Lois McMaster Bujold - 14 Diplomatic Immunity

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2024-12-02 0 0 540.61KB 114 页 5.9玖币
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Diplomatic Immunity
Lois McMaster Bujold
CHAPTER ONE
In the image above the vid plate, the sperm writhed in elegant, sinuous curves. Its
wriggling grew more energetic as the invisible grip of the medical micro-tractor
grasped it and guided it to its target, the pearl-like egg: round, lustrous, rich with
promise.
“Once more, dear boy, into the breach - for England, Harry, and Saint George!” Miles
murmured encouragingly. “Or at least, for Barrayar, me, and maybe Grandfather Piotr.
Ha!” With a last twitch, the sperm vanished within its destined paradise.
“Miles, are you looking at those baby pictures again?” came Ekaterin's voice, amused,
as she emerged from their cabin's sybaritic bathroom. She finished winding up her dark
hair on the back of her head, secured it, and leaned over his shoulder as he sat in the
station chair. “Is that Aral Alexander, or Helen Natalia?”
“Well, Aral Alexander in the making.”
“Ah, admiring your sperm again. I see.”
“And your excellent egg, my lady.” He glanced up at his wife, glorious in a heavy red
silk tunic that he'd bought her on Earth, and grinned. The warm clean scent of her skin
tickled his nostrils, and he inhaled happily. “Were they not a handsome set of gametes?
While they lasted, anyway.”
“Yes, and they made beautiful blastocysts. You know, it's a good thing we took this
trip. I swear you'd be in there trying to lift the replicator lids to peek, or shaking
the poor little things up like Winterfair presents to see how they rattled.”
“Well, it's all new to me.”
“Your mother told me last Winterfair that as soon as the embryos were safely
implanted you'd be acting like you'd invented reproduction. And to think I imagined she
was exaggerating!”
He captured her hand and breathed a kiss into its palm. “This, from the lady who sat
in the nursery next to the replicator rack all spring to study? Whose assignments all
suddenly seemed to take twice as long to complete?”
“Which, of course, had nothing to do with her lord popping in twice an hour to ask
how she was going on?” The hand, released, traced his chin in a very flattering
fashion. Miles considered proposing that they forgo the rather dull luncheon company in
the ship's passenger lounge, order in room service, get undressed again, and go back to
bed for the rest of the watch. Ekaterin didn't seem to regard anything about their
journey as boring, though.
This galactic honeymoon was belated, but perhaps better so, Miles thought. Their
marriage had had an awkward enough commencement; it was as well that their settling-in
had included a quiet period of domestic routine. But in retrospect, the first
anniversary of that memorable, difficult, mid-winter wedding had seemed to arrive in
about fifteen subjective minutes.
They had long agreed they would celebrate the date by starting the children in their
uterine replicators. The debate had never been about when, just how many. He still
thought his suggestion of doing them all at once had an admirable efficiency. He'd
never been serious about twelve; he'd just figured to start with that proposition, and
fall back to six. His mother, his aunt, and what seemed every other female of his
acquaintance had all mobilized to explain to him that he was insane, but Ekaterin had
merely smiled. They'd settled on two, to begin with, Aral Alexander and Helen Natalia.
A double portion of wonder, terror, and delight.
At the edge of the vid recording, Baby's First Cell Division was interrupted by a red
blinking message light. Miles frowned faintly. They were three jumps out from Solar
space, in the deep interstellar on a sub-light-speed run between wormholes expected to
take four full days. En route to Tau Ceti, where they would make orbital transfer to a
ship bound for Escobar, and there to yet another that would thread the jump route past
Sergyar and Komarr to home. He wasn't exactly expecting any vid calls here. “Receive,”
he intoned.
Aral Alexander in potentia vanished, to be replaced by the head and shoulders of the
Tau Cetan passenger liner's captain. Miles and Ekaterin had dined at his table some two
or three times on this leg of their tour. The man favored Miles with a tense smile and
nod. “Lord Vorkosigan.”
“Yes, Captain? What can I do for you?”
“A ship identifying itself as a Barrayaran Imperial courier has hailed us and is
requesting permission to match velocities and lock on. Apparently, they have an urgent
message for you.”
Miles's brows rose, and his stomach sank. This was not, in his experience, the way
the Imperium delivered good news. On his shoulder, Ekaterin's hand tightened.
“Certainly, Captain. Put them through.”
The captain's dark Tau Cetan features vanished, to be replaced after a moment by a
man in Barrayaran Imperial undress greens with lieutenant's tabs and Sector IV pins on
his collar. Visions surged through Miles's mind of the Emperor assassinated, Vorkosigan
House burned to the ground with the replicators inside, or, even more hideously likely,
his father suffering a fatal stroke - he dreaded the day some stiff-faced messenger
would begin by addressing him, Count Vorkosigan, sir?
The lieutenant saluted him. “Lord Auditor Vorkosigan? I'm Lieutenant Smolyani of the
courier ship Kestrel. I have a message to hand-deliver to you, recorded under the
Emperor's personal seal, after which I am ordered to take you aboard.”
“We're not at war, are we? Nobody's died?”
Lieutenant Smolyani ducked his head. “Not so far as I've heard, sir.” Miles's heart
rate eased; behind him, Ekaterin let out her breath. The lieutenant went on, “But,
apparently, a Komarran trade fleet has been impounded at some place called Graf
Station, Union of Free Habitats. It's listed as an independent system, out near the
edge of Sector V. My clear-code flight orders are to take you there with all safe
speed, and to wait on your convenience thereafter.” He smiled a bit grimly. “I hope
it's not a war, sir, because they only seem to be sending us.”
“Impounded? Not quarantined?”
“I gather it's some sort of legal entanglement, sir.”
I smell diplomacy. Miles grimaced. “Well, no doubt the sealed message will make it
more plain. Bring it to me, and I'll take a look while we get packed up.”
“Yes, sir. The Kestrel will be locking on in just a few minutes.”
“Very good, Lieutenant.” Miles cut the com.
“We?” said Ekaterin in a quiet tone.
Miles hesitated. Not a quarantine, the lieutenant had said. Not, apparently, a
shooting war either. Or not yet, anyway. On the other hand, he couldn't imagine Emperor
Gregor interrupting his long-delayed honeymoon for something trivial. “I'd better see
what Gregor has to say, first.”
She dropped a kiss on the top of his head, and said simply, “Right.”
Miles raised his personal wrist com to his lips and murmured, “Armsman Roic - on
duty, to my cabin, now.”
* * *
The data disk with the Imperial Seal upon it that the lieutenant handed to Miles a
short time later was marked Personal, not Secret. Miles sent Roic, his bodyguard-cum-
batman, and Smolyani off to sort and stow luggage, but motioned Ekaterin to stay. He
slipped the disk into the secured player that the lieutenant had also brought, set it
on the cabin's bedside table, and keyed it to life. He sat back on the edge of the bed
beside her, conscious of the warmth and solidity of her body. For the sake of her
worried eyes, he took her hand in a reassuring grip.
Emperor Gregor Vorbarra's familiar features appeared, lean, dark, reserved. Miles
read profound irritation in the subtle tightening of his lips.
“I'm sorry to interrupt your honeymoon, Miles,” Gregor began. “But if this has caught
up with you, you haven't changed your itinerary. So you're on your way home now in any
case.”
Not too sorry, then.
“It's my good luck and your bad that you happen to be the man physically closest to
this mess. Briefly, one of our Komarr-based trade fleets put in at a deep-space
facility out near Sector V, for resupply and cargo transfer. One - or more, the reports
are unclear - of the officers from its Barrayaran military escort either deserted, or
was kidnapped. Or was murdered - the reports are unclear about that, too. The patrol
the fleet commander sent to retrieve him ran into trouble with the locals. Shots - I
phrase this advisedly - shots were fired, equipment and structures were damaged, people
on both sides were apparently seriously injured. No other deaths reported yet, but that
may have changed by the time you get this, God help us.
“The problem - or one of them, anyway - is that we're getting a significantly
different version of the chain of events from the local ImpSec observer on the Graf
Station side of the conflict than we're getting from our fleet commander. Yet more
Barrayaran personnel are now reported either held hostage, or arrested, depending on
which version one is to believe. Charges filed, fines and expenses mounting, and the
local response has been to lock down all ships currently in dock until the muddle is
resolved to their satisfaction. The Komarran cargomasters are now screaming back to us
over the heads of their Barrayaran escort, with yet a third spin on events. For your,
ah, delectation, all the original reports we've received so far from all the viewpoints
are appended to this message. Enjoy.” Gregor grimaced in a way that made Miles twitch.
“Just to add to the delicacy of the problem, the fleet in question is about fifty
percent Toscane-owned.” Gregor's new wife, Empress Laisa, was a Toscane heiress and a
Komarran by birth, a political marriage of enormous importance to the peace of the
fragile union of planets that was the Imperium. “The problem of how to satisfy my in-
laws while simultaneously presenting the appearance of Imperial evenhandedness to all
their Komarran commercial rivals - I leave to your ingenuity.” Gregor's thin smile said
it all.
“You know the drill. I request and require you, as my Voice, to get yourself to Graf
Station with all safe speed and sort out the situation before it deteriorates further.
Pry all my subjects out of the hands of the locals and get the fleet back on its way.
Without starting a war, if you please, or breaking my Imperial budget.
“And, critically, find out who's lying. If it's the ImpSec observer, that's a problem
to bounce to their chain of command. If it's the fleet commander - who is Admiral Eugin
Vorpatril, by the way - it becomes... very much my problem.”
Or rather, very much the problem of Gregor's proxy, his Emperor's Voice, his Imperial
Auditor. Namely Miles. Miles considered the interesting pitfalls inherent in
attempting, without backup, far from home, to arrest the ranking military officer out
of the middle of his long-standing and possibly personally loyal command. A Vorpatril,
too, scion of a Barrayaran aristocratic clan of far-flung and important political
connections within the Council of Counts. Miles's own aunt and cousin were Vorpatrils.
Oh, thank you, Gregor.
The Emperor continued, “In matters rather closer to Barrayar, something has stirred
up the Cetagandans around Rho Ceta. No need to go into the peculiar details here, but I
would appreciate it if you would settle this impoundment crisis as swiftly and
efficiently as you can. If the Rho Cetan business becomes any more peculiar, I'll want
you safely home. The communications lag between Barrayar and Sector V is going to be
too long to for me to breathe over your shoulder, but some occasional status or
progress reports from you would be a nice touch, if you don't mind.” Gregor's voice did
not change to convey irony. It didn't need to. Miles snorted. “Good luck,” Gregor
concluded. The image on the viewer returned to a mute display of the Imperial Seal.
Miles reached forward and keyed it off. The detailed reports, he could study once he
was en route.
He? Or we?
He glanced up at Ekaterin's pale profile; she turned her serious blue eyes toward
him. He asked, “Do you want to go with me, or continue on home?”
“Can I go with you?” she asked doubtfully.
“Of course you can! The only question is, would you like to?”
Her dark brows rose. “Not the only question, surely. Do you think I'd be of any use,
or would I just be a distraction from your work?”
“There's official use, and there's unofficial use. Don't bet that the first is more
important than the second. You know the way people talk to you to try to get oblique
messages to me?”
“Oh, yes.” Her lips twisted in distaste.
“Well, yes, I realize it's tedious, but you're very good at sorting them out, you
know. Not to mention the information to be obtained just from studying the kinds of
lies people tell. And, ah - not-lies. There may well be people who will talk to you who
won't talk to me, for one reason or another.”
She conceded the truth of this with a little wave of her free hand.
“And... it would be a real relief for me to have someone along I can talk to freely.”
Her smile tilted a little at this. “Talk, or vent?”
“I - hem! - suspect this one is going to entail quite a lot of venting, yes. D'you
think you can stand it? It could get pretty thick. Not to mention boring.”
“You know, you keep claiming your job is boring, Miles, but your eyes have gone all
bright.”
He cleared his throat and shrugged unrepentantly.
Her amusement faded, and her brows drew down. “How long do you think this sorting out
will take?”
He considered the calculation she had doubtless just made. It would be six more
weeks, give or take a few days, to the scheduled births. Their original travel plan
would have put them back at Vorkosigan House a comfortable month early. Sector V was in
the opposite direction from their present location to Barrayar, insofar as the network
of jump points people navigated to get from here to there could be said to have a
direction. Several days to get from here to Graf Station, plus an extra two weeks of
travel at least to get home from there, even in the fastest of fast couriers. “If I can
settle things in less than two weeks, we can both get home on time.”
She breathed a short laugh. “For all that I try to be all modern and galactic, that
feels so strange. All sorts of men don't make it home for the births of their children.
But My mother was out of town on the day I was born, so she missed it, just seems...
seems like a more profound complaint, somehow.”
“If it runs over, I suppose I could send you home on your own, with a suitable
escort. But I want to be there, too.” He hesitated. It's my first time, dammit, of
course it's making me crazy, was a statement of the obvious that he managed to stop on
his lips. Her first marriage had left her riddled with sensitive scars, none of them
physical, and this topic trod near several of them. Rephrase, O Diplomat. “Does it...
make it any easier, that it's the second time, for you?”
Her expression grew introspective. “Nikki was a body birth; of course everything was
harder. The replicators take away so many risks - our children could get all their
genetic mistakes corrected, they won't be subject to damage from a bad birth - I know
replicator gestation is better, more responsible, in every way. It's not as though they
are being shortchanged. And yet...”
He raised her hand and touched her knuckles to his lips. “You're not shortchanging
me, I promise you.”
Miles's own mother was adamantly in favor of the use of replicators, with cause. He
was reconciled now, at age thirty-odd, with the physical damage he had taken in her
womb from the soltoxin attack. Only his emergency transfer to a replicator had saved
his life. The teratogenic military poison had left him stunted and brittle-boned, but a
childhood's agony of medical treatments had brought him to nearly full function, if
not, alas, full height. Most of his bones had been replaced piecemeal with synthetics
thereafter, emphasis on the pieces. The rest of the damage, he conceded, was all his
own doing. That he was still alive seemed less a miracle than that he had won
Ekaterin's heart. Their children would not suffer such traumas.
He added, “And if you think you're having it too luxuriously easy now to feel
properly virtuous, why, just wait till they get out of those replicators.”
She laughed. “Very good point!”
“Well.” He sighed. “I'd intended this trip to show you the glories of the galaxy, in
the most elegant and refined society. It appears I'm heading instead to what I suspect
is the armpit of Sector V, and the company of a bunch of squabbling, frantic merchants,
irate bureaucrats, and paranoid militarists. Life is full of surprises. Come with me,
my love? For my sanity's sake?”
Her eyes narrowed in amusement. “How can I resist such an invitation? Of course I
will.” She sobered. “Would it violate security for me to send a message to Nikki
telling him we'll be late?”
“Not at all. Send it from the Kestrel, though. It'll get through faster.”
She nodded. “I've never been away from him so long before. I wonder if he's been
lonely?”
Nikki had been left, on Ekaterin's side of the family, with four uncles and a great-
uncle plus matching aunts, a herd of cousins, a small army of friends, and his
Grandmother Vorsoisson. On Miles's side were Vorkosigan House's extensive staff and
their extensive families, with Uncle Ivan and Uncle Mark and the whole Koudelka clan
for backup. Impending were his doting Vorkosigan step-grandparents, who had planned to
arrive after Miles and Ekaterin for the birthday bash, but who now might beat them
home. Ekaterin might have to travel ahead to Barrayar, if he couldn't cut through this
mess in a timely fashion, but by no rational definition of the word, alone.
“I don't see how,” said Miles honestly. “I expect you miss him more than he misses
us. Or he'd have managed more than that one monosyllabic note that didn't catch up with
us till Earth. Eleven-year-old boys can be pretty self-centered. I'm sure I was.”
Her brows rose. “Oh? And how many notes have you sent to your mother in the past two
months?”
“It's a honeymoon trip. Nobody expects you to... Anyway, she's always gotten to see
the reports from my security.”
The brows stayed up. He added prudently, “I'll drop her a message from the Kestrel
too.”
He was rewarded with a League of Mothers smile. Come to think of it, perhaps he would
include his father in the address as well, not that his parents didn't share his
missives. And complain coequally about their rarity.
* * *
An hour of mild chaos completed their transfer to the Barrayaran Imperial courier
ship. Fast couriers gained most of their speed by trading off carrying capacity. Miles
was forced to divest all but their most essential luggage. The considerable remainder,
along with a startling volume of souvenirs, would continue the journey back to Barrayar
with most of their little entourage: Ekaterin's personal maid, Miss Pym, and, to
Miles's greater regret, both of Roic's relief armsmen. It occurred to him belatedly, as
he and Ekaterin fitted themselves into their new shared cabin, that he ought to have
mentioned how cramped their quarters would be. He'd traveled on similar vessels so
often during his own years in ImpSec, he took their limitations for granted - one of
the few aspects of his former career where his undersized body had worked to his
advantage.
So while he did spend the remainder of the day in bed with his wife after all, it was
primarily due to the absence of other seating. They folded back the upper bunk for head
space and sat up on opposite ends, Ekaterin to read quietly from a hand viewer, Miles
to plunge into Gregor's promised Pandora's box of reports from the diplomatic front.
He wasn't five minutes into this study before he uttered a Ha!
Ekaterin indicated her willingness to be interrupted by looking up at him with a
reciprocal Hm?
“I just figured out why Graf Station sounded familiar. We're headed for Quaddiespace,
by God.”
“Quaddiespace? Is that someplace you've been before?”
“Not personally, no.” This was going to take more politic preparation than he'd
anticipated. “Although I actually met a quaddie once. The quaddies are a race of
bioengineered humans developed, oh, two or three hundred years ago. Before Barrayar was
rediscovered. They were supposed to be permanent free fall dwellers. Whatever their
creators' original plan for them was, it fell through when the new grav technologies
came in, and they ended up as sort of economic refugees. After assorted travels and
adventures, they finally settled as a group in what was at the time the far end of the
wormhole Nexus. They were wary of other people by then, so they deliberately picked a
system with no habitable planets, but with considerable asteroid and cometary
resources. Planning to keep themselves to themselves, I guess. Of course, the explored
Nexus has grown around them since then, so now they get some foreign exchange by
servicing ships and providing transfer facilities. Which explains why our fleet came to
be docked there, although not what happened afterwards. The, ah...” He hesitated. “The
bioengineering included a lot of metabolic changes, but the most spectacular alteration
was, they have a second set of arms where their legs should be. Which is really, um,
handy in free fall. So to speak. I've often wished I'd had a couple of extra hands,
when I was operating in vacuum.”
He passed the viewer across and displayed the shot of a quaddie, dressed in bright
yellow shorts and a singlet, handing himself along a gravity-less corridor with the
speed and agility of a monkey navigating through treetops.
“Oh,” gulped Ekaterin, then quickly regained control of her features. “How, uh...
interesting.” After a moment she added, “It does look quite practical, for their
environment.”
Miles relaxed a trifle. Whatever her buried Barrayaran reflexes were regarding
visible mutations, they would be trumped by her iron grip on good manners.
The same, unfortunately, did not appear to be true of their fellow members of the
Imperium now stranded in the quaddies' system. The difference between deleterious
mutation and benign or advantageous modification was not readily grasped by Barrayarans
from the backcountry. Given that one officer referred to them as horrible spider
mutants right in his report, it was clear that Miles could add racial tensions to the
mix of complications they were now racing toward.
“You get used to them pretty quickly,” he reassured her.
“Where did you meet one, if they keep to themselves?”
“Um...” Some quick internal editing, here... ”It was on an ImpSec mission. I can't
talk about it. But she was a musician, of all things. Played the hammer dulcimer with
all four arms.” His attempt to mime this remarkable sight resulted in his banging his
elbow painfully on the cabin wall. “Her name was Nicol. You would have liked her. We
got her out of a tight spot. I wonder if she ever made it home?” He rubbed his elbow
and added hopefully, “I'll bet the quaddies' free fall gardening techniques would
interest you.”
Ekaterin brightened. “Yes, indeed.”
Miles returned to his reports with the uncomfortable certainty that this was not
going to be a good task to plunge into underprepared. He mentally added a review of
quaddie history to his list of studies for the next few days.
CHAPTER TWO
“Is my collar straight?”
Ekaterin's cool fingers made businesslike work upon the back of Miles's neck; he
concealed the shiver down his spine. “Now it is,” she said.
“Clothes make the Auditor,” he muttered. The little cabin lacked such amenities as a
full-length mirror; he had to use his wife's eyes instead. This did not seem a
disadvantage. She stepped back as far as she could, a half-pace to the bulkhead, and
looked him up and down to check the effect of his Vorkosigan House uniform: brown tunic
with his family crest in silver thread upon the high collar, silver-embroidered cuffs,
brown trousers with silver side piping, tall brown riding boots. The Vor class had been
cavalry soldiers, in their heyday. No horse within God knew how many light-years now,
that was certain.
He touched his wrist com, mate in function to the one she wore, though hers was made
Vor-lady-like with a decorative silver bracelet. “I'll give you a heads-up when I'm
ready to come back and change.” He nodded toward the plain gray suit she'd already laid
out on the bunk. A uniform for the military-minded, civvies for the civilians. And let
the weight of Barrayaran history, eleven generations of Counts Vorkosigan at his back,
make up for his lack of height, his faintly hunched stance. His less visible defects,
he didn't need to mention.
“What should I wear?”
“Since you'll have to play the whole entourage, something effective.” He smiled
crookedly. “That red silk thing ought to be distractingly civilian enough for our
Stationer hosts.”
“Only the male half, love,” she pointed out. “Suppose their security chief is a
female quaddie? Are quaddies even attracted to downsiders?”
“One was, apparently,” he sighed. “Hence this mess.... Parts of Graf Station are
null-gee, so you'll likely want trousers or leggings instead of Barrayaran-style
skirts. Something you can move in.”
“Oh. Yes, I see.”
A knock sounded at the cabin door, and Armsman Roic's diffident voice, “My lord?”
“On my way, Roic.” Miles and Ekaterin exchanged places - finding himself at her chest
height, he stole a pleasantly resilient hug in passing - and he exited to the courier
ship's narrow corridor.
摘要：

DiplomaticImmunityLoisMcMasterBujoldCHAPTERONEIntheimageabovethevidplate,thespermwrithedinelegant,sinuouscurves.Itswrigglinggrewmoreenergeticastheinvisiblegripofthemedicalmicro-tractorgraspeditandguidedittoitstarget,thepearl-likeegg:round,lustrous,richwithpromise.“Oncemore,dearboy,intothebreach-forE...

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