“I was twenty fucking years old and a junior lieutenant,” his aunt said, with some asperity. “I didn’t pick anyone.”

“Don’t give me that shit. I’m twenty.”

“And you’re doing so well,” his aunt said. She grimaced and looked away. “They had to blame it on someone, and the Cavalry leader at the time thought readers would die out. We didn’t know they’d show up in architects’ kids.”

“Oh, fantastic,” Tennal said. “Always nice to know we’re wanted. So you stopped experimenting with the remnants?”

Basavi spoke up, her voice like gravel. Her face had taken on a grayish tinge. “But they didn’t,” she said. “They didn’t stop until General Yeni tried to blow this place up.”

The legislator glanced at her, as if surprised someone other than Tennal was giving her trouble. She paused for a moment before answering, “Some of the experiments carried on. They wanted to see if they could make readers less intrusive, at first, and then they must have got onto brainwashing. The Resolution confiscated most of the remnants, but we had thousands of them. I know you want grisly details, but I don’t have any. I was making my career in those years, not peering over the shoulder of a bunch of scientists. Both of you are too young to know, but it was difficult enough for society to deal with suddenly having architects around—and architects are common and controllable. We don’t even know how many readers are out there. There are no tests. But this was all years ago. Nobody really cares whose fault it was anymore.”

“Nobody cares? Nobody cares whether readers are trustworthy? You were going to murder Surit to make me an architect!” Tennal said. “I bloody care. Would you go public with all this?”

The legislator snorted. “If the Convocation brings it to me to sign.” Never, she meant.

“General Yeni rebelled,” Basavi said, doggedly following a train of thought. “General Yeni knew all this.”

“Marit Yeni had … principles,” the legislator said. “I couldn’t bloody stand Marit, but you couldn’t accuse her of wavering. Shit went down. High command took her soldiers; she came here on a suicide mission. She blew up the lab, and we called her a rogue element.” Her mouth twisted. “I didn’t know they were working on brainwashing here. I became legislator much later. I interdicted the site. Then, a couple weeks ago, I finally got around to sending a fleet in to strip it of anything dangerous—that was the mission I attached you to. For all the good that did,” she added. Then she called, “Come in!”

Tennal, already twitchy, spun as the door opened.

One of the unobtrusive black-suited aides—a bodyguard?—came in and gave Tennal and Basavi a hard look. She laid a case on the small table by the legislator and wordlessly checked some of the readings from the medical equipment.