"So, can't you do it in vitro?" Cordelia asked the obvious question.
Vaagen shot a glance of triumph at her man. "It would certainly open up a number of possible lines of experiment, if it could be arranged," he murmured to the ceiling.
"In vitro?" said the Residence man, puzzled. "How?"
"What, how?" said Cordelia. "You've got seventeen Escobaran-manufactured uterine replicators stored in a closet around here somewhere, carried home from the war." She turned excitedly to Vaagen. "Do you happen to know a Dr. Henri?"
Vaagen nodded. "We've worked together."
"Then you know all about them!"
"Well—not exactly all. But, ah—in fact, he informs me that they are available. But you understand, I'm not an obstetrician."
"You certainly aren't," said her man. "Milady, this man isn't even a physician. He's only a biochemist."
"But you're an obstetrician," she pointed out. "So we have the whole team, then. Dr. Henri, and, um, Captain Vaagen here for Piotr Miles, and you, for the transfer."
His lips were compressed, and his eyes held a very strange expression. It took her a moment to identify it as fear. "I can't do the transfer, Milady," he said. "I don't know how. Nobody on Barrayar has ever done one."
"You don't advise it, then?"
"Definitely not. The possibility of permanent damage—you can, after all, begin again in a few months, if the soft-tissue scarring doesn't extend to testicular—ahem. You can begin again. I am your doctor, and that is my considered opinion."
"Yes, if somebody else doesn't knock Aral off in the meantime. I must remember this is Barrayar, where they are so in love with death they bury men who are still twitching. Are you willing to try the operation?"
He drew himself up in dignity. "No, Milady. And that's final."
"Very well." She pointed a finger at her doctor, "You're out," and shifted it to Vaagen, "you're in. You are now in charge of this case. I rely on you to find me a surgeon—or a medical student, or a horse doctor, or somebody who's willing to try. And then you can experiment to your heart's content."
Vaagen looked mildly triumphant; her former man looked furious. "We had better see what my Lord Regent has to say, before you carry his wife off on this wave of criminally false optimism."
Vaagen looked a little less triumphant.
"You thinking of charging over there right now?" asked Cordelia.
"I'm sorry, Milady," said the Residence man, "but I think we'd do best to quash this thing right now. You don't know Captain Vaagen's reputation. Sorry to be so blunt, Vaagen, but you're an empire builder, and this time you've gone too far."
"Are you ambitious for a research wing, Captain Vaagen?" Cordelia inquired.
He shrugged, embarrassed rather than outraged, so she knew the Residence man's words to be at least half true. She gathered Vaagen in by eye, willing to possess him body, mind, and soul, but especially mind, and wondering how best to fire his imagination in her service.
"You shall have an institute, if you can bring this off. You tell him," she jerked her head in the direction of the hall, toward Aral's room, "I said so."
Variously discomfited, angry, and hopeful, they withdrew. Cordelia lay back on the bed and whistled a little soundless tune, her fingertips continuing their slow abdominal massage. Gravity had ceased to exist.
Chapter Nine
She slept at last, toward the middle of the day, and woke disoriented. She squinted at the afternoon light slanting through the hospital room's windows. The grey rain had gone away. She touched her belly, for grief and reassurance, and rolled over to find Count Piotr sitting at her bedside.
He was dressed in his country clothes, old uniform trousers, plain shirt, a jacket that he wore only at Vorkosigan Surleau. He must have come up directly to ImpMil. His thin lips smiled anxiously at her. His eyes looked tired and worried.
"Dear girl. You need not wake up for me."
"That's all right." She blinked away blear from her eyes, feeling older than the old man. "Is there something to drink?"
He hastily poured her cold water from the bedside basin spigot, and watched her swallow. "More?"
"That's enough. Have you seen Aral yet?"
He patted her hand. "I've talked to Aral already. He's resting now. I am so sorry, Cordelia."
"It may not be as bad as we feared at first. There's still a chance. A hope. Did Aral tell you about the uterine replicator?"
"Something. But the damage has already been done, surely. Irrevocable damage."
"Damage, yes. How irrevocable it is, no one knows. Not even Captain Vaagen."
"Yes, I met Vaagen a little while ago." Piotr frowned. "A pushing sort of fellow. New Man type."
"Barrayar needs its new men. And women. Its technologically trained generation."
"Oh, yes. We fought and slaved to create them. They are absolutely necessary. They know it, too, some of them." A hint of self-aware irony softened his mouth. "But this operation you're proposing, this placental transfer . . . it doesn't sound too safe."
"On Beta Colony, it would be routine." Cordelia shrugged. We are not, of course, on Beta Colony.
"But something more straightforward, better understood—you would be ready to begin again much sooner. In the long run, you might actually lose less time."
"Time . . . isn't what I'm worried about losing." A meaningless concept, now she thought of it. She lost 26.7 hours every Barrayaran day. "Anyway, I'm never going through that again. I'm not a slow learner, sir."
A flicker of alarm crossed his face. "You'll change your mind, when you feel better. What does matter now—I've talked to Captain Vaagen. There seemed no question in his mind there is great damage."
"Well, yes. The unknown is whether there can be great repairs."
"Dear girl." His worried smile grew tenser. "Just so. If only the fetus were a girl . . . or even a second son . . . we could afford to indulge your understandable, even laudable, maternal emotions. But this thing, if it lived, would be Count Vorkosigan someday. We cannot afford to have a deformed Count Vorkosigan." He sat back, as if he had just made some cogent point.
Cordelia wrinkled her brow. "Who is we?"
"House Vorkosigan. We are one of the oldest great houses on Barrayar. Never, perhaps, the richest, seldom the strongest, but what we've lacked in wealth we've made up in honor. Nine generations of Vor warriors. This would be a horrible end to come to, after nine generations, don't you see?"
"House Vorkosigan, at this point in time, consists of two individuals, you and Aral," Cordelia observed, both amused and disturbed. "And Counts Vorkosigan have come to horrible ends throughout your history. You've been blown up, shot, starved, drowned, burned alive, beheaded, diseased, and demented. The only thing you've never done is die in bed. I thought horrors were your stock in trade."
He returned her a pained smile. "But we've never been mutants."
"I think you need to talk to Vaagen again. The fetal damage he described was teratogenic, not genetic, if I understand him correctly."
"But people will think it's a mutant."
"What the devil do you care what some ignorant prole thinks?"
"Other Vor, dear."
"Vor, prole, they're equally ignorant, I assure you."
His hands twitched. He opened his mouth, closed it again, frowned, and said more sharply, "A Count Vorkosigan has never been an experimental laboratory animal, either."
"There you go, then. He serves Barrayar even before he's born. Not a bad start on a life of honor." Perhaps some good would come of it, in the end, some knowledge gained; if not help for themselves, then for some other parents' grief. The more she thought about it, the more right her decision felt, on more than one level.
Piotr jerked his head back. "For all you Betans seem soft, you have an appalling cold-blooded streak in you."
"Rational streak, sir. Rationality has its merits. You Barrayarans ought to try it sometime." She bit her tongue. "But we run ahead of ourselves, I think, sir. Ther
e are lots of d—" dangers, "difficulties yet to come. A placental transfer this late in pregnancy is tricky even for galactics. I admit, I wish there were time to import a more experienced surgeon. But there's not."
"Yes . . . yes . . . it may yet die, you're right. No need to . . . but I'm afraid for you, too, girl. Is it worth it?"
Was what worth what? How could she know? Her lungs burned. She smiled wearily at him, and shook her head, which ached with tight pressure in her temples and neck.
"Father," came a raspy voice from the doorway. Aral leaned there, in his green pajamas, a portable oxygenator stuck up his nose. How long had he stood there? "I think Cordelia needs to rest."
Their eyes met, over Piotr. Bless you, love. . . .
"Yes, of course." Count Piotr gathered himself together, and creaked to his feet. "I'm sorry, you're quite correct." He pressed Cordelia's hand one more time, firmly, with his dry old-man's grip. "Sleep. You'll be able to think more clearly later."
"Father."
"You shouldn't be out of bed, should you?" said Piotr, drawn off. "Go back and lie down, boy. . . ." His voice drifted away, across the corridor.
Aral returned later, after Count Piotr had finally left.
"Was Father bothering you?" he asked, looking grim. She held out her hand to him, and he sat beside her. She transferred her head from her pillow to his lap, her cheek on the firm-muscled leg beneath the thin pajama, and he stroked her hair.
"No more than usual," she sighed.
"I feared he was upsetting you."
"It's not that I'm not upset. It's just that I'm too tired to run up and down the corridor screaming."
"Ah. He did upset you."
"Yes." She hesitated. "In a way, he has a point. I was so afraid for so long, waiting for the blow to fall, from somewhere, nowhere, anywhere. Then came last night, and the worst was done, over . . . except it's not over. If the blow had been more complete, I could stop, quit now. But this is going to go on and on." She rubbed her cheek against the cloth. "Did Illyan come up with anything new? I thought I heard his voice out there, earlier."
His hand continued to stroke her hair, in even rhythm. "He'd finished the preliminary fast-penta interrogation of Evon Vorhalas. He's now investigating the old armory where Evon stole the soltoxin. It appears Evon might not have equipped himself so ad hoc unilaterally as he claimed. An ordnance major in charge there has disappeared, AWOL. Illyan's not certain yet if the man was eliminated, to clear Evon's path, or if he actually helped Evon, and has gone into hiding."
"He might just be afraid. If it was dereliction."
"He'd better be afraid. If he had any conscious connivance in this . . ." His hand clenched in her hair, he became aware of the pull, muttered, "Sorry," and continued petting. Cordelia, feeling very like an injured animal, crept deeper into his lap, her hand on his knee.
"About Father—if he upsets you again, send him to me. You shouldn't have to deal with him. I told him it was your decision."
"My decision?" Her hand rested, without moving. "Not our decision?"
He hesitated. "Whatever you want, I'll support you."
"But what do you want? Something you're not telling me?"
"I can't help understanding his fears. But . . . there's something I haven't discussed with him yet, nor am I going to. The next child may not be so easy to come by as the first."
Easy? You call this easy?
He went on, "One of the lesser-known side effects of soltoxin poisoning is testicular scarring, on the micro-level. It could reduce fertility below the point of no return. Or so my examining physician warns me."
"Nonsense," said Cordelia. "All you need is any two somatic cells and a replicator. Your little finger and my big toe, if that's all they can scrape off the walls after the next bomb, could go on reproducing little Vorkosigans into the next century. However many our survivors choose to afford."
"But not naturally. Not without leaving Barrayar."
"Or changing Barrayar. Dammit." His hand jerked back at the bite in her tone. "If only I had insisted on using the replicator in the first place, the baby need never have been at risk. I knew it was safer, I knew it was there—" Her voice broke.
"Sh. Sh. If only I had . . . not taken the job. Kept you at Vorkosigan Surleau. Pardoned that murderous idiot Carl, for God's sake. If only we'd slept in separate rooms . . ."
"No!" Her hand tightened on his knee. "And I refuse to go live in some bomb shelter for the next fifteen years. Aral, this place has to change. This is unbearable." If only I had never come here.
If only. If only. If only.
* * *
The operating room seemed clean and bright, if not so copiously equipped as galactic standard. Cordelia, wafting on her float pallet, turned her head sideways to take in as much detail as she could. Lights, monitors, an operating table with a catch-basin set beneath it, a tech checking a bubbling tank of clear yellow fluid. This was not, she told herself sternly, the point of no return. This was simply the next logical step.
Captain Vaagen and Dr. Henri stood sterile-garbed and waiting, beyond the operating table. Next to them sat the portable uterine replicator, a metal and plastic canister half a meter tall, studded with control panels and access ports. The lights on its sides glowed green and amber. Cleaned, sterilized, its nutrient and oxygen tanks re-charged and ready . . . Cordelia eyed it with profound relief. The primitive Barrayaran back-to-the-apes style gestation was nothing but the utter failure of reason to triumph over emotion. She'd so wanted to please, to fit in, to try to become Barrayaran. . . . And so my child pays the price. Never again.
Dr. Ritter, the surgeon, was tall and dark-haired, with olive skin and long lean hands. Cordelia had liked his hands the first moment she saw them. Steady. Ritter and a medtech now positioned her over the operating table, and shifted the float pallet out from under her. Dr. Ritter smiled reassuringly. "You're doing fine."
Of course I'm fine, we haven't even started yet, Cordelia thought irritably. Dr. Ritter was palpably nervous, though the tension somehow stopped at his elbows. The surgeon was a friend of Vaagen's, whom Vaagen had strong-armed into this, after they'd spent a day running through a list of more experienced men who had refused to touch the case.
Vaagen had explained it to Cordelia. "What do you call four big bravos with clubs in a dark alley?"
"What?"
"A Vor lord's malpractice suit." He'd chuckled. Vaagen's sense of humor was acid-black. Cordelia could have hugged him for it. He'd been the only person to crack a joke in her presence in the last three days, possibly the most rational and honest person she'd met since she'd left Beta Colony. She was glad he was here.
They rolled her to her side, and touched her spine with the medical stun. A tingle, and her cold feet felt suddenly warm. Her legs went abruptly inert, like bags of lard.
"Can you feel that?" asked Dr. Ritter.
"Feel what?"
"Good." He nodded to the tech, and they straightened her out. The tech uncovered her stomach, and turned on the sterilizer-field. The surgeon palpated her, cross-checking the holovid monitors for the infant's exact position within her.
"Are you sure you wouldn't rather be asleep through this?" Dr. Ritter asked her for the last time.
"No. I want to watch. This is my first child being born." Maybe my only child being born.
He smiled wanly. "Brave girl."
Girl, hell, I'm older than you. Dr. Ritter, she sensed, would rather not be watched. Tough.
Dr. Ritter paused, taking one last glance around as if mentally checklisting the readiness of his tools and people. And will and nerve, Cordelia guessed.
"Come on, Ritter my man, let's get this over with," said Vaagen, tapping his fingers impatiently. His tone was a peculiar mix, a little sarcastic prodding lilt over an underlying warmth of genuine encouragement. "My scans show bone sloughing already under way. If the disintegration gets too far advanced, I'll have no matrix left to build from. Cut now, chew your nails later."
Very old friends, Cordelia gauged. But the surgeon raised his hands, took a breath and a grip on his vibra-scalpel, and sliced her belly open in one perfectly controlled stroke. The medtech followed his motion smoothly with the surgical hand-tractor, clamping blood vessels; scarcely a cat-scratch of blood escaped. Cordelia felt pressure but no pain. Other cuts laid open her uterus.
A placental transfer was vastly more demanding than a straightforward cesarian section. The fragile placenta must be chemically and hormonally persuaded to release from the blood-vessel-enriched uterus, without damaging too many of its multitude of tiny villi, then floated free from the uterine wall in a running bath of highly oxygenated nutrient solution. The replicator sponge then had to be slipped into place between the placenta and the uterine wall, and the placenta's villi at least partially induced to re-interdigitate on its new matrix, before the whole mess could be lifted from the living body of the mother and placed in the replicator. The more advanced the pregnancy, the more difficult the transfer.
The umbilical cord between placenta and infant was monitored, and extra oxygen injected by hypospray as needed. On Beta Colony, a nifty little device would do this; here, an anxious tech hovered.
The tech began running the clear bright yellow solution-bath into her uterus. It filled her, and ran over, trickling pink-tinged down her sides and into the catch basin. The surgeon was now working, in effect, underwater. No question about it, a placental transfer was a messy operation.
"Sponge," called the surgeon softly, and Vaagen and Henri trundled the uterine replicator to her side, and strung out the matrix sponge from it on its feed lines. The surgeon fiddled interminably with a tiny hand-tractor, his hands out of Cordelia's line of sight as she peered down cross-eyed over her chest to her rounded—so-barely-rounded—belly. She shivered. Ritter was sweating.
"Doctor . . ." A tech pointed to something on a vid monitor.
"Mm," said Ritter, glancing up, then continuing fiddling. The techs murmured, Vaagen and Henri murmured, calm, professional, reassuring . . . she was so cold. . . .
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