Miles, Mutants, and Microbes

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  "Can't be helped, my Lord Auditor," Clogston murmured soothingly. "We have to lower your body temperature at least three degrees. It will buy time."

  Miles hunched, uncomfortably reminded that they didn't have a fix for this yet. He stifled a gush of terror, escaping under pressure from the place he'd kept it locked for the past hours. Not for one second would he allow himself to believe that there was no cure to be had, that this bio-shit would drag him under and this time he wouldn't come back up . . . "Where's Roic?" He raised his right wrist to his lips. "Roic?"

  "I'm in the outer chamber, m'lord. I'm afraid to carry this triggering device through the bio-barrier till we're sure it's disarmed."

  "Right, good thinking. One of those fellows out there should be the bomb disposal tech I requested. Find him and give it to him. Then ride herd on the interrogation for me, will you?"

  "Yes, m'lord."

  "Captain Clogston."

  The doctor glanced down from where he fiddled with the jury-rigged blood filter. "My lord?"

  "The moment you have a medtech—no, a doctor. The moment you have some qualified men free, send them to the cargo hold where the ba has the replicators. I want them to run samples, try to see if the ba has contaminated or poisoned them in any way. Then make sure the equipment's all running all right. It's very important that the haut infants all be kept alive and well."

  "Yes, Lord Vorkosigan."

  If the haut babies were inoculated with the same vile parasites presently rioting through his own body, might the replicators' temperature be turned down to chill them all, and slow the disease process? Or would such cold stress the infants, damage them . . . he was borrowing trouble, reasoning in advance of his data. A trained agent, conditioned to the correct disconnect between action and imagination, might have performed such an inoculation, cleaning up every bit of incriminating high-haut DNA before abandoning the scene. But this ba was an amateur. This ba had another sort of conditioning altogether. Yes, but that conditioning must have gone very wrong somehow, or this ba wouldn't have got this far . . .

  Miles added as Clogston turned away, "And give me word on the condition of the pilot, Corbeau, as soon as you have it." The retreating suited figure raised a hand in acknowledgment.

  In a few minutes, Roic entered the ward; he had doffed the bulky powered work suit, and now wore more comfortable military-issue Level Three biotainer garb.

  "How's it going over there?"

  Roic ducked his head. "Not well, m'lord. T' ba has gone into some sort of strange mental state. Raving, but nothing to the point, and the intelligence fellows say its physiological state is all out of kilter as well. They're trying to stabilize it."

  "The ba must be kept alive!" Miles struggled half-up, a vision of having himself carried into the next chamber to take charge running through his head. "We have to get it back to Cetaganda. To prove Barrayar is innocent."

  He sank back and eyed the humming device filtering his blood hung by his left side. Pulling out parasites, yes, but also draining the energy the parasites had stolen from him to create themselves. Siphoning off the mental edge he desperately needed right now.

  He remarshaled his scattering thoughts, and explained to Roic the news Bel had imparted. "Return to the interrogation room and give them the word on this development. See if they can get any cross-confirmation on the hiding place in the Minchenko Auditorium, and especially see if they can get anything that would suggest if there is more than one device. Or not."

  "Right." Roic nodded. He glanced over Miles's growing array of medical attachments. "By the way, m'lord. Had you happened to mention your seizure disorder to the surgeon yet?"

  "Not yet. There hasn't been time."

  "Right." Roic's lips screwed up thoughtfully, in an editorial fashion that Miles chose to ignore. "I'll see to it then, shall I, m'lord?"

  Miles hunched. "Yeah, yeah."

  Roic trod out of the ward on both his errands.

  The remote comconsole arrived; a tech swung a tray across Miles's lap, laid the vid plate frame upon it, and helped him sit mostly up, with extra pillows at his back. He was starting to shiver again. All right, good, the device was Barrayaran military issue, not just scavenged from the Idris. He had a securable visual link again now. He entered codes.

  Vorpatril's face was a moment or two coming up; riding herd on all this from the Prince Xav's tactics room, the admiral no doubt had a few other demands on his attention at the moment. He appeared at last with a, "Yes, my lord!" His eyes searched the image of Miles on his vid display. He apparently was not reassured by the view. His jaw tightened in dismay. "Are you all—" he began, but edited this fatuity on the fly to, "How bad is it?"

  "I can still talk. And while I can still talk, I need to record some orders. While we're waiting on the quaddies' search for the bio-bomb—are you following the latest on that?" Miles brought the admiral up to the moment on Bel's intelligence about the Minchenko Auditorium, and went on. "Meanwhile, I want you to select and prepare the fastest ship in your escort that has a sufficient capacity for the load it's going to be carrying. Which will be me, Portmaster Thorne, a medical team, our prisoner the ba and guards, Guppy the Jacksonian smuggler if I can pry him out of quaddie hands, and a thousand working uterine replicators. With qualified medical attendants."

  "And me," put in Ekaterin's voice firmly from offsides. Her face leaned briefly into range of Vorpatril's vid pickup, and she frowned at him. She'd seen her husband looking like death on a plate more than once before, though; perhaps she wouldn't be as disturbed as the admiral clearly was. Having an Imperial Auditor get melted to steaming slime on his watch would be a notable black mark, not that Vorpatril's career wasn't in a shambles over this episode already.

  "My courier ship will travel in convoy, carrying Lady Vorkosigan." He cut across Ekaterin's beginning objection: "I may well need one spokesperson along who isn't in medical quarantine."

  She settled back with a dubious "Hm."

  "But I want to make damned sure we're not impeded by any hassles along the way, Admiral, so have your fleet department start working immediately on our passage clearances in all the local space polities we're going to have to cross. Speed. Speed is of the essence. I want to get away the moment we're sure the ba's devil-device has been cleared from Graf Station. At least with us carrying all these biohazards, no one is going to want to stop and board us for inspections."

  "To Komarr, my lord? Or Sergyar?"

  "No. Calculate the shortest possible jump route directly to Rho Ceta."

  Vorpatril's head jerked back in startlement. "If the orders I received from Sector Five HQ mean what we think, you'll hardly get passage there. Reception by plasma fire and fusion shells the moment you pop out of the wormhole, would be what I'd expect."

  "Unpack, Miles," Ekaterin's voice drifted in.

  He grinned briefly at the familiar exasperation in her voice. "By the time we arrive there, I will have arranged our clearances with the Cetagandan Empire." I hope. Or else they were all going to be in more trouble than Miles ever wanted to imagine. "Barrayar is bringing their kidnapped haut babies back to them. On the end of a long stick. I get to be the stick."

  "Ah," said Vorpatril, his gray brows rising in speculation.

  "Give a head's-up to my ImpSec courier pilot. I plan to start the moment we have everyone and everything transferred aboard. You can start on the everything part now."

  "Understood, my lord." Vorpatril rose and vanished out of vid range. Ekaterin moved back in, and smiled at him.

  "Well, we're making some progress at last," Miles said to her, with what he hoped seemed good cheer, and not suppressed hysteria.

  Her smile twisted up on one side. Her eyes were warm, though. "Some progress? What do you call an avalanche, I wonder?"

  "No arctic metaphors, please. I'm cold enough. If the medicos get this . . . infestation under control en route, perhaps they'll clear me for visitors. We'll want the courier ship later, anyway."

  A med
tech appeared, drew a blood sample from the outbound tube, added an IV pump to the array, raised the bed rails, then bent and began tying down the left arm board.

  "Hey," objected Miles. "How am I supposed to unravel all this mess with one hand tied behind my back?"

  "Captain Clogston's orders, m'lord Auditor." Firmly, the tech finished securing his arm. "Standard procedure for seizure risk."

  Miles gritted his teeth.

  "Your seizure-stimulator is with the rest of your things aboard the Kestrel," Ekaterin observed dispassionately. "I'll find it and send it across as soon as I transfer back aboard."

  Prudently, Miles limited his response to, "Thank you. Check back with me before you dispatch it—there may be a few other things I'll need. Let me know when you're safely aboard."

  "Yes, love." She touched her fingers to her lips and held them up, passing them through his image before her. He returned the gesture. His heart chilled a little as her image winked out. How long before they dared touch flesh to warm flesh again? What if it's never . . . ? Damn, but I'm cold.

  The tech departed. Miles hunched down in his bed. He supposed it would be futile to ask for blankets. He imagined little tiny bio-bombs set to go off all through his body, sparking like a Midsummer fireworks display seen at a distance out over the river in Vorbarr Sultana, cascading to a grand, lethal finale. He imagined his flesh decomposing into corrosive ooze while he yet lived in it. He needed to think about something else.

  Two empires, both alike in indignation, maneuvering for position, massing deadly force behind a dozen wormhole jumps, each jump a point of contact, conflict, catastrophe . . . that was no better.

  A thousand almost-ripe haut fetuses, turning in their little chambers, unaware of the distance and dangers they had passed through, and the hazards still to come—how soon would they have to be decanted? The picture of a thousand squalling infants dropped upon a few harried Barrayaran military medicos was almost enough to make him smile, if only he wasn't so primed to start screaming.

  Bel's breath, in the next bunk, was thick and labored.

  Speed. For every reason, speed. Had he set in motion everyone and everything that he could? He ran down checklists in his aching head, lost his place, tried again. How long had it been since he'd slept? The minutes crawled by with tortuous slowness. He imagined them as snails, hundreds of little snails with Cetagandan clan markings coloring their shells, going past in procession, leaving slime-trails of lethal biocontamination . . . a crawling infant, little Helen Natalia, cooing and reaching for one of the pretty, poisonous creatures, and he was all tied up and pierced with tubes and couldn't get across the room fast enough to stop her . . .

  A bleep from his lap link, thank God, snapped him awake before he could find out where that nightmare was going. He was still pierced with tubes, though. What time was it? He was losing track altogether. His usual mantra—I can sleep when I'm dead—seemed a little too apropos.

  An image formed over the vid plate. "Sealer Greenlaw!" Good news, bad news? Good. Her lined face was radiant with relief.

  "We found it," she said. "It's been contained."

  Miles blew out his breath in a long exhalation. "Yes. Excellent. Where?"

  "In Minchenko Auditorium, just as the portmaster said. Attached to the wall in a stage light cell. It did seem to have been put together hastily, but it was deadly clever for all of that. Simple and clever. It was scarcely more than a little sealed plastic balloon, filled with some sort of nutrient solution, my people tell me. And a tiny charge, and the electronic trigger for it. The ba had stuck it to the wall with ordinary packing tape, and sprayed it with a little flat black paint. No one would notice it in the ordinary course of events, not even if they had been working on the lights, unless they put a hand right on it."

  "Homemade, then. On the spot?"

  "It would seem so. The electronics, which were off-the-shelf items—and the tape, for that matter—are all quaddie-make. They match with the purchases recorded to Dubauer's credit chit the evening after the attack in the hostel lobby. All the parts are accounted for. There seems to have been only the one device." She ran her upper hands through her silver hair, massaging her scalp wearily, and squeezed shut eyes bounded beneath by little dark half-moons of shadow.

  "That . . . fits with the timetable as I see it," said Miles. "Right up until Guppy popped up with his rivet gun, the ba evidently thought it had gotten away clean with its stolen cargo. And with Solian's death. Everything calm and perfect. Its plan was to pass through Quaddiespace quietly, without leaving a trace. It would not have had any reason before then to rig such a device. But from that botched murder attempt on, it was running scared, having to improvise rapidly. Curious bit of foresight, though. It can't have planned to be trapped on the Idris the way it was, surely."

  She shook her head. "It planned something. The explosive charge had two leads to its trigger. One was a receiver for the signal device the ba had in its pocket. The other was a simple sound sensor. Set to a fairly high decibel level. That of an auditorium full of applause, for example."

  Miles's teeth snapped shut. Oh, yes. "Thus masking the pop of the charge, and blowing out contaminant to the maximum number of people at once." The vision was instant, and horrifying.

  "So we think. People come in from other stations all over Quaddiespace to see performances of the Minchenko Ballet. The contagion could have spread back out with them through half the system before it became apparent."

  "Is it the same—no, it can't be what the ba gave to me and Bel. Can it? Was it lethal, or merely something debilitating, or what?"

  "The sample is in the hands of our medical people now. We should know soon."

  "So the ba set up its bio-bomb . . . after it knew real Cetagandan agents would be following, after it knew it would be compelled to abandon the utterly incriminating replicators and their contents . . . I'll bet it put the bomb together and slapped it out there in a hurry." Maybe it was revenge. Revenge upon the quaddies for all the forced delays that had so wrecked the ba's perfect plan . . . ? By Bel's report, the ba was not above such motivations; the Cetagandan had displayed a cruel humor, and a taste for bifurcating strategies. If the ba hadn't run into the troubles on the Idris, would it have retrieved the device, or would it simply have quietly left the bomb behind to go off on its own? Well, if Miles's own men couldn't get the whole story out of their prisoner, he damned well knew some people who could.

  "Good," he breathed. "We can go now."

  Greenlaw's weary eyes opened. "What?"

  "I mean—with your permission, Madame Sealer." He adjusted his vid pickup to a wider angle, to take in his sinister medical setting. Too late to adjust the color balance toward a more sickly green. Also, possibly, redundant. Greenlaw's mouth turned down in dismay, looking at him.

  "Admiral Vorpatril has received an extremely alarming military communiqué from home . . ." Swiftly, Miles explained his deduction about the connection of suddenly increased tensions between Barrayar and its dangerous Cetagandan neighbor to the recent events on Graf Station. He talked carefully around the tactical use of trade fleet escorts as rapid-deployment forces, although he doubted the sealer missed the implications.

  "My plan is to get myself, the ba, the replicators, and as much evidence as I can amass of the ba's crimes back to Rho Ceta, to present to the Cetagandan government, to clear Barrayar of whatever accusation of collusion is driving this crisis. As fast as possible. Before some hothead—on either side—does something that, to put it bluntly, makes Admiral Vorpatril's late actions on Graf Station look like a model of restraint and wisdom."

  That won a snort from her; he forged on. "While the ba and Russo Gupta both committed crimes on Graf, they committed crimes in the Cetagandan and Barrayaran empires first. I submit we have clear prior claim. And worse—their mere continued presence on Graf Station is dangerous, because, I promise you, sooner or later their furious Cetagandan victims will be following them up. I think you've had enough of a taste
of their medicine to make the prospect of a swarm of real Cetagandan agents descending upon you unwelcome indeed. Cede us both criminals, and any retribution will chase after us instead."

  "Hm," she said. "And your impounded trade fleet? Your fines?"

  "Let . . . on my authority, I am willing to transfer ownership of the Idris to Graf Station, in lieu of all fines and expenses." He added prudently, "As is."

  Her eyes sprang wide. She said indignantly, "The ship's contaminated."

  "Yes. So we can't take it anywhere anyway. Cleaning it up could be a nice little training exercise for your biocontrol people." He decided not to mention the holes. "Even with that expense, you'll come out ahead. I'm afraid the passengers' insurance will have to eat the value of any of their cargo that can't be cleared. But I'm really hopeful that most of it will not need to be quarantined. And you can let the rest of the fleet go."