Cherryh, C J - Alliance-Union 08 (61 page)

"No!"

"Easy. All right. All right. "

"Dammit, don't patronize me!"

"Oh, we
are
short-fused. Drink your coffee. You're doing fine just fine, just get a grip on here, all right? Yanni's gone crazy, you re put fine, I'm just fine, Administration's totally off the edge, I don't know what's different. "

He gave a sneeze of a laugh, made a furtive wipe at his eyes, and took a sip of cooling coffee.

"God, I don't know if I can last this."

"Easy, easy, easy. One day at a time. We'll cut it short today and go home, all right?"

"I want us near witnesses.

"Office. " He drew a slow breath, getting his pulse-rate back to normal. And bought a holo-poster at the corner shop, on the way back, for the office all over his desk.

Grant lifted an eyebrow, getting a look at it while he was handing the checkout his credit card.

It was a plane over the outback. FLY RESEUNEAIR, it said.

In the years between 2301 and 2351, Expansion was the unquestioned policy of Union: the colonial fervor which had led to the establishment of the original thirteen star stations showed no sign of abating.

The discovery of Cyteen's biological riches and the new technology of jump-space travel brought Cyteen economic self-sufficiency and eventual political independence, not, however, before it had reached outward and established a number of colonies of its own. The fact that Cyteen was founded by people seeking independence from colonial policies of the Earth Company, however, provided a philosophical base important to all Union culture—the idea of a new form of government.

From the time the tensions between Cyteen and the Earth Company they had fled, led to the Company Wars and the Secession, we have to consider Cyteen as one planet within the larger context of Union. Within that context, the desire for independence and the strong belief in local autonomy; and second, the enthusiasm for exploration, trade, and the development of a new frontier—have been the predominant influences. The framers of the Constitution made it a cardinal principle that the Union government will not cross the local threshold, be it a station dock, a gravity well, or a string of stars declaring themselves a political unit within Union—unless there is evidence that the local government does not have the consent of the governed, or unless one unit exits its own area to impose its will on a neighbor. So there can be, and may one day be, many governments within Union, and still only one Union, which maintains what the founders called a consensus of the whole.

It was conceived as a framework able to exist around any local structure, even a non-human one, a framework infinitely adaptable to local situations, in which local rule serves as the check on Union and Union as the check on local rule.

But, in the way of secessions, Union began in conflict. The Company Wars were a severe strain on the new government, and many institutions originated as a direct response to those stresses—among them, the first political parties.

The Expansionist party may be said to have existed from the founding of Union; but as the war with the Earth Company entered its most critical phase, the Centrist movement demanded negotiation and partition of space at Mariner. The Centrists, who had a strong liberal, pacifist and Reunionist leaning in the inception of the organized party, gained in strength rapidly during the last years of the War, and ironically, lost much of that strength as the Treaty of Pell ended the War in a negotiation largely unpopular on the home front. Union became generally more pro-Expansion as enormous numbers of troops returned to the population centers and strained the systems considerably.

From that time the Centrist platform reflected in some part the growing fears that unchecked Expansion and colonization would lead to irredeemable diffusion of human cultures—and, in the belief of some, —to war between human cultures which had arisen with interests enough in common to be rivals and different enough to be enemies.

But except for social scientists such as Pavel Brust, the principal proponent of the Diffusion Theory, the larger number of Centrists were those who stood to be harmed by further colonization, such as starstations which looked to become peripheral to the direction of that expansion, due to accident of position; and the war-years children, who saw themselves locked in a cycle of conflict which they had not chosen.

The Centrists received a considerable boost from two events: first, the peaceful transition within the Alliance from the wartime administration of the Konstantins to that of the Dees, known to be moderates; second, the discovery of a well-developed alien region on the far side of Sol. Sol, sternly rebuffed by the alien Compact, turned back toward human space, and it became a principal tenet of the Centrist Party that a period of stability and consolidation might lead to a reunification of humanity, or at least a period of peace. To certain people troubled by the realization that they were not only not alone, but that they had alien competitors, this seemed the safest course.

In 2389 the Centrists were formally joined by the Abolitionists, who opposed the means by which existing and proposed colonies were designed, some on economic grounds and others on moral grounds ranging from philosophical to religious, denouncing practices from mindwipe to psychsurgery, and calling for an end to the production of azi. Previously the Abolitionists had lacked a public voice, and indeed, were more a cross-section of opposition to the offworld government, including the Citizens for Autonomy, who wished to break up the government and make all worlds and stations independent of central authority; the Committee Against Human Experimentation; the Religious Council; and others, including, without sanction of the official party, the radical Committee of Man, which committed various acts of kidnapping and terrorism aimed at genetics research facilities and government offices.

To those who feared Sol's influence, and those who felt the chance of alien war was minimal, the Centrist agenda seemed a dangerous course: loss of momentum and economic collapse was the Expansionist fear. And at the head of the new Expansionist movement was a coalition of various interests, prominent among whom, as scientist, philosopher and political figure, was Ariane Emory.

Her murder in 2404 touched off a furor mostly directed at the Abolitionists, but the Centrist coalition broke under the assault.

What followed was a period of retrenchment, reorganization, and realignment, until the discovery in 2412 of the Gehenna plot and the subsequent investigations of culpability gave the Centrists a cause and an issue. Gehenna lent substance to Centrist fears; and at the same time tarnished the image of the Expansionist majority, not least among them Ilya Bogdanovitch, the Chairman of the Nine; Ariane Emory of Reseune; and admiral Azov, the controversial head of Defense, who had approved the plan.

The Centrists for the first time in 2413 gained a majority in the Senate of Viking and in the Council of Mariner; and held a sizable bloc of seats and appointed posts within the Senate of Cyteen. They thus gained an unprecedented percentage of seats in the Council of Worlds and frequently mustered four votes of the Nine.

Although they did not hold a majority in either body, their influence could no longer be discounted, and the swift gains of the Centrists both worried the Expansionist majority and made the uncommitted delegates on any given issue a pivotal element: delegates known to be wavering were courted with unprecedented fervor, provoking charges and countercharges of influence-trading and outright bribery that led to several recall votes, none of which, however, succeeded in unseating the incumbent.

The very fabric of Union was being tested in the jousting of strong interest groups. Certain political theorists called into question the wisdom of the founders who had created the electorate system, maintaining that the system encouraged electorates to vote their own narrow interests above that of the nation at large.

It was the aphorism of Nasir Harad, president of the Council, on his own re-election after his Council conviction on bribery charges, that:
"Corruption means elected officials trading votes for their own advantage; democracy means a bloc of voters doing the same thing. The electorates know the difference."

An announcement came through the public address in Wing One corridors—storm alert, Justin thought, ticking away at his keyboard on a problem while Grant got up to lean out the door and see what it was.

Then: "Justin," Grant said urgently.
"Justin"

He shoved back and got up.

Everything in the hall had stopped, standing and listening.

". . .
in Novgorod"
the PA said,
"came in the form of briefs filed this morning by Reseune lawyers on behalf of Ariane Emory, a minor child, seeking a Writ of Succession and an injunction against any Discovery proceedings of the Council against Reseune. The brief argues that the child, who will be nine in five days, is the legal person of Ariane Emory by the right of Parental Identity, that no disposition of Ariane Emory's property can be taken in any cause without suit brought against the child and her guardians. The second brief seeks an injunction against the activities of the Investigatory Commission on the grounds that their inquiries invade the privacy and compromise the welfare and property rights of a minor child.

"The news hit the capital as the Commission was preparing to file a bill requiring the surrender of records from Reseune Archives pertinent to the former Councillor, on the grounds that the records may contain information on other Gehenna-style projects either planned or executed.

"Mikhail Corain, leader of the Centrist party and Councillor of Citizens, declared: 'Its an obvious maneuver. Reseune has sunk to its lowest.'

"James Morley, chief counsel for Reseune, when told of the comment, stated: 'We had no wish to bring this suit. The child's privacy and well-being have been our primary considerations, from her conception. We cannot allow her to become a victim of partisan politics. She has rights, and we believe the court will uphold the point. There's no question about her identity. A simple lab test can prove that.'

"Reseune Administration has refused comment.
..."

Ari thought she was crazy sometimes, because twice an hour she thought everyone was lying, and sometimes she thought they were not, that there really had been an Ari Emory before she was born.

But the evening when she could get out of bed and come in her robe to the living room with her arm still in a sling, uncle Denys said he had something to show her and Florian and Catlin; and he had a book filled with paste-in pictures and old faxes.

He had them sit at the table, himself on her left and Florian and then Catlin on her right, and he opened the book on the table, putting it mostly in front of her, a book of photos and holos, and there were papers, dim and showing their age. He showed her a picture of
her,
standing in the front portico of the House with a woman she had never seen.

"That's Ari when she was little," Uncle Denys said. "That's
her
maman. Her name was Olga Emory." There was another picture uncle Denys turned to. "This is James Carnath. That was your papa." She knew that. It was the picture maman had once showed her.

The girl in the picture looked just exactly like her, but it was not her maman; but it was the right name for her papa. It was all wrong. It was
her
standing there. It was. But the front doors were not like that. Not quite. Not now.

She felt her stomach more and more upset. Uncle Denys turned the page and showed her pictures of old Reseune, Reseune before the House was as big, before the Town was anything but old barracks, and the fields were real small. There were big buildings missing, like the AG barn, and like a lot of the mills and half the town, and
that
Ari was walking with her maman down a Town Road that was the same road, toward a Town that was very different.

There was that Ari, sitting in her same classroom, with a different teacher, with a kind of screwed-up frown on her face while she looked at a jar that was like her saying
Ugh,
she could feel it right in her stomach and feel her own face the way it would be.

But she never had a blouse like that, and she never wore a pin like that in her hair.

She felt herself all sick inside, because it was like it was all real, maman
had
tricked her, and she was stupid like she had been afraid she was, in front of Catlin and Florian, in front of everybody. But she couldn't
not
look at these things, she couldn't do anything but sit there with her arm aching in the dumb cast and herself feeling lightheaded and silly being out here in the dining room in her robe and her slippers, looking at herself in a place that was Reseune a long, long time ago.

A
long
time ago.

That Ari had been born—that long ago. Her maman's friend, uncle Denys had called her; and she had not thought when he said that, just how old maman was.

A hundred thirty-four years. No. A hundred forty-one, no,
two,
she was real close to her ninth birthday and maman was that old now.

A hundred forty-two. . . .

She was close to her ninth birthday and maman's letter
had
to come, any day now, and maybe maman would explain some of these things, maybe maman would send her all the letters maman must have written too, all at once, like hers. . . .

"There's your maman," uncle Denys said, and showed her a picture of her and a bunch of other kids all playing, and there was this pretty woman with black hair, with her maman's mouth and her maman's eyes, only
young,
with
her,
but she was about five or six. A baby. Maman had had another Ari,
first,
a long, long time ago.