"And do a fix for it."

"And lose the edge, just as often. —Which brings us back to young Ari, who's maybe given the committee all she knows—which I don't believe, if she's as much Ari as she seems, and our Ari—doesn't take chances with her security. I very much think access to those programs is a leverage of sorts—and do you know, I think Denys would have begun to guess that?"

Justin considered that thought, with a small, involuntary twitch of his shoulders. "The committee swears no one can retrieve from Ari's programs without Ari's ID. And possibly it's always been true."

"Possibly—more than that. Possibly that Base, once activated—can't be outmaneuvered in other senses. Possibly it's capable of masking itself."

"Lying about file sizes?"

"And invading other Bases—eventually. Built-in tests, parameters, —I've been thinking how I'd write a program like that ... if she were azi. The first Ariane designed me. Maybe—" Grant made a little quirk of his mouth. "Maybe I have a—you'd say innate, but that's a mistake— in-builtresonance with Ari's programs. I remember my earliest integrations. I remember—there was a—even for a child— sensualpleasure in the way things fit, the way the pieces of my understanding came together with such a precision. She was so very good. Do you think she didn't prepare for them to replicate her? Or that she'd be less careful with a child of her own sets, than with an azi of her design?"

Justin thought about it. Thought about the look on Grant's face, the tone of his voice—a man speaking about his father ... or his mother. "Flux-thinking," he said. "I've wondered— Do you love her, Grant?" Grant laughed, fleeting surprise. "Loveher."

"I don't think it's impossible. I don't think it's at all unlikely."

"Reseune is my Contract and I can never get away from it?"

"Reseune is my Contract: I shall not want? —I'm talking about CIT-style flux. The kind that makes for ambivalences. Do you love her?"

A frown then. "I'm scared of the fact this Ari ran a probe. I'm scared because Ari's got the first Ari's notes—which include my manual, I'm quite sure. And what if—what if—This is my nightmare, Justin: what if—in my most fluxed imaginings, Ari planned for her successor; what if she planted something in me that would respond to her with the right trigger? —But then I flux back again and think that's complete nonsense. I'll tell you another nightmare: I'm scared of my own program tape."

Justin suffered a little sympathetic chill. "Because Ari wrote it."

Grant nodded. "I don'twant to review it under trank nowadays. I know I could take enough kat to put me flat enough I could take it—but then I think—I can handle things without it. I can manage. I don't need it, God, CITs put up with the flux and they learn from it. And I do—learn from it, that is."

"I wish to hell you'd told me that."

"You'd worry. And there's no reason to worry. I'm fine—except when you ask me questions like that: do I love Ari?God, that's skewed. That's the first time I ever wondered about it in CIT terms. And you're right, there's a multi-level flux around her I don't like at all."

"Guilt?"

"Don't do that to me."

"Sorry. I just wondered."

Grant shifted position in the nest of pillows, against the arm. "Have you ever scanned my tape for problems?"

"Yes," Justin said after a little hesitation, a time-stretch of hesitation, that felt much too long and much too significant. "I didn't want to make it evident—I didn't want to worry you about it."

"I worry. I can't help but worry. It's too basic to me."

"You—worry about it."

Grant gave a small, melancholy lift of the brows, and seemed to ponder for a moment, raking a hand through his hair. "I think she asked something that jolted me—deep. I think I know where. I think she asked about my tape—which, admittedly, I have a small guilt about: I don't use it the way I'm supposed to; I think she asked about contact with subversives; and I dream about Winfield, lately. The whole scene out at Big Blue. The plane, and the bus with those men, and that room. . . ."

"Why didn't you tell me that?"

"Are dreams abnormal?"

"Don't give me that. Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because it's not significant. Because I know—when I'm not fluxed—that I'm all right. You want me to take the tape, I'll take it. You want to run a probe of your own—do it. I've certainly no apprehensions about that. Maybe you should. It's been a long time. Maybe I'd even feel safer if you did. —If,"

Grant added with a little tilt of the head, a sidelong glance, a laugh without humor. "If I didn't then wonder if youweren't off. You see? It's a mental trap."

"Because you got a chance to see Jordan. Because the damn place is crazy!" Of a sudden he felt a rush of frustration, an irrational concern so intense he got up and paced the length of the living room, looked back at Grant in a sudden feeling of walls closing in, of life hemmed around and impeded at every turn.

Not true, he thought. Things were better. Never mind that it was another year of separation from his father, another year gone, things no different than they had ever been—things were better in prospect, Ari was closer than she had ever been to taking power in her own right, and her regime, he sincerely believed it—promised change, when it would come.

They're burying Giraud today.

Why in hell does that make me afraid?

"I wish," Grant said, "you'd listened to me. I wish you'd gone to Planys instead."

"What difference? We'd have still been separate. We'd still worry—"

"What then? What's bothering you?"

"I don't know." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Being pent up in here, I think. This place. This—" He thought of a living room in beige and blue; and realized with a little internal shift-and-slide that it was not Jordan's apartment that had come back with that warm little memory. "God. You know where I wish we could go back to? Ourplace. The place—" Face in a mirror, not the one he had now. The boy's face. Seventeen and innocent, across the usual clutter of bottles on the bathroom counter, getting ready for an evening—

Tape-flash, ominous and chaotic. The taste of oranges.

"—before all this happened. That's useless, isn't it? I don't even want to be that boy. I only wish I was there knowing what I know now."

"It was good there," Grant said.

"I was such a damned fool."

"I don't think so."

Justin shook his head.

"I know differently," Grant said. "Put yourself in Ari's place. Wonder—what you would have been—on her timetable, with her advantages, with the things they did to her— You'd have been—"

"Different. Harder. Older."

"—someone else. Someone else entirely. CITs are such a dice-throw. You're so unintentionally cruel to each other."

"Do you think it's necessary? Can't we learn without putting our hand in the fire?"

"You're asking an azi, remember?"

"I'm askingan azi. Is there a way to get an Ariane Emory out of that geneset—or me—out of mine—"

"Without the stress?" Grant asked. "Can flux-states be achieved intellectually—when they have endocrine bases? Can tape-fed stress—short of the actual chance of breaking one's neck—be less real, leave less pain—than the real experience? What if that tape Ari made—were only tape? What if it had never happened—but you thought it had? Would there be a difference? What if Ari's maman had never died, but she thought she had? Would she be sane? Could she trust reality? I don't know. I truly don't know. I would hate to discover that everything until now—was tape; and I was straight from the Town, having dreamed all this."