Of course they were hers. Ari and Ari blurred together and came separate and blurred together again, with very little discomfort nowadays. Ari senior had collected real trouble in her lifetime, but that was all right, she didn't like Ari's Enemies either. They had murdered Ari and now she had Security with her everywhere and planes flying beside just to be sure she got home, to Ari's bed and Ari's comforts and Ari's Reseune, in all—

She didn't mind being Ari, she decided. It was not a bad thing to be. It was a little strange. It was a little lonely a lot of the time, but that was all right, there were enough people to keep it from being toolonely. There was a lot to keep up with, but it was never boring. She would not be Maddy or 'Stasi, or even Amy—Amy, closest, maybe, but she had rather be Ari, all the same, and travel to Novgorod and have Catlin and Florian with her—not forgetting that: Amy had no company. Just her maman and her maman's staff, who were no fun.

Being Jane would have been all right. She thought about Ollie, suddenly, hurt because he never wrote; but Ollie wouldn't, Ollie was so correct when he had to be.

He might not even be alive anymore. People could die at Fargone and it took so long to find it out.

She put the pin back in the box. "Put that in my carry, will you?" she said to Florian. "I don't want anything to happen to it." When there was a chance she would wear it where Giraud could see it. He would like that.

"Are you tired, sera?" Catlin asked. "Do you want us to put out the lights?"

"No. I'm fine." But she felt after the lap robe, and tucked it up around her, listening to the drone of the engines.

She could write to Fargone. But it was not wise right now. Anything she did would make her Enemies nervous and maybe put other people in danger, like hanging a sign out over them saying: This is a friend of mine.

Her friends didn't have Security to protect them, if they came outside Reseune and Reseune's other holdings. She had to think about things like that now.

From now on.

v

Ari, this is Ari senior.

You've gained your majority. You are 15 chronological years. This program deals with you as 17. Your accesses have widened.

You may now access all working notes to the year of my death and all history up to 2362, which is the year I resigned as Reseune Administrator to take up the Council Seat for Science.

When I was 17, in 2300, Union declared itself a nation and the Company Wars began.

When I was 35, in 2318,I sat as Proxy Councillor for Science during the illness of Lila Goldstein, of Cyteen Station, who subsequently died.

When I was 37, in 2320, I yielded the seat to Jurgen Fielding, of Cyteen. The Special Status bill passed and I was one of 5 persons accorded that privilege.

When I was 48, in 2331, I became Director of Wing One at Reseune, on the death of Amelie Strassen; I went on rejuv in that year.

When I was 62, in 2345, I became Administrator of Reseune, on the death of my uncle Geoffrey Carnath. The Company Fleet in those years had succeeded in interdicting Union warships from all stations Earthward of Mariner, and attempted to blockade merchanters from dealing with Cyteen and Fargone and to destroy any merchanter registered to Cyteen. Heavy losses of ships and the need for workers and trained military personnel had brought Reseune into the war effort: from the years 2340 to 2354, Reseune increased in size over 400%.

Actions which I took during those years: franchising of production centers; automation of many processes; building of mills to relieve dependency on scarce transport; expansion of agriculture; establishment of Moreyville as a shipping center; establishment of RESEUNEAIR as a commercial carrier for the Volga area; establishment of Reseune's legal rights over franchised production centers; establishment of Reseune as legal guardian of all azi, no matter where produced; establishment of Reseune as sole producer of all tape above skill-level.

I consider the latter measures, which make it possible for Reseune to guide and oversee all azi throughout Union, to be among the most important things I have ever done—for the obvious reasons of the power it conveys, for moral reasons of the azi's welfare, and for two reasons less apparent. . . 1. that it gives us the leverage to terminate the production of azi at some future date, to prevent the establishment of a permanent institution of servitude in Union or elsewhere; 2. See file under keyword: Sociogenesis.

When I was 69, in 2352, Union launched its last major offensive of the war; and came to me with the outline of the Gehenna project. See file under keyword: Gehenna, keyword: private file. When I was 71, in 2354, the Company Wars ended with the Treaty of Pell. When I was 72, in 2355, the Gehenna Colony was dispatched, as a contingency measure. My advice to the contrary was overruled by Adm. Azov, Councillor of Defense.

When I was 77, in 2360, I challenged Jurgen Fielding for the Science seat. When I was 79, in 2362, final vote tabulations gave me the seat, which I hold at the time I am writing these notes.

It's one thing, young Ari, to study older people as a fact in psychology; its quite another thing to be aware of the psychology of old age in yourself—because you do get old inside, even if rejuv holds your physical age more or less constant. The difference rejuv has made in human psychology is a very profound difference: consider . . . without rejuv, the body begins to change by age 50 and specific deteriorations begin and grow acute enough within the next 20 to 30 years to cause disability. That is the natural aging process, which would lead to natural death between the ages of 60 and 110 at the outside, varying according to genetics and environment.

In individuals without rejuv, the 20-to-30-year period of decline in functions, followed by a period of diminished function and degenerative disease, works a considerable psychological change. In eras when no rejuv was possible, or in places such as Gehenna, where no rejuv is available, there are sociological accommodations to having a large portion of the population undergoing this slow diminution of physical and in a few cases mental capacity. There may be institutions and customs which provide support to this segment of the population, although, historically, such provisions were not always optimum or satisfactory to the individual faced with the psychological certainty that the process had begun. With rejuv, we contemplate natural death at, considering mere percentages, a little greater lifespan, ranging in my time between 100 and 140 ... bearing in mind that rejuv is still a tolerably new phenomenon, and the figure may increase. But rejuv was a discovery on Cyteen, was available for the first time during my mother's generation, and the sociological adjustments were still extremely rapid during my early years: keyword: Aging, keyword: Olga Emory: keyword: thesis.

At the time I write these notes, the major change has not been so much length of life, although that has had profound effect on family structures and law, due to the fact most people now live near their parents for a century or more, and frequently enter into financial partnership in their estates, so that inheritance, as you have done with my estate, is quite rare: estates usually progress rather than leap from one individual to the other nowadays.

The major change has been the combination of advanced experience with good health and vitality. The period of decline is usually brief, often under 2 years, and frequently there is no apparent decline. Death has become much more of a sudden event; and one enters one's 140's with the expectation onewill die, but faces it, not in the depressive effects of degenerative illness, but as an approaching time limit, a fearful catastrophe, or, quite commonly, with the I'm-immune attitude which used to characterize much younger individuals.