Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Simon, wrapped in an aged military greatcoat, was sitting on a bench at the grass’s verge benignly overlooking the show. Hatless—Mamere would have had words—with his thinning, graying hair making him look very much like some retired old man watching youngsters at play. Which Ivan supposed he was. Sort of. In some pig’s eye somewhere.

  A uniformed ImpSec officer without a coat—a major, Ivan saw as he approached—was standing talking to Simon, looking back and forth from his former chief to the dance practice that was just getting rolling again. Bright music blared. Jewels were suddenly in motion, swaying, stomping, gesturing, rising and dipping. Jet, in a bravura moment, suddenly began a series of back-flips that ran in a straight diagonal all across the park, and ended with him balanced first on one hand, and then on one foot.

  “That’s impressive,” the major said to Simon, as Ivan came up. The fellow’s eyes shifted from Jet to check out Ivan, in civvies because this was his day off dammit; his face cleared. “Captain Vorpatril, is it? Ops?”

  Ivan granted him a nod, in lieu of a salute. “Yes, sir.”

  “So you would know what all this is in aid of . . . ?”

  “A rather high-energy galactic dance troupe who have been cooped up on jumpships for too long, celebrating their reunion, is the tale I was told,” said Ivan easily. Did Simon smile, there, into his lack of a beard?

  “I had never seriously watched dance,” Simon remarked to the major, “before my retirement. Lady Vorpatril has her own box at the Vorbarr Sultana Hall, you know. She has been kind enough to invite me to escort her there, many times since. It’s been a real artistic education. Of a style I’d never had time for, earlier in my life. Old dogs, new tricks, who knows where it could all end?”

  “Hm. Well. If they’re with you, sir . . .” The major, with a restraint that practically seemed to break something—perhaps his heart—visibly kept himself from saluting his former chief, managing a mere curt farewell nod before turning away to dodge traffic across the street and slip back through the front gate.

  Ivan slung himself down on the bench beside Simon, who had twisted a bit to watch the fellow retreat.

  “That’s the fifth man who has come out so far to check this out,” Simon observed, turning back. “The ranks keep getting higher.”

  “Have they?” said Ivan, neutrally.

  Star, all slicked-back hair, green eyes, and long leggings, bopped out and moved the sparkly pom-poms again. The music started up once more, a slower beat this time. Jewels glittered, in an eye-grabbing and athletic whirl. Jet repeated the astonishing back-flip routine, on the park’s other diagonal.

  “I had always considered,” Simon mused after a bit, “that for a building housing a cadre of men whose insignia”—he touched his civilian shirt collar, where no Eye-of-Horus pins now hung—“proclaimed to the Imperium, sees all, knows all, to have no damned windows allowing them to see out, to be some sort of cosmic irony.”

  Ivan leaned forward slightly to glance around Simon at the looming façade. “I expect they were more worried at the time about windows being blown in.” The techno-eyes were mostly nonobvious, but for some antennae and reception dishes peeking over the crenellated roof edge. “They have electronic surveillance, surely.”

  “Of a redundant redundancy. It was like working in a granite spaceship. Hermetically sealed.”

  “So, um . . .” Ivan considered how to phrase this. “How far up does the rank have to go before someone in your parade of concerned officers comes out and says, What the hell, Simon?”

  “I wait with some fascination to find out.”

  Star shifted markers. The four Jewels began to dance another pattern.

  “Granted,” said Simon meditatively, “the half-dozen men that I’m sure would begin their inquiries in just those words either have the day off or are out of town. Which seems like cheating, but then, it was often much about cheating. On all sides.”

  Ivan considered this. “What the hell, Simon?”

  Simon flashed a thin slice of grin. “Make that seven. Don’t you see?”

  “No.”

  “Neither can they.” He glanced across the street. “No windows, y’see. I’m sure we still have some analysts in there somewhere who specialize in the arts, but they’re probably kept in a box in the basement, poor lads. Keep watching, then.”

  The Jewels set up once more, for a longer pattern this time. Frowning, Ivan got up, pulled one of the pom-pom sticks out of the ground, and examined it. It wasn’t very heavy. The surface featured swirling candy-colored stripes. It had a metal ferrule; Ivan tilted it up to peer in the end, which was not solid, but which was dark. Star, frowning more fiercely, came up and twisted it back out of his hand, shook it vigorously, and reset it. “Don’t screw up our stage marks,” she chided him. “Someone might have an accident.” It was hard to tell, but Ivan suspected the stripes were not the same as before. He trod back to rejoin Simon.

  The music this time seemed to mix a cheerful march with a winding wail, like women lamenting the departure of their city’s valiant militia. Jet produced another bravura set of flips. Again.

  So . . . what was so different about Jet? He certainly wasn’t any more athletic than Rish or the others. Why weren’t they doing flips?

  He said aloud, before he could stop himself, “Jet’s the heaviest.”

  Simon glanced aside at him, that disturbing faint smile again turning his lips.

  More music started up. Rish had portioned out the ankle bells Ivan had seen on her and Tej the other day among the three female Jewels. They began another dance, or dance section—they seemed to be practicing movements rather than whole compositions. This time the mood was merry, the timing—the frequency?—different yet again.

  Jet began his run-up, and bounced over the ground in a quick succession of thumps.

  Ivan blinked. And blurted, “Sonic mapping.”

  Simon’s smile deepened. “You’re wasted in Ops, you know. I have increasingly thought so. If not, I admit”—some grimace of memory Ivan certainly wasn’t going to inquire after—“earlier in your career.”

  “I don’t think so. More to the point, Admiral Desplains doesn’t think so. I’m happy in Ops.”

  “Well, there’s that. And your mother is happy to have you there”—another lip-pursing—“relatively safe.”

  “Nobody’s tried to blow up Ops for ages. They always went for you fellows first.”

  “One of ImpSec’s many unsung public services: human shields for Ops. But did Ops ever say thank you?”

  Ivan had no idea. Most Ops commentary on ImpSec reports that he’d heard was prefaced by swearing, but maybe that was just habit. “Has anyone tried to bomb Ops lately? Or ever? Since our new building went up after the last one was leveled in the Pretendership, that is.”

  Simon huddled down in his coat. “I wouldn’t recall the details now. Nor the main points, in some cases.”

  I can’t remember was Simon’s all-purpose response to any question he didn’t want to answer, Ivan had suspected for some time. It almost always daunted the hell out of the inquirer, who sheared off.

  Except that Ivan was getting used to Illyan, in some strange domestic way. All those little tricks of expression, inflection, reminder, that he used to defend his dignity. It had been a horrifically beleaguered dignity, during the chip breakdown, in some ways Ivan had witnessed and didn’t wish to dwell on. Still—the Spook’s Spook had also been the Weasel’s Weasel. For all that Simon had forgotten, Ivan didn’t think he’d forgotten all of that.

  Ivan scrambled back up the conversational diversion to the last knot. “Mapping. Underground mapping. What the hell, Simon? I would think you fellows would have had every cubic centimeter of underground Vorbarr Sultana mapped to the limit. Especially right around this place.” Underground, ugh.

  “Indeed, one would think that. I certainly did.” Simon scratched his neck. “Although most people don’t realize how incredibly complicated and ill-documented it can get, under
the Old Town. Old sewers. Abandoned utility tunnels. Freight access. Built-over foundations. A couple of outdated, bankrupted attempts at public transport, before the bubble-tube system was planned or even thought of. Streambeds, drainage. Assorted Vor mansions’ personal bolt-holes and escape hatches—and the same for some less savory prole venues. And a rat warren of other covert passages dating back mostly to the Occupation, but some to other wars. Several centuries of forgotten secrets down there, dying with their possessors.”

  Ivan glanced again at the six skewed floors and several subbasements of paranoia piled across the street. “Why aren’t they picking anything up? Of this, over there?”

  “What would you guess?”

  “I dunno . . .” He considered the odd stage-mark stick that he’d held in his hand. “Passive analog data collectors, I suppose, with nothing electronic about them?”

  “I understand the color-gradient has a biological base that sensitively responds to vibrations, yes. Dancing microbes of some sort.”

  Ivan wiped his hand on his trousers, nervously. “Oh. You’re in on this, then.” Whatever this is.

  “I wouldn’t say that, exactly.”

  “What would you say, exactly?”

  “At this juncture, not much.”

  “Simon.” It took a bit of effort to make the name come out low and commanding, and not a reproachful wail.

  It was effort wasted; Simon just twitched the damned deadly eyebrows at him, as if he’d heard the wail in his possibly-telepathic mind anyway and don’t even think about that, boy. “There is nothing illegal or even immoral about looking, Ivan. I’m sure I’ve even seen those old gentlemen with the metal detectors right here in this park, searching for ancient coins and the like. Retirement hobby or destitution, I was never quite sure.”

  “Your guards ran them off, surely.”

  “Not always. They might, after all, have found something interesting.”

  “And have the Arquas found something interesting?”

  “We don’t, of course, know yet. Till Shiv and Udine analyze their measurements.”

  “And what will you do then?”

  “Flowcharts, Ivan. I’m sure I’ve heard you go on at length over some meal or another with your lady mother about the warm, fuzzy feelings you get from flowcharts. This is only the first bifurcation in the decision-tree, not the last.”

  Whatever Ivan was feeling right now, warm and fuzzy wasn’t in it.

  The sun was climbing toward noon, though not overhead, as high as it got this time of year. From the ImpSec gates there issued a gaggle of pallid men, officers and enlisted both, clutching lunch sacks and drinks of various sorts. They split up and spread out to take over the benches in a practiced-seeming way, with some of the enlisted ending up sharing their lunch picnics on rolled-out ground sheets. They all gazed in suspicion at the Jewels; some gazed in suspicion at the two civilian-clothed men on the last bench, especially the group displaced from their usual perch, till apprised by some of their older colleagues. Then they just stared.

  Tej grinned across at Simon and at Ivan, almost the first his wife had acknowledged his existence since he’d sat down, and went into a brief huddle with the Jewels. Star opted out, looking mildly bored; she had collected all the stage markers back into a bundle, and seemed to be loading things up.

  The group of Jewels split up again and took positions in a circle, or square, or imaginary four-pointed star. Tej bent and started the music once more, louder than heretofore; a very traditional Barrayaran mazurka, if with a livelier, updated beat and flourishes. The Jewels began to move, grandly leaping and kicking, in a version that recalled traditional Barrayaran men’s dances without in any way being one. It was by far the most athletic performance yet. Even Jet, usually the thrower, took his turn being thrown into the air—if by two of his sister-Jewels in cooperation—and somersaulting to daring landings. All the men around the perimeter of the park stopped eating to goggle. Tej watched as if hypnotized with pleasure.

  When the dance finished in a whirl and a shout, all the Jewels were breathing heavily, sweating despite the chill. Quite spontaneously, the ImpSec men scattered around their impromptu stage broke into applause; the Jewels grinned and bowed back, in one cardinal direction after another, concluding with an especially low sweep toward Simon and Ivan.

  Simon rose, with one of those my-back-hurts sounds made by the aging, whether sincerely or for audience effect. There had been a deal of audience effect running in several directions here this morning, Ivan was pretty sure. The Jewels and Tej finished packing up their scant props, or gear, hauling it to the ground-van parked on the far side of the grassy space.

  “You talk to Guy Allegre about all this yet?” Ivan nodded toward the late outdoor stage. “Or was he one of your six men?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Or him to you?”

  “I set it as a high probability that we’ll be talking to each other sometime.”

  “Ah . . . Gregor?”

  Simon’s eyebrows mocked him. “And what is Gregor’s favorite motto?”

  “Let’s see what happens,” Ivan recited glumly. “I always thought that was an appallingly irresponsible thing for an emperor to say.”

  “There you go.”

  Tej came over, to inquire rather breathlessly of Simon, but not Ivan, “Did you like the show, sir?”

  “Yes. I did. Street theater of the highest order.”

  “Complete with audience participation?” Ivan muttered. Wait, right—Simon hadn’t answered his last question. Or his first, for that matter.

  “You should take your wife to lunch, Ivan,” Simon suggested genially. He asked Tej to convey his thanks to the Jewels for the show, excused himself, and walked off down the boulevard, just as though he had been some ordinary passerby who’d stopped to watch the rehearsing dancers.

  But Tej, still elusive, claimed chauffeuring duties, and fled in the opposite direction.

  Ivan, feeling at default if not fault, sat back on the bench and stared at the blank landscape, trying to imagine how far was down.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ivan woke the next morning to an empty bed, again, a depopulated flat, and a note on the coffeemaker: Gone driving. T. Which was better than no reassurance at all, but wouldn’t Love, T. have been a better closing salutation? Not that he had ever ended any note to Tej with Love, I., so far, but then, he hadn’t ever gone out and left her with just some laconic, uninformative scrawl. She’d come in very late last night, too, after some family thing, and gone straight to sleep, with no talk and scarcely a cuddle.

  He buttered his instant breakfast groats, which made him think back to the emergency impromptu wedding on Komarr, and wondered if the gelid grains would taste better with a shot of brandy poured over them instead. No. No drinking at dawn, that was a bad sign, not that this was dawn—merely midmorning. He tried Tej’s wristcom, without reply, and was dumped to her message bin. Dumped, that wasn’t a good word, either. Nor—memory intruded again, albeit not one of Tej—a good sign. When his would-be-breezy Hey, Tej, call me. Ivan, your husband, remember?, produced no response by the time he had shaved and dressed, he steeled himself and walked down the street to the Arqua-occupied hotel.

  Shiv himself admitted him when he buzzed the door of their suite. “Ah. Ivan.” He called over his shoulder, “Udine, Tej’s Barrayaran is here.” He gestured Ivan in and to one of the sitting room’s upholstered chairs, and fetched coffee from a credenza; Ivan accepted it gratefully.

  The Baronne shut down her comconsole, joined her husband on the small sofa facing Ivan, and cast her provisional son-in-law a cool smile of welcome.

  “I just popped in to ask where Tej had gone,” Ivan explained. “She left me a note, but it didn’t say much.”

  Udine answered, “She has kindly taken my mother and Amiri out for some touring. I don’t believe they had a set destination.”

  Well, all right, that sounded pretty safe and benign, compared to yesterday’s . .
. odd performance. Lady ghem Estif was not wholly alarming, for a haut woman, or ex-haut woman, and Amiri was surely the least Jacksonian of this crew. A doctor, after all, aspiring unworldly researcher to boot. But Ivan was beginning to regret getting Tej all those driving lessons. “Couldn’t you hire a driver?” Wondering if that sounded rude, he added, “I could help you find one.” Or Captain Raudsepp could, no doubt.

  “Perhaps later on,” said Shiv. “But this gave Tej a chance to catch up with her favorite brother.”

  “Ah,” said Ivan, unable to argue with that. Dead end. He cast around for another topic. One came up readily. “So, ah . . . how long are you folks planning to stay on Barrayar, anyway?”

  “I expect that will rather depend on Pidge’s success in obtaining our emergency visa extension,” said Udine.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Ivan. “How’s that going for you?”

  “Moving along,” said Udine. “She thinks it may prove advantageous to hire a local lawyer; she said she’d know by tomorrow or the next day.”

  “My, um, mother might be able to put you in touch with a good one,” Ivan suggested. Not that he necessarily wanted their stay extended. With one exception.

  “Lady Alys has already made that offer,” said Udine brightly. “So helpful, your mother.”

  “What will you all do if the extension is—” he started to say, denied, but switched on the fly to, “granted? You wouldn’t be planning to stay permanently, would you? Apply for immigration status, take oath as Barrayaran subjects? I should probably warn you, they take oaths pretty seriously around here.”

  Udine smiled slightly. “I am aware.”

  “It wouldn’t be my first choice,” said Shiv, gem-black eyes narrowing in his dark face in some unreadable emotion, “but if there is one thing my life has taught me, it’s the need to stay flexible. Barrayar is not a place I would ever have gone voluntarily, but I must say I’ve been agreeably surprised by what I’ve seen here. They do say travel broadens the mind. If none of our first-choice plans work out, we may simply have to develop some new . . . enterprise.” His carved lips drew back in a smilelike expression.