Miles in Love

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  "Cappell?"

  The mathematician hesitated a long time. "I can't stand that Marie died for nothing. Hold out."

  "Myself . . ." Soudha let his big square hand fall open. "Stop. Now that we've lost surprise, this goes nowhere. The only question is how long it takes to arrive." He turned to Madame Radovas.

  "Oh. My turn already? I didn't want to go last."

  "Yours would be the tie-breaking vote in any case," said Soudha.

  Madame Radovas fell silent, staring out the control booth's glass—at the airlock door, across the bay? Miles's gaze could not help following hers; her turn back caught him at it, and he flinched.

  You've done it now, boy. Ekaterin's life and your soul's oath ride on a frigging Komarran shareholders' debate. How did you let this happen? This wasn't in the plans. . . . His eye relocated, and ignored, the code on his comconsole that would launch Vorgier and his waiting troops.

  Madame Radovas's gaze returned to window. She said, to no one in particular, "Our safety before always depended on secrecy. Now even if we get to Pol or Escobar, or further, ImpSec will follow us. There would not ever be a safe time to give up our hostages. In exile or not, it will be prisoners, always prisoners. I'm tired of being a prisoner, of hope or fear."

  "You were not a prisoner!" said Foscol. "You were one of us. I thought."

  Madame Radovas looked across at her. "I supported my husband. If I hadn't—he would still be alive. Lena, I'm tired."

  Foscol said tentatively, "Maybe you should rest, before deciding."

  The look she got from Madame Radovas in return for that line made her drop her eyes, and look away.

  Madame Radovas said to Soudha, "Do you believe him, about the device not working?"

  Soudha frowned deeply. "Yes. I'm afraid so. Or I would have voted differently."

  "Poor Barto." She stared at Miles for a long time in an almost detached wonder.

  Encouraged by her apparent dispassion, he asked curiously, "Why is your vote the tie-breaker?"

  "The scheme was my husband's idea, originally. This obsession has dominated my life for seven years. His voting share was always considered the greatest."

  How very Komarran. Then Soudha had actually been the second-in-command, forced into the dead man's shoes . . . it was all amazingly irrelevant now. Maybe they'll name it after him. The Radovas Effect. Belike. "We are both heirs, of a sort, then."

  "Indeed." The widow's lips twisted. "You know, I will never forget the look on your face when that fool Vorsoisson told you there was no place on his forms for an Imperial order. I almost laughed out loud, despite it all."

  Miles smiled briefly, scarcely daring to breathe.

  Madame Radovas shook her head in disbelief, but not, he thought, of his promises. "Well, Lord Vorkosigan . . . I'll take your word. And find out what it's worth." She searched the faces of each of her three colleagues, but when she spoke, she looked at him. "I vote to stop now."

  Miles waited tensely for signs of dissension, protest, internal revolt. Cappell struck his fist on the booth's glass wall, which reverberated, and turned away, his features working. Foscol buried her face in her hands. After that, silence.

  "That's it, then," said Soudha, bleakly exhausted. Miles wondered if the news of the device's inherent defect had sapped his will more than any argument. "We surrender, on your word for our lives. Lord Auditor Vorkosigan." He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. "Now what?"

  "A lot of sensible slow moves. First I gently detach ImpSec from its vision of a heroic assault. They were getting pretty worked up, out here. Then you inform the rest of your group. Then disarm whatever booby-traps you've set, and pile any weapons you may possess well away from yourselves. Unlock the doors. Then sit down quietly on the loading bay floor with your hands behind your heads. At that point, I'll let the boys in." He added prudently, "Please avoid sudden movements, that sort of thing."

  "So be it." Soudha cut his comm; the Komarrans winked out. Miles shuddered in sudden disorientation, alone again in his little sealed room. The screaming man behind the glass wall in his mind was getting out a battering ram, it felt like.

  Miles opened the channel on his comconsole and ordered a medical squad to accompany the arresting officers from ImpSec and Station Security, who were to be armed with stunners and stunners only. He repeated that last command a couple of times, to be sure. He felt as if he'd spent a century in his station chair. When he tried to stand up, he nearly fell over. Then he ran.

  Miles's only compromise with Vorgier's anxiety for the Imperial Auditor's personal safety was to march down the ramp into the Southport loading bay behind instead of in front of the security team. The ten or so Komarrans, sitting cross-legged on the floor, twisted around to watch as the Barrayarans entered. After Miles came the tech squad, which spread out looking for booby-traps, and behind them the medical team with a float pallet.

  The first thing which caught Miles's eye after the live target inventory was the upside-down float cradle in the middle of the bay, atop a pile of tangled wreckage. He was able, barely, to recognize it from the diagrams he'd seen back on Komarr as the fifth novel device. His heart lifted at this inexplicable, welcome sight.

  He walked around it, staring, and came up to where Soudha was being frisked down and restrained. "My goodness. Your wormhole-collapser appears to have met with an accident. But it won't do you any good. We have the plans."

  Cappell and a man Miles recognized as the engineer who'd fled from Bollen Design stood nearby, glowering at him; Foscol struggled into earshot, barely controlled by her female arresting officer.

  "It wasn't us," sighed Soudha. "It was her."

  A jerk of his thumb drew Miles's attention to the inner door of the bay's personnel airlock. A metal bar was placed crookedly across the airseal door's jamb; the ends were melted onto door and wall respectively.

  Miles's eyes widened, and his lips parted in breathless anticipation. "Her?"

  "The bitch from hell. Or Barrayar, which is almost the same thing to hear her tell it. Madame Vorsoisson."

  "Remarkable." The source of several oddly tilted responses on the Komarrans' part to his recent negotiations began at last to come clear to Miles. "Um . . . how?"

  All three Komarrans tried to answer him at once, with a medley of blame-casting which included a lot of phrases like, If Madame Radovas hadn't let her out, If you hadn't let Radovas let her out, How was I supposed to know? The old lady looked sick to me. Still does, If you hadn't put the remote down right in front of her, If you hadn't left the damned control booth, If you had just moved faster, If you had run for the float cradle and cut the power, So why didn't you think of that, huh? by which Miles slowly pieced together the most glorious mental picture he'd had all day. All year. For quite a long time, actually.

  I'm in love. I'm in love. I just thought I was in love, before. Now I really am. I must, I must, I must have this woman! Mine, mine, mine. Lady Ekaterin Nile Vorvayne Vorsoisson Vorkosigan, yes! She'd left nothing here for ImpSec and all the Emperor's Auditors to do but sweep up the bits. He wanted to roll on the floor and howl with joy, which would be most undiplomatic of him, under the circumstances. He kept his face neutral, and very straight. Somehow, he didn't think the Komarrans appreciated the exquisite delight of it all.

  "When we stuffed her in the airlock I welded it shut," said Soudha morosely. "I wasn't going to let her do us a third time."

  "Third time?" Miles said. "If that was the second, what was the first?"

  "When that idiot Arozzi first brought her down here, she damn near blew the whole thing right then by hitting the emergency alarm."

  Miles glanced aside at the alarm on the nearby wall. "And then what happened?"

  "We had a sudden influx of station accident control. I thought I'd never get rid of them."

  "Ah. I see." How curious. Vorgier never mentioned that part. Later. "You mean we've spent the last five hours scrambling to evacuate this station for nothing?"

  Soudha sm
iled sourly. "You coming to me for sympathy, Barrayaran?"

  "Heh. Never mind."

  Most of the prisoners were formed up and marched out; with a gesture, Miles ordered Soudha to be held behind.

  "Moment of truth, Soudha. Have you booby-trapped this thing?"

  "There is a motion-sensitive charge attached to the outer door. Opening it from this side should not set it off."

  With iron self-control, Miles watched as an ImpSec tech torched off the metal bar. It fell to the deck with a clang. He paused in one last moment of sick fear.

  "What are you waiting for?" asked Soudha curiously.

  "Just pondering the depth of your political ingenuity. Suppose this is set to go off and snatch our prize from us at the last."

  "Now? Why? It's over," said Soudha.

  "Revenge. Manipulation. Maybe you figure to drive me berserk and trigger a repeat of the Solstice Massacre all over again, writ somewhat smaller. That could be a propaganda coup. Whether it would be worth spending your lives for is all in your point of view, of course. Properly massaged, the incident could help start a new Komarr Revolt, I suppose."

  "You have a really twisted mind, Lord Vorkosigan," said Soudha, shaking his head. "Was it your upbringing, or your genetics?"

  "Yes." Miles sighed. After a brief moment of reflection, Miles waved the guards on, and Soudha was marched out after his colleagues.

  After a go-ahead nod from the Imperial Auditor, the tech tapped the control pad. The inner door whined, sticking halfway. Miles pressed it gently sideways with his boot, and it shuddered open.

  Ekaterin was on her feet, between the inner door and the Professora, who sat on the deck wearing her niece's vest over her own bolero. Ekaterin's face bore a red bruise, her hair was hanging every which way, her fists were clenched, and she looked perfectly demented and altogether gorgeous, in Miles's personal opinion. Smiling broadly, he held out both his hands and leaned inside.

  She glared back at him. "About time." She stalked past, muttering in a voice of loathing, "Men!"

  After the briefest lurch, Miles managed to convert his open arms into a smooth bow toward the Professora. "Madame Dr. Vorthys. Are you all right?"

  "Why, hello, Miles." She blinked at him, gray faced and very chilled looking. "I've been better, but I believe I'll survive."

  "I have a float pallet for you. These sturdy young men will help you to it."

  "Oh, thank you, dear."

  Miles stood back and waved the medtechs forward. The Professora looked perfectly content to be whisked aboard the medical pallet and covered with warm wraps. A cursory examination and a few words of debate resulted in a half-dose of synergine for her, but no IV; then the pallet rose into the air.

  "The Professor will be here shortly," Miles assured her. "In fact, he'll likely be along before you both are done at the station infirmary. I'll see he gets sent straight on to you."

  "I'm so pleased." The Professora motioned him nearer; when he bent over her, she grabbed him by the ear and planted a kiss on his cheek. "Ekaterin was wonderful," she whispered.

  "I know," he breathed. His eyes crinkled, and she smiled back.

  He stepped back from the pallet to Ekaterin's side, hoping her aunt's example might inspire her—he wouldn't mind salvaging some little show of appreciation—"You didn't seem surprised to see me," he murmured. The pallet started off, under the guidance of a medtech, and he and Ekaterin followed in procession; the ImpSec technicians politely waited till they'd cleared the chamber to plunge in to the airlock to disarm the charge.

  Ekaterin shoved a strand of hair back over one ear with a hand that trembled only slightly. Red bruises glared on her arms, too, as her sleeve slid back. Miles frowned at them. "I knew it had to be our side," she said simply. "Or else it would have been the other door."

  "Eh. Quite." Three hours, she'd had, to contemplate that possibility. "My fast courier was slow."

  They turned up the next corridor in reflective silence. Gratifying as it might have been to have her fling herself into his arms and weep relief into—well, if not his shoulder, at least the top of his head—in front of that herd of ImpSec fellows, he had to admit he admired this style even more. So what is this thing you have about tall women and unrequited love? His cousin Ivan would doubtless have some cutting things to say—he growled in anticipation, in his mind. He would deal with Ivan and other hazards to his courtship later.

  "Do you know you saved about five thousand lives?" he asked her.

  Her dark brows drew down. "What?"

  "The novel device was defective. If the Komarrans had managed to get it started, the gravitational back-blow from the wormhole would have taken out this station just like the soletta array, possibly with as few survivors. And I shudder at the thought of the property damage bill. To think how Illyan used to complain about my equipment losses back when I was just covert ops. . . ."

  "You mean . . . it didn't work after all? I did all that for nothing?" She stopped short, her shoulders sagging.

  "What do you mean, nothing? I've met Imperial generals who completed their entire careers with less to show for them. You should get a bloody medal, I think. Except that this whole thing is going to end up so classified, they're going to have to invent a whole new level of classification just to put it in. And then classify the classification."

  Her lips puffed, not quite mirthfully. "What would I do with so useless an object as a medal?"

  He thought bemusedly of the contents a certain drawer at home in Vorkosigan House. "Frame it? Use it as a paperweight? Dust it?"

  "Just what I always wanted. More clutter."

  He grinned at her; she smiled back at last, clearly beginning to come off her adrenaline jag, and without breaking down, either. She drew breath and started forward again, and he kept pace. She had met the enemy, mastered her moment, hung three hours on death's doorstep, all that, and she'd emerged still on her feet and snarling. Oversocialized, hah. Oh, yeah, Da, I want this one.

  He stopped at the door to the infirmary; the Professora vanished within, borne off by her medical minions like a lady on a palanquin. Ekaterin paused with him.

  "I have to leave you for a time and check on my prisoners. The stationers will take care of you."

  Her brow wrinkled. "Prisoners? Oh. Yes. How did you get rid of the Komarrans?"

  Miles smiled grimly. "Persuasion."

  She stared down at him, one side of her lovely mouth curving up. Her lower lip was split; he wanted to kiss it and make it well. Not yet. Timing, boy. And one other thing.

  "You must be very persuasive."

  "I hope so." He took a deep breath. "I bluffed them into believing that I wouldn't let them go no matter what they did to you and the Professora. Except that I wasn't bluffing. We could not have let them go." There. Betrayal confessed. His empty hands clenched.

  She stared at him in disbelief; his heart shrank. "Well, of course not!"

  "Eh . . . what?"

  "Don't you know what they wanted to do to Barrayar?" she demanded. "It was a horror show. Utterly vile, and they couldn't even see it. They actually tried to tell me that collapsing the wormhole wouldn't hurt anyone! Monstrous fools."

  "That's what I thought, actually."

  "So, wouldn't you put your life on the line to stop them?"

  "Yes, but I wasn't putting my life—I was putting yours."

  "But I'm Vor," she said simply.

  His smile and his heart revived, dizzy with delight. "True Vor, milady," he breathed.

  A female medtech was approaching, murmuring anxiously, "Madame Vorsoisson?" Miles yielded to her shepherding motions, gave Ekaterin an analyst's salute, and turned away. He was humming, off-key, by the time he rounded the first corner.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The station infirmary personnel insisted on keeping both Vor women overnight, a precaution with which neither argued. Despite her exhaustion Ekaterin did get dispensation to go pick up her valise from her never-used hostel room, under the watchful
eye of a very young ImpSec guard who called her "Ma'am" in every sentence and was determined to carry her luggage.

  One message waited on her hostel room's comconsole: an urgent order from Lord Vorkosigan for her to take her aunt and flee the station at once, delivered in a tone of such intense conviction as to almost send her scurrying off despite its obviously outdated content. Instructions only, she noted; no explanations whatsoever. He really must have once held military command. The contrast between this strained, forceful lord and the almost goofy geniality of the young man who'd bowed her out of the airlock bemused her; which was the real Lord Vorkosigan? For all his apparently self-revealing babble, the man remained as elusive as a handful of water. Water in the desert. The thought popped unbidden into her mind, and she shook her head to clear it.