The Tester's name was Will, a Gamma type, a warehousing supervisor what time he was not involved in test-taking, plain as midday and matter-of-fact about internal processes Gamma azi were not usually aware of.
Phlegmatic of disposition, if he were a CIT: older, experienced. And stubborn.
"I want to see you in my office," the message from Yanni had said, and Justin had gathered his nerve and gone in with his notes and his Scriber to sit listening while Will GW 79 told him and Yanni what he had told the Testing Super.
It was good news. Good news, no matter how he turned it over and looked at all sides of it.
"He said," Justin reported to Grant when he got back to the office, Grant listening as anxiously as he had: "Will said he got along with it fine. Why Yanni called me in—it seems Will's told his super he wants to take it all the way. He likes it. His medical report is absolutely clean. No hyper reactions, no flutters. His blood pressure is still reading like he was on R&R. He wants to Carry the program. Committee's going to consider it."
Grant got up from where he was sitting and put his arms around him for a moment. Then, at arm's length: "Told you so."
"Not saying the Committee's going to approve." He tried desperately hard to keep his mental balance and not go too far in believing it was working. Discipline: equilibrium. Things didn't work so well when the ashes settled out. There were always disasters, things not planned for; and Administration's whims. He found the damnedest tendency in his hands to shake and his gut to go null-G, every time he thought about believing it was going to work. He wanted it too badly. And that was dangerous. "Damn, now I'm scared of it."
"I told you. I told you I wasn't scared of it. You ought to believe me, CIT. What did Yanni say?"
"He said he'd be happier if the Tester was a little less positive. He said addictions feel fine too ... up to a point."
"Oh, damn him!" Grant threw up his hands and stalked the three clear paces across the cluttered office. "What's the matter with him?"
"Yanni's just being Yanni. And he's serious. It is a point he has to—"
Grant turned around and leaned on his chair back. "I'm serious. You know that frustrates hell out of me. They aren't going to know anything a Tester can't tell them; they've had their run in Sociology, let them believe what the man's saying."
"Well, it frustrates me, too. But it doesn't mean Yanni's going to go down against it. And it's had a clear run. It's had that."
Grant looked at him with agitation plain on his face. But Grant took a deep breath and swallowed it, and cleared the expression away in a transition of emotions possible only in an actor or an azi. "It's had that, yes. They'll clear it. They have to use sense sooner or later."
"They don't have to do anything," he admitted, feeling the pall of Grant's sudden communications shutdown. "They've proved that. I just have some hope—"
"Faith in my creators," Grant repeated quietly. "Damn, it deserves celebrating." The last with cheerfulness, a bright grin. "I can't say I'm surprised. I knew before you ran it. I told you. Didn't I?"
"You told me."
"So be happy. You've earned it."
One tried. There was a mountain of work to do and the office was not the place to discuss subtleties. But walking the quadrangle toward dark, an edge-of-safety shortcut with weather-warnings out and a cloud-bank beyond the cliffs and Wing Two: "You started to say something this afternoon," Justin said. He had picked the route. And the solitude. "About Yanni."
"Nothing about Yanni."
"Hell if there wasn't. Has he been onto you for something?"
"Yanni's conservatism. That's all. He knows better than that. Dammit, he knows it's going through. He just has to find something negative."
"Don't blank on me. You were going to say something. Secrets make me nervous, Grant, you know that."
"I don't know what about. There's no secret."
"Come on. You went 180 on me. What didn't you say?"
A few paces in silence. Then: "I'm trying to remember. Honestly."
Lie.
"You said you were frustrated about something."
"That?" A small, short laugh. "Frustrated they have to be so damn short-sighted."
"You're doing it again," Justin said quietly. "All right. I'll worry in private. No matter. Don't mind. I don't pry."
"The hell."
"The hell. Yes. What's going on with you? You mind telling me?"
More paces in silence. "Is that an order?"
"What the hell is this 'order'? I asked you a question. Is there something the matter with a question?" Justin stopped on the walk where it crossed the sidewalk from Wing Two, in the evening chill with the flash of lightning in the distance. "Something about Yanni? Was it Yanni? Or did I say something?"
"Hey, I'm glad it worked, I am glad. There's nothing at all wrong with me. Or you. Or Will."
"Addictions. Was that the keyword?"
"Let's talk about it later."
"Talk where, then? At home? Is it that safe?"
Grant gave a long sigh, and faced the muttering of thunder and the flickering of lightnings on Wing Two's horizon. It was a dangerous time. Fools lingered out of doors, in the path of the wind that would sweep down—very soon.
"It's frustration," he said. "That they won't take Will's word on it. That they know so damn much because they're CITs."
"They have to be careful. For Will's sake, if nothing else. For the sake of the other programs he tests, —"
"CITs are a necessary evil," Grant said placidly, evenly, against the distant thunder. "What would we azi possibly do without them? Teach ourselves, of course."
Grant made jokes. This was not one of them. Justin sensed that. "You think they're not going to listen to him."
"I don't know what they're going to do. You want to know what's the greatest irritation in being azi, Supervisor mine? Knowing what's right and sane and knowing they won't listen to you."
"That's not exactly an exclusive problem."
"Different." Grant tapped his chest with a finger. "There's listening and listening. They'll always listen to me, when they won't, you. But they won't listen to me the way they do you. No more than they do Will."
"They're interested in his safety. Listening has nothing to do with it."
"It has everything to do with it. They won't take his word—"
"—because he's in the middle of the problem."
"Because an azi is always in the middle of the problem, and damn well outside the decision loop. Yanni's in the middle of the problem, he's biased as hell with CIT opinions and CIT designs, does that disqualify him? No. It makes him an expert."
"1 listen."
"Hell, you wouldn't let me touch that routine."
"For your own damn—good, —Grant." Somehow that came out badly, about halfway. "Well, sorry, but I care. That's not a CIT pulling rank. That's a friend who needs you stable. How's that?"
"Damn underhanded."
"Hey." He took Grant by the shoulder. "Hit me on something else, all right? Let's don't take the work I'd test my own sanity on and tell me you're put out because I won't trust my judgment on it either. I'd give you anything.
I'd let you—"
"There's the trouble."
"What?"
"Let me."
"Friend, Grant. Damn, you're flux-thinking like hell, aren't you?"
"Ought to qualify me for a directorship, don't you think? Soon as we prove we're crazy as CITs we get our papers and then we're qualified not to listen to azi Testers either."
"What happened? What happened, Grant? You want to level with me?"
Grant looked off into the dark awhile. "Frustration, that's all. I—got turned down—for permission to go to Planys."
"Oh, damn."
"I'm not his son. Not—" Grant drew several slow breaths. "Not qualified in the same way. Damn, I wasn't going to drop this on you. Not tonight."
"God." Justin grabbed him and held on to him a moment. Felt him fighting for breath and control.
"I'm tempted to say I want tape," Grant said. "But damned if I will. Damned if I will. It's politics they're playing. It's—just what they can do, that's all. We just last it through, the way you did. Your project worked, dammit. Let's celebrate. Get me drunk, friend. Good and drunk. I'll be fine. That's the benefit of flux, isn't it? Everything's relative. You've worked so damn long for this, we've both worked for it. No surprise to me. I knew it would run. But I'm glad you proved it to them."
"I'll go to Denys again. He said—"
Grant shoved back from him, gently. "He said maybe. Eventually. When things died down. Eventually isn't now, evidently."
"Damn that kid."
Grant's hands bit into his arms. "Don't say that. Don't—even think it."
"She just has lousy timing. Lousy timing. That's why they're so damn nervous. . . ."
"Hey. Not her timing. None of it's—her timing. Is it?"
Thunder cracked. Flashes lit the west, above the cliffs. Of a sudden the perimeter alarm went, a wailing into the night. Wind was coming, enough to break the envelope.
They grabbed each other by the sleeve and the arm and ran for shelter and safety, where the yellow warning lights flashed a steady beacon above the entrance.