Chapter Twenty
On the next morning’s drive Tej found herself threading through a new part of the city, an unexpected suburban sprawl north of the ridges that cradled the river valley and the Old Town. Barrayarans seemed to date all their activities in terms of famous military events—before the Occupation, during Mad Yuri’s War, after the Pretender’s War—but in this rare case, by a peaceful one: the area had mostly been built up since Gregor took the reins, or in other words, in the past two decades.
Tej turned in at a modest industrial park, and found a slot for the rented groundcar in front of what was soon to be a rather bewildered minor pipe-laying firm. Star took her notecase and headed purposefully for the door, but for a change Dada did not go with her, nor instruct Tej to stay with the vehicle. Instead, he gestured Tej after him, and walked off toward the street. Tej turned up the collar of her coat against the thick, chilly fog—a change from the recent rains—and followed.
“Where are we going?”
“To see a man I know.”
“Does he expect us?”
“Not yet.”
No appointment, no comconsole contact, and the rental car, which had a mapping system that also served to precisely locate the vehicle for anyone who might be wanting to follow its movements, had a legitimate place to be. Well, faux-legitimate. Tej found herself growing unwillingly alert.
Dada added, “I’m not keen on bringing in an outsider, but we’re now expecting and in fact counting on our visa not being extended. Time grows tight. A reliable contact said she’d used him as a carrier, not long back, and found the results satisfactory. He’ll be open to our business. And, if he has his wits about him, future business.”
They walked two blocks and crossed over to another utilitarian building, and through a door with a sign over it reading Imola & Kovaks, Storage and Transshipping. A harried-looking human receptionist presiding over a cluttered counter, which gave Tej a small, unwanted flashback to her days at Swift Shipping, looked up and said, “May I help you, sir, ma’am?”
“Would you please tell Ser Imola that an old friend is here to see him.”
“He’s very busy this morning, but I’ll ask.” Standard clerk-speak prep, Tej recognized from experience, for greasing an unwanted visitor back out the door. “What name should I say?”
“Selby.”
A brief intercom exchange, and the clerk was escorting them upstairs to another office, also cluttered. A man on the high side of middle age, dressed in relatively unmilitary Barrayaran casual business garb, looked up over his comconsole desk, frowning; his frown changed to an expression of astonishment. A touch of his hand extinguished the current display. “Thank you Jon,” he said. “Please close the door.” The clerk, disappointed in his curiosity, did so. Only then did the man surge up and around his desk to grasp both of Dada’s hands and say, “Shiv Arqua, you old pirate! I heard you were dead!”
“An exaggeration. Again. Though not by much, this time.” Dad smiled without showing his teeth, and turned to Tej, but then turned back. “And what name are you going by, these days?”
“Vigo Imola.”
“Vigo, meet my daughter, Baronette Tejaswini Arqua.”
Tej shook hands, wondering. Formerly, on these business stops with her sisters or mother, she had been named our driver, or not introduced at all, or left with the car. “People usually call me Tej.” Or Lady Vorpatril, but none of her family had used her new name yet. She stifled an unruly urge to trot it out here; Dada was plainly going into dealing-mode.
“Delightful! I would guess she gets her looks from her mother?” Imola’s gaze swept her up and down; he scored a point, or two, by not lingering on her chest. “Mostly.”
“Fortunately,” said Dada, with his low laugh. Their host pulled up a pair of serviceable chairs, and gestured them both to sit.
“Where do you two know each other from?” asked Tej. Sometimes she got an answer, after all.
“In a former life, Vigo was my planetary liaison officer when I was a captain in the Selby Fleet,” said Dada. “Just before I met your mother.”
“And weren’t those the days,” said Imola, planting himself comfortably behind his desk once more. “Was old Selby insane, to take that defense contract with Komarr?”
“We were young. And probably thought we were immortal,” said Dada.
“Yeah, I got over that about then,” said Imola. Imola’s underlying accent was Komarran, Tej judged, overlain by a long residence on Barrayar; in this urban environment, very blended. “Who would’ve thought that a backward planet like this could field such an aggressive fleet?”
“Not your Komarran comrades, it seems.”
“Huh.” Imola shook his head at some old military memory. “So what the devil are you doing on Barrayar? I thought House Cordonah had suffered an extremely hostile takeover. Prestene, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, the bastards.” At the name, Dada bit his thumb and made a spitting gesture. “It’s a long story, very roundabout. I’ll tell you the whole tale at some more leisured moment. So, you ended up in the transshipping business.”
“As you see.” Imola waved around at his unpretentious company offices.
“Ah…all of it?”
Ser Imola smiled, reached under his desk, and turned something off. Or on. “Sometimes. If the price is right. And the risks are low. The second being more important than the first, these days.” He heaved a sigh. “I’m not as ambitious as when we were younger. Nor as energetic. Nor as crazy.”
“Your end should be low risk. The price…we’ll need to discuss.”
“So what do you have for me?” Imola inquired. “Weight and volume? Perishability? Live or inert? Live costs more.”
“Inert, as it happens. Weight and volume to be determined, though it won’t be high bulk. But you ship live cargo? How does that jibe with low risk?”
Imola smiled in satisfaction. “We solve the perishability problem by shipping all such consignments cryo-frozen. The new generation of portable cryochambers being much more reliable, with longer service cycles. Shipping deceased expats or ill-fated tourists who want to be treated or buried back home is a legitimate part of the business, see. I have a contact on the medical side who sends clients my way, or sometimes helps prep them, and if we occasionally slip in a few extras on the manifest, the documentation is all in order.”
Dada’s brows twitched up. “The cargo takes a risk.”
“For voluntary cargo, well, they’re willing. For involuntary cargo, their shippers are usually even more willing. Our losses in transit are actually lower. And it’s vastly cheaper, since they don’t have to send handlers along to thwart escapes en route. The method does depend on having adequate cryorevival facilities on the far end, but that’s not my problem.” Imola waved a didactic finger. “The trick, as always, is not to get greedy—not try to ship too often, or too many at once. There are only so many tragic accidents to go around. We reference real ones, whenever we can.”
Dada nodded approval. “Very clever. I see you’re not too old to innovate.”
“It was my son-in-law’s idea, to give credit where it’s due. My daughter married this Barrayaran boy, some years after the annexation. I wasn’t thrilled at first, but he’s come along. Junior partner. He’s the Kovaks. Our medical contact is his brother.”
“Glad to hear you’re keeping it in the family. That’s…almost always safer.” Another brief grimace of a smile.
“Heh, daughters getting married—that’s a crap shoot to make the old days look sensible. You don’t know what they’ll drag in. My other one married this Komarran fellow, who is completely useless but at least lives five jumps away. You folks’ve got the right idea out in the Whole, Shiv—pre-vetted contracts, money and considerations up front.”
“Oh, well…” Dada did not follow this up, to Tej’s relief. “Can you get local ground transport—a mid-sized cargo van, say?”
“I have vans. And loading crews.”
“That aren’t traceable back to you?”
“That could be done, too.” Imola’s eyes narrowed with interest.
“We would do our own loading. Could you get it by this weekend?”
“Probably.”
“And very private storage?”
“Could be made available.”
“Deal would be, park your van overnight in a certain underground garage in the Old Town. Send someone in on foot to drive it away in the morning. We might need a second night, in which case best have a different van. One of us will meet you separately to oversee the unloading—some of the cargo may be delicate.”
Tej tried to picture the implied scene. A bucket brigade of Arquas spaced along the Mycoborer tunnel, silently hand-carting contraband all night? They might just about do it. Heavy loads that could not be broken down might have to be regretfully abandoned—happily, this did not include gold coins. Nothing inside the old lab could be very large, though, or its original owners could not have squeezed it down through the elevator shaft, the one Grandmama had said she’d once been responsible for blowing up, as last haut woman out.
“Once our target location is cleared and the goods safely stored,” Dada went on, “the transshipping arrangements could be completed at leisure, more carefully. Possibly in small batches.”
“Where to?”
“Not known precisely yet. Out of the Barrayaran Empire; some towards the Hegen Hub, some to Escobar.”
“Makes it hard to calculate a price. You thinking percentage or flat fee?”
“Until the items reach their final destination and are disposed of, they’re solid, not liquid. I think you might prefer flat fee, now, rather than an unknown amount decanted off an unknown amount, much later.”
“Why not both?” said Imola. “Flat fee up front, to be sure all possible expenses are covered, and the percentage after success. Say, fifteen percent. That’s pretty usual.”
Dada winced slightly. “Could be. We need to move quickly and quietly.”
“For a percentage, I can do quickly and quietly. So do we have a deal?”
After a short hesitation, Dada rose and reached across the desk; a brief handshake. “Deal.”
Imola leaned back and prepared to make a note. “So what’s the address of this garage of yours?”
Dada named it. Imola’s hand froze. “Shiv, do you know what’s across the street from that building?”
“Oh, yes,” sighed Dada. “Hence our discretion.”
“You may not have spotted the scanners, but I guarantee any vehicle that parks within three blocks of ImpSec headquarters gets scrutinized somehow. And recorded.”
“Quite thoroughly scanned, entering that garage, yes. But—not leaving it. That one’s cursory, just to be sure outs match ins. We checked.”
“Ah.” Imola frowned, obviously thinking this through. His anonymous van would be arriving empty and innocent, yes. The driver would know nothing…“One of the ways I stay in business around here is that I don’t get involved with local politics. Strictly commercial, I am. Vorbarra District Guard and Imperial Customs are all bad enough. ImpSec—that’s too high up for me. Give you a nosebleed, those boys will.”
“I have no interest in local politics, myself.”
“Strictly commercial, is this?”
“I certainly hope so.”
“Hm.” Imola stared at the address on his autofiler, evidently memorizing it, then deleted the screen. “You might have said.”
“You didn’t think I’d pester you with something trivial, did you?”
“No, I suppose not. You always were a beat ahead of the rest of us, back when.” Imola sighed. “Do give my best to your lady. She’s still with you, I suppose?”
Dada nodded.
“And the rest of the clan?”
“All safe with us, for now.” Dada, Tej noticed, did not go into the distressing details about Ruby and Topaz and Eric.
“Mustering for a fresh move on Prestene, are you? Or something?”
“More or less. Or something.” Dada’s lips twitched. “Or we might buy a tropical island.”
Imola looked nonplussed at this last, but said, “Eh, good luck on that. People just don’t keep up with each other, these scattered times. Does Udine still have her fancy dance troupe? Quite the show, I heard, when you were all on Cordonah Station.”
“Her Jewels, yes. And they will dance again,” said Dada firmly. “You’ll have to stop by, next you get out that way.”
After a few more anecdotes about the Good Old Days, which sounded like the Repulsive Old Days to Tej, Dada rose and they extracted themselves, and exited to the street once more. The fog was thinning, or perhaps just condensing into a cold drizzle.
“Let’s wait in the car,” Dada directed, when they’d made their way back to the pipe-layer’s building. “No point in stepping on Star’s script.”
She slid into the driver’s side, and Dada into the seat beside her. He turned to face her.
She eyed him sideways. “You weren’t quite straight with that man. Imola. Do you trust him or not?”
“The limits of trust depend much on whether you mean to do business more than once. But it’s just good practice never to show all your cards in the first round of a deal. One must maintain reserves. Besides, what he doesn’t need to know he can’t tell, not even under fast-penta. Speaking of sound practice. He knows that game.”
“I suppose.” Tej sighed.
“You don’t seem happy, honey.”
“None of us are just now, I expect.”
“True. Well, we’ll all be home—soon enough.”
He’s leaving out a few steps. And the new House Cordonah was going to be unavoidably different from the old, Tej suspected. Home would be changed. Or I will be.
“You know,” Dada went on, “you were Udine’s special gift to me. All the other kids, I was happy enough to let her play the haut geneticist, but you were merely gene-cleaned. Unmodified her, unmodified me. My almost-natural offspring.”
“I knew that.” Star had once called her the control child; it hadn’t been a compliment.
“I always wanted to see you do well.”
To prove what for you, Dada?
“I meant to hold out for something really special, when it came to your marital contract. Still could, you know.”
“Mm,” said Tej.
“But…there’s another possible deal in the air, now. How well do you like that Barrayaran boy?”
“Ivan Xav? I like him fine.” And one of the things she most liked about him, she realized, was that he’d had nothing whatsoever to do with any Arqua deals, ever. He was surrounded by his own Barrayaran style of crazy, true, but surprisingly little seemed to have rubbed off on him.
“Should a deal emerge that did involve him, would you be willing to be party to it?”
“What kind of a deal?” she asked automatically, then said, “Wait. Do you mean a marriage contract? We’re kind of a done deal that way, I thought.” Count Falco said so. And they’d made it themselves, with their own breath and voices—funny Barrayaran phrase, that. Their own breath and no one else’s. “The only way that deal could change is to be undone.”
“Which could happen in so many ways. I can’t help but notice that you’ve not been pursuing any of them.”
“We’ve been busy. And then you all arrived, and we’ve been busier.”
“Does your Ivan Xav know that you think it’s a done deal? Or your stepfather-in-law?”
“I…” don’t know, Tej realized. Did she even know herself, for real, for sure?
“Because if they don’t, I can certainly see no reason for you to tell them. That could be slick. Trade them something they already have, for…heh. Considerations, yes.”
Tej tried to keep her face from scrunching up in dismay. “Has this got anything to do with that private talk you had with Simon?”
He looked cagey. “Might.”
Her heart chilled. Ivan Xav had seemed very sure that his um-stepfather couldn’t be suborned by threats or bribed by wealth. But what about love?
In more than one form. It was plain that the strange, reserved man wanted some better relations with his stepson than he had yet been able to construct, if only to please his high Vor lady. And more: Simon liked Ivan Xav in his own right—in his own quietly awkward way—though Ivan Xav didn’t seem to see it. The late great Captain Illyan had been superb with security, it was said; maybe not so deft with family. He’d evidently never had one before, in all his long adult life, or was that only…his long adult career? But surely the man couldn’t be compromising his peculiar Barrayaran honor just to secure his stepson’s marriage. Simon was a mystery; how could you tell what he was thinking?
Although it was bad enough that Dada wanted to use her as a counter in his deals. Dada at least was Dada, Baron Cordonah for real. Simon had no right…
“Have you already made some kind of a deal with Simon about me?” she demanded in alarm.
“Mm, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a deal. More of a bet.”
“That’s worse.”
“Oh, it didn’t involve you. Yet. Though it was clear that you and Ivan Xav weighed in his calculations.”
“What did it involve?”
“Step One of our program here—the site mapping. Simon bet we couldn’t do it in any way. Undetected by ImpSec, that is, on ImpSec’s doorstep. I bet we could.” He added after a moment’s reflection, “As long as one doesn’t count Simon himself as ImpSec, of course. We won.”
“What did we win?” she asked suspiciously.
“Round Two. Which Simon thinks Star is pursuing as we speak. The Mycoborer, fortunately, still remains outside the realm of his otherwise far-reaching imagination.”
“Oh. So—every round you win buys us another round?”
“Yes. But we only need two. Simon’s thinking three or four.”
Weasels, that was term Ivan Xav kept using. But which old weasel was the, the weaseliest?
Maybe Simon simply wanted Lady Alys all to himself. Was Ivan Xav’s protracted bachelorhood holding up Simon’s own marriage, the way it had evidently been holding up Lady Alys’s longed-for release from the burning ritual? Maybe he thought he was trading not Tej, but Ivan Xav—to be carried off by Clan Arqua to the Whole as a prize, or what? Would the The Gregor allow that—or applaud it? The emperor had his own sons now—maybe Ivan Xav was reclassified as redundant, an heir in excess of need. An embarrassing leftover, and everyone relieved to have him be shunted out of the way.
Tej didn’t know whether to be distressed or really, really annoyed. With the whole lot of them, Arquan and Barrayaran both.
Dada, watching whatever parade of emotions was passing across her face, said a bit plaintively, “I’d do my best for you, honey, but you have to give your old Dada a clue.”
“If I get one,” she sighed, “I’ll share.”
His belly jumped in a muffled, pained laugh that didn’t make it out his mouth. Women, eh, didn’t quite appear as a caption over his head, but it might as well have. She wanted to return, Men, ugh!
And if it would help Clan Arqua to sell what was already given away, didn’t she have an obligation to allow that much?…Especially as it might get her off the hook for further demands. It wouldn’t make any practical difference to her and Ivan Xav—would it? Damn it, now I’m all confused. Again. It was hardly a help that Ivan Xav didn’t make her crazy when everyone else around them was doing so good a job.
Star emerged from the door of the engineering firm, looking self-satisfied. She and Dada slid into the back for a short report on her fake tunneling bid. Tej started the groundcar again and pulled into the street.
“Oh, about Ivan Xav,” Tej called over her shoulder. “He was going to ask Admiral Desplains for some personal leave. He hopes to get tomorrow free. To join us.”
“Oh, hell,” said Star. “Rotten timing. Why couldn’t he have waited till next week? What will we do with him?”
“The same drill as with his friend Byerly,” Dada assured her, unmoved. “Not a problem.”
Speak for yourself, Dada.
* * *
Tej did her best to slip away without him, the morning of Ivan’s first day off, but he cornered her in the kitchen.
“Driving again?” he asked amiably, sucking coffee. “What say I go with you?”
“It’ll be boring,” she told him, drinking her own coffee faster. “Who would have thought I’d ever be saying that about Vorbarr Sultana traffic? Live and learn.”
“I’m never bored with you.”
She flashed him a nervous smile. “And there wouldn’t be room.”
“I don’t mind squeezing up.”
He wondered how many rounds she’d go on this hedging, and had a brief insight into Simon’s fascination with the clan, but she gave over the argument and let him follow her down the street to the Arqua hotel. There, he discovered, she’d cannily sited reinforcements, and he somehow, without intending it, found himself assigned to drive another set of Arquas around on an assortment of errands that extended into a lingering lunch. They were joined in this meal by Byerly, trailing Emerald and looking thwarted. As diversions went, Ivan supposed it displayed a certain efficiency.
The polite runaround continued all day in this vein. It was only by chance, miscalculation, and a couple of social lies that Ivan managed to cross paths with his wife in his flat once more, at nearly bedtime. She was dressing—not for bed, which more usually involved undressing—in some casual, sturdy clothes that looked more suitable for a walk in the woods than a night on the town.
“Oh,” she said, looking around in surprise as he came in.
“Hi, beautiful.” He kissed her hello; even her return kiss felt evasive. “What’s up?”
“Just a few more chores for my family. Don’t wait up for me.”
“At this hour? You should be in bed. With me.” He nuzzled her neck; she slipped out of his grasp, which he just managed not to let become a clutch.
“We might not have much longer together on Barrayar. Pidge is having trouble getting the visa extension.”
Good. Wait, not good. “That doesn’t include you, you know. Lady Vorpatril.”
“Uh…” Her evasiveness was shading into panic, in her eyes. It wasn’t all that amusing.
“Tej,” he sighed. “We need to talk.”
“Next week. Next week would be good for me. I have to go now, or I’ll be late.”
“Not next week. Right now.” He captured her hand—it jerked in his grip, but didn’t jerk away—and led her to sit on the edge of the bed with him.
She offered him only a tight-lipped smile; she, clearly, wasn’t going to start. Up to him, eh.
“Tej. I know a lot more about what’s going on with you and your folks than you think.”
“Oh?” she tried. Leading not conceding.
“In fact, I bet I know something you don’t.”
“How can you know that you know something I don’t when you don’t what I know in the first place? I don’t see how you can. I mean, logically. Or you wouldn’t be asking.”
Simon had recently tricked him into going first with much the same turn of phrase, Ivan was wearily reminded. Or at least the gist of it. “Tej. I know that your family is after a certain Cetagandan bunker dating back to the Occupation, or at least, after something in it. And it’s sitting under that park in front of ImpSec. You mapped it during that dance last weekend.”
She froze for a moment, and then came up with: “Well…so? Simon was watching us.”
“Simon’s onto you.”
“He has an, an understanding with Dada, yes. You might have figured that out.”
“I did, yes. But Simon knows one thing that you—you Arquas—don’t.”
He waited, to by-God make her say something. Anything. Her face screwed up in the effort to contain her words, not to mention her curiosity, but lost the fight: “What?”
Ivan felt like a lout. No, this wasn’t going to be fun at all. “The bunker was found and emptied decades ago, when ImpSec HQ was first built. The bunker’s still there, yes, but there’s nothing inside. Simon’s setting you all up for a fall.” The weaselly bastard.
“No,” she snapped. And, a tiny doubt creeping into her voice, “Can’t be. Grandmama would have known, and the Baronne.”
“Is so. Empty.” A trap without bait.
“Isn’t.” Tej could look remarkably mulish, when she set her mind to it.
“Is.”
“Isn’t.” Her jaw unset just enough for her to say, “And I can prove it to you.”
“How?”
“I won’t tell you.” She was getting better with shifty; maybe it was all the recent practice. “But I’ll make you a deal for it. A…a bet. If that’s more Barrayaran.”
“What kind of a deal? Or bet.”
“If the lab—the bunker is empty, I’ll do what you want.”
Might that include stay on Barrayar? Could he twist this into a ploy to make her stay? He just kept that thought from falling straight out of his mouth; he didn’t know if she’d think it was a jewel or a toad. “And if it’s not?”
“If it’s full, then you’ll do what I want.” She frowned in reflection. “That seems balanced, doesn’t it?”
“Which would be…what?” Ivan was learning caution around Jacksonians bearing deals.
“Uh…” She’d been caught short, but was thinking fast. “To start with…help carry stuff. You’re big and strong. And, and go on keeping your mouth shut. About everything you see or hear. And no cheating by giving people hints. And after that…there might be more.”
“This deal seems to getting a bit open-ended.”
“So what do you care? If you really think the bunker is empty.”
So…should he bet on Simon? Ivan had a lot of trouble fitting Simon Illyan and wrong into the same sentence, although Aunt Cordelia claimed it was historically possible. And she should know. Not often wasn’t, after all, the same thing as never.
And he’d just be following Simon’s own example, with that bet. He wondered how well that might work as a defense, later. Not sanguine, was that the phrase? Which had something to do with blood. No, this was not a helpful line of thought.
“All right,” Ivan heard his mouth saying. Because Tej wasn’t the only person in this room being driven to insanity by curiosity, it seemed. “It’s a deal.”
He’d rather have sealed it with a kiss, but she offered him a firm Arqua handshake instead.
“Oh,” she said, turning back at the bedroom door. “And bring a pair of slippers.”
* * *
Tej made Ivan Xav park his two-seater a good five blocks from ImpSec Headquarters, just to be sure, which then entailed a long trudge through a cold drizzle. He had grown more and more silent, on the short drive over, as she’d explained about the Mycoborer. But his tone grew irate when she led him to the lower level of the garage—quiet, deserted, and shadowy at this late hour. “Why couldn’t we have parked here?”
“Shh,” she hissed back, equally irate. A bulky ground van was sitting directly across from the utility room; evidently Ser Imola had done his part. She tapped gently on the door.
It swung open; Star’s hand shot out to yank her inside. A couple of bright cold lights cast conflicting green shadows. “Tej, you’re late.” Star looked up in consternation at Ivan Xav, shouldering in after her. Her hand went to the stunner holster riding her hip. “Why’d you bring him? Are you crazy?”
“He’s going to help. He…volunteered.” Sort of.
Ivan Xav stared around the little chamber in deep suspicion, and Tej wondered belatedly if she should have demanded that Vor-name’s-word thing on their deal, or bet, as well. The access well to the Mycoborer tunnel was uncovered; a pulley was set up on a frame above the hole, with ropes descending into the dark.
Star scowled at Ivan Xav, who scowled back. She said, “I’d stun him where he stands, but we can’t let off energy devices.”
“Then why are you even carrying that?” asked Tej, gesturing to the stunner.
“Last resorts. Come on. Everyone’s in ahead of us, and I doubt they’ll wait.”
Tej walked around the pulley. “That’s new.”
“Yes, Dada’s idea. He says it’ll speed getting things up the shaft, and make it safer, too. No hand-tractors or grav lifts allowed, either.”
Tej considered their flimsy telescoping ladder, and nodded in relief.
Star stepped back to lock and block the outside door, then said, “All right, everybody in.”
Tej led the way to the ladder. Ivan Xav stopped short at the lip of the hole.
“Wait, we’re going down there?”
“Yes?”
“Underground?”
“Most tunnels are underground. Oh, no, Ivan Xav—I forgot about your claustrophobia thing. Why didn’t you say something? I’m sorry!”
“I do not have a claustrophobia thing. I have a perfectly rational dislike of being locked up in small, dark, wet spaces by people trying to kill me.”
“So you won’t, like, panic down there?”
“No,” he said curtly.
“Are you sure? Because you could stay up here and help by manning the pulley—I’d count that—”
Ivan Xav growled and swung down the ladder.
Tej followed; Star brought up the rear.
The vestibule was quite a bit larger than when Tej had last seen it. A bench had been added, now piled with assorted Arqua wristcoms, audiofilers, and something she was afraid might be a very illegal plasma arc. Star divested her own wristcom and stunner; Tej followed suit.
“Everything electronic or that has a power cell has to be left here,” whispered Tej. “And our shoes.” A long row of Arqua footgear was piled along one wall. Tej counted the pairs; everyone was here for the big moment. She could hardly blame them. Despite everything, her own breath came fast with excitement and anticipation.
Ivan Xav, an unjoyful expression on his face, pulled his slippers one by one from his jacket pockets and let them drop to the floor, which seemed much firmer underfoot than it had the other day; evidently Jet was right about the curing rate for the Mycoborer tubes. After a long hesitation, Ivan Xav pulled off his wristcom and emptied his pockets of forbidden gizmos, including his car and door remotes and that neat military stunner that Tej had first met on Komarr. Tej and Star each picked up a spare cold light from a box at the end of the bench. Ivan Xav followed their example, then, after a narrow glance at Tej, proceeded to stuff his pockets with more.
Tej bit her tongue on any comment. It wouldn’t hurt anything. He could return the unused ones later.
Star handed out hospital masks and plastic gloves all around.
“What the hell?” said Ivan Xav.
“It’s all right,” said Tej. “You just don’t want live Mycoborer stuff to rub on your skin. Or get in your lungs, I guess.”
“And you people turned this crap loose on my planet? That is not my definition of all right. If it’s that nasty, I’d want a full biotainer suit.”
“Well, this is what Grandmama said to use, and she should know. And we’ve been running in and out of here for days with just this, and nothing’s happened to us.”
Ivan Xav stared at Tej with new alarm, as if he expected to see flesh-eating fungus start spreading all over her skin on the spot. His gaze flicked to Star with equal curiosity, if somewhat less concern.
“You don’t have to come along,” added Star. “Nobody invited you.”
Ivan Xav donned the gloves and yanked the mask up over his face. His deep brown eyes, Tej discovered, could glower quite fiercely all on their own, without any help from his mouth.
Tej held up her cold light and started down the tunnel. She whispered over her shoulder, “From this point on, as little talking as possible.”
“Right,” Ivan Xav whispered back.
The tunnel, too, seemed slightly larger in diameter than before. Ivan Xav didn’t even have to duck his head, although he did anyway. He was very careful not to touch or brush the walls in passing. He plainly did not like the sitting and sliding around the two bendy parts at all. He held up his cold light to the occasional random appendix-holes, his brow furrowing in disapproval. Tej tried not to feel defensive. She hadn’t invented the Mycoborer.
A wide place in the passage was impeded by a big pile of dirt, a few pale bones, and a tattered backpack with electronic parts spilling out of it.
“I thought Grandmama was going to make Jet and Amiri clean this up,” Tej whispered to Star, stepping carefully around it.
“They did,” whispered Star back. “But something shifted when we were out today, and this all came spilling out of the wall again. Dada says Jet has to come back and clean it up again before we start hauling goods out.”
“What the hell is this…?” whispered Ivan Xav sharply, holding his cold light down to illuminate the pile. The bones sprang out in harsh relief.
“It’s poor Sergeant Abelard,” Tej whispered back. “I didn’t actually find that dog-tag necklace on the floor of a garage. He was wearing it.”
Ivan Xav knelt, staring wide-eyed, not touching.
“He was in a collapsed tunnel that our tunnel crossed. Or at least his foot was; Jet made the hole. I didn’t think that was such a good idea, but, you know, brothers. Well, I suppose you don’t know brothers. Guys, then.”
Ivan Xav’s hand turned up a flap of backpack, then drew back.
“I do not have claustrophobia,” he…well, it was still a whisper, but it had a lot of snarl in it. It seemed he actually did possess emotional range beyond peeved. “I do, however, have a quite active unexploded bombs phobia. This could be—anything. Unstable, for example. Are you people insane?”
“It can’t be too unstable,” said Star, unsympathetically. “It didn’t go off when it fell in here, and it didn’t go off when Pidge tripped over it and kicked it a bit ago. I wouldn’t play with it, mind, but it’s not going to do anything spontaneous, I don’t think.”
Unlike Ivan Xav, who looked quite close to something spontaneous, possibly combustion. But he just stood up and waved them on.
Their next check was at a point where the Mycoborer tunnel split into five channels. Three of them wrapped around a large-diameter pipe, from which the sound of rushing water filtered faintly. Ivan stared at it, listening, then shook his head. He muttered something that sounded like, Oh, sure, of course there’s water, but didn’t expand.
“Uh, which way?” Tej asked Star. She hadn’t made it quite this far the other day; but neither had the Mycoborer.
Star counted, then pointed. “That one.”
They trudged after her, slippered feet shuffling. After a number of meters and a few kinks, but no more loop-the-loops, a faint viridescent glow showed up ahead. They rounded one more bend and climbed a slope to find a new vestibule, brightly lit by wavering cold lights, dead-ended against a flat wall and full of silent, milling Arquas.
Dada and the Baronne looked around and spotted Ivan Xav. “Tej!” whispered the Baronne, with a shocked gesture at her Barrayaran.
“It’s all right,” Tej whispered, coming over to them. “He’s with me.”
Dada scowled. “But is he with us?”
“He will be,” she promised. Ivan Xav smiled tightly behind his mask, but did not gainsay her. Yet.
Amiri was just fitting some sort of hand-pumped suction device to an oval in the wall showing signs of work by cutting fluid and maybe something more physical. He motioned Jet forward; shoulders straining, they shifted the slab out of the wall and let it down slowly and silently.
Amiri tossed in a couple of cold lights—Tej could hear them hit something and roll to a stop—adjusted his mask, and stuck his head through. Nine other Arquas, a ghem Estif, and one Vorpatril held their breaths. Or was that, eight other Arquas, one ghem Estif, and two Vorpatrils…?
“What can you see?” demanded Dada. His hand reached out to clasp the Baronne’s. She gripped back just as hard.
Amiri’s voice floated back: “Marvelous things!”