C. Cherryh - Cyteen

"They can throw that back at us too," Giraud said.

"We can rely on Harogo, I think. At certain times, you have to let a thing go."

"Even Warrick?"

"If they want him by then."

Ari smiled gently across the table, across the salad with vinaigrette, product of their own gardens, and dusted it liberally with a spoonful of Keis, synthetic cheese, a salted yeast, actually: spacer's affectation. Her mother had used it. Ari still liked the tang of it, and imported it downworld at some little trouble.

Most of the Family abhorred it.

It was the formal dining hall: one long table for the Family, and a large U-shaped table around the outside for the azi who were closer than relatives, and somewhat more numerous, about two to one.

Herself at the head: that had been the case since the day uncle Geoffrey died. To her right, Giraud Nye, to her left his brother Denys; then Yanni Schwartz rightside, left again, his sister Beth; and across from her, Beth's son by Giraud Nye, young Suli Schwartz, long-nosed and thin-faced, and looking preoccupied as usual: sixteen and bored; left next, and right and right again, Petros Ivanov and his two sisters Irene and Katrin, then Katrin's current passion the dark-skinned Morey Carneth-Nye; old Jane Strassen looking like a dowager empress in black and an ostentatious lot of silver; daughter Julia Strassen in green, a truly amazing decolletage; dear cousin Patrick Carnath-Emory, who was far more Carnath than Emory, and absolutely butter-fingered—he was already mopping his lap; Patrick's daughter Fideal Carnath, olive-skinned and lovely, and her thirty-two-year-old son Jules who they had thought was Giraud's until they ran the genetics and found it was, of all people, Petros'. Then Robert Carnath-Nye and his daughter young Julia Carnath; and of course, endmost, Jordan and Justin Warrick, who looked exactly like father and son, unless you had known Jordan thirty years ago and knew that they were twins.

Vanity, vanity.

Jordan had had his passages. (Who had not?) But when it came to bestowing his heredity he had not trusted nature. Or women. It was the temptation to godhood, perhaps. Or the belief that he, being a Special, was bound to produce another.

A replicate citizen was not azi. There were considerable legal differences between young Justin, say, and elegant, red-haired Grant, at the second rank of tables, so, so close in all respects . . . born in the same lab, an insignificant day apart. But Justin, dark-haired, square-jawed, and, at a handsome, broad-shouldered seventeen, so very much Jordan's younger image . . . was CIT 976-88-2355 PR, that all-important Citizen prefix and that expensive Parental Replicate suffix—replicate except for the little accidents like the break in Jordan's nose, the little scar on Justin's chin, and oh, indeed, the personality, and the ability. When Justin was a mote in a womb-tank, the Bok project had already failed—but (Ari was amused) Jordan had entertained notions that his tapes and his genes could overcome all odds.

The lad was bright. But he was not Jordan. Thank God.

Grant's number, on the other hand, was ALX-972, experimental: a design of her own, aesthetic in the extreme, and with an excellent antecedent—another Special geneset, but, for certain legal reasons, she had corrected a genetic fault, incidentally expressing a few aesthetic recessives, to an extent that the legitimate descendants of a certain slightly myopic, brown-haired, unathletic biologist with a heart defect . . . would find astounding.

Neither was Grant a biologist. An excellent student in tape-design, an Alpha capable of working on the structures which had made him what he was—structures wherein lay the legal difference, not in the substitution of certain sequences in the geneset, not in the wombs which gestated them.

One infant had gone to a father's arms, to lie in a crib in the House, to hear—nothing, at times; or to deal with the fact that Jordan Warrick might be busy at some given time, and a meal might be late, or a noise startle him—

The other had gone to a crib where human heartbeat gave way at intervals to a soothing voice, where activity was monitored, crying measured, reactions clocked and timed—then extensive tape and training for three years until Ari had asked Jordan to take the boy in, nothing unusual: they fostered-out the suspected Alphas, as a rule, and in those days her relations with Jordan had been stormy but professional. A member of the House with a son the same age was a natural thought, and an Alpha companion was a high-status prize for a household, even at Reseune.

I have every confidence in Justin, she had said that day to Jordan. It's such a natural pairing. I'm perfectly willing to let that happen, on a personal basis, you understand, as long as I can continue my tapes and my tests with Grant.

Meaning that the azi as he grew might pass into Justin's care, become his companion—which implied her faith that young Justin would be in that small percentage licensed to work with Alphas—that Justin's own scores would be Alpha-equivalent.

Not entirely to her astonishment it had worked out very well. The correction was a routine one, minor, not likely to affect the azi's intelligence, . . . although, within certain parameters, that had not been a primary concern in creating the set.

So, so convenient to have a link to troublesome Jordan in those years, not informational, since there was hardly anything a ten-, a thirteen-year-old azi knew in the House that she did not.

But one never knew—when it might be of use.

She finished the salad, chatted with Giraud while the serving staff took away the plates and brought in the next course: a fine ham. Terrestrial pigs thrived at Reseune, on the residue of the gardens, in sufficient numbers to provide seed stock for several other farms. Pigs and goats, humankind's oldest and hardiest foodstock, with sense enough not to poison themselves on a stray sprig of native shrubbery.

Horses and cattle had the damnedest self-destructive bent.

"Do you know," she said, over the dessert, a simple ice, tangy and pleasant. "We are going to have to make some far-reaching adjustments in staff."

Amazing how many ears were pricked at table, and how quiet a room could get, when she was only speaking to Denys.

"I really don't anticipate any difficulty with the Hope bill." They were all listening now, not pretending to do otherwise. She smiled at her family, put down the spoon and picked up the little cup of strong coffee. "You know how to read that. No difficulty. Forget the news reports. Everything is proceeding tolerably well on schedule, and we have a very exciting prospect in front of us . . . certainly a very exciting prospect, a military psych facility at Fargone—in addition. Which is going to make a real difference in operations here. You can congratulate Jordan for laying the groundwork—really, just everything that may put the Hope route in our laps; and the new labs; everything. That's what's going on. Jordan should have a lot of the credit for that."

Jordan's face was absolutely devoid of expression. "Let's drop the pretense. We're home, we're not in front of the cameras."

Ari flashed a smile. "Jordan, I don't bear you the least ill will. I'm sorry if that offends you, but you've done Reseune—and me—a great favor. I truly don't begrudge you the rewards of it."

"The hell!"

Ari laughed gently and took another sip of coffee. "Jordie, dear, I know you'd like to have upstaged me with this; but as it happens, Gorodin came to me, and I'm going to give you everything you asked for, on a platter. You'll get that long-awaited transfer, you and anyone in your wing who wants to go to Fargone, just as soon as the official request for military liaison comes down the tubes."