“Like a lion accepts a wildebeest.”

Justine burst out laughing. “You’re a senator of the Commonwealth, and he still intimidates you?”

He took her arm, and walked into the entrance hall. “I will smile at him and make polite conversation for exactly three minutes. If you don’t rescue me by then, I’ll…”

“Yes?”

“Put you over my knee.”

“Ah, hark the heavenly angels as they sing glad tidings: the good old days are back in town.”

Gore Burnelli had decompressed his parallel personality into Sorbonne Wood’s large array, settling himself into the house as other humans would return to a comfortable old armchair. Unlike most humans who underwent frequent rejuvenation, he didn’t dump his memories into a secure store for nostalgia’s sake. He carried them around with him in high-density inserts, loading them into local arrays wherever he went. They were essential to him; to make the deals that gave his family a smooth ride into the future he had to have the knowledge of past deals, and the reasoning behind them, if they’d worked, what the problems were. Others, like his daughter, relied on briefings and extensive database access through an e-butler; while he had the real events immediately available thanks to the homogenized access programs that his early memories were rooted to.

Business and positioning the family in the market were his constant now. Technology made it possible for him to be involved for most of the day. Some of the routines he’d developed for managing the process were almost autonomous, allowing him to parallel multitask. Even now, as he watched his son and daughter enter Sorbonne Wood’s big classical library, he was reviewing the deluge of data that fell between them like red digital rain. Figures and headlines briefly flared green as his virtual fingers flashed among them, rearranging them into new configurations, shunting money and information to form the new deals and purchases.

“Everybody’s here,” Justine told him.

He made no comment. That information had long since flowed past him; the house was now updating him on the location of the guests and their aides and staff and spouses and lovers: who was using the showers and baths, who was using heavy (and heavily encrypted) bandwidth to the unisphere, who was walking along the pergola paths to the main house ready for predinner drinks in the Magnolia lounge. Secondary information like that was now presented to his brain in the form of scent; the multitude of OCtattoos allowing him to smell where the guests were and what they were up to.

“I think these guests provide us with a critical mass,” Thompson said. “As long as there aren’t any unforeseen problems it should go smoothly.”

“That’s self-evident, boy,” Gore snapped. “But there are always problems. I’m relying on you two to anticipate them and massage them out of those grossly bloated egos gathering out there.”

“The only possible glitch so far was Isabella,” Justine said. “But she won’t register on the Halgarth radar. Just another trustbabe having herself some first-life fun. I don’t think Patricia had an ulterior motive for sleeping with her.”

Thompson dropped down in one of the winged leather armchairs in front of the big fireplace. “Not like Patricia to take any sort of risk. The girls she normally fucks are completely sanitized as far as political connections are concerned.”

“Maybe it’s true love?” Justine said in amusement.

“That’d be a first,” Thompson said. “Why the hell Patricia doesn’t simply get a body reassignment when she’s in rejuve I’ll never know.”

“She can’t,” Gore said. “Most of Doi’s team are female; it’s an image she’s worked hard at for twenty-five years. Nobody’s going to screw that up now by growing a dick in the tank.”

“Speaking of which, we haven’t officially declared for her yet,” Thompson said.

“That can happen this weekend,” Gore said. “If the timing is right. For that I’ll require confirmation of Doi’s policy on the starflight agency start-up. Assuming she’s going to back it, and she’d be a stupid bitch if she didn’t, I want us to pay particular attention to the structure which is going to emerge. This weekend will give the family a big advantage on positioning when the agency is announced. Those details will matter.”

“The agency is temporary,” Thompson said. “It’s the navy we need to concentrate on.”

“I know. That’s where we come in.”

“What if we don’t need a navy?” Justine asked.

“We will,” Gore said firmly. “I happen to agree with Sheldon and Kime on this one. The Dyson aliens shoot first and ask questions later. That tells me all I need to know about them. Even if it’s just for deterrence value, the Commonwealth is going to need warships. Government will be spending money on procurement, a lot of money. We have to ensure the family gets a slice of that.”

“Easy enough,” Thompson said.

“Godfuck.” Gore closed a golden hand into a fist. “Don’t you ever fucking learn? All the other Grands are maneuvering right now. Justine was right to put this weekend together for us, if we can influence the shape our placing will be unmatched.”

“What sort of shape do you want?”

“The main one has got to be location. Get Sheldon to let go of that hillbilly backwood Anshun. I want the agency centered at the High Angel, where it damn well should have been all along. The family has a lot of interest in the astroengineering companies based there; a real shipbuilding program will see their stock go through the roof.”

“We can probably make that sound logical,” Justine said.

“It is logical. What we need is a way to make it serve their interests.”

“I’ll work on it,” she promised.

Gore turned back to Thompson. “The other side to the navy is going to be the planetary defenses. Don’t allow that to be overlooked this weekend. People are going to want damn great force fields guarding their cities and making them feel safe. I can see that ultimately chewing up even more cash than the starships.”

“Okay, I’ll keep that one on the agenda,” Thompson said.

Dinner was the kind of formal event that Justine could sleepwalk through in her official role as hostess. They held it in the main dining room, with broad churchlike arched windows looking out across gardens illuminated by thousands of twinkling white fairy stars. She made sure Campbell was at one end of the long oak table with her father, while she chatted away to Patricia at the other end. Isabella didn’t join them for dinner.

“She finds these things a little dull, I’m afraid,” Patricia said as the band started playing some background jazz.

“She’s young,” Justine said sympathetically. “You did well getting her to come along at all.”

“It was the names, she’s a bit of a fame junkie,” Patricia admitted as she bit into her starter of cannelloni of smoked salmon. “Right now she’s accessing Murderous Seduction , it’s the penultimate episode.”

“Isn’t that a biogdrama of the last Myo case?”

“Yes. A bit melodramatic for me, but the lead character is sort of her age, and it’s a good production.”

“I wish I had time to keep up on pop culture. I’m surprised you do, especially right now.”

“Part of the job is coaxing various celebrity endorsements, among others.” Her smile was polite, but one hundred percent professional.

“Our family is very supportive of the starship agency proposal. Hence this weekend.”

“I know, and Elaine is very appreciative of that.”

“Will she be making it part of her platform?” Justine looked down the length of the table, straight at her father’s expressionless gold face.

“It’s a bit radical, but then the Dyson mission has injected a few new factors into today’s politics. The agency needs to go ahead, Elaine knows that, she’s prepared to go out on a limb if that’s what it takes.”

Gore Burnelli gave a tiny nod. “Our family will certainly do whatever we can to support her position this weekend,” Justine said.