AE2: Ari, wait.

B/1: I'm listening, Ari.

AE2: Are you Base One now?

B/1: Yes.

AE2: Who sent my maman Jane Strassen to Fargone?

B/1: Access inadequate. There is a reference from Ari. Stand by.

Ari, this is Ari senior.

This is the first time you've asked a question with a Security block on it. I don't know what the question is. It means something is preventing you from reaching that information in the House computers and your clearance isn't high enough. The most probable reason is: Minority status. End segment.

AE2: Ari, wait.

B/1: I'm listening, Ari.

AE2: Where is Valery Schwartz?

B/1: Access inadequate.

AE2: Where's Amy Carnath?

B/1: Amy Carnath checked into the Minder in U8899. U8899 is: apartment registered to Julia Carnath. There is no record of check-out in that Minder.

AE2: Then she's home.

B/1: Please be specific.

AE2: Then Amy Carnath is home, isn't she?

B/1: Amy Carnath is home, yes.

2315: 1/27: 2035

AE2: Base One: look up Ariane Emory in Library.

B/1: Access limited. Ari has a message. Stand by.

Ari, this is Ari senior.

So you've gotten curious about me. I don't blame you. I would be too. But you're 9 and the program will only let you access my records up to when I was 4. That gap will narrow as you grow older, until you're able to read into my records equal to and beyond your current age. There's a reason for this. You'll understand more of that reason as you grow. One reason you can understand now is that these records are very personal, and people older than 9 do things that would confuse hell out of you, sweet.

Also at 9 you're not old enough to understand the difference between my accomplishments and my mistakes, because the records don't explain anything. They're just things the House computer recorded at the time.

Now that you've asked, Base One will automatically upgrade the information once a week. I'd give it to you daily, because there's going to be a lot of it, but I don't want you to get so involved with what I did from day to day that you live too much with me and not enough in the real world.

You can access anything about anybody you want in Archives through 2287, when I was 4. If the person you want wasn't born by then, you won't get anything.

This gap will constantly narrow as you grow, and as your questions and your own records indicate to Base One that you have met certain criteria. So the harder you study in school and the more things you qualify in, the faster you get answers. That's the way life works.

Remember what you do is your own choice. What I did was mine.

Good luck, sweet.

Now Library will retrieve all my records up to the time I was 4 and store it for your access in a file named BIO.

2315: 4/14: 1547

B/1: Stand by for your Library request.

AE2: Capture.

B/1: Affirmative: document captured; copyrighted: I must dump all data in two days unless you authorize the 20-credit purchase price.

AE2: Scan for reference to horse or equine or equestrian.

B/1: Located.

AE2: How many references?

B/1: Eighty-two.

AE2: Compare data to data in study file: HORSE. Highlight and Tempstore additional information or contradictions in incoming data. Call me when you're done.

B/1: Estimated time of run: three hours.AE2: Log-off.

2316: 1/12: 0600

B/1: Good morning, Ari. Happy birthday.

AE2: Is this Base One?

B/1: Ari, this is Ari senior. You're 10 now. That upgrades your accesses. If you'll check library function you can access a number of new tapes.

Your test scores are one point better than mine in geography, three points under mine in math, five points under mine in language.. . .

CHAPTER 9

i

Uncle Giraud called it the highest priced shop in the known universe, let alone Novgorod, and Ari loved it. She tried on a blouse that would absolutely killMaddy Strassen: it was bronze and brown, it was satin, and it had a scarf around the throat with a topaz and gold pin—real, of course, at thisplace.

And she looked back at uncle Giraud with a calculated smile. It was a very grown-up smile. She had practiced it in the mirror.

The blouse cost two hundred fifty credits. It went into a box, and uncle Giraud put it on his personal card without saying a word.

She signed a picture of herself for the shop, which had a lot of pictures of famous people who shopped there: it had its own garage and a security entrance, and it was an appointment-only place, near the spaceport, where you couldn't just walk in.

Which was why uncle Giraud said it was a place they could go, the only place they could go, because of Security.

There was a picture of the first Ari. It was spooky. But she had seen those before. The first Ari was pretty even when she was almost as old as maman, and she had been a hundred twenty when she died. She had pretty, pretty eyes, and her hair was long and black (but she would have been on rejuv then and she would have dyed it) and parted in the middle the way Ari wore hers. She wanted to wear makeup like Ari senior, but uncle Denys said no, she could have a little, but not that much, and besides, styles changed.

Uncle Denys had given her cologne for last New Year's, that he said had been made especially for Ari by a perfumery in Novgorod. It smelled wonder-ful, like the greenhouse gardens when the tulips were blooming.

She was growing up, he said, and she knew that. All of a sudden one day a long time back Nelly had said she was getting to old to run around without her blouse on, and she had looked down and realized it was not that she was getting a little fat, but that something was changing.

At the time she had thought it was a damn nuisance, because she likednot having to wear a shirt.

By now she definitelywas getting a shape, and even Catlin was, sort of. Nothing, of course, to match her cousin Maddy Morley-Strassen, who was a year older, transferred in from Planys with her maman Eva, who was aunt Victoria Strassen's daughter, and maman's niece; and a cousin of Amy Carnath through Amy'sfather Vasily Morley-Peterson, who was at Planys.

Maddy was—

An early developer, uncle Denys called it.

Maddy was not anybody she would want to be, but she was certainly not the sort to let get too comfortable.

So she bought a scarf for Maddy and a real gold pin for Amy and a pullover for Sam and one for Tommy, and insistedto carry them on the plane, besides the other things she got for everybody. It didn't matter that you could order a lot of it, she told uncle Giraud, it mattered it came from Novgorod,where the other kids didn't get to go, and she was too going to take it on the plane. She got a blouse for Catlin, for parties: black, of course, but gauzy; Catlin looked surprised when she saw herself in the mirror. And a shirt for Florian over on the men's side: black and satiny and with a high collar that was sort of like his usual uniform sweaters, but very, very elegant. And then the woman who owned the shop thought of a pair of pants that would fit Catlin, very tight and satiny. So that meant it was only fair Florian should get new pants too. And while they were doing that, shefound a gunmetal satin pair of pants that just fit her, and that meant the sweater that went with them, which was bronzed lavenders on the shoulders shading down to gunmetal-sheen lavender and then gunmetal-and-black at the bottom. It was elegant. Uncle Giraud said it was too old for her before she put it on. When he saw her in it he said well, she wasgetting older.