"You could report it!"

"And get in the middle of it again? Get myself yanked in for another inquisition? I followed orders. I figured you were bugging my office. I figuredSecurity knew where she was. I figuredyou knew exactly what I said, which was nothing. Nothing,Yanni, except Go home, Ari. Go home, Ari. Go home, Ari.And I got her out. It's a juvenile behavior. She's found an adult to tease. She's being an ordinary brat kid. For God's sake, you make something out of this, you'll fixit, Yanni, does a damned juvenile-fixated foolhave to tell you calm down with this kid and just let her pull her little prank? She can read you. She can read the tension you're pouring on her, I know damned well she can, because I have to fight like hell to keep her from reading me inthe two or three minutes she comes past and says hello, and you and Denys must be doing real well, the way you're coming through to me. Get off her! Just let the whole thing alone,for God's sake, or what in hell are you trying to do,push her at me till it takes?"A second pause for breath, while Yanni just stood there and stared at him in a way that raised the hair on his neck. "Is that what you're trying to do?Is that what's behind this? Are you helping her do this?"

"You're paranoid."

"Damned right. Damned right,Yanni. What are you trying to do to me?"

"Get out of here! Get the fuck out of here! I got you off. I got you off with Administration. I spent the fucking morning on you, Petroswasted a day covering your ass, and you're damn right this is a psych and you just flunked it, son, you just flunked it! I don't trust you. I don't trust you further than I can see where you are. You walk a tight line, a damned tight line. If she shows up again you get her out of there and you phone Denys before her steps are cool!"

"What about Jordan?"

"Now you want favors."

"What about Jordan?"

"I don't hear anything about them cutting the phone calls. But you're playing with it, son. You're really playing with it. Don'tpush. Don't push any further."

"What are you putting in that report?"

"That you're not real casual around that kid. That you've got yourself some real hostilities about that kid."

"Notabout that kid! About the lousy things you're doing to her, Yanni, about your whole damned program,your whole damned project!You're going to drive her crazy, shooting her full of stuff and jerking everything human away from her, Yanni. You're not a human being any longer!"

"And you've lost your perspective, boy, you've damned well lost your professional perspective! You're feeding your own damn insecurities into the situation. You're interpreting,son, you're not observing, you're not functioning, you've lost your objectivity, and you're off the project, son, you're off the projectuntil you come back here with your head back together. Now get out of here! And don't bother me with these damn play-time projects of yours until you getyour problem fixed. Get out!"

"I don't know what I could have said."

He was shaking. He was shaking all over again when Grant came over to the couch and handed him a glass. The ice rattled. He drank a gulp, and Grant settled down beside him with the tablet.

Give it a few days. Yanni explodes. He calms down.

He shook his head. Made a helpless gesture with the glass and rested his eyes against his hand a moment while the whiskey hit his bloodstream and the cold hit his stomach. "Maybe," he said finally, "maybe Yanni's right. Maybe I'm what he said, an assembly-line designer making an ass out of myself."

"That's not so."

"Yanni ripped me to shreds the last two designs. He was right,dammit, the whole thing would have blown up, they'd have had suicides."

Grant grabbed the tablet next to him, and wrote:

Don't give up.And went on writing: Denys said once Ari didn't fake your Aptitudes. You've taken it as an article of faith that she did. You've always thought you belonged in Education. You do. But Ari wanted you in Design. I wonder why.

His gut went queasy when he read that.

Grant wrote: Ari did a hell of a lot to you. But she never refused to look at your work.

"I'm off the project," he said. Because that was no news to Security and their eavesdroppers. "He says I hate the kid. It's not true, Grant. It's not true. It's not true."

Grant gripped his shoulder. "I know it. I know it, they know it, Yanni knows it, it's what he does—he was psyching you. He was getting you on tape."

"He said I flunked, didn't he?"

"For God's sake, that's part of it, that's part of the psych-out, don't you understand it? You know what he was doing. The test wasn't over yet. He wanted a reaction, and you gave it to him."

"I'm still pulling up what I said." He took a second drink, still shaking. "I can remember what I meant. I don't know if I can figure Yanni well enough to know what he heard."

"Yanni's good. Remember that. Remember that."

He tried to. He wrote: The question is, whose side is he on?

xii

Horse dipped his head and took grain from Florian's palm. "See," he said to Catlin, "see, he's friendly. He just worries when it's strangers. You want to touch him?"

Catlin did, very carefully. Horse shied back.

Catlin outright grinned as she jerked her hand back. "He's smart." The pigs and chickens had not impressed Catlin at all. She had just looked at the chicks in disgust when they piled up against the wall, and retreated from the piglets in some alarm when they rushed up to get the food. Then she had said they were stupid, and when he explained how smart they were about what they ate, she said they wouldn't be bacon if they were smarter about where they got what they ate.

The cows she said looked strong, but she was not very interested.

But Horse got the first real grin Florian had ever seen from Catlin, and she climbed up on the rail and watched while Horse played games with them and snorted and threw his head.

"We aren't going to eat Horse's babies," Florian said, climbing up beside her. "He's a working animal. That means they're not for food."

Catlin took that in the way she took a lot of things, with no comment, but he saw the nod of her head, which was Catlin agreeing with something.

He liked Catlin. That took a lot of deciding, because Catlin was hard to get hold of, but they had been through the Room a lot of times, and only once had he been Got and that was because they had Got Catlin first, and there had just been a whole lot of the Enemy, all Olders. Catlin had been Got twice in all, but the second time she had yelled Go! and given him time to blow a door and get through, which was his fault: he had been slower than he ought; so she Got all the Enemy but the one that Got her, and he Got that one, because hehad a grenade, and the Enemy didn't expect him to have because he was a tech with his hands full. Catlin had been real proud of him for that.

He was just glad it was a game, and he told the Instructor it was his fault, not Catlin's. But the Instructor said they were a team, and it didn't matter.

He gave them half their Rec time.

Which was enough time to come over here. And this time he talked Catlin into coming with him and meeting Andy and seeing all the animals.

He was not sure Andy and Catlin got along. But Catlin said Horse was special.