“Nice.” Jordan took the drink Paul handed him, had a sip. “So my own appeal couldn’t get you through my door, but you don’t mind bringing the little dear’s guards to burgle my apartment.”
“I was concerned for your safety. She was talking about somebody inside, Dad. Who would that be?”
“The possibilities are endless. Ari, some CIT–getting an azi past Reseune Supervisors wouldn’t be easy, but with inside help, who knows? Are we worried about assassins?”
“I’m worried for your safety. I’m worried for Grant’s and Paul’s. They didn’t ask to get involved in whatever crazy mess you’re in. Planys is a small place. Everybody knows everybody. Who would have killed an old man who didn’t have long to live anyway?”
“A long list of volunteers,” Jordan said, and took a drink of what looked like vodka. “The man was an insufferable egotist.”
Justin sat back against the couch, crossed one leg over the other. “I thought you were friends.”
“Society there is sparse.”
“Come on, Jordan. Tell me. What happened? I know you didn’t kill Ari. Everybody knows it. You were bitter, you wanted to strangle Denys, that didn’t happen, and you spent nearly twenty years in the company of a doddering old guy with an ego. That, I understand. But if this guy had associates that were getting to him past the security screen at PlanysLabs, where were they? How was Patil involved? Why were you carrying her card around? And why in bloody hell did you dump it on me?”
“So Ari’s got you asking her questions, has she?”
“I’m asking my own damn questions. I wouldn’t have, if you hadn’t shoved that card off on me, and if Patil hadn’t called me in the middle of the night a few minutes before someone shoved her out a twelfth‑story window–I call thatinvolvement. I call that a damned mess, and if you’ve got any key to Thieu’s goings‑on at Planys, I want it!”
“What? Afraid your nice career’s getting tarnished?”
“I’m afraid my father’s trying to tarnish it, thanks. I’m afraid my father’s decided to carry on a stupid war with a dead woman and can’t figure out what year it is!”
“Justin,” Grant said, a calm‑down.
Jordan grinned. “Got to you, did I?”
“It’s not a damn game!”
“Isn’t it? I don’t get out much lately. I need some amusement.”
“At my expense.”
“Anyway I can, son, anyway I can.”
“Oh, poor Jordan. Poor Jordan. I never thought you were a sympathy sponge. But that’s what you want. You want me to feel so sorry for you I’ll ask you what I can do to help you out. Well, hell!”
“You could ask Florian in for a drink.”
“Somehow I don’t think he will. He’s here to protect us both. And there will be guards. I’ll be real damned surprised if there aren’t guards dogging you down the halls, after this. So that’s what you won with this stupid stunt.”
“What stunt? The card? Did I pull the bandage off Reseune’s old sores’? Maybe they deserve airing.”
“Twenty years ago! Normal people don’t carry on a feud with a dead woman for twenty years, normal people don’t blame her daughter, normal people don’t try to get their own sons arrested for a damn joke!”
“You live with her. You never leave her.”
“She’s just a nice kid. You don’t give her a chance. No, you’ve got to play politics, and deadpolitics, at that. What have the Paxers got, since the War ended? Their war stopped, we’ve got the peace they wanted, and they’re still running around in back halls passing cryptic notes to each other and pasting up posters, what time they’re not blowing up children. The Centrists, hell, the lawwon’t let them mess up this planet–” Air went rarified. He didn’t doreal‑time work, but a woman had died tonight while she was talking to him, and he and Jordan were going to be closely guarded for the rest of their natural lives. So what the hell did it matter if Jordan got a year’s jump on what was going to go public anyhow? “You want the truth, Dad? I’m going to breach security right now and give you a name. Eversnow.”
“Actually no surprise. I know about your little secret.”
“Knew about it when you gave me that damned card?”
“I don’t think I want to tell you. Let ReseuneSec figure what to do about it.”
“Patil was your source.”
Jordan shrugged. “Or not.”
“So you know about it. All right. And certain Centrists know, but that doesn’t make them happy, because they’d have to go off in the deep dark and actually build their new Earth, which means no nice, warm offices and no influence in Novgorod, doesn’t it, so some of them aren’t as happy as they could be.”
“That could be true.”
“And then there’s the Abolitionists, oh, ask Grant about them. They know what’s moral for everybody but them. The world is going along pretty much on course, and the War’s over, so it’s unemployment for radical types…everybody’s too comfortable. They’re sending Patil out to handle Eversnow, and now somebody’s killed her. You know, but you don’t want to say how you know, and that doesn’t look damn good, Jordan, it doesn’t. You had your little fling with the Paxer element, which damn near got Grant killed… So what in hell are you involved in this time?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
“Dad. Talk to me.”
“So how do you know?”
“You can figure how I heard about it. From Ari.”
“From the little dear. Who keeps you from unemployment until the bills come due and your pretty, safe world blows up in your face. You know what your precious Ari is, son of mine? The same as the first one–a damn self‑contained genius with the power to run mindsets on the whole human species. You get all bothered about terraforming a planet we weren’t born to, oh, the poor microbes–the damn stupid megafauna that’s been turning this planet to desert for twenty million years: we’ve got to save them so they can go on desertifying the planet. We get all worked up about that, and never mind this one woman is imposing her mental design on the whole human species, dictating the social ratios from one end of space to the other, dictating the attitudes, the thoughts, the philosophies, of every single azi that gets his CIT status and turns into a breeding, proliferating citizen of this planet and everywhere else we reach! Every freedman on every station in Union space is teaching his kids the sacred dogma Ari Emory embedded in their psyches. Every planet we ever occupy and every station in Union space is going to be populated with just the right ratio of brilliant to moderately stupid that Ariane Emory decided is just fine and right for humanity. We don’t need a god. We’ve got one!”
“The Bureau of Defense was the one that landed a colony on Gehenna. The first Ari modified it so as notto create a human timebomb.”
“Do we know that?” Jordan fired back. “Seems it did pretty well at being a bomb. Alliance is still trying to figure out how to get the locals out of the bushes.”
“Good question. I’m sure I don’t know what she’s thinking and I don’t know what your Ari thought. But I’m even more sure the Defense Bureau doesn’t know what they’re doing from one campaign to the next, and if you want somebody to blame for this mess, Jordan, blame the people you were dealing with when it all went wrong. They wanted a weapon. A poison pill. They didn’t care how it got mopped up so long as Alliance had to do it, and now we’re not at war with Alliance, and you’re right when you ask what do we do now, sterilize the planet? It’s not going to happen, Dad. It’s what we’ve got to live with. It’s going to be this Ari’s problem.”
“We’ve got a whole new branch of the human species out there, thanks to her. What are we going to do with that, when it wants off its planet? Is it going to like us? We don’t fucking know, do we?”
“We’ll learn from it. And we’ll deal with it.”
“Oh, I’m sure we’ll learn. And I hope your little dear keeps her hands the hell off it before it gets worse. That’llcome back to make us sorry, no way it won’t.”