Cherryh, C J - Alliance-Union 08 (120 page)

And to a series of insistent questions:
Seri, Dr. Yanni Schwartz, the head of Wing One in Reseune, will be answering any specific questions about that. . ..

. . . No, sera, that would be in the future. Of course my predecessor held the seat. Presently I'm a wing supervisor in Research, I do have a staff, I have projects under my administration—

Every reporter in the room had focused in on that, sharp and hard—scenting a story that was far off their present, urgent assignment: she had thrown out the deliberate lure and they burned to go for it despite the fact they were going out live-feed, with solemn and specific leadins and funeral music. She handed them the hint of a story they could not, with propriety, go for; and kept any hint of deliberate signal off her face when she did it.

But they had gone for it the moment they were off live-feed: to what extent was she actually in Administration, what were the projects, how were the decisions being made inside Reseune and was she in fact involved in that level?

Dangerous questions. Exceedingly dangerous. She had flashed then on bleeding bodies, on subway wreckage, on newsservice stills of a child's toy in the debris.

Seri,
she had said then, direct, not demure: with Ari senior's straight stare and deliberate pause in answering:
any wing administrator is in the process.

Read me, seri: I'm not a fool. I won't declare myself over my uncle's ashes.

But don't discount me in future.

I came here,
she had reminded them in that context, as
a delegated spokesman for the family. That's my immediate concern. I have to go, seri. I have to be up the hill for the services in thirty minutes. Please excuse me. . . .

It was the first funeral she had attended where there was actually burial, a small canister of ash to place in the ground, and two strong gardeners to raise the basalt cenotaph up from the ground and settle it with a final thump over the grave.

She flinched at that sound, inside. So damned little a canister, for tall uncle Giraud.

And burial in earth instead of being shot for the sun. She knew which she would pick for herself—same as her predecessor, same as maman. But it was right for Giraud, maybe.

Emil Carnath called for speeches from associates and colleagues.

"I have a word," Victoria Strassen said right off.

O God, Ari thought.

And braced herself.

"Giraud threw me out of my sister's funeral," Victoria began in a voice sharper and stronger than one ever looked for from that thin body. "I never forgave him for it."

Maddy cast Ari an anguished look across the front of the gathering. Sorry
for this.

Not your fault,
Ari thought.

"What about you, Ariane Emory PR? Are you going to have me thrown out for saying what the truth is?"

"I'll speak after you, aunt Victoria. Maman taught me manners."

That
hit. Victoria's lips made a thin line and she took a double-handed grip on her black cane.

"My sister was
not
your maman," Victoria said. "That's the trouble
in
the House. Dead is dead, that's all. The way it works best. The way it's worked in all of human society. Old growth makes way for new. It doesn't batten off the damn corpse. I've no quarrel with you, young sera, no quarrel with you. You didn't choose to be born. Where's Denys? Eh?" She looked around her, with a sweeping gesture of the cane. "Where's Denys?" There was an uncomfortable shifting in the crowd. "Sera," Florian whispered at Ari's shoulder, seeking instruction.

"I'll
tell
you where Denys is," Victoria snapped.
"Denys
is in the lab making another brother, the way he made another Ariane.
Denys
has taken the greatest scientific and economic power in human history and damned near run it into bankruptcy in his administration, —never mind poor Giraud, who took the orders, we all know that—damned near bankrupted us all for his eetee notion of personal immortality. You tell me, young sera, do you remember what Ariane remembered? Do you remember her life at all?"

God. It was certainly not something she wanted asked, here, now, in an argumentative challenge, in any metaphysical context. "We'll talk about that someday," she said back, loudly enough to carry. "Over a drink, aunt Victoria. I take it that's a
scientific
question, and you're not asking me about reincarnation."

"I wonder what Denys calls it," Victoria said. "Call your security if you like. I've been through enough craziness in my life, people blowing up stations in the War, people blowing up kids in subways, people who aren't content to let nature throw the dice anymore, people who don't want kids, they want little personal faxes they can live their fantasies through, never mind what the poor kid wants. Now do we give up on funerals altogether? Is that what everyone in the damn house is thinking, I don't have to die, I can impose my own ideas on a poor sod of a replicate who's got no say in it so I can have my ideas walking around in the world after I'm dead?"

"You're here to talk about Giraud," Yanni Schwartz yelled. "Do it and shut up, Vickie."

"I've done it. Goodbye to a human being. Welcome back, Gerry PR. God help the human race."

The rest of the speeches, thank God, were decorous—a few lines, a:
We differed, but he had principles,
from Petros Ivanov; a:
He kept Reseune going,
from Wendell Peterson.

It ascended to personal family then, always last to speak. To refute the rest, Ari decided, for good or ill.

"I'll tell you," she said in her own turn, in what was conspicuously her turn, last, as next-of-kin, Denys being exactly where Victoria had said he was, doing what Victoria had said, "—there was a time I hated my uncle. I think he knew that. But in the last few years I learned a lot about him. He collected holograms and miniatures; he loved microcosms and tame, quiet things, I think because in his real work there never was any sense of conclusion, just an ongoing flux and decisions nobody else wanted to make. It's not true that he only took orders. He consulted with Denys on policy; he implemented Bureau decisions; but he knew the difference between a good idea and a bad one and he never hesitated to support his own ideas. He was quiet about it, that's all. He got the gist of a problem and he went for solutions that would work.

"He served Union in the war effort. He did major work on human personality and on memory which is still the standard reference work in his field. He took over the Council seat in the middle of a national crisis, and he represented the interests of the Bureau for two very critical decades—into my generation, the first generation of Union that's not directly in touch with either the Founding or the War.

"He talked to me a lot in this last year: Abban made a lot of trips back and forth—" She looked to catch Abban's eye, but Abban was staring straight forward, in that nowhere way of an azi in pain. "—couriering messages between us. He knew quite well he was dying, of course; and as far as having a replicate, he didn't really care that much. We did talk about it, the way we talked about a lot of things, some personal, some public. He was very calm about it all. He was concerned about his brother. The thing that impressed me most, was how he laid everything out, how he made clear arrangements for everything—"

Never mind the mess Denys made of those arrangements.

"He operated during the last half year with a slate so clearly in order that those of us he was briefing could have walked into his office, picked up that agenda and known exactly where all the files were and exactly what had to be priority. He confessed he was afraid of dying. He certainly would have been glad to stay around another fifty years. He never expressed remorse for anything he'd done; he never asked my forgiveness; he only handed me the keys and the files and seemed touched that I did forgive him. That was the Giraud I knew."

She left it at that.

I have the files.
That was deliberate, too. The way she had done with the press.

Not to undermine Lynch, damned sure. Denys refused the seat and someone had to hold it; Reseune was in profound shock. Certain people were urging Yanni to declare for the seat, challenge Lynch.

No, Denys had said, focused enough to foresee that possibility. No challenge to Lynch from anyone. He's harmless. Leave him.

What Yanni thought about it she was not sure. She did not think Yanni wanted that honor.

But Denys' refusal had jerked a chance at Reseune Administration out of Yanni's reach. And
that,
she thought, however much any of them in Reseune had suspected Denys would refuse the seat, that had to be a disappointment.

She made a point of going over to Yanni after the services, catching his arm, thanking him for his support and making sure the whole Family saw that.

Making sure that the whole Family knew Yanni was not out of the running in future, in her time. "I know what you're doing," she said fervently, careless of just who could hear, knowing some would. "Yanni, I won't forget. Hear?"

She squeezed his hand. Yanni gave her a look—as if he had not believed for a second it was more than a salve to his pride and then caught on that it was altogether more than that, in that subtle way such indicators passed in the Family.

Not a word said directly. But there were witnesses enough. And Yanni was profoundly affected.

Hers, she reckoned, when it came down to the line, in the same way Amy and Maddy and the younger generation were.

And others in the House would see the indicators plain, that she had declared herself on several fronts, and started making acquisitions, not on a spoils system for the young and upcoming, but for a passed-over senior administrator who enjoyed more respect in the House than he himself imagined.

Signal clearly that Yanni was hers and let Yanni collect his own following: Yanni took no nonsense and let himself be taken in by no one.
Yanni
had stripped his own daughter of authority when she had abused it, and favored no one except on merit: that was his reputation—when Yanni thought of himself as a simple hardnosed bastard.

Yanni had some reassessing to do. Figure on that.

Yanni was not going to be taken in by the bootlickers and the Stef Dietrichs in the House or elsewhere.

He had been one of maman's friends. She thought with some personal satisfaction, that maman would approve.

She took the outside walk back to the House, around the garden wall, toward the distant doors: it was, thank God, quiet, after the pressure of the interviews.
Damn Victoria,
she thought, and reckoned that Maddy had wanted to sink out of sight.

"Do you wonder why we do such things?" she murmured to Florian and Catlin. "So do I."

They looked at her, one and the other. Catlin said, in Florian's silence: "It's strange when someone dies. You think they ought to be there. It was that way in Green Barracks."

Ari put her hand on Catlin's shoulder as they walked. Memories. Catlin was the one who had seen people die. "Not slowing down, are you?"

"No, sera," Catlin said. "
I
don't intend to be talked about."

She laughed softly.
Count on Catlin.

Florian said nothing at all. Florian was the one who would have taken in every signal in the crowd; and work over it and work over it to make it make sense. Florian was the one who would worry about the living.

"He's gone," Ari said finally, at the doors. "Damn, that
is
strange." And looked at Florian, whose face had just gone quite tense, that listening-mode that said he was getting something attention-getting over the Security monitor. One or the other of them was always on-line.

"Novgorod," Florian said. "Jordan Warrick—has declared his innocence— He says—he was coerced. Reseune Security is issuing orders to place him in detention—"

Ari's heart jolted. But everything came clear then. "Florian," she said while they were going through the doors, "code J Red, go. We're on A; go for Q and we're Con2."

Make sure of Justin and Grant: Catlin and I are going for Denys; get home base secure and stay there; force permitted, but not as first resort.

That, before they were through the doors, while a Security guard whose com would not be set on that command-priority gave them a slightly puzzled look at their on-business split-and-go.

"They're not saying much," Catlin said as they went.

"Out to the newsservices?"

"That, first," Catlin said. "Com 14 is loaded with incomings."

Reporters at the airport, at the edge of a major news event and hemmed in by an anxious, noncommunicative Security.

"Damn, is Denys on it? What in hell is he doing?"

Catlin tapped the unit in her ear. "Denys is still in the lab; Base One, relay Base Two transmission? —Affirmative, sera. He's sent word to defer all questions; he's saying the charges are a political maneuver, quote, ill-timed and lacking in human feeling. He says, quote, the Family is returning from the funeral and people are out of their offices: Reseune will have a further statement in half an hour."

"Thank God," she said fervently.

Denys was awake. Denys was returning fire.

Damned well about time.

It was a good day to stay home, Justin reckoned—given the situation in the House, given a general unsettled state in Security now that its chief was dead:

I don't want to be alarmist,
Ari had said in a message left on the Minder,
but I'd be a lot easier in my mind if you and Grant didn't go anywhere you don't have to for the next few
days—
work at home if you can. I'm going to be busy; I can't watch everything; and Security is confused as hell—a little power struggle going on there. Do you mind? Feel free to attend the services. But stay where people are.

I'll take your advice,
he had messaged back.
Thank you. I know you have a lot to take care of right now. I don't think our presence at the services would be appropriate, or welcome to his friends; but if there should be anything Grant or I can do in the wing to take care of details, we're certainly willing to help.