Justin and Grant were not. Justin had sent, all things considered, a very gracious refusal, and let her off one very difficult position. It was the only mercy she had gotten from Family or outsiders. Reporters clustered down at the airport press area, a half hour down there this morning, an appointment for an interview this afternoon, a half a hundred frustrated requests for an interview with Denys—
I'm sorry.,she had said, privately and on camera. Even those of us who work lifelong with psych, seri, do feel personal grief.Coldly, precisely, letting her own distress far enough to the surface to put what Giraud would call the human face on Reseune. My uncle Denys was extremely close to his brother, and he's not young himself. He's resigning the proxy to Secretary Lynch out of health considerations— No. Absolutely not. Reseune has never considered it has a monopoly on the Science seat. As the oldest scientific institution on Cyteen we have contributions to make, and I'm sure there will be other candidates from Reseune, but no one in Reseune, so far as I know, intends to run. After all—Dr. Nye wasn't bound to appoint Secretary Lynch: he might have appointed anyone in Science, Secretary Lynch is a very respected, very qualified head of the Bureau in his own right.
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 lead-ins 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 news-service 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."
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.