Miles cleared his throat. “I can say that I was working as an ImpSec intelligence pathfinder in the Hub at the time. Further details must wait another three years, I’m afraid. At least any coming from me.” When one of the interim marker-dates, which generally ran in five-year increments, for sensitive information to age out of classification was passed at a quarter-century. Was Miles counting down the days? Probably. Although there were some aspects that would have to wait the full fifty, Cordelia was certain. Fifty years seemed a shorter time than it had used to.
“Your reticence is fairly pointless,” observed Aucoin. “Given all those Vervani holodramas.”
And Cordelia had seen them all; Miles had a collection, which he had insisted on sharing with his family—sometimes including Gregor, or, lately, his historian friend ImpSec Commodore Galeni, who did have the clearance—and critiquing the errors in excruciating detail. Aral had not been above helping, in a rumbling sort of way, or sometimes critiquing the critique.
“I know,” sighed Miles. “Three more years nonetheless.”
Aucoin came off-point like a disappointed bird dog. Before he could evolve another probe that wasn’t actually in violation of security regs, Oliver shifted the subject smoothly: “But since you are here, Miles, would you like to repeat your war-gaming exercise that you did a few years back about repelling theft attempts from our mothballing yards?”
Which was how Miles had capped his Auditorial investigation of the busted theft ring, back when, incidentally giving him an excuse to extend his family stay, and to terrorize a select group of Sergyar Fleet’s baby officers.
Miles sat up with all the glistening enthusiasm of a trout striking a lure. “Can we do it live-action? It would take me some prep time, but I’ll bet I could surprise—”
“Sims,” said Oliver. “You can run through more scenarios in less time, that way.”
And at much less cost, compared to letting Miles play toy soldiers with real soldiers, Cordelia reflected.
Miles tried, “Sims are good, too, but there’s nothing like removing the virtual from the reality to uncover all those snags nobody thought of.”
“While I agree with you in principle,” said Admiral Jole firmly, “sims.”
The military half of the table then fell into a vigorous discussion of various ways to set up this valuable training exercise, which diverted them all handily till the end of the meal. Ekaterin, Cordelia, and her staff physician didn’t have to endure too long, though, as the kids finished their own meal and grew restive and the junior officers had to go do some actual work. And Oliver, she thought, had as much motivation as she did to seek an early bedtime.
* * *
His time alone—at last!—with Cordelia was everything Jole had pictured during those long weeks on his upside tour, if not where and when he’d pictured. The unregulation double bed in her regulation cabin was all the world they needed, for an hour or so. She charitably let him go first to the lav, not sized for two, after. When she came out later, she looked surprised to find him not snoring in a post-coital coma, as she’d obviously anticipated when she’d kissed him goodnight on her way to wash up, but lying on his back with one arm flung behind his neck, staring up into the dimness.
“You’re quiet tonight,” she said, snuggling in under the covers and arranging her head on his chest, ear to his heart. “Thinking about the past?”
“No. The future.” He bent his neck to kiss her hair, then finally said, “Something came up at work.”
She raised her head and gave him an admonitory scowl, sideways. “You were supposed to be taking your week off. A balanced life for health and all that.”
He snorted.
“Anything that affects my patch?”
“Mm…Yes. No. Maybe.”
She appeared to consider this disordered ambiguity. “Would it help to talk it out? Aral used to use me for a sounding board all the time. Or an oubliette to rant into, as needed. If you tell me which parts are confidential, they’ll stay that way.”
He had no doubt of that. “I had a private message from Admiral Desplains. He’s headhunting his replacement at Ops HQ. He says he thinks I’m in the weight class for it, if I want to put my name in the hat.”
She went still, except for a careful blink. “So…have you sent your reply?”
“Not yet.”
Her brows twitched. “Haven’t decided? Or decided but delaying?”
No yes maybe. “Haven’t decided.”
She rolled away from him, up on her elbow. Long familiarity made her bare body no distraction, if still a delight. It was the concern in her face that locked his eye. “If it were an enthusiastic yes, surely you’d be packing for Barrayar right now.”
“Well, not right now…” His lips tweaked despite his unsettled mood. “There are in any case a few intervening steps. Such as finding my own replacement. Though Bobrik could be ready to move up.” Had to be, in an emergency. “D’you think you could work with him?”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “Not as easily—or as pleasurably—as with you, but I could adjust. It wouldn’t be for much longer in any case.” She did not say, But what about us? She did say, “What would you do with your embryos?”
“Just so.” As Aral used to remark, when caught in some fork. He bit his lip, not happily.
“I—” She stopped herself. Went on, “Shall I have a go at helping you sort it out? Or would you rather I didn’t?”
If he hadn’t wanted this offer, he could have kept his mouth shut, right? “Are you an unbiased adjudicator?”
“No, but I could pretend to be one for a short stretch.” As if in preparation, she moved slightly away from him, leaving a cool space down the edge of his body.
“I’ve been spinning my wheels for two days on my own,” he sighed. “Poke away.”
“Well…” Her mouth scrunched in thought. “Try a hypothetical. If Desplains had offered you this five months ago—at Winterfair, say—what would you have done?”
He thought back to those barren days of worn mourning. They seemed improbably long ago, from this vantage. Mourning could be buried in work, he knew, trapped alive in its coffin. “I’d have said yes,” he replied, surprised at his certainty. “Despite—no, because of the challenge. It would have been—not a decision of despair—it would have seemed a chance to break out of a kind of dry stasis. Move forward into…something. An unknown.” Might there have been new people on that road as well? A new lover, maybe even a spouse? In that milieu, he’d no doubt that he’d have been targeted, and could have chosen from propinquity. He recalled Cordelia’s laughing voice, once, misquoting, It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a high rank must be in want of a partner.
Although any man who would trade a Cordelia in the hand for any number of birds in the bush would have to be insanely stupid. Granted, there was no accounting for taste. But then, five months ago, she’d not been in his hand, had she? Because he had not yet lifted it out for her. Or grasped her hand lifted out to him, whichever it had been. It was a bit of a blur now. Hold on, hold on, we have to stop this falling business, it can’t end well…
He took a breath. “And then you offered me a completely different unknown future. So now I have two mysterious paths and only one pair of feet.”
She moved back a little more, as if primly trying to be unseductive and fair. It didn’t quite work, given the naked and all, but he respected the effort.
“I keep thinking,” he went on, “that Aral would have encouraged me to take this. Ops, that is. I’m not sure he envisioned…the other.” Might he have intended Jole and Cordelia to inherit each other? Hoped, even? But the embryos part, no. He suppressed an amused and painful pang at the thought that he would never get to watch Aral’s face while Cordelia proposed it to him.
She shrugged. “We all had other plans. Which went the way of most plans. But, yes, I’m sure you’re right. He’d have been delighted for your promotion. We might even have gone back to
the district, then.”
Jole nodded, having had just that vision himself. “He was always concerned about my career. Sometimes even more than I was. Leaving Vorbarr Sultana felt like being sent away, almost discarded, despite the visits on leave, but he was right—I needed that new space to grow into. And not just for career development.”
“He was always good at personnel,” Cordelia agreed. Dryly? Sadly? Or just a statement of fact? “Though in this case, I always suspected him of a touch of magical thinking—protecting your career as a proxy for protecting you.”
“Hm.” Jole could understand that better now than he had all those years ago, certainly.
“For what it’s worth, even then he was muttering about that job for you in the district someday. Like trying to put down a book yet keeping your finger on your place in it. A bit contorted.”
Jole had to smile a little. “I made a sooner someday by coming to Sergyar.”
“Thankfully.” She twitched, as if to move to kiss him, but seemed to remember her assumed neutrality just in time. “So—are you setting this up in your head as some sort of self-arm-wrestling, right hand against left, between pleasing him and pleasing me?”
Jole hunched under that too-shrewd observation. “Might be. Some. I know it makes no sense, you don’t have to say that—”
She gave a pensive wave of her free hand. “Not that, it’s just…Miles and his grandfather Piotr had a, call it a conflicted relationship, when he was younger. Credit to Piotr, even at his age, and however painfully, he grew into the challenge. Aral didn’t give him any other choice, true. It was the mutie heir or none. When Piotr died when Miles was seventeen, Miles spent, well, quite a few years thereafter bending his life in knots still trying to please the old man. Miles being Miles, he managed to twist it around to please himself as well. But it was heartbreaking to watch.”
“Multitasking, a Vorkosigan family trait?”
That won a smirk. She went on, “It seems to have worn off, lately. Or maybe just been assimilated. He doesn’t flinch anymore when someone calls him Count. Or look around for the real count.” She paused, and lifted her hand to brush his face. “Or the real admiral.”
He took her point, but…“Is that supposed to clarify anything?”
She sighed. “Maybe not. Except to say, I’ve watched someone dear to me work through these issues before. Burning his life as an offering to the dead. We all survived somehow, but sometimes—only just barely.” She smiled. “Fortunately, you are not so inventive in getting yourself killed as Miles was. I’m pretty sure you’d survive Ops. And vice versa. Desplains is not wrong.”
He nodded shortly. They both knew that wasn’t the real question. “Wasn’t there some folk tale about a horse starving to death, equidistant between two bales of hay?”
She scrubbed at her hair. “So, which bale is bigger? Or closer? One must calibrate for distance, after all.”
“Ops is closer. Oddly. Easier, though it seems absurd to say so. But I can’t really know, can I? It’s more like…two bales of unknown size each behind a closed door.” The lady or the tiger? “I don’t think this metaphor is helping, either.” He tried another, more direct assault. “Duty, or happiness? Selfishness,” he corrected. “And how could a man be happy knowing he’d left a duty abandoned?”
“Ah,” said Cordelia. Her smile grew sad.
“I should answer Desplains soon.”
“Ah.”
“It’s not the sort of offer a man gets twice. There are other officers waiting to move up.”
“Ah.”
“Though retiring as Admiral of Sergyar Fleet—that’s already much farther than I’d ever dreamed of advancing in my lifetime.”
“Ah.”
“And what does ah mean?” he asked, slightly exasperated.
“It’s sort of like biting my tongue, but less painful.”
“Ah,” he returned, which did at least make her laugh.
“Thank you for confiding in me,” she said, rather formally considering their state of undress. “It will keep me from making up dire alternate explanations for your distraction.”
“Do I seem distracted?”
“Only to someone who knows you very well.”
Did anyone in his life know him better, more intimately? You can’t make new old friends, they said. Well, you could, but it took a very long time. And time ran out, eventually. “The embryos could not go with me to Vorbarr Sultana.”
“Probably not.”
“And you would not.”
“…No. I’ve made my choices. It’s Sergyar for me.”
“So, unlike your Miles, I can’t have it both ways. There might be other rewards in that other future, but not…these.” This bed was not exactly the most unbiased place to pick for this conversation, he realized belatedly. Although he couldn’t picture having it in either of their offices.
“The embryos would stay safely frozen for a decade. More,” she offered, in her adjudicator-voice. “Barring volcanoes, and none are predicted that soon. And I would—” She cut herself off. Shook her head. Closed her lips.
“Would?” he prodded.
“I was about to say, I would still be here. But not frozen in time like the embryos. The most I can say is that I plan to be here.”
Nor could he ask her to wait, locking herself in cold stasis for him. Now or never seemed overly dramatic, but now or no guarantees was only justice. Realistic. Sensible. And other depressing, grownup adjectives.
So back around they came to Square One. “Any further thoughts?”
“I’m afraid I’ve come to the end of my capacity for neutral adjudication. Sorry.”
No, she was not going to release him from responsibility for his own decision. It was much as he’d figured this conversation would go. Did he want her to passionately beg him to stay? Demand that he throw it all over for love and life? It was not the Vorkosigan style, and yet…she’d done exactly that, once—career, family, roots all discarded when she’d left Beta Colony for Barrayar. No—for Aral. Without a backward glance? Maybe not.
“If you could have known everything, back then, before you came to Barrayar, would you still have chosen?” he asked her suddenly.
She fell silent a moment, considering this. “Then? Maybe not. I’d have been too much of a coward. Now? Yes. There’s a paradox for you. Although really it’s no more than saying that I’m satisfied with my life. Changing anything would wish people I’ve loved out of existence, and yet…there would have been other people, I suppose. Who now will never be.”
And there was Cordelia, summed. Not the empire would have fallen, but people, just people, called into existence or erased by the chances of her life. He did not know if she thought more simply, or more deeply, than anyone else he’d ever known. Maybe both.
He gathered her to him, and reached over her to turn off the light. He did not quite know when their breathing synchronized in sleep.
Chapter Thirteen
Ghost ship, was all Jole could think, strolling through the echoing, deserted corridors of the Prince Serg the next day. They glinted in the corners of his vision like fatigue hallucinations, those shades of anxious men. Some of them, he supposed, were dead for real by now; all were gone, scattered away from what had at the time seemed—been—their overwhelming purpose. From the pensive look on Miles’s face, Jole wondered if he was seeing similar specters.
So many crewmembers on the Vicereine’s expedition had wanted to see the Serg, the tour had been broken up into two groups. Hers, naturally, was led by the skeleton crew’s captain himself, and escorted by the chief engineer. Extra work for them all, but it did cast a validating few hours of importance across an otherwise boring routine voyage. And it never hurt to get the house cleaned up for guests.
Jole gazed around with almost as much curiosity as everyone else when they reached Engineering. He’d seldom been down here on his own long-ago months aboard. The kids were portioned out among the adults—Cordelia held Alex’s hand, Mi
les Helen’s, and Ekaterin Lizzie’s, to keep them from straying onto any unfortunate live controls. At a few points Cordelia looked as if she half wanted to pass off her charge to Jole and hold Miles’s hand instead, but he did manage to restrain himself and set a good example. His disturbingly expert lecture on the several ways one might go about hijacking the ship right from here was limited to a strictly verbal version, though he looked back wistfully over his shoulder as they left.
The bridge brought them to more-familiar old territory, from Jole’s point of view; and then the tactics room, doubly so. The old tactical computer had not been torn out or shut down with the weaponry, though its software had been sanitized of anything currently still classified. The hardware was too obsolete to recycle. It was plain that the skeleton crew, whiling away their voyage, had been using it to play war games, a skill-building leisure activity Jole could only approve. Here, at last, the visitors were allowed to push all the buttons their hearts desired. Miles led his children and Freddie into virtual battle with great enthusiasm.
Jole smiled and shook his head at an invitation to join the fray. “I’ve seen it in operation before,” he murmured, which, recalling where and when, daunted their hosts sufficiently not to press him. Cordelia also seemed to find the temptation resistible, sauntering up to companionably take his arm and watch.
“I’ve often wondered what it is the officers have left to do, when the tactical computer does so much,” Ekaterin, also observing, remarked after a time. “And so fast.”
“There are some classes of decisions it can’t make,” said Jole. “Mainly political ones. Also, rarely, an officer may know something it doesn’t. Even so, I only saw Aral override it a few times during the hot part of the Hegen Hub fight. Three instances out of four he was correctly guessing the psychology of the enemy’s next moves, when they were overriding their tac comps.”
And a hellish few hours the battle had been, but not nearly as hellish as the strained weeks leading up to it.
The official version was that young Emperor Gregor had secretly left the economics conference that he’d been attending with his Prime Minister on Komarr to go on an urgent personal diplomatic mission to the Hegen Hub, to try to pull its disparate polities together in the face of an imminent Cetagandan invasion of the planet Vervain. Since the Vervain system bordered the Hegen Hub, the expectation was that the Cetagandans would hopscotch the planet itself to seize the Hub and its vital multiple wormhole-nexus connections; and, if their momentum proved sufficient, perhaps move on to snap up the Pol system as well, which would have brought them right to the Barrayaran empire’s Komarran doorstep.
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