They parted company at the quadrangle. He walked on, heart racing as he walked toward the Wing One doors, where the guard always stood, where—quite likely, the guard was getting an advisement over the pocket-corn; or sending one and getting orders back.
He had seen enough of Security's inner rooms.
He walked through the door, looked at the guard eye to eye—offering no threat, trying without saying a thing to communicate that he was not going to be a problem: he had had enough in his life of being slammed face-about against walls.
"Good day, ser," the guard said, and his heart did a skip-beat. "Good day," he said, and walked on through the small foyer into the hall, all the way to the lift, all the time he was standing there expecting to get a sharp order from behind him, still expecting it all the way down the hall upstairs. But he got as far as his office, and Grant was there, unarrested, looking worried and frayed at the edges.
"It's all right," he said, to relieve the worst of Grant's fears. "Went pretty well. A lot better than it could have." He sat down, drew a breath or two. "She's asked me to teach her."
Grant did not react overmuch. He shrugged finally. "Denys will put the quietus on that."
"No. I don't know what in hell it is. She got us transferred. I," he said as Grant showed alarm, "got us transferred back to Yanni's wing. But right now—and until she gets it straight with Security—we're not Wing One. That's how serious it is—if she's telling the truth; and I haven't a reason in the world to doubt it. She wants me to work with her. She's been talking with Yanni about my work, Yanni told her—damn him—he thinks I'm on some kind of important track, and young sera wants what I know, wants me to show her everything I'm working on."
Grant exhaled a long, slow breath.
"So, well—" Justin swung the chair around, reached for his coffee cup and got up to fill it from the pot. "That's the story. If Security doesn't come storming in here— You want a cup?"
"Thanks. —Sit down, let me get it."
"I've got it." He retrieved Grant's cup and gave him the rest of the pot and a little of his own. "Here." He handed Grant the cup. "Anyway, she was reasonable. She was—"
Not quite the little kid anymore.
But he didn't say that. He said: "—quite reasonable. Concerned." And then remembered with a flood of panic: We're in her administration at the moment; if there's monitoring going on, it's not routed just to Denys, it's going straight to her. My God, what have we said?
"We'll be under her security for a little while," he said with that little Remember the eavesdroppers sign, and Grant's eyes followed that move.
Trying to remember what he had said, too, he imagined, and to figure out how a young and very dangerous CIT could interpret it.