

“Was there ever a point he wasn’t one?”

“You want the truth? He said he was in love with your predecessor,” Yanni said. “I don’t think he really was. But he may have thought he was, for a complex of reasons involving power, and he was certainly less of an ass before that major blowup.”

That was interesting. “So he lied to her. He was interested in romance and power, and she was interested in her projects?”

“I don’t think she cared about the sex. It was his mind she wanted. I think he lied to himself, for one of the rare times in his life. Major self‑delusion, wrapped up in his self‑concept. He was sleeping with Paul while that affair was going on. I told him it wouldn’t work. He told me go to hell. A year later he had Justin conceived, born the year after. The Ari affair was on again, off again. They were trying to work together. He suddenly got the notion she was taking his ideas. Sharing didn’t work with either of them. That’s where it blew up. What happened in the bedroom, I don’t know; but the ideas were the issue he complained about.”

“I can imagine that,” she said. “He’s very self‑protective in that regard.”

“So,” Yanni said somewhat cheerfully, “it all blew up. I don’t think Jordan’s the godfather of the Paxers, not even the model of them–he may have done a few designs that could be problematic in Ari’s integrations, you could be right about that. She tossed certain of them out and wouldn’t let them go to implementation. There was a hell of a fight about it–he called her a goddess‑bitch and she said he was a damned lunatic. They traded those words back and forth and had one shouting light right in Admin offices in front of the secretaries and the visitors. I don’t think they slept together after that.”

She had to laugh ruefully for a microsecond, and grew sad after, thinking about herself and Justin, and swearing to herself it never would happen to them that way. “What did Paul think about it?”

Yanni looked at the door, as if measuring the distance to the conference room, and said, quietly, “Poor Paul. Always, poor Paul. Paul puts up with him. That’s got to be a ferociously strong mindset, Paul’s. God knows Jordan’s tinkered with it over the years. But Paul loves him.”

“That’s what Paul gets out of it, at least. Did the first Ari ever try to do anything with him?”

Yanni shook his head emphatically. “No. That would have really torn it worse than what she did with Justin. Paul’s where Jordan lives, that’s all. Justin just happenedone year–a project that ran for a couple of decades, and blew up when Ari intervened. Became a permanent reminder of a quarrel he’d had with Ari. That’s one way to look at it, on Jordan’s scale of things.”

“That’s sad, too. Justin loves him.”

“A lot of people have tried,” Yanni said with a second shake of his head. “God knows. If you have an altruistic bent, young lady, take it from me on this one. Don’t try kindness, not with him. He’s just what he is. Let him be.”

“I wish I could Get him, all the same,” she said, and set to work at the dish again. “Yanni, Uncle Yanni, you keep being Director for a while. I’ll wait. Just don’t you be my Jordan, and let’s be friends. I’ll respect your opinion, you respect mine, and don’t hold out on me anymore.”

“I’ll take a good deep look at your theory on Novgorod,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “I’ll be interested.”

“Eversnow,” he said, “stays.”

“Through anything I can foresee at the moment,” she said, wishing otherwise–but it was necessary, right now.