"Know what?"
"That you're, um . . . hustling her for the next Lady Vorkosigan." And what an odd way to say, I love her, and I want to marry her . It was very Miles, though.
"Ah." Miles touched his lips. "That's the tricky part. She's very recently widowed. Tien Vorsoisson was killed rather horribly less than two months ago, on Komarr."
"And you had what, to do with this?"
Miles grimaced. "Can't give you the details, they're classified. The public explanation is a breath-mask accident. But in effect, I was standing next to him. You know how that one feels."
Mark flipped up a hand, in sign of surrender; Miles nodded, and went on. "But she's still pretty shaken up. By no means ready to be courted. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop the competition around here. No money, but she's beautiful, and her bloodlines are impeccable."
"Are you choosing a wife, or buying a horse?"
"I am describing how my Vor rivals think, thank you. Some of them, anyway." His frown deepened. "Major Zamori, I don't trust. He may be smarter."
"You have rivals already?" Down, Killer. He didn't ask for your help.
"God, yes. And I have a theory about where they came from . . . never mind. The important thing is for me to make friends with her, get close to her, without setting off her alarms, without offending her. Then, when the time is right—well, then."
"And, ah, when are you planning to spring this stunning surprise on her?" Mark asked, fascinated.
Miles stared at his boots. "I don't know. I'll recognize the tactical moment when I see it, I suppose. If my sense of timing hasn't totally deserted me. Penetrate the perimeter, set the trip lines, plant the suggestion—strike. Total victory! Maybe." He counter-rotated his feet the other way.
"You have your campaign all plotted out, I see," said Mark neutrally, rising. Enrique would be glad to hear the good news about the free bug fodder. And Kareen would be here for work soon—her organizational skills had already had notable effect on the zone of chaos surrounding the Escobaran.
"Yes, exactly. So take care not to foul it up by tipping my hand, if you please. Just play along."
"Mm, I wouldn't dream of interfering." Mark made for the door. "Though I'm not at all sure I'd choose to structure my most intimate relationship as a war. Is she the enemy, then?"
His timing was perfect; Miles's feet had come down and he was still sputtering just as Mark passed the door. Mark stuck his head back through the frame to add, "I hope her aim is as good as Countess Vormuir's."
Last word: I win. Grinning, he exited.
CHAPTER SIX
"Hello?" came a soft alto voice from the door of the laundry room-cum-laboratory. "Is Lord Mark here?"
Kareen looked up from assembling a new stainless steel rack on wheels to see a dark-haired woman leaning diffidently through the doorway. She wore very conservative widow's garb, a long-sleeved black shirt and skirt set off only by a somber gray bolero, but her pale face was unexpectedly young.
Kareen put down her tools and scrambled to her feet. "He'll be back soon. I'm Kareen Koudelka. Can I help you?"
A smile illuminated the woman's eyes, all too briefly. "Oh, you must be the student friend who is just back from Beta Colony. I'm glad to meet you. I'm Ekaterin Vorsoisson, the garden designer. My crew took out that row of amelanchier bushes on the north side this morning, and I wondered if Lord Mark wanted any more compost."
So that's what those scrubby things had been called. "I'll ask. Enrique, can we use any um, amel-whatsit bush chippings?"
Enrique leaned around his comconsole display and peered at the newcomer. "Is it Earth-descended organic matter?"
"Yes," replied the woman.
"Free?"
"I suppose. They were Lord Vorkosigan's bushes."
"We'll try some." He disappeared once more behind the churning colored displays of what Kareen had been assured were enzymatic reactions.
The woman stared curiously around the new lab. Kareen followed her gaze proudly. It was all beginning to look quite orderly and scientific and attractive to future customers. They'd painted the walls cream white; Enrique had picked the color because it was the exact shade of bug butter. Enrique and his comconsole occupied a niche in one end of the room. The wet-bench was fully plumbed, set up with drainage into what had once been the washtub. The dry-bench, with its neat array of instruments and brilliant lighting, ran along the wall all the way to the other end. The far end was occupied by racks each holding a quartet of meter-square custom-designed new bughouses. As soon as Kareen had the last set assembled, they could release the remaining queen-lines from their cramped travel box into their spacious and sanitary new homes. Tall shelves on both sides of the door held their proliferating array of supplies. A big plastic waste bin brimmed with a handy supply of bug fodder; a second provided temporary storage for bug guano. The bugshit had not proved nearly as smelly or abundant as Kareen had expected, which was nice, as the task of cleaning the bughouses daily had fallen to her. Not half bad for a first week's work.
"I must ask," said the woman, her eye falling on the heaped-up maple bits in the first bin. "What does he want all those chippings for ?"
"Oh, come in, and I'll show you," said Kareen enthusiastically. The dark-haired woman responded to Kareen's friendly smile, drawn in despite her apparent reserve.
"I'm the Head Bug Wrangler of this outfit," Kareen went on. "They were going to call me the lab assistant, but I figured as a shareholder I ought to at least be able to pick my own job title. I admit, I don't have any other wranglers to be the head of, yet, but it never hurts to be optimistic."
"Indeed." The woman's faint smile was not in the least Vor-supercilious; drat it, she hadn't said if it was Lady or Madame Vorsoisson. Some Vor could get quite huffy about their correct title, especially if it was their chief accomplishment in life so far. No, if this Ekaterin were that sort, she would have made a point of the Lady at the first possible instant.
Kareen unlatched the steel-screen top of one of the bug hutches, reached in, and retrieved a single worker-bug. She was getting quite good at handling the little beasties without wanting to puke by now, as long as she didn't look too closely at their pale pulsing abdomens. Kareen held out the bug to the gardener, and began a tolerably close copy of Mark's Better Butter Bugs for a Brighter Barrayar sales talk.
Though Madame Vorsoisson's eyebrows went up, she didn't shriek, faint, or run away at her first sight of a butter bug. She followed Kareen's explanation with interest, and was even willing to hold the bug and feed it a maple leaf. There was something very bonding about feeding live things, Kareen had to admit; she would have to keep that ploy in mind for future presentations. Enrique, his interest piqued by the voices drifting past his comconsole discussing his favorite subject, wandered over and did his best to queer her pitch by adding long, tedious technical footnotes to Kareen's streamlined explanations. The garden designer's interest soared visibly when Kareen got to the part about future R&D to create a Barrayaran-vegetation-consuming bug.
"If you could teach them to eat strangle-vines, South Continent farmers would buy and keep colonies for that alone," Madame Vorsoisson told Enrique, "whether they produced edible food as well or not."
"Really?" said Enrique. "I didn't know that. Are you familiar with the local planetary botany?"
"I'm not a fully-trained botanist—yet—but I have some practical experience, yes."
"Practical," echoed Kareen. A week of Enrique had given her a new appreciation for the quality.
"So let's see this bug manure," the gardener said.
Kareen led her to the bin and unsealed the lid. The woman peered in at the heap of dark, crumbly matter, leaned over, sniffed, ran her hand through it, and let some sift out through her fingers. "Good heavens."
"What?" asked Enrique anxiously.
"This looks, feels, and smells like the finest compost I've ever seen. What kind of chemical analysis are you getting off it?"
"Well, it depends on what
the girls have been eating, but—" Enrique burst into a kind of riff on the periodic table of the elements. Kareen followed the significance of about half of it.
Madame Vorsoisson, however, looked impressed. "Could I have some to try on my plants at home?" she asked.
"Oh, yes," said Kareen gratefully. "Carry away all you want. There's getting to be rather a lot of it, and I'm really beginning to wonder where would be a safe place to dispose of it."
"Dispose of it? If this is half as good as it looks, put it up in ten-liter bags and sell it! Everyone who's trying to grow Earth plants here will be willing to try it."
"Do you think so?" said Enrique, anxious and pleased. "I couldn't get anyone interested, back on Escobar."
"This is Barrayar. For a long time, burning and composting was the only way to terraform the soil, and it's still the cheapest. There was never enough Earth-life based compost to both keep old ground fertile and break in new lands. Back in the Time of Isolation they even had a war over horse manure."
"Oh, yeah, I remember that one from my history class." Kareen grinned. "A little war, but still, very . . . symbolic."
"Who fought who?" asked Enrique. "And why?"
"I suppose the war was really over money and traditional Vor privilege," Madame Vorsoisson explained to him. "It had been the custom, in the Districts where the Imperial cavalry troops were quartered, to distribute the products of the stables free to any prole who showed up to cart it away, first-come first-served. One of the more financially pressed Emperors decided to keep it all for Imperial lands or sell it. This issue somehow got attached to a District inheritance squabble, and the fight was on."
"What finally happened?"
"In that generation, the rights fell to the District Counts. In the following generation, the Emperor took them back. And in the generation after that—well, we didn't have much horse cavalry anymore." She went to the sink to wash, adding over her shoulder, "There is still a customary distribution every week from the Imperial Stables here in Vorbarr Sultana, where the ceremonial cavalry squad is kept. People come in their groundcars, and carry off a bag or two for their flower beds, just for old time's sake."
"Madame Vorsoisson, I've lived for four years in butter bug guts," Enrique told her earnestly as she dried her hands.
"Mm," she said, and won Kareen's heart on the spot by receiving this declaration with no more risibility than a slight helpless widening of her eyes.
"We really need someone on the macro-level as a native guide to the native vegetation," Enrique went on. "Do you think you could help us out?"
"I suppose I could give you some sort of quick overview, and some ideas about where to go to next. But you'd really need a District agronomy officer—Lord Mark can surely access the one in the Vorkosigan's District for you."
"There, you see already," cried Enrique. "I didn't even know there was such a thing as a District agronomy officer."
"I'm not sure Mark does, either," Kareen added doubtfully.
"I'll bet the Vorkosigans' manager, Tsipis, could guide you," Madame Vorsoisson said.
"Oh, do you know Tsipis? Isn't he a lovely man?" said Kareen.
Madame Vorsoisson nodded instant agreement. "I've not met him in person yet, but he's given me ever so much help over the comconsole with Lord Vorkosigan's garden project. I mean to ask him if I could come down to the District to collect stones and boulders from the Dendarii Mountains to line the stream bed—the water in the garden is going to take the form of a mountain stream, you see, and I fancied Lord Vorkosigan would appreciate the home touch."
"Miles? Yes, he loves those mountains. He used to ride up into them all the time when he was younger."
"Really? He hasn't talked much to me about that part of his life—"
Mark appeared at the door at that moment, tottering along under a large box of laboratory supplies. Enrique relieved him of it with a glad cry, and carried it off to the dry bench, and began unpacking the awaited reagents.
"Ah, Madame Vorsoisson," Mark greeted her, catching his breath. "Thank you for the maple chippings. They seem to be a hit. Have you met everyone?"
"Just now," Kareen assured him.
"She likes our bugs," said Enrique happily.
"Have you tried the bug butter yet?" Mark asked.
"Not yet," Madame Vorsoisson said.
"Would you be willing to? I mean, you did see the bugs, yes?" Mark smiled uncertainly at this new potential customer/test subject.
"Oh . . . all right." The gardener's return smile was a trifle crooked. "A small bite. Why not."
"Give her a taste test, Kareen."
Kareen pulled one of the liter tubs of bug butter from the stack on the shelf, and pried it open. Sterilized and sealed, the stuff would keep indefinitely at room temperature. She'd harvested this batch just this morning; the bugs had responded most enthusiastically to their new fodder. "Mark, we're going to need more of these containers. Bigger ones. A liter of bug butter per bughouse per day is going to add up to a lot of bug butter after a while." Pretty soon, actually. Especially when they hadn't been able to persuade anyone in the household to eat more than a mouthful apiece. The Armsmen had taken to avoiding this corridor.
"Oh, the girls will make more than that, now they're fully fed," Enrique informed them cheerfully over his shoulder from the bench.
Kareen stared thoughtfully at the twenty tubs she'd put up this morning, atop the small mountain from the last week. Fortunately, there was a lot of storage space in Vorkosigan House. She scrounged up one of the disposable spoons kept ready for sampling, and offered it to Madame Vorsoisson. Madame Vorsoisson accepted it, blinked uncertainly, scooped a sample from the tub, and took a brave bite. Kareen and Mark anxiously watched her swallow.
"Interesting," she said politely after a moment.
Mark slumped.
Her brows knotted in sympathy; she glanced at the stack of tubs. After a moment she offered, "How does it respond to freezing? Have you tried running it through an ice cream freezer, with some sugar and flavoring?"
"Actually, not yet," said Mark. His head tilted in consideration. "Hm. D'you think that would work, Enrique?"
"Don't see why not," responded the scientist. "The colloidal viscosity doesn't break down when exposed to subzero temperatures. It's thermal acceleration which alters the protein microstructure and hence texture."
"Gets kind of rubbery when you cook it," Mark translated this. "We're working on it, though."
"Try freezing," Madame Vorsoisson suggested. "With, um, perhaps a more dessert-sounding name?"
"Ah, marketing," Mark sighed. "That's the next step now, isn't it?"
"Madame Vorsoisson said she would test out the bug shit on her plants for us," Kareen consoled him.
"Oh, great!" Mark smiled again at the gardener. "Hey, Kareen, you want to fly down to the District with me day after tomorrow, and help me scout sites for the future facility?"
Enrique paused in his unpacking to unfocus his gaze into the air, and sigh, "Borgos Research Park ."
"Actually, I was thinking of calling it Mark Vorkosigan Enterprises ," Mark said. "D'you suppose I ought to spell it out in full? MVK Enterprises might have some potential for confusion with Miles."
"Kareen's Butter Bug Ranch ," Kareen put in sturdily.
"We'll obviously have to have a shareholder's vote." Mark smirked.
"But you'd win automatically," Enrique said blankly.
"Not necessarily," Kareen told him, and shot Mark a mock-glower. "Anyway, Mark, we were just talking about the District. Madame Vorsoisson has to go down there and collect rocks. And she told Enrique she could help him with figuring out Barrayaran native botany. What if we all go together? Madame Vorsoisson says she's never met Tsipis except over the comconsole. We could introduce her and make a sort of picnic out of it all."
And she wouldn't end up alone with Mark, and exposed to all sorts of . . . temptation, and confusion, and resolve-melting neck rubs, and back rubs, and ear-nibbling, and .
. . she didn't want to think about it. They'd got on very professionally all week here at Vorkosigan House, very comfortably. Very busily. Busy was good. Company was good. Alone together was . . . um.
Mark muttered under his breath to her, "But then we'd have to take Enrique, and . . ." By the look on his face, alone together had been just what he'd had in mind.
"Oh, c'mon, it'll be fun." Kareen took the project firmly in hand. A very few minutes of persuasion and schedule-checking and she had the quartet committed, with an early start set and everything. She made a mental note to arrive at Vorkosigan House in plenty of time to make sure Enrique was bathed, dressed, and ready for public display.
Quick, light footsteps sounded from the corridor, and Miles rounded the doorjamb like a trooper swinging himself through a shuttle hatch. "Ah! Madame Vorsoisson," he panted. "Armsman Jankowski only just told me you were here." His gaze swept the room, taking in the demonstration in progress. "You didn't let them feed you that bug vom—bug stuff, did you? Mark—!"
"It's not half bad, actually," Madame Vorsoisson assured him, earning a relieved look from Mark, followed by a see-what-did-I-tell you jerk of his chin at his brother. "It may possibly need a little product development before it's ready to market."
Miles rolled his eyes. "Just a tad, yes."
Madame Vorsoisson glanced at her chrono. "My excavation crew will be back from lunch any minute. It was nice to meet you, Miss Koudelka, Dr. Borgos. Until day after tomorrow, then?" She picked up the bag of tubs packed with bug manure Kareen had put up for her, smiled, and excused herself. Miles followed her out.
He was back in a couple of minutes, having evidently seen her to the door at the end of the corridor. "Good God, Mark! I can't believe you fed her that bug vomit. How could you!"
"Madame Vorsoisson," said Mark with dignity, "is a very sensible woman. When presented with compelling facts, she doesn't let a thoughtless emotional response overcome her clear reason."
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