There were two more senators to complete the weekend gathering. Crispin Goldreich, whose position on the Commonwealth Budget Commission gave him a great deal of influence over the start-up arrangements of the whole starflight agency project. Justine’s briefing had him down as a mild skeptic; but as she knew there was really no such political animal. He was fishing for something.
Finally there was Ramon DB, the senator for Buta, although remarkably he didn’t belong to the Mandela family that had established that Big15 world. Instead, he was the leader of the general African caucus in the Senate, which gave him a respectable power base. He had also been Justine’s husband for twelve years. But that was eight decades ago.
“Remember me?” she asked coyly as he got out of his car.
He just wrapped his arms around her, hugging tightly. “Damn, you look hot when you’re this age,” he rumbled softly. He held her at arm’s length, looking her up and down. A wistful expression crossed his face. “Can we get married again?”
It was her turn to look at him. His traditional robe had a wonderful rainbow hem of semiorganic fiber that kept swirling as if he were in a breeze. Not even that movement could entirely disguise the way it fell over his stomach. His apparent age was approaching sixty, with white hairs infiltrating his temple. Midnight-black OCtattoos ran across his cheeks, flickering in and out of visibility.
“How much weight are you carrying under there?” she asked.
He put his hands together in prayer, and appealed to the sky. “Once a wife, always a wife. I keep in shape.”
“What shape? A beach ball? Rammy, you know you have trouble with your heart when you put on this much weight.”
“It is the fate of senators to attend huge meals every day of the week. I expect you’ll be sitting us down for an eight-course dinner tonight.”
“You are definitely not having eight courses; and I’m going to talk to the chef about your diet for the rest of the weekend. I don’t want to have to visit you in a re-life procedure ward, Rammy.”
“Yes, yes, woman. I am due to rejuve soon. It will all be sorted out then. Stop worrying.”
“Have they got a specific retrosequence for your condition yet?”
He gave an impatient swish of his fly whisk. “I have rare genes. It is difficult for doctors to isolate the problem and correct it.”
“Then have them vector in a sequence for a new heart. It’s simple enough.”
“I am what I am. You know that. I don’t want somebody else’s heart.”
She gathered a breath, ready to sigh at him. Before she had a chance his thick forefinger came up under her chin. “Don’t scold me, Justine. It is so good to see you again. Being a senator isn’t nearly as wonderful as everyone claims. I was hoping we could spend a little time together, you and I, this weekend.”
“We will.” She patted his arm. “I want to talk to you about Abby, anyway.”
“What’s up with our great-grandchild now?”
“Later.” She read the clock in her virtual vision. “I have to check in with Dad and Thompson before the evening begins for real.”
“Your father is here?” Ramon was suddenly reluctant to get closer to the house.
“Yes. Is that a problem?”
“You know he never liked me.”
“That’s your insecurity and imagination. He always accepted you.”
“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.
