Komarr b-11

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  He'd caught her with her mouth full. "Hmm?"

  "Lovely, yes. You see, suppose . . . suppose this thing of Soudha's is more than a mere embezzlement scheme. Maybe they were diverting all those Imperial funds to support a real research and development project, although nothing to do with Waste Heat Management. It may be a prejudice of my military background, but I keep thinking they might have been building a weapon. Some new variation on the gravitic imploder lance, I don't know." He gulped tea.

  "I never had the impression that Soudha or any of the other Komarrans in the Terraforming Project were very military-minded. Quite the opposite."

  "They needn't be, for an act of sabotage. Some grand stupid vile gesture—I keep worrying about Gregor's wedding coming up."

  "Soudha isn't grandiose," said Ekaterin slowly. "Nor vile, particularly." She didn't doubt that Tien's death had been unintended.

  "Nor stupid." Vorkosigan sighed regretfully. "I merely suggest that timetable to make myself nervous. Keeps me awake. But suppose it was a weapon. Did they perhaps attack that ore ship, as a test? Vile enough. Did their smoke test go very wrong? Was the subsequent damage to the mirror accidental, or deliberate? Or was it the other way around? The condition of Radovas's body suggests something backfired. A falling-out among thieves? Anyway, to anchor this spate of speculation to some sort of physical fact, I plan to get a list of every piece of equipment Soudha bought for his department, subtract from it everything they left there, and produce a parts list for their secret weapon. At this point my brilliance fails, and I plan to dump it on your uncle."

  "Oh!" said Ekaterin. "He'll like that. He'll growl at you."

  "Is that a good sign?"

  "Yes."

  "Hm. So, positing a secret-weapon sabotage-attack . . . how close are they to success? I keep coming back—sorry—to Foscol's odd behavior in providing that data packet of evidence against Tien. It seems to proclaim: it doesn't matter if the Komarrans are incriminated, because—fill in the blank. Because why? Because they will not be here to suffer the consequences? That suggests flight, which runs counter to the weapon hypothesis, which requires that they linger to use it."

  "Or that they believed you would not be here to inflict the consequences," said Ekaterin. Had they meant Vorkosigan to die, too? Or … what?

  "Oh, nice. That's reassuring." He bit rather aggressively into the last of his sandwich.

  She rested her chin on her hand and regarded him with wry curiosity. "Does ImpSec know you babble like this?"

  "Only when I'm very tired. Besides, I like to think out loud. It slows it down so I can get a good look at it. It gives you some idea of what living in my head is like. I admit, very few people can stand to listen at length." He shot her an odd sideways look. Indeed, whenever his animation slowed—which was not often—a gray weariness flashed underneath. "Anyway, you encouraged me. You sang Hmm."

  She stared in amused indignation and refused to rise to the bait.

  "Sorry," he said in a smaller voice. "I think I'm a little disoriented just now." He gave her an apologetic grimace. "I actually came back here to rest. Is that not sensible of me? I must be getting old."

  Both their lives were out of phase with their chronological ages, Ekaterin realized bemusedly. She now possessed the education of a child and the status of a dowager. Vorkosigan . . . was young for his post, to be sure. But this whole posthumous second life of his was surely as old as you could be at any age. "Time is out of joint," she murmured; he looked up sharply, and seemed about to speak.

  Voices from the vestibule interrupted whatever he'd been about to say. Ekaterin's head turned. "Tuomonen, so soon?"

  "Do you want to put this off?" Vorkosigan asked her.

  She shook her head. "No. I want to get it over with. I want to go get Nikki."

  "Ah." He drained his tea mug and rose, and they both went out to her living room. It was indeed Captain Tuomonen. He nodded to Vorkosigan, and greeted her politely. He had brought a female medtech with him, in the uniform of the Barrayaran military medical auxiliary, whom he also introduced. She carried a medkit, which she placed on the round table and opened. Ampoules and hyposprays glittered in their gel slots. Other first-aid supplies hinted at more sinister possibilities.

  Tuomonen indicated Ekaterin should sit on the circular couch. "Are you ready, Madame Vorsoisson?"

  "I suppose so." Ekaterin watched with concealed fear and some loathing as the medtech loaded her hypospray and showed it to Tuomonen to cross-check.

  The medtech laid a second hypospray out at the ready, and pulled a small, burr-like patch off a plastic strip. "Would you hold out your wrist, Madame?"

  Ekaterin did so; the woman pressed the allergy test patch firmly against her skin, then peeled it up again. She continued to hold Ekaterin's wrist while she marked time on her chrono. Her fingers were dry and cold.

  Tuomonen dispatched the two guards to the perimeter, namely the hallway and the balcony, and set up a vid recorder on a tripod. He then turned to Vorkosigan, and with a rather odd emphasis, said, "May I remind you, Lord Vorkosigan, that more than one questioner can create unnecessary confusion in a fast-penta interrogation."

  Vorkosigan gave him an acknowledging hand wave. "Quite. I know the drill. Go ahead, Captain."

  Tuomonen glanced at the medtech, who stared closely at Ekaterin's wrist, then released it. "She's clear," the woman reported.

  "Proceed, please."

  At the medtech's direction, Ekaterin rolled up her sleeve. The hypospray hissed against her skin with a cold bite.

  Count backwards slowly from ten," Tuomonen told her.

  "Ten," Ekaterin said obediently. "Nine . . . eight . . . seven . . ."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Two … one …" Ekaterin's voice, almost inaudible at first, grew more firm as she counted down.

  Miles thought he could almost mark Ekaterin's heartbeats, as the drug flooded her system. Her tightly clenched hands loosened in her lap. Tension in her face, neck, shoulders, and body melted away like snow in the sun. Her eyes widened and brightened, her pale cheeks flushed with soft color; her lips parted and curved, and she looked up at Miles, beyond Tuomonen, with an astonished sunny smile.

  "Oh," she said, in a surprised voice. "It doesn't hurt."

  "No, fast-penta doesn't hurt," said Tuomonen, in a level, reassuring tone.

  That isn't what she means, Tuomonen. If a person lived in hurt like a mermaid in water, till hurt became as invisible as breath, its sudden removal—however artificial—must come as a stunning event. Miles breathed covert relief that Ekaterin apparently wasn't going to be a giggler or a drooler, nor was she one of the occasional unfortunates in whom the drug released a torrent of verbal obscenities, or an almost equally embarrassing torrent of tears.

  No. The kicker here is going to be when we take it away again. The realization chilled him. But my God, isn't she beautiful when she is not in pain? Her open, smiling warmth looked strangely familiar to him, and he tried to remember just when he'd seen that sweet air about her before. Not today, not yesterday . . .

  It was in your dream.

  Oh.

  He sat back and rested his chin in his hand, fingers across his mouth, as Tuomonen started down the list of standard neutral questions: name, birth date, parents' names, the usual. The purpose was not only to give the drug time to take full effect, but also to set up a rhythm of question-and-answer which would help carry the interrogation along when the questions, and answers, became more difficult. Ekaterin's birthday was just three weeks before his own, Miles noted in passing, but the War of Vordarian's Pretendership, which had so disrupted their mutual birth year in the regions around Vorbarr Sultana, had scarcely touched the South Continent.

  The medtech had settled herself on a chair drawn up outside the conversation circle, out of the line of sight between interrogator and subject, but not, alas, entirely out of earshot. Miles trusted she had suitable top security clearances. He didn't know, and decided not to ask, if her gend
er represented delicacy on Tuomonen's part, tacit acknowledgment that a fast-penta interrogation could be a mind-rape. Physical brutality did not mix with fast-penta interrogation, which had helped to eliminate certain unsavory psychological types from successful careers as interrogators. But physical assault was not the only possible kind, nor even necessarily the worst. Or maybe she'd just been next up on the roster of available personnel.

  Tuomonen moved on to more recent history. Exactly when had Tien acquired his Komarran post, and how? Had he known anyone in his department-to-be, or met with anyone in Soudha's group, before they'd left Barrayar? No? Had she seen any of his correspondence? Ekaterin, growing ever more cheerful in fast-penta elation, rattled on as confidingly as a child. She'd been so excited about the appointment, about the promised proximity to good medical facilities, certain she would get galactic-class help for Nikki at last. She had agonized over Tien's application and helped him to write it. Well, yes, written most of it for him. Serifosa Dome was fascinating, and their assigned apartment much larger and nicer than she'd been led to expect. Tien said the Komarrans were all techno-snobs, but she had not found them to be so …

  Gently, Tuomonen led her back to the issue at hand. Just when had she discovered her husband's involvement in the embezzlement scheme, and how? She repeated the same story about Tien's midnight call to Soudha she had given Miles last night, larded with more extraneous details—among other things she insisted on giving Tuomonen a complete recipe for spiced brandied milk. Fast-penta did do odd things to one's memory, even though it did not, despite rumor, give one perfect recall. Her report of the overheard conversation sounded nearly verbatim, though. Despite his obvious fatigue, Tuomonen was skillful and patient, allowing her to ramble on at length, alert for the hidden gem of critical information in these flowing associations an interrogator always hoped would turn up, but usually didn't.

  Her description of breaking into her husband's comconsole the following morning included the mulish side comment, "If Lord Vorkosigan could do it, I could do it," which at Tuomonen's alert query triggered an embarrassing detour into her views of Miles's earlier ImpSec-style raid on her own comconsole. Miles bit his lip and met Tuomonen's raised brows blandly.

  "He did say he liked my gardens, though. Nobody else in my family wants to even look at them." She sighed, and smiled shyly at Miles. Dared he hope he was forgiven?

  Tuomonen consulted his plastic flimsy. "If you didn't discover your husband's debts until yesterday morning, why did you transfer almost four thousand marks into his account on the previous morning?" His attention sharpened at Ekaterin's look of drunken dismay.

  "He lied to me. Bastard. Said we were going for the galactic treatment. No! He didn't say it, damn it. Fool, me. I wanted it to be true so much. Better a fool than a liar. Is it? I didn't want to be like him."

  Tuomonen sought enlightenment of Miles with a quick baffled glance. Miles blew out his breath. "Ask her if it was Nikki's money."

  "Nikki's money," she confirmed with a quick nod. Despite the fast-penta wooze, she frowned fiercely.

  "This make sense to you, my lord?" Tuomonen murmured.

  "I'm afraid so. She had saved just that sum out of her household accounts toward her son's medical treatment. I saw the account in her files, when I was taking that, um, unfortunate tour. I take it that her husband, claiming to be using it for that purpose, instead relieved her of it to stave off his creditors." Embezzlement indeed. Miles exhaled, to bring his blood pressure back down. "Have you traced it?"

  "Tien transferred it upon receipt to the Rialto Sharemarket Agency."

  "There's no getting it back, I suppose?"

  "Ask Gibbs, but I don't think so."

  "Ah." Miles bit his knuckle, and nodded for Tuomonen to proceed. Now armed with the right questions, Tuomonen confirmed this interpretation explicitly, and went on to draw out all the intensely personal details about the Vorzohn's Dystrophy.

  In exactly the same neutral tone, Tuomonen asked, "Did you arrange your husband's death?"

  "No." Ekaterin sighed.

  "Did you ask anyone, or pay anyone, to kill him?"

  "No."

  "Did you know he was to be killed?"

  "No."

  Fast-penta frequently made subjects bloody literal-minded; you always asked the important questions, the ones you were hot about, in a number of different ways, to be sure.

  "Did you kill him yourself?"

  "No."

  "Did you love him?"

  Ekaterin hesitated. Miles frowned. Facts were ImpSec's rightful prey; feelings, maybe less so. But Tuomonen wasn't quite out of line yet.

  "I think I did, once. I must have. I remember the wonderful look on his face, the day Nikki was born. I must have. He wore it out. I can hardly remember that time."

  "Did you hate him?"

  "No . . . yes … I don't know. He wore that out too." She looked earnestly at Tuomonen. "He never hit me, you know."

  What an obituary. When I go down into the ground at last, as God is my judge, I pray my best-beloved may have better to say of me than, "He didn't hit me." Miles set his jaw and said nothing.

  "Are you sorry he died?"

  Watch it, Tuomonen. . . .

  "Oh, but it was such a relief. What a nightmare today would have been if Tien were still alive. Though I suppose ImpSec would have taken him away. Theft and treason. But I would have had to go see him. Lord Vorkosigan said I could not have saved him. There was not enough time after Foscol called me. I'm so glad. It's so ugly to be so glad. I suppose I should forgive Tien for everything, because he's dead now, but I'll never forgive him for turning me into something so ugly." Despite the drug, tears were leaking from her eyes now. "I didn't use to be this kind of person, but now I can't go back."

  Some truths cut deeper than even fast-penta could soak. Expressionlessly, Miles reached past Tuomonen and handed Ekaterin a tissue. She blotted the moisture in owlish distress.

  "Does she need more drug?" the medtech whispered.

  "No." Miles made a hand-down gesture for silence.

  Tuomonen asked some more neutral questions, till something like his subject's original sunny and confiding air returned. Yeah. Nobody should have to do this much truth all at once.

  Tuomonen looked at his flimsy, glanced uneasily at Miles, licked his lips, and said, "Your cases and Lord Vorkosigan's were found together in your vestibule. Were you planning to leave together?"

  Shock and fury flushed through Miles in a hot wave. Tuomonen, you dare—! But the memory of sorting through all that mixed underwear under the eye of the ImpSec guard stopped his words; so, yes, it could have looked odd, to someone who didn't know what was going on. He converted his boiling words to a slow breath, which he let out in a trickle. Tuomonen's eyes flicked sideways, wary of that sigh.

  Ekaterin blinked at him in some confusion. "I'd hoped to."

  What? Oh. "She means, at the same time," Miles gritted through his teeth to Tuomonen. "Not together. Try that."

  "Was Lord Vorkosigan planning to take you away?"

  "Away? Oh, what a lovely idea. Nobody was taking me away. Who would? I had to take myself away. Tien threw my aunt's skellytum over the balcony, but he didn't quite dare throw me. He wanted to, I think."

  Miles was diverted to brood on these last words. How much physical courage had it taken her, to stand up to Tien at the last? Miles did not underestimate just what nerve it took to face down large angry men who had the power to pick you up and pitch you across the room. Nerve and wit and never letting yourself get within arm's reach, nor blocked from the door. The calculations were automatic. And you had to stay in practice. For Ekaterin, it must have felt like landing a fully-loaded freight shuttle on her very first flying lesson.

  Tuomonen, trying desperately for clarity and still with one eye on Miles, repeated, "Were you going to elope with Lord Vorkosigan?"

  Her brows flew up. "No!" she said in astonishment.

  No, of course not. Miles tried to recapture
his first properly stunned reaction to the accusation, except that it now came out, What a great idea. Why didn't I think of it? which rather blunted the fine edge of his outrage. Anyway, she'd never have run off with him. It was all he could do to get a Barrayaran woman to walk down the street with a sawed-off mutie like him. . . .

  Oh hell. Have you fallen in love with this woman, idiot boy?

  Um. Yeah.

  He'd been falling for days, he realized in retrospect. It was just that he'd finally hit the ground. He should have recognized the symptoms. Oh, Tuomonen. The things we learn under fast-penta.

  He could finally see what Tuomonen was getting at, though, all complete. A nice neat little conspiracy: murder Tien, blame it on the Komarrans, run off with his wife over his dead body … "A most flattering scenario, Tuomonen," Miles breathed to the ImpSec captain. "Quick work on my part, considering I only met her five days ago. I thank you." Was ever woman in this humor wooed? Was ever woman in this humor won? I think not.

  Tuomonen shot him a flat-lipped glower. "If my guard could think of it, and I could think of it, so could someone else. Best to knock the notion in the head as soon as possible. It's not as though I could fast-penta you. My lord."

  No, not even if Miles volunteered. His known idiosyncratic reaction to the drug, so historically useful in evading hostile interrogation, also made it impossible for him to use it to clear himself of any accusation. Tuomonen was just doing his job, and doing it well. Miles leaned back, and growled, "Yeah, yeah, all right. But you're optimistic, if you think even fast-penta is fast enough to compete with titillating rumor. As a courtesy to his Imperial Majesty's Auditors' reputations, do have a word with that guard of yours after this."

  Tuomonen didn't argue, or pretend to misunderstand. "Yes, my lord."

  Temporarily undirected, Ekaterin was burbling along on her free-association tangent. "I wonder if the scars below his belt are as interesting as the ones above. I could hardly have got him out of his trousers in that bubble-car, I suppose. I had a chance last night, and I didn't even think of it. Mutie Vor. How does he do it . . . ? I wonder what it would be like to sleep with someone you actually liked . . . ?"