Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen - eARC

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  I hope so, Cordelia thought, and her breath caught sharp. No, do not let your fears eat the happiness in front of you. Or your grief consume your future? That was harder.

  Despite herself, Cordelia yawned. “Think you could sleep now?”

  He stretched, rolling his shoulders. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “You can sleep in as long as you like, tomorrow morning.”

  “But you can’t, I am reminded.” He took his cane and levered himself to his feet, and made his way to the door. “G’night, then.”

  “Good night. Sleep well, kiddo.”

  “Good luck on yours, too.” He made a hand-wave of acknowledgment, and wandered out. No Thank you, no I’m so glad we had this little chat. Unsurprising, all things considered.

  But a moment later, he stuck his head back inside the door. “So when are you going to tell Aurelia all these lurid tales?”

  The boy bites back!

  …Good.

  “When she’s old enough to ask. I suppose.” Or never. Let the future be freed of the heavy hand of the past through the power of selective amnesia? It wasn’t the worst approach, in Cordelia’s lengthening experience.

  Miles vented a short laugh and withdrew. Cordelia sighed unease and turned out the light.

  * * *

  The morning meetings in the Offices of the Viceroyalty went reasonably briskly, Cordelia being fatigued from her disrupted night’s sleep and disinclined to suffer diversions, and already starting to fantasize about an early escape that afternoon. Back at her comconsole, she found that the usual virtual mountain of items flagged for her attention had been reduced to a virtual hillock, Thank you, Ivy. And not even any hidden volcanoes, till she came to the last item on the list.

  “Those smarmy sons-of-bitches,” she snarled when she’d taken her first survey-scan, apparently less under her breath than she thought, because Ivy called cautiously through the open door between their respective domains, “You, ah…get down to the Plas-Dan proposal, did you?”

  “Yes.” Cordelia unset her teeth, and wondered if there was space in her budget to slip in another raise for her executive secretary. If this had been placed first on the list, she wouldn’t have had the concentration to get through the rest nearly as quickly.

  An outside eye would have found the proposal unexceptionable, certainly. Plas-Dan wanted to set up a second materials manufacturing plant at Gridgrad. Gridgrad certainly needed one. Plas-Dan, smugly sure of their current monopoly, made a list of demands for support in this enterprise that…weren’t actually impossible, though they were certainly stiff. It was rather like a man holding himself for ransom. Well, that ploy had worked for them once, hadn’t it?

  And, for lack of another option, Cordelia might just have to roll over and give it all to them. Or else watch her plan to shift the capital grind to, if not a halt, a glacial pace. “Gah.”

  She read through it again. None of the details changed the broad outline. The most she could do was mark it Received, hold pending review. Not that reading it for a third time would alter anything. She couldn’t pull a competing bid out of her ear.

  She composed and sent off a reminder tightbeam message on the subject to Mark, and another to certain friends back in Vorbarr Sultana, and even one to Komarr, but if the first set she’d dispatched had failed to stir up anything, she wasn’t sure how the reprise could. Holding an answer till she returned from the Prince Serg the day after tomorrow was unlikely to give her industrial nemesis any sleepless nights in the interim, as they could do the same tactical calculations she could. It didn’t even yield the satisfaction of petty revenge. She held it all the same.

  A little while later, as she was beginning to imagine she would make that early escape after all, and wondering how and what the kids and grandkids were doing on the other side of the garden, Ivy buzzed her desk. She could have just stuck her head around the door; Cordelia realized why not when she said, formally, “Vicereine, Mayor Kuznetsov is here to see you.”

  Making it easier to brush the man off, if Cordelia was so inclined. She was entirely inclined, but she couldn’t really justify it. She needed to establish bridges with him, now that Yerkes was out. Yerkes had been fairly obstreperous at times, but at least broken in. Personally, Cordelia had voted for Moreau. The disappointment was not a new experience; back in her younger days as a Betan citizen, it had seemed to Cordelia that she was usually outvoted. I mean, Steady Freddie, really! It had taken years for the Betan electorate to finally get rid of the clot.

  Cordelia sighed, and said, “Send him in.”

  Kuznetsov was flanked by an older woman, whom Cordelia recognized as one of the town council members. But they did the work of running Kayburg so the Imperial government didn’t have to, always a point in their favor. They exchanged greetings; Cordelia fixed a friendly smile on her face and waved them to the comfy chairs on the opposite side of her comconsole desk. The pair looked determined and nervous. Cordelia canned her usual easy opening of And what can His Imperial Majesty’s government do for Kareenburg today? with a more neutral—if still inviting, because she wanted to move this along—“And what do you wish me to hear today, Mayor, Councilor?”

  Kuznetsov leaned forward to place a somewhat battered readpad atop the black glass of her comconsole desk. “This,” he said portentously, “is a formal petition protesting the proposed removal of the Imperial planetary capital from historic Kareenburg to a lesser provincial town. We have so far collected over five thousand signatures, and can certainly obtain more. If they are in fact needed, to give a louder voice to those we serve.”

  “Very good practice for you in democratic procedures,” Cordelia observed, not touching it. Some older Barrayaran immigrants didn’t trust such galactic doings; others took to it with alacrity, reinventing every possible method of cooking a vote with dizzying speed. The electorally experienced Komarrans had an edge, there. The cadre of more-ethical local election volunteers was keeping up with the arms race, but only just.

  “As a Betan,” said the councilwoman, Madame Noyes, “you surely cannot turn this aside.”

  Cordelia leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “I haven’t been a Betan for over four decades, but yes, I do understand. Your procedure is good. Your issue, however, is bad.”

  “Stealing the capital from us will strangle Kareenburg’s growth,” argued Kuznetsov. “Extinguish its chance at glory!”

  Precisely, Cordelia thought, but said aloud, “No one is suggesting knocking the place down. Everything that’s here will still be here. Including the base and the civilian shuttleport, which are growth taps that will not be shut off.” Anyway, not soon enough. She pursed her lips. “Consider also that size isn’t the only driver of fame. What’s the population here today, around forty thousand? Same as Florence, Italy, at the height of the Renaissance. So where’s our Leonardo da Vinci? Our Michelangelo?” She did not add, Where’s our Brunelleschi?, Aral’s very favorite lunatic creator of Old Earth, because planting brilliant architecture in doomed Kayburg would be tragic.

  “We were the first—and foremost—colonial settlement on Sergyar,” said Kuznetsov. “Our history is central to this world.”

  “Yes, I was there,” said Cordelia, a little dryly. Kuznetsov had been in nappies, somewhere back on Barrayar, she estimated. Noyes could have been his elder cousin. “History, yes; glorious, no. Kayburg, or rather, the base, started as a concealed military supplies depot and, soon after, a shuttle tarmac and an ugly POW camp. And some really ugly events. The abortive invasion of Escobar was not Barrayar’s most shining hour, you know. No one involved was thinking about rational settlement plans at the time, because they were all caught up in the old War Party’s schemes. The peaceful settlement of one of the best Earthlike planets discovered in two generations barely ticked their meters, probably because it offered too high a ratio of hard work to glory grabbing. Not to mention slow returns.”

  Kuznetsov, no Vor, at least had to shrug his shoulders in agreement at this one
. He was not allergic to work, either, as far as Cordelia had been able to discern; he was, after all, doing the job he was paid for right now. Alas.

  “Mount Thera has not erupted for thousands of years,” argued Noyes. “It could be thousands more before it does it again.”

  “Hundreds of years,” Cordelia corrected. “The big blowout that took off its top was a thousand years back, but there have been minor eruptions since. The event-survey timeline for the past several thousand years is publicly posted.” Still being revised as new data arrived, not fast enough. Need more people. “It’s not dead, just dormant, and as the rift continues to shift and widen under it, long-term predictions are tricky. No, it’s not going off in the next ten years, or I really would be trying to evacuate Kayburg. The next hundred? Maybe. The next two hundred? Almost certainly.”

  “There are cities on Old Earth that have lived for thousands of years beside volcanoes more active than this one,” said Kuznetsov. “They rebuild and go on.”

  “Yes, but they were originally sited before plate tectonics was discovered. People back then thought such geologic catastrophes were punishments from their gods, having no better explanation. After that conceptual breakthrough, it was just inertia. And shortsightedness. And the sunk-cost fallacy. We don’t have the excuse of ignorance. The sunk-cost will never be smaller than now. And inertia is in part a product of mass which, yes, I am trying to reduce.”

  “By crippling the future of Kareenburg!” objected Kuznetsov.

  Cordelia stifled the urge to tear her hair. “The future of Kareenburg is a lava flow.” She frowned. “If the earthquakes don’t get it first. Although Aral once remarked to me, when we were discussing the subject, ‘Earthquakes don’t kill people; contractors kill people.’ I thought he had a point, but still.”

  “The earthquakes we get here barely rattle my dishes,” said Noyes. “Once or twice a year!”

  Hadn’t she been here for the ground-cracker a decade ago? “No, the seismic activity in the rift is nearly continuous. People just don’t notice the deep or minor ones. I know my volcanology team feeds the raw data onto the government net in real-time. Anyone can look at it.” She laid her palm out flat on the cool black glass of her desktop. Because clenching her fist might be construed as hostile.

  Noyes sniffed. “Obscure scientific gobbledygook! Any lie could be hidden in it, and who could tell?”

  Cordelia stared. “On the contrary, all our posted explanations are written in language a ten-year-old could understand. And that’s not a figure of speech. I have Blaise Gatti go find a classroom of ten-year-olds to test them on. Their reading comprehension is surprisingly good.” Gatti had at first been taken aback by his assignment, but had quickly got into the spirit of the thing. The classrooms now quite looked forward to his visits, she understood. “There’s even a tutorial post on interpreting the charts and graphs, right there.”

  “So,” said Noyes coldly. “Your much-lauded progressivism is a sham, isn’t it, Vicereine? Five thousand voices, swept aside at a Vor word.”

  “Look.” Cordelia leaned forward, clasping her hands on the desktop. “There is no political solution to this, because it’s not a political problem. Asteroids—Admiral Jole’s people can fix asteroids, bless them. Not volcanoes. It’s a different order of magnitude.” Well, unless the asteroid were near-planet-sized, but Cordelia had learned not to undercut her own arguments with excessive precision. “Gregor grants the office of Viceroy many powers, but not superpowers. I can’t stop continental drift.” She added reflectively, “Which would be a supremely bad idea for the long-term health of the Sergyaran biosphere even if I could, actually.”

  “But you could stop the capital from shifting away from us,” said Kuznetsov.

  If I were shortsighted, vicious, or stupid, sure. She sighed, and shoved the signature recorder back toward its presenters. “I suggest you take your petition up to the lip of the old caldera and present it to the mountain. It, not I, will determine the long-term outcome, here. Though if you get an answer, run.”

  “Very funny,” said Kuznetsov, with understandable bitterness. “I’m sorry that you see the economic hardships you plan to visit upon the residents of Kareenburg as a joke.”

  “Hardship is an exaggeration. A significant number of people aren’t going to make as much profit out of Kayburg as they thought they would, this is true. This is not the same thing as starvation.”

  Looking equally indignant, Noyes grabbed the pad back. “You haven’t heard the end of this, Vicereine.”

  I should be so lucky. “There is much about Kayburg that I have loved, myself. The Viceroy’s Palace is a home that I built, and it and its gardens contain some of the happiest memories of my life.” As well as the most devastating one ever, but that was no business of theirs. “It will be more than a little heartbreaking to leave it behind. Aral and I always did our best for the place in the time we had. But if I want to do my best for its people, they need to learn to shift ground.”

  Her petitioners, recognizing that the stalemate wasn’t going to be broken today, finally shifted themselves out, still grumbling. But at least they left, so that Cordelia could, too.

  * * *

  Exiting her office a short time later, Cordelia found Blaise chatting over Ivy’s desk, and no other petitioners waiting.

  Ivy looked up. “On your way? Have a safe trip!”

  “Thanks! It should be extremely interesting.”

  “I don’t suppose you need a press officer along?” Blaise asked in faint hope.

  “Sorry, I’m full up with family. Not everything needs to be a PR opportunity, you know.” She took pity on his doleful look, which he had deployed at her to his benefit more than once. “You can write up a small squib. Run it past me before you release it.”

  Accepting this consolation prize, he nodded. It would likely be a large article by the time he was done, but the subject seemed safe and the history lesson useful. Although she’d have to cross-check any mention of the mothballing procedures with the military censors, so that it didn’t work out to be a notice to the Nexus at large, Here, come steal our stuff! Let me show you how!

  About to make for the outer door, Cordelia hesitated, recognizing an opportunity. Waste not, want not. “By the way, I should probably mention a recent development to you both. Admiral Jole and I have started dating. This isn’t secret, but it is private, so treat it accordingly. But Blaise, if you run across anything, er, pertinent to the subject in your scans, do let me know.” There. Blindsiding averted. Virtue of a sort, or at least a duty discharged. Like a visit to the dentist.

  Blaise looked pole-axed. “Er…?” he managed. “Really?”

  Ivy sat up in equal astonishment, and more open curiosity. “Gentleman Jole, the dog who does nothing in the nighttime, really? How did that happen?”

  Cordelia wasn’t sure if Ivy’s uncertain smile was salacious or just bemused. In any case, it seemed to indicate that if Cordelia wanted someone with whom to discuss Oliver’s fine points, rather the way old Count Piotr had gone on and on with certain cronies about his horses, she would find a willing volunteer ready to hand. This had considerably more appeal than trying to expound on Oliver to Miles, certainly. And Ivy could keep her counsel.

  “We’ll do lunch about that sometime,” Cordelia promised. Which would be sandwiches at her desk, probably. “Have your people call my people.”

  Ivy mock-saluted, her smile growing firmer.

  “You don’t think there will be any…any issues?” Blaise tried. “The late Viceroy…” Cordelia wasn’t sure what he saw in her face that stopped that sentence, but at least it did.

  I will eviscerate anyone who tries to make an issue out of this wasn’t something Cordelia could say. Or do either, she supposed glumly. “I have no idea. Hence your heads-up on a subject that would otherwise be no one else’s business.” Including yours hung implied. “You might spend some thought on how to turn it into old, boring, uninteresting non-news, though, just in
case.”

  A faint professional whimper.

  Cordelia grinned and blew out.

  * * *

  Getting her family into orbit turned out not to be such a circus as Cordelia had feared. Miles, after all, had also had experience moving small armies. The exercise was aided by the decision to leave the two toddlers and Taurie back at the Palace with their nanny, the phalanx of regular staff, ImpSec, and Rykov as experienced seneschal. The older three who came along, plus Freddie, were seriously outnumbered and surrounded by the adults. As long as Miles stayed on the grownups’ side, Cordelia figured they were safe. The military crew manning her pinnace and its shadowing courier vessel were all cheery to be racking up more space-duty hours on their logs, not to mention as excited to be visiting the historic vessel as their seniors. With both the Vicereine and their Fleet Admiral aboard, their service grew alarmingly keen.

  After the miniature convoy had broken orbit, dinner was laid on in the ship’s compact observation lounge. It was split between two tables; the four kids had their own, plus a couple of sacrificial junior officers and senior techs for them to interrogate, leaving the other table—of the elder Vorkosigans, Oliver, those senior officers who weren’t on duty, and the Vicereine’s personal physician—to get on with boring grownup talk. Which wasn’t so boring as all that, although tomorrow night Cordelia promised herself that she would jump tables.

  The talk, unsurprisingly, turned to their destination. Oliver stuck to the official versions of his war stories, very practiced by now; Miles kept a straight face, mostly, though he coughed wine once. The heroic role of the free mercenary fleet in holding the Vervain wormhole till the Prince Serg and the ships of the extremely ad hoc Hegen Hub Alliance could arrive to relieve them in the victory-snatched-from-debacle was, of course, known to all the military folk here.

  “So what were you doing during the lead-up to the Cetagandan invasion of Vervain, Count Vorkosigan?” asked Captain Aucoin. “You were a very junior officer then, I believe? ImpSec, wasn’t it?”