I do worry that being overall happier might have taken something vital off my potential. That’s yet to prove. If you never hear this, well, I’m not the model someone wants you to follow. But I think I’m intellectually close to the first Ari, despite some detours, and despite the fact I play off a bit. I’m very close to being up with my studies, at the benchmarks she set for me, so I guess it’s all right; and if I think about it I’m exceeding some of them. I did start study early. I tend to forget I’m younger than I’m supposed to be by a few years. And I’m close to being able to make my own decisions in the labs, and I know I’m going to be capable of Admin, though I just haven’t got the time even to consider actually taking that on, and I really don’t want to. I’m so glad Yanni is running things and I don’t have to. And anything that suggests there’s any problem with Yanni scares me. There’s something right now, just a question about the way he’s handling Jordan Warrick, and I want to trust him, but I’d be a fool to say I’m not thinking about it, thinking hard. If I had to step in and control Reseune, it would be a major setback for my studies. And I don’t want that, and most of all I don’t want to lose Yanni, because, so much he does is good. And he could even be right.

It’s natural he should keep secrets from me. I haven’t let him see all I can do. And maybe I should just call him here and ask him outright what he’s done or what he thinks he’s doing, but I’m just reluctant to do it while Florian and Catlin are investigating things. I could make everything blow up. And that’s no good.

For now, Yanni limits what I do, and that’s good. He gets the results of my tests, and he’s my outside checkup. He says he wants me to keep focused on study precisely so I don’t appear in public and disturb people–especially people down in Novgorod–but I think, too, so I don’t scattershot my studies. I can do so many things and I’m interested in so many things I sometimes think I could just fly apart. Strassenburg’s a toy, in one sense. In another, it’s important for me to set that up early, and you’ll see why, if you think about it two seconds. And now I have to think about Reseune itself, and find out who’s doing what, and how the lines of power run.

I’ve been far too happy in the last couple of months to be entirely safe. Isn’t that a paradox? And I’m frustrated because there are things I can already see skewing off Ari’s plan, and I can’t fix them without taking authority over things and potentially making things worse–because I’m not as good yet as she was when she set up the parameters of what I think might be going wrong.

Is being able to see trouble coming normal for an eighteen‑year‑old? It’s not normal for an eighteen‑year‑old to have the power to do what I can do, that’s for sure–and just in the rules that govern Reseune, I can do anything right now but make an unchecked decision in the labs. I know I could remove Jordan Warrick. I could have him killed and no one would find out. Is that normal for an eighteen‑year‑old? It’s not supposed to be normal for a civilized being. But I just have to worry if it’s normal for me. I keep thinking–if I got rid of him I could save Yanni, if Yanni’s involved in anything he shouldn’t be.

And the choice not to do it may be a mistake on my part, but I see real problems down the years if I do remove him.

Jordan Warrick’s existence may even be important for me. He’s my enemy. And I need one. I need a good, strong enemy to gather up the people who wish I didn’t exist, so I can keep an eye on the lot. I just can’t get distracted from the possibility he’s not my only enemy.

He wants Justin in his control. He’ll fight me for Justin. That makes me mad every time I think about it.

But Mad doesn’t think straight. Mad may be honest, but it doesn’t plan well at all.

So I won’t give way to Mad.

And I won’t kill him. Or replace Yanni. I really don’t want to do things like that. I wonder who put that reluctance into my psychset. I’m not sure it was ever in the first Ari’s. But I watch impulses like that. I’m telling myself there’s a logical reason I’m reluctant to take extreme measures, as Florian would call it, but I have to be sure it’s a logic structure, and not air castles. Do you know that expression, air castles? I found it in a book. It’s a city without any foundations, a perfect dream without any feet on the ground. And you don’t see the fact there’s no connection between it and solid thinking, because you’re looking at how pretty the towers are, instead of the fact there’s no logic supporting them.

Pretty is good. But survivable is important, when real people are depending for their lives on your logic. And people do depend on me. I depend on me. I want to live a long time.

Soon I will have a security unit that will report directly to Catlin and Florian, and they’ll be able to know if there’s any undercurrent anywhere in the world that I need to know about. I can trust them to come to me if there’s anything peculiar going on, anything out of parameters…even in high places.

They’re going to be very busy for the next while. Soon they’ll be getting a whole lot of files on all our current problems. And maybe I’ll learn things I don’t want to hear once they do start reporting on people I know–I wish I could omit that, but I’ll have to deal with it when it happens. This was Hicks’s idea, Florian tells me. He’s the director of ReseuneSec, the post Giraud used to have. And in my worry about people’s loyalty, Hicks is one I’ve wanted to keep an eye on. Now he sends us a gift. Florian says all the people he’s sending are clean, so far as he can tell by the manuals. But I’m going to go over the manuals myself that’s going to be instructive. I have to be sure there’s nothing in them I can’t rely on, once their Contracts are engaged. Yanni won’t let me work above gamma, but these people are higher than that, mostly, and if I make a mistake it could be very bad.

That means, among other things, if we find these people are reliable, I can actually get out of this wing and go places on a regular basis–for the first time since Denys died, with minor exceptions. I’ll be able to go wherever I want in Reseune, whenever I want, and I’ll be so glad of that. I haven’t ridden Horse for months: his trainer is taking care of him. I haven’t been out to the pond to see the goldfish. I haven’t seen the new construction, just the virtuals. Note maybe I can do all those things. I feel as if I haven’t been able to breathe for weeks, and now I almost think I might–and yet I have all these worries about Yanni, and Hicks, and the very people who are supposed to be helping Florian and Catlin–not to mention new staff coming into the apartment…those are all delayed while we look through their records and check through the tape they’ve had.

One thing I’m certainly going to do, so when you accede to power, you won’t have to go through what I have, and risk what I’ve risked. My security office may not outlive me–but I’m going to see to it that a security staff inside ReseuneSec is automatically offered to your Florian and your Catlin when you reach your majority, and that you don’t have to fight for it or ask for it or wait until someone offers. I very much suspect Denys ordered Giraud to take the first Ari’s security apparatus apart when she died, under the excuse it was dangerous to his power. I don’t know what circumstances may apply when you’re hearing this. But by the time you’re making your first steps into being an adult in charge, you have to have information and a secure perimeter, and you have to have it fast. I was very lucky to have had Yanni, and not somebody much worse than Denys stepping into control of Reseune, or I might not have survived.