Uncle Denys was right. It was a huge place. It was very quiet, and at the same time filled with strange noises—motors going on, expansion of metal in the ducts, or small sounds that might have been a step, or a breath, though the Minder would surely sound an alarm if there were a living presence.
If it had not been tampered with. If Base One itself was reliable.
Ari knew which bedroom had been the first Ari's. The closets were full of her clothes. The drawers had more clothes, sweaters, underwear, jewelry, real jewelry, she thought. And the smell of the drawers and the closet was the smell of home—the scent she wore. The same smell as permeated her closet at home—at uncle Denys' apartment.
There was a room which had belonged to the first Florian and another which had belonged to the first Catlin. There were uniforms in their closets which were a man's and a woman's. Which bore their numbers. And party clothes in satin and black gauze.
There were things in the bureau drawers—there were guns, and odd bits of electronics, and wire—as well as personal things.
"They were Older," Catlin said.
"Yes," Ari said, feeling a chill in her bones, "they were."
There were, constantly, the sounds, the small whisperings that the rooms made.
"Come on," she said, and brought them out of the first Catlin's room.
She kept telling herself the Minder would react to an intruder.
But what if one had already been there?
What if the Minder were in someone's control?
She took them back to Ari's bedroom, back at the far end of the house They brought the guns that they had found, even though Catlin said they ought not to rely on charges that old. They were better than nothing
Stay with me," Ari said to them, and sat down on the bed and patted the place beside her.
So they got beneath the covers in their clothes, because the night seemed cold, and she was in the middle of the huge bed, Ari's bed, and Florian and Catlin were on either side of her, tucked up against her for warmth, or to keep her warm.
She shivered, and Florian put his arm around her on the right side and Catlin edged closer on her left, until she was warm.
She could not tell them the things they needed to know, like who the Enemy was. She did not know any longer. It was ghosts she imagined. She had read the old books. She was afraid of things she reckoned Florian and Catlin did not even imagine, and they were foolish to name.
No one had slept in this bed, on these sheets, since the first Ari died. No one had used her things or turned back the covers.
The whole bedroom smelled of perfume and musty age.
She knew it was foolish to be afraid. She knew that the sounds probably had to do with heating and cooling of metal ducts and unfamiliar, wooden floors. And the countless systems this place had.
She had read Poe. And Jerome. And knew there was no ghost to haunt the place. Things like that belonged to old Earth, which believed the nights were full of spirits with unfinished business, anxious to lay hands on the living.
They had no place in so modern a place, so far from old Earth, which had had so many dead: Cyteen was new, and they were only stories and silliness.
Except in the dark around their lighted rooms, in the unexplained noises and the start and stop of things that were surely the Minder doing its business
She wanted to ask Florian and Catlin if they felt anything like that, in their azi way of looking at things: she wondered in one pan of her, cold curiosity, if CITs could feel ghosts because of something in CIT mindsets—shades of value, her psych instructor said. Flux-thinking.
Which Florian and Catlin could do, but it was something they were just now learning to do.
Which meant if she told them about ghosts they could get very disturbed: Catlin was so literal, Catlin believed what she said, and if she started talking about Ari being dead and still in this place—
No. Not a good idea.
She tucked the sheets up around her chin and Florian and Catlin both tucked themselves up against her, warm and dependable and free of wild imagination, never mind the fact that Catlin also had a gun with her under the covers, which ought to make her more nervous than thumps in the night
The whole thing was unreal. Uncle Denys had called her bluff, that was what he had done, and hoped she would foul up and come back.
No, Base One had altered itself. It kept saying she was fourteen. It complained she was low in her test scores. Dammit, she was twelve; twelve; twelve; she was not ready to grow up.
And here she was, in a mess because she did not know whether to believe Base One anymore; or where everybody was pushing her life.
By setting her free. It was crazy. They set her free; and she didn't have to listen to Base One, she could ignore it, she didn't have to read the data, she didn't have to know what happened to Ari senior between seven and fourteen, that was seven years, dammit, she was supposed to jump over.
She wanted to be a kid. She wanted to take care of the Filly and have her friends and have fun and be just Ari Emory, just nobody-Ari, not—somebody who was dead.
And they—the They who did things in Reseune, like uncle Denys and uncle Giraud and dead Ari—they shoved her into this huge, cold place and told her to live by herself with no maman and no uncle Denys and no Nelly or Seely, nobody to take care of anything if it went wrong.
It had started out feeling good, and then feeling like an adventure, and now, at 0300 and snuggled down in a strange, huge bed with two kid azi, it started feeling like a terrible mistake.
I wonder if I can get Base One to back up and say I'm twelve again.
Or have I gotten myself into a mess and I can't back up and I can't catch up with it, it's just going to keep going, faster and faster, until I can't handle it anymore.
If I say no, Base One will stop all my accesses and take my Super license, and if they take that, they'll take Florian and Catlin—
They can't do that. Everybody across Union knows me, knows Catlin and Florian, I could call Mayday—
Not if I lose those accesses. Base One has to do that.
I daren't lose them. If I lose that I lose everything. I stop being Ari. I stop being—
—Ari.
I've got to do good, I've got to hold on to this, I can't do those things uncle Denys said, I can't foul up. I'm going to look like a fool, I know I'm going to do something wrong the very first day out—
I wish—
I wish I knew whether I like Ari. I wonder what did happen to her?
Are they going to do it to me, the way they did everything else?
But in this place Base One is supposed to take care of me. If that's lying, then everything is lying and I'm in bad trouble.
I can't foul up tomorrow. I can't look like I've had no sleep. I've got to do better than I usually do, that'll Get uncle Denys, throw me out, dammit, bug my room, put tapes of me under the mountain. I bet he can get at them, I bet he can, I bet his Base can retrieve it.
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 a me. If there ever was a me 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 that was his future.
That was 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.
I have 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?