The Serrano Succession

by Elizabeth Moon

  "There's always been time for discussion—" someone yelled loudly, from a few rows over. Brun queried her panel. Minor branch of the Dakkers Sept, coded turquoise in the Family database.

  "That's the trouble, all we do is talk!" yelled someone else. Conselline, minor branch, Hobart's third younger brother.

  A gabble of voices rose, and lights flashed on the panel. Hobart banged the gavel repeatedly and finally the turmoil died down. Brun, looking around, saw angry, flushed faces everywhere, all glaring tight-lipped at one another.

  How had Hobart Conselline become Speaker? Brun raced through the database, trying to figure out the story behind the story. It had been the emergency Grand Council meeting, held in the hours after the assassination. Emergency meetings did not require the same quorum of Seats . . . so response was limited to those attending in person, or immediately available on an ansible link. Only 23.2 percent of the Grand Council had been polled. Naturally, Lord Thornbuckle's family had not been present or available, nor had most of their friends. Hobart Conselline had received a majority of votes cast, but it amounted to only 15.8% of the whole. Yet he was acting as if he had a large majority of the entire Council.

  "Look behind the obvious," one of Brun's instructors had taught her. "Who benefits?" The Consellines, clearly, but how? They were already filthy rich—as rich or richer than the Barraclough Sept—so why this grab for power? What more did they want?

  "We're going to vote now," Hobart was saying. "Right now, and get it behind us, so we can move on to important external issues."

  The warning chimes of Vote in Progress rang through the chamber, and Brun's screen lit with the proposals. Had Hobart really read through all of them? She struggled through the convoluted legalese, trying to figure out what they really meant. Kevil Mahoney had always said that legal language had more subtext than any fiction ever written, but she had not actually studied law. Some didn't look that bad; the reasoning as given had a plausible ring to it. She chewed on her lip, struggling to find the hidden meanings.

  Safer to vote against all of them, just in case. She hoped that was safer. She entered her votes, and sat back to watch the others. Kell, tip of his tongue just showing, was marking his votes slowly, one by one. Harlis had finished. And Hobart Conselline . . . Hobart was watching her, she realized.

  Time dragged on, as they waited for others to complete their votes. Most seemed to have had their minds made up ahead of time, but a few earnest souls were bent over their desks, clearly checking every word of every proposition, and comparing it to other texts.

  The outcome of the voting was less a surprise than it might have been . . . the bylaws changes passed, and the next vote confirmed Hobart Conselline as Speaker for a normal term. The speeches had been confusing; on both sides of what was clearly becoming a deep division, speakers seemed choked with outrage, incoherent. Brun kept quiet, watching carefully and making notes. Buttons, she saw, did the same.

  After the meeting ended, they went back to Appledale in the same car, by mutual consent talking only of things they could see from its windows. After supper, they settled to business, and finally Brun's big brother treated her as an equal.

  "I have to say I was impressed with your performance today."

  "I didn't do anything."

  "You didn't pout, flounce, flirt, or storm. You sat there being attentive, intelligent, and menacing."

  "Menacing?"

  "Didn't you see our new Speaker watching you during the voting?"

  "Yes. Made me itchy."

  "As well it should. The man's odd, Brun. Well—Mother's gone to Sirialis, I hear. Are you staying here?"

  "For now, yes. I'd planned to be the person on site to deal with the Grand Council, unless you want to take it over."

  "Are you sure? Because if you can keep an eye on the Council, then I can concentrate on what our dear uncle was up to with the various family companies. It's hard without Kevil—"

  "I'm sorry," Brun said.

  He looked at her a long moment, and she knew that he knew what she meant—sorry for everything, for becoming the issue by which the Family lost ground, as well as the reason for their father's assassination.

  "Don't be sorry for being yourself," Buttons said finally. "And don't be sorry for coming back—it'd be worse if you hadn't."

  "I don't see how," Brun said.

  "I can think of a dozen ways," Buttons said. "And so can you, if you take the trouble. But that's not what matters right now. We've got attacks on all fronts—where'd you put the babies, by the way? I don't want them used as hostages against us."

  "Cecelia de Marktos took them somewhere. She's trustworthy—"

  "Well, unless she puts them in a barn and tries to turn them into racehorses," Buttons said, with the first genuine grin she'd seen on his face. "Grooms, I wouldn't mind, but you never know with her."

  Brun laughed aloud. "You're right—but I don't think she has them with her."

  "Good. As long as they aren't going to cause us trouble—"

  "Not for another ten or twelve years . . . I don't want to think about them as teenage boys. . . ."

  "If we have a Familias Regnant in ten years, we can worry about it then." Brun glanced at him; his face had gone somber, and he looked far older than his age.

  "Buttons—do you agree with Hobart about that?"

  "That the Familias is in danger, yes. That it's in danger because of lax leadership in the past, no. It's his policies that endanger it most. This business of restricting the franchise—one way we've had of relieving strain between Families is that the small know they can enlarge by having more Seatholders. That's let them take in outsiders as clients. Dad said the movement of power from one sept to another was a major factor in keeping the Familias stable. That's why they instituted the kingship, originally."

  "Why can't Hobart see it?" Brun asked.

  "I don't know. Back when I was a boy of maybe ten—and you were still in the nursery—I overheard some of the adults talking about how the new rejuv methods might change things politically. But of course, I was too young to follow it. I remember Dad and Uncle Harlis arguing, though. When I asked questions in school, nobody seemed to understand them, and later, when I was in the Royals, everyone talked as if the repeating rejuvenations were just a way to stay young for a normal lifespan, not an actual extension. It was—oh, the year that Lepescu came to Sirialis, I think it was—that Charlie Windetsson got drunk at a mess dinner and pointed out that if our parents never grew old, we had no reason to grow up. There was no future for us. Everyone laughed, and drank, and—I remember a sort of cold chill. I left the party early, called Sarah, and that's when we decided to marry."

  "I didn't know that."

  "Well . . . you were being wild at the time. Most of our set were, and I suddenly saw it myself. Our parents had been more grown up—working in family business in some way—by the time they finished their education. Sometimes even before. But their parents barely lived past their Centuries, and retired from Family work in their eighties. The first rejuv upset that a little, but the new one . . . I came home, and talked to Dad about it. He promised that he and Mother would resign their duties while I was still young—he transferred stock to me right after that Hunt Ball, and encouraged me to be active in Council as well as business."

  "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, ex
pected 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.

  Chapter Nine

  Castle Rock, Old Palace

  Hobart Conselline ran his hand ov
er 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.