Lois McMaster Bujold - 11 Memory

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Memory
Lois McMaster Bujold
CHAPTER ONE
Miles returned to consciousness with his eyes still closed. His brain seemed to smolder with the confused embers of some fiery
dream, formless and fading. He was shaken by a fearful conviction that he had been killed again, till memory and reason began to
place this shredded experience.
His other senses tried to take inventory. He was in null-gee, his short body stretched out flat, strapped to a surface and swathed
in what felt like a thin foil med wrap, standard military issue. Wounded? All limbs seemed present and accounted for. He was still
wearing the soft bodysuit that had lined his now-missing space armor. The straps were not tight. The complex scent of many-
times-refiltered air, cool and dry, tickled his nostrils. He secretly snaked an arm free, careful not to rattle the wrap, and touched
his bare face. No control leads, no sensors - no blood - where are my armor, my weapons, my command headset?
The rescue mission had been going as smoothly as such missions ever did. He and Captain Quinn and their patrol had
penetrated the hijackers’ ship, found the brig. Blasted through to the captured Barrayaran ImpSec courier officer, Lieutenant
Vorberg, still alive though addled with sedatives. The medtech had pronounced the hostage clear of mechanical or chemical
boobytraps, and they’d begun the exhilarating trip through the dark corridors back to the waiting Dendarii combat shuttle.
The hijackers, very much occupied elsewhere, had made no attempt to jump them. What went wrong?
The sounds around him were quiet: the bleep of equipment, the hiss of atmosphere recycling on normal operation, the murmur
of voices. One low animal moan. Miles licked his lips, just to be sure that noise wasn’t coming from himself. He might not be
wounded, but somebody nearby was not in good shape. A tangy whiff of antiseptics escaped filtration. He slitted open his eyes,
prepared to play unconscious again and think fast if he found himself in enemy hands.
But he was - safely, he hoped - in his own Dendarii Fleet combat shuttle, strapped to one of the four fold-down bunks toward
the rear of the fuselage. The emergency medical station was a familiar sight, though he didn’t usually see it from this angle of
view. Blue Squad’s medtech, his back to Miles, hovered by a bunk across the aisle that held another strapped-down form. Miles
couldn’t see any body bags. Only one other casualty. He have would added, Good, except that there weren’t supposed to be any
casualties.
Only one casualty, Miles corrected his thought. A violent headache throbbed at the base of his brain. But he bore no plasma
arc burns, no nerve-disrupter paralysis. No intravenous tubing or hypospray injector pierced his body, pumping in blood
replacements or synergine against shock. He did not float in a narcotic haze of painkillers, and no pressure bandages hampered his
slight movements. No sense-blockers. The headache felt like a post-stun migraine. How the hell could I have been stunned
through combat armor?
The Dendarii medtech, still combat-armored but with helmet and gloves off, turned and saw Miles’s open eyes. "You’re
awake, sir? I’ll notify Captain Quinn." He hovered briefly over Miles’s face, and flashed a light into his eyes, doubtless checking
for abnormal pupil response.
"How long... was I out? What happened?"
"You had some kind of seizure, or convulsion. No apparent cause. The field kit test for toxins didn’t turn up anything, but its
pretty basic. We’ll go over you more thoroughly as soon as we’re back to the ship’s sick bay."
Not dead again. Worse. This is still more of the leftovers from the last time. Oh, hell. What have I done? What have they seen?
He would rather have been - well, no. He would not rather have been nerve-disrupted. But almost. "How long?" Miles
repeated.
"The seizure seemed to last four or five minutes."
It had certainly taken more than five minutes to get from there to here. "Then?"
"You’ve been unconscious for about a half hour, I’m afraid, Admiral Naismith."
He’d never been out so long before. This was the worst attack ever, by far. He’d prayed the last one would be the last one.
Over two months had passed since his previous unwitnessed, brief collapse. Dammit, he’d been certain the new medication had
worked.
He made to free himself, fighting out of the heat wrap and bunk straps.
"Please don’t try to get up, Admiral."
"I have to go forward and get reports."
The medtech placed a cautious hand upon his chest, and pressed him back onto the bunk. "Captain Quinn ordered me to sedate
you if you tried to get up. Sir."
Miles almost barked, And I countermand that order! But they did not seem to be in the midst of combat now, and the tech had
a medically steely look in his eye, of a man prepared to do his duty whatever the risks. Save me from the virtuous. "Is that why I
was out so long? Was I sedated?"
"No, sir. I only gave you synergine. Your vital signs were stable, and I was afraid to give you anything else till I had some
better idea what we were dealing with."
"What about my squad? Are we all out? The Barrayaran hostage, did we get him out all right?"
"Everybody got out all right. The Barrayaran, um... will live. I retrieved his legs; there’s a good chance the surgeon will be
able to reattach them." The medtech glanced around, as if seeking comradely assistance.
"What? How was he injured?"
"Uh... I’ll call Captain Quinn for you, sir."
"You do that," growled Miles.
The medtech ducked away into free fall, and murmured urgently into an intercom on the far wall. He returned to his patient -
Lieutenant Vorberg? IVs were pumping plasma and medications into the man through sites on both an arm and his neck. The rest
was concealed by heat foil. At a light-signal from the forward bulkhead, the medtech hastily strapped himself into his station jump
seat, and the shuttle went through a quick series of accelerations, decelerations, and attitude adjustments, in preparation for
locking on to its mother ship.
Properly, upon docking the injured hostage was rushed out first. In two parts. Miles gritted his teeth in dismay at the sight of
the soldier clutching a large cold-container who followed the medtech and float pallet. There did not seem to be much blood
smeared around, though. Miles had just given up waiting for Quinn and was releasing himself from his medical restraints when
she appeared from the flight deck and floated down the aisle toward him.
She had doffed the helmet and gloves from her space armor, and pulled back her bodysuit’s hood to free her dark, sweat-
flattened curls. Her beautifully sculpted face was pale with tension, her brown eyes dark with fear. But his little three-ship fleet
could be in no immediate danger, or she would be attending to it, not to him. "Are you all right?" she asked hoarsely.
"Quinn, what - no. Give me a general status report first."
"Green Squad got the hijacked ships crew out. All of them. There was a bit of equipment damage - the insurance company’s
not going to be as ecstatic as the last time - but our Life Bonus is safe and warm."
"Praise be to God and Sergeant Taura. And our hijackers?"
"We took their big ship and nineteen prisoners. Three enemy killed. All secured there; our prize crew is aboard cleaning up.
Six or eight of the bastards escaped in their jump-pinnance. It’s weak on armament - this far from the nearest jump point, the Ariel
can overtake them at our leisure. Your decision, whether to stand off and blow them up, or attempt capture."
Miles rubbed his face. "Interrogate those prisoners. If this is the same bloody-handed lot that took the Solera last year, and
murdered all the passengers and crew, Vega Station will pay a reward, and we can collect three times for the same mission. Since
the Vegans are offering the same reward for the proof of their deaths, record everything carefully. We’ll demand surrender.
Once." He sighed. "I take it things did not run exactly according to plan. Again."
"Hey. Any hostage-rescue ploy that gets everyone out alive is a success by any sane standard. Assuming our fleet surgeon
doesn’t reattach your poor Barrayaran’s legs left-to-right or backwards, this is a one-hundred-percenter."
"Er... yes. What happened when... I went down? What happened to Vorberg?"
"Friendly fire, unfortunately. Though it didn’t seem all that friendly at the time. You fell over - surprised the hell out of us.
Your suit emitted a lot of garbage telemetry, then your plasma arc locked on." She raked her hands through her hair.
Miles glanced at the heavy-duty plasma arc built into the right arm of Quinn’s space armor, twin to his own. His heart sank
into his churning stomach. "Oh, no. Oh, shit. Don’t tell me."
"I’m afraid so. You kneecapped your own rescuee. Neat as could be, right across both legs. Luckily - I guess - the beam
cauterized as it sliced, so he didn’t bleed to death. And he was so tanked on drugs, I’m not even sure he felt much. For a moment I
thought some enemy had taken over remote control of your suit, but the engineers swear that isn’t possible anymore. You blew
out a bunch of walls - it took four of us to sit on your arm till we could take the medic’s can-opener to your armor and get in and
get you disconnected. You were thrashing around - you damn near took us out too. In pure desperation, I stunned you on the back
of your neck, and you went limp. I was afraid I’d killed you."
Quinn was a little breathless, describing this. Her lovely face was not, after all, the original, but a replacement after her own
violent encounter with plasma fire, over a decade ago. "Miles, what the hell was going on with you?"
"I think I had... some kind of seizure. Like epilepsy, except that it doesn’t seem to leave any neurological tracks. I’m afraid it
might be an aftereffect from my cryo-revival last year." You know damned well it is. He touched the twin scars on either side of
his neck, now grown faint and pale, the lesser souvenirs of that event. Quinn’s emergency stunner-treatment explained his lengthy
bout of unconsciousness and subsequent headache. So, the seizures were no worse than before....
"Oh, dear," said Quinn. "But is this the first - " She paused, and looked at him more closely. Her voice went flatter. "This isn’t
the first time you’ve done this, is it."
The silence stretched; Miles forced himself to speak before it snapped. "It happened three or four," or five "times soon after I
was brought back from stasis. My cryo-revival surgeon said they might go away on their own, the way the memory loss and the
shortness of breath have. And after that they seemed to stop."
"And ImpSec let you go out on a covert ops field mission with that kind of time bomb in your head?"
"ImpSec... does not know."
"Miles..."
"Elli," he said desperately, "they’d pull me right off line duty, you know they would. Nail my boots to the floor behind some
desk at best. Medical discharge at worst - and that would be the end of Admiral Naismith. Forever."
She froze, stricken.
"I figured if the seizures came back I’d try to solve ’em on my own. I thought I had."
"Does anybody know?"
"Not... very many. I didn’t want to chance it getting back to ImpSec. I told the Dendarii fleet surgeon. I swore her to secrecy.
We were working on a causal diagnosis. Haven’t got too far yet. Her specialty’s trauma, after all." Yes, like plasma arc burns, and
limb reattachment. At least Lieutenant Vorberg could not be in better or more experienced hands right now, even if he could have
been magically transported in an instant back to Barrayar’s own Imperial Military Hospital.
Quinn’s lips tightened. "But you didn’t tell me. Never mind our personal relationship, I’m your second in command on this
mission!"
"I should have told you. Obvious in hindsight." Blindingly.
Quinn glanced up the fuselage of the shuttle, where a medtech from the Peregrine was wrestling a float pallet in through the
hatch. "I still have some mopping up to supervise. You’re going to stay in the frigging sick bay till I get back, right?"
"I’m back on track now! It could be months till it happens again. If ever."
"Right?" Quinn repeated through her teeth, with an open glare at him.
He thought of Vorberg, and deflated. "Right," he muttered.
"Thank you," she hissed.
He scorned the float pallet, insisting on walking, but otherwise followed the medtech, feeling horribly subdued. I’m losing
control of this....
As soon as Miles arrived in sick bay, an anxious tech administered a brain scan, drew blood, took samples of every fluid his
body could be made to exude, and rechecked every vital sign he possessed. After that, there was not very much to do but wait for
the surgeon. Miles withdrew discreetly into a small examining room, where his batman brought him his ship uniform. The man
seemed inclined to hover solicitously and Miles, irritated, sent him away.
This left Miles alone in a quiet room with nothing to do but think, possibly a tactical error. Quinn could be trusted with the
mopping up, or why else had he made her his second? She had taken over competently enough the last time he had been violently
removed from his chain of command, his chest blown out by that sniper’s needle grenade on the mission to Jackson’s Whole.
He pulled up and fastened his gray trousers, and studied his torso, his fingers tracing the wide spidery burst of scars fading on
his skin. The Jacksonian cryo-revival surgeon had done a superb job. His new heart and lungs and assorted other organs were
nearly fully grown now, entirely functional. With the latest additions, the brittle bones that had plagued him since his defective
birth were almost completely replaced by synthetics throughout his body. The cryo-surgeon had even straightened his spine while
she was at it; there was barely a hint left of the hunchback curvature that, along with his dwarfish stature, had made his fellow
Barrayarans snigger Mutant! when they thought he could not hear. He’d even gained a couple more centimeters in height out of
the deal, an expensive little bonus, but it mattered to him. The fatigue didn’t show. To the outward eye, he was in better physical
shape than he’d ever been in his nearly thirty years of life.
There’s just one little hitch.
Of all the threats that had ever shadowed his hard-won career, this was the most elusive, the least expected, the most fatal.
He’d worked with impassioned concentration, overcoming all doubts as to his physical disabilities, winning his way to premier
status as Barrayaran Imperial Security’s most creative galactic affairs agent. Where the Barrayaran Empire’s regular forces could
not reach, past barriers of politics and distance in the chaining network of wormhole jump routes that strung the galaxy together, a
supposedly independent mercenary outfit might pop up unimpeded. Miles had spent a decade perfecting his cover identity of
"Admiral Naismith," self-styled leader of the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet. Daring Rescues Our Specialty.
Such as the current mission. The grotty crew of hijackers had run seriously out of luck the day they’d stolen an unarmed
freighter of Zoave Twilight’s planetary registry, and found what they thought was the prize in the package in the form of a
Barrayaran Imperial Courier, covertly transporting credit chits and vital diplomatic information. If they’d had any sense of self-
preservation at all, they should have returned Lieutenant Vorberg and his packets, undamaged and unexamined, immediately to
the nearest drop-point, with profuse apologies.
Instead, they’d tried to sell him to the highest bidder. Slay them all, ImpSec Chief Simon Illyan had muttered. The Devil will
recognize his own. Then he’d delegated the details to Miles. The Emperor did not approve of unauthorized persons impeding his
couriers. Or torturing them, or attempting to market them like high-information-density slabs of meat. This was one mission
where, although the Dendarii Fleet’s official sponsor was the insurance company covering the Zoave Twilight ship, it wouldn’t
hurt to reveal that their co-backer was the Barrayaran Empire. Good publicity, for the protection of the next courier to run into
similar bad luck.
Assuming it was luck. Miles itched to go oversee the interrogation of the prisoners; Illyan’s second sharpest concern after the
retrieval of Vorberg alive was to determine if the courier had been kidnapped by accident or on purpose. If on purpose...
somebody had some internal investigating to do. In all, Miles was extremely glad that sort of messy job did not fall into his area of
expertise.
The surgeon, still dressed in her sterile garb, entered at last. She put her hands on her hips, stared at Miles, and sighed. She
looked tired.
"How’s the Barrayaran?" Miles ventured. "Will, um... he recover?"
"He’s not too bad. The cuts were very clean, and luckily just below the knee joints, which saved a world of complications.
He’ll be about three centimeters shorter after this."
Miles winced.
"But he’ll be on his feet by the time he gets home," she added, "assuming that takes about six weeks."
"Ah. Good." But suppose the random blare of the plasma arc had taken Vorberg through the knees. Or about a meter higher,
cutting him in half. There were limits to the miracles even his Dendarii surgical expert could perform. It would not have been a
career high point, after Miles had airily assured his ImpSec chief that he could rescue Vorberg with scarcely a ripple in his
routine, to return him packed in a body bag. Two body bags. Miles felt faint with a weird mixture of relief and horror. Oh, God,
I’m going to hate explaining this to Illyan.
The surgeon studied Miles’s scans, muttering medical incantations. "We’re still on baseline, here. No obvious abnormalities
show up. The only way I can get any leverage into this is to have you monitored while you undergo an attack."
"Hell, I thought we did every kind of stress and electroshock and stimulus known to science, to try to trigger something in the
lab. I thought the pills you gave me had brought it under control."
"The standard anticonvulsant? Were you taking it properly?" She eyed him suspiciously.
"Yes." He bit back more profane protestations. "Have you thought of something else to try?"
"No, which is why I gave you that monitor to wear around." Her glance around the examining room did not disclose the
device. "Where is it?"
"In my cabin."
Her lips thinned in exasperation. "Let me guess. You weren’t wearing it at the time."
"It didn’t fit under my combat armor."
Her teeth clenched. "Couldn’t you have at least thought to - to disable your weapons?"
"I could hardly be of use to my squad in an emergency, disarmed. I might as well have stayed aboard the Peregrine."
"You were the emergency. And you certainly should have stayed aboard the Peregrine."
Or back on Barrayar. But securing Vorberg’s person had been the most critical part of the operation, and Miles was the only
Dendarii officer ImpSec entrusted with the Barrayaran Imperial recognition codes. "I - " He bit his tongue on futile defenses, and
started over. "You are quite correct. It won’t happen again, until... we get this straightened out. What do we do next?"
She opened her hands. "I’ve run every test I know. Obviously, the anticonvulsant isn’t the answer. This is some kind of
idiosyncratic cryonic damage on a cellular or subcellular level. You need to get your head to the highest-powered cryo-neurology
specialist you can find."
He sighed, and shrugged into his black tee shirt and gray uniform jacket. "Are we done for now? I urgently need to supervise
prisoner interrogation."
"I suppose." She grimaced. "But do us all a favor. Don’t go armed."
"Yes, ma’am," he said humbly, and fled.
CHAPTER TWO
Miles sat before the secured comconsole in his cabin aboard the flagship Peregrine, composing what seemed like his
thousandth classified field report to the Chief of Barrayaran Imperial Security, Simon Illyan. Well, it wasn’t the thousandth, that
was absurd. He couldn’t have averaged more than three or four missions a year, and he’d been at it less than a decade, really,
since the Vervain invasion adventure had made it all official. Less than forty assignments. But he could no longer name the actual
number offhand without stopping to think, and add them all up, and it wasn’t an effect of lingering cryo-amnesia, either.
Keep organizing, boy. His personal synopsis needed to be no more than a brief guide to the appendices of raw data, drawn
from the Dendarii Fleet’s own files. Illyan’s intelligence analysts liked having lots of raw data to chew upon. It kept them
occupied, down in their little cubicles in the bowels of ImpSec headquarters at Vorbarr Sultana. And entertained too, Miles
sometimes feared.
The Peregrine, the Ariel, and the rest of "Admiral Naismith’s" select battle group now orbited the planet of Zoave Twilight.
His fleet accountant had turned in a busy couple of days, settling up with the insurance company who finally had their freighter
and crew back, applying for salvage fees for the hijacker’s captured ships, and filing the official claims for bounty to the Vega
Station Embassy. Miles entered the costs/returns spreadsheets in full into his report, as Appendix A.
The prisoners had been dumped downside, for the Vegan and Zoavan governments to divide between them - preferably in the
same sense as poor Vorberg had been. The ex-hijackers were a vile crew. Miles was almost sorry the pinnace had surrendered.
Appendix B was copies of the Dendarii recordings of the prisoner interrogations. The downside governments would get an edited
version of these, with most of the Barrayar-specific queries and answers deleted. Lots of criminal testimony, of little direct interest
to ImpSec, though the Vegans ought to be pretty excited about it.
The important thing from Illyan’s point of view was that no evidence had been extracted which would indicate that the
kidnapping of the Barrayaran courier was anything but an accidental side effect of the hijacking. Unless - Miles made sure to note
this in his synopsis - that information had been known only to those hijackers who had been killed. Since that number included
both their so-called captain and two of the higher-ranking officers, there were enough possibilities in this direction to keep
Illyan’s analysts earning their pay. But that lead must now be traced from the other end, through the House Hargraves
representatives who had been trying to handle the sale or ransom of the courier for the hijackers. Miles hoped cordially that
ImpSec would focus its best negative attentions upon the Jacksonian semicriminal Great House. Though House Hargraves’s
agents had been extremely, if unwittingly, useful in helping the Dendarii set up their raid.
Illyan ought to like the accountant’s report. The Dendarii had not only succeeded in keeping their costs under budget this time
- for a change - they had made a truly amazing profit. Illyan, who had been willing to spend Imperial marks like water on the
principle of the thing, had got his courier officer retrieved effectively for free. Are we good, yes?
So - when was the so-efficient ImpSec Lieutenant Lord Miles Vorkosigan finally going to get that longed-for promotion to
captain? Odd, how Miles’s Barrayaran rank still seemed more real to him than his Dendarii one. True, he had proclaimed himself
an admiral first and then earned it later, instead of the more normal other way around, but at this late date no one could say he had
not really become what he had once pretended to be. From the galactic point of view, Admiral Naismith was solid all the way
through. Everything he advertised himself as being, he really was, now. His Barrayaran identity was simply an extra dimension.
An appendix?
There’s no place like home.
I didn’t say there was nothing better. I just said there was nothing like it.
This brought him to Appendix C, which was the Dendarii combat armor recordings of the actual penetration and hostage
retrieval sequences, Sergeant Taura’s Green Squad and its rescue of the freighter’s crew, and his own Blue Squad and that
whole... chain of events. In full sound and color, with all their suits’ medical and communications telemetry. Morbidly, Miles ran
through all the real-time records of his seizure and its unfortunate consequences. Suit #060’s vid recording had some really great
close-ups of Lieutenant Vorberg, shocked from his doped stupor, screaming in agony and toppling unconscious in one direction
while his severed legs fell in the other. Miles found himself bent over, clutching his chest in sympathy.
This was not going to be a good time to pester Illyan for a promotion.
The convalescent Vorberg had been handed over yesterday to the Barrayaran Counsel’s office on Zoave Twilight, for
shipment home through normal channels. Miles was secretly grateful that his covert status had let him off the hook for going into
sick bay and personally apologizing to the man. Before the plasma arc accident Vorberg had not seen Miles’s face, concealed as it
had been by the combat armor’s helmet, and afterwards, of course... The Dendarii surgeon reported Vorberg had only the haziest
and most confused memory of his rescue.
Miles wished he could delete the entire Blue Squad record from his report. Impractical, alas. Having the most interesting
sequence missing would draw Illyan’s attention as surely as a signal fire on a mountaintop.
Of course, if he deleted the entire appendix, all the squad records, it would be camouflaged in the general absence....
Miles considered what could replace Appendix C. He had written plenty of brief or vague mission synopses in the past, in the
press of events or exhaustion. Due to a malfunction, the right-arm plasma arc in Suit #032 locked into the "on" position. In the
several minutes of confusion surrounding correcting the malfunction, the subject was unfortunately hit by the plasma beam.... Not
his fault, if the reader construed this as a malfunction in the suit and not its wearer.
No. He could not lie to Illyan. Not even in the passive voice.
I wouldn’t be lying. I’d just be editing my report for length.
It couldn’t be done. He’d be sure to miss some tiny corroborative detail in one of the other files, and Illyan’s analysts would
pick it up, and then he’d be in ten times the trouble.
Not that there was that much in the other sections pertinent to this brief incident. It wouldn’t be that hard to run over the whole
report.
This is a bad idea.
Still... it would be interesting practice. He might have the job of reading field reports someday, God forbid. It would be
educational to test how much fudging was possible. For his curiosity’s sake, he recorded the full report, made a copy, and began
playing around with the copy. What minimum alterations and deletions were required to erase a field agent s embarrassment?
It only took about twenty minutes.
He stared at the finished product. It was downright artistic. He felt a little sick to his stomach. This could get me cashiered.
Only if I got caught. His whole life felt as if it had been based on that principle; he’d outrun assassins, medics, the regulations
of the Service, the constraints of his Vor rank... he’d outrun death itself, demonstrably. I can even move faster than you, Illyan.
He considered the present disposition of Illyan’s independent observers in the Dendarii fleet. One was detached back with the
fleet’s main body; the second posed as a comm officer on the Ariel. Neither had been aboard the Peregrine or out with the squads;
neither could contradict him.
I think I’d better think about this for a while. He classified the doctored version top secret and filed it beside the original. He
stretched to ease the ache in his back. Desk work did that to one.
His cabin door chimed. "Yes?"
"Baz and Elena," a woman’s voice floated through the intercom.
Miles cleared his comconsole, slipped his uniform jacket back on, and released the door lock. "Enter." He turned in his station
chair, smiling a little, to watch them come in.
Baz was Dendarii Commodore Baz Jesek, chief engineer of the Fleet and Miles’s nominal second-in-command. Elena was
Captain Elena Bothari-Jesek, Baz’s wife, and current commander of the Peregrine. Both were among the few fellow Barrayarans
the Dendarii employed, and both were fully apprised of Miles’s dual identity as Admiral Naismith, slightly renegade Betan
mercenary, and Lieutenant Lord Miles Vorkosigan, dutiful Barrayaran ImpSec covert ops agent, for both predated the creation of
the Dendarii Fleet itself. The lanky, balding Baz had been in on the beginning of it, a deserter on the run whom Miles had picked
up and (in his private opinion) re-created. Elena... was another matter altogether.
She’d been Miles’s Barrayaran bodyguard’s daughter, raised in Count Vorkosigan’s household, and practically Miles’s foster
sister. Barred from Barrayaran military service by her gender, she had longed for the status of a soldier on her army-mad
homeworld. Miles had found a way to get it for her. She looked all soldier now, slim and as tall as her husband in her crisp
Dendarii undress grays. Her dark hair, clipped in wisps around her ears, framed pale hawk features and alert dark eyes.
So how might their lives have been different, if she had only said "Yes" to Miles’s passionate, confused proposal of marriage
when they were both eighteen? Where would they be now? Living the comfortable lives of Vor aristocrats in the capital? Would
they be happy? Or growing bored with each other, and regretting their lost chances? No, they wouldn’t even know what chances
they had lost. Maybe there would have been children.... Miles cut off this line of thought. Unproductive.
Yet somewhere, suppressed deep in Miles’s heart, something still waited. Elena seemed happy enough with her choice of
husband. But a mercenary’s life - as he had recent reason to know - was chancy indeed. A little difference in some enemy’s aim,
somewhere along the line, might have turned her into a grieving widow, awaiting consolation... except that Elena saw more line
combat than Baz did. As an evil plot, brooded upon in the recesses of Miles’s mind in the secrecy of the night-cycle, this one had
a serious flaw. Well, one couldn’t help one’s thoughts. One could help opening one’s mouth and saying something really stupid,
though.
"Hi, folks. Pull up a seat. What can I do for you?" Miles said cheerfully.
Elena smiled back, and the two officers arranged station chairs on the other side of Miles’s comconsole desk. There was
something unusually formal in the way they seated themselves. Baz opened his hand to Elena, to cede her the first word, sure sign
of a tricky bit coming up. Miles pulled himself into focus.
She began with the obvious. "Are you feeling all right now, Miles?"
"Oh, I’m fine."
"Good." She took a deep breath. "My lord - "
Another sure sign of something unusual, when she addressed him in terms of their Barrayaran liege relationship.
" - we wish to resign." Her smile, confusingly, crept wider, as if she’d just said something delightful.
Miles almost fell off his chair. "What? Why?"
Elena glanced at Baz, and he took up the thread. "I’ve received a job offer for an engineering position from an orbital shipyard
at Escobar. It would pay enough for us both to retire."
"I, I... didn’t realize you were dissatisfied with your pay grades. If this is about money, something can be arranged."
"It has nothing to do with money," said Baz.
He’d been afraid of that. No, that would be too easy -
"We want to retire to start a family," Elena finished.
What was it about that simple, rational statement that put Miles so forcibly in mind of the moment when the snipers needle
grenade had blown his chest out all over the pavement? "Uh..."
"As Dendarii officers," Elena went on, "we can simply give appropriate notice and resign, of course. But as your liege-sworn
vassals, we must petition you for release as an Extraordinary Favor."
"Um . . , I’m... not sure the Fleet’s prepared to lose my two top officers at one blow. Especially Baz. I rely on him, when I’m
away, as I have to be about half the time, not just for engineering and logistics, but to keep things under control. To make sure the
private contracts don’t step on the toes of any of Barrayar’s interests. To know... all the secrets. I don’t see how I can replace
him."
"We thought you could divide Baz’s current job in half," said Elena helpfully.
"Yes. My engineering second’s quite ready to move up," Baz assured him. "Technically, he’s better than I am. Younger, you
know."
"And everyone knows you’ve been grooming Elli Quinn for years for command position," Elena went on. "She’s itching for
promotion. And ready, too. I think she more than proved that last year."
"She’s not... Barrayaran. Illyan might get twitchy about that," Miles temporized. "In such a critical position."
"He never has so far. He knows her well enough by now, surely. And ImpSec employs plenty of non-Barrayaran agents," said
Elena.
"Are you sure you want to formally retire? I mean, is that really necessary? Wouldn’t an extended leave or a sabbatical be
enough?"
Elena shook her head. "Becoming parents... changes people. I don’t know that I’d want to come back."
"I thought you wanted to become a soldier. With all your heart, more than anything. Like me." Do you have any idea how
much of all this was for you, just for you?
"I did. I have. I’m... done. I know enough is not a concept you particularly relate to. I don’t know if the wildest successes
would ever be enough to fill you up."
That’s because I am so very empty....
"But... all my childhood, all my youth, Barrayar pounded into me that being a soldier was the only job that counted. The most
important thing there was, or ever could be. And that I could never be important, because I could never be a soldier. Well, I’ve
proved Barrayar wrong. I’ve been a soldier, and a damned good one."
"True..."
"And now I’ve come to wonder what else Barrayar was wrong about. Like, what’s really important, and who is really
important. When you were in cryo-stasis last year, I spent a lot of time with your mother."
"Oh." On a journey to a homeworld she’d once sworn passionately never to set foot upon again, yes...
"We talked a lot, she and I. I’d always thought I admired her because she was a soldier in her youth, for Beta Colony in the
Escobar War, before she immigrated and married your father. But once, reminiscing, she went into this sort of litany about all the
things she’d ever been. Like astrocartographer, and explorer, and ship’s captain, and POW, and wife, and mother, and politician...
the list went on and on. There was no telling, she said, what she would be next. And I thought... I want to be like that. I want to be
like her. Not just one thing, but a world of possibilities. I want to find out who else I can be."
Miles glanced covertly at Baz, who was smiling proudly at his wife. No question, her will was driving this decision. But Baz
was, quite properly, Elena’s abject slave. Everything she said would go for him too. Rats.
"Don’t you think... you might want to come back, after?"
"In ten, fifteen, twenty years?" said Elena. "Do you even think the Dendarii Mercenaries will still exist? No. I don’t think I’ll
want to go back. I’ll want to go on. I already know that much."
"Surely you’ll want some kind of work. Something that uses your skills."
"I’ve thought of becoming a commercial shipmaster. It would use most of my training, except for the killing-people parts. I’m
tired of death. I want to switch to life."
"I’m... sure you’ll be superb at whatever you choose to do." For a mad moment, Miles considered the possibility of denying
their release. No, you can’t go, you have to stay with me.... "Technically, you realize, I can only release you from this duty. I can’t
release you from your liege relationship, any more than Emperor Gregor can release me from being Vor. Not that we can’t... agree
to ignore each others’ existences for extended periods of time."
Elena gave him a kindly smile that reminded him quite horribly for a moment of his mother, as if she were seeing the whole
Vor system as a hallucination, a legal fiction to be edited at will. A look of centered power, not checking outside of herself for...
for anything.
It wasn’t fair, for people to go and change on him, while his back was turned being dead. To change without giving notice, or
even asking permission. He would howl with loss, except... you lost her years ago. This change has been coming since forever.
’You’re just pathologically incapable of admitting defeat. That was a useful quality, sometimes, in a military leader. It was a pain
in the neck in a lover, or would-be lover.
But, wondering why he was bothering, Miles went through the proper Vor forms with them, each kneeling before him to place
his or her hands between Miles’s. He turned his palms out and watched Elena’s long slim hands fly up like birds, freed from some
cage. I did not know I had imprisoned you, my first love. I’m sorry....
"Well, I wish you every joy," Miles went on, as Elena rose and took Baz’s hand. He managed a wink. "Name the first one after
me, eh?"
Elena grinned. "I’m not sure she’d appreciate that. Milesanna? Milesia?"
"Milesia sounds like a disease," Miles admitted, taken aback. "In that case, don’t. I wouldn’t want her to grow up hating me in
absentia."
"How soon can we go?" asked Elena. "We are between contracts. The Fleet’s scheduled for some downtime anyway."
"Everything’s in order in Engineering and Logistics," Baz added. "For a change, no postmission damage repairs."
Delay? No. Let it be done swiftly. "Quite soon, I expect. I’ll have to notify Captain Quinn, of course."
"Commodore Quinn," Elena nodded. "She’ll like the sound of that." She gave Miles an unmilitary parting hug. He stood still,
trying to breathe in the last lingering scent of her, as the door whispered closed behind them.
Quinn was attending to duties downside on Zoave Twilight; Miles left orders for her to report to him upon her return to the
Peregrine. He called up Dendarii Fleet personnel rosters upon his comconsole while he waited, and studied Baz’s proposed
replacements. There was no reason they shouldn’t work out. Promote this man here, move that one and that one to cover the
holes.... He was not, he assured himself, in shock about this. There were limits even to his capacity for self-dramatization, after
all. He was a little unbalanced, perhaps, like a man accustomed to leaning on a decorative cane having it suddenly snatched away.
Or a swordstick, like old Commodore Koudelka’s. If it weren’t for his private little medical problem, he would have to say the
couple had chosen their timing well, from the Fleet’s point of view.
Quinn blew in at last, trim and fresh in her undress grays, bearing a code-locked document case. Since they were alone, she
greeted him with a nonregulation kiss, which he returned with interest. "The Barrayaran Embassy sends you this, love. Maybe it’s
a Winterfair gift from Uncle Simon."
"We can hope." He decoded and unlocked the case. "Ha! Indeed. It’s a credit chit. Interim payment for the mission just
concluded. Headquarters can’t know we’re done yet - he must have wanted to make sure we didn’t run out of resources in the
middle of things. I’m glad to know he takes personnel retrieval so seriously. It might be me needing this kind of attention,
someday."
"It was you, last year, and yes he does," agreed Quinn. "You have to give ImpSec that much credit, at least, they do take care
of their own. A very old-Barrayaran quality, for an organization that tries to be so up-to-date."
"And what’s this, hm?" He fished the second item out of the case. Ciphered instructions, for his eyes only.
Quinn politely moved out of the line of sight, and he ran it through his comconsole, though her native curiosity couldn’t help
prompting a, "So? Orders from home? Congratulations? Complaints?"
"Well... huh." He sat back, puzzled. "Short and uninformative. Why’d they bother to deep-code it? I am ordered to report
home, in person, to ImpSec HQ, immediately. There’s a scheduled government courier ship passing through Tau Ceti, which will
lay over and wait for me - I’m to rendezvous with it by the swiftest possible means, including commercial carrier if necessary.
Didn’t they learn anything from Vorberg’s little adventure? It doesn’t even say, Conclude mission and... , it just says, Come. I’m
to drop everything, apparently. If it’s that urgent, it has to be a new mission assignment, in which case why are they requiring me
to spend weeks traveling home, when I’ll just have to spend more weeks traveling right back out to the Fleet?" A sudden icy fear
gripped his chest. Unless it’s something personal. My father - my mother... no. If anything had happened to Count Vorkosigan,
presently serving the Imperium as Viceroy and colonial governor of Sergyar, the galactic news services would have picked it up
even as far away as Zoave Twilight.
"What happens" - Quinn, leaning against the far side of the comconsole desk, found something interesting to study on her
fingernails - "if you collapse again while you’re traveling?"
"Not much," he shrugged.
"How do you know?"
"Er..."
She glanced up sharply. "I didn’t know psychological denial could drop so many IQ points over the side. Dammit, you’ve got
to do something about those seizures. You can’t just... ignore them out of existence, though apparently that’s exactly what you’ve
been attempting."
"I was trying to do something. I thought the Dendarii surgeon could get a handle on it. I was frantic to get back out to the fleet,
to a doctor I could trust. Well, I can trust her all right, but she says she can’t help me. Now I have to think of something else."
"You trusted her. Why not me?"
Miles managed a somewhat pathetic shrug. The palpable inadequacy of this response drove him to add placatingly, "She
follows orders. I was afraid you might try to do things for my own good, whether they were the things I wanted or not."
After a moment spent digesting this, Quinn went on a shade less patiently, "How about your own people? The Imperial
Military Hospital at Vorbarr Sultana is nearly up to galactic medical standards, these days."
He fell silent, then said, "I should have done that last winter. I’m... committed to finding another solution, now."
"In other words, you lied to your superiors. And now you’re caught."
I’m not caught yet. "You know what I have to lose." He rose and circled the desk to take her hand, before she started biting her
nails; they fell into an embrace. He tilted his face back, slipped an arm up around her neck, and pressed her down to his level for a
kiss. He could feel the fear, as suppressed in her as it was in him, in her quick breathing and somber eyes.
"Oh, Miles. Tell them - tell them your brains were still thawing out back then. You weren’t responsible for your judgments.
Throw yourself on Illyan’s mercy, quick, before it gets any worse."
He shook his head. "Any time up to last week, that might have worked, maybe, but after what I did to Vorberg? I don’t think it
can get any worse. I wouldn’t have any mercy on a subordinate who pulled a trick like that, why should Illyan? Unless Illyan...
isn’t presented with the problem in the first place."
"Great and little gods, you’re not thinking you can still conceal this, are you?"
"It drops out of this mission report quite neatly."
She pushed back from him, aghast. "Your brains did get frostbitten."
Irritated, he snapped, "Illyan cultivates his reputation for omniscience quite carefully, but it’s hype. Don’t let those Horus-eye
badges" - he mimed the ImpSec insignia by holding his circled thumb and fingers up to his eyes, and peering through owlishly -
"affect your mind. We just try to look like we always know what we’re doing. I’ve seen the secret files, I know how screwed up
things can really get, behind the scenes. That fancy memory chip in Illyan’s brain doesn’t make him a genius, just remarkably
obnoxious."
"There are too many witnesses."
"All Dendarii missions are classified. The troops won’t blab."
"Except to each other. The story’s all over the ship, half-garbled. People have asked me about it."
"Uh... what did you tell them?"
She shrugged a shoulder, angrily. "I’ve been implying it was a suit malfunction."
"Oh. Good. Nevertheless... they’re all here, and Illyan’s way over there. A vast distance. What can he learn, except through
what I tell him?"
"Only half-vast." Quinn’s bared teeth had little in common with a smile.
"Come on, use your reason. I know you can. If ImpSec was going to catch this, they should have done it months ago. All the
Jacksonian evidence has obviously escaped them clean."
A pulse beat in her throat. "There’s nothing reasonable about this! Have you lost your grip, have you lost your frigging mind?
I swear to the gods, you are getting as impossible to manage as your clone-brother Mark!"
"How did Mark jump into this discussion?" It was a bad sign, warning of a precipitous downhill slide in the tone of the debate.
The three most ferocious arguments he’d ever had with Elli were all over Mark, all recently. Good God. He’d avoided - mostly -
their usual intimacy this mission for fear of her witnessing another seizure. He hadn’t thought he could explain one away as a
really terrific new kind of orgasm. Had she been attributing his coolness to their lingering differences about his brother? "Mark
has nothing to do with this."
"Mark has everything to do with this! If you hadn’t gone downside after him, you would never have been killed. And you
wouldn’t have been left with some damned cryonic short circuit in your head. You may think he’s the greatest invention since the
Necklin drive, but I loathe the fat little creep!"
"Well, I like the fat little creep! Somebody has to. I swear, you are frigging jealous. Don’t be such a damned cast-iron bitch!"
They were standing apart, both with their fists clenched, breathing hard. If it came to blows, he’d lose, in every sense. Instead,
he bit out, "Baz and Elena are quitting, did you know that? I’m promoting you to Commodore and Fleet-second in Baz’s place.
Pearson will take over as Fleet engineer. And you will also be brevet captain of the Peregrine till you make rendezvous with the
other half of the Fleet. The choice of the Peregrine’s new commander will be your first staff appointment. Pick someone you
think you can tr... work with. Dismissed!"
Blast it, that was not how he’d intended to present Quinn with her longed-for promotion. He’d meant to lay it at her feet as a
great prize, to delight her soul and reward her extraordinary effort. Not fling it at her head like a pot in the middle of a raging
domestic argument, when words could no longer convey the weight of one’s emotions.
Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. "And where the hell do you think you’re going, without me as a bodyguard?" she bit
out. "I know Illyan gave you the most explicit standing orders that you’re not to travel alone without one. How much more career
suicide do you think you need?"
"In this sector, a bodyguard is a formality, and a waste of resources." He inhaled. "I’ll... take Sergeant Taura. That ought to be
enough bodyguard to satisfy the most paranoid ImpSec boss. And she’s certainly earned a vacation."
"Oh! You!" It was seldom indeed that Quinn ran out of invective. She turned on her heel, and stalked to the door, where she
turned back and snapped him a salute, forcing him to return it. The automatic door, alas, was impossible to slam, but it seemed to
shut with a snake-like hiss.
He flung himself into his station chair, and brooded at his comconsole. He hesitated. Then he called up the short mission file,
and ciphered it onto a security card. He punched up the long version - and hit the erase command. Done.
He stuffed the ciphered report into the code-locked pouch, tossed it onto his bed, and rose to begin packing for the journey
home.
CHAPTER THREE
The only two adjoining cabins left aboard the first Tau Ceti-bound jump-ship heading out of Zoave Twilight happened to be
premier-class luxury suites. Miles smiled at this misfortune, and made a mental note to document the security necessity for
Illyan’s accountants, preferably while pointing out what obscene profits the mission just completed had made. He pottered about,
taking his time putting away his sparse luggage, and waiting for Sergeant Taura to finish her meticulous security sweep. The
lighting and decor were serene, the beds were spacious and soft, the bathrooms individual and private, and they didn’t even have
to go out for food; unlimited room service was included in the stiff fare. Once the ship was space-borne, they would be in effect
inhabiting their own private universe for the next seven days.
The rest of the trip home would be much less inviting. At the Tau Ceti transfer station he would change uniforms and
identities, and step aboard the Barrayaran government vessel in the persona of Lieutenant Lord Miles Vorkosigan, ImpSec
courier, a modest young officer with the same rank and duties as the unlucky Lieutenant Vorberg. He shook out his Imperial
undress greens, and hung them up in a lockable cupboard along with the uniform boots, their shine protected in a sealed bag.
Courier officer always made an excellent cover-identity for Miles s wide-ranging travels to and from the Dendarii Fleet; a courier
never had to explain anything. On the debit side, the company aboard the next ship would be all-male, all-military, and, alas, all
Barrayaran. No bodyguard required. Sergeant Taura could split off to return to the Dendarii, and Miles would be left alone with
his fellow subjects of the Imperium.
From long experience, he anticipated their reaction to him, to his apparent undersized unfitness for his military duties. They’d
say nothing overt - it would be obvious to them that he held this cushy courier’s sinecure by virtue of some powerful nepotistic
string-pulling on the part of his father the Viceroy Admiral Count Vor-etcetera. It was exactly the reaction he desired, to maintain
his deep cover, and Lieutenant Vorkosigan the Dull would do nothing to correct their assumptions. His own slur-sensitive
antennae would fill in the blanks. Well, maybe the crew would include men he’d traveled with before, used to him by now.
He locked the cupboard. Let Lieutenant Vorkosigan and all his troubles stay out of sight and out of mind, for the next week.
He had more engaging concerns. His belly shivered in anticipation.
Sergeant Taura returned at last, and ducked her head through the open doorway between their two rooms. "All clear," she
reported. "No bugs found anywhere. In fact, no new passengers or cargo added at all since we booked passage. We’ve just left
orbit."
He smiled up, and up at her, his most unusual Dendarii trooper, and one of his best. No surprise that she should be good at her
job; she’d been genetically engineered for the task.
Taura was the living prototype of a genetic design project of dubious morality conceived and carried out, where else, on
Jackson’s Whole. They’d wanted a super-soldier, and they’d assigned a research committee to carry out the project. A committee
consisting entirely of biological engineers, and not one experienced soldier. They’d wanted something spectacular, to impress the
client. They had certainly achieved that.
When Miles had first encountered her, the sixteen-year-old Taura had reached her full adult height of eight feet, all of it lean
and muscular. Her fingers and toes were tipped with heavy claws, and her outslung mouth made fierce with fangs that locked over
her lips. Her body seemed to glow with the radiant heat of a burning metabolism that lent her unnatural strength and speed. That,
and her tawny golden eyes, gave her a wolfish air; when fully concentrated upon her work, her ferocious stare could cause armed
men to drop their weapons and throw themselves flat on the floor, a psychological-warfare effect Miles had actually witnessed, on
one delightful occasion.
Miles had long thought that she was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen, in her own way. You just had to be
able to see her properly. And unlike his blurred-together Dendarii missions, Miles could enumerate every rare occasion they had
ever made love, from their very first encounter, six, seven years ago now? From before he and Quinn had ever become a couple,
in point of fact. Taura was some kind of very special first for him, as he had been for her, and that secret bond had never faded.
Oh, they’d tried to be good. Dendarii regs against cross-rank fraternization were for the benefit of all, to protect the rankers
from exploitation and the officers from losing control of discipline, or worse. And Miles had been quite determined, as the young
and earnest Admiral Naismith, to set a good example for his troops, a virtuous resolve that had slipped away... somewhere. After
the umpteenth we’ve-lost-count-again time he had been almost killed, perhaps.
Well, if you couldn’t be good, at least you could be discreet.
"Very good, Sergeant." He held out a hand to her. "You may as well take a break - for the next seven days, eh?"
Her face lit; her lips drew back in a smile that fully exposed her fangs. "Really?" she said, her resonant voice thrilling.
"Really."
She trod over to him, her muscled mass making the deck creak slightly beneath her Dendarii combat boots, and bent to
exchange a promissory kiss. Her mouth, as always, was hot and exhilarating. The fangs might be a subliminal trigger to that
adrenaline rush, but mostly it was just the sheer wonderful... Taura-ness of her. She was life-relishing, experience-devouring,
living in an eternal Now, and for very good reasons.... He forced his mind away from a descending swoop on that future, or any
other, and curled his hand around the back of her head to loosen the neatly pinned-up braid of her mahogany hair.
"I’ll freshen up," she grinned, breaking away after a time. She twitched at her loosened gray uniform jacket.
"Enjoy the hell out of the bathing facilities," he advised cordially. "Its the most sybaritic setup I’ve seen since Dyne Station’s
Ambassadorial Baths."
He retreated to his own facility, to ditch uniform and rank insignia and to engage in a pleasant ritual of leisurely preparation,
involving depilation, cleanliness, and cologne. Taura deserved the best. She also deserved all the time she wanted. Seldom could
she shed the stern Sergeant, and reveal that feminine self shyly hidden on the inside. Seldom indeed could she trust anyone to
guard that vulnerability. The Fairy Princess, he thought of her. We all have our secret identities, it seems.
He dressed himself sarong-fashion in a prewarmed fluffy towel, and went to perch on his bed, waiting alertly. Had she
anticipated this private space together, and if so, what little garment would she bring out of her valise this time? She would insist
on trying out these would-be sexy numbers on him, not seeming to realize how like a goddess she was already when dressed in
nothing but her streaming hair. Well, all right, not streaming hair; left to its own devices it tended to go stiff and uncooperative
and frizzy, tickling his nose, but it looked good on her. He hoped she had managed to lose the horrifying pink thing with the red
feathers. It had taken all his tact, last time, to get across the idea that perhaps the color and design choice did not compliment her
best features, without ever once intimating any fault in her taste or personal appearance. She might be able to break him with one
hand, but he could kill her with a word. Never.
His own face lit with unabashed delight at her return. She was wearing something cream-colored and sleek and shimmery-
silky, meters of fabric so fine one might with little effort draw it through a ring. The goddess-effect was nicely enhanced, her
immense intrinsic dignity unimpaired. "Oh, splendid!" he caroled, with unfeigned enthusiasm.
"Do you really think so?" She spun for him; the silk floated outward, along with a spicy-musky scent that seemed to go
straight up his nostrils to his back-brain with no intervening stops. Her bare toes did not click on the floor - prudently, she had
trimmed and blunted all her nails, before painting them with gold enamel. He’d have no hard-to-explain need for stitches or
surgical glue this time.
She lay down beside him, their ludicrous height-difference obviated. Here at last they might fill their hunger for human, or
almost-human, touch until sated, without interruption, without comment.... He bristled defensively inside, at the thought of anyone
watching this, of some abrupt surprised bark of laughter or sarcastic witticism. Was his edginess because he was breaking his own
rules? He didn’t expect any outsider to understand this relationship.
Did he understand it himself? Once, he might have mumbled something about the thrill, an obsession with mountain climbing,
the ultimate sex fantasy for a short guy. Later, maybe something about a blow for life against death. Maybe it was simpler than
that. Maybe it was just love.
He woke much, much later, and watched her as she slept. It was a measure of her trust, that his slight stirring did not bring her
hyper-awake, as her genetically programmed drives usually rendered her. Of all her many and fascinating responses, the fact that
she slept for him was the most telling, if one knew her inside story.
He studied the play of light and shadow over her long, long ivory body, half-draped with their well-stirred sheets. He let his
hand flow along the curves, a few centimeters from the surface, buoyed by the feverish heat rising from her golden skin. The
gentle movement of her breathing made the shadows dance. Her breathing was, as always, a little too deep, a little too fast. He
wanted to slow it down. As if not her days, but her inhalations and exhalations were numbered, and when she’d used them all up...
She was the last survivor of her fellow prototypes. They had all been genetically programmed for short lives, in part, perhaps,
as a sort of fail-safe mechanism, in part, perhaps, in an effort to inculcate soldierly courage, out of some dim theory that a short
life would be more readily sacrificed in battle than a long one. Miles did not think the researchers had quite understood courage,
or life. The super-soldiers had died fast, when they died, with no lingering years of arthritic old age to gradually wean them from
their mortality. They suffered only weeks, months at most, of a deterioration as fierce as their lives had been. It was as if they
were designed to go up in flame, not down in shame. He studied the tiny silver glints in Taura’s mahogany hair. They had not
been there last year.
She’s only twenty-two, for God’s sake.
The Dendarii fleet surgeon had studied her carefully, and given her drugs to slow her ferocious metabolism. She only ate as
much as two men now, not four. Year by year, like pulling hot gold wire through a screen, they had extended Taura’s life. Yet
sometime, that wire must snap.
How much more time? A year? Two? When he returned to the Dendarii next time, would she still be there to greet him, with a
proper, Hello, Admiral Naismith in public, and a most improper, not to mention rude and raucous, Howdy, Lover! in private... ?
It’s a good thing she loves Admiral Naismith. Lord Vorkosigan couldn’t handle this.
He thought a bit guiltily of Admiral Naismith’s other lover, the public and acknowledged Quinn. Nobody had to explain or
excuse being in love with the beautiful Quinn. She was self-evidently his match.
He was not, exactly, being unfaithful to Elli Quinn. Technically, Taura predated her. And he and Quinn had exchanged no
vows, no oaths, no promises. Not for lack of asking; he’d asked her a painful number of times. But she too was in love with
Admiral Naismith. Not Lord Vorkosigan. The thought of becoming Lady Vorkosigan, grounded downside forever on a planet she
herself had stigmatized as a "backwater dirtball," had been enough to send space-bred Quinn screaming in the opposite direction,
or at least, excusing herself uneasily.
Admiral Naismith’s love-life was some sort of adolescents dream: unlimited and sometimes astonishing sex, no
responsibilities. Why didn’t it seem to be working anymore?
He loved Quinn, loved the energy and intelligence and drive of her, their shared passion for the military life. She was one of
the most wonderful friends he’d ever had. But in the end, she offered him only... sterility. They had no more future together than
did he and Elena, bound to Baz, or he and Taura. Who is dying.
God, I hurt. It would be almost a relief, to escape Admiral Naismith, and return to Lord Vorkosigan. Lord Vorkosigan had no
sex life.
He paused. So... when had that happened, that... lack in his life? Rather a long time ago, actually. Odd. He hadn’t noticed it
before.
Taura’s eyes half-opened, honey-colored glints. She favored him with a sleepy, fanged smile.
"Hungry?" he asked her, confident of the answer.
"Uh huh."
They spent a pleasant few minutes studying the lengthy menu provided by the ship’s galley, then punched in a massive order.
With Taura along, Miles realized cheerfully, he might get to try a bite of nearly everything, with no embarrassing wasteful
leftovers.
While waiting for their feast to arrive, Taura piled pillows and sat up in bed, and regarded him with a reminiscent gleam in her
gold eyes. "Do you remember the first time you fed me?"
"Yes. In Ryoval’s dungeons. That repellent dry ration bar."
"Better rat bars than raw rats, let me tell you."
"I can do better now."
"And how."
When people were rescued, they ought to stay rescued. Wasn’t that the deal? And then we all live happily ever after, right?
Till we die. But with this medical discharge threat hanging over his head, was he so sure that it was Taura who would go first?
Maybe it would be Admiral Naismith after all.... "That was one of my first personnel retrievals. Still one of the best, in a sort of
cockeyed way."
"Was it love at first sight, for you?"
"Mm... no, truthfully. More like terror at first sight. Falling in love took, oh, an hour or so."
"Me, too. I didn’t really start to fall seriously in love with you till you came back for me."
"You do know... that didn’t exactly start out as a rescue mission." An understatement: he’d been hired to "terminate the
experiment."
"But you turned it into one. It’s your favorite kind, I think. You always seem to be especially cheerful whenever you’re
running a rescue, no matter how hairy things are getting."
"Not all the rewards of my job are financial. I don’t deny, it’s an emotional kick to pull some desperate somebody out of a
deep, deep hole. Especially when nobody else thinks it can be done. I adore showing off, and the audience is always so
appreciative." Well, maybe not Vorberg.
"I’ve sometimes wondered if you’re like that Barrayaran fellow you told me about, who went around giving everybody liver
pates for Winterfair ’cause he loved them himself. And was always frustrated that no one ever gave him any."
"I don’t need to be rescued. Usually." Last year’s sojourn on Jackson’s Whole having been a memorable exception. Except
that his memory of it had a big three-month blank in it.
"Mm, not rescue, exactly. Rescue’s consequence. Freedom. You give freedom away whenever you can. Is it because it’s
something you want yourself?"
And can’t have? "Naw. It’s the adrenaline high I crave."
Their dinner arrived, on two carts. Miles sent away the human steward at the door, and he and Taura busied themselves in a
brief domestic bustle, getting it all nicely arranged. The cabin was so spacious, the table wasn’t even fold-down, but permanently
bolted to the deck. Miles nibbled, and watched Taura eat. Feeding Taura always made him feel strangely happy inside. It was an
impressive sight in its own right. "Don’t overlook those little fried cheese things with the spicy sauce," he pointed out helpfully.
"Lots of calories in them, I’m sure."
"Thanks." A companionable silence fell, broken only by steady munching.
"Contented?" he inquired.
She swallowed a bite of something meltingly delicious formed into a dense cake in the shape of a star. "Oh, yes."
摘要：

MemoryLoisMcMasterBujoldCHAPTERONEMilesreturnedtoconsciousnesswithhiseyesstillclosed.Hisbrainseemedtosmolderwiththeconfusedembersofsomefierydream,formlessandfading.Hewasshakenbyafearfulconvictionthathehadbeenkilledagain,tillmemoryandreasonbegantoplacethisshreddedexperience.Hisothersensestriedtotakei...

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