Komarr b-11

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  The supervisor, a pleasant young Komarran man, returned with the clerk, and Ekaterin gave her explanation again. He listened, and rechecked all the documentation, and turned to her with an air of earnest regret.

  "I'm sorry, Madame Vorsoisson. If you were a Komarran planetary shareholder, instead of a Barrayaran subject, the rules would be very different."

  "All Komarran planetary shareholders are Barrayaran subjects," Vorkosigan pointed out from behind her, in a bland tone.

  The supervisor managed a pained smile. "I'm afraid that's not quite what I meant. The thing is, a similar problem came up for us just a few months ago, regarding treatment under quasi-emergency conditions of a Vor child of Komarr-resident Barrayarans. We went with what seemed to us to be the common-sense approach. The child's legal guardian later disagreed, and the judicial, er, negotiations are still going on. It proved to be a very costly error of judgment for the clinic. Given that Vorzohn's Dystrophy is a chronic and not an immediately life-threatening condition, and that you should in theory be able to obtain your legal permissions in a week or two, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to reschedule."

  Ekaterin took a deep breath, whether to argue or scream she was not sure. But Lord Vorkosigan leaned past her shoulder and smiled at the supervisor. "Hand me that read-pad, will you?"

  The puzzled supervisor did so; Vorkosigan rummaged in his pocket and pulled out his gold Auditor's seal, which he uncapped and pressed to the pad, along with his right palm. He spoke into the vocorder. "By my order, and for the good the Imperium, I request and require all assistance, to wit, suitable medical treatment for Nikolai Vorsoisson. Vorkosigan, Imperial Auditor." He handed it back. "See if that doesn't make your machine happier." He murmured aside to Ekaterin, "Just like swatting flies with a laser cannon. The aim's a bit tricky, but it sure takes care of the flies."

  "Lord Vorkosigan, I can't …" Her tongue stumbled to a halt. Can't what? This wasn't like waffling over the lunch bill; Tien's benefits would be paying for Nikki's treatment, if only the Komarrans could be persuaded to disgorge it. Vorkosigan's offered contribution was entirely intangible. "Nothing your esteemed uncle would not have done for you, if I could have spared him to you today." He gave her one his ghost-bows, seated.

  The supervisor's expression changed from suspicious to stunned as his comconsole digested this new data. "You are Lord Auditor Vorkosigan?"

  "At your service."

  "I … er … uh … in what capacity are you here, my Lord?"

  "Friend of the family." Vorkosigan's smile twisted just slightly, "Red tape cutter and general expediter." To his credit, the supervisor managed not to gibber. He dismissed the clerk and sped them through processing, and himself escorted them upstairs and into the hands of the medtechs in the genetics department. He then vanished, but things ran blazingly quickly thereafter.

  "It almost seems unfair," Ekaterin murmured, when Nikki was whisked away briefly by a tech to pee into a sampler, "to think Nikki just jumped the queue, there."

  "Yes, well … I found last winter that an Auditor's seal had the same enlivening effect on ImpMil's veteran's treatment division, whose hallways are much draftier and drab than these, and whose queue times are legendary. Quite ridiculous. I was charmed." Vorkosigan's face grew more introspective, and sober. "I'm afraid I've not quite found my balance with this Imperial Auditor thing yet. What is the just use of power, what is its abuse? I could have ordered Madame Radovas to be fast-penta'd, or ordered Tien to land us at the experiment station that first evening, and events would now be … well, I don't quite know what they would now be, except different than this. But I did not wish to …" He trailed off, and for just a flash, Ekaterin caught an impression of a much younger man beneath his habitual mask of irony and authority. He is no older than me, after all.

  "Did you anticipate that problem with the permissions? I should have thought of it, I suppose, but they took all the information when I made the appointment, and didn't say anything, so I thought, I assumed—"

  "Not specifically. But I hoped I might have a chance to do some little service or another today. I'm pleased it was so easy."

  Yes, she realized enviously, he could just wave all ordinary problems out of his path. Leaving only the extraordinary ones . . . her envy ebbed. It occurred belatedly to Ekaterin that he too might feel some guilt about Tien's death, and that was why he was going to such lengths to assist Tien's widow and orphan. So intense a concern seemed unnecessary, and she wondered how to reassure him that she did not blame him without creating more awkwardness than she erased.

  A battery of tests was completed upon Nikki in about half the time Ekaterin had mentally allotted for them. The Komarran physician met with them in her comfortable office very shortly thereafter; Vorkosigan dismissed the bodyguards to lurk in the corridor.

  "Nikki's gene scan shows the dystrophy complex to be very much in the classic mode," the doctor told them, when Ekaterin and Nikki were seated side by side in front of her comconsole desk. Vorkosigan, as usual, took a backseat and just watched. "He has a few idiosyncratic complications, but nothing our lab can't handle."

  She illustrated her talk with a holovid of the actual offending chromosomes, and a computer-generated vid of exactly how the retrovirus would deliver the splice that would work to supplement their deficiencies. Nikki did not ask as many questions as Ekaterin had hoped he would—was he intimidated, weary, bored?

  "I believe our gene techs can have the retrovirus personalized for Nikki in about a week," the doctor concluded. "I'm going to have you return for the injection then, Nikki. Plan to stay overnight in Solstice for a recheck the following day, Madame Vorsoisson, and if possible, visit us again just before you leave Komarr. Nikki will need to be reexamined monthly thereafter for three months, which you can have done at a clinic I will recommend to you in Vorbarr Sultana. We'll give out a disk with all the records, and they should be able to pick it up from there. After that, assuming all goes well, a early checkup should suffice."

  "That's all?" said Ekaterin, weak with relief.

  "That's all."

  "There was no damage yet? We are in time?"

  "No, he's fine. It's hard to project, with Vorzohn's Dystrophy, but I would guess in his case the onset of detectable gross cellular damage would have begun to appear in his late teens or early twenties. You are in good time."

  Ekaterin held Nikki's hand hard as they exited, her steps firm, to keep her feet from dancing. With an, "Aw, Mama," Nikki extracted himself, and walked with independent dignity beside her. Vorkosigan, his hands shoved deep in his gray trouser pockets, followed smiling.

  Nikki fell asleep in the shuttle, with his head pillowed on Ekaterin's lap. She watched him fondly, and stroked his hair, lightly so as not to wake him.

  Vorkosigan, sitting across from them with his reader on his knees again, watched her in turn, and murmured, "Is it well?"

  "It's well," she said softly. "But it feels so strange . . . Nikki's illness has been the whole focus of my life for so long. I gradually pared away all the other impossibilities to concentrate wholly on this, the one main thing. It feels as though I had been steeling myself to batter down some unscalable wall. And then, when I finally took a deep breath and put my head down and charged, it just . . . fell, all in a heap, like that. And now I'm stumbling around in the dust and the bricks, blinking. I feel very unbalanced. Where am I now? Who am I now?"

  "Oh, you'll find your center. You can't have mislaid it totally, even if you have been revolving around other people. Give yourself time."

  "I thought my center was to be Vor, like the women before me." She glanced across at him, feeling inarticulate and urgent. And then I chose Tien . . . you have to understand, it was my choice. My marriage was arranged, offered, but it wasn't forced, I wanted it, wanted to have children, form a family, carry on the pattern. Make my place in this, I don't know, generational pageant."

  "I am the eleventh of my name. I know about the Vor pageant."

 
"Yes," she said gratefully. "It wasn't that I didn't choose what I wanted, or gave away my center, or any of those things. But somehow, I didn't end up with the beautiful Vor pattern-weave I was trying to make. I ended up with this . . . tangle of strings." Her fingers wriggled in air, miming chaos.

  His lips quirked, introspective and ironic. "I know tangles, too."

  "But do you know—well, of course you would, but . . . The business with the brick wall. Failure, failure was grown familiar to me. Comfortable, almost, when I stopped struggling against it. I did not know achievement was so devastating."

  "Huh." He was leaning back, now, his reader forgotten on his lap, regarding her with his entire attention. "Yes . . . vertigo at apogee, eh? And the reward for a job well done is another job, and what have you done for us lately, and is that all, Lieutenant Vorkosigan, and . . . yes. Achievement is devastating, or at least disorienting, and they don't warn you in advance. It's the sudden change of momentum and direction, I think."

  She blinked. "How very strange. I expected you to tell me I was being foolish."

  "Deny your perfectly correct perception? Why should you expect that?"

  "Habit … I suppose."

  "Mm. You can learn to enjoy the sensation of winning, you know, once you get over the initial queasiness. It's an acquired taste."

  "How long did it take you to acquire it?"

  He smiled slowly. "Once."

  "That's not a taste, that's an addiction."

  "It's one that would look well on you."

  His eyes were uncomfortably bright. Challenging? She smiled in confusion, and stared out the port at the darkening Komarran sky as the shuttle began its descent. He rubbed his lips, not quite erasing their odd quirk, and returned his attention to his reports.

  Uncle Vorthys met them at the apartment door, data disks in his hand and a vague distracted smile on his face. He gave Ekaterin's hand a warm grasp, and fended off Nikki's immediate attempt to appropriate him and carry him off to hear about the wonders of the ImpSec shuttle.

  "Just a moment, Nikki. We shall go to the kitchen for dessert, and you can tell me all about it. Ekaterin. I've heard from the Professora. She's taken ship on Barrayar, and will be here in three days' time. I didn't like to tell you till she was sure she could get away."

  "Oh!" Ekaterin almost jumped with delight, mitigated immediately by concern. "Oh, no, sir, do you meant to say you are dragging that poor woman through five wormhole jumps from Barrayar to Komarr for me? She gets so jumpsick!"

  "It was Lord Vorkosigan's idea, actually," said Uncle Vorthys.

  Vorkosigan put on a bright, trapped smile at this, and shrugged warily.

  "Although I had fully intended to drag her here for my own sake," Uncle Vorthys continued, "at the end of the term. This just advanced the timetable. She does like Komarr, once she gets here and has a day to recover from the jump-lag. I thought you would like it."

  "You shouldn't have—but oh, I do like it, very much."

  Vorkosigan straightened at these words, and his smile relaxed into a self-satisfaction that amused her vastly. Ekaterin wasn't sure if she was reading the subtleties of his expression better now, or if he was concealing them less.

  "If I get you a ticket, would you go out to meet her at the jump-point station?" Uncle Vorthys added. "I'm afraid I won't have time, and she hates traveling alone. You could see her a day earlier, and have some time together on the last leg downside."

  "Certainly, sir!" Ekaterin almost shivered with the realization of how much she longed to see her aunt. She'd been living in Tien's orbit so long, she'd become used to her isolation as the norm. Ekaterin counted the Professora as one of the few non-disheartening relatives she possessed. A friend—an ally! The Komarran women Ekaterin had met were nice enough, but there was so much they didn't understand. . . . Aunt Vorthys might make acerbic comments, but she understood deeply.

  "Yes, yes, Nikki—" said Uncle Vorthys. "Miles. When you are ready, I'll meet you in my room, and we can go over today's progress on the comconsole."

  "Have we some? Is it interesting?"

  Uncle Vorthys made a balancing gesture with his free hand. "I'd be interested in what pattern you see emerging, if any."

  "At your convenience. Knock on my door when you're ready." Vorkosigan smiled at Nikki, gave the Professor a vague salutelike gesture, and withdrew.

  Nikki, impatiently waiting his turn, now dragged his great-uncle off to the kitchen as promised; Ekaterin could only be grateful that of his day's events the ImpSec shuttle seemed to loom so much larger than the medical examinations. She followed, satisfied.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Early the next morning Miles, in shirt and trousers but barefoot, stepped into the hallway with his toiletries case in hand. He must remind Tuomonen to return his medical kit. The ImpSec techs couldn't have found any interesting explosive devices in it, or he would have been informed by now. His bleary meditations suffered a check when he discovered Ekaterin, still dressed in a robe and with her hair in unusual but fetching disarray, leaning against the hall bathroom door. "Nikki," she hissed. "Open this door at once! You can't hide all day in there."

  A muffled young voice returned mulishly, "Yes, I can."

  Lips tight, she tapped again, urgently but quietly, then jumped a little as she saw Miles, and clutched the neck of her robe.

  "Oh. Lord Vorkosigan."

  "Good morning, Madame Vorsoisson," he said civilly. "Ah . . . trouble?"

  She nodded ruefully. "I thought yesterday went awfully easily. Nikki tried to insist he was too sick to go to school today, because of his Vorzohn's Dystrophy. I explained again it didn't work that way, but he got more and more stubborn. He begged to stay home. No, not just stubborn. Scared, I think. This isn't the usual malingering." She jerked her head toward the locked door. "I tried getting firm. It was not the right tactic. Now he's panicked."

  Miles bent to glance at the lock, which was an ordinary mechanical one. Too bad it wasn't a palm lock; he knew some tricks with those. This one didn't even have screws, but some kind of rivets. It was going to take a pry bar. Or subterfuge . . .

  "Nikki," called Ekaterin hopefully. "Lord Vorkosigan is out here. He needs to get washed and dressed, so he can go to work."

  Silence.

  "I'm torn," murmured Ekaterin in lower tones. "We're leaving in a few weeks. A few missed lessons wouldn't matter, but . . . that's not the point."

  "I went to a private Vor school rather like his, when I was his age," Miles murmured back. "I know what he's afraid of. But I think your instincts are correct." He frowned thoughtfully, then set his case down and rummaged for his tube of depilatory cream, which he smeared liberally over his night's bristles. "Nikki?" he called more loudly. "Can I come in? I'm all over depilatory cream, and if I don't wash it off, it'll start eating through my skin."

  "Won't he realize you can wash in the kitchen?" Ekaterin whispered.

  "Maybe. But he's only nine, I'm gambling depilation is still a bit of a mystery."

  After a moment Nikki's voice came, "You can come in. But I'm not coming out. And I'm locking it again."

  "That's fair," Miles allowed.

  Some rustling near the door. "Should I grab him when it opens?" Ekaterin asked, very dubiously.

  "Nope. It would violate our tacit agreement. I'll go in, then we'll see what happens. At least you'll have a spy inside the gate, at that point."

  "It seems wrong to use you so."

  "Mm, but kids only dare defy those whom they really trust. The fact that I'm still mostly a stranger to him gives me an advantage, which I invite you to use."

  "True enough. Well … all right."

  The door opened a cautious crack. Miles waited. It opened a little wider. He sighed, turned sideways, and slipped through. Nikki shut it again immediately, and snapped the lock.

  The boy was dressed for school, in his braided uniform of sober gray and maroon, but minus his shoes. The shoes presumably had been the sticking point, with their im
plicit commitment to going out. Nikki backed up and seated himself on the edge of the tub; Miles laid out his toiletries kit on the counter and rolled up his sleeves, trying to think fast before coffee. Or think at all. His eloquence had inspired his soldiers to face death, in the past, or so he dimly recalled. Now let's try something really hard. Playing for time and inspiration, he methodically brushed his teeth, by which time the depilatory had finished working. He washed off the resultant goo, rubbed his face dry with the towel, flung it over his shoulder, and leaned with his back against the door, slowly unrolling his sleeves and fastening his cuffs.

  "So, Nikki," he said at last. "What's the trouble with going to school this morning?"

  Moisture smeared around the boy's defiant eyes glistened when it caught the light. "I'm sick. I've got Vorzohn's thing."

  "It's not catching. You can't give it to anybody." Except for the way you got it. From the blank look on Nikki's face, the idea of being dangerous to anyone else had never crossed his mind. Ah, the self-centeredness of childhood. Miles hesitated, wondering how to approach the real problem. For almost the first time, he wondered how certain aspects of his childhood had looked from his parents' point of view. The doubled vision was dizzying. How the devil did I wind up on the enemy side?

  "You know," Miles essayed, "no one will even know you have it unless you tell them. It's not like they can smell it on you, eh?"

  The mulish look redoubled. "That's what Mama said."

  Scratch that trial balloon. There was an inherent problem in suggesting secrecy anyway, as Tien's life demonstrated. Suppressing a passing desire to strangle the boy for inflicting yet more distress on Ekaterin just now, Miles asked, "Have you had breakfast yet?"