Chapter Twenty
The afternoon sun warmed the consulate's back garden, murmurous with creatures. Gyre preened and muttered on his perch. The chickens scratched in the grass or dozed in their nest boxes. The sphinx nosed and mumbled among the flower beds, occasionally sneezing just like Jin's mom. Gracing the tabletop, the turtle slowly crunched a piece of lettuce, donated from Mina's lunch salad. Lucky sat in Jin's mother's lap and purred, unsheathing her claws whenever the stroking hand stopped, apparently demanding to be petted bald. Granted that the rats, let out for a run earlier and then fed special tidbits, just curled up and slept in their cages, but then they never made much noise in the first place. It was all very alive out here, Jin thought with satisfaction.
They had brought out a table to eat lunch under a tree, Mom and Jin and Mina and Consul Vorlynkin, and Aunt Lorna, invited for the first time to visit her revived sister. Jin had been horrified when he'd learned she was coming, but since she wanted him back in her household quite as little as he wanted to go there, they'd actually ended up on the same side, in a weird sort of way. She still seized the chance to chide him for running off. Both times.
"She's right, Jin," his mother endorsed this. "They were all very upset when they didn't know what had happened to you. You might have been killed, for all she and your uncle knew."
"But if I hadn't run away," Jin said, "I'd never have met Miles-san. And Mom would still be frozen."
Vorlynkin-san grinned at Aunt Lorna's flummoxed expression. "Unassailable logic, I'm afraid." He'd taken off his business coat in the warmth, and leaned back in his chair in his shirtsleeves, looking more relaxed than Jin had ever seen him. But then, most of the time he'd been following Miles-san around, and Miles-san had a way of un-relaxing people.
Miles-san and Armsman Roic had left yesterday, to board an orbital shuttle and catch a jumpship to Escobar, from where, Consul Vorlynkin had explained to Jin and Mina with the aid of a wormhole map, the Lord Auditor would transfer to a ship bound for the planets Sergyar and Komarr, and finally to Barrayar, where his real home was. The one with all those children and ponies, Jin supposed. Despite the steady procession of lawyers, police, and journalists into and out of the consulate, not to mention Jin and Mina and their mother and now relatives, Jin had to admit it had grown a lot quieter around here since the little man had left. It had all been very exciting for a time, but Jin wasn't sorry for the slow-down. In any case, the parade of people had been closely supervised by the consul, at his most formal and intimidating, not to mention Barrayaran and tall, and nobody had tried to take Jin's mother away again.
Mina had gone inside to go to the bathroom, but now the back door slammed open and she rushed out in excitement, a familiar box in her hands. Lieutenant Johannes followed warily, saying, "She'll be much happier returned to her natural habitat, I'm sure."
"Jin! Mommy!" said Mina. "Look! Lady Murasaki's babies all hatched!"
Their mother valiantly replied, "That's nice, dear," although Aunt Lorna winced. Mom stared down through the transparent lid, and added faintly, "My goodness, she has a lot of children, doesn't she? Perhaps it's time to move them to a larger home."
Like us? thought Jin. Let it be like us. He eyed Consul Vorlynkin in fresh speculation.
"Lieutenant Johannes says I have to put them all out in the garden." Mina frowned, evidently trying to decide if this was a good idea or not. Behind her, Johannes made motions that seemed to indicate he didn't want to share the consulate with a hundred active spiderlings, which Jin thought quite narrow-minded of him.
"Excellent notion," said Vorlynkin, tactfully. "I understand their webs look quite attractive in the morning light, after a heavy dew."
Jin embarked on a hasty tutorial about what kinds of spiders did and didn't spin webs, and the web designs of various species in relation to their prey, while Mina went off to find some especially pretty flowers on which to release the new family.
Johannes muttered to Vorlynkin, "When she shoved that box under my nose, I thought I was going to throw up."
Vorlynkin's eyes crinkled. "I didn't know you were arachnophobic, Trev."
"You realize, the garden is going to be swarming with those gigantic spiders?"
"Actually," said Jin, "the chickens will probably eat some of them."
Johannes eyed the chickens with approval for perhaps the first time ever.
"Don't tell Mina," Jin added.
"Wouldn't dream of it," said Johannes, and, after a polite nod at Jin's mother and aunt, went back inside.
Not five minutes later, the back door opened more sedately, and Raven-sensei strolled through. Jin had never been more glad for an interruption, as the grownups had started talking about Jin's missed school, and what was to be done about it, and how soon. Raven-sensei gave a general wave to everyone-Mina waved back enthusiastically-and came to a stop at the table, with a lift of his eyebrows at Aunt Lorna. "Ah. Sister-san?"
Jin didn't think Aunt Lorna looked that much like her older sister, being both shorter and rounder, with bobbed hair, and more peevish, although any peeve evaporated as she stared up, wide-eyed, at the Escobaran surgeon. Vorlynkin hastened to introduce them, and Aunt Lorna actually smiled and shook hands, and, when Raven-sensei turned away to greet Mina, whispered to her sister, "You didn't tell me your doctor looked like that."
"Decorative and functional," Mom murmured back. "His clinic has quite the reputation on Escobar, I'm told."
For a moment, Consul Vorlynkin frowned, as if worrying whether to try to look decorative or functional, but settled on diplomatic, which suited him better anyway.
Raven-sensei returned from admiring the spider family, and Jin, at a nod from his mother, gave up his chair to the new guest. This wasn't so bad, as Jin then went to lean on her shoulder, and she slipped her arm around his waist. Lucky, with a grumpy noise at the loss of the petting hand, jumped down.
"I thought you would like the word at once, Madame Sato," said Raven-sensei. "We retrieved Mr. Kang and Ms. Khosla last night, and I did both revivals this morning. Entirely uneventfully, I'm pleased to report. Both spoke briefly, and about as lucidly as could be expected, before I put them back to sleep. As soon as your head cold passes off, you may come down to the facility and see them."
Jin felt his mother's body tremble; her eyes squeezed shut in brief thanksgiving. "Thank you for your excellent work, Doctor."
"Truly," said Consul Vorlynkin. He tilted his head in concern at Jin's mother, but eased back in his chair again when she dabbed her eyes and relaxed. "How soon will they be able to speak to the lawyers and the police detectives?"
"They will, of course, have to stay in biological isolation for a few days, but I'd expect their recoveries to be almost as swift as Madame Sato's. They may be coherent enough to give depositions through the booth intercoms as early as tomorrow evening, but I told the authorities to come the following morning, to be sure."
"And their physical security, meantime?"
"Miss Koudelka has arranged that, as part of setting up security for the new clinic. She turns out to have a knack for that sort of thing. Did you know her mother used to be a bodyguard to the Emperor of Barrayar, when he was a child? ImpSec trained, I gather, and she passed it along in the family."
"Yes, I believe Lord Vorkosigan did say something about that, before he left. He does seem to know the most extraordinary range of people. Only to be expected, given his background."
"What is this Lord Unpronounceable you keep talking about, anyway?" asked Aunt Lorna.
"What, or who?" said Raven-sensei. "Although I gather that for him, the two are nearly inextricable."
"Either. Both."
"He investigates insurance fraud for somebody," Jin supplied. "His boss is named Gregor. He talks about him a lot."
Vorlynkin blinked; Raven-sensei laughed, and Jin twisted his toes in unease. "Isn't that right?" he asked.
"Well, yes," said Vorlynkin, smiling again. "Emperor Gregor Vorbarra, that is. But a Lord Auditor investigates all kinds of fraud and, er, other difficult situations that may arise that affect the Imperium, on the Emperor's direct orders. At the highest levels, generally, and with very little oversight."
"He once called himself the Emperor's stirrup-man," Raven-sensei confided. "I wasn't sure if that meant a guardsman who rides at his leader's side, or a man who holds the stirrup while he mounts. Very Barrayaran turn of phrase, though, I thought."
"Rides at his side is more correct," said Vorlynkin. "Although the other isn't out of line."
Jin's mother tilted her chin in interest. Aunt Lorna's eyes widened a bit.
"I didn't know he was that important," said Jin, thinking back to his first view of the tattered lost druggie. And a great deal of really strange behavior and babble subsequently. Miles-san had never acted at all high-nosed or stuffy. On the other hand, he'd never acted like the rules applied to him, either.
"His father, Count Aral Vorkosigan, is Viceroy of Sergyar," Vorlynkin explained to Jin's interested female relations, "and his mother, the famous Countess, is Vicereine in her own right-her title's a co-appointment, not a courtesy just because she's his wife. His viceroyalty caps a long career in service to the Imperium."
"Very hard act for Miles to follow, I gather," Raven-sensei put in.
Jin thought of his own father, frozen in time by his death more permanently than by any cryonic procedure. Jin would never be more than seven, in those fading memories. Never seventeen, or twenty-seven, or almost thirty-eight from the other side. What would it be like to have a father when you were both grownups at the same time? It seemed a strange, uncomfortable, tantalizing thought.
"Royalty?" asked Mina, who had drifted back to her mother's other elbow in time to hear this. "Is Miles-san's daddy some kind of prince?"
"A viceroy is a-hm," Vorlynkin paused as if to choose words especially for her. "Emperor Gregor can't be on all three worlds at once. So he stays on Barrayar, mostly, and sends people to represent him on the other two planets. The Imperial Counselor on Komarr, the Viceroy and Vicereine as a team on Sergyar. Same jobs, really, just under two different titles because the planets are rather different." He glanced at Jin's mother, as if to check how she liked this explanation about his home.
"So, they're like . . . deputy emperors?" asked Jin.
Vorlynkin's brows rose in approval. "Yes, actually. Except they are appointed, serve terms, and then stop. Emperor is a life sentence. So to speak." A wry smile crossed his lips.
"So Miles-san has an important job and an important family," said Mina, testing out these ideas. Jin wondered if she was thinking about those ponies.
Aunt Lorna grimaced. "Is his important relative why he was given the important job?"
"No," said Raven-sensei judiciously, "I expect Miles was given his job because he's a damned weasel. There's a reason ferret out means what it does. You have to have noticed that the man is a hyperactive lunatic, surely." With a fair-minded air, he added, "To the benefit of me and mine, to be sure."
"Well . . ." Vorlynkin trailed off vaguely. And diplomatically, Jin supposed.
Jin heaved a sigh. "I wish I might have ferret!"
Jin's mother choked; Vorlynkin glanced at her, and at Nefertiti who was now nosing among the violets, and put in, "You just got a-er-almost a lion, at least. Possibly enough wildlife wishes granted for the moment."
Mina twined her arms around her mother and rested her head on the maternal shoulder. Mom hugged her back. There's a wish, thought Jin. There's a real big wish, to have granted. Bigger than a ferret any day. Bigger than a lion, even.
Although-Jin had seen pictures-ferrets were really cute. Cute-and-furry was always an easier sell than carapaced-and-multilegged, for some obscure reason. Grownups, so unreasonable . . .
The grownups started talking about lawyers and lawsuits and NewEgypt's evil executives, all under arrest, and Mom's old political action committee and what would happen to it next, which they'd been doing nonstop for days, practically the whole week since Suze-san's place had almost been burned down, so Jin drifted away to watch Nefertiti. Mina, equally bored, followed him.
The sphinx was crouched down in the patch of purple and white violets.
"Oh, no!" cried Mina. "She's eating them!"
Jin, worried that the consul might be attached to his violets-thin green stems, at this point, mostly-grabbed the sphinx and dragged her away, scolding.
"Fud," mumbled Nefertiti, squashed lavender petals dribbling from her mouth.
"Vorlynkin-san!" Mina called in anxiety. "Will eating violets make Nefertiti sick?"
Jin's mother gulped in dismay, except that she was also laughing, but Vorlynkin seemed barely taken aback. "I shouldn't think so. Edible flowers are sometimes put on salads, and violets, I believe, are among them. They're also served candied. It would doubtless be prudent not to let her eat too many at a time, however."
Jin and Mina both slumped in relief, for slightly different reasons, perhaps. Vorlynkin-san knew all kinds of nifty things. And he smiled at Jin's mom. And Jin's mom smiled back, which wasn't something she'd done much, lately. He was actually an all-right-all-round sort of fellow, though he needed to be brought up to speed on zoolology, if he was . . . going to stick around.
So that's all right, thought Jin.
Miles selected a table at the edge of the balcony overlooking the Escobar transfer station's main concourse. From here, one had a doubly dizzying view, of the people passing two floors below, and of a broad slice of star-specked space and Escobar's rim, glowing with light and color, through the transparent wall above. He set out three coffee bulbs, took a seat, and gestured Roic to another.
The armsman accepted a coffee bulb but shook his head at the seat, preferring to lean against the balcony rail and gaze around, appearing, alas, exactly like a bodyguard trying to look like a tourist. Roic was not fond of these exposed positions. Miles always enjoyed this cafe, when passing through here-this addition to the station was about ten years old, he recollected.
Mark appeared, spotted him-well, Roic-waved, and trod over. Miles's commercial ship was not leaving for some hours, so Mark had delayed catching the hourly downside shuttle in favor of a few more minutes with his brother. Sharing the same ship from Kibou-daini had thrown them together for a longer stretch of time than they'd had in years, even if they'd both spent much of the time en route in their separate cabins devising detailed directives to send ahead to their respective associates. Busy and absorbed was, on the whole, good. Beat the hell out of insane and dead, for example.
Mark sat down, swept up the last bulb, popped the cap with his thumb, took a swig, and grimaced. When he had time, Mark was a bit of a gourmet, finicky in his tastes for food and drink. Miles didn't think the flavor was so bad, for transfer station bulb coffee. As a practical matter, you had to allow the modifiers.
"Sorry I'm late," said Mark. "At the last moment before disembarking, I got a message from Kareen, and I wanted to play it right away."
In the privacy of his cabin. Miles nodded understanding. Mark had left Kareen and Raven behind to start the set-up for the new Durona clinic, and incidentally keep an eye on the progress of Jin's affairs, while Mark went ahead to deal with the details on the Escobar end. The separation from his partner, temporary though it was, left him notably cranky. Miles thought of Ekaterin and sighed.
"News good or news bad?" Miles asked. Though if there were anything very bad, he should have received a tight-beam from Vorlynkin.
"Not bad. Kareen reports Raven successfully revived those two missing friends of Madame Sato's, and they've given some useful testimony to their authorities. Legal actions against NewEgypt proceed apace, by legal standards, which means glacially by human standards, but they are apparently moving in the right directions, so far. With the murder charges laid, the NewEgypt execs remain in custody. The locals accepted a plea bargain of some sort from your friend Oki, whatever you call it when you rat out your comrades in exchange for a lighter sentence." Mark didn't sound especially disapproving.
Roic, listening, raised his coffee bulb in salute and drank. Oki hadn't been the worst of the bunch, to be sure.
"I trust my name hasn't turned up in the proceedings," said Miles.
"They don't know you from a hole in the ground," Mark assured him, and grinned like a fat shark at his pained expression. "Did Kareen really have to sit on you to keep you from giving interviews?"
"That was a joke, and she knew it," Miles said austerely.
"Yeah, right."
"What's next for you?"
"I descend on the Durona Group with a long list of chores not in their prior schedule, much as you will when you hit home, no doubt. I hope to have the set-up team for our first off-Escobar satellite clinic assembled and on their way in a week. Fuwa's repairs are in hand, which is a relief; most contractors in my experience are only just barely faster than lawyers. Kareen says his work looks good so far, so we'll be able to employ his company some more. Seems the least I can do for the man."
"How little did you get him down to, that night?"
Mark gave a smug duck of his chin. "That's proprietary information. But to thwart seller's remorse, I plan to swing him a lot of construction business."
"Bet he'll try to pad his estimates."
"Oh, of course." Mark waved this away as a given.
Miles wondered if sending Mark to batten on Kibou-daini would prove adequate revenge for WhiteChrys's ploy on Komarr. On the whole, he thought it might.
"And you?" asked Mark. "Are you going straight back to Barrayar, or will you stop at Sergyar to see our parents?"
Miles rubbed his knuckles across his mouth, and frowned. "There was no chance to go downside on my outbound trip, of course. Though I did snatch twenty minutes to talk in real time with Mother, from the orbital transfer station."
"How was she?"
"No more harried than usual. I'd promised to stop on the way back, but my case ran a couple of weeks over what I'd initially planned-did that one to myself, true-and I might need to spend a few days on Komarr, setting up the trap for WhiteChrys with some folks, which also wasn't in my initial plan. So I may have to wait till they come home for Winterfair, if they do, this year. Will you and Kareen be coming home then?"
"Not sure yet."
"I was thinking you could pitch your new procedure to the Count-our-father in person."
"We'll see how good it's looking at that point. We might actually have some preliminary results. Or not."
A few passers-by turned their heads to stare at the two not-quite-twins, slouching, for the moment, in identical poses in their bolted-down chairs opposite each other. Miles studied his clone, in a little frisson of wonder he'd never quite lost.
"What?" said Mark, tilting his head in an invitation to be amused by his progenitor-brother's infamous babble.
"Thinking about the uncle we neither of us ever knew. Our father's older brother, who was killed in that same attack that took out our Barrayaran grandmother, in the opening salvo of Mad Yuri's war. He was in his mid-teens, I believe. I was thinking how strange it was that I had a brother I never knew till I was an adult, and our father had a brother everyone had forgotten by the time he was an adult. Were you ever told anything about him at all, when you were being trained about Barrayar?"
Mark shrugged. "Just a name. No time was spent on him, when there was so much else to learn."
"That's about all I've ever gotten from Da, either. A painful period of his life, I gather. Maybe if you and Kareen do Winterfair, we can tag-team him and get him to disgorge more. Because I'm thinking . . . there's hardly anyone else alive who knows anything about the fellow, by now."
Mark nodded. "It's a deal. If we come. Could be interesting. Or hair-raising."
"Or both. I sometimes wonder how different things would be if he'd lived. Our father would never have become the count, for one. Maybe not even Lord Vorkosigan, if his brother had managed to pop an heir before our grandfather died. He'd have spent his life as Lord Aral."
"I'll bet he'd still have had a military career, though," said Mark judiciously.
"Perhaps. Or perhaps, with the responsibility for our House taken up by someone else, he'd have felt freer to rebel. Do something else, be someone else."
"Huh," said Mark.
Miles fingered the holocube in his pocket. There was no point in pulling it out and showing it to Mark again, as he'd already done so. Twice. "You and Kareen planning kids yet? Not to mention marriage," Miles added in an afterthought. The couple's informal partnership, which would have been unremarkable on Beta Colony, had been a difficult pill for Kareen's very Barrayaran parents to swallow, but after several years the senior Koudelkas seemed pretty reconciled. And Kareen had three older married sisters, all of whom had sprung at least one sprog, so there wasn't the family pressure on her that there had been on, say, Miles.
"Children frighten me," Mark confessed. "You had your Da as a role model, but all I ever had growing up was an insane Komarran terrorist who spent all his time trying to train me to be you."
"Da spent a good bit of time trying to train me to be me, too," said Miles, "but it wasn't at all the same thing."
Mark snorted. "Indeed."
We can laugh about this now, sort of, Miles thought, pleased and bemused. What a journey that's been. "You'd have Kareen for a co-parent," Miles offered. "She's one of the sanest people I know."
"There is that," Mark admitted. "So what's your greatest terror, now you're a Da yourself?"
"What if . . ." Miles pulled at his hair, looking up cross-eyed to see if he could spot any of the sneaky gray ones, but this cut was still too short. "What if my children find out I'm not really a grownup? How dreadfully disappointed would they be?"
This time, Mark laughed out loud. It was a very good sound, Miles thought, and he grinned back ruefully at his brother.
"I think your wife already knows," said Mark.
"I'm afraid so." Miles rubbed his lips. "Heh. D'you think Vorlynkin and Madame Sato will make a match of it?"
"Good God, how would I know?"
"I thought he had that look in his eye. Not as sure about her . . ." Which gave Miles a rather comradely feeling toward Vorlynkin, now he considered it. He wished the man luck.
Roic stiffened, peering down into the concourse.
"What?" said Miles.
"There's Colonel Vorventa," Roic answered. "Wonder what he wants?"
Miles leaned toward the railing and craned to see. The Barrayaran officer was, among other duties, senior ImpSec liaison from the local Barrayaran embassy on this main transfer station; Miles had dealt with him before, though more often with his predecessors. The colonel looked up, saw Roic, then Miles, waved in a wait-right-there sort of fashion, and made for the lift tubes at the end of the concourse. "Us, I'll bet. Or me." ImpSec would have known when their ship was coming in, of course.
"You, I hope," said Mark. "I've had a few conversations with him. I don't think he trusts me."
"He's actually pretty cosmopolitan, for a Barrayaran," said Miles. "One of Da's New Men. Blast, I hope he's not bringing me more work."
It was a compelling and unwelcome notion. If some fresh forest fire involving Barrayar's interests had sprung up somewhere on this end of the Nexus, well, here was one of Gregor's most notable firemen already halfway there. Miles's lips twisted. No, I've just been! I want to go home now!
"That's funny," said Roic, in slow speculation. "I don't think I've ever seen him wearing his dress greens before."
Miles hadn't either. "That's true. He always wears local civvies, and tries to blend in."
Not today. Vorventa wore a high-necked military tunic in forest green, all his rank tags and decorations squarely in place, the green trousers with the red side-piping tucked neatly into mirror-polished riding boots, and a more inappropriate garb for a space station Miles could scarcely imagine. "Damn, but he looks shiny. Wonder what's up?"
"We'll find out in a minute," said Mark, turning in his chair to watch the officer make his way among the tables toward them.
Vorventa's steps slowed as he approached, and his eyes searched his quarry, though his face remained stiff. He halted at the table's side, cast Mark and Roic a grave nod, came to attention, and offered Miles a very formal salute, though Miles was in no kind of uniform at all except his gray trousers and jacket.
The messenger moistened his lips, and said, "Count Vorkosigan, sir?"
Aftermaths
A drabble is a story in exactly 100 words.
Aftermaths:
Five Views, in Drabbles
1 Mark.
Mark had once shot a man with a nerve disruptor; seen the surprised eyes go blank as the charge burned out the brain behind them. He didn't know why watching Miles take in the news of their father's death made that black memory surface. No buzz or crackle from a weapon here; just three quiet words.
It wasn't for hours, after the scramble to rearrange travel, that he realized he'd witnessed the truth. As if harnessed in tandem to the Count-his-father, Lord Vorkosigan had died in that moment, too, old life draining away along with the color from his face.
2 Miles.
Count Vorkosigan stared at his face in the mirror. "Fuck."
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck . . .
"Are you all right, m'lord?" called Roic from the fast courier's cabin.
"Of course I'm not all right, you idiot!" Miles snarled, and then, in a smaller voice, "Sorry. Sorry. I feel like my brain's been pulled out, and there's nothing in my skull but loose wires waving from my spinal cord. God. Why are we in a hurry now? Days too late?"
"The Countess, er, the Dowager Coun . . . your mother is waiting for you on Sergyar."
"Ah," said the Count. "Yes." And, "Sorry."
"We'll manage, m'lord."
3 Cordelia.
It wasn't Cordelia who'd found him, but it was she who'd decided. A brain aneurysm, a warm afternoon, two hours gone while the servants assumed the white-haired man had fallen asleep in his armchair, as he did after lunch these days.
Miles's voice was ragged. "Couldn't you have had him cryoprepped anyway? The technology might progress . . ."
"To wake without mind or memory, soul in tatters? He told me himself once; no man would want to live on like that."
Or else wake with the burden of his memories intact, hardly less a horror. Could Miles understand?
Ensign Dubauer, I'm sorry.
4 Ivan.
The state funeral ran for a grueling week. Ivan watched Miles mount the podium to present the eulogy. Gregor'd lent his best speechwriters; Miles had edited. Still, Ivan held his breath when Miles clutched the flimsies in a shaking fist and almost, almost cast them away to deliver his wounded words ex tempore.
Till his eye fell on his children, squirming and confused in the front row between their mother and grandmother. He hesitated, smoothed out the flimsies, began reading. The new Count's speech was everything it should be; many wept.
Ivan wondered what the old Miles would have said.
5 Gregor.
The interment at Vorkosigan Surleau was private, meaning a hundred or so people milling around. The grave was double but only one side dug; the earth waited like a bridal bed. The pallbearers were six: Ivan, Illyan, and Koudelka, of course; Duv Galeni for Komarr; Admiral Jole for Sergyar. And one other.
Lady Alys, to whom everyone owed their sanity, pointed out that Gregor's place was with the chief mourners.
"The man has carried me since I was five years old," answered the Emperor of Barrayar. "It's my turn."
Alys gave way as Gregor went to help shoulder the bier.
Miles Vorkosigan/Naismith:
His Universe and Times