Union Alliance - Cyteen. Part 27

"Yes, ser," Catlin said. She was nervous and anxious at the same time. She had heard about the Room from Olders. She heard about the things they did to you, like turning the lights on and off and sometimes water on the floor. But her Instructor always had the Real Word. Her Instructor told her she had to get through a tunnel and do it fast.

"Are you ready?"

"Yes, ser."

He opened the door. It was a tiny place with another door. The one behind her shut and the lights went out.

The one in front of her opened and cold wet air hit her in the face. The place had echoes.

She moved, not even sure where the tunnel was or whether she was in it.

"Stop!" a voice yelled. And a red dot lit the wall and popped.

It was a shot. She knew that. Her body knew what to do; she was tumbling and meaning to roll and find cover, but the whole floor dropped, and she kept rolling, down a tube and splash! into cold water.

She flailed and got up in knee-deep water. You never believed a Safe. Someone had shot. You ran and got to cover.

But: Get through, Get through, the Instructor had said. the Instructor had said. Fast as you can. Fast as you can.

So she got, fast as she could, till she ran into a wall and followed it, up again, onto the dry. In a place that rang under her boots. Noise was bad. It was dark and she was easy to see in the dark because of her pale skin and hair. She did not know whether she ought to sneak or run, but fast fast was was fast, fast, that was what the Instructor said. that was what the Instructor said.

She ran easy and quick, fingers of one hand trailing on the wall to keep her sense of place in the dark and one hand out ahead of her so she wouldn't run into something.

The tunnel did turn. She headed up a climb and down again onto concrete, and it was still dark.

Something-! she thought, just before she got to it and the Ambush grabbed her. she thought, just before she got to it and the Ambush grabbed her.

She elbowed it and twisted and knew it was an Enemy when she felt it grab her, but it only got cloth and twisting got her away, fast, fast, hard as she could run, heart hammering.

She hit the wall where it turned, bang! and nearly knocked herself cold, but she scrambled up and kept going, kept going- The door opened, white and blinding.

Something made her duck and roll through it, and she landed on the floor in the tiny room, with the taste of blood in her mouth and her lip cut and her nose bleeding.

One door shut and the other opened, and the man there was not the Instructor. He had the brown of the Enemy and he had a gun.

She tried to kick him, but he Got her, she heard the buzz.

The door shut again and opened and she was getting up, mad and ashamed.

But this time it was her Instructor. "The Enemy is never fair," he said. "Let's go find out what you did right and wrong."

Catlin wiped her nose. She hurt. She was still mad and ashamed. She had gotten through. She wished she had got the man at the end. But he was an Older. That was not fair either. And her nose would not stop bleeding.

The Instructor got a cold cloth and had her put it on her neck. He said the med would look at her nose and her mouth. Meanwhile he turned on the Scriber and had her tell what she did and he told her most Sixes got stopped in the tunnel.

"You're exceptionally good," he said.

At which she felt much, much better. But she was not going to forget the Enemy at the end. They Got you here even when the lesson was over. That was the Rule. She hated being Got. She hated it. She knew when you grew up you went where Got was dead. She knew what dead was. They took the Sixes down to the slaughterhouse and they saw them kill a pig. It was fast and it stopped being a pig right there. They hauled it up and cut it and they got to see what dead meant: you just stopped, and after that you were just meat. No next time when you were dead, and you had to Get the Enemy first and make the Enemy dead fast.

She was good. But the Enemy was not fair. That was a scary thing to learn. She started shaking. She tried to stop, but the Instructor saw anyhow and said the med had better have a look at her.

"Yes, ser," she said. Her nose still bubbled and the cloth was red. She blotted at it and felt her knees wobble as she walked, but she walked all right.

The med said her nose was not broken. A tooth was loose, but that was all right, it would fix itself.

The Instructor said she was going to start marksmanship. He said she would be good in that, because her genotype was rated that way. She was expected to do well in the Room. All her genotype did. He said genotypes could sometimes get better. He said that was who she had to beat. That was who every azi had to beat. Even if she had never seen any other AC-7892.

She got a good mark for the day. She could not tell anyone. You were never supposed to. She could not talk about the tunnel. The Instructor told her so. It was a Rule.

It was only the last Enemy that worried her. The Instructor said a gun would have helped and size would have helped, but otherwise there was not much she could have done. It had not been wrong to roll at the last. Even if it put her on the floor when the door opened.

"I could have run past him," she said.

"He would have shot you in the back," the Instructor said. "Even in the hall."

She thought and thought about that.

iv "Vid off," Justin said, and the Minder cut it. He sat in his bathrobe on the couch. Grant wandered in, likewise in his bathrobe, toweling his hair.

"What's the news tonight?" Grant asked, and Justin said, with a little unease at his stomach: "There's some kind of flap in Novgorod. Something about a star named Gehenna."

"Where's that?" There was was no star named Gehenna in anybody's reckoning. Or there had not been, until tonight. Grant looked suddenly sober as he sat down on the other side of the pit. no star named Gehenna in anybody's reckoning. Or there had not been, until tonight. Grant looked suddenly sober as he sat down on the other side of the pit.

"Over toward Alliance. Past Viking." The news report had not been entirely specific. "Seems there's a planet there. With humans on it. Seems Union colonized it without telling anybody. Sixty years ago."

"My G.o.d," Grant murmured.

"Alliance amba.s.sador's arrived at station with an official protest. They're having an emergency session of the Council. Seems we're in violation of the Treaty. About a dozen clauses of it."

"How big big a colony?" Grant asked, right to the center of it. a colony?" Grant asked, right to the center of it.

"They don't know. They don't say."

"And n.o.body knew knew about it. Some land of Defense base?" about it. Some land of Defense base?"

"Might be. Might well be. But it isn't now. Apparently it's gone primitive."

Grant hissed softly. "Survivable world."

"Has to be, doesn't it? We're not talking about any bail of rock. The news-service is talking about the chance of some secret stuff from back in the war years."

Grant was quiet a moment, elbows on knees.

The war was the generation before them. The war was something no one wanted to repeat; but the threat was always there. Alliance merchanters came and went. Sol had explored the other side of s.p.a.ce and got its fingers burned-dangerously. Eetees with a complex culture and an isolationist sentiment. Now Sol played desperate politics between Alliance and Union, trying to keep from falling under Alliance rule and trying to walk the narrow line that might leave it independent of Alliance ships without pushing Alliance into defending its treaty prerogatives or bringing Alliance interests and Union into conflict. Things were so d.a.m.ned delicate. And they had gotten gradually better.

A generation had grown up thinking it was solving the problems.

But old missiles the warships had launched a hundred years ago were still a shipping hazard. Sometimes the past came back into the daily news with a vengeance.

And old animosities surfaced like ghosts, troubling a present in which humans knew they were not alone.

"It doesn't sound like it was any case of finding three or four survivors," he said to Grant. "They're saying 'illegal colony' and they admit it's ours."

"Still going? Organized?"

"It's not real clear."

Another moment of silence. Grant sat up then and remembered to dry his hair before it dried the way it was. "d.a.m.n crazy mess," Grant said. "Did they say they got them off, or are they going to? Or what are they going to do about it?"

"Don't know yet."

"Well, we can guess where Giraud's going to be for the next week or so, can't we?"

v Ari was bored with the offices. She watched the people come in and out. She sat at a desk in back of the office and cut out folded paper in patterns that she unfolded. She got paper and drew a fish with a long tail.

Finally she got up and slipped out while Kyle wasn't looking, while maman was doing something long and boring in the office inside; and it looked like maman was going to be talking a long time.

Which meant maman would not mind much if she walked up and down the hall. It was only offices. That meant no stores, no toys, nothing to look at and no vid. She liked sitting and coloring all right. But maman's own offices were best, because there was a window to look out.

There was nothing but doors up and down. The floor had metal stripes and she walked one, while she looked in the doors that were open. Most were.

That was how she saw Justin.

He was at a desk, working at a keyboard, very serious.

She stood in the doorway and saw him there. And waited, just watching him, for the little bit until he would see her.

He was always different from all the rest of the people. She remembered him from a glittery place, and Grant with him. She saw him only sometimes, and when she asked maman why people got upset about Justin, maman said she was imagining things.

She knew she was not. It was a danger-feeling. It was a worried feeling.

She knew she ought not to bother him. But it was all right here in the hall, where there were people going by. And she just wanted to look at him, but she did not want to go inside.

She shifted to her other foot and he saw her then.

"h.e.l.lo," she said.

And got that fear-feeling again. His, as he looked up. And hers, as she thought she could get in trouble with maman.

"h.e.l.lo," he said, nervous-like.

It was always like that when she was around Justin. The nervous-feeling went wherever he did, and got worse when she got close to him. From everybody. It was a puzzle she could not work out, and she sensed by the way maman shut down on questions about Justin that he was a puzzle maman did not approve of. Ollie too. Justin came to parties and she saw him from across the room, but maman always came and got her if she went to say h.e.l.lo. So she thought that Justin was somebody in a lot of trouble for something, and maybe there was something Wrong with him, so they were not sure he was going to behave right. Sometimes azi got like that. Sometime CITs did. Maman said. And it was harder to straighten CITs out, but easier to make azi upset. So she mustn't tease them. Except Ollie could take it all right.

There was a lot about Justin that said azi, but she knew that he wasn't. He was just Justin. And he was a puzzle that came and went and no one ever wanted kids around.

"Maman's down there with ser Peterson," she said conversationally, also because she wanted him to know she was not running around where she had no business to be. So this was Justin's office. It was awfully small. Papers were everywhere. She leaned too far and caught her balance on the door. Fool, maman would say. Stand up. Stand straight. Don't wobble around. But Justin never said much. He left everything for her to say. "Where's Grant?"

"Grant's down at the library," Justin said.

"I'm six now."

"I know."

"How do you know that?"

Justin looked uncomfortable. "Isn't your maman going to be wanting you pretty soon?"

"Maman's having a meeting. I'm tired of being down there." He was going to ignore her, going back to his work. She was not going to have him turn his shoulder to her. She walked in and up to the chair by his desk. She leaned on the arm and looked up at him. "Ollie's always working."

"So am I. I'm busy, Ari. You go along."

"What are you doing?"

"Work."

She knew a go-away when she heard one. But she did not have to mind Justin. So she leaned on her arms and frowned and tried a new approach. "I go to tapestudy. I can read that. It says Sub-" Sub-" She twisted around, because it was a long word on the screen. She twisted around, because it was a long word on the screen. "Sub-li-min-al mat-ma-trix." "Sub-li-min-al mat-ma-trix."

He turned the screen off and turned around and frowned at her.

She thought maybe she had gone too far, and oughtn't to be leaning on her elbows quite so close to him. But backing up was something she didn't like at all. She stuck out her lip at him.

"Go back to maman, Ari. She's going to be looking for you."

"I don't want to. What's a sub-liminal matrix?"

"A set of things. A special arrangement of a set." He shoved his chair back and stood up, so she stood up and got back. "I've got an appointment. I've got to lock up the office. You'd better get on back to your mother."

"I don't want to." He was awfully tall. Like Ollie. Not safe like Ollie. He was pushing her out, that was what. She stood her ground.

"Out," he said, at the door, pointing to the hall.

She went out. He walked out and locked the door. She waited for him. She had that figured out. When he walked on down the hall she went with him.

"Back," he said, stopping, pointing back toward where maman was.

She gave him a nasty smile. "I don't have to."

He looked upset then. And he got very quiet, looking down at her. "Ari, that's not nice, is it?"

"I don't have to be nice."

"I'd like you better."

That hurt. She stared up at him to see if he was being nasty, but he did not look like it. He looked as if he was being nasty, but he did not look like it. He looked as if he was the hurt one. he was the hurt one.