Mirror Dance b-9

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “Would you like to try riding him?” the Count offered. “Though he hasn’t been worked lately, he’s probably a bit fresh.”

  “No, thank you,” choked Mark. “Some other time, maybe.”

  “Ah.”

  They walked along the fence, Ninny trailing them on the other side till its hopes were stopped by the corner. It whinnied as they walked away, a staggeringly mournful noise. Mark’s shoulders hunched as from a blow. The Count smiled, but the attempt must have felt as ghastly as it looked, for the smile fell off again immediately. He looked back over his shoulder. “The old fellow is over twenty, now. Getting up there, for a horse. I’m beginning to identify with him.”

  They were heading toward the woods. “There’s a riding trail … it circles around to a spot with a view back toward the house. We used to picnic there. Would you like to see it?”

  A hike. Mark had no heart for a hike, but he’d already turned down the Count’s obvious overture about riding the horse. He didn’t dare refuse him twice, the Count would think him … surly. “All right.” No armsmen or ImpSec bodyguards in sight. The Count had gone out of his way to create this private time. Mark cringed in anticipation. Intimate chat, incoming.

  When they reached the woods’ edge the first fallen leaves rustled and crackled underfoot, releasing an organic but pleasant tang. But the noise of their feet did not exactly fill the silence. The Count, for all his feigned country-casualness, was stiff and tense. Off-balance. Unnerved by him, Mark blurted, “The Countess is making you do this. Isn’t she.”

  “Not really,” said the Count, ”… yes.”

  A thoroughly mixed reply and probably true.

  “Will you ever forgive the Bharaputrans for shooting the wrong Admiral Naismith?”

  “Probably not.” The Count’s tone was equable, unoffended.

  “If it had been reversed—if that Bharaputran had aimed one short guy to the left—would ImpSec be hunting my cryo-chamber now?” Would Miles even have dumped Trooper Phillipi, to put Mark in her place?

  “Since Miles would in that case be ImpSec in the area—I fancy the answer is yes,” murmured the Count. “As I had never met you, my own interest would probably have been a little … academic. Your mother would have pushed all the same, though,” he added thoughtfully.

  “Let us by all means be honest with each other,” Mark said bitterly.

  “We cannot possibly build anything that will last on any other basis,” said the Count dryly. Mark flushed, and grunted assent.

  The trail ran first along a stream, then cut up over a rise through what was almost a gully or wash, paved with loose and sliding rock. Thankfully it then ran level for a time, branching and re-branching through the trees. A few little horse jumps made of cut logs and brush were set up deliberately here and there; the trails ran around as well as over them, optionally. Why was he certain Miles chose to ride over them? He had to admit, there was something primevally restful about the woods, with its patterns of sun and shade, tall Earth trees and native and imported brush creating an illusion of endless privacy. One could imagine that the whole planet was such a people-less wilderness, if one didn’t know anything about terraforming. They turned onto a wider double track, where they could walk side by side.

  The Count moistened his lips. “About that cryo-chamber.”

  Mark’s head came up like the horse’s had, sensing sugar. ImpSec wasn’t talking to him, the Count hadn’t been talking to him; driven half-crazy by the information vacuum, he’d finally broken down and badgered the Countess, though it made him feel ill to do so. But even she could only report negatives. ImpSec now knew over four hundred places the cryo-chamber was not. It was a start. Four hundred down, the rest of the universe to go … it was impossible, useless, futile—

  “ImpSec has found it.” The Count rubbed his face.

  “What!” Mark stopped short. “They got it back? Hot damn! It’s over! Where did they—why didn’t you—” He bit off his words as it came to him that there was probably a very good reason the Count hadn’t told him at once. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it. The Count’s face was bleak.

  “It was empty.”

  “Oh.” What a stupid thing to say, Oh. Mark felt incredibly stupid, just now. “How—I don’t understand.” Of all the scenarios he’d pictured, he’d never pictured that. Empty? “Where?”

  “The ImpSec agent found it in the sales inventory of a medical supply company in the Hegen Hub. Cleaned and re-conditioned.”

  “Are they sure it’s the right one?”

  “If the identifications Captain Quinn and the Dendarii gave us are correct, it is. The agent, who is one of our brighter boys, simply quietly purchased it. It’s being shipped back by fast courier to ImpSec headquarters on Komarr for a thorough forensic analysis right now. Not that, apparently, there is much to analyze.”

  “But it’s a lead, a break at last! The supply company must have records—ImpSec should be able to trace it back to—to—” To what?

  “Yes, and no. The record trail breaks one step back from the supply company. The independent carrier they bought it from appears to be guilty of receiving stolen property.”

  “From Jackson’s Whole? Surely that narrows down the search area!”

  “Mm. One must remember that the Hegen Hub is a hub. The possibility that the cryo-chamber was routed into the Cetagandan Empire from Jackson’s Whole, and back out again via the Hegen Hub, is … remote but real.”

  “No. The timing.”

  “The timing would be tight, hut possible. Illyan has calculated it. The timing limits the search area to a mere … nine planets, seventeen stations, and all the ships en route between them.” The Count grimaced. “I almost wish I was sure we were dealing with a Cetagandan plot. The Ghem-lords at least I could trust to know or guess the value of the package. The nightmare that makes me despair is that the cryo-chamber somehow fell into the hands of some Jacksonian petty thief, who simply dumped the contents in order to re-sell the equipment. We would have paid a ransom … a dozen times the value of the cryo-chamber for the dead body alone. For Miles preserved and potentially revivable—whatever they asked. It drives me mad to think that Miles is rotting somewhere by mistake.”

  Mark pressed his hands to his forehead, which was throbbing. His neck was so tight it felt like a piece of solid wood. “No … it’s crazy, it’s too crazy. We have both ends of the rope now, we’re only missing the middle. It has to be connectable. Norwood—Norwood was loyal to Admiral Naismith. And smart. I met him, briefly. Of course, he hadn’t planned to be killed, but he wouldn’t have sent the cryo-chamber into danger, or off at random.” Was he so sure? Norwood had expected to be able to pick up the cryo-chamber from its destination within a day at most. If it had arrived … wherever … with some sort of cryptic hold-till-called-for note attached, and then no one had called for it … “Was it re-conditioned before or after the Hub supply company purchased it?”

  “Before.”

  “Then there has to be some sort of medical facility hidden in the gap somewhere. Maybe a cryo-facility. Maybe … maybe Miles was shifted into somebody’s permanent storage banks.” Unidentified, and destitute? On Escobar such a charity might be possible, but on Jackson’s Whole? A most forlorn hope.

  “I pray so. There are only a finite number of such facilities. It’s checkable. ImpSec is on it now. Yet only the … frozen dead require that much expertise. The mere mechanics of cleaning an emptied chamber could be done by any ship’s sickbay. Or engineering section. An unmarked grave could be harder to locate. Or maybe no grave, just disintegrated like garbage… .” The Count stared off into the trees.

  Mark bet he wasn’t seeing trees. Mark bet he was seeing the same vision Mark was, a frozen little body, chest blown out—you wouldn’t even need a hand-tractor to lift it—shoved carelessly, mindlessly, into some disposal unit. Would they even wonder who the little man had been? Or would it just be a repellent thing to them? Who was them, dammit?

&nbs
p; And how long had the Count’s mind been running on this same wheel of thought, and how the devil was it that he could still walk and talk at the same time? “How long have you known this?”

  “The report came in yesterday afternoon. So you see … it becomes measurably more important that I know where you stand. In relation to Barrayar.” He started again up the trail, then took a side branch that narrowed and began to rise steeply through an area of taller trees and thinner brush.

  Mark toiled on his heels. “Nobody in their right mind would stand in relation to Barrayar. They would run in relation to Barrayar. Away.”

  The Count grinned over his shoulder. “You’ve been talking too much to Cordelia, I fear.”

  “Yes, well, she’s about the only person here who will talk to me.” He caught up with the Count, who had slowed.

  The Count grimaced painfully. “That’s been true.” He paced up the steep stony trail. “I’m sorry.” After a few more steps he added, with a flash of dark humor, “I wonder if the risks I used to take did this to my father. He is nobly avenged, if so.” More darkness than humor, Mark gauged. “But it’s more than ever necessary … to know …”

  The Count stopped and sat down abruptly by the side of the trail, his back to a tree. “That’s strange,” he murmured. His face, which had been flushed and moist with the hill-climb and the morning’s growing warmth, was suddenly pale and moist.

  “What?” said Mark cautiously, panting. He rested his hands on his knees and stared at the man, so oddly reduced to his eye level. The Count had a distracted, absorbed look on his face.

  “I think … I had better rest a moment.”

  “Suits me.” Mark sat too, on a nearby rock. The Count did not continue the conversation at once. Extreme unease tightened Mark’s stomach. What’s wrong with him? There’s something wrong with him. Oh, shit… . The sky had grown blue and fine, and a little breeze made the trees sigh, and a few more golden leaves flutter down. The cold chill up Mark’s spine had nothing to do with the weather.

  “It is not,” said the Count in a distant, academic tone, “a perforated ulcer. I’ve had one of those, and this isn’t the same.” He crossed his arms over his chest. His breath was becoming shallow and rapid, not recovering its rhythm with sitting as Mark’s was.

  Something very wrong. A brave man trying hard not to look scared was, Mark decided, one of the most frightening sights he’d ever seen. Brave, but not stupid: the Count did not, for example, choose to pretend that nothing was the matter and go charging up the trail to prove it.

  “You don’t look well.”

  “I don’t feel well.”

  “What do you feel?”

  “Er … chest pain, I’m afraid,” he admitted in obvious embarrassment. “More of an ache, really. A very … odd … sensation. Came up between one step and the next.”

  “It couldn’t be indigestion, could it?” Like the kind that was boiling up acidly in Mark’s belly right now?

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Maybe you had better call for help on your comm link,” Mark suggested diffidently. There sure as hell wasn’t anything he could do, if this was the medical emergency it looked like.

  The Count laughed, a dry wheeze. It was not a comforting sound. “I left it.”

  “What? You’re the frigging Prime Minister, you can’t go around without—”

  “I wanted to assure an uninterrupted, private conversation. For a change. Unpunctuated by half the under-ministers in Vorbarr Sultana calling up to ask me where they left their agendas. I used to … do that for Miles. Sometimes, when it got too thick. Drove everyone crazy but eventually … they became … reconciled.” His voice went high and light on the last word. He lay back altogether, in the detritus and fallen leaves. “No … that’s no improvement… .” He extended a hand and Mark, his own heart lumping with terror, pulled him back into the sitting position.

  A paralyzing toxin … heart failure … I was to get alone with you … I was to wait, in your sight, for twenty minutes while you died… . How had he made this happen? Black magic? Maybe he was programmed, and part of him was doing things the rest of him didn’t know anything about, like one of those split personalities. Did I do this? Oh, God. Oh shit.

  The Count managed a pallid grin. “Don’t look so scared, boy,” he whispered. “Just go back to the house and get my guardsmen. It’s not that far. I promise I won’t move.” A hoarse chuckle.

  / wasn’t paying any attention to the paths on the way up. I was following you. Could he possibly carry … ? No. Mark was no med-tech, but he had a clear cold feeling that it would be a very bad idea to try to move this man. Even with his new girth he was heavily outweighed by the Count. “All right.” There hadn’t been that many possible wrong turns, had there? “You … you …” Don’t you dare die on me, godammit. Not now!

  Mark turned, and trotted, skidded, and flat ran back down the path. Right or left? Left, down the double track. Where the hell had they turned on to it, though? They’d pushed through some brush—there was brush all along it, and half a dozen openings. There was one of those horse-jumps they’d passed. Or was it? A lot of them looked alike. I’m going to get lost in this frigging woods, and run around in circles for … twenty minutes, till he’s brain-dead and rigor-stiff, andthey’re all going to think I did it on purpose … He tripped, and bounced off a tree, and scrambled for balance and direction. He felt like a dog in a drama, running for help; when he arrived, all he’d be able to do would be bark and whine and roll on his back, and no one would understand… . He clung to a tree, gasping, and staring around. Wasn’t moss supposed to grow on the north side of trees, or was that only on Earth? These were Earth trees, mostly. On Jackson’s Whole a sort of slimy lichen grew on the south sides of everything, including buildings, and you had to scrape it out of the door grooves … ah! there was the creek. But had they walked up or down stream? Stupid, stupid, stupid. A stitch had started in his side. He turned left and ran.

  Hallelujah! A tall female shape was striding down the path ahead of him. Elena, heading back to the barn. Not only was he on the right path, he’d found help. He tried to shout. It came out a croak, but it caught her attention; she looked over her shoulder, saw him, and stopped. He staggered up to her.

  “What the hell’s got into you?” Her initial coldness and irritation gave way to curiosity and nascent alarm.

  Mark gasped out, “The Count … took sick … in the woods. Can you get … his guardsmen … up there?”

  Her brows drew down in deep suspicion. “Sick? How? He was just fine an hour ago.”

  “Real sick, pleasedammit, hurry!”

  “What did you do—” she began, but his palpable agony overcame her wariness. “There’s a comm link in the stable, it’s closest. Where did you leave him?”

  Mark waved vaguely backward. “Somewhere … I don’t know what you call it. On the path to your picnic spot. Does that make sense? Don’t the bloody ImpSec guards have scanners?” He found he was practically stamping his feet in frustration at her slowness. “You have longer legs. Go!”

  She believed at last, and ran, with a blazing look back at him that practically flayed his skin.

  I didn’t do— He turned, and began to leg it back to where he’d left the Count. He wondered if he ought to be running for cover instead. If he stole a lightflyer and made it back to the capital, could he get one of the galactic embassies there to give him political asylum? She thinks I7 … they’re all going to think I … hell, even he didn’t trust himself, why should the Barrayarans? Maybe he ought to save steps, and just kill himself right now, here in these stupid woods. But he had no weapon, and rough as the terrain was, there hadn’t been any cliffs high and steep enough to fling himself over and be sure of death on impact.

  At first Mark thought he’d taken another wrong turn. Surely the Count couldn’t have risen and walked on—no. There he was, lying down on his back beside a fallen log. He was breathing in short labored gasps, with too-long paus
es in between, arms clutched in, clearly in much greater pain than when Mark had left him. But not dead. Not dead yet.

  “Hello. Boy,” he huffed in greeting.

  “Elena’s bringing help,” Mark promised anxiously. He looked up and around, and listened. But they’re not here yet.

  “Good.”

  “Don’t … try to talk.”

  This made the Count snort a laugh, an even more horrible effect against the disrupted breathing. “Only Cordelia … has ever succeeded … in shutting me up.” But he fell silent after that. Mark prudently allowed him the last word, lest he try to go another round.

  Live, damn you. Don’t leave me here like this.

  A familiar whooshing sound made Mark look up. Elena had solved the problem of getting transport through the trees with a float-bike. A green-uniformed ImpSec man rode behind her, clutching her around the waist. Elena swiftly dropped the bike through the thinner branches, which crackled. She ignored the whipping backlash that left red lines across her face. The ImpSec man dismounted while the bike was still half a meter in the air. “Get back,” he snarled to Mark. At least he carried a medkit. “What did you do to him?”

  Mark retreated to Elena’s side. “Is he a doctor?”

  “No, just a medic.” Elena was out of breath too.

  The medic looked up and reported, “It’s the heart, but I don’t know what or why. Don’t have the Prime Minister’s doctor come here, have him meet us in Hassadar. Without delay. I think we’re going to need the facilities.”

  “Right.” Elena snapped orders into a comm link.