Cordelia's Honor

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  The next morning Mehta called early on the comconsole, to tell Cordelia cheerily she could relax; something had come up, and their session that afternoon was canceled. She did not refer to Cordelia's absence the previous afternoon.

  Cordelia was relieved at first, until she began thinking about it. Just to be sure, she absented herself from home again. The day might have been pleasant, but for a dust-up with some journalists lurking around the apartment shaft, and the discovery about mid-afternoon that she was being followed by two men in very inconspicuous civilian sarongs. Sarongs were last year's fashion; this year it was exotic and whimsical body paint, at least for the brave. Cordelia, wearing her old tan Survey fatigues, lost them by trailing them through a pornographic feelie-show. But they turned up again later in the afternoon as she puttered through the Silica Zoo.

  * * *

  At Mehta's appointed hour the next afternoon the door chimed. Cordelia slouched reluctantly to answer it. How am I going to handle her today? she wondered. I'm running low on inspiration. So tired . . .

  Her stomach sank. Now what? Framed in the doorway were Mehta, Commodore Tailor, and a husky medtech. That one, Cordelia thought, staring up at him, looks like he could handle Bothari. Backing up a bit, she led them into her mother's living room. Her mother retreated to the kitchen, ostensibly to prepare coffee.

  Commodore Tailor seated himself and cleared his throat nervously. "Cordelia, I have something to say that will be a little painful, I'm afraid."

  Cordelia perched on the arm of a chair and swung her leg back and forth, baring her teeth in what she hoped was a bland smile. "S-sticking you with the dirty work, eh? One of the joys of command. Go ahead."

  "We're going to have to ask you to agree to hospitalization for further therapy."

  Dear God, here we go. The muscles of her belly trembled beneath her shirt; it was a loose shirt, maybe they wouldn't notice. "Oh? Why?" she inquired casually.

  "We're afraid—we're very much afraid that the Barrayaran mind programming you underwent was a lot more extensive than anyone realized. We think, in fact . . ." he paused, taking a deep breath, "that they've tried to make you an agent."

  Is that an editorial or an imperial "we," Bill? "Tried, or succeeded?"

  Tailor's gaze wavered. Mehta fixed him with a cold stare. "Our opinion is divided on that—"

  Note, class, how sedulously he avoids the "I" of personal responsibility—it suggests the worst "we" of all, the guilty "we"—what the hell are they planning?

  "—but that letter you sent day before yesterday to the Barrayaran admiral, Vorkosigan—we thought you should have a chance to explain it, first."

  "I s-see." You dared! "Not an official l-letter. How could it be? You know Vorkosigan's retired now. But perhaps," her eye nailed Tailor, "you would care to explain by what right you are intercepting and reading my private mail?"

  "Emergency security. For the war."

  "War's over."

  He looked uncomfortable at that. "But the espionage goes on."

  Probably true. She had often wondered how Ezar Vorbarra came by the knowledge of the plasma mirrors, until the war the most closely guarded new weapon in the Betan arsenal. Her foot was tapping nervously. She stilled it. "My letter." My heart, on paper—paper wraps stone. . . . She kept her voice cool. "And what did you learn from my letter, Bill?"

  "Well, that's a problem. We've had our best cryptographers, our most advanced computer programs, working on it for the better part of two days. Analyzed it right down to the molecular structure of the paper. Frankly," he glanced rather irritably at Mehta, "I'm not convinced they found anything."

  No, Cordelia thought, you wouldn't. The secret was in the kiss. Not subject to molecular analysis. She sighed glumly. "Did you send it on, after you were done?"

  "Well—I'm afraid there wasn't anything left, by then."

  Scissors cut paper. . . . "I'm no agent. I g-give you my word."

  Mehta looked up alertly.

  "I find it hard to believe, myself," Tailor said.

  Cordelia tried to hold his eyes; he looked away. You do believe it, she thought. "What happens if I refuse to have myself committed?"

  "Then as your commanding officer, I must order you to do so."

  I'll see you in hell first—no. Calm. Must stay calm, keep them taking, maybe I can talk my way out of this yet. "Even if it's against your private judgment?"

  "This is a serious security matter. I'm afraid it doesn't admit private judgments."

  "Oh, come on. Even Captain Negri has been known to make a private judgment, they say."

  She'd said something wrong. The temperature in the room seemed to drop suddenly.

  "How do you know about Captain Negri?" said Tailor frozenly.

  "Everybody knows about Negri." They were staring at her. "Oh, c-come on! If I were an agent of Negri's, you'd never know it. He's not so inept!"

  "On the contrary," said Mehta in a clipped tone, "we think he's so good that you'd never know it."

  "Garbage!" said Cordelia, disgusted. "How do you figure that?"

  Mehta answered literally. "My hypothesis is that you are being controlled—unconsciously, perhaps—by this rather sinister and enigmatic Admiral Vorkosigan. That your programming began during your first captivity and was completed, probably, during the late war. You were destined to be the linchpin of a new Barrayaran intelligence network here, to replace the one that was just rooted out. A mole, perhaps, put in place and not activated for years, until some critical moment—"

  "Sinister?" Cordelia interrupted. "Enigmatic? Aral? I could laugh." I could weep. . . .

  "He is obviously your control," said Mehta complacently. "You have apparently been programmed to obey him unquestioningly."

  "I am not a computer." Thump, thump, went her foot. "And Aral is the one person who has never constrained me. A point of honor, I believe."

  "You see?" said Mehta. To Tailor; she didn't look at Cordelia. "All the evidence points one way."

  "Only if you're s-standing on your head!" cried Cordelia, furious. She glared at Tailor. "That's not an order I have to take. I can resign my commission."

  "We need not have your permission," said Mehta calmly, "even as a civilian. If your next of kin will agree to it."

  "My mother'd never do that to me!"

  "We've already discussed it with her, at length. She's very concerned for you."

  "I s-see." Cordelia subsided abruptly, glancing toward the kitchen. "I wondered why that coffee was taking so long. Guilty conscience, eh?" She hummed a snatch of tune under her breath, then stopped. "You people have really done your homework. Covered all the exits."

  Tailor summoned up a smile and offered it to her, placatingly. "You don't have anything to be afraid of, Cordelia. You'll have our very best people working for—with—"

  On, thought Cordelia.

  "—you. And when you're done, you'll be able to return to your old life as if none of this had ever happened."

  Erase me, will you? Erase him . . . Analyze me to death, like my poor timid love letter. She smiled back at him, ruefully. "Sorry, Bill. I just have this awful vision of being p-peeled like an onion, looking for the seeds."

  He grinned. "Onions don't have seeds, Cordelia."

  "I stand corrected," she said dryly.

  "And frankly," he went on, "if you are right and, uh, we are wrong—the fastest way you can prove it is to come along." He smiled the smile of reason.

  "Yes, true . . ." But for that little matter of a civil war on Barrayar—that tiny stumbling block—that stone—paper wraps stone . . .

  "Sorry, Cordelia." He really was.

  "It's all right."

  "Remarkable ploy of the Barrayarans," Mehta expounded thoughtfully. "Concealing an espionage ring under the cover of a love affair. I might even have bought it, if the principals had been more likely."

  "Yes," Cordelia agreed cordially, writhing within. "One doesn't expect a thirty-four-year-old to fall in love like an adolescent. Q
uite an unexpected—gift, at my age. Even more unexpected at forty-four, I gather."

  "Exactly," said Mehta, pleased by Cordelia's ready understanding. "A middle-aged career officer is hardly the stuff of romance."

  Tailor, behind her, opened his mouth as if to speak, then shut it again. He stared meditatively at his hands.

  "Think you can cure me of it?" asked Cordelia.

  "Oh, yes."

  "Ah." Sergeant Bothari, where are you now? Too late. "You leave me no choice. Curious." Delay, whispered her mind. Look for an opportunity. If you can't find one, make one. Pretend this is Barrayar, where anything is possible. "Is it all right if I g-get a shower—change clothes, pack? I assume this is going to be a lengthy business."

  "Of course." Tailor and Mehta exchanged a relieved look. Cordelia smiled pleasantly.

  Dr. Mehta, without the medtech, accompanied her to her bedroom. Opportunity, thought Cordelia dizzily. "Ah, good," she said, closing the door behind the doctor. "We can chat while I pack."

  Sergeant Bothari—there is a time for words, and there is a time when even the very best words fail. You were a man of very few words, but you didn't fail. I wish I'd understood you better. Too late . . .

  Mehta seated herself on the bed, watching her specimen, perhaps, as it wriggled on its pin. Her triumph of logical deduction. Are you planning to write a paper on me, Mehta? wondered Cordelia dourly. Paper wraps stone. . . .

  She puttered around the room, opening drawers, slamming cabinets. There was a belt—two belts—and a chain belt. There were her identity cards, bank cards, money. She pretended not to see them. As she moved, she talked. Her brain seethed. Stone smashes scissors. . . .

  "You know you remind me a bit of the late Admiral Vorrutyer. You both want to take me apart, see what makes me tick. Vorrutyer was more like a little kid, though. Had no intention of picking up his mess afterwards.

  "You, on the other hand, will take me apart and not even get a giggle out of it. Of course, you fully intend to put the pieces back together afterwards, but from my point of view that scarcely makes any difference. Aral was right about people in green silk rooms. . . ."

  Mehta looked puzzled. "You've stopped stuttering," she noted.

  "Yes . . ." Cordelia paused before her aquarium, considering it curiously. "So I have. How strange." Stone smashes scissors. . . .

  She removed the top. The old familiar nausea of funk and fear wrung her stomach. She wandered aimlessly behind Mehta, the chain belt and a shirt in her hands. I must choose now. I must choose now. I choose—now!

  She lunged, wrapping the belt around the doctor's throat, yanking her arms up behind her back, securing them painfully with the other end of the belt. Mehta emitted a strangled squeak.

  Cordelia held her from behind, and whispered in her ear.

  "In a moment I'll give you your air back. How long depends on you. You're about to get a short course in the real Barrayaran interrogation techniques. I never used to approve of them, but lately I've come to see they have their uses—when you're in a tearing hurry, for instance—" Can't let her guess I'm playacting. Playacting. "How many men does Tailor have planted around this building, and what are their positions?"

  She loosened the chain slightly. Mehta, eyes stunned with fear, choked, "None!"

  "All Cretans are liars," Cordelia muttered. "Bill's not inept either." She dragged the doctor over to the aquarium and pushed her face into the water. She struggled wildly, but Cordelia, larger, stronger, in better training, held her under with a furious strength that astonished herself.

  Mehta showed signs of passing out. Cordelia pulled her up and allowed her a couple of breaths.

  "Care to revise your estimate yet?" God help me, what if this doesn't work? They'll never believe I'm not an agent now.

  "Oh, please," Mehta gasped.

  "All right, back you go." She held her down again.

  The water roiled, splashing over the sides of the aquarium. Cordelia could see Mehta's face through the glass, strangely magnified, deathly yellow in the odd reflected light from the gravel. Silver bubbles broke around her mouth and flowed up over her face. Cordelia was temporarily fascinated by them. Air flows like water, underwater, she thought; is there an aesthetic of death?

  "Now. How many? Where?"

  "No, really!"

  "Have another drink."

  At her next breath Mehta gasped, "You wouldn't kill me!"

  "Diagnosis, Doctor," hissed Cordelia. "Am I a sane woman, pretending to be mad, or a madwoman, pretending to be sane? Grow gills!" Her voice rose uncontrollably. She shoved Mehta back under, and found she was holding her own breath. And what if she's right and I'm wrong? What if I am an agent, and don't know it? How do you tell a copy from the original? Stone smashes scissors. . . .

  She had a vision, trembling to her fingers, of holding the woman's head under, and under, until her resistance drained away, until unconsciousness took her, and a full count beyond that to assure brain death. Power, opportunity, will—she lacked nothing. So this is what Aral felt at Komarr, she thought. Now I understand—no. Now I know.

  "How many? Where?"

  "Four," Mehta croaked. Cordelia melted with relief. "Two outside the foyer. Two in the garage."

  "Thank you," said Cordelia, automatically courteous; but her throat was tightened to a slit and squeezed her words to a smear of sound. "I'm sorry. . . ." She could not tell if Mehta, livid, heard or understood. Paper wraps stone. . . .

  She bound and gagged her as she had once seen Vorkosigan do Gottyan. She shoved her down behind the bed, out of sight from the door. She stuffed bank cards, IDs, money, into her pockets. She turned on the shower.

  She tiptoed out the bedroom door, breathing raggedly through her mouth. She ached for a minute, just one minute, to collect her shattered balance, but Tailor and the medtech were gone—to the kitchen for coffee, probably. She dared not risk the opening even to pause for boots.

  No, God—! Tailor was standing in the archway to the kitchen, just raising a cup of coffee to his lips. She froze, he went still, and they stared at each other.

  Her eyes, Cordelia realized, must be huge as some nocturnal animal's. She never could control her eyes.

  Tailor's mouth twisted oddly, watching her. Then, slowly, he raised his left hand and saluted her. The incorrect hand, but the other was holding the coffee. He took a sip of his drink, gaze steady over the rim of his cup.

  Cordelia came gravely to attention, returned the salute, and slipped quietly out the apartment door.

  * * *

  To her temporary terror, she found a journalist and his vidman in the hallway, one of the most persistent and obnoxious, the one she'd had thrown out of the building yesterday. She smiled at him, dizzy with exhilaration, like a sky diver just stepping into air.

  "Still want to do that interview?"

  He jumped at the bait.

  "Slow down, now. Not here. I'm being watched, you know." She dropped her voice conspiratorially. "The government's doing a cover-up. What I know could blow the administration sky-high. Things about the prisoners. You could—make your reputation."

  "Where, then?" He was avid.

  "How about the shuttleport? Their bar's quiet. I'll buy you a drink, and we can—plan our campaign." Time ticked in her brain. She expected her mother's apartment door to slam open any second. "It's dangerous, though. There are two government agents up in the foyer and two in the garage. I'd have to get past them without being seen. If it were known I was talking to you, you might not get a chance at a second interview. No rough stuff—just a little quiet disappearance in the night, and the ripple of a rumor about 'gone for medical tests.' Know what I mean?" She was fairly sure he didn't—his media service dealt mainly in sex fantasies—but she could see a vision of journalistic glory growing in his face.

  He turned to his vidman. "Jon, give her your jacket, your hat, and your holovid."

  She tucked her hair up in the broad-brimmed hat, concealed her fatigues under the jacket,
and carried the vid ostentatiously. They took the lift tube up to the garage. There were two men in blue uniforms waiting by its exit. She placed the vid casually on her shoulder, her arm half-concealing her face, as they walked past them to the journalist's groundcar.

  At the shuttleport bar she ordered drinks, and took a large gulp of her own. "I'll be right back," she promised, and left him sitting there with the unpaid-for liquor in front of him.

  The next stop was the ticket computer. She punched up the schedule. No passenger ships leaving for Escobar for at least six hours. Far too long. The shuttleport would surely be one of the first places searched. A woman in shuttleport uniform walked past. Cordelia collared her.

  "Pardon me. Could you help me find out something about private freighter schedules, or any other private ships leaving soon?"

  The woman frowned, then smiled in sudden recognition. "You're Captain Naismith!"

  Her heart lurched, and pounded drunkenly. No—steady on . . . "Yes. Um . . . The press have been giving me a rather hard time. I'm sure you understand." Cordelia gave the woman a look that raised her to an inner circle. "I want to do this quietly. Maybe we could go to an office? I know you're not like them. You have a respect for privacy. I can see it in your face."

  "You can?" The woman was flattered and excited, and led Cordelia away. In her office she had access to the full traffic control schedules, and Cordelia keyed through them rapidly. "Hm. This looks good. Starts for Escobar within the hour. Has the pilot gone up yet, do you know?"

  "That freighter isn't certified for passengers."

  "That's all right. I just want to talk to the pilot. Personally. And privately. Can you catch him for me?"

  "I'll try." She succeeded. "He'll meet you in Docking Bay 27. But you'll have to hurry."

  "Thanks. Um . . . You know, the journalists have been making my life miserable. They'll stop at nothing. There's even a pair who've gone so far as to put on Expeditionary Force uniforms to try and get in. Call themselves Captain Mehta and Commodore Tailor. A real pain. If any of them come sniffing around, do you suppose you could sort of forget you saw me?"