Cordelia held her from behind, and whispered in her ear.
“In a moment I’ll give you your air back. How long depends on you. You’re about to get a short course in the real Barrayaran interrogation techniques. I never used to approve of them, but lately I’ve come to see they have their uses—when you’re in a tearing hurry, for instance—” Can’t let her guess I’m playacting. Playacting. “How many men does Tailor have planted around this building, and what are their positions?”
She loosened the chain slightly. Mehta, eyes stunned with fear, choked, “None!”
“All Cretans are liars,” Cordelia muttered. “Bill’s not inept either.” She dragged the doctor over to the aquarium and pushed her face into the water. She struggled wildly, but Cordelia, larger, stronger, in better training, held her under with a furious strength that astonished herself.
Mehta showed signs of passing out. Cordelia pulled her up and allowed her a couple of breaths.
“Care to revise your estimate yet?” God help me, what if this doesn’t work? They’ll never believe I’m not an agent now.
“Oh, please,” Mehta gasped.
“All right, back you go.” She held her down again.
The water roiled, splashing over the sides of the aquarium. Cordelia could see Mehta’s face through the glass, strangely magnified, deathly yellow in the odd reflected light from the gravel. Silver bubbles broke around her mouth and flowed up over her face. Cordelia was temporarily fascinated by them. Air flows like water, underwater, she thought; is there an aesthetic of death?
“Now. How many? Where?”
“No, really!”
“Have another drink.”
At her next breath Mehta gasped, “You wouldn’t kill me!”
“Diagnosis, Doctor,” hissed Cordelia. “Am I a sane woman, pretending to be mad, or a madwoman, pretending to be sane? Grow gills!” Her voice rose uncontrollably. She shoved Mehta back under, and found she was holding her own breath. And what if she’s right and I’m wrong? What if I am an agent, and don’t know it? How do you tell a copy from the original? Stone smashes scissors… .
She had a vision, trembling to her fingers, of holding the woman’s head under, and under, until her resistance drained away, until unconsciousness took her, and a full count beyond that to assure brain death. Power, opportunity, will—she lacked nothing. So this is what Aral felt at Komarr, she thought. Now I understand—no. Now I know.
“How many? Where?”
“Four,” Mehta croaked. Cordelia melted with relief. “Two outside the foyer. Two in the garage.”
“Thank you,” said Cordelia, automatically courteous; but her throat was tightened to a slit and squeezed her words to a smear of sound. “I’m sorry… .” She could not tell if Mehta, livid, heard or understood. Paper wraps stone… .
She bound and gagged her as she had once seen Vorkosigan do Gottyan. She shoved her down behind the bed, out of sight from the door. She stuffed bank cards, IDs, money, into her pockets. She turned on the shower.
She tiptoed out the bedroom door, breathing raggedly through her mouth. She ached for a minute, just one minute, to collect her shattered balance, but Tailor and the medtech were gone—to the kitchen for coffee, probably. She dared not risk the opening even to pause for boots.
No, God—! Tailor was standing in the archway to the kitchen, just raising a cup of coffee to his lips. She froze, he went still, and they stared at each other.
Her eyes, Cordelia realized, must be huge as some nocturnal animal’s. She never could control her eyes.
Tailor’s mouth twisted oddly, watching her. Then, slowly, he raised his left hand and saluted her. The incorrect hand, but the other was holding the coffee. He took a sip of his drink, gaze steady over the rim of his cup.
Cordelia came gravely to attention, returned the salute, and slipped quietly out the apartment door.
*
To her temporary terror, she found a journalist and his vidman in the hallway, one of the most persistent and obnoxious, the one she’d had thrown out of the building yesterday. She smiled at him, dizzy with exhilaration, like a sky diver just stepping into air.
“Still want to do that interview?”
He jumped at the bait.
“Slow down, now. Not here. I’m being watched, you know.” She dropped her voice conspiratorially. “The government’s doing a cover-up. What I know could blow the administration sky-high. Things about the prisoners. You could—make your reputation.”
“Where, then?” He was avid.
“How about the shuttleport? Their bar’s quiet. I’ll buy you a drink, and we can—plan our campaign.” Time ticked in her brain. She expected her mother’s apartment door to slam open any second. “It’s dangerous, though. There are two government agents up in the foyer and two in the garage. I’d have to get past them without being seen. If it were known I was talking to you, you might not get a chance at a second interview. No rough stuff—just a little quiet disappearance in the night, and the ripple of a rumor about ‘gone for medical tests.’ Know what I mean?” She was fairly sure he didn’t—his media service dealt mainly in sex fantasies—but she could see a vision of journalistic glory growing in his face.
He turned to his vidman. “Jon, give her your jacket, your hat, and your holocam.”
She tucked her hair up in the broad-brimmed hat, concealed her fatigues under the jacket, and carried the vidcam ostentatiously. They took the lift tube up to the garage. Two men in blue uniforms waited by its exit. She placed the vidcam casually on her shoulder, her arm half-concealing her face, as they walked past them to the journalist’s groundcar.
At the shuttleport bar she ordered drinks, and took a large gulp of her own. “I’ll be right back,” she promised, and left him sitting there with the unpaid-for liquor in front of him.
The next stop was the ticket computer. She punched up the schedule. No passenger ships leaving for Escobar for at least six hours. Far too long. The shuttleport would surely be one of the first places searched. A woman in shuttleport uniform walked past. Cordelia collared her.
“Pardon me. Could you help me find out something about private freighter schedules, or any other private ships leaving soon?”
The woman frowned, then smiled in sudden recognition. “You’re Captain Naismith!”
Her heart lurched, and pounded drunkenly. No—steady on … “Yes. Um … The press have been giving me a rather hard time. I’m sure you understand.” Cordelia gave the woman a look that raised her to an inner circle. “I want to do this quietly. Maybe we could go to an office? I know you’re not like them. You have a respect for privacy. I can see it in your face.”
“You can?” The woman was flattered and excited, and led Cordelia away. In her office she had access to the full traffic control schedules, and Cordelia keyed through them rapidly. “Hm. This looks good. Starts for Escobar within the hour. Has the pilot gone up yet, do you know?”
“That freighter isn’t certified for passengers.”
“That’s all right. I just want to talk to the pilot. Personally. And privately. Can you catch him for me?”
“I’ll try.” She succeeded. “He’ll meet you in Docking Bay 27. But you’ll have to hurry.”
“Thanks. Um … You know, the journalists have been making my life miserable. They’ll stop at nothing. There’s even a pair who’ve gone so far as to put on Expeditionary Force uniforms to try and get in. Call themselves Captain Mehta and Commodore Tailor. A real pain. If any of them come sniffing around, do you suppose you could sort of forget you saw me?”
“Why, sure, Captain Naismith.”
“Call me Cordelia. You’re first-rate! Thanks!”
The pilot was a very young one, getting his first experience on freighters before taking on the larger responsibilities of passenger ships. He, too, recognized her, and promptly asked for her autograph.
“I suppose you’re wondering why you were chosen,” she began as she wrote it out for him, without the fai
ntest idea of where she was going, but only with the thought that he looked the sort of person who had never won a contest in his life.
“Me, ma’am?”
“Believe me, the security people went over your life from end to end. You’re trustworthy. That’s what you are. Really trustworthy.”
“Oh—they can’t have found out about the cordolite!” Alarm struggled with response to flattery.
“Resourceful, too,” Cordelia extemporized, wondering what cordolite was. She’d never heard of it. “Just the man for this mission.”
“What mission!”
“Sh, not so loud. I’m on a secret mission for the president. Personally. It’s so delicate, even the Department of War doesn’t know about it. There’d be heavy political repercussions if it ever got out. I have to deliver a secret ultimatum to the Emperor of Barrayar. But no one must know I’ve left Beta Colony.”
“Am I supposed to take you there?” he asked, amazed. “My freight run—”
I believe I could talk this kid into running me all the way to Barrayar on his employer’s fuel. But it would be the end of his career. Conscience controlled soaring ambition.
“No, no. Your freight run must appear to be exactly the same as usual. I’m to meet a secret contact on Escobar. You’ll simply be carrying one article of freight that isn’t on the manifest. Me.”
“I’m not cleared for passengers, ma’am.”
“Good heavens, don’t you think we know that? Why do you suppose you were picked over all the other candidates, by the president himself?”
“Wow. And I didn’t even vote for him.”
He took her aboard the freighter shuttle, and made her a seat among the last-minute cargo. “You know all the big names in Survey, don’t you, ma’am? Lightner, Parnell … Do you suppose you could ever introduce me?”
“I don’t know. But—you will get to meet a lot of the big names from the Expeditionary Force, and Security, when you get back from Escobar. I promise.” Will you ever …
“May I ask you a personal question, ma’am?”
“Why not? Everyone else does.”
“Why are you wearing slippers?”
She stared down at her feet. “I’m—sorry, Pilot Officer Mayhew. That’s classified.”
“Oh.” He went forward to lift ship.
Alone at last, she leaned her forehead against the cool, smooth, plastic side of a packing case, and wept silently for herself.
Chapter Fourteen
It was about noon, local time, when the lightflyer she had rented in Vorbarr Sultana brought her over the long lake. The shore was bordered by vine-garlanded slopes backed in turn by steep, scrub-covered hills. The population here was thinly scattered, except around the lake, which had a village at its foot. A cliffed headland at the water’s edge was crowned by the ruins of an old fortification. She circled it, rechecking her map on which it was a principal landmark. Counting northward from it past three large properties, she brought her flyer down on a driveway that wound up the slope to a fourth.
A rambling old house built of native stone blended with the vegetation into the side of the hill. She retracted the wings, killed the engine, pocketed the keys, and sat staring uncertainly at its sun-warmed front.
A tall figure in a strange brown-and-silver uniform ambled around the corner. He bore a weapon in a holster on his hip, and his hand rested on it caressingly. She knew then that Vorkosigan must be nearby, for it was Sergeant Bothari. He looked to be in good health, at least physically.
She hopped out of the lightflyer. “Uh, good afternoon, Sergeant. Is Admiral Vorkosigan at home?”
He stared at her, narrow-eyed, then his face seemed to clear, and he saluted her. “Captain Naismith. Ma’am. Yes.”
“You’re looking a lot better than when we last met.”
“Ma’am?”
“On the flagship. At Escobar.”
He looked troubled. “I—can’t remember Escobar. Admiral Vorkosigan says I was there.”
“I see.” Took away your memory, did they? Or did you do it yourself? No telling now. “I’m sorry to hear that. You served bravely.”
“Did I? I was discharged, after.”
“Oh? What’s the uniform?”
“Count Vorkosigan’s livery, ma’am. He took me into his personal guard.”
“I’m—sure you’ll serve him well. May I see Admiral Vorkosigan?”
“He’s around back, ma’am. You can go up.” He wandered away, evidently making some kind of patrol circuit.
She trudged around the house, the sun warm on her back, kicking at the unaccustomed skirts of her dress and making them swirl about her knees. She had bought it yesterday in Vorbarr Sultana, partly for fun, mostly because her old tan Survey fatigues with the insignia taken off collected stares in the streets. Its dark floral pattern pleased her eye. Her hair hung loose, parted in the middle and held back from her face by two enameled combs, also purchased yesterday.
A little farther up the hill was a garden, surrounded by a low, gray stone wall. No, not a garden, she realized as she approached: a graveyard. An old man in old coveralls was working in it, kneeling in the dirt planting young flowers from a flat. He squinted up at her as she pushed through the little gate. She did not mistake his identity. He was a little taller than his son, and his musculature had gone thin and stringy with age, but she saw Vorkosigan in the bones of his face.
“General Count Vorkosigan, sir?” She saluted him automatically, then realized how peculiar it must look in the dress. He rose stiffly to his feet. “My name is Cap—my name is Cordelia Naismith. I’m a friend of Aral’s. I—don’t know if he mentioned me to you. Is he here?”
“How do you do, madam.” He came more or less to attention, and gave her a courteous half nod that was achingly familiar. “He said very little, and it did not lead me to think I might meet you.” A smile creaked across his face, as if those muscles were stiff from long disuse. “You have no idea how pleased I am to be wrong.” He gestured over his shoulder up the hill. “There is a little pavilion at the top of our property, overlooking the lake. He, ah, sits up there most of the time.”
“I see.” She spotted the path, winding up past the graveyard. “Um. I’m not sure how to put this … is he sober?”
He glanced at the sun, and pursed leathery lips. “Probably not, by this hour. When he first came home he only drank after dinner, but the time has been creeping up, gradually. Very disturbing, but there isn’t much I can do about it. Although if that gut of his starts bleeding again I may …” He broke off, looking her over with intense, uncertain speculation. “He has taken this Escobar failure unnecessarily personally, I think. His resignation was not in the least called for.”
She deduced the old count was not in his emperor’s confidence on this matter, and thought, it wasn’t its failure that slew his spirit, sir; it was its success. Aloud, she said, “Loyalty to your emperor was a very great point of honor for him, I know.” Almost its last bastion, and your emperor chose to flatten it to its foundations in the service of his great need… .
“Why don’t you go on up,” suggested the old man. “Although, this isn’t a very good day for him, I—had better warn you.”
“Thank you. I understand.”
He stood looking after her as she left the walled enclosure and went on up the winding walk. It was shaded by trees, most of them Earth imports, and some other vegetation that had to be local. The hedge of bush-like things with flowers—she assumed they were flowers, Dubauer would have known—that looked like pink ostrich feathers was particularly striking.
The pavilion, a faintly oriental structure of weathered wood, commanded a fine view of the sparkling lake. Vines climbed it, seeming to claim it for the rocky soil. It was open on all four sides, and furnished with a couple of shabby chaises, a large faded armchair and footstool, and a small table holding two decanters, some glasses, and a bottle of a thick white liquid.
Vorkosigan lay back in the chair, eyes closed, bar
e feet on the stool, a pair of sandals kicked carelessly over the side. Cordelia paused at the pavilion’s edge to study him with a sort of delicate enjoyment. He wore an old pair of black uniform trousers and a very civilian shirt, a loud and unexpected floral print. He obviously had not shaved that morning. His toes, she noticed, had a little wiry black hair on them like the backs of his fingers and hands. She decided she definitely liked his feet; indeed, could easily become quite foolishly fond of every part of him. His generally seedy air was less amusing. Tired, and more than tired. Ill.
He opened his eyes to slits and reached for a crystal tumbler filled with an amber liquid, then appeared to change his mind and picked up the white bottle instead. A small measuring cup stood beside it, which he ignored, knocking back a slug of the white liquid directly from its source instead. He sneered briefly at the bottle, then traded it for the crystal tumbler and took a drink, rinsing it around in his mouth and swallowing. He hunched back down in the armchair at a slightly lower level than before.
“Liquid breakfast?” Cordelia inquired. “Is it as tasty as oatmeal and blue cheese dressing?”
His eyes snapped open. “You,” he said hoarsely after a moment, “are not a hallucination.” He started to get up, then appeared to think better of it and sank back in frozen self-consciousness. “I never wanted you to see …”
She mounted the steps to the shade, pushed a chaise closer to him, and seated herself. Blast, I’ve embarrassed him, catching him all awry like this. Off balance. How to put him at his ease? I would have him at his ease, always… . “I tried to call ahead, when I first landed yesterday, but I kept missing you. If hallucinations are what you expect, that must be remarkable stuff. Pour me one too, please.”
“I think you’d prefer the other.” He poured from the second decanter, looking shaken. Curious, she tasted from his glass.
“Faugh! That’s not wine.”
“Brandy.”
“At this hour?”
Shards of Honor (Vorkosigan Saga) Page 21
