Elyse and Althea moved to one side as Nora took her position at Charisse's left. Nora's eyes moved to his, and she smiled.

This is it. It's really going to happen.

Charisse stepped forward.

"Marriage," she said, "is the oldest human institution. It predates all other institutions, all religions, and all other celebrations and traditions. It goes back as far as we have records of human societies, and probably further still. Every civilization that showed any persistence has been founded on marriage and the families that spring from it."

She smiled. "Obviously, it's something to be taken seriously.

"Some years ago I made a study of marriage and marital customs, and I was intrigued by what I discovered. The earliest records describe marriage ceremonies and the subsequent celebrations that lasted for several days. In one culture, if a widow had not yet borne children, her deceased husband's oldest surviving brother was required to take her to bed and do his best to give her progeny. In another culture, the widow was expected to fling herself onto her husband's funeral pyre as a final demonstration of her love and grief." The crowd murmured dismay, and Charisse shuddered. "If she were disinclined to do so, her husband's nearest kin were obliged to, ah, assist her. In a host of Old Earth cultures, a husband and wife were not considered officially wed unless the State gave them its sanction."

Charisse smiled again. "Clan Morelon has its own customs. Some of you are already acquainted with them. For the rest, please be aware that these are merely our traditions...our ways of marking a passage into a deeper adulthood and a deeper, fuller bond with our clan."

Charisse turned to Nora. "Nora Morelon, you come here as a maiden free of all obligations, who has never known any tie but to the clan that bore and nurtured you. The bond of marriage has been offered to you. Are you ready, in full awareness of its weight and its implications, to accept it?"

Nora inclined her head. "I am."

Charisse turned to Elyse and nodded. Elyse reached behind her and brought forth a pair of satin high-heeled pumps, as brilliantly white as Nora's gown. The dowager matriarch knelt before the bride, slipped them onto her small feet, and rose to address her.

"You will be a child no longer," Elyse intoned, "from this day forward. Walk forth from here as a wife and a woman among women."

Nora curtseyed, and Elyse returned to her previous position. Charisse turned to Barton, who swallowed hastily.

"Barton Kramnik," she said, "you come here as a bachelor, who has not yet known the burden of a spouse or children. The bond of marriage has been offered to you. Are you ready, in full awareness of its weight and its implications, to accept it?"

"I am," he said as steadily as he could manage.

Charisse nodded to her husband. Feigner brought forth a pair of gold rings. He moved to stand before Barton, bowed, and offered the rings to him.

"In taking this maiden to wife," Feigner rumbled, "you accept the responsibility for her love and support, for the love, support, and education of the children she will bear you, and for other things no one can foresee." His eyes pierced Barton's own. "Bind yourself to her, and her to you, with these rings. Walk forth from here as a husband and a man among men."

Barton took the rings from the huge hand and bowed in acknowledgement. Feigner bowed again and returned to his previous position.

Barton turned to Nora. She held out her right hand, he gave her the ring meant for him, and she held out her left hand. Trembling only slightly, he slipped her wedding ring into place, and held out his right hand for her to do the same. Together they turned to face Charisse Morelon. She took their beringed hands into hers.

"Nora and Barton," she said, "do you agree to become husband and wife? To love, cherish, protect, and support one another in all things great and small? For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, till death do you part?"

In perfect unison, Barton and Nora said, "We do."

Charisse joined their hands and raised them high.

"Then thus shall it be," she cried, "before God and Man!"

The crowd burst into thunderous applause.

Douglas Kramnik had issued the expected congratulations to bride and groom, and was casting about for the least conspicuous way to leave the gathering, when a large hand fell on his shoulder. It proved to be attached to Chuck Feigner.

"Are you bored with the festivities already, Douglas?" Feigner grinned. "Charisse has been waiting. Rather patiently, for her. It's time we had a quiet word before you go."

Kramnik nodded, and Feigner maneuvered him unsubtly toward the knot of revelers where Charisse Morelon stood. The Morelon matriarch was chaffing and jesting as gaily as anyone else in the throng. When she saw them approach, she excused herself from her companions and went at once to them.

"Thank you for joining us, Douglas," she said. "It was a pleasure finally to have you here."

"The pleasure," he said in a monotone, "was mine."

She inclined her head as if she believed him sincere. "I have a request for you to entertain, if you have the time and aren't averse to doing a little business in the middle of all this revelry."

"What is it you want, Charisse?" Kramnik barely managed to keep the snarl mounting inside him from affecting his face or voice.

"As it happens," Charisse said, "I'm looking at some reorganization of clan operations. I've been managing every aspect of Clan Morelon's businesses and finances for coming up on a century, but it's getting to be beyond me. So I consulted with my senior kinsmen about how to divide the load, and they made a most useful suggestion, simple yet penetrating. Would you like to hear it?"

"I can't wait," he growled.

"It's just this," she said. "Separate off the clan's investment activities and place them under other management. I'll go on running farm operations and conducting our external relations, but the employment and monitoring of our investment capital will become the responsibility of others."

Kramnik said nothing.

"Well?" Charisse said. "Don't you have any opinion to offer?" Althea and Martin drifted toward them, noticed the sobriety of the conversation, and veered away.

"I can't imagine for the life of me why you'd want my opinion about it," Kramnik said. "I can't see what it has to do with me or Clan Kramnik."

Charisse's eyebrows rose. "No? How odd. Alvah and Patrice have spoken exceedingly well of your skill at managing your own clan's resources. I know how high-stress an undertaking that is, when margins are thin and a business is hanging by a thread. So you must have garnered quite a bit of expertise at it." She smiled. "Expertise I was hoping to employ to Clan Morelon's benefit."

Kramnik's mouth fell open.

"You want...me...to advise you on your investments and financial management?"

Charisse squinted. "No, not quite. We want you to become part of the management council for Morelon Investments. You would have an equal voice with two other councilors. The three of you would share the duties of allocating, monitoring, and harvesting the fruits of our liquid capital. At the moment, that comes to a bit more than eighty-five million dekas. About a third of that is already invested. The position carries a stipend of a hundred thousand dekas per annum."

Kramnik blinked disbelief at his oldest adversary. "You're serious?"

Charisse nodded. "Quite. Are you interested? It would seem to be a good fit to your aptitudes."

"Why are you offering me this?" he murmured.

"Douglas!" she said. "Is it completely impossible that I'm sincere about my appreciation for your skills and my desire to have the advantage of them?"

Kramnik was unable to reply.

"If you're thinking that I must have a reason beyond that," she said, "you're quite correct. Your son is now a member of my clan. I'd hoped that would be enough to put an end to the enmity between us, but recent events suggest that more might be required. That got me thinking about tents."

"Tents?" he said.

Charisse nodded. "I came across a saying from an Earth politician that tweaked me just right. This...person was known for bringing his political adversaries into his councils, giving them a say in what sort of advice he would receive. The way he put it was, 'I'd rather have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.'" She chuckled. "Quaint, isn't it?"

Kramnik rubbed at his temples. "Have you selected the other members of this little council?"

Charisse smiled. "Indeed I have." She looked up at her husband. "One of them is standing next to you."

Kramnik looked into Chuck Feigner's face. Charisse's consort nodded and smiled pleasantly. "I'm looking forward to working with you."

"And the other?" Kramnik said.

"Someone you already know quite well," Charisse said. "One of our newest kindred. Patrice Kramnik Morelon. Are you in?"

Kramnik started to speak, stopped, stuttered, and finally clamped his mouth firmly shut.

"Is there something more you need to know, Douglas?"

"Yes, there is." He braced himself internally. "To whom would we answer?"

"To me, of course," Charisse said. "But I have no desire to resume those responsibilities, so unless you were to start throwing dekas around like confetti, your position would be secure."

She turned a little away from him and regarded the party still in full flight.

"I know you have no love for me or my clan," she said. "You seem to think I'm some sort of autocrat, determined to run Jacksonville as if I were a queen. You once accused me of trying to buy your good will, and I demurred. I doubt you believed me, but I meant what I said. Would you care to guess why I meant it?"

Kramnik shook his head, and Charisse smiled again.

"I have no need of your good will, Douglas. You and yours are nothing compared to me and mine. If I were ever to adjudge Clan Morelon seriously threatened by you or Clan Kramnik, we would simply eliminate you. We'd annihilate you down to the last adult, adopt your minor children, and raise them as our own. We'd burn Kramnik House to the ground and erect a monument there to commemorate your foolhardy arrogance for the edification of others." She stared unsparingly into his eyes. "Do you doubt that I can and would do so?"

"No," he said. "But if you can..."

"If I can," she said, "then why bother to bring you inside Morelon operations? First, I meant what I said about my opinion of your managerial skills. Second, I want to do something for the rest of Clan Kramnik, which I will apprise of your new position, its salary, and its perquisites as soon as you accept it. Third and least, I'm tired of your intrigues, and I'd prefer not to have to explain to our other neighbors that I had you killed just so I wouldn't have to mop any more of your piss out of my tent."

In that moment, Douglas Kramnik became at last fully aware of the gulf that separated him from Charisse Morelon. She was by far his intellectual superior. Her foresight made his ability to plot look trivial. Worst of all, she exceeded him by orders of magnitude in ruthlessness.

I can't bear it, but if the elders were to learn that I refused it...

I can't refuse it.

"I'll take it," he croaked.

Charisse nodded. "Wise of you." She scanned the throng irregularly orbiting the hearthroom. "Let's go find Patrice."

Chapter 13: Sexember 33, 1303 A.H.

Charisse took a last bite of her scone, washed it down it with a long draught of coffee, and dabbed the crumbs from her lips. Althea and Martin sat at bare places. Except for the three of them, the kitchen was empty. For the rest of Clan Morelon, breakfast was long over.

"Chuck and I overflew it yesterday," she said. "It's just barely wide enough for the trucks. But I won't trust it to be adequately firm until the end of Octember."

Althea glanced at Martin, who nodded. "That's okay," she said. "We won't have all our gear assembled before about November fifteenth anyway."

She doesn't look happy, Grandpere.

-Why should she, Al? Her clan scion will be nearly five hundred miles away for an indeterminate time.

Well, yes. But the alternative- -Is to go back on Martin's statement to the rest of the community. I know. This is the best approach. That doesn't make it a good one.

Hm. Okay.

"How often can we expect consumables drops?" Martin said.

Charisse shrugged. "Radio me, tell me what you need, and I'll get it and pay Grenier Air to bring it to you." She turned to Althea. "Have you established an account I can draw on?"

Althea nodded. "Jacksonville Surety. Just remind me to give you the number."

"I will." Charisse sat back, features still as expressionless as a bust of Homer.

"Grandaunt-"

"You will be alone in the harshest environment north of the equator," Charisse said. "Neither of you has medical training. Neither of you has ever set a broken bone. Spooner's beard, neither of you has ever had to go without cream and sugar for your coffee! Why are you so set on this...this adventure?"

Althea started to answer. Martin squeezed her hand, and she clamped her mouth shut.

"It's not that we want to be parted from Clan Morelon, Charisse," he said. "We're going to be playing with some nasty chemicals and some frightening bits of physics."

The Morelon matriarch's eyes became very dark. "Worse than nuclear fission?"

"Less predictable than fission," Martin said. "Propulsion engineering is like that. A degree of danger is unavoidable. We have to make certain that what we'll be doing won't rebound to the detriment of the clan, or anyone else. If you'd been at that meeting, you'd understand at once."

"So there will be danger to the two of you," Charisse said. "And no one nearby to come to your rescue in the event of a calamity."

Martin nodded. "I'm afraid so. There's no way we can eliminate all risk to the two of us, though we'll take every precaution we can. But the alternative involves endangering a lot of other people who haven't consented and wouldn't be likely to do so."

Charisse made no reply. The three of them sat silently at the kitchen table for a long interval. Presently she rose, deposited her mug in the small sink, leaned back against it and crossed her arms over her breasts.

"I'm minded to forbid this," she said at last.

Althea started. "All the arrangements are in place. Grandaunt. I've already spent a ton of money."

Charisse nodded. "Even so. Arrangements or not. Expense or not. The two of you are too precious to be allowed to endanger yourselves for such a frivolous reason. You are too valuable to the clan, and too important to this community."

Althea felt her blood rising, and fought to quell it.

"Grandaunt," she said, "I've been working toward this since I was eighteen years old. This isn't just a flight of fancy. The sole reason I went into finance was to do this. It was Grandpere Armand's last request."

"My brother," Charisse said, "will not be there to share the risks with you, or to bail you out should things go wrong, or, God help me, to weep over your corpses."