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."
Thathit. Victoria's lips made a thin line and she took a double-handed grip on her black cane.
"My sister was notyour maman," Victoria said. "That's the trouble inthe 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 tellyou where Denys is," Victoria snapped. "Denysis in the lab making another brother, the way he made another Ariane. Denyshas 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 scientificquestion, 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. Yannihad 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.