Free Regenesis by C. J. Cherryh Page B

track down. The tunnel was crowded today, a popular route, past Admin, between Admin and Education—they’d recently installed a bank of vending machines down by the intersection, by the water fountains; but those only produced a traffic jam at noon. Right now people were bent on supper, and restaurants.
    The route was particularly convenient for them: the storm tunnel exit in the Education Wing delivered them right near their own office door, in the 100’s of A corridor, in that sprawling building.
    Their office was dark. Em and the staff had properly locked up and gone home on schedule, to residences down in the town—the shuttle buses, a whole new fleet of them, ran a heavy service right at 1610h, the whole fleet lining up at the curb ten minutes after shift change. Em and the staff likely had mentally dumped the day’s business and joined the outpouring, blithe and free for their own pursuits of the evening.
    Their employers, however, didn’t enjoy the luxury of such precise hours—especially not on teaching days.
    Justin reached for his keycard, but Grant beat him to it and opened the door—walked in through the foyer that was Em’s office, into their own slightly less tidy inner sanctum. Grant disposed his long frame in his own office chair, legs extended at grand leisure, while Justin opened his briefcase and extracted the desired folder. He fed sheets into the reader, which spat them out again. He returned each to the folder in the briefcase, not to mingle them with the piles of paper on the desk.
    Fifteen sheets, file done, and the program asked him what program should apply.
    He used his keycard again and told it, aloud, “Code Y10, Class alpha through mu. Read to D3, run Integrations. Output results to Base One, code Y10.”
    “Voiceprint accepted.”
    For about a second, thanks to his keycard and that spoken code, it hadn’t been his own computer talking: that had been Base One itself, in a significantly different tone. It always sounded so human.
    Then it was gone. His own computer, with far lower clearances, said, “Done.”
    “Thanks, computer, endit.”
    “Well,” someone said. It was his own voice. Or nearly so. He turned, his heart giving a little thump, and saw his father standing in the inner doorway.
    “Hey, we’re closed for the day.” Half a joke. His father wasn’t supposed to be here. It took a security clearance to get through that door, in an office that dealt with actively working psychsets and one special student’s study projects. Jordan Warrick’s security clearance was entirely nuked. Gone. Non-existent. And Em would have stalled, held him in the outer office. Nobody being there but them, they’d just left the inner door open and the outer door unlocked.
    “I figured you were.” It wasn’t only Jordan who’d come in, it was, of course, his companion Paul as well, whose accesses had also been nuked. Jordan walked all the way through into their inner office and looked around. “My old digs.”
    It had been. Before the first Ari died.
    “You changed the paint,” Jordan observed.
    Justin was still off-balance. He looked around him, foolishly, remembered it had once been a slightly different shade. Twenty years ago. “I suppose it is different. Still green. I didn’t even question it.”
    “Probably security took the walls apart.” Jordan gave a look around him, and Justin snapped the briefcase shut, sealing up the last item exposed. “Probably a whole new set of bugs.”
    “Possibly,” Justin said. He worked with his father in off hours since Jordan’s return, in the living room of Jordan’s apartment. He brought a different briefcase with him when he did.
    Jordan asked him: “What are you working on?”
    “Today’s a teaching day.” He used his handprint to open the safe, and put the briefcase into it.
    “Her.”
    “She’s the only student I’ve got.” He shut the door and sealed it, feeling much more comfortable after that door was shut. Grant,