That whole list of people with higher clearances than mine—can lie to the system and lie to me and I can't find it out.

Unless I get a higher clearance. . . and the way I get that is when I do something that gets Base One to do it.

Which means doing everything Ari wants.

Nothing Ari wants, me-Ari, myself, for me. If I'm not the same. If there is ame. If there ever was ame that isn't Ari. Or if she's not me.

If I was her, how old would I be? A hundred fifty and twelve, a hundred sixty-two. That's older than Jane, no, she was born—Jane was a teenager, Jane was a hundred forty-two when she died, and she held the first Ari when she was a baby, so if I'm twelve and Jane was my maman when she was a hundred thirty-four and I was born—and if uncle Denys is right and I was begun on paper the day after Ari died—

It could take more work than making the Filly. And that was tons of figuring. And I'm not an azi, I'm not a production geneset, so that's nothing fast. So say it was a year, and then nine, ten months, and everything works out that Ari was a hundred—twenty-something.

You can live longer than that. I wonder if that's when I'm going to die. I wonder what she died of.

Rejuv usually doesn't go till you're a hundred forty if you get it started early, and she was pretty, she was pretty when she was older, she was on it early, for sure—

That's depressing. Don't think of that. It's awful to know when you're going to die.

It's awful to read ahead what's going to happen to you. I don't want to read that stuff in the files. I don't want to know.

And it's real stupid not to.

There was a man who could see the future. He tried to change his. But thatwas his future.

Thatwas his future.

Like changing it—can't work. Because then you go off what the Base wants and you're frozen, locked up, no accesses.

Ihave to do well. I have to do everything they want and then when I grow up I can Get them good.

Damn. That's exactly what Ari said I should do.

How do I get away from her?

Can I get away from her—and still be me?

ii

She was very careful to keep on time when the Minder woke her, shower fast, grab breakfast—Florian and Catlin cooked it: the eggs got too done, and the cocoa was lumpy, but it was food, and she swallowed it down and headed out for class . . . Florian and Catlin to clean up and then wait for the deliveries from Housekeeping and check them out and get their stuff installed in their rooms; and stay put, and debug the place, as soon as Housekeeping brought some batteries up for some of the first Florian's stuff. Theyhad an excuse to miss classes today. She didn't, and there was no stopping by the fishpond this morning: she had to stop by the pharmacy, and she was going to walk through Dr. Edwards' door right on the minute.

Dr. Edwards was very relieved to see her: he said that without saying a word; and was uncommonly easy on her in the work—she noticed that and looked up sideways and gave him her wickedest grin. "I suppose uncle Denys told you what happened last night."

Oh, he didn't want to talk about that. "In a general kind of way. You know he'd be worried."

"You tell him I was on time and we didn't burn up anything in the kitchen."

"I'll tell him. Don't you want to tell him yourself?"

"No," she said cheerfully, and went back to her frog eggs.

She really put her mind to it in Designs, worked with no nonsense, blasted through two lessons and actually enjoyed it: she got Dr. Dietrich to give her a complete manual on one of the Deltas in Housekeeping management, so she could see the whole picture of a Design, because that was the way she liked to learn, get the idea what the whole thing looked like so that the parts made sense.

She wantedan Alpha set, but Dr. Dietrich said it was better to learn a more typical kind and then work on the exotic cases. That made sense.

Dr. Dietrich said it shouldn't be anybody she knew. That she wasn't ready for that.

Nice that she wasn't ready for something.It made her feel like there was at least a floor to stand on. She had learned a very good word in Dr. Dietrich's class.

Flux. Which fairly well said what she was caught in.

She didn't have class with any other kids until just before noon, when she had Economics with Amy and Maddy.

Amy and Maddy hadn'tknown about her moving out. They thought she was putting one on them. So she put her card in the nearest House slot in One A, and it started spitting out all these messages she hadn't known she was going to get, like Housekeeping asking for a verification on an order for a special kind of battery—she knew who had asked that, and punched yes—and a note from Yanni Schwartz telling her that her office in 1-244 was keyed to her card, and he had a secretary and a clerk going to set up in there, whose names were Elly BE 979 and Winnie GW 88690, and their living allowances were now on her card, along with the equipment requisition for another couple of terminals and on-line time on the House system; and a message from Dr. Ivanov that her prescription was waiting at the pharmacy.

That impressed Amy and Maddy, all right.

They looked like they still weren't sure she hadn't set this up to Get them, but she told them that tomorrow they were going to get a chance to see, she would take them up where she lived now, all on her own.

And they went funny then, like something was going different.

That was something she hadn't thought about.

She was thinking about it all the way to the pharmacy, and then she had that package to worry about, up past the Security guards into the lonely terrazzo hallway that was all hers down to the barrier-wall. She used her keycard on the door, and let herself in. The Minder told her that Florian and Catlin were there, and quick as that they showed up from the hall to the kitchen.

"Did Housekeeping get here?" she asked.

"Yes, sera," Florian said. "We've got everything put away. We went all over the apartment."

That meant the batteries Florian had wanted had gotten there. "Housekeeping was in order," Catlin said. "We made them set the boxes in the kitchen, no matter what they were, and we went over everything piece by piece before we put it away. We're warming up lunch."

"Good," she said. "Class was fine. No problems." She walked all the way back through the halls to her office to put down the carry-bag.

Heroffice, when she had automatically started for her bedroom. But now there was a room for everything. She unloaded the manual there; and took the carry-bag back past Florian and Catlin's rooms to her own bedroom.

Poo-thing was there, right on her bed where he always was. She picked him up and thought it would be really rotten if uncle Denys had bugged him. She picked him up and set him down again against the pillows.

And sat down and kicked off her shoes, and took out the pills from her carry-bag, the prescription pharmacy had fussed about until they nearly made her late for school, no matter what her keycard said and no matter what the House system told them she was authorized to have.

"75's," Florian said, looking at the pill-bottle, after lunch. Ham-and-cheese sandwiches. With nothing burned. "That's all right. That's right for a deep dose."

"Do you want to see what I have to tell you?" She had run out the print, and she had the paper in her lap. "I've told the Minder, no calls, no noises. I've got everything on the list. But I'd feel better if you looked at it."