Maddy was—
An early developer, uncle Denys called it.
Maddy was not anybody she would want to be, but she was certainly not the sort to let get too comfortable.
So she bought a scarf for Maddy and a real gold pin for Amy and a pullover for Sam and one for Tommy, and insistedto carry them on the plane, besides the other things she got for everybody. It didn't matter that you could order a lot of it, she told uncle Giraud, it mattered it came from Novgorod,where the other kids didn't get to go, and she was too going to take it on the plane. She got a blouse for Catlin, for parties: black, of course, but gauzy; Catlin looked surprised when she saw herself in the mirror. And a shirt for Florian over on the men's side: black and satiny and with a high collar that was sort of like his usual uniform sweaters, but very, very elegant. And then the woman who owned the shop thought of a pair of pants that would fit Catlin, very tight and satiny. So that meant it was only fair Florian should get new pants too. And while they were doing that, shefound a gunmetal satin pair of pants that just fit her, and that meant the sweater that went with them, which was bronzed lavenders on the shoulders shading down to gunmetal-sheen lavender and then gunmetal-and-black at the bottom. It was elegant. Uncle Giraud said it was too old for her before she put it on. When he saw her in it he said well, she wasgetting older.
Shethought she could sneak some lavender eyeshadow when she wore it at Maddy's next party.
So take that, Maddy Strassen.
They brought so many packages out of La Lunethat uncle Giraud and Abban had to put a lot of them in the security escort car, and she and Florian and Catlin had to sit practically on top of each other in the back seat.
Uncle Giraud said they were going to be into the next century going through Decon at Reseune.
That was the wonderful thing about Novgorod: because they had the Amity escarpment on the east and the terraforming had piled up the rock and put up towers to make the Curtainwall on the west, and because they had all those people and all that sewage and all that algae and the greenbelt and algae starting out even in the marine shallows, it was one of the few places in the world besides Reseune that people went out without D-suits and the only other airport besides Reseune where you could take your baggage right through without anything but a hose-down and an inspection.
There was an interview to go through, in the lounge at the airport, while Abban was supervising the baggage being loaded. But she knew a lot of the reporters, especially one of the women and two of the oldest men and a young man who had a way of winking at her to get her to laugh; and she didn't mind taking the time.
Ransom, uncle Giraud called it, for being let alone while she got to see the botanical gardens, except for the photographers.
"What did you do today, Ari?" a woman asked.
"I went to the garden and I went shopping," she said, sitting in the middle of the cameras and in front of the pickup-bank. She had been tired until she got in front of the cameras. But she knew she was on,then, and onmeant sparkle, which she knew how to do: it was easy, and it made the reporters happy and it made the people happy, and it made uncle Giraud happy—not that Giraud was her favorite person, but they got along all right: she had it figured uncle Giraud was real easy to Work in a lot of ways, and sometimes she thought he really had a soft place she got to. He would buy her things, lots of things. He had a special way of talking with her, being funny, which he wasn't, often, with other people.
And he was always so nasty every time they had a party or anything in the House.
About Giraud and maman—she neverforgot that. Ever.
"What did you buy?"
She grinned. "Uncle Giraud says 'too much.'" And ducked her head and smiled up at the cameras with an expression she knew was cute. She had watched herself on vid and practiced in the mirror. "But I don't get to come to the city but once a year. And this is the first time I ever went shopping."
"Aren't there stores in Reseune?"
"Oh, yes, but they're small, and you always know what's there. You can always get what you need, but it's mostly the same things, you know, like you can get a shirt, but if you want one different from everybody's you have to order it, and then you know what you're going to get."
"How are the guppies?"
Another laugh. A twitch of her shoulders. "I've got some green long-tails."
Uncle Denys had given her a whole lab. And guppies and aquariums were a craze in Novgorod, the first time in the world, uncle Denys said, that anybody had had pets, which people used to, on Earth. Reseune had gotten a flood of requests for guppies, ever since she had said on vid that they were something anybody could do.
And she got a place to sell her culls: uncle Denys said she should keep all the records on it, she would learn something.
Which meant that most every flight RESEUNEAIR's freight division made out, had some of her guppies on it, sealed in plastic bags and Purity-stamped for customs, and now it was getting to be an operation larger than the lab she did the breeding in: uncle Denys said it was about time she franchised-out, because guppies bred fast, and bred down, and the profit was in doing the really nice ones, which meant you had to get genesets. It was really funny, in some ways it was a lot easier to clone people than guppies.
"We hear," someone else said, "you've taken up another project. Can you tell us about the horse?"
"It's a filly. That's what you call a female baby horse. But she's not born yet. I had to study about her and help the techs get the tank ready; and I have to do a lot of reports—it's a lotof work. But she's going to be pretty just like her genesister. She'spregnant. She's going to birth not too long after my filly comes out of the tank. So we'll have twobabies."
"Haven't you had enough of horses?"
"Oh, no. You have to seethem. I'm going to ride mine. You can, they do it on Earth, you just have to train them."
"You're not going to break another arm, are you?"
She grinned and shook her head. "No. I've studied how to do it."
"How do you do it?"
"First you get them used to a saddle and a bridle and then you get them used to a weight on their back and then they don't get so scared when you climb on. But they're smart, that's what's so different, they're not like platytheres or anything, they thinkwhat they're going to do. That's the most wonderful thing. They're not like a computer. They're like us.Even pigs and goats are. You watch them and they watch you and you know they're thinking things you don't know about. And they feel warm and they play games and they do things just like people, just because they think of it."
"Could we get a clip of that?"
"Couldwe, uncle Giraud?"
"I think we could," Giraud said.
ii
Uncle Giraud was very, very happy with the session in Novgorod, Ari decided that on the flight back. She and Florian and Catlin sat up front in the usual spot and drank soft drinks and watched out the windows, while Giraud and the secretaries and the staffers sat at the back and did business, but there was a lot of laughing.
Which was why uncle Giraud bought her things, she thought. Which was all right. Sometimes she almost warmed up to Giraud. That was all right too. It kept Giraud at ease. And she learned to do that, be very nice to people she knew quite well were the Enemy, and even like them sometimes: it didn't mean you weren't going to Get them, because they were bound to do something that would remind you what they were sooner or later. When you were a kid you had to wait, that was all. She had told that to Catlin and Florian, and she got Catlin in front of a mirror and made Catlin practice smiling and laughing until she could do it without looking like she was faking it.