Black Point Clan (Wine of the Gods Book 36)

by Pam Uphoff

  Ajha paused to gain control. "I'll be there." No point in being rude. Shouting that he was too damned old to need his Daddy's approval anymore wouldn't impress anyone. And it wasn't actually untrue. He'd just realized if it ever happened, it would be met with the same qualifying terms and lukewarm praise his grandfather had always extended.

  "Still having trouble with your father?"

  Ajha looked over his shoulder. Jain, one of his mother's school chums—Poppy's and Whipper's mother—looked concerned.

  Ajha shrugged. "You have to accept people for who and what they are. And Father is an emotionally remote man. Period."

  The man with her was vaguely familiar. "Damned remote yourself, aren't you?"

  "Oh, Ajha, this is my husband, Sub-minister Arja Withione. Commerce Department, you know."

  "Oh, of course, I should have recognized you. Can't think what distracted me." Ajha cast a glance toward the younger set of women.

  The man laughed, and steered his wife away. Ajha sighed.

  An up-and-coming politician. A Player. A cousin to some degree, going by the name.

  Ajha wondered briefly what the man wanted from Jain. A closer connection to The Ax perhaps? Or the Director of External Relations. Possibly both, if the Ax and his ex-wife—full sister of the Director—could make up and work together. At his level, wives came and went with the political seasons.

  Only the young women, like his mother seventy-two years ago, and Poppy fourteen years ago, were tender enough to be bruised. Lady Kiaj's grudge was notably acute and long lasting. Even Poppy was blaming the man she'd willingly had an affair with, rather than the husband who had been her inferior in the power and unable to impregnate her.

  It was an engineering flaw, or possibly a deliberate design, poorly thought out. A fertility block that faded only with sex with a more powerfully magic man. Perhaps an attempt to ensure that the best of the sperm were the ones that fertilized the egg. Unfortunately they rejected equal power as well.

  So that the more powerful the woman, the less likely she'd ever have children. The Prophets had been transported from a parallel world, one a few centuries ahead of the world they'd been marooned in.

  Before genetic studies had made testing possible, women who had not gotten pregnant after a few years of marriage generally divorced their husbands and sought a more powerful man, political allegiances coming and going with them. Or the 'barren' wife seduced a more powerful man.

  A pregnancy was taken as a measure of the relative power of the two men. A wife gotten pregnant by another man was a disgrace, a defeat. Back then, it had happened frequently.

  The psychic bond between parent and child produced a quick zap of energy, detectible to those nearby. A man publicly touching a baby in public . . . everyone would know if he was, or wasn't the father. A fool proof method of counting coup . . . if one survived the duel that almost inevitably followed. In modern times, the seduction ploy had lapsed.

  Then twelve years ago, Endi Dewulfe had revived the tactic. He'd disgraced half the War Party's leaders by impregnating their otherwise barren wives. That had enlivened the Game no end.

  Ajha smiled a bit, and glanced over at Xiat. "Political infighting, via sex and marriage. I've been abroad long enough to see it as strange and bizarre. Does it still look normal and natural to you?"

  "It comes into every One damned case I've ever investigated. From neighborhood politics on up. I doubt it's different elsewhere. Possibly less obvious."

  Ajha blinked in surprise. "No. Elsewhere, marriages are expected to be close to permanent. A marriage cements an alliance. It's a pledge of the permanency of the support. Here, it's Team Colors. A pretty flag of temporary fandom, shallow and frequently dropped."

  "One, Ajha!" Phoebe sniffed. "You've not just grown up, you've gotten old. What utter nonsense you spout. Careful, or I'll mistake you for my great great grandfather." She hooked Xiat's arm in hers and led her off.

  Pity. The Cheer Girl, all agile flips and athletic springs, had grown into an intelligent woman. Perhaps some other pleasant surprises awaited him. "So, Bo? What are you doing these days?"

  "Oh. Accounting. I know it sounds boring, but I love the definiteness of numbers."

  "Satisfying. Compared to trying to figure out people, at least." Ajha contemplated the effects of over forty years of such surety and shivered. "I do a fair amount of statistical analysis on data I collect. Bringing order to chaos. Have you eaten? There's a good spread across the room, if we can get there."

  Analyzing the crowd, he was a bit surprised to find that his cohort was indeed the youngest in the room. He nibbled on a cracker. "Bo? Did everyone leave their kids behind? Shouldn't there be some twenty- and thirty-year-olds around? Or even fifty-year-olds. Unless they're partying elsewhere, our family is shrinking badly."

  Bo shrugged. "Too many Withiones. I think most of the women have married at least five times. Well, Poppy, just three, and she the only one with a kid to show for it, so to speak. Poor kid. You think we were ostracized? One! Endi Dewulfe's bastards live in Hell. Well, Xiat never married. She's a princess, no matter what job she has. Guaranteed no children."

  "And us guys aren't doing much better."

  "Well, we're just reaching an attractive age. Women always marry up a generation, you know?"

  Ajha tried to imagine marrying one of the younger agents he'd trained and supervised, and shuddered. "That's insane. I like mature and intelligent women."

  "Pity they don't like you." Krazy at his back, this time.

  "Much though I hate to admit it, I can see why you girls didn't find me attractive in school. But do you really like marrying men older than you? How did you meet them? What did you have in common, to talk about over breakfast back when you were barely twenty?"

  Cookie chuckled. "Oh my. Ajha, we may have lived under the same roof as our husbands, but we don't live with them. We usually have adjoining bedrooms, for the necessary. But the servants get up and fix the men breakfast, not us." She rolled her eyes. "Except when we're packed in like sardines like this. Thank god I'm divorced."

  "How many husbands have you been through?"

  "Just dropped the sixth one yesterday."

  "That is . . . an interesting career."

  Cookie lowered her elegant brows. Professionally plucked and shaped, no doubt. "Was that meant to be an insult?"

  "No. An observation. You seem to be making a career of being a Marker in the Game. Do you prefer to think of it as a life style?"

  "Well. I suppose it's both."

  "Does having a child boost your value as a Marker?"

  "That depends. It brings up doubt as to how high your own score is, but if you've been infertile through several marriages, then produce a child inarguably your husband's, then his prestige is raised, relative to the prior husbands and that reflects on you. It really is a game. A very profitable one." She cast a glance toward Poppy, across the room. "Ende Dewulfe really raised the stakes. Thirty years of barren marriages, then, wham. A blow to every man she's ever bedded. Husbands have gotten more generous since then, not wanting to risk a bastard dropping their prestige."

  Bo just shook his head in disbelief.

  Krazy snickered. "Sometimes we get tired of the Game, drop out. Maybe in another fifty years. I'm about ready to take a big step up and marry some real power."

  "Director or Minister? Or will you go for a subdirector or subminister first? Our generation of the family is over-supplied with Withione girls, I guess. I mean, not counting the more distantly related of you, that's five Withiones and one Neartuone, here and what? Six others in the subclan? Only one other Neartuone that I can think of. The men, we've got three Withiones to eight Neartuones."

  Bo snorted. "You and I are lacking girls, period. And you didn't count yourself."

  "Nah. I have no idea how I'd be ranked, these days. Exposure to Comet Fall genetic engineering, you see."

  More women oozed into the group as he spoke.

  "I hope you aren't tr
ying to pass yourself off as an Endi Dewulf."

  "Oh, is that why you've got such nice hair? Last I'd heard you were going bald."

  "And gray."

  Ajha lost track of who said what, and just nodded in general. "Yeah, it's sort of cheating, anyway you look at it. I didn't get those genes from my parents, and they may not be identical to the Prophet's genes."

  "Eww!" Poppy led a general drawing away from Ajha.

  He and Bo swapped grins. "Now there's a reaction I remember from school."

  "Yep." Bo grinned. "I'm clean, Girls."

  That completed the rout.

  Bo and Ajha turned back for more food.

  "More satisfaction, here." Bo mumbled around a melon ball.

  "I feel young again." Ajha admitted.

  ***

  Xiat watched from across the room, and wondered what had caused the general exodus from the vicinity of Ajha Clostuone and Ifbo Neartuone. They'd been the class nerds, no doubt about it. But they'd never hung around together, either. Xiat had always had the opposite problem. Especially after she'd gotten passed-out drunk at a graduation party and woken up having jumped in power through losing her virginity. She'd attracted both men and women like flies to carrion until her advanced training had taught her how to shut down her aura in a deliberate and thorough manner. Now she usually kept it down to a nice polite social glow, nothing special. She'd opened up a little tonight, just to be sure of contacting the men she was supposed to be monitoring.

  Ajha was one of them. The Ax's only child. And he worried her. She'd seen that level of barrier in the most dangerous Players, and the most ruthless criminals. And Ajha had been out-dimension too much to be a Player.

  She'd been half looking forward to, and half apprehensive, about getting chummy with all her old school pals. Fifty-five years since they'd split up, and only one of them had had the sense to just get a job.

  Poppy was doing well, growing micro-circuits for a small specialty manufacturer. They got together every few months, lunch or dinner, chat a bit, talk to the kid, walk away. The other four were still going through husbands and trying to figure out the unwritten, and generally unspoken, rules of the Game.

  Since her own mother died, Xiat hadn't even kept up on the gossip about them. As far as Xiat could tell from a quick look at their files, their divorces had been rancorous enough to not count as 'making useful contacts' and since none of the four had yet managed a pregnancy, they hadn't crushed the reputations of ex-husbands, nor worked their way high enough to marry someone who could get them pregnant.

  Fortunately Director Ajki was the only unmarried older man in the house. The younger male cohort would be considered barely suitable for chatting and maybe even practicing flirting technique, but nothing heavier. So it ought to be a peaceful week. Watch Ajki and the Ax's son; try to enjoy catching up with rather shallow old friends.

  All expenses paid and she got to save her vacation days.

  Chapter Three

  7 Shawwal 1407yp

  Black Point Enclave, West Coast of North America

  Ajha got up early and beat the drunks to the shower. And with the wisdom of experience, he slid the glass door wide and left the drapes pulled across the closed half. Fast, safe egress for the possibly sick Mushy and Whipper. He left the bathroom door open as well. Then he left them to deal with themselves.

  With so many guests, his mother had apparently decided on buffet style breakfasting. Ajha wasn't the first in. Fibber and Jain and their husbands were chatting at one end of the table. Three of the six younger women were up. Two in robes. Xiat was dressed in riding gear. He filled a plate and sat down across from her.

  "Riding? Do you have a horse?"

  "I don't own a horse right now, but I ride regularly. I had to reserve a horse a month ago, and I'm not going to miss my only opportunity to ride my favorite old trails."

  Ajha nodded. "I've ridden a bit, but my last oh, nearly a decade of work has all been either Helios or post industrial. No opportunity to ride."

  She swallowed a bite. "I thought we avoided post industrial?"

  "Yes, for exploring for colonies or mining prospects. But I'm working with the Dimensional Physics Group at the moment, studying close parallel worlds."

  "Really? Those are such strange . . . " She broke off as the House computer chimed.

  "An unapproved visitor is approaching the door. Opjw Withione."

  "Pajamas? Poppy's boy?" Xiat frowned. "She's going to throw a fit if he bothers her mother or Sub-minister Arja." She glanced down the table, where Jain's fingers were tapping in irritation.

  "Well, let’s find out what's up." Ajha rose. "Let him in, House."

  The boy hovering in the doorway looked younger than ten. Or maybe it had just been a long time since he'd seen a kid that age.

  "Hi. Opjw?" He pronounced it more or less like Op Jaw. The boy looked relieved. Pajamas was definitely the nickname from hell. "I'm Ajha. Your mother's not up yet, do you need her immediately, or would you like some breakfast?"

  More relief. "Breakfast would be good." His glance slid past Ajha and he nodded to Xiat, eyes brightening in relieved recognition. In the dining room he hesitated at the sight of his grandmother and her new acquisition.

  "Grab a plate and come sit with us." Ajha headed for his own abandoned breakfast.

  The boy speed loaded his plate and sat on Ajha's far side.

  Xiat frowned. "I thought Poppy said you were going to stay in school."

  The boy nodded. "Yeah, but everyone's older brother and sister are looking for places to stay, and the bullies are making sure they find them."

  Ajha nodded. "Figures. They're probably earning finder's fees."

  Opjw smiled briefly. "I sold my bed last week, for my roommate's brother. Unfortunately his parents can't find a place. So they're getting the beds and the three of us get the floor. They all snore. And cough. And whine about not having room to unpack. I figured I needed to clear out for a couple of hours this morning."

  "No problem. Make yourself at home. House, add Opjw to the allowed guest list."

  "Yes, Information Leader Ajha."

  The boy sat up straight. "Info leader? Here or do you get to Cross over?"

  "Cross over. I highly recommend it." I think I won’t mention that I’m actually an Action Leader, right now.

  He deflated. "I'd never pass the security checks, because of my father."

  Ajha frowned at that. "Well. I can see where it might be considered an item to check. But I wasn't raised by my father and my loyalties are all with my mother's family. I mean, judging the split of loyalties is something that is done both internally and externally for all of us." He'd been thinking as he talked, though. "One! You are so screwed, aren't you?"

  "Yep. I might as well be a Servaone."

  "Oh, it's not that bad. Just—government service may not be in your future, but private industry is still eighty percent of all jobs."

  The kid really did look like Xen.

  "Have you considered a different hair cut? Minimize your resemblance to Dewulfe?" Ajha shrugged. "I blend in to various cultures all the time. Hair and clothes are the easy part."

  Xiat eyed the kid. "He's right. Stick around, kid. I think you need a makeover."

  Opjw looked alarmed. "I haven't got money for that! Mom isn't one of you rich divorcees, you know. Sorry, Aunt Xiat, I know you work too. But the school is expensive, much more than the stipend."

  Xiat sighed. "Right. And that's why I'll do the hair cutting and then buy you just a couple of shirts in a very different style. But right now, I've got to bolt, or I'll miss my ride."

  "Stick around, kid. I'll show you how to research what you need."

  The kid was smart and caught on fast. They compared the most frequently seen pix of Endi Dewulfe, and the most recent of Xen Wolfson.

  "He always had his hair a bit long and shaggy. Showing the curl in it. Clothes-wise, recently, uniforms. And previously, show jackets or stretchy shirts that showed off his m
uscles."

  "No worries about that." Pajamas' tone was glum.

  "Not yet. You're a little young for puberty. The muscles will come. So. I'd recommend short hair and traditional Arab style shirts. Those are starting to come back into popularity. Your coloring is good for a Withione. Colors. Hmm. Xen tended to wear black jackets and white shirts for showing. Black t-shirts to show off his muscles. And now the charcoal grey Disco uniform, and sometimes the dark blue and gold Comet Fall uniform." Ajha glanced at his watch. "I've got to do a command performance at my father's. Stick around. I'll be back and make sure Xiat doesn't violate masculine standards of appearance."

  He hiked out to the main road, hopped a tram to the top of the hill, and walked to his Grandfather's house. He was deliberately barely on time. His father gave him a stiff nod. Princess Vaad looked him over with half closed eyes, glow showing. Ajha didn't let it in. As far as he'd ever been able to tell, Vaad was a social arranger, no love lost between her and the Ax. Professional politeness, indifference or tepid dislike below, as far as Ajka could tell. Above a certain level in both government and industry, all men had Princesses somewhere in their vicinity. Often in their beds. If his father and Vaad had a private relationship, it was very private. But even their public relationship was cooler than a lot of princess and principal interactions.

  Vaad's eyes flicked over Ajha's 'business casual' attire and she frowned.

  "I brought a tie, in case it was needed."

  His father snorted. "That's the least of it."

  Indeed. He got a complete briefing of his father's stands on a dozen matters. All solidly conservative. While he listened, a woman combed his hair, nodded approvingly, and made up his face.

  "You'll look very well on the screen. Just a bit rugged, and you have very good posture. You look confident and accomplished." She stepped back and smiled. "Now don't touch your hair or face."