Chaos Colony. We really don’t need to make it up…
She was reaching the end of the morning queue Ivy had rationed out for her, and beginning to imagine escaping the office on time, when a bustle in the outer chamber heralded yet another unscheduled visitor, blast. Her annoyance flipped to delight as Oliver’s voice resonated, and Ivy’s returned, “I’m sure she’s available to you, sir. Go right in.”
She was on her feet to seize a hello kiss by the time he’d closed the door behind him, though she thoughtfully forewent the hug. Somewhere in his morning’s travels he’d washed up and changed into a loose civilian shirt and old fatigue trousers, looking just as off-duty as he had been instructed. The medicinal scent of fresh burn ointment and new dressings clung to him, and he still moved stiffly, but his face was relaxed and his eyes were smiling.
“We’re getting a plascrete factory!” she told him, and excitedly detailed Kareen’s call as he found a straight chair, flipped it around, and sat athwart it. She perched on the edge of her desk within touching distance.
He grinned up at her. “You know, I’d expect a woman to get all swoony about, I don’t know, gifts of clothes and jewels.”
“Piffle, I’m a way more expensive date than that. You are warned. But better still, Kareen will be downside for dinner.”
“Oh, very fine. I’ve always enjoyed Kareen.”
“Everybody enjoys Kareen. It seems to be her personal superpower. Fortunately, she uses it for good.”
He crossed his arms on the chair back. “I have news as well. Following up on the arrests from yesterday—”
“Ack! I lost that in the shuffle this morning, and I said I’d—”
He held up a stemming hand. “Freddie Haines is getting a stern lecture, a mandatory trip through the self-defense course run by those bored commandoes out at the base, and a stunner permit.”
“Well…all right, that seems well balanced, but—”
“The late boot polo team is getting—Fyodor. I wasn’t sure if the angry father or the embarrassed commander was uppermost, but if I were them I’d be more frightened of the first.”
“Ah.” She smiled. It probably wasn’t her nice smile. A Red Queen smile, maybe.
“Consider the follow-up effectively delegated.”
She nodded, then said more hesitantly, “How, ah, did you get on with Miles last night? He didn’t say much this morning.”
That relaxed look returned. “You know the feeling of a clean, solid docking, space or sail, when it all clicks and you know you’ve brought your ship in safe? And you can finally stand down?”
“That good, huh?”
“I think so.” He shifted in his chair, stretched his back, only winced a little. “I told him about the boys. Which entailed telling him everything, in outline.”
The relief was unexpectedly profound. “Oh, thank you.”
His mouth softened as he studied her. “You carried that burden of silence, too. And never bent under it.”
She made a vague, fending wave. “Goes with the job, sometimes.”
He eyed her, seemed about to say something else, but then went on: “I wasn’t sure if I’d find myself talking to the Old Barrayaran Miles or the Galactic Miles, but fortunately last night he came down on his Betan side.”
“I had a spoke or two prepared to stick in his wheel if he started channeling old Piotr,” she confessed. Starting with that pair of great-something-grandmothers up her own family tree—had anyone ever mentioned them to him?
“Does he?”
“Now and then. This countship thing, it goes to their heads sometimes. Cultural reinforcement, you know.” She fell silent, waiting comfortably now. Soon, it came.
“When I stopped by my apartment, I sent a tightbeam to Desplains. Offering my thanks and regrets.”
“You’re very sure?” she said quietly.
A short nod. “I knew the moment I hit send. I’m not sure I can call it a weight off my shoulders, since none had yet been placed there. More of a sense of space, as if my world had unfolded, opened out, leaving me standing there all amazed. Very strange sensation. I don’t think it was the pain meds.” He studied her. “You don’t look altogether surprised. How could you know when I didn’t?”
“I didn’t, but I thought it was a fat clue when you went for the fertilizations and not just freezing gametes. It seemed to me you were making it harder for yourself to abandon the project. Perhaps not consciously.”
He considered this. “In another era, you could have been burned for a witch.”
“Oh, rubbish,” she said, pleased.
* * *
Unusually for Miles, the departure the next morning was not for a dedicated fast courier that awaited the Lord Auditor’s pleasure, but for a scheduled passenger ship that would undock on time. Ekaterin, marshalling the exodus, seemed more conscious of this fact than her husband, but in due course all the principals, support staff, and luggage were assembled in the general vicinity of the front portico to load into the convoy of groundcars. Getting to overhear Miles negotiating the personal weight allotments of the souvenir scientific rocks with his children had been the highlight of Cordelia’s day so far. Well, he could afford the fees.
Oliver had said his goodbyes at breakfast, and gone off to keep his next appointment with his burn colonel. Kareen had left to catch the earliest of the new three-flights-a-day shuttles to Gridgrad where, Cordelia was fairly sure, she would shortly have engineers following her around like entranced ducklings. Nothing had yet tackled Ivy to the ground and leapt through her comconsole to displace the Vicereine’s precious allotment of time for sendoffs. Life is good.
Miles stumped up to Cordelia on the front walkway, a little out of breath, and surveyed the scene. At least it was organized chaos. After a moment, he spoke.
“I know I had issues with being an only child, but really, Mother, nine siblings?”
“Don’t forget to count Mark,” she replied. “Although whether you should be defined as his brother or his parent is an arguable point.”
“Brother,” said Miles. “We definitely decided on brother. It’s all legal and everything.”
“So, you go from a lonely only to one of eleven. A bit late, but I did my best. Life is full of ambushes like that.”
“Not like that, ordinarily.”
She cocked an ironic eyebrow at him. “And when have you ever aspired to be ordinary?”
He shrugged, Point.
“Look on the bright side—situated as we are, you won’t be forced to share your toys.”
Ekaterin, going past with her arms full in time to catch this, threw in, “At least not until they’re much older.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Miles complained under his breath. He looked away, into the bright Sergyaran morning. “I keep wondering what Da would have thought of it all.”
“Dubious at the method, delighted with the results, I expect,” said Cordelia. “It’s a circular sort of hypothetical.” Or maybe a corkscrew. “If a thousand things had been different, if I could have dragged his head all the way out of the Time of Isolation instead of just half, if he’d never been lumbered with the regency, or the countship for that matter, if we could have been a quiet private family somewhere, if, if, if…Once you start making up might-have-beens, there’s no end to them.”
“Mm.” He shifted his weight on his cane, and she wondered if she should let him keep standing, or make him sit. But then he’d just have to clamber up again in a minute. Hands off, hands off. Or be bitten for her pains. Could his half-brothers possibly turn out to be as maniacally independent as he’d been, and should she warn Oliver? Too late.
“I like Oliver,” he said after a minute. “Always did. Although I didn’t actually know him nearly as well as I’d imagined. I, um…won’t mind getting to fix that, as our chances permit.”
“I would like that,” she said quietly, and he gave a quick chin-duck.
He added, “Just don’t abuse the poor sucker.
You have him totally under your thumb, I trust you realize.” In the balance of his tone between being offended for his gender and smug for his mother, she fancied the smug was winning.
Ekaterin went past again, going the other way, and Miles’s glance followed her.
“You would know something about that, I think. Is it worth it?”
“Oh yes,” he breathed. “It’s plain he’d take a bullet for you in a heartbeat.”
“Which would be the stupidest waste of his talents I could imagine.” She grimaced. Let’s avoid that necessity, this time around. “I have much more interesting things in mind for him to do for me.”
“Can’t argue with that.” And, more quietly, “I hope you’ll be happy.”
“Oliver has a knack for happiness.” At least compared to the average Vorkosigan, if that juxtaposition of words wasn’t a contradiction in terms. It was perhaps the subtlest reason Aral had grown addicted to having him around. Given his early life, Aral had nearly feared happiness, as if daring to reach for it tempted some sadistic Barrayaran god. But he could safely enjoy it at one remove, delegating the task like a shrewd senior officer. This seemed too complicated a thing to explain on a doorstep. She said only, “What is love but delight in another human being? He delights me daily.”
A gruff nod. “That’s all right, then.”
Ekaterin hove to. “I’ll send you the final designs for the six municipal gardens and the new Palace grounds after I get back to my office and have a chance to run them through my programs there. Or rather, final for the basic layouts. I still have a lot of fiddling to do with the plant selections. I’m still weak on Sergyaran botany, especially in the new Gridgrad ecocline, and I don’t want to miss any opportunities to bring in as much local flora as I can.”
“Everyone’s still weak on Sergyaran botany,” Cordelia assured her. “We’re working on it, though.”
“I’ll probably have to make at least one more personal visit, before turning them over to local follow-up,” Ekaterin warned.
“Make it as soon as you like.” Cordelia embraced her. “And as often.”
“I’m afraid they’d have to clone me,” said Ekaterin ruefully.
Miles, clearly thinking of Mark, bit his tongue on whatever tart quip had mustered in his mouth. Indeed, he was growing into his new mature roles—when he remembered. Cordelia supposed it would be as pointless to beg him to slow down as it had ever been.
Doors slammed, voices called, hugs were exchanged all around, some of them startlingly sticky; this necessitated a last-moment foray for wipes. A certain thick and well-secured portfolio was taken under the personal supervision of the Heir. Persons short and tall were loaded, unloaded, rearranged, and loaded again.
“Goodbye!” Cordelia called. “Travel safe! And remember, tightbeams—they’re not just for emergencies, dammit!” She semaphored to Ekaterin. “Send me more pictures of the kids along with those plans!”
A last acknowledging wave, and the caravan pulled out. It grew a bit blurry, turning away into the street. She watched it out of sight, and a while longer.
O loves, take delight in one another.
While you can, take delight.
Epilogue
The day after the day after the joint formal openings of the Gridgrad shuttleport base, and the almost-finished, already-occupied Viceregal palace in what was rapidly becoming West Gridgrad’s city center, Jole and Cordelia took some time off together. It would have been the prior day but, as Cordelia sighed in one of her mantras, There’s Always Something.
The ceremonies had gone quite smoothly, entirely devoid of explosions or fires and with only the normal attrition of persons to the base infirmary for minor complaints or, much later in the day and thankfully off-duty, drunken accidents. General Haines had been puffed and pleased and almost over his lingering grudges against Sergyaran contractors.
Fyodor had been joined at last by Madame Haines, who’d proved dumpy and frumpy and quietly decisive. A hint of their more complex inner world was supplied only by the fact that Fyodor kept her hand locked through his arm whenever he had the excuse, as if to anchor her there, and that he could be spotted cordially massaging the back of her neck when he thought no one was looking.
Chief of Imperial Service Engineers General Otto shared the ceremonial platform, in one of his periodic rechecks of their progress. Cordelia, who had known him back in Vorbarr Sultana in both their younger days, had hailed his initial arrival last year with nearly the ecstatic squeals of a teen girl crushing on a musician. As Jole shortly figured out, it was Otto’s energy, efficiency and calm good sense that beguiled her, not his sex appeal. Although even that was not lacking, for a certain mature taste, though it was clear that for him physical was the first half of a compound word followed by plant. Hey, I can look. After watching him get things done, by hook or crook, Jole had come to see Cordelia’s point, and joined her fandom.
West Gridgrad actually looked more like a war zone than the base did just now, but things were coming along. Cordelia assured him that her daughter-in-law’s civic gardens were supposed to look like that at this stage; they had great bones, which everyone would see when they were draped in their living cloaks of green and gray-green, with a touch of Barrayaran red-brown here and there for contrast. Jole had to take her word.
Kareenburg was still complaining bitterly of its abandonment; even a strong series of temblors six months ago that had cracked pavements all over town had not quelled the chorus. Cordelia had gripped her hair but, since she was getting her way after all, refrained from tearing any out.
There had been, in the inevitable course of events, some quite imaginative slanders circulated about the Vicereine’s and the Admiral’s new private life. The contents had ranged from risible to enraging. Cordelia had ignored them. Jole had tried to. She wasn’t wrong. As the lack of angry, or indeed any, reaction failed to reward their detractors with the attention they desired, they moved on to other less-wise and more-profitable targets. Poor stupid sods, Cordelia had muttered, but made no move to rescue these sacrifices. She hadn’t always loved her Vorbarr Sultana experiences, but no one could say she hadn’t learned from them.
As their suborbital shuttle lifted off, Jole had to admit that his strongest emotion at leaving the new capital and all its local uproars in their wake was relief.
Cordelia glanced out the window at the ImpSec shuttle pacing them. “I don’t suppose ImpSec and I will ever be entirely shut of each other,” she sighed.
“No,” Jole agreed. “Even when you’re done being Vicereine”—he’d seen the calendar on her bathroom wall, days marked down with a broad red flow-pen—“you will never stop being Gregor’s foster-mother.”
“And therefore a potential handle on the Emperor, I know, I know.” She frowned. “Gregor knows how to stand his ground, if he has to.”
“But it would be cruel to make him.” Cordelia’s ImpSec coverage, however much it made her itch, shielded Jole’s heart as well, and at no added cost to the Imperium. Not to mention her property and her progeny. She might have his sympathy on this issue, but they both knew she’d never get his accord.
“Well—I just hope Allegre’s boys and girls can learn to like the backcountry.” Her eyes narrowed in calculation. “Maybe I can find some chores for them, in their down times.”
The small shuttle had been borrowed from the base, and was fast and utilitarian rather than luxurious. The seats had been rearranged into four groupings, one held by Jole and Cordelia, with Aurelia’s seat strapped in across, the other by Rykov, Ma Rykov, and the young nanny expensively imported from the Vorkosigan’s District, another armsman’s daughter who had grown up on Sergyar and had hankered to return. The third held a trio of Palace servants in charge of the picnic, and the fourth housed their secured supplies. Not exactly solitude, but in the ambient noise of the flight two people with their heads together could converse in reasonable privacy.
“I started my resignation process yesterday,” Jole to
ld her.
She nodded, trying not to smile too much. “How long till your replacement arrives?”
“Two to six months, I was given to understand.” He’d found himself hoping for the lower figure. “And then I called Dr. Tan and told him to start Everard Xav.”
The grin this time escaped and took over her face. She squeezed his arm in silent enthusiasm. “He and Nile will be almost age-mates, then.” Aurelia’s next younger sister, now brewing blobbily in her replicator.
Jole’s third piece of news had to wait as Aurelia woke up and began burbling at her mother, who promptly rescued her from her seat, and Jole was treated to the always-fascinating sight of Cordelia playing with her daughter.
Aurelia had escaped from her uterine replicator some eighteen months ago, and promptly embarked on, as nearly as Jole could tell, a course of world domination. She’d certainly captured the government on the first day.
“You’re such a big, strong girl!” Cordelia told her. “So good! Such a sturdy baby!” Aurelia chortled back and with Cordelia’s aid began dance-marching on her mother’s lap. These observations had been repeated about five hundred times since her birth, by Jole’s count.
Cordelia had been fiercely protective at first, scarcely letting anyone else touch the baby and reducing the nanny to tears more than once. Jole had finally taken the poor girl aside and explained about Miles’s infancy. Undersized, bones nearly friable, subjected to endless medical procedures and in constant pain, frustrated by hampering pads and braces, he’d reportedly let the world know, but the world had not responded at all satisfactorily. It was easy to see how his medicalized start might have traumatized Miles; less obvious till now that it had also left Cordelia a trifle crazed. The nanny had caught on, and, slowly, Cordelia had started to relax as Aurelia plainly thrived. Maybe after Miles, a perfectly normal infant would seem like a super-baby to her. Jole hoped that by six repetitions she would get used to it.
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