Lois McMaster Bujold - Borders of Infinity

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BORDERS OF INFINITY
Lois McMaster Bujold
[31 jul 2001 - scanned for #bookz, proofread and
released - v1]
1
"You have a visitor, Lieutenant Vorkosigan." A little
glassy panic twitched in the normally matter-of-fact
corpsman's face. He stepped aside to let the man he
escorted enter Miles's hospital room. Miles caught a
glimpse of the corpsman retreating hastily even
before the door hissed shut behind the visitor.
Snub nose, bright eyes, and an open, mild expression
gave the man a false air of youth, though his brown
hair was greying at the temples. He was slight of
body, wore civilian clothes, and radiated no aura of
menace, despite the corpsman's reaction. In fact, he
had scarcely an aura at all. Work as a covert agent
in his early days had given Simon Illyan, Chief of
Barrayar's Imperial Security, a life-long habit of
being inconspicuous.
"Hi, boss," said Miles.
"You look like hell," Illyan noted agreeably. "Don't
bother saluting."
Miles snorted a laugh, which hurt. Everything seemed
to hurt except his arms, bandaged and immobilized
from shoulderblades to fingertips; they were still
numb from the surgical stunners. He wriggled his
hospital-gowned body further into his bedclothes,
futilely seeking comfort.
"How was your bone-replacement surgery?" asked Illyan.
"About what I expected, from having my legs done
before. The ugliest part was opening my right arm and
hand up to pick out all the bone fragments. Tedious.
The left went a lot faster, the pieces were bigger.
Now I get to sit around for a while to see if the
marrow transplants are going to take in their
synthetic matrix. I'll be a bit anemic for a while."
"I hope you are not going to make a habit of
returning from your mission assignments on a
stretcher."
"Now, now, this is only the second time that's
happened. Besides, eventually I'll run out of
unreplaced bones. By the time I'm thirty I could be
entirely plastic." Glumly, Miles considered this
possibility. If more than half of him became spare
parts, could he be declared legally dead? Would he
ever walk into a prosthetics manufacturing plant and
cry, "Mother!"? Were the medical sedatives making him
just a little spacey . . . ?
"About your missions," said Illyan firmly.
Ah. So this visit wasn't just an expression of
personal concern, if Illyan had ever owned any
personal concern. It was sometimes hard to tell. "You
have my reports," said Miles warily.
"Your reports, as usual, are masterpieces of
understatement and misdirection," said Illyan. He
sounded perfectly serene about it.
"Well . . . anybody might read 'em. You can't tell."
"Hardly 'anyone,' " said Illyan. "But just so."
"So what's the problem?"
"Money. Specifically, accountability for same."
Maybe it was the drugs he was stuffed with, but Miles
could make no sense of this. "Don't you like my
work?" he said rather plaintively.
"Apart from your injuries, the results of your latest
mission are highly satisfactory," began Illyan.
"They'd by-God better be," Miles muttered grimly.
" -- and your late, er, adventures on Earth, just
prior to it, are still fully classified. We will
discuss them later."
"I've got to report to a couple of higher authorities
first," Miles put in urgently.
Illyan waved this aside. "So I understand. No. These
charges date to the Dagoola affair, and before."
"Charges?" Miles muttered in bewilderment.
Illyan studied him thoughtfully. "I consider what the
emperor spends to keep up your connection to the
Dendarii Free Mercenaries to be worth it purely from
an internal security standpoint. Were you to be
permanently posted at, say, Imperial HQ here at the
capital, you'd be a damned plot-magnet all the time.
Not just for favor- and office-seekers, but for
anyone who wants to touch your father through you. As
now."
Miles squinted, as though focusing his eyes could
focus his thoughts. "Ah?"
"In brief, certain parties in Imperial Accounting are
going over your reports from your mercenary fleet's
covert ops with a microscope. They would like to know
in more detail where certain large packets of cash
have gone. Some of your equipment-replacement chits
have been outrageous. More than once. Even from my
point of view. They would very much like to prove an
on-going pattern of peculation. A court-martial
charging you with lining your own pockets at the
emperor's expense would be gloriously embarrassing
just now, for your father and his whole Centrist
coalition."
Miles exhaled, stunned. "Has it gone so far -- ?"
"Not yet. I fully intend to quash it before it gets
off the ground. But to do so I need more details. So
as not to get blindsided, as I have sometimes been in
your more tangled affairs -- still remember, if you
do not, spending a month in my own prison because of
you . . ." Illyan glowered into the past.
"That was part of a plot against Dad," Miles
protested.
"So is this, if I'm picking up the early signals
correctly. But Count Vorvolk in Accounting is their
front-man, and he is depressingly loyal, in addition
to having the emperor's personal, er, support.
Untouchable. But manipulatable, I fear. He's been
primed. He thinks he's being a watch-dog. The more
he's given a run-around the more tenacious he'll
become. He must be handled with utmost care, whether
he's mistaken or not."
"Not . . . ?" breathed Miles. The full import of the
timing of Illyan's visit now dawned on him. Not
anxiety for an injured subordinate after all. But to
put his questions to Miles just post-surgery, when
Miles was weak, hurting, drugged, maybe confused. . .
. "Why don't you just fast-penta me and get it over
with?" Miles snarled.
"Because I have the report about your idiosyncratic
reaction to truth drugs," said Illyan equably.
"Unfortunate, that."
"You could twist my arm." There was a bitter taste in
Miles's mouth.
Illyan's expression was dry and grim. "I thought
about it. Then I decided to let the surgeons do it
for me."
"You can be a real sonofabitch some days, Simon, do
you know?"
"Yes." Illyan sat unmoved and unmoving. Waiting.
Watching. "Your father cannot afford a scandal in his
government this month. Not during this appropriations
fight. This plot must be quashed regardless of its
truth. What is said in this room will remain -- must
remain -- between you and me alone. But I must know."
"Are you offering me an amnesty?" Miles's voice was
low, dangerous. He could feel his heart begin to
pound.
"If necessary." Illyan's voice was perfectly flat.
Miles couldn't clench or even feel his fists, but his
toes curled. He found himself gulping for air in the
pulsing waves of his rage; the room seemed to waver.
"You . . . vile . . . bastard! You dare call me a
thief. . . ." He rocked in the bed, kicking off
tangling strangling covers. His medical monitor began
to bleep alarms. His arms were useless weights
hanging from his shoulders, flopping nervelessly. "As
if I would steal from Barrayar. As if I would steal
from my own dead ..." He swung his feet out, pulled
himself upright with a mighty wrench of abdominal
muscles. Dizzied, half-blacking-out, he toppled
forward precipitously with no hands to catch himself.
Illyan leapt to grab him before he smashed face-first
on the matting. "What the hell do you think you're
doing, boy?" Miles wasn't sure himself.
"What are you doing to my patient?" the white-faced
military doctor cried, plunging through the door.
"This man just had major surgery!"
The doctor was frightened and furious; the corpsman,
in his wake, merely frightened. He tried to impede
his superior, plucking at his arm and hissing, "Sir,
that's Security Chief Illyan!"
"I know who he is. I don't care if he's Emperor
Dorca's ghost. I will not have him carrying on his
... business, here." The doctor glared courageously
at Illyan. "Your interrogation, or whatever, can take
place in your own damned headquarters. I will not
have that kind of thing going on in my hospital. This
patient is not released to anybody yet!"
Illyan looked at first baffled, then outraged. "I was
not..."
Miles considered, briefly, clutching artistically at
certain nerve junctions in his body and screaming,
except that he wasn't equipped to clutch at anything
just at present. "Appearances can be so damning," he
purred in Illyan's ear, sinking in Illyan's arms. He
grinned evilly through clenched teeth. His body
shook, shocky, the sheen of cold sweat on his
forehead quite unfeigned.
Illyan frowned at him, but put him back to bed very
carefully.
"It's all right," Miles wheezed to the doctor. "It's
all right. I was merely . . . merely . . ." Upset
didn't quite seem to cover it; he'd felt for a moment
as if the top of his head had been about to blow off.
"Never mind." He felt horribly unbalanced. To think
that Illyan, whom he'd known all his life, whom he'd
assumed trusted him implicitly or why else send him
on a series of such distant, independent missions . .
. He'd been proud to be so trusted, while still a
young officer, with so little direct supervision in
his covert ops . . . Could his whole career to date
have been, not desperately needed Service to the
Imperium, but just a ploy to get a dangerously clumsy
Vor puppy out from underfoot? Toy soldiers . . . no,
that made no sense. A peculator. Ugly word. What a
profound slur upon his honor, and his wit; as if he
did not know where Imperial funds came from, or at
what cost.
The black anger sagged into a black depression. His
heart hurt. He felt smeared. Could Illyan -- Illyan!
-- really think, even for one hypothetical moment. .
. . Yes, Illyan could. Illyan would not be here, not
doing this, if he were not genuinely worried the
charge could be proved true. To his dismay, Miles
found himself silently crying. Damn the drugs.
Illyan was staring at him in considerable disquiet.
"One way or another, Miles, I must defend your
expenditures -- which are my department's
expenditures -- tomorrow."
"I'd rather be court-martialed."
Illyan's lips thinned. "I'll come back later. When
you've had a chance to sleep. Perhaps you'll be more
coherent."
The doctor fussed over him, zapped him with yet
another damned drug, and left. Leadenly, Miles turned
his face to the wall; not to sleep, but to remember.
The Mountains of Mourning
Miles heard the woman weeping as he was climbing the
hill from the long lake. He hadn't dried himself
after his swim, as the morning already promised
shimmering heat. Lake water trickled cool from his
hair onto his naked chest and back, more annoyingly
down his legs from his ragged shorts. His leg braces
chafed on his damp skin as he pistoned up the faint
trail through the scrub, military double-time. His
feet squished in his old wet shoes. He slowed
curiously as he became conscious of the voices.
The woman's voice grated with grief and exhaustion.
"Please, lord, please. All I want is m'justice . . ."
The front gate guard's voice was irritated and
embarrassed. "I'm no lord. C'mon, get up, woman. Go
back to the village and report it at the district
magistrate's office."
"I tell you, I just came from there!" The woman did
not move from her knees as Miles emerged from the
bushes and paused to take in the tableau across the
paved road. "The magistrate's not to return for
weeks, weeks. I walked four days to get here. I only
have a little money. ..." A desperate hope rose in
her voice, and her spine bent and straightened as she
scrabbled in her skirt pocket and held out her cupped
hands to the guard. "A mark and twenty pence, it's
all I have, but -- "
The exasperated guard's eye fell on Miles, and he
straightened abruptly, as if afraid Miles might
suspect him of being tempted by so pitiful a bribe.
"Be off, woman!" he snapped.
Miles quirked an eyebrow, and limped across the road
to the main gate. "What's all this about, Corporal?"
he inquired easily.
The guard corporal was on loan from Imperial
Security, and wore the high-necked dress greens of
the Barrayaran Service. He was sweating and
uncomfortable in the bright morning light of this
southern district, but Miles fancied he'd be boiled
before he'd undo his collar on this post. His accent
was not local, he was a city man from the capital,
where a more-or-less efficient bureaucracy absorbed
such problems as the one on her knees before him.
The woman, now, was local and more than local -- she
had backcountry written all over her. She was younger
than her strained voice had at first suggested. Tall,
fever-red from her weeping, with stringy blonde hair
hanging down across a ferret-thin face and
protuberant grey eyes. If she were cleaned up, fed,
rested, happy and confident, she might achieve a
near-prettiness, but she was far from that now,
despite her remarkable figure. Lean but full-breasted
-- no, Miles revised himself as he crossed the road
and came up to the gate. Her bodice was all blotched
with dried milk leaks, though there was no baby in
sight. Only temporarily full-breasted. Her worn dress
was factory-woven cloth, but hand-sewn, crude and
simple. Her feet were bare, thickly-callused, cracked
and sore.
"No problem," the guard assured Miles. "Go away," he
hissed to the woman.
She lurched off her knees and sat stonily.
"I'll call my sergeant," the guard eyed her warily,
"and have her removed."
"Wait a moment," said Miles.
She stared up at Miles from her cross-legged
position, clearly not knowing whether to identify him
as hope or not. His clothing, what there was of it,
offered her no clue as to what he might be. The rest
of him was all too plainly displayed. He jerked up
his chin and smiled thinly. Too-large head, too-short
neck, back thickened with its crooked spine, crooked
legs with their brittle bones too-often broken,
drawing the eye in their gleaming chromium braces.
Were the hill woman standing, the top of his head
would barely be even with the top of her shoulder. He
waited in boredom for her hand to make the
back-country hex sign against evil mutations, but it
only jerked and clenched into a fist.
"I must see my lord Count," she said to an uncertain
point halfway between Miles and the guard. "It's my
right. My daddy, he died in the Service. It's my
right."
"Prime Minister Count Vorkosigan," said the guard
stiffly, "is on his country estate to rest. If he
were working, he'd be back in Vorbarr Sultana." The
guard looked like he wished he were back in Vorbarr
Sultana.
The woman seized the pause. "You're only a city man.
He's my count. My right."
"What do you want to see Count Vorkosigan for?" asked
Miles patiently.
"Murder," growled the girl/woman. The security guard
spasmed slightly. "I want to report a murder."
"Shouldn't you report to your village speaker first?"
inquired Miles, with a hand-down gesture to calm the
twitching guard.
"I did. He'll do nothing." Rage and frustration
cracked her voice. "He says it's over and done. He
won't write down my accusation, says it's nonsense.
It would only make trouble for everybody, he says. I
don't care! I want my justice!"
Miles frowned thoughtfully, looking the woman over.
The details checked, corroborated her claimed
identity, added up to a solid if subliminal sense of
authentic truth which perhaps escaped the
professionally paranoid security man. "It's true,
Corporal," Miles said. "She has a right to appeal,
first to the district magistrate, then to the count's
court. And the district magistrate won't be back for
two weeks."
This sector of Count Vorkosigan's native district had
only one overworked district magistrate, who rode a
circuit that included the lakeside village of
Vorkosigan Surleau but one day a month. Since the
region of the Prime Minister's country estate was
crawling with Imperial Security when the great lord
was in residence, and closely monitored even when he
was not, prudent troublemakers took their troubles
elsewhere.
"Scan her, and let her in," said Miles. "On my
authority."
The guard was one of Imperial Security's best,
trained to look for assassins in his own shadow. He
now looked scandalized, and lowered his voice to
Miles. "Sir, if I let every country lunatic wander
the estate at will -- "
"I'll take her up. I'm going that way."
The guard shrugged helplessly, but stopped short of
saluting; Miles was decidedly not in uniform. The
gate guard pulled a scanner from his belt and made a
great show of going over the woman. Miles wondered if
he'd have been inspired to harass her with a
strip-search without Miles's inhibiting presence.
When the guard finished demonstrating how alert,
conscientious, and loyal he was, he palmed open the
gate's lock, entered the transaction, including the
woman's retina scan, into the computer monitor, and
stood aside in a pose of rather pointed parade rest.
Miles grinned at the silent editorial, and steered
the bedraggled woman by the elbow through the gates
and up the winding drive.
She twitched away from his touch at the earliest
opportunity, yet still refrained from superstitious
gestures, eyeing him with a strange and hungry
curiosity. Time was, such openly repelled fascination
with the peculiarities of his body had driven Miles
to grind his teeth; now he could take it with a
serene amusement only slightly tinged with acid. They
would learn, all of them. They would learn.
"Do you serve Count Vorkosigan, little man?" she
asked cautiously.
Miles thought about that one a moment. "Yes," he
answered finally. The answer was, after all, true on
every level of meaning but the one she'd asked it. He
quelled the temptation to tell her he was the court
jester. From the look of her, this one's troubles
were much worse than his own.
She had apparently not quite believed in her own
rightful destiny, despite her mulish determination at
the gate, for as they climbed unimpeded toward her
goal a nascent panic made her face even more drawn
and pale, almost ill. "How -- how do I talk to him?"
she choked. "Should I curtsey . . . ?" She glanced
down at herself as if conscious for the first time of
her own dirt and sweat and squalor.
Miles suppressed a facetious set-up starting with,
Kneel and knock your forehead three times on the
floor before speaking, that's what the General Staff
does, and said instead, "Just stand up straight and
speak the truth. Try to be clear. He'll take it from
there. He does not, after all," Miles's lips
twitched, "lack experience."
She swallowed.
A hundred years ago, the Vorkosigans' summer retreat
had been a guard barracks, part of the outlying
fortifications of the great castle on the bluff above
the village of Vorkosigan Surleau. The castle was now
a burnt-out ruin, and the barracks transformed into a
comfortable low stone residence, modernized and
re-modernized, artistically landscaped and bright
with flowers. The arrow slits had been widened into
big glass windows overlooking the lake, and comm link
antennae bristled from the roof. There was a new
guard barracks concealed in the trees downslope, but
it had no arrow slits.
A man in the brown-and-silver livery of the Count's
personal retainers exited the residence's front door
as Miles approached with the strange woman in tow. It
was the new man, what was his name? Pym, that was it.
"Where's m'lord Count?" Miles asked him.
"In the upper pavilion, taking breakfast with
m'lady." Pym glanced at the woman, waited on Miles in
a posture of polite inquiry. "Ah. Well, this woman
has walked four days to lay an appeal before the
district magistrate's court. The court's not here,
but the Count is, so she now proposes to skip the
middlemen and go straight to the top. I like her
style. Take her up, will you?"
"During breakfast?" said Pym.
Miles cocked his head at the woman. "Have you had
breakfast?" She shook her head mutely.
"I thought not." Miles turned his hands palm-out,
dumping her, symbolically, on the retainer. "Now,
yes."
"My daddy, he died in the Service," the woman
摘要：

BORDERSOFINFINITYLoisMcMasterBujold[31jul2001-scannedfor#bookz,proofreadandreleased-v1]1"Youhaveavisitor,LieutenantVorkosigan."Alittleglassypanictwitchedinthenormallymatter-of-factcorpsman'sface.HesteppedasidetoletthemanheescortedenterMiles'shospitalroom.Milescaughtaglimpseofthecorpsmanretreatinghas...

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