Captain Vorpatril's Alliance-eARC

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “Is it safe to leave this stuff alone?” asked Amiri.

  Grandmama shrugged. “If it’s not safe to leave, it’s not safe to stay with, now is it?”

  “That’s…a point,” said Amiri reluctantly. He didn’t say what kind.

  Tej helped shift the slab back, move the shelves, and tidy up. When they finished, there was no sign of their intrusion but a new crack in the concrete, which, since the floor had a few others, ought to pass visual inspection. They exited the garage into a cold afternoon rain, and then she had no attention left for anything but getting them all through Vorbarr Sultana traffic alive.

  * * *

  As a first step toward re-seducing Tej, Ivan had a splendid dinner waiting her return that evening. And waiting, slowly drying out. About two hours after she’d said she’d be home, the door at last slid open, and voices sounded. Ivan arose grumpily from the couch, schooled his face into a smile, and lost it again as not only Tej, but Rish and Byerly strode in. In the middle of a raging argument.

  “—and stop putting bugs in my hair!” Rish snarled to By. “You’d think you were twelve!”

  “If you would just talk to me, we wouldn’t have any need for this roundabout method of communication,” said By, his normally suave voice slipping a bit.

  “And where do you get the we need, anyway? If I need to talk to you, I will, believe me!”

  Tej rubbed her temples, as if they ached. “Hi, Ivan Xav,” she said in a dull voice. She did not advance to kiss him or, as had been her even more charming habit considering her fetching build, hug him. “Sorry I’m late. Things ran on.”

  “What things?”

  “Just things.”

  “Well, dinner?” said Ivan brightly. Yeah, it looked to be hypoglycemia city all around, here.

  “I had a late lunch,” said Tej.

  “I’m going back to the hotel,” said Rish. Ivan didn’t even get out an Oh, good, before she went on, “Are you coming with me, Tej? Or do you want to stay here and be interrogated?”

  Tej cast Ivan a grimace that had little in common with a smile, and a tired wave. “Yes, all right…”

  “Wait!” Ivan called as they reversed direction, shedding By. “When will you be back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, will you be back here to sleep? Should I wait up?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I won’t,” said Rish. “I’m going to bunk in with Em and Pearl. I suppose the hotel can give me a gel-mattress or something.” She glowered at Byerly, and padded past him without looking back. Tej trailed disconsolately. The door slid shut once more.

  Silence fell. Ivan and By stared at one another.

  Ivan said, “Weren’t you supposed to be the glib, debonair ImpSec agent, here?”

  Byerly said a rude word. “Or not, as the case may be. She’s cut me off, she says. I suppose I shouldn’t have tried to slip in a few subtle questions during sex. She didn’t like it.”

  “Ah,” said Ivan, and mentally edited his own planned ploy for later. If there was a later.

  “But I am half maddened with curiosity. Arquas have been handing me off one to another for the past three days, all the same run-around going nowhere. They wouldn’t be working so hard if they didn’t have something to hide. Unless it’s a practical joke, I suppose.” He let out his breath in a huff and sloped over to fling himself on Ivan’s couch.

  Ivan stuffed his hands in his pockets and followed, reluctantly. “Can’t you call for backup?”

  “Did.” By put his head back, eyes closing. “ImpSec, it seems, is busy this week. Galactic, Domestic, Komarran, all the Affairs. That high-level diplomatic conference going on at the Residence, the big comconsole-net security convention downtown, prep for dear Laisa’s upcoming excursion with the crown prince to Komarr to see the grandparents—yes, they promise me help. At the end of the week. Or next week. Maybe. Meantime, I’m on my own. Just me and this ungodly herd of your in-laws.” His eyes opened, and shot a look of unmerited blame Ivan-ward. “To whom I am already outed.”

  Ivan had seldom seen By emit so much emotion at one time. Granted, it was all one emotion, frustration, but still. Byerly-the-Smooth was decidedly ruffled.

  “I’ve cozied up to every Arqua,” said By, closed-eyed and addressing the ceiling once more. “Staked out the hotel. Planted bugs, which have either yielded nothing but rubbish, or gone fuzzy altogether. They’re spotting them, all right. God. What haven’t I tried?”

  Ivan hesitated. “Simon?”

  By made to raise his head, but it fell back. He did open his eyes again. “Are you nuts?”

  “No, listen…” Ivan described his excursion yesterday to the park in front of ImpSec, the dance practice, Simon’s security street theater, and what seemed the pertinent bits of his strange conversation this morning with the Baron and the Baronne. By sat up and clasped his hands between his knees, listening hard.

  “Simon and Shiv have some deal going on, I’d swear it,” said Ivan. “Or something. Going back to that first night in Simon’s study.”

  “And they think there’s something buried, where, under ImpSec HQ? What, for God’s sake?”

  “I don’t know. Something big enough to fund a small war. And old enough…I hesitate to guess how old, but what say a hundred years? Occupation, maybe? Or should I say Ninth Satrapy?”

  “That’s before ImpSec was built.”

  “Simon ought to know.” But did he remember?

  “If Simon Illyan is up to something, we shouldn’t bump his elbow,” By declared firmly.

  “I’m…not so sure.”

  By’s eyes narrowed. “I thought he was just playing befuddled.”

  So, By had spotted that. Good on By. “He does do that. He’s got half of Vorbarr Sultana believing he’s as addled as an egg, and my mother his caretaker. And the people they report to.”

  “Right…”

  “But sometimes he…shorts out, just a little. You can tell when it’s real, because it’s the only time he tries to hide it.”

  “Oh.” By frowned. “I suppose you would know. Seeing him close up and all.”

  “Mostly it’s seeing my mother. She gets this kind of brittle look around her eyes, when she’s covering for him.”

  “But that’s just little memory lapses, right?”

  “It’s Illyan. You want to try to guess what goes on in his head?” Ivan gave it a beat. “Or do you want to go ask?” That’s what Simon had once told Ivan to do, after all, in so many words. If Barrayar’s Foremost Former Authority gave you advice…

  “No,” said By frankly. He hesitated. “But I’ll go if you’ll go with me.”

  “What are we, a couple of women getting up a posse to go to the lav?”

  “Why do women travel in herds like that, anyway?”

  Ivan said glumly, “Delia Galeni, back when she was Delia Koudelka, once told me they go together to critique their dates.”

  “Really?” By blinked.

  “Not sure. She might have just been trying to wind me up, at the time.”

  “Ah. Sounds like Delia.” Byerly waved a limp hand. “All right. Lead on.”

  Ivan sighed, and pulled him up.

  Then made him help eat the dehydrated dinner first, because Ivan had cooked it himself, dammit. But definitely without the seducing part. He left the dishes in the sink.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ivan drove By to his mother’s building in his two-seater; despite, or perhaps because of, the heavy rain, the city traffic was relatively light. To Ivan’s secret relief, they found Simon alone for the evening. Mamere had gone off to the Imperial Residence to help coordinate some sort of feed, hosted by Gregor and Laisa, for those galactic diplomats By had complained of—a crowd guaranteed to clear a buffet table much the way Time of Isolation cavalry charges had cleared street riots. Ivan was only surprised neither of them had been roped in as native Barrayaran décor, as Mamere frequently did unto them for these things.

  “Huh,
” said Simon, looking them both over when they were guided into his study by the maidservant playing porter tonight. “You two again.” He set aside his reader, and took his slippered feet down from the hassock that had supported them in extended comfort. He was dressed in shirtsleeves and a sleeveless sweater, making him look in the lamplight like someone’s retired schoolteacher-uncle. “Close the door, would you please, Marie?”

  “Yes, sir. Should I bring drinks?”

  By looked briefly hopeful, but Ivan said firmly, “No, thank you, Marie.”

  “Very good, Lord Ivan.” She withdrew, and the door shut rather more than firmly. It was extraordinarily quiet in this chamber, once that lock clicked. Byerly swallowed, and Ivan thought irritably, Welcome to Chez Vorpatril. Please, take a seat. I will be your spine for this evening…Not his favorite role under any circumstances.

  “Well, gentlemen.” Simon waved genially to chairs, and tented his hands above his lap. “What brings you to me this rainy night? Why aren’t you out squiring your young ladies?”

  By grimaced and barely shifted the comfy chairs; Ivan dragged them closer to their host, on whom he felt an unwanted responsibility to keep an eye. By sat on the edge of his.

  “Sir,” By began, atop Ivan’s, “Simon…” They both stopped and waved each other on.

  Ivan began again, since By seemed determined to outwait him. “Simon. What do you know that we don’t about what the Arqua clan is up to in front of ImpSec? Or under ImpSec, as it may be?”

  Simon’s eyes crinkled, just slightly. “I can’t guess, Ivan. What do you two know?”

  “That they think there’s something under there, probably Cetagandan and probably dating back to the Occupation, and Shiv and Udine Arqua think it’s valuable enough to fund their attempt to retake their House, which has got to be a high-end hobby. How the hell they think they can extract whatever it is right under ImpSec’s collective nose, not to mention get it out of the Empire, defeats me. But I think not you. Want to give me a clue?”

  Simon murmured something under his breath that might have been, But you’re so much more amusing without one; Ivan didn’t ask him to repeat it. Simon went on, “Well, that’s proving more interesting than I thought at first glance. How do we know what we know? It’s really a very philosophical question.”

  “Yeah, but I’m a practical kind of guy,” said Ivan, recognizing Simon-diversion. The man could keep interrogators going in circles for hours, at parties. All that practice, Ivan supposed. On both sides of the table. “And I’m tired and my wife’s stopped talking to me.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Was it something you said?”

  “Simon.”

  Byerly mustered his nerve and got out, “Sir, did you make some kind of deal with Shiv Arqua? Or does he just think you did?”

  “Mm…” said Simon, in a judicious tone. “I believe it was more in the nature of a bet.”

  Ivan rubbed his face. “Just how drunk were you two, the other night?”

  Simon…smirked. “Perhaps a little. But it was my favorite sort of bet, very rare in my experience—one I can’t lose.”

  It was By’s turn to wail: “Sir.”

  Simon held up a hand, abandoning, thank God, his sport upon his juniors. “To answer your first question first, Ivan, what the Arquas appear to be after is a Cetagandan bunker, built during the Occupation under the mansion that formerly stood on ImpSec HQ’s site. It was first mapped and marked cleared at the time the foundation for the headquarters was excavated. Under Mad Yuri’s and Increasingly Disturbed Dono’s civil engineering aegis, you know.”

  “You mean I’ve been running in circles for a week chasing nothing?” said By indignantly.

  “Not quite that,” said Simon.

  “But ImpSec knew it was there, all this time?” said Ivan.

  “Once again we return to the subtleties of the term, know. Or perhaps—remember. ImpSec’s records have been damaged many times, in the intervening decades. And even without that, people who know things transfer or retire or die, to be replaced with…people who know different things, let’s say. A kind of cumulative organizational amnesia. It’s possible there might be some half-a-dozen men in ImpSec now alive who have personally examined those original historical documents, but that’s likely a generous estimate.”

  “Are you one of those men?” asked Ivan.

  Simon shrugged. “I may have been. I did a great deal of such homework, when I was just taking over the place three-and-a-half decades ago and cleaning up after the Pretendership. And Negri, dear God. Almost worse than…anyway. All I can tell you now is that the information didn’t make enough of an impression upon me for much detail to be retained in my organic memory alongside my artificial one. Of course, there was a great deal of competition for my attention, back then.”

  “That’s the old records,” said Ivan. “What about the bunker itself? Surely it has to still be on ImpSec’s own current site maps.”

  “Oh, certainly it is.”

  “And it’s just been left sitting there ever since Yuri’s day?” said By.

  “More or less. My plan for that park was that it was to be the site of the new ImpSec building which, as you know, I never got. Whenever they excavated the foundations, the bunker would have been revisited, and after a quick check by us for safety issues, turned over to the University historians to get what they could, after which my contractors would continue. I had the archeological dig boss all picked out, in my mind.” Simon sighed.

  Simon remembered quite a bit, apparently, along certain odd lines.

  “Did Shiv promise to cut you in?” demanded Ivan. “For a percent of…um…nothing?”

  “So who was doing who?” By muttered.

  “And then—what?” Ivan continued, growing perturbed in a whole new way. “Just let them go on, falsely hoping? Watch them while they try to break into an empty vault? You’re a cruel bastard, Simon.”

  “I always had to be. This time, however, the future of the Imperium and millions of lives don’t seem to be at stake, making it all much more relaxing. Not to mention the quite standard procedure of letting a suspect run to lead the observer to other contacts, which I should not have to explain to you, Byerly.”

  That probably worked a lot better when the observer hadn’t been outed to the suspects, Ivan thought glumly.

  Simon added after a reflective moment, “Also, I was extremely interested to see how far they would get. Something of a private test.”

  “For Guy Allegre?” What did he ever do to you? “In that case, was it fair to cover for that damn mapping dance, yesterday morning? You know the Jewels would’ve been run off if you hadn’t been sitting there, nodding benignly.”

  “Mm, not so much cover as catalyze, in my view. Speed things up.” Simon frowned, and added, “Although my presence should not have caused an alteration in security procedures. I mean to have words with Guy about that, later.” He added after another moment, “Mind you, my personal evaluation is that the civil engineering problems of tunneling in secret around ImpSec will defeat them, as they have the many who have tried before. And a smash-and-grab approach, say, driving down through the park dirt with a plasma beam some, what, some twenty or thirty meters and boiling a hole through the roof of the bunker, is simply not on. Nevertheless, if they manage some way through those challenges, and if they finally break in…then will be the right psychological moment to make my deal.”

  Ivan’s eyes narrowed. “What are you playing for, Simon?”

  “Wider strategic concerns.”

  By made a kind of weak, inquiring, throat-clearing noise.

  Simon cast a head-tilt his way. “Jackson’s Whole has always been a problem disguised as an opportunity, for ImpSec and the Imperium. Too far away for direct intervention, but sitting astride a major wormhole route out of the Cetagandan Empire, which gives the Cetas roughly similar strategic interests to our own. And the same problem with working through local contacts—they tend not to stay bought.
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  “House Fell has always been dangerous, but determinedly independent. Morozov believes that House Prestene has strong Cetagandan contacts—and it now controls two out of the five wormholes in a possible first move on a monopoly. The loss of House Cordonah was originally judged to make little difference in that count, as they were thought to be technically neutral but with personal ties to the Cetagandans through the Baronne. Having now met Moira ghem Estif I am…rethinking that.”

  “I, uh…Shiv Arqua doesn’t strike me as material to be anybody’s puppet,” said Ivan. “Still less Shiv and Udine. Ours or the Cetas.”

  “Puppet, no. Ally…perhaps. Even just having a reliable safe house for our agents in the Whole would be a tactical improvement over the present confusion.”

  “So you’re thinking of offering him—them—what?” asked By.

  “At present, nothing, till I’ve had a bit longer to evaluate the man.”

  “Word in your ear, Simon,” Ivan put in uneasily. “The man and the woman. Evaluating Shiv without Udine would be like, like…trying to assess Uncle Aral and leaving out Aunt Cordelia. They seemed that tight, to me.”

  Simon’s brows climbed. “Really.” His attention on Ivan was suddenly sharper. “How do you come by that impression?”

  Ivan stirred uncomfortably. “Not any one thing. Just the way they add up.”

  “Hm.” Simon’s lips pursed. “Not that I, in my capacity as a mere retired Imperial subject, am in a position to promise anything to anyone, of course. Shiv kept…not noticing that.”

  Ivan refrained from blurting a raspberry through his lips at this disingenuity. It would have disturbed By.

  “So,” said By slowly, “what is all this, then—an IQ test for a future ally?”

  Simon’s smile flashed. “Nothing so simple, alas. Or unidirectional. The one other thing I would point out—but did either of you notice? I handed it to you, a few minutes ago.”

  By shot Ivan an agonized look. Simon playing mentor sometimes reminded Ivan of his worst moments from his school days, or maybe one of those nightmares where you found yourself running to a test naked. And he’d been Miles’s boss for years; maybe that, too, explained something about his cousin. Simon sat back, clearly willing to wait till the coin dropped. For hours, if need be. And no end-of-period bell to save them.