Cherryh, C J - Alliance-Union 08 by Cyteen Trilogy V1 1 html

Grant had just been transferred, had been Aptituded into Ari's wing. Let her, he had said to his father. Let her take me into her staff. Don't contest it. It's all right. You can't afford a falling-out with her right now, and maybe it's a good place for me to be.
    Because he had had a notion then that his father, harried with plans (again) for getting a transfer, could lose too much.
    You tell me, Jordan had said with the greatest severity, you tell me immediately if she makes trouble for you.
    There had been trouble. There had been more than trouble, from his second day in that wing—an interview with Ari in her office, Ari too close and touching him in a way that started out only friendly and got much too personal, while she suggested quietly that there was more reason than his test scores that she had requisitioned him into her wing, and that he and Grant both could . . . accommodate her, that others of her aides did, and that was the way things were expected to be on her staff. Or, she had hinted, there were ways to make life difficult.
    He had been disgusted, and scared; and worst of all, he had seen Ari's intention, the trap laid—slow provocations, himself the leverage she meant to wield against Jordan, a campaign to provoke him to an incident she could use. So he had gone along with it when she put her hands on him, and stammered his way through reports while she sat on the arm of his chair and rested her hand on his shoulder. She had asked him to her office after hours, had asked him questions, pretending to fill out personnel reports, and he mumbled answers, things he did not dwell on, things he did not want even to remember, because he had never even had a chance to do the things she asked him about, and never wanted in his life to do some of the things she talked about; and suspected that without tape, without drugs, without anything but his own naivete and her skill, she was in the process of twisting his whole life. He could fight back—by losing his capacity to be shocked, by answering her flippantly, playing the game—
    —but it was her game.
    "I'll think of something," he said to Grant. "There's a way out of this. It'll be all right." And he let Grant go off to his rooms to pack, while he stood alone in the living room in the grip of a chill that went to his bones. He wanted to phone Jordan, ask advice, whether there was anything legal they could do.
    But it was all too likely Jordan would go straight to Ari to negotiate Grant free of her. Then Ari might play other cards, like tapes of those office sessions—
    —O God, then Jordan would go straight to the Science Bureau, and launch a fight that would break all the careful agreements and lose him everything.
    Query the House computers on the law—but there was nothing he dared use: every log-on was recorded. Everything left traces. There was no way that Reseune would not win a head-on challenge. He did not know the extent of Ari's political power, but it was enough that it could open new exploration routes, subvert companies on distant starstations and affect trade directly with old Earth itself; and that was just the visible part of it.
    Beyond the archway, he heard the sounds of the closet door, saw Grant piling his clothes onto the bed.
    He knew suddenly where Grant was going—the way they had dreamed of when they were boys, sitting on the banks of the Novaya Volga, sending boats made of old cans floating down to Novgorod, for city folk to marvel at. And later, on a certain evening when they had talked about Jordan's transfer, about the chance of them being held until Jordan could get them out.
    It was that worst-case now, he thought, not the way they had planned, but it was the only chance they had.
    He walked into Grant's room, laid a finger on his lips for silence, because there was Security monitoring: Jordan had told him it went on. He took Grant's arm, led him quickly and quietly out into the living room, toward the door, took his coat from