Mirror Dance b-9

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Mark almost killed him instantly with a kick to the neck; he pulled his punch barely in time, and the blow landed slightly off-center. Even through his boot he could feel the tissues crush, a sickening sensation richoceting up through his body. Mark recoiled in horror as the kid lay gurgling on the ground. No, I wasn’t trained to fight. I was trained to kill. Oh, shit. He’d managed not to quite smash the larynx. He prayed the kick hadn’t snapped a major internal blood vessel. The other two assailants paused in shock.

  Ivan pounded around the corner. “What the hell are you doing?” he cried hoarsely.

  “I don’t know,” Mark gasped, bent over with his hands on his knees. His nose was bleeding all over his new shirt. In delayed reaction, he was beginning to shake. “They jumped me.” I baited them. Why the hell was he doing this? It had all happened so fast… .

  “Is the mutie with you, soldier?” the skinny lad demanded in a mixture of surprise and dread.

  Mark could see the struggle in Ivan’s face with the urge to disavow all connection with him. “Yes,” Ivan choked out at last. The big punk who was still on his feet faded backward, turned, and ran. The skinny kid was glued to the scene by the presence of the injured man and the old woman, though he looked like he wanted to run too. The hag, who had risen and hobbled over to her downed champion, screamed accusations and threats at Mark. She was the only one present who seemed undismayed by the sight of Ivan’s officer’s greens. Then the municipal guards arrived.

  Once he was sure the injured punk was going to be taken care of, Mark shut up and let Ivan handle it. Ivan lied like a … trooper, to keep the name of Vorkosigan from ever coming up; the municipal guards in turn, realizing who Ivan was, dampened the old woman’s hysteria and extricated them with speed. Mark declined to press assault charges even without Ivan’s urgent advice to that effect. Thirty minutes later they were back in Ivan’s ground car. This time Ivan drove much more slowly; residual terror, Mark judged, from having almost lost his charge.

  “Where the hell was that outer perimeter guy who was supposed to be my guardian angel?” Mark asked, gingerly probing the contusions on his face. His nose had finally stopped bleeding. Ivan hadn’t let him in his ground car until it had, and he’d made sure Mark wasn’t going to throw up.

  “Who d’you think called the municipal guards? The outer perimeter’s supposed to be discreet.”

  “Oh.” His ribs hurt, but nothing was broken, Mark decided. Unlike his progenitor, he’d never had a broken bone. Mutie. “Was … did Miles have to deal with this kind of crap?” All he’d done to those people was walk past them. If Miles had been dressed as he was, been alone as he was, would they have attacked him?

  “Miles wouldn’t have been stupid enough to wander in there by himself in the first place!”

  Mark frowned. He’d gained the impression from Galen that Miles’s rank made him immune to Barrayar’s mutagenic prejudices. Did Miles actually have to run a constant safety-calculation in his head, editing where he could go, what he could do?

  “And if he had,” Ivan continued, “he’d have talked his way out of it. Slid on by. Why the hell did you mix in with three guys? If you just want somebody to beat the shit out of you, come to me. I’d be glad to.”

  Mark shrugged uncomfortably. Is that what he’d been secretly seeking? Punishment? Was that why things went so bad, so fast? “I thought you all were the great Vor. Why should you have to slide on by? Can’t you just stomp the scum?”

  Ivan groaned. “No. And am I ever glad I’m not going to be your permanent bodyguard.”

  “I’m glad too, if this is a sample of your work,” Mark snarled in return. He checked his left canine tooth; his gum and lips were puffy, but it wasn’t actually loose.

  Ivan merely growled. Mark settled back, wondering how the kid with the damaged throat was doing. The municipal guards had taken him away for treatment. Mark should not have fought him; he’d come within a centimeter of killing him. He might have killed all three. The punks were only little cannibals, after all. Which was why, Mark realized, Miles would have talked and slid away; not fear, and not noblesse oblige, but because those people weren’t up to his … weight class. Mark felt ill. Barrayarans. God help me.

  Ivan swung by his apartment, which was in a tower in one of the city’s better districts, not far from the entirely modern government buildings housing the Imperial Service Command headquarters. There he allowed Mark to wash up and remove the bloodstains from his clothing before his return to Vorkosigan House. Tossing Mark’s shirt back to him from the dryer, Ivan remarked, “Your torso is going to be piebald, tomorrow. Miles would have been in hospital for the next three weeks over that. I’d have had to cart him out of there on a board.”

  Mark glanced down at the red blotches, just starting to turn purple. He was stiffening up all over. Half a dozen pulled muscles protested their abuse. All that, he could conceal, but his face bore marks that were going to have to be explained. Telling the Count and Countess that he’d been in a ground-car wreck with Ivan would be perfectly believable, but he doubted they’d get away with the lie for long.

  In the event, Ivan did the talking again, delivering him back to the Countess with a true but absolutely minimized account of Mark’s adventure: “Aw, he wandered off and got pushed around a little by the local residents, but I caught up with him before anything much could happen. ’Bye, Aunt Cordelia …” Mark let him escape without impediment.

  The whole report had certainly caught up with the Count and Countess by dinner. Mark sensed the cool faint tension even as he slid into his place at the table opposite Elena Bothari-Jesek, who was back at last from her lengthy and presumably grueling debriefing at ImpSec HQ.

  The Count waited until the first course had been served and the human servant had departed the dining room before remarking, “I’m glad your learning experience today was not lethal, Mark.”

  Mark managed to swallow without gagging, and said in a subdued voice, “For him, or me?”

  “Either. Do you wish a report on your, ah, victim?”

  No. “Yes. Please.”

  “The physicians at the municipal hospital expect to release him in two days. He will be on a liquid diet for a week. He will recover his voice.”

  “Oh. Good.” I didn’t mean to … What was the point of excuses, apologies, protests? None, surely.

  “I looked into picking up his medical bill, privately, only to discover that Ivan had been in ahead of me. Upon reflection, I decided to let him stand for it.”

  “Oh.” Ought he to offer to repay Ivan, then? Did he have any money, or any right to any? Legally? Morally?

  “Tomorrow,” stated the Countess, “Elena will be your native guide. And Pym will accompany you.”

  Elena looked very much less than thrilled.

  “I spoke with Gregor,” Count Vorkosigan continued. “You apparently impressed him enough, somehow, that he has given his approval for my formal presentation of you as my heir, House Vorkosigan’s cadet member of the Council of Counts. At a time of my discretion, if and when Miles’s death is confirmed. Obviously, this step is still premature. I’m not sure myself whether it would be better to get your confirmation pushed through before the Counts get to know you, or after they have had time to get used to the idea. A swift maneuver, hit and run, or a long tedious siege. For once, I think a siege would be better. If we won, your victory would be far more secure.”

  “Can they reject me?” Mark asked. Is that a light I see at the end of this tunnel?

  “They must accept and approve you by a simple majority vote for you to inherit the Countship. My personal property is a separate matter. Normally, such approval is routine for the eldest son, or, lacking a son, whatever competent male relative a Count may put forward. It doesn’t even have to be a relative, technically, though it almost always is. There was the famous case of one of the Counts Vortala, back in the Time of Isolation, who had fallen out with his son. Young Lord Vortala had allied with his father-in-law in t
he Zidiarch Trade War. Vortala disinherited his son and somehow managed to maneuver a rump session of the Counts into approving his horse, Midnight, as his heir. Claimed the horse was just as bright and had never betrayed him.”

  “What … a hopeful precedent for me,” Mark choked. “How did Count Midnight do? Compared to the average Count.”

  “Lord Midnight. Alas, no one found out. The horse pre-deceased the Vortala, the war petered out, and the son eventually inherited after all. But it was one of the zoological high points of the Council’s varied political history, right up there with the infamous Incendiary Cat Plot.” Count Vorkosigan’s eye glinted with a certain skewed enthusiasm, relating all this. His eye fell on Mark and his momentary animation faded. “We’ve had several centuries to accumulate any precedent you please, from absurdities to horrors. And a few sound saving graces.”

  The Count did not make further inquiries into Mark’s day, and Mark did not volunteer further details. The dinner went down like lead, and Mark escaped as soon as he decently could.

  He slunk off to the library, the long room at the end of one wing of the oldest part of the house. The Countess had encouraged him to browse there. In addition to a reader accessing public data banks and a code-locked and secured government comconsole with its own dedicated comm links, the room was lined with bound books printed and even hand-calligraphed on paper from the Time of Isolation. The library reminded Mark of Vorhartung Castle, with its modern equipment and functions awkwardly stuffed into odd corners of an antique architecture that had never envisioned nor provided place for them.

  As he was thinking about the museum, a large folio volume of woodcuts of arms and armor caught his eye, and he carefully pulled it from its slipcase and carried it to one of a pair of alcoves flanking the long glass doors to the back garden. The alcoves were luxuriously furnished, and a little table pulled up to a vast wing-chair provided support for the, in both senses, heavy volume. Bemused, Mark leafed through it. Fifty kinds of swords and knives, with every slight variation possessing its own name, and names for all the parts as well … what an absolutely fractal knowledge-base, the kind created by, and in turn creating, a closed-in group such as the Vor… .

  The library’s door swung open, and footsteps sounded across the marble and carpeting. It was Count Vorkosigan. Mark shrank back in the chair in the alcove, drawing his legs up out of sight. Maybe the man would just take something and go out again. Mark did not want to get trapped into some intimate chat, which this comfortable room so invited. He had conquered his initial terror of the Count, yet the man managed still to make him excruciatingly uncomfortable, even without saying a word.

  Unfortunately, Count Vorkosigan seated himself at one of the com-consoles. Reflections of the colored lights of its display flickered on the glass of the windows Mark’s chair faced. The longer he waited, Mark realized, lurking like an assassin, the more awkward it was going to be to reveal himself. So say hello. Drop the book. Blow your nose, something. He was just working up the courage to try a little throat-clearing and page-rustling, when the door hinges squeaked again, and lighter footsteps sounded. The Countess. Mark huddled into a ball in the wing-chair.

  “Ah,” said the Count. The lights reflecting in the window died away as he shut down the machine in favor of this new diversion, and swung around in his station chair. Did she lean over for some quick embrace? Fabric whispered as she seated herself.

  “Well, Mark is certainly getting a crash-course about Barrayar,” she remarked, effectively spiking Mark’s last frantic impulse to make his presence known.

  “It’s what he needs,” sighed the Count. “He has twenty years of catching up to do, if he is to function.”

  “Must he function? I mean, instantly?”

  “No. Not instantly.”

  “Good. I thought you might be setting him an impossible task. And as we all know, the impossible takes a little longer.”

  The Count vented a short laugh, which faded quickly. “At least he’s had a glimpse of one of our worst social traits. We must be sure he gets a thorough grounding in the history of the mutagen disasters, so he’ll understand where the violence is coming from. How deeply the agony and the fear are embedded, which drive the visible anxieties and, ah, as you Betans would see it, bad manners.”

  “I’m not sure he’ll ever be able to duplicate Miles’s native ability to dance through that particular minefield.”

  “He seems more inclined to plow through it,” murmured the Count dryly, and hesitated. “His appearance … Miles took enormous pains to move, act, dress, so as to draw attention away from his appearance. To make his personality overpower the evidence of the eye. A kind of whole-body sleight-of-hand, if you will. Mark … almost seems to be willfully exaggerating it.”

  “What, the surly slump?”

  “That, and … I confess, I find his weight gain disturbing. Particularly, judging from Elena’s report, its rapidity. Perhaps we ought to have him medically checked. It can’t be good for him.”

  The Countess snorted. “He’s only twenty-two. It’s not an immediate health problem. That’s not what’s bothering you, love.”

  “Perhaps … not entirely.”

  “He embarrasses you. My body-conscious Barrayaran friend.”

  “Mm.” The Count did not deny this, Mark noticed.

  “Score one for his side.”

  “Would you care to clarify that?”

  “Mark’s actions are a language. A language of desperation, mostly. They’re not always easy to interpret. That one is obvious, though.”

  “Not to me. Analyze, please.”

  “It’s a three-part problem. In the first place, there’s the purely physical side. I take it you did not read the medical reports as carefully as I did.”

  “I read the ImpSec synopsis.”

  “I read the raw data. All of it. When the Jacksonian body-sculptors were cutting Mark down to match Miles’s height, they did not genetically retrofit his metabolism. Instead they brewed up a concoction of time-release hormones and stimulants which they injected monthly, tinkering with the formula as needed. Cheaper, simpler, more controlled in result. Now, take Ivan as a phenotypic sample of what Miles’s genotype should have resulted in, without the soltoxin poisoning. What we have in Mark is a man physically reduced to Miles’s height who is genetically programmed for Ivan’s weight. And when the Komarrans’ treatments stopped, his body again began to try to carry out its genetic destiny. If you ever bring yourself to look at him square on, you’ll notice it’s not just fat. His bones and muscles are heavier too, compared to Miles or even to himself two years ago. When he finally reaches his new equilibrium, he’s probably going to look rather low-slung.”

  You mean spherical, Mark thought, listening with horror, and intensely conscious of having overeaten at dinner. Heroically, he smothered an incipient belch.

  “Like a small tank,” suggested the Count, evidently entertaining a somewhat more hopeful vision.

  “Perhaps. It depends on the other two aspects of his, um, body-language.”

  “Which are?”

  “Rebellion, and fear. As for rebellion—all his life, other people have made free with his somatic integrity. Forcibly chosen his body-shape. Now at last it’s his turn. And fear. Of Barrayar, of us, but most of all fear, frankly, of being overwhelmed by Miles, who can be pretty overwhelming even if you’re not his little brother. And Mark’s right. It’s actually been something of a boon. The Armsmen and servants are having no trouble distinguishing him, taking him as Lord Mark. The weight ploy has that sort of half-cocked half-conscious brilliance that … reminds me of someone else we both know.”

  “But where does it stop?” The Count was now picturing something spherical too, Mark decided.

  “The metabolism—when he chooses. He can march himself to a physician and have it adjusted to maintain any weight he wants. He’ll choose a more average body-type when he no longer needs rebellion or feels fear.”

  The Count sno
rted. “I know Barrayar, and its paranoias. You can never be safe enough. What do we do if he decides he can never be fat enough?”

  “Then we can buy him a float pallet and a couple of muscular body-servants. Or—we can help him conquer his fears. Eh?”

  “If Miles is dead,” he began.

  “If Miles is not recovered and revived,” she corrected sharply.

  “Then Mark is all we have left of Miles.”

  “No!” Her skirts rustled as she rose, stepped, turned, paced. God, don’t let her walk over this way! “That’s where you take the wrong turn, Aral. Mark is all we have left of Mark.”

  The Count hesitated. “All right. I concede the point. But if Mark is all we have—do we have the next Count Vorkosigan?”

  “Can you accept him as your son even if he isn’t the next Count Vorkosigan? Or is that the test he has to pass to get in?”

  The Count was silent. The Countess’s voice went low. “Do I hear an echo of your father’s voice in yours? Is that him I see, looking out from behind your eyes?”

  “It is … impossible … that he not he there.” The Count’s voice was equally low, disturbed, but defiant of apology. “On some level. Despite it all.”

  “I … yes. I understand. I’m sorry.” She sat again, to Mark’s frozen relief. “Although surely it isn’t that hard to qualify as a Count of Barrayar. Look at some of the odd ducks who sit on the Council now. Or fail to show up, in some cases. How long did you say it’s been since Count Vortienne cast a vote?”

  “His son is old enough to hold down his desk now,” said the Count. “To the great relief of the rest of us. The last time we had to have a unanimous vote, the Chamber’s Sergeant-at-Arms had to go collect him bodily from his Residence, out of the most extraordinary scene of … well, he finds some unique uses for his personal guard.”