Komarr b-11

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  He dropped a kiss on her forehead, and she relaxed further. She said, "I never thought about raiding your pension for the medical quest. I didn't realize we could. How soon can we get away?"

  "That's … the next thing I'll have to find out. I would have checked it out this week, but I was interrupted by my department suffering a severe outbreak of Imperial Auditors."

  She smiled in brief appreciation of his wit. He'd used to make her laugh more. If he had grown more sour with age, it was understandable, but the blackness of his humor had gradually come to weary her more than amuse her. Cynicism did not seem nearly so impressively daring to her now as it had when she was twenty. Perhaps this decision had lightened his heart, too.

  Do you really think he'll do what he says, this time? Or will you be a fool? Again. No … if suspicion was the deadliest possible insult, then trust was always right, even if it was mistaken. Provisionally relieved by his new promise, she snuggled into the crook of his body, and for once his heavy arm flung across her seemed more comfort than trap. Maybe this time, they would finally be able to put their lives on a rational basis.

  "Shopping?" Lord Vorkosigan echoed over the breakfast table the next morning. He had been the last of the household to arise; Uncle Vorthys was already busy on the comconsole in Tien's study, Tien had left for work, and Nikki was off to school. Vorkosigan's mouth stayed straight, but the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled. "That's an offer seldom made to the son of my mother. . . . I'm afraid I don't need-no, wait, I do need something, at that. A wedding present."

  "Who do you know who's getting married?" Ekaterin asked, relieved her suggestion had taken root, primarily because she didn't have a second one to offer. She prepared to be helpful.

  "Gregor and Laisa."

  It took her a moment to realize he meant the Emperor and his new Komarran fiancee. The surprising betrothal had been announced at Winterfair; the wedding was to be at Midsummer. "Oh! Uh . . . I'm not sure you can find anything in the Serifosa Dome that would be appropriate—maybe in Solstice they would have the kind of shops . . . oh, dear."

  "I have to come up with something, I'm supposed to be Gregor's Second and Witness on their wedding circle. Maybe I could find something that would remind Laisa of home. Though possibly that's not a good idea—I'm not sure. I don't want to chance making her homesick on her honeymoon. What do you think?"

  "We could look, I suppose …" There were exclusive shops she'd never dared enter in certain parts of the dome. This could be an excuse to venture inside.

  "Duv and Delia, too, come to think of it. Yes, I've gotten way behind on my social duties."

  "Who?"

  "Delia Koudelka's a childhood friend of mine. She's marrying Commodore Duv Galeni, who is the new Chief of Komarran Affairs for Imperial Security. You may not have heard of him yet, but you will. He's Komarran-born."

  "Of Barrayaran parents?"

  "No, of Komarran resistance fighters. We seduced him to the service of the Imperium. We've agreed it was the shiny boots that turned the trick."

  He was so utterly deadpan, he had to be joking. Hadn't he? She smiled uncertainly.

  Uncle Vorthys lumbered into her kitchen then, murmuring, "More coffee?"

  "Certainly." She poured for him. "How is it going?"

  "Variously, variously." He sipped, and gave her a thank-you smile.

  "I take it the morning courier has been here," said Vorkosigan. "How was last night's haul? Anything for me?"

  "No, happily, if by that you mean more body parts. They brought back quite a bit of equipment of various sorts."

  "Does it make any difference in your pet scenarios so far?"

  "No, but I keep hoping it will. I dislike the way the vector analysis is shaping up."

  Vorkosigan's eyes became notably more intent. "Oh? Why?"

  "Mm. Take Point A as all things a moment before the accident—intact ship on course, soletta passively sitting in its orbital slot. Take Point B to be some time after the accident, parts of all masses scattering off in all directions at all speeds. By good old classical physics, B must equal A plus X, X being whatever forces—or masses—were added during the accident.

  We know A, pretty much, and the more of B we collect, the more we narrow down the possibilities for X. We're still missing some control systems, but the topside boys have by now retrieved most of the initial mass of the system of ship-plus-mirror. By the partial accounting done so far, X is … very large and has a very strange shape."

  "Depending on when and how the engines blew, the explosion could have added a pretty damned big kick," said Vorkosigan.

  "It's not the magnitudes of the missing forces that are so puzzling, it's their direction. Fragments of anything given a kick in free fall generally travel in a straight line, taking into account local gravities of course."

  "And the ore ship pieces didn't?" Vorkosigan's brows rose. "So what do you have in mind for an outside force?"

  Uncle Vorthys pursed his lips. "I'm going to have to contemplate this for a while. Play around with the numbers and the visual projections. My brain is getting too old, I think."

  "What's the … the shape of the force, then, that makes it so strange?" asked Ekaterin, following all this with deep interest.

  Uncle Vorthys set his cup down and placed his hands side by side, half open. "It's … a typical mass in space creates a gravitational well, a funnel if you will. This looks more like a trough."

  "Running from the ore ship to the mirror?" asked Ekaterin, trying to picture this.

  "No," said Uncle Vorthys. "Running from that nearby worm-hole jump point to the mirror. Or vice versa."

  "And the ore ship, ah, fell in?" said Vorkosigan. He looked momentarily as baffled as Ekaterin felt.

  Uncle Vorthys did not look much better. "I should not like to say so in public, that's certain."

  Vorkosigan asked, "A gravitational force? Or maybe … a gravitic imploder lance?"

  "Eh," said Uncle Vorthys neutrally. "It's certainly not like the force map of any imploder lance I've ever seen. Ah, well." He picked up his coffee, and prepared to depart for his comconsole again.

  "We were just planning an outing," said Ekaterin. "Would you like to see some more of Serifosa? Pick up a present for the Professora?"

  "I would, but I think it's my turn to stay in and read this morning," said her uncle. "You two go and have a good time. Though if you do see anything you think would please your aunt, I'd be extremely grateful if you'd purchase it, and I'll reimburse you."

  "All right . . ." Go out with Vorkosigan alone? She'd assumed she would have her uncle along as chaperone. Still, if they stayed in public places, it should be enough to assuage any incipient suspicion on Tien's part. Not that Tien seemed to see Vorkosigan as any sort of threat, oddly. "You didn't need to see any more of Tien's department, did you?" Oh, dear, she hadn't phrased that well—what if he said yes?

  "I haven't even reviewed their first stack of reports yet." Her uncle sighed. "Perhaps you'd care to take those on, Miles . . . ?"

  "Yeah, I'll have a go at them." His eyes flicked up to Ekaterin's anxious face. "Later. When we get back."

  Ekaterin led Lord Vorkosigan across the domed park that fronted her apartment building, heading for the nearest bubble-car station. His legs might be short, but his steps were quick, and she found she did not have to moderate her pace; if anything, she needed to lengthen her stride. That stiffness which she had seen impede his motion seemed to be something that came and went over the course of the day. His gaze, too, was quick, as he looked all around. At one point he even turned and walked backward a moment, studying something that had caught his eye.

  "Is there anyplace in particular you would like to go?" she asked him.

  "I don't know a great deal about Serifosa. I throw myself on your mercy, Madame, as my native guide. The last time I went shopping in any major way, it was for military ordnance."

  She laughed. "That's very different."

  "It's not a
s different as you might think. For the really high-ticket items they send sales engineers halfway across the galaxy to wait upon you. It's exactly the way my Aunt Vorpatril shops for clothes—in her case, come to think of it, also high-ticket items. The couturiers send their minions to her. I've become fond of minions, in my old age."

  His old age was no more than thirty, she decided. A new-minted thirty much like her own, still worn uncomfortably. "And is that the way your mother the Countess shops, too?" How had his mother dealt with the fact of his mutations? Rather well, judging from the results.

  "Mother just buys whatever Aunt Vorpatril tells her to. I've always had the impression she'd be happier in her old Betan Astronomical Survey fatigues."

  The famous Countess Cordelia Vorkosigan was a galactic expatriate, of the most galactic possible sort, a Betan from Beta Colony. Progressive, high-tech, glittering Beta Colony, or corrupt, dangerous, sinister Beta Colony, take your pick of political views. No wonder Lord Vorkosigan seemed tinged with a faint galactic air; he literally was half galactic. "Have you ever been to Beta Colony? Is it as sophisticated as they say?"

  "Yes. And no."

  They arrived at the bubble-car platform, and she led them to the fourth car in line, partly because it was empty and partly to give herself an extra few seconds to select their destination. Quite automatically, Lord Vorkosigan hit the switch to close and seal the bubble canopy as soon as they'd settled into the front seat. He was either accustomed to his privacy, or just hadn't yet encountered the "Share the Ride" campaign now going on in Serifosa Dome. In any case, she was glad not to be bottled up with any Komarran strangers this trip.

  Komarr had been a galactic trade crossroads for centuries, and the bazaar of the Barrayaran Empire for decades; even a relative backwater like Serifosa offered an abundance of wares at least equal to Vorbarr Sultana. She pursed her lips, then slotted in her credit chit and punched up the Shuttleport Locks District as their destination on the bubble-car's control panel. After a moment, they bumped into the tube and began to accelerate. The acceleration was slow, not a good sign.

  "I believe I've seen your mother a few times on the holovid," she offered after a moment. "Sitting next to your father on reviewing platforms and the like. Mostly some years ago, when he was still Regent. Does it seem strange . . . does it give you a very different view of your parents, to see them on vid?"

  "No," he said. "It gives me a very different view of holovids."

  The bubble-car swung into a walled darkness lit by side-strips, flickering past the eye, then broke abruptly into sunlight, arching toward the next air-sealed complex. Halfway up the arc, they slowed still further; ahead of them, in the tube, Ekaterin could see other bubble-cars bunching to a crawl, like pearls on a string. "Oh, dear, I was afraid of that. Looks like we're caught in a blockage."

  Vorkosigan craned his neck. "An accident?"

  "No, the system's just overloaded. At certain times of day on certain routes, you can get held up from twenty to forty minutes. They're having a local political argument over the bubble-car system funding right now. One group wants to shorten the safety margins between cars and increase speeds.

  Another one wants to build more routes. Another one wants to ration access."

  His eyes lit with amusement. "Ah, yes, I understand. And how many years has this argument been ongoing without issue?"

  "At least five, I'm told."

  "Isn't local democracy wonderful," he murmured. "And to think the Komarrans imagined we were doing them a favor to leave their downside affairs under their traditional sector control."

  "I hope you don't mind heights," she said uncertainly, as the bubble-car moaned almost to a halt at the top of the arc. Through the faint distortions of the canopy and tube, half of Serifosa Dome's chaotic patchwork of structures seemed spread out to their view. Two cars ahead of them, a couple seized this opportunity to indulge in some heavy necking. Ekaterin studiously ignored them. "Or . . . small enclosed spaces."

  He smiled a little grimly. "As long as the small enclosed space is above freezing, I can manage."

  Was that a reference to his cryo-death? She hardly dared ask. She tried to think of a way to work the conversation back to his mother, and thence to how she'd dealt with his mutations. "Astronomical Survey? I thought your mother served in the Betan Expeditionary Force, in the Escobar War."

  "Before the war, she had an eleven-year career in their Survey."

  "Administration, or … She didn't go out on the blind worm-hole jumps, did she? I mean, all spacers are a little strange, but wormhole wildcatters are supposed to be the craziest of the crazy."

  "That's quite true." He glanced out, as with a slight jerk the bubble-car began to move once more, descending toward the next city section. "I've met some of 'em. I confess, I never thought of the government Survey as in the same league with the entrepreneurs. The independents make blind jumps into possible death hoping for a staggering fortune. The Survey . . . makes blind jumps into possible death for a salary, benefits, and a pension. Hm." He sat back, looking suddenly bemused. "She made ship captain, before the war. Maybe she had more practice for Barrayar than I'd realized. I wonder if she got tired of playing wall, too. I'll have to ask her."

  "Playing wall?"

  "Sorry, a personal metaphor. When you've taken chances a few too many times, you can get into an odd frame of mind. Adrenaline is a hard habit to kick. I'd always assumed that my, um, former taste for that kind of rush came from the Barrayaran side of my genetics. But near-death experiences tend to cause you to reevaluate your priorities. Running that much risk, that long . . . you'd end up either damn sure who you were and what you wanted, or you'd be, I don't know, anesthetized."

  "And your mother?"

  "Well, she's certainly not anesthetized."

  She grew more daring still. "And you?"

  "Hm." He smiled a small, elusive smile. "You know, most people, when they get a chance to corner me, try to pump me about my father."

  "Oh." She flushed with embarrassment, and sat back. "I'm sorry. I was rude."

  "Not at all." Indeed, he did not look or sound annoyed, his posture open and inviting as he leaned back and watched her. "Not at all."

  Thus encouraged, she decided to be daring again. When would she ever repeat such a chance, after all? "Perhaps . . . what happened to you was a different kind of wall for her."

  "Yes, it makes sense that you would see it from her point of view, I guess."

  "What . . . exactly did happen . . . ?"

  "To me?" he finished. He did not grow stiff as he had in that prickly moment over dinner the other night, but instead regarded her thoughtfully, with a kind of attentive seriousness that was almost more alarming. "What do you know?"

  "Not a great deal. I'd heard that the Lord Regent's son had been born crippled, in the Pretender's War. The Lord Regent was noted for keeping his private life very private." Actually, she'd heard his heir was a mutie, and kept out of sight.

  "That's all!" He looked almost offended—that he wasn't more famous? Or infamous?

  "My life didn't much intersect that social set," she hastened to explain. "Or any other. My father was just a minor provincial bureaucrat. Many of Barrayar's rural Vor are a lot more rural than they are Vor, I'm afraid."

  His smile grew. "Quite. You should have met my grandfather. Or … perhaps not. Well. Hm. There's not a great deal to tell, at this late date. An assassin aiming for my father managed to graze both my parents with an obsolete military poison gas called soltoxin."

  "During the Pretendership?"

  "Just prior, actually. My mother was five months pregnant with me. Hence this mess." A wave of his hand down his body, and that nervous jerk of his head, both summed himself and defied the viewer. "The damage was actually teratogenic, not genetic." He shot her an odd sidelong look. "It used to be very important to me for people to know that."

  "Used to be? And not now?" Ingenuous of him—he'd managed to tell her quickly enough. She was almost d
isappointed. Was it true that only his body, and not his chromosomes, had been damaged?

  "Now … I think maybe it's all right if they think I'm a mutie. If I can make it really not matter, maybe it will matter less for the next mutie who comes after me. A form of service that costs me no additional effort."

  It cost him something, evidently. She thought of Nikolai, heading into his teens soon, and what a hard time of life that was even for normal children. "Were you made to feel it? Growing up?"

  "I was of course somewhat protected by Father's rank and position."

  She noted that somewhat. Somewhat was not the same as completely. Sometimes, somewhat was the same as not at all.

  "I moved a few mountains, to force myself into the Imperial Military Service. After, um, a few false starts, I finally found a place for myself in Imperial Security, among the irregulars. The rest of the irregulars. ImpSec was more interested in results than appearances, and I found I could deliver results. Except– a slight miscalculation—all the achievements upon which I'd hoped to be rejudged disappeared into ImpSec's classified files. So I fell out at the end of a thirteen-year career, a medically discharged captain whom nobody knew, almost as anonymous as when I started." He actually sighed.

  "Imperial Auditors aren't anonymous!"

  "No, just discreet." He brightened. "So there's some hope yet."

  Why did he make her want to laugh? She swallowed the impulse. "Do you wish to be famous?"

  His eyes narrowed in a moment of introspection. "I would have said so, once. Now I think … I just wanted to be someone in my own right. Make no mistake, I like being my father's son. He is a great man. In every sense, and it's been a privilege to know him. But there is, nevertheless, a secret fantasy of mine, where just once, in some history somewhere, Aral Vorkosigan gets introduced as being principally important because he was Miles Naismith Vorkosigan's father."

  She did laugh then, though she muffled it almost immediately with a hand over her mouth. But he did not seem to take offense, for his eyes merely crinkled at her. "It is pretty amusing," he said ruefully.