The Duke Of Uranium by John Barnes Page B

marriage-of-lines, then the House of Cofinalez, which is more senior even though all they’ve got is a duchy and she’s in line to be queen, would subordinate the Karrinynya Dynasty, and Greenworld would pass under their control.”
    Jak felt ill, which was strange. Not long ago he’d have been surprised at the idea of anyone his age getting married, though he knew some people did, particularly in the Tolerated Faiths. Certainly the idea of Sesh getting married would have seemed ridiculous.
    But if she was going to marry anyone, then toktru it ought to be Jak. And the idea that it would be part of a property arrangement—”What would Uranium want with Greenworld, if it’s so incompatible with what they do? Would they just want to destroy it?” And would they take my beautiful, wonderful demmy and use her for a marker just so they could wreck one small kingdom? he thought. Suddenly the world seemed very cruel; he couldn’t stop thinking of her smile and her laugh.
    “They’re not going to succeed at any of it,” Gweshira reminded him, firmly. “And anyway even a very small kingdom is too expensive to acquire it just to wreck. But unfortunately, there is some method to the madness. They already have quite a few territorial holdings— some on Mars, some on Mercury, many in the Aerie, and of course their big home base in Africa on Earth—so adding Greenworld would expand that territorial base, not to mention adding one of the best middle-sized armies in the solar system to their forces.
    “It’s their longer-run goal that’s really insane. If the Cofinalezes can get Greenworld under their thumb, they’d have an excellent springboard from which to expand their monopoly and eventually take over fusion, gravitational, planetary thermal, and Casimir effect power, and thus eventually, instead of Duke of Uranium, Mun Cofinalez, or more likely (since Mun is old and failing) his son Pukh, could be King of Energy.”
    “But there’s no such thing!”
    Sib nodded emphatic agreement. “Nor should there be. It would be like having a Kingdom of Money, or a Kingdom of Information. Far too much power in one place. But that’s what the House of Cofinalez are driving at, or so we believe. And it starts with getting Princess Shyf to marry a Cofinalez.”
    “So why didn’t they just put a gun to her head, hold the ceremony, and have done with it?”
    Gweshira made a face, as if she’d smelled something bad. “Because we are a somewhat more civilized civilization than that. Emphasis on the somewhat. No level of marriage below full marriage-of-lines will subordinate one dynasty to another; Shyf can have a consort, or six of them if she wishes (Greenworld has legal polygamy for aristocrats), and it doesn’t affect her status—she’s queen as soon as her father dies. She can have a hundred term marriages if she wants, and has the energy, without changing a bit of her legal status. But if she goes into a full marriage-of-lines with a line senior to her own, she forfeits the title to
     
    Greenworld to her husband. Those are the rules.
    “Now, not surprisingly, the aristocrats have surrounded marriages-of-lines with a fence of very strict legal restrictions. And one of the strictest is that consent of both parties has to be verified by a full deep brain scan. That means, among other things, that Shyf has to agree to it without reservation—no detectable coercion. So whichever Cofinalez it is that they want to marry her to, he’ll have to win her heart for real.
    No drugs. No threats. No hypnosis. Not even any lies.
    “Princess Shyf knows enough to be pretty hard to persuade. So it’s going to take them several years of keeping her in comfortable captivity, during which at least one Cofinalez brother is going to have to exhibit all kinds of charm that his family has never had. That’s part of why we’re almost sure she’s in Fermi—because the most logical person to marry her off to is Psim Cofinalez, since he’s second in