A hastily recruited double of Gregor had been sent back to Barrayar on the pretext of illness, to cover for the Emperor’s sudden absence. Another layer of supposed deception was that the Emperor had disappeared from Komarr, kidnapped or worse. This was supported by a frantic, if tightly closed-mouthed, ImpSec sweep of the domes and the system for the missing man. To this day, the confusion about which of the tales was true had been carefully maintained in the face of all commentary, well fogged. Every possible permutation had its variously fanatical supporters as the questions slowly segued from current events into history.
Jole and Cordelia were among the few who knew that the real answer was all of the above, and not necessarily in the order one would imagine. Evidently musing along similar lines, Cordelia pressed Jole’s arm and murmured, “I am so thankful that Aral had you with him, when I had to escort that poor boy we had playing emperor back to Barrayar. I had never seen Aral so mutely terrified as when we thought we’d lost Gregor, just when it had all seemed completed, Barrayar safely delivered to its future.”
“Not even during the Pretendership?”
“Not the same thing at all, no. And not just because he’d been twenty years younger then, I don’t think. This was a qualitatively different crisis, somehow. For a while there, he feared he might be looking down the throat of the third civil war on Barrayar in his lifetime, and it almost broke his heart. Finding himself facing Cetagandans instead was practically a joy, by contrast.”
That was almost too true to be funny. Fortunately, Aral’s usual stern and decisive facade had never cracked in public. Even Jole had only been treated to the occasional alarming flash of Aral’s doubts, like vivid filaments of lava seen through a surface one had thought safe stone. He’d done all he could to support the man, whether in his roles as aide, confidante, or lover, not that there’d been much time, energy, or attention left over for that last. Apparently, it had been enough, because they’d all won through alive somehow.
But when they’d received the confirmation that Gregor was at last coming aboard, Aral had smiled, snapped out the necessary orders, walked to his cabin, locked the door, sat down on his bunk with his face buried in his hands, and wept for the relief of it. Not for long; there’d been a wormhole to defend, coming right up. The maniacally cheerful edge with which the aging admiral had approached this task had been a big morale boost to the men, many of whom had never faced live fire before. That its source was far, far more complicated than a native enthusiasm for war was not something Jole had been able to explain to people, then or later. Except, perhaps, to Cordelia, who already understood. He covered the present Cordelia’s hand with his own, and pressed it in an unmoored gratitude.
The skeleton crew had offered a lunch of standard rations in the Serg’s mess as an authentic military experience, attempting to make a virtue of necessity; they were happily spared this charade by the Vicereine’s own chef, who provided for all. Scarfing it down, and discussing the vicissitudes of military chow generally, the engineer sighed to Jole, “I suppose at least the Admiral ate better, on board here.”
No, worse. During the lead-up, Aral had barely been able to eat at all, with his old stress-related stomach issues resurfacing, and he hadn’t dared start drinking. Jole edited this to, “Only during the diplomatic phases. During the crunch times, he hardly paid attention to what was shoved in front of him.” And Jole had quietly added badger him to eat to his growing list of key-man-maintenance tasks.
Following lunch, at Cordelia’s suggestion, the kids were sent to the ship’s gym with some of the younger crewmembers for a modified introduction to onboard military fitness routines. After a brief, surreal peek into what had been Aral’s quarters and his adjoining own, now stripped bare, gray and hollow, Jole rejoined the senior Vorkosigans in the corridor for a last slow stroll around.
“It seems so wasteful of resources,” Cordelia sighed. “All this short-lived military buildup.”
“Till it’s suddenly needed, and then it’s everyone wailing, Why didn’t we prepare?” Jole countered amiably.
Miles nodded. “And then you’re up to your asses in ghem. Again.”
Ekaterin said thoughtfully, “I do sometimes wonder what the purpose of the ghem brotherhood really is, with all their militant cultural traditions. I mean, from the Cetagandan haut viewpoint. Lately, I’ve started to think their main function is camouflage.”
Cordelia’s eyebrows went up. “For what, do you figure?”
“Cetagandan haut bioweapons. And very long-range agendas.” She extended a hand, turned it over. “I really gathered the impression, on my own trip behind the scenes on Rho Ceta, that the haut could destroy us at any time. The only reason why not is that they haven’t chosen to.”
Miles said reluctantly, “I’m afraid that’s true. The haut ladies of the Star Crèche have some biological agents that can melt your bones. Literally.” He shuddered in memory. “The crew of a ship like this one could all be dead in an hour.”
“How do you defend against something like that?” said Ekaterin.
Jole wasn’t sure if that was a real or a rhetorical question. He answered it anyway. “Current plans call for fully automated and drone ships. I can’t give you operational details, but I promise you, a large number of people both in and out of the military are working on the issues.”
“We used to call the biowar intelligence and analysis section at ImpSec HQ the Nightmare Barn,” Miles reminisced. “In a large building full of pale, overcaffeinated men, they had a reputation as being the pastiest and the twitchiest.”
Ekaterin shrugged. “There are organisms that attack plastics and metals. I can’t imagine that the haut haven’t thought of hyping them up as well.”
“They still have to be delivered,” Jole pointed out. “This is—fortunately—a nontrivial problem.” But he suspected the gentle gardener knew more than she was saying. As do we all, here.
“It’s a haunting image, though. Automated warships forever defending a world that has already died, with no one left alive to turn them off.” She stared away through the walls, in her mind’s eye seeing…what?
Cordelia, ever practical, broke the spell. “If you can find me a manufacturer of any machinery that will last forever, I want their address. Some of our stuff doesn’t last a week.”
Miles laughed blackly, and Ekaterin smiled a little. Cordelia had not, Jole noted, addressed the dead-world half of that scenario.
But then Miles bit his lip, his face scrunching down in some decision. Making it, he looked up. “There’s a thing coming along that Gregor’s been sitting on, which I should probably apprise you two of. Has to do with that goldmine of old Occupation data that was uncovered when they found that buried lab bunker. And why some of it hasn’t been declassified yet, despite the howls from the academic community. Duv Galeni’s been overseeing the work on it for ages, and even he agrees with Gregor. Though he’d love to publish—he’s actually written the book, which is sitting in his ImpSec secure files waiting for the go-ahead. He let me read the first draft.”
Jole had the utmost respect for Commodore Galeni, one of the more overworked men in Vorbarr Sultana, simultaneously holding down the ImpSec Komarran Affairs chief’s desk because of his background as a Komarran, and, because of his background as a trained historian, given oversight of the examination of an enormous cache of abandoned Cetagandan military and other data, left behind at the century-past pullout and not found until seven years ago. Jole wondered if his own high classification status would allow him to put himself forward as a peer reviewer for Galeni’s manuscript…
Miles was going on: “Anyway, he’s solved certain mysteries about the last days of the war and the pullout from the Occupation that we didn’t even know were mysteries, although, when the clues are laid out, you wonder how we missed them. I have some theories on that, too. The ghem only used lightweight chemical warfare on Barrayar, back then, and almost no biologicals, even when they were losing ground.”
The people they’d been used on might have a different opinion of that “light” classification, Jole reflected, but this was more-or-less true. “Because the haut wouldn’t let them use the good stuff, I’ve always understood. Which is part of how an apparently effete, apparently unmilitary genetic aristocracy keeps control of their own warrior class. Apparently.”
Miles’s grin flickered at the string of ironic apparentlys. He’d had more direct experience of the haut than even Jole had, and was quite alive to the depths those elegant, deceptive surfaces hid.
“A cabal in the ghem junta running the Occupation had an operational plan for stepping up the game, it turns out, after their nasty foray into nuclears backfired so thoroughly. Seems that wasn’t their last-ditch effort after all. The existence of the abandoned bunker itself was actually a fat clue, once you step back and squint—they wouldn’t have packed that much wealth and data into it if they hadn’t imagined they’d be coming back to collect it. Plus Galeni was also given some unique contemporaneous eyewitness testimony by Moira ghem Estif, though it was typically haut-oblique—even he took a while to decode her pointers.
“The real pullout plan called for the use of stolen haut bioweapons—some kind of virulent plague, as I understand it, rekeyed to Barrayaran genetics. Picture it. Pull all your people out, release this hell-brew, seal the wormholes behind you and let it work in tidy isolation. A planet-sized culture dish. Come back in a year or two to a neatly depopulated landscape freed of that pesky native crowd who kept irrationally refusing to be culturally uplifted, and move in. There would be galactic outcry, sure, but—too bad, so sad, too late.”
“How close to operational did this plan get?” asked Jole, chilled.
“They’d got as far as actually stealing the base material and trying to set up a crew of biochemists—with at least one suborned haut among them—for the modifications and replication. They were figuring on getting away with a fait accompli. But then their central Imperial—in other words, haut—government caught up with them. Remember all those famous executions when the junta returned to Eta Ceta? Everyone thought the ghem were being punished for losing, for losing the war, for losing face. Which made a handy dual duty for the exercise. But there was a second lesson for stroppy ghem embedded under the more public one.”
Cordelia blew out her breath. Jole’s brows couldn’t climb any higher. He observed slowly, “That…certainly puts a different spin on all our military self-congratulations for throwing the ghem off our world, back then.”
“Oh, yes.”
“No wonder Gregor’s been delaying this,” said Cordelia. “It must feel like brooding a bomb.”
“Yes, he keeps wondering and waiting for the right diplomatic time to let it hatch. Most useful or least destructive moment, whichever. Given haut lifespans, all the principals aren’t dead even yet. So is it history, or is it politics? I keep thinking such secrets should be out on the table, and then…I think some more.”
“So, Ekaterin is right,” murmured Cordelia. “We continue to exist at the discretion of the haut.”
“Yeah, that’s the problem,” said Miles. “Anybody got a solution?”
“Out of my own head? No,” said his mother. “Except to continue to improve our broad scientific and bioexpertise, and not just at the top. Which is a process that has to start at the primary school education level.” She sighed. “When everything is a priority, nothing is, but at least that one underlies all others. Thus, you would think people could agree on it, but. People.”
“It seems the haut aren’t interested in real estate alone—ah.” Miles broke off, as the herd of his children and their escorts appeared around the corner, finding their way back to the parental home base. Jole supposed that to Cordelia, the younger crewmen looked like children as well. He only had to squint a bit to see them that way himself.
In light of the conversation just interrupted, he didn’t have to work too hard to interpret the introspective, disquieted looks on the adults’ faces, regarding their offspring’s approach. Terror, once removed. He stared around one last time at the creaky old warship as they all started to make their way to the flex tubes.
If his life’s calling had been to defend Barrayar, and he did not think that notion was wholly self-delusion, had he been in the wrong line of work for the past thirty years?
* * *
The Vorkosigan family was safely delivered back to the base in the Kareenburg dawn. Oliver stopped by his apartment; Cordelia shepherded the rest on to the Viceroy’s Palace. She then spent the rest of the morning playing catch-up with all the duties that could not be accomplished by comconsole, mostly meeting with people petitioning her to provide them with goods or services, generally for free. It made her feel wearily maternal. She tried to extract as many chores as possible in return.
Such tasks were pleasant enough when she could actually supply their wants; less so when, more commonly, she couldn’t; and least of all when she was presented with multiple irreconcilably conflicting agendas. She wondered if being the parent of an only child had unfitted her for such situations. On the other hand, maybe all the practice at being vicereine would ready her for her rematch with motherhood. It was a consoling notion.
As she made her way back across the garden for the planned family lunch, she spotted Alex sitting alone on a secluded bench, kicking his heels—metaphorically as well as literally? Alex’s quiet demeanor was usually camouflaged by the uproar of his siblings, but when one saw him alone like this, it sprang out. She angled amiably over to him.
“Hey, kiddo.”
He looked up. “Hi, Granma.” As she continued to loom, he obligingly scooted over on the bench, and she sat down beside him. They both looked out into the variegated foliage and a winding path that might have gone on for kilometers, rather than meters.
“What’s everyone up to?” she asked, as a less-invasive version of Why are you all alone out here?
Alex gave a defensive kid-shrug nonetheless. But he answered, “Mama’s working on the garden project for you. Da went off to the base to see Admiral Jole about that war-gaming thing they were talking about. Helen and the rest of the girls are inside playing with Freddie.”
Leaving Alex odd-male-out? It was unfortunate that Selig was too young to be a companion for him. Miles’s idea of starting all his children as one fell squadron seemed a little less insane, in this retrospect.
“Did you enjoy the trip out to the old flagship?”
“Yeah, it was pretty interesting.” Perhaps worried that this sounded flat, he offered, “I liked the parts when Admiral Jole talked about Granda the best.”
“Those were my favorite bits, too.” She hesitated, then tried, “So why the long face today? Tuckered out?”
His nose wrinkled, but he waved this explanation-sparing notion away. Either not yet adept at personal subterfuge, or too honest, he sighed, “Not that. It’s just Da.”
Cordelia groped for neutral-yet-inviting wording. “What’s he up to now?”
“Nothing new. He was just going on about the Academy, again. He does that.”
Interesting description. At least Alex recognized that this family obsession was as much about Miles as it was about himself. Cordelia detected Ekaterin’s hand, there.
“He wants to encourage you, you know. He had so much trouble gaining entry himself due to his soltoxin damage, and went to such, really, extraordinary lengths to get around the barriers in his path that, well…he wants it to be easier for you.”
“I get that, it’s just…” Alex trailed off. “He makes it seem as much a, a thing as being count.”
“An unavoidable historical necessity?”
Alex’s brows scrunched down. “I guess. I mean, all the counts’ heirs went there, like, back since forever.”
“This is not technically true. The Imperial Service Academy didn’t actually exist till after the end of the Time of Isolation. Before that, officers were trained by an apprenticeship system. Including your great-gra
ndfather Piotr.” Granted, Piotr’s apprenticeship had been during a real war, as a sort of genius-autodidact with very few seniors able to advise him in that beleaguered new Barrayar. Piotr had made it up as he went along, and his world had perforce followed. There was a lot of Piotr in Miles, Cordelia reflected, not for the first time.
“But Granda went there. And Da. And Uncle Ivan. And Uncle Gregor, and Uncle Duv Galeni, who isn’t even Vor, and everybody.”
“Not your Uncle Mark,” Cordelia offered. She perhaps deserved the Look she received in return.
“Uncle Mark’s different.”
“Very different,” she conceded, “yet genetically identical to your da. Biology isn’t destiny, you know.”
“He even looks different.”
“Yes, he goes to some trouble about that.” Mark worked to keep his formidable weight up as consciously as some people worked to keep theirs down, if more pleasurably. That this somatic choice disturbed the hell out of his progenitor-brother was more feature than bug, Cordelia gathered.
Alex focused on some unseen vision, apparently between his feet. “Not Great-uncle Vorthys, though.”
The Professor, as everyone called Dr. Vorthys, was Ekaterin’s late mother’s brother, and a galactic-class engineer in his own right. Perhaps Alex’s world was not as devoid of nonmilitary male role models as all that? Cordelia suddenly smiled. “Come into the house with me. I have something to show you. Just you.”
Alex followed her dutifully, but looking curious.
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