The Serrano Succession by Elizabeth Moon Page A

right, whatever it is. I cannot give you a Ministry. In a few years, I expect the public climate will change, and then, perhaps, we can find something for you."
     
    "You expect my vote but you aren't giving me anything?"
     
    "I expect your vote because you know where your advantage lies. Even if they had it to give, you would get nothing out of that clique Bunny ran. And they do not have it to give, not anymore."
     
    Oskar glared, but subsided, as Hobart had known he would. Oskar was a blusterer, but if that didn't work he had no second weapon. Hobart always had a second weapon—and a third and a fourth, he thought to himself. He changed his tone, and went on; if Oskar could get it through his head what the problem really was, he might be useful.
     
    "Whoever controls the rejuvenation process controls everything—as long as the public doesn't rebel against rejuvs. We must take steps against the Ageist conspiracies; the shortlifes, if they realize the danger they're in, outnumber us at this point and could be dangerous."
     
    "But Venezia says—"
     
    "Venezia is a fool. Yes, something had gone wrong there, something serious. A Benignity spy, if I understand the little that's been declassified. But it's not as bad as all that. Women are so excitable, not to mention sentimental, and Venezia in particular—"
     
    Oskar nodded eagerly; Hobart smiled to himself. How the Morrelline brothers hated having Venezia in charge! "All she ever did was play with pottery—" Oskar said.
     
    "Quite so. How could she know anything about the real world? She could not be expected to realize how many lives would be disrupted—prematurely ended, with the shortage of rejuvenation drugs—because of her finicky insistence on exact procedures."
     
    "But Hobart—how do we get it back? How do we get her out of there?"
     
    Exactly the opening he'd hoped for. "By doing precisely what I tell you," Hobart said. "I need your support at all the Grand Council sessions; I will let you know what I need you to say, and how to vote. With more sympathetic, more cooperative Ministers, we should be able to ease dear Venezia back into her supportive role."
     
    "She won't like it," Oskar said, puffing out his plump cheeks.
     
    "I don't care whether she does or not," Hobart said. "I am not going to let one woman stand in the way of progress for the Conselline Sept." He looked forward to that moment, probably more than Oskar did. Venezia had been a constant nuisance at sept board meetings, poking her nose into all sorts of inconvenient corners. He'd had to roust her out of his own offices more than once, where she chatted up the clerical staff and wheedled who knows what out of them. She seemed to think she had a moral mission to clean up the whole sept.
     
    "Our responsibility to the whole Familias . . ." she would say, while Hobart ground his teeth. They had no responsibility to the whole Familias; they had a responsibility to Family shareholders. Period. He wasn't going to urge her to go on making faulty drugs. Bad for business, and people would be watching carefully. Beyond that, though, it wasn't their business to be saints, if that's what she had in mind.
     
    "If Kemtre had not been a weak man, none of these disasters would have happened. He drugged his son into stupidity, and then created those damned clones."
     
    "I don't see that cloning is such a bad thing."
     
    "No, nor do I, except that we have a rapidly growing population anyway. We don't need clones; we need sensible strong men who know how to handle the hysterics. No offense." He eyed Oskar, but Oskar didn't mind if Hobart called his sister hysterical. "Now, Oskar, I want you to have a word with the Broderick Institute, and tell them to do their homework a little better—"
     
    "The Broderick Institute? What have they done?"
     
    Sometimes he wondered if Oskar had a brain. Venezia, for all her impracticality, had wit enough. "Oskar, the Broderick Institute is where Dr. Margulis