Pel's own white, long-fingered hand drove the sampling needle into the fleshy part of his forearm. It was so fine, its bite scarcely pained him; when she withdrew it, barely a drop of blood formed on his skin, to be wiped away by the servitor. She laid the needle into its own freezer case, held it high for a moment of public display and declaration, closed it, and set it away in a compartment in the arm of her float chair. The faint murmur from the throng in the amphitheater did not seem to be outrage, though there was, perhaps, a tinge of amazement. The highest honor any Cetagandan could achieve, higher even than the bestowal of a haut bride, was to have his or her genome formally taken up into the Star Cr?che's banks—for disassembly, close examination, and possible selective insertion of the approved bits into the haut race's next generation.
Miles, rolling his sleeve back down, muttered to Pel, “It's prob'ly nurture, not nature, y'know.”
Her exquisite lips resisted an upward crook to form the silent syllable, Sh .
The spark of dark humor in her eye was veiled again as if seen through the morning mist as she reactivated her force shield. The sky to the east, across the lake and beyond the next range of hills, was turning pale. Coils of fog curled across the waters of the lake, its smooth surface growing steel gray in reflection of the predawn luminescence.
A deeper hush fell across the gathering of haut as through the shuttle's door and down its ramp floated array after array of replicator racks, guided by the ghem-women and ba servitors. Constellation by constellation, the haut were called forth by the acting consort, Pel, to receive their replicators. The Governor of Rho Ceta left the little group of visiting dignitaries/heroes to join with his clan, as well, and Miles realized that his humble bow, earlier, had not been any kind of irony after all. The white-clad crowd assembled were not the whole of the haut race residing on Rho Ceta, just the fraction whose genetic crosses, arranged by their clan heads, bore fruit this day, this year.
The men and women whose children were here delivered might never have touched or even seen each other till this dawn, but each group of men accepted from the Star Cr?che's hands the children of their getting. They floated the racks in turn to the waiting array of white bubbles carrying their genetic partners. As each constellation rearranged itself around its replicator racks, the force screens turned from dull mourning white to brilliant colors, a riotous rainbow. The rainbow bubbles streamed away out of the amphitheater, escorted by their male companions, as the hilly horizon across the lake silhouetted itself against the dawn fire, and above, the stars faded in the blue.
When the haut reached their home enclaves, scattered around the planet, the infants would be given up again into the hands of their ghem nurses and attendants for release from their replicators. Into the nurturing cr?ches of their various constellations. Parent and child might or might not ever meet again. Yet there seemed more to this ceremony than just haut protocol. Are we not all called on to yield our children back to the world, in the end? The Vor did, in their ideals at least. Barrayar eats its children , his mother had once said, according to his father. Looking at Miles.
So , Miles thought wearily. Are we heroes here today, or the greatest traitors unhung? What would these tiny, high haut hopefuls grow into, in time? Great men and women? Terrible foes? Had he, all unknowing, saved here some future nemesis of Barrayar—enemy and destroyer of his own children still unborn?
And if such a dire precognition or prophecy had been granted to him by some cruel god, could he have acted any differently?
He sought Ekaterin's hand with his own cold one; her fingers wrapped his with warmth. There was enough light for her to see his face, now. “Are you all right, love?” she murmured in concern.
“I don't know. Let's go home.”
EPILOGUE
They said good-bye to Bel and Nicol at Komarr orbit.
Miles had ridden along to the ImpSec Galactic Affairs transfer station offices here for Bel's final debriefing, partly to add his own observations, partly to see that the ImpSec boys did not fatigue the herm unduly. Ekaterin attended too, both to testify and to make sure Miles didn't fatigue himself. Miles was hauled away before Bel was.
“Are you sure you two don't want to come along to Vorkosigan House?” Miles asked anxiously, for the fourth or fifth time, as they gathered for a final farewell on an upper concourse. “You missed the wedding, after all. We could show you a very good time. My cook alone is worth the trip, I promise you.” Miles, Bel, and of course Nicol hovered in floaters. Ekaterin stood with her arms crossed, smiling slightly. Roic wandered an invisible perimeter as if loath to give over his duties to the unobtrusive ImpSec guards. The armsman had been on continuous alert for so long, Miles thought, he'd forgotten how to take a shift off. Miles understood the feeling. Roic was due at least two weeks of uninterrupted home leave when they returned to Barrayar, Miles decided.
Nicol's brows twitched up. “I'm afraid we might disturb your neighbors.”
“Stampede the horses, yeah,” said Bel.
Miles bowed, sitting; his floater bobbed slightly. “My horse would like you fine. He's extremely amiable, not to mention much too old and lazy to stampede anywhere. And I personally guarantee that with a Vorkosigan liveried armsman at your back, not the most benighted backcountry hick would offer you insult.”
Roic, passing nearby in his orbit, added a confirming nod.
Nicol smiled. “Thanks all the same, but I think I'd rather go someplace where I don't need a bodyguard.”
Miles drummed his fingers on the edge of his floater. “We're working on it. But look, really, if you—”
“Nicol is tired,” said Ekaterin, “probably homesick, and she has a convalescing herm to look after. I expect she'll be glad to get back to her own sleepsack and her own routine. Not to mention her own music.”
The two exchanged one of those League of Women looks, and Nicol nodded gratefully.
“Well,” said Miles, yielding with reluctance. “Take care of each other, then.”
“You, too,” said Bel gruffly. “I think it's time you gave up those hands-on ops games, hey? Now that you're going to be a daddy and all. Between this time and the last time, Fate has got to have your range bracketed. Bad idea to give it a third shot, I think.”
Miles glanced involuntarily at his palms, fully healed by now. “Maybe so. God knows Gregor probably has a list of domestic chores waiting for me as long as a quaddie's arms all added together. The last one was wall-to-wall committees, coming up with, if you can believe it, new Barrayaran bio-law for the Council of Counts to approve. It took a year. If he starts another one with, 'You're half Betan, Miles, you'd be just the man'– I think I'll turn and run.”
Bel laughed; Miles added, “Keep an eye on young Corbeau for me, eh? When I toss a prot?g? in to sink or swim like that, I usually prefer to be closer to hand with a life preserver.”
“Garnet Five messaged me, after I sent to tell her Bel was going to live,” said Nicol. “She says they're doing all right so far. At any rate, Quaddiespace hasn't declared all Barrayaran ships non grata forever or anything yet.”
“That means there's no reason you two couldn't come back someday,” Bel pointed out. “Or at any rate, stay in touch. We are both free to communicate openly now, I might observe.”
Miles brightened. “If discreetly. Yes. That's true.”
They exchanged some un-Barrayaran hugs all around; Miles didn't care what his ImpSec lookouts thought. He floated, holding Ekaterin's hand, to watch the pair progress out of sight toward the commercial ship docks. But even before they'd rounded the corner he felt his face pulled around, as if by a magnetic force, in the opposite direction—toward the military arm of the station, where the Kestrel awaited their pleasure.
Time ticked in his head. “Let's go.”
“Oh, yes,” said Ekaterin.
He had to speed his floater to keep up with her lengthening stride up the concourse.
Gregor waited to greet Lord Auditor and Lady Vorkosigan upon th
eir return, at a special reception at the Imperial Residence. Miles trusted whatever reward the Emperor had in mind would be less disturbingly arcane than that of the haut ladies. But Gregor's party was going to have to be put off a day or two. The word from their obstetrician back at Vorkosigan House was that the children's sojourn in their replicators was stretched to nearly its maximum safe extension. There had been enough oblique medical disapproval in the tone of the message, it didn't even need Ekaterin's nervous jokes about ten-month twins and how glad she was now for replicators to get him aimed in the right direction, and no more damned interruptions.
* * *
He'd undergone these homecomings what seemed a thousand times, yet this one felt different than any before. The groundcar from the military shuttleport, Armsman Pym driving, pulled up under the porte-coch?re of Vorkosigan House, looming stone pile that it ever was. Ekaterin bustled out first and gazed longingly toward the door, but paused to wait for Miles.
When they'd left Komarr orbit five days ago he'd traded in the despised floater for a slightly less despised cane, and spent the journey hobbling incessantly up and down what limited corridors the Kestrel provided. His strength was returning, he fancied, if more slowly than he'd hoped. Maybe he would look into getting a swordstick like Commodore Koudelka's for the interim. He pulled himself to his feet, swung the cane in briefly jaunty defiance, and offered Ekaterin his arm. She rested her hand lightly upon it, covertly ready to grab if needed. The double doors swung open on the grand old black-and-white paved entry hall.
The mob was waiting, headed by a tall woman with roan-red hair and a delighted smile. Countess Cordelia Vorkosigan actually hugged her daughter-in-law first. A white-haired, stocky man advanced from the antechamber to the left, face luminous with pleasure, and stood in line for his chance with Ekaterin before turning to his son. Nikki clattered down the sweeping stairway and into his mother's arms, and returned her tight hug with only a tinge of embarrassment. The boy had grown at least three centimeters in the past two months. When he turned to Miles, and copied the Count's handshake with dauntingly grown-up resolve, Miles found himself looking up into his stepson's face.
A dozen armsmen and servants stood around grinning; Ma Kosti, the peerless cook, pressed a splendid bunch of flowers on Ekaterin. The Countess handed off an awkwardly worded but sincere message of felicitation for their impending parenthood from Miles's brother Mark, at graduate school on Beta Colony, and a rather more fluent one from his Grandmother Naismith there. Ekaterin's older brother, Will Vorvayne, unexpectedly present, took vids of it all.
“Congratulations,” Viceroy Count Aral Vorkosigan was saying to Ekaterin, “on a job well done. Would you like another? I'm sure Gregor can find you a place in the diplomatic corps after this, if you want it.”
She laughed. “I think I have at least three or four jobs already. Ask me again in, oh, say about twenty years.” Her glance went to the staircase leading to the upper floors, and the nursery.
Countess Vorkosigan, who caught the look, said, “Everything is waiting and ready as soon as you are.”
After the briefest of washups in their second-floor suite, Miles and Ekaterin made their way down a servitor-crowded hallway to rendezvous with the core family again in the nursery. With the addition of the birth team—an obstetrician, two medtechs, and a bio-mechanic—the small chamber overlooking the back garden was as full as it could hold. It seemed as public a birth as those poor monarchs' wives in the old histories had ever endured, except that Ekaterin had the advantage of being upright, dressed, and dignified. All of the cheerful excitement, none of the blood or pain or fear. Miles decided that he approved.
The two replicators, released from their racks, stood side by side on a table, full of promise. A medtech was just finishing fiddling with a cannula on one. “Shall we proceed?” inquired the obstetrician.
Miles glanced at his parents. “How did you all do this, back then?”
“Aral lifted one latch,” said his mother, “and I lifted the other. Your grandfather, General Piotr, lurked menacingly, but he came around to a wider way of thinking later.” His mother and his father exchanged a private smile, and Aral Vorkosigan shook his head wryly.
Miles looked to Ekaterin.
“It sounds good to me,” she said. Her eyes were brilliant with joy. It lifted Miles's heart to think that he had given her that happiness.
They advanced to the table. Ekaterin went around, and the techs scrambled out of her way; Miles hooked his cane over the edge, supported himself with one hand, and raised the other to match Ekaterin's. A double snap sounded from the latches. They moved down and repeated the gesture with the second replicator.
“Good,” Ekaterin whispered.
Then they had to stand out of the way, watching with irrational anxiety as the obstetrician popped the first lid, swept the exchange tube matting aside, slit the caul, and lifted the pink squirming infant out into the light. A few heart-stopping moments clearing air passages, draining and cutting the cord; Miles breathed again when little Aral Alexander did, and blinked his blurring lashes. He felt less self-conscious when he noticed his father wipe his eyes. Countess Vorkosigan gripped her skirts at her sides, forcibly making hungry grandmotherly hands wait their turn. The Count's hand on Nikki's shoulder tightened, and Nikki in his front-and-center viewpoint lifted his chin and grinned. Will Vorvayne bobbed around trying to get better vid angles, until his little sister put on her firmest Lady Ekaterin Vorkosigan voice and quashed his attempts at stage directing. He looked startled, but backed off.
By some tacit assumption, Ekaterin got first dibs. She held her new son and watched as the second replicator yielded up her very first daughter. Miles leaned on his cane at her elbow, his eyes devouring the astonishing sight. A baby. A real baby. His . He'd thought his children had seemed real enough, when he'd touched the replicators in which they grew. That was nothing like this. Little Aral Alexander was so small. He blinked and stretched. He breathed, actually breathed, and placidly smacked his tiny lips. He had a notable amount of black hair. It was wonderful. It was . . . terrifying.
“Your turn,” said Ekaterin, smiling at Miles.
“I . . . I think I'd better sit down, first.” He half-fell into an armchair brought hastily forward for him. Ekaterin tucked the blanket-wrapped bundle into his panicked arms. The Countess hovered over the back of the chair like some maternal vulture.
“He seems so small.”
“What, four point one kilos!” chortled Miles's mother. “He's a little bruiser, he is. You were half that size when you were taken out of the replicator.” She continued with an unflattering description of Miles at that moment that Ekaterin not only ate up, but encouraged .
A lusty yowl from the replicator table made Miles start; he looked up eagerly. Helen Natalia announced her arrival in no uncertain terms, waving freed fists and howling. The obstetrician completed his examination and pressed her rather hastily into her mother's reaching arms. Miles stretched his neck. Helen Natalia's dark, wet wisps of hair were going to be as auburn as promised, he fancied, when they dried.
With two babies to go around, all the people lined up to hold them would have their chances soon enough, Miles decided, accepting Helen Natalia, still making noise, from her grinning mother. They could wait a few more moments. He stared at the two bundles more than filling his lap in a kind of cosmic amazement.
“We did it,” he muttered to Ekaterin, now perching on the chair arm. “Why didn't anybody stop us? Why aren't there more regulations about this sort of thing? What fool in their right mind would put me in charge of a baby? Two babies?”
Her brows drew together in quizzical sympathy. “Don't feel bad. I'm sitting here thinking that eleven years suddenly seems longer that I realized. I don't remember anything about babies.”
“I'm sure it'll all come back to you. Like, um, like flying a lightflyer.”
He had been the end point of human evolution. At this moment he abruptly felt more like a missin
g link. I thought I knew everything. Surely I knew nothing. How had his own life become such a surprise to him, so utterly rearranged? His brain had whirled with a thousand plans for these tiny lives, visions of the future both hopeful and dire, funny and fearful. For a moment, it seemed to come to a full stop. I have no idea who these two people are going to be .
Then it was everyone else's turn, Nikki, the Countess, the Count. Miles watched enviously his father's sure grip of the infant on his shoulder. Helen Natalia actually stopped screaming there, reducing the noise level to one of more generalized, desultory complaint.
Ekaterin slipped her hand into his and gripped tightly. It felt like free falling into the future. He squeezed back, and soared.
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Diplomatic Immunity b-13 Page 32
