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It was a party. Catlin hadn’t known about parties before. Neither had Florian. Parties, it turned out, was getting bunch of CIT kids together in the apartment and watching them get really fluxed. Flux was another word from Sera; Catlin and Florian liked it. It was good to have a word for the way CITs acted so strange.
A lot of things could get CITs fluxed. Alcohol, definitely, but Sera had decided to cut back on that after the first party she’d held a few months ago, when they’d almost set off the fire alarm. Now there was just dancing, and that got them all fluxed nearly as fast. Catlin liked dancing, a lot, and the CIT kids liked it when she danced, and they usually convinced Florian to dance, too. Catlin was azi, she didn’t get fluxed like the CITs did, but she really liked how much focus it took to dance well, especially with a partner, and keep an eye on everyone in the room at the same time. It made all her nerves buzz.
She noticed something odd about Amy Carnath, right off at the start of the night, but it took her a whole hour of dancing and talking to figure it out. She just did the dancing. Florian and Sera did the talking. And Amy Carnath watched. She talked, she laughed, she even danced with Sam Whitely a couple times, but the whole night she watched- Sera.
And Catlin figured out why, eventually, because even if she always had trouble understanding CIT social behaviors, body language was simple, and Amy Carnath’s body language was shouting loud and clear.
Catlin thought about it, after the guests had gone home, while Florian was looking after Sera and Catlin was picking paper cups up off the floor in the living room. She ought to tell Sera.
It was so strange even thinking that Catlin knew a social thing that Sera hadn’t picked up on. But she knew Sera didn’t know, because Sera talked about Amy a lot, with Florian.
Catlin should tell her. She should at least tell Florian. She didn’t want to. She didn’t know why she didn’t want to.
Florian was with Sera. Catlin could hear Sera laughing, even down the corridor. Catlin’s hearing was better than either of them realized. Her skin felt strangely hot. She picked up the last cup, and threw it into the incinerator, a perfect shot from across the room. That was what she was good at. Reflexes. Seeing what people were going to do before they did them, seeing what they wanted to do, from the way their muscles moved. Usually she was perfectly happy with that.
In the morning Sera had a hangover. Catlin poured her juice. Florian had left to go spend his daily hour with the Filly. Sera took the juice with a quiet, “Thanks.” There was silence while she drank, and then she said, “Catlin, what do you think makes somebody a bad person?”
Catlin blinked. “Sera?”
“Is it just doing bad things? Or do you have to know that they’re bad, when you’re doing them?”
She was squinting at her juice, pupils constricted from the headache. She was wearing a dress so dark blue it was almost black. Catlin remembered, suddenly, that afternoon several years ago, Sera dressed all in black sneaking down to the Town with them, practicing being azi, pretending to be like them, pretending they were each one of three instead of two-and-Sera.
“I don’t know,” Catlin said. And because Sera had asked, because she seemed genuinely distressed and Catlin wished, wished so hard for one moment that she was more like Florian, she tried to come up with something better. “That’s not an azi thing. They never tell you that you’re bad. They just say you’re good, when you’re little and you do what you’re supposed to. So I guess being bad is not doing what you’re supposed to.”
“Fuck that,” Sera said. “I don’t care what I’m supposed to do. I want to do what’s right, damn it. I just- I don’t know, sometimes. It’s hard.”
“Being more like me wouldn’t help,” Florian said, when Catlin repeated the conversation to him that evening. “She has a lot of questions like that, and most of the time I can’t help her with them. She worries a lot.” Catlin knew that. “She worries about us, that she’s not being a good Supervisor to us.”
Catlin knew that too. “Because she does sex with you.”
Florian blushed. “Not just that,” he said. “Because I think she wants someone to talk to about CIT problems, and we’re not it.”
That hurt, more than Catlin had expected it to, since she sort of had known it already, but hearing it said like that stung. She kept thinking about Amy Carnath, dancing with Ser Whitely and looking over his shoulder at Catlin’s Sera, where she sat on the couch, sipping a drink, not dancing. She still hadn’t told Sera about that.
The Rule was, if you have a problem you can’t figure yourself, go to your Supervisor, and you’ll get tape that tells you what the right answer is. If Catlin were still a Little she could do that, she could ask for tape. But she wasn’t. It had been different ever since the day she and Florian were called to Hospital together and she went in Catlin AC-7892 and came out as something different, as Sera’s Catlin. It was extra different now since they had left Ser Denys, now no one but Sera was allowed to give her tape. Catlin couldn’t go to her Super with a problem when her Super was the problem.
It was tricky.
It took Catlin about a week to figure out a plan and set it up. She went to the office in Wing Two while Sera was at a class, and while Justin Warrick was out getting coffee. The office door was locked but she’d planned for that. It opened with a noise, and Grant looked up at her from his terminal, face white.
He was easy to read, as easy as any other azi. He was real angry, but he didn’t shout at her, like a CIT would shout. She thought he knew what she could do to him. He said, real quiet, “What are you doing, Catlin?”
She knew why he was mad. She wasn’t supposed to talk to him, but he was even more not supposed to talk to her, and she was going to get him in serious trouble. She didn’t care about that. “I’d like to speak to you for a minute, Ser,” she said.
“That’s not a good idea,” he said. He was sweating. His face was even paler than hers. “You should leave.”
“I’m not going to leave,” she said. He was being stupid, but it was an older kind of stupid, not a CIT thing. He should still know better. “If you want to get rid of me you’ll have to talk to me first.”
He stared at her for four seconds. “All right,” he said.
“Outside,” she said. She could see he didn’t know whether to be relieved or scared about that. He got up. He followed her out of the office, down the stairs to the quadrangle. She knew where the blind spots were in House surveillance. Security wouldn’t like it, but it’d be worse, to have them overheard.
When she stopped he stopped too. She could tell he was very scared. That was fine, if it didn’t distract him too badly. She took a moment, to get all the words lined up in her head properly, before she said, “How do you take care of your Supervisor when they’re not always right?”
That surprised him. That probably wasn’t what he had been expecting her to ask. He took a while to answer. She kept an eye on the area, kept an eye on him. No one nearby. No signs of danger. Just her and him. He was very tall, but weak, twitchy and nervous and pretty soft-looking under that dark jacket. She knew a few things about him, despite the security block that kept Sera from looking at his files in the system. She knew he was eighteen years older than her. More than twice her age, but still younger than you’d think, from all the lines on his face, that made him look like a CIT.
“Why the hell are you asking me?” he said.
“I saw you at the New Years party,” Catlin said. “You told Ser Warrick he was drinking too much, and you took his glass away. He let you.”
She’d seen more than that. She’d been watching Grant and his Supervisor for years, ever since she and Florian had first been sent to Sera and she’d told them Grant and Justin Warrick were part of the What’s Unusual. Sera had decided it wasn’t worth doing a full investigation on them, that it’d tip off Ser Denys and Ser Giraud that Sera knew something was up, but Catlin had always watched them, at each Family gathering, every time they passed within a hundred feet of Sera at the shops or restaurants. She knew they were sleeping together, that was the easiest thing to see from body language. But every adult CIT in the House was sleeping with at least one azi, that wasn’t unusual. There were other things that were unusual about Grant and Ser Warrick, things she saw but didn’t understand.
“Security can’t hear us here,” she said. “I know. No one will know what we say except Sera.”
Grant shut his eyes. He said, very quietly, “What do you think your Supervisor is wrong about?”
That was- bad, the way he phrased it. Sera wasn’t wrong about anything, it was just-
“She worries that she’s wrong about things,” Catlin said. “I don’t know how to help her.”
He didn’t say anything. He was still waiting. Catlin breathed out sharp in frustration. She wasn’t going to give him anything more.
After a while he said, “Justin always says your Ari is a good kid.” He met her gaze. She had to crane her neck a little, he was so inconveniently tall. “I think he wants to believe that.”
“What do you think?”
He bit his lip, and then he said, in a rush, “Ariane Emory was a monster.” He laughed a little, high pitched, nervous, an azi under extreme stress. “If you’re wrong about who’s listening I’m going to be in a lot of trouble for saying that to you. But I don’t think they watch you as closely as they should. They don’t really see you, or your partner. You’re just azi.”
Catlin felt cold. She clenched her fists, trying to burn it out.
“Catlin.” He was very serious. “If she’s worrying, that’s a good sign. I know you weren’t designed to judge good and evil. But maybe if you had been, things would have… Just keep thinking about it. There’s no easy answer. Your deepsets tell you there must be, but there isn’t. Just- stay close to her. Do your best to help her.”
“Of course, Ser,” Catlin said.
When Sera returned to the apartment Catlin told her what she had done. She could have prevented Sera from finding out, although Florian would have known. But she hadn’t.
Sera went pale and tense, and Florian tensed up too, nervous. “Why did you do that?” Sera asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She was fluxed. There were tears in the corners of her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
This is what it would have felt like, Catlin thought, if the tapes had told me I was bad, when I was a little. She wanted to scream. She kept herself still. “Can I talk to you alone, Sera?”
Sera’s jaw worked for a moment. She swallowed. “Okay,” she said, voice small.
Catlin walked to Florian, and for the first time in their lives, hugged him, without him hugging her first. He was stiff, shocked. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “Don’t worry. I promise it’s all right.” He relaxed, and hugged her back. When she let go, he nodded to her and to Sera, and disappeared into the bedroom suite, closing the door softly behind him.
“Please explain,” Sera said, tight, ready to unwind and snap like a trap.
“Amy is attracted to you,” Catlin said. It wasn’t what she had thought to say. The hurt and confusion in Sera’s body transformed into utter bewilderment.
“No she isn’t,” Sera said after a moment. “She likes Sam.”
Catlin shook her head. “She likes you. I can tell, from her body language. When I got my sex education tape it said girls could like girls. Did yours?”
“Yes,” Sera said. “But- well, I didn’t think anyone here- I know some of the grownups, but-” She stopped.
“Do you like her, Sera?” Catlin asked. Her heart was pounding like she was in the middle of an Exercise. It felt terrible. Why couldn't this be easy, like bombs or guns or Rooms full of Enemies?
“Well, I don’t know,” Sera said. “I mean- she’s a good friend, but- CITs are complicated, and none of them are as pretty or smart as you and Florian, anyway.”
“It’s not because she’s a girl?” Catlin had never felt this kind of stress before, never in her life. She felt sweaty, like she had a fever.
“I don’t know,” Sera said. “I never thought about it.”
“If you liked girls,” Catlin said, “would you like me?”
Sera looked up at her. Really looked, eyes wide, like she’d never seen Catlin’s face before, never really looked at it.
“Oh,” Sera said, comprehension dawning in her eyes. “That’s what you wanted to talk to Grant about.”
Catlin nodded.
The lie ought to have shaken her to her deepsets. It didn’t. Maybe she was programming herself now, making herself into something more like what Sera needed. Maybe Grant had planted something in their conversation, was running something to change her with all his psych expertise. All she could think about, all she could care about was Sera resting a hand on her cheek.
“This isn’t just because you feel left out, is it?” Sera asked. Still worrying.
“Part of it maybe,” Catlin said. “I just-” Her breath caught in her chest. “I want-”
“Okay,” Sera said. Her eyes were so wide and dark. “I think- me too.”
Their education tapes hadn’t told them much about how you could do sex with two girls, and in the end they had to find a tape in Ari Senior’s library, which made Sera uncomfortable. “She had really broad tastes,” Sera said. “But I don’t think she ever did this with her Catlin.”
“Good,” Catlin said. “Then it’s just us.”
Sera smiled, and it brightened the universe, like always. “Yes,” she said, and kissed Catlin on the mouth, and laughed. “Just us.”
They figured it out.
Afterward Catlin put on one of Sera’s robes, although it was too short for her, the edge hanging to her knees, and she went to Florian’s room. He was sitting on his bed waiting for her. “It’s all right,” she said again. “It’ll be all of us, from now on.”
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, that’s better.”
“I know I’m not good at the flux stuff,” Catlin said. “But I’m going to try and get better at it. So it’s not just you and Sera trying to deal with it. I’m your partner.”
“I didn’t mind,” Florian said.
“I know,” Catlin said. “See you in the morning.”
When she was lying in bed she knocked on the wall between their rooms, like she hadn’t done in ages, and smiled to herself when she heard him knock back.