Lois Bujold - Komarr

“Just so.” His brief grin again. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure the Professors are a human greenhouse. All those students-they’re used to people growing up and moving on. They regard it as normal. I’d think you’d like it there.” He wandered to her window and glanced out.

“I did like it there,” she admitted wistfully.

“Then it all sounds perfectly possible to me. Good, that’s settled. Have you had lunch?”

“What?” She laughed, and clutched her hair.

“Lunch,” he repeated, deadpan. “Many people eat it at about this time of day.”

“You’re mad,” she said with conviction, ignoring this willful piece of misdirection. “Do you always dispose of people’s futures in that offhand fashion?”

“Only when I’m hungry.”

She gave up. “I suppose I have something I can fix-”

“Certainly not!” he said indignantly. “I sent a minion. I just spotted him returning across the park, with a very promising large bag. The guards have to eat too, you see.”

She contemplated, briefly, the spectacle of a man who casually sent ImpSec for carry-out. There probably were security concerns about meals on duty, at that. She let Vorkosigan shepherd her into her own kitchen, where they selected from a dozen containers. Ekaterin snitched a flaky apricot tart to set aside for Nikki, and they sent the remainder to the living room for the guards to picnic off. The only thing Vorkosigan permitted her to do was supply fresh tea.

“Did you find out anything new this morning?” she asked him, when they were settled at the table. She tried not to think about her last conversation here with Tien. Oh, yes, I want to go home. “Any word on Soudha and Foscol?”

“Not yet. Part of me expects ImpSec to catch up with them at any moment. Part of me… is not so optimistic. I keep wondering just how long they had to plan their departure.”

“Well… I don’t think they were expecting Imperial Auditors to arrive in Serifosa. That, at least, came as a surprise to them.”

“Hm. Ah! I know why this whole thing feels so odd. It’s as though my entire brain is suffering a time lag, and it’s not just the bloody seizures. I’m on the wrong side. I’m on the damned defense, not the offense. One step behind all the time, reacting not acting-and I’m horribly afraid it may be an intrinsic condition of my new job.” He downed a bite of sandwich. “Unless I can sell Gregor on the idea of an Auditor Provocateur… Well, anyway, I did have one idea, which I propose to spring on your uncle when he gets downside.” He paused; silence fell. After a moment he added, “If you make an encouraging noise, I’ll go on.”

He’d caught her with her mouth full. “Hmm?”

“Lovely, yes. You see, suppose… suppose this thing of Soudha’s is more than a mere embezzlement scheme. Maybe they were diverting all those Imperial funds to support a real research and development project, although nothing to do with Waste Heat Management. It may be a prejudice of my military background, but I keep thinking they might have been building a weapon. Some new variation on the gravitic imploder lance, I don’t know.” He gulped tea.

“I never had the impression that Soudha or any of the other Komarrans in the Terraforming Project were very military-minded. Quite the opposite.”

“They needn’t be, for an act of sabotage. Some grand stupid vile gesture-I keep worrying about Gregor’s wedding coming up.”

“Soudha isn’t grandiose,” said Ekaterin slowly. “Nor vile, particularly.” She didn’t doubt that Tien’s death had been unintended.

“Nor stupid.” Vorkosigan sighed regretfully. “I merely suggest that timetable to make myself nervous. Keeps me awake. But suppose it was a weapon. Did they perhaps attack that ore ship, as a test? Vile enough. Did their smoke test go very wrong? Was the subsequent damage to the mirror accidental, or deliberate? Or was it the other way around? The condition of Radovas’s body suggests something backfired. A falling-out among thieves? Anyway, to anchor this spate of speculation to some sort of physical fact, I plan to get a list of every piece of equipment Soudha bought for his department, subtract from it everything they left there, and produce a parts list for their secret weapon. At this point my brilliance fails, and I plan to dump it on your uncle.”

“Oh!” said Ekaterin. “He’ll like that. He’ll growl at you.”

“Is that a good sign?”

“Yes.”

“Hm. So, positing a secret-weapon sabotage-attack… how close are they to success? I keep coming back-sorry-to Foscol’s odd behavior in providing that data packet of evidence against Tien. It seems to proclaim: it doesn’t matter if the Komarrans are incriminated, because-fill in the blank. Because why? Because they will not be here to suffer the consequences? That suggests flight, which runs counter to the weapon hypothesis, which requires that they linger to use it.”

“Or that they believed you would not be here to inflict the consequences,” said Ekaterin. Had they meant Vorkosigan to die, too? Or… what?

“Oh, nice. That’s reassuring.” He bit rather aggressively into the last of his sandwich.

She rested her chin on her hand and regarded him with wry curiosity. “Does ImpSec know you babble like this?”

“Only when I’m very tired. Besides, I like to think out loud. It slows it down so I can get a good look at it. It gives you some idea of what living in my head is like. I admit, very few people can stand to listen at length.” He shot her an odd sideways look. Indeed, whenever his animation slowed-which was not often-a gray weariness flashed underneath. “Anyway, you encouraged me. You sang Hmm.”

She stared in amused indignation and refused to rise to the bait.

“Sorry,” he said in a smaller voice. “I think I’m a little disoriented just now.” He gave her an apologetic grimace. “I actually came back here to rest. Is that not sensible of me? I must be getting old.”

Both their lives were out of phase with their chronological ages, Ekaterin realized bemusedly. She now possessed the education of a child and the status of a dowager. Vorkosigan… was young for his post, to be sure. But this whole posthumous second life of his was surely as old as you could be at any age. “Time is out of joint,” she murmured; he looked up sharply, and seemed about to speak.

Voices from the vestibule interrupted whatever he’d been about to say. Ekaterin’s head turned. “Tuomonen, so soon?”

“Do you want to put this off?” Vorkosigan asked her.

She shook her head. “No. I want to get it over with. I want to go get Nikki.”

“Ah.” He drained his tea mug and rose, and they both went out to her living room. It was indeed Captain Tuomonen. He nodded to Vorkosigan, and greeted her politely. He had brought a female medtech with him, in the uniform of the Barrayaran military medical auxiliary, whom he also introduced. She carried a medkit, which she placed on the round table and opened. Ampoules and hyposprays glittered in their gel slots. Other first-aid supplies hinted at more sinister possibilities.

Tuomonen indicated Ekaterin should sit on the circular couch. “Are you ready, Madame Vorsoisson?”

“I suppose so.” Ekaterin watched with concealed fear and some loathing as the medtech loaded her hypospray and showed it to Tuomonen to cross-check.

The medtech laid a second hypospray out at the ready, and pulled a small, burr-like patch off a plastic strip. “Would you hold out your wrist, Madame?”

Ekaterin did so; the woman pressed the allergy test patch firmly against her skin, then peeled it up again. She continued to hold Ekaterin’s wrist while she marked time on her chrono. Her fingers were dry and cold.