Regenesis

APRIL 25, 2424

1748H

“How was Novgorod?” Ari asked purposely, over the shrimp cocktail. “Quiet?”

“Agreeably so, actually,” Ya

Not uncommon for Ya

He’d brought her a trinket from the capital. Giraud used to do that, and this one, when she unwrapped it, looked even to be from the same company as some of Giraud’s gifts. It was a desk sitter, a little glass globe with a holo insect that crawled in a circle so long as you set it in the light. He had handed it to her before they sat down at table and she had it by her plate. It kept ru

The gift‑giving urge in Ya

One thing was sure: Ya

In her opinion, that was the way family ought to be. She’d almost begun to think of him that way. Until this last week.

“I love the bug,” she said.

“Beetle,” he said. “A Glorious Beetle.”

“Well, he is, but is that his name?”

“ Plusiotis gloriosa. Native to the western hemisphere of Earth.”

“He’s really that green?”

Ya

She had Giraud’s butterfly. They lately had real butterflies in the Conservatory. All sorts of them. But they didn’t have a beetle.

“I absolutely love him,” she said. It had been ages since she’d spent time in the Conservatory. Reseune sprawled, from the high end, where Wing One sat, down to the town and the fields, and she hadn’t been to the Conservatory since–oh, long before the shooting that had brought Denys down, long before the world had come apart. She and Maman used to go there when she was small, to walk the garden paths and see the flowers.

The family that she had once had, had been broken by Denys’ order. Ya

Lump‑lump‑lump, in its endless silent circle.

She dropped her napkin over it, to remove the distraction. Looked Ya

“It doesn’t have an off switch,” Ya

“So there’s nothing up I should know about,” she said, direct to the point, regarding Novgorod and the legislative session.

“Oh, the Paxers are kicking up the usual fuss, we didn’tget the remediation increase we wanted, and there’s talk about putting an embargo on Earth‑origin wood veneers.”

So he wasn’t going to get to the topic of secret meetings straight off. So neither did she. “It’ll only drive up the price. It won’t ever stop the demand, will it?”

“It might drive the price far beyond what the average citizen can afford. Take the mass out of mass market. Earth is claiming its woods are a sustainable resource. We’re saying they’re not, on an interstellar scale, and we’re talking about a hundred‑year embargo.”

“If Alliance doesn’t go with it–” she began. She hadn’t been interested at all in that, but a brain cell fired, and she couldn’t help it.

“Alliance is actually going with it.”

Thatrated a lift of the brows, for an item that hadn’t been to the forefront of the news at all. The Alliance kept their hands off their own forested world, at Pell, a planet called Downbelow, barred exploitation by vote of the station residents, if not the far‑flung ship‑communities that were the greatest majority of that government.

So the whole ecosystem of Downbelow was protected from intrusion–because practically speaking there was nobody but Pell Station that would mount an expedition down there. The ecological sensibilities of the Alliance capital, however, had not stopped the Alliance merchanters from buying up luxuries out of Sol System hand over fist, which they were selling, hand over fist, to Union. Since the Alliance sat halfway between Union and Sol, a ban on certain Earth products couldn’tbe meaningful without Alliance compliance, and she’d have bet Alliance, composed mostly of merchanter families, wouldn’t possibly go with it.

Uncommon that Alliance and Union both, former enemies, ended up ba

“Well,” she said. “So no more wood from Earth?”

“I think it will pass in the Council of Worlds,” he said. “A lot of talk, a lot of fire and fury and discussion. The spotlight’s on the users of certain products, and no senator wants to be tagged as one of the conspicuously rich consumers. They’ve exempted historical pieces from the ban. I’ve objected that we’ll see an uncommon glut of relics coming out of Earth. And we get one other quiet little provision–the Hinder Stars Defense Treaty gets moved forward. Talks renewed.”

“That’s good.” It was.

“So,” he said, in a changing‑the‑subject tone, “how are things here?”

And still no mention of the private meetings. “Same as last week. Same as the week before.” There was some local news, not as dramatic as the ban on wood veneers. “The new wing has its foundations laid.”

“Saw that, as the plane came in. Looking quite impressive back there.”

“They’re mostly finished with the storm tu

Not that much besides a twenty‑bed residential bunker and a machine shop stood on that remote site yet. The new building, well upriver, was in the early stages, a lot of raw earth and robots at the moment, superintended by a small azi technical crew and a supervisor, and soon to be occupied by the loneliest and craziest people on Cyteen, line‑ru

“Fine,” he said. “And how are your studies going?”

“Oh, good enough.”

“So–” Archly. “–are we moving researchers in upriver?”

“We’re a few months from that.”

“I don’t think I’d like the climate.”

She didn’t like the implication of that, not at all. He’d sensed she was stalking him. He’d Got her. She was sure her face had reacted in some dismay. As of now, it had a frown, which she immediately purged.

“Oh? And what did you do” she asked, in her best Ari One mode, “in Novgorod?”