"And I thought you'd gone all stuffy . . ."
"So I had. But I didn't want to go from childhood to childhood—rich enough to rejuv and be twenty or thirty all my life, with nothing to do. That's no way to live—"
"But Uncle Harlis," Brun said. She wanted information, not a lecture on lifestyle. "What about him?"
"He saw multiple rejuvs as a way of maintaining Family power. He wanted rejuv restricted to the Seated Families at first. So did some others, but the proposal didn't pass. Then he tried an age restriction: no one under eighty should be eligible. That didn't pass either, of course. The Ageists, who had used the biological problems with the earlier procedure to make repeated rejuvs illegal, expected his support with the new procedure, but he didn't go along."
"So . . . you're saying the population grew?"
"Not just that. The birth rate in our set actually dropped, because people could wait to have children until they were fifty or sixty or older. It's the shape of the population that really changed, and the power structure. Age always did confer an advantage of experience, and now it could do so without losing any advantage of physical strength and energy. Younger people needed to find new opportunities because the old weren't dying—or even retiring. And of course people wanted rejuv, and especially when they found out how useful it was in some kinds of illness and injury. Everyone rich enough wanted it. And the Consellines wanted the profit."
"Ummm . . . which meant expanding, somehow . . . like Dad's proposal to open new colonies?"
"As a temporary measure. Some others wanted to annex adjacent territories, but Dad opposed spatial expansion, on the grounds that we couldn't serve all we had. And why alienate neighbors when we had planets within the Familias outline which could be settled? But he wanted more support for colonies, too—he had been pushing the Colonial Office to make allowances for the less stable ecosystems of the worlds now being opened. That translates into concessions for the companies—and families—purchasing settlement licenses."
Brun shook her head. "I don't know enough to follow this."
"Well, you can learn. Basically, the longer a world is allowed to stabilize after the terraforming treatments, the more easily it can be colonized. Until recently, this required such long-term investment that very few Families would attempt it. When the Familias Regnant came together, the Council agreed to a joint investment at one world a year. We only know how much better the old-treated planets are because of the Lost Worlds."
"Paradise, Babylon, Oasis," Brun said, to prove she was listening.
"Yes. All treated in the second wave of outreach, and all lost to the records for centuries in the Cluster Wars. So they had between seven and eight hundred years of stabilization after treatment. Nothing like the mature ecosystem of a planet in its natural state, but for human purposes vastly superior to most of the worlds we used . . . only now are others approaching the quality. The scouts who found Paradise found mature forests with 300-year-old timber . . . grasslands with deep soil, not a shallow dark layer . . . estuaries rich in shellfish rather than a few colonies that had still to be nurtured. A stable climate, reasonably predictable. Nobody had known what difference another five centuries could make. If we could let all terraformed planets have that long, colonists would have a much easier time. Not easy—it's never easy—but easier."
"But temporary, you said. Was he thinking of enforcing a limit on reproduction, or on rejuv?"
"I'm not sure. He talked about both, from time to time. But the Familias is so complicated . . . you know, we have planets populated mostly by free-birthers, and others with mostly zero-growthers, and probably eight dozen religions, not even counting the fringes. Any policy one group approves will offend someone else. And meanwhile, the percentage of the population that had been rejuved was going up every year. Every survey taken showed that Rejuvenants wanted and expected to rejuv again."
"I wonder how the Guernesi have handled it," Brun said. "They've had the process as long as we have, and they aren't falling apart."
"I don't know . . . it's a good question. Do they have our diversity of beliefs?"
"And I don't know that one." Brun shook her head. "This is seriously complicated stuff, Buttons."
"It's a seriously complicated universe, and we're right in the middle of a whirlpool if we don't figure it out." He gave her a long, steady look. "You're a grownup now, and you've volunteered for the job of being Council watchdog for our family. This is what it takes."
"Being a dizzy blonde was such
fun
," Brun said, but her heart wasn't in it.
Jessamyn Essence,
Essential Transport Ltd.
In the working passengers' mess, the men had played the newsvid cube of the assassination and aftermath three times already without more than a few muttered cusswords. Then one of them, the oldest, shut off the player.
"So we're too late and somebody got 'im first, so what do we do?" His glance challenged them.
"Git the rest of 'em. If he's dead maybe they won't be watchin' so close. I could take that yellow-haired slut."
"I keep thinkin' about the chillen, Dan . . . by rights, they should be our'n."
"Ben's right," another said. "Somebody stomps the rattler's head, no matter how it thrashes around it's not gonna attack nobody. We don't need to be goin' around killin' people like criminals. But gettin' our chillen back, that's a good thing to do."
"But how're we gonna find 'em? Sposin' they've already been sent to new homes?"
Dan held up his hand. "We don't know that yet. First thing is, we'll look for 'em in a group. Prob'ly we'll hear, if we keep our ears open. Every port we come to. Now mind—nobody gets drunk, like that idiot on Zenebra—" They all knew about that; a whole shipload had been captured. "No fights, no arguments. We have a mission—a new mission—and that's the rules. Got it?"
"Yessir."
The next day, the
Jessy
came into Goldwyn Station, and the working passengers debarked after checking off their assignments with the captain. For once, the captain thought, working passengers had actually worked—without complaint—and he added the optional minimal pay chit to their goodbye handshake. Whatever anyone said about fanatics, he always liked to hire the pious brotherhoods, because he could count on them to work hard and keep their fingers off the cargo.
The Goldwyn spacers services section, or S-3, offered a variety of cheap lodging, food, and drink. This was an all-civilian station, rarely visited by R.S.S. ships, and the diversity of Familias spacefaring cultures showed up in decor and cuisine both. The men followed their noses to something with a familiar smoky-meat odor, and settled at one long table. On one wall, a newsvid showed scenes from some business meeting, but they didn't recognize any of the faces or references. Then a face they did recognize, a blonde woman with short curly hair.
"—Any comments on the outcome of the meeting, Sera Meager-Thornbuckle?" The announcer's accent was hard to follow.
"No . . . you realize our family is still in mourning . . ." The blonde woman's accent was, if possible, worse.
"Yes, Sera, but what do you think of a Conselline as Speaker?"
"Excuse me—" She turned away, and the camera followed, showing her getting into a long dark-maroon car.
"Damn," one of the men said. "It's
her!
"
"You men are all the same." That was a waitress in red checks and blue denim, slapping menus down in front of them. "Just because she's young and rich and pretty—"
"We'll have chili," Dan said. "All of us—a bowl of chili each, and some crackers." His glance silenced the others, who looked ready to say things they must not say.
"An' some beer?" the waitress asked.
"No . . . not yet, anyway." Not until they'd found out what they wanted, where the women and children were. If they could find them and bring them home—even some of them—they'd be honored among men, maybe even more than if they'd managed to kill the Speaker themselves. That would stop the Rangers of Texas True from saying they were nothing but a bunch of wifeless drifters causing trouble.
"Look—" Ben touched Dan's arm and nodded at the newsvid. There it was again, the picture that had infuriated them all—women and children in the traditional clothes walking down a corridor from a ship's hatch, guarded by battle-armored troops of the Familias Fleet.
Dan had trouble following the accent of the newsvid announcer, but he did understand Baskar Station. Was that where the women were in the picture, or where they were now? He didn't know, but they could always go and find out. Somewhere there'd be a bar, and men talking, and someone would know, if he asked the right questions.
Hobart Conselline ran his hand over the wide gleaming surface of the desk—
his
desk now, as it had been Bunny Thornbuckle's, and before that Kemtre Altmann's—and felt a glow of satisfaction. His Delphine now had the suite Miranda had occupied, and to him had come every perquisite he had once envied, from the skilled silent staff to the deference of those who had been his peers, and were now his subordinates.
He had worried, when he saw Brun and Buttons both at the Thornbuckle tables, but neither of them had offered to speak. And however they had voted, the count had gone his way. Their own uncle supported him—for a specific reason, but that didn't matter. He would have appointed new ministers for legal affairs and internal affairs anyway; he would have appointed new judges. There were certain legal actions in progress within his own sept which made that prudent. If Harlis benefitted, and assumed it was all for his own benefit, well—that was a cheap profit, and he had never scorned a cheap profit in his life.
He leaned back in the chair and gave himself up to reverie for a few minutes. He was relatively young, and with the aid of repeated rejuvenations he would remain young . . . and powerful. They had seen what happened with a succession of Speakers, generations back, and then what happened when they made leadership hereditary, with the Altmanns. Prosperity had followed prosperity, an upward trend with only minor adjustments. But no one had yet seen what he would show them: the stability and wealth that would come with one leader who would never fade into senility. Year after year, decade after decade, he would be there to serve and protect . . . to guide and lead. . . .
His desk chimed at him, and he sat up, scowling. That was the future, but now he had to deal with the problems his predecessors had left him.
"Milord, Colonel Bai-Darlin, head of the Special Security Unit, would like a meeting."
"Send him in." He would show them how hard a real leader worked. He would be tireless for the good of the realm, as he had always been tireless for the good of his Family, and his sept. And realistically speaking, given the importance of his sept in the economy of the realm, what was good for the Consellines could not help but be good for the rest—at least most of them.
Bai-Darlin came in with a crisp salute and heel-click that convinced Hobart the man was efficient. But was he smart? Was he tireless?
"Milord, I thought you might like to be brought up to date on the investigation into the death of Lord Thornbuckle—"
"It was those NewTex terrorists," Hobart said. "I can't imagine why you haven't caught them yet."
"Milord, the preliminary investigations have found no trace of anyone from any of the worlds on which they operate being on Castle Rock since the Rangers were brought to this system for trial."
"Then the investigators are incompetent! What does it take, a bright red stripe painted on someone's head? They threatened to kill the Speaker, and the Speaker was shot. What more do you want?"
Bai-Darlin looked at him in a way that made Hobart feel uncomfortable. "Evidence, for a start."
"You have evidence; Lord Thornbuckle's dead body. The damage done to Ser Mahoney, to the vehicle."
"Yes, milord, but none of that points to the New Texas Godfearing Militia. We have no indication, on travel manifests, on hotel registers, that they were here."
"If they weren't here, they must have hired someone."
"According to our best sources, they do not hire criminals to work for them, and what we know about the types of weapons used does not fit with them either. They like direct confrontation; they would be far more likely to walk up to an intended victim on the street."
"Excuses," Hobart said firmly. "Although, if it wasn't the Militia, I can think of another disruptive element it might be."
"Yes, milord? Anything you could suggest—"
"Ageists," Hobart said. "Lord Thornbuckle was a Rejuvenant, and so was his wife, a multiple." Bai-Darlin's gaze shifted to Hobart's ear. Hobart shook his head. "These are jewelry, Colonel. I support rejuvenation, of course; any sensible man does. And a man in my position must wear his colors, so to speak. I will rejuvenate when I need to, in another ten years or so; I'm quite a bit younger than Lord Thornbuckle was. In the meantime, these rings—" He touched his ear—"These rings reassure the older rejuvenants that I am serious when I support their interests."