Lois Bujold - Komarr

This station had been built nearly a century ago, when fresh explorations of the wormhole had yielded up the rediscovery of Barrayar. The lost colony had been found at the end of a complex multijump route entirely different from the one through which it had originally been settled. The station had undergone modification and enlargement during the period of the Cetagandan invasion; Komarr had granted the ghem lords right of passage in exchange for massive trade concessions throughout the Cetagandan Empire and a slice of the projected profits of the conquest, a bargain it later came to regret. A quieter period had followed, till the Barrayarans, graduates of the harsh school of the failed Cetagandan occupation, had poured through in turn.

Under the new Barrayaran Imperial management, the station had grown again, into a far-flung and chaotic structure housing some five thousand resident employees, their families, and a fluctuating number of transients, and serving some hundreds of ships a week on the only route to and from cul-de-sac Barrayar. A new long docking bar was under construction, sticking out from the bristling structure. The Barrayaran military station was a bright dot in the distance, bracketing the invisible five-space jump point. Ekaterin could see half a dozen ships in flight between civilian station and jump point, maneuvering to or from dock, and a couple of local-space freighters chugging off with cargoes to transfer at one of the other wormhole jump points. Then the ferry itself slid into its docking bay, and the looming station occluded the view.

The tedious business of customs checks having been got through back in Komarr orbit before boarding, the ferry’s passengers disembarked freely. Ekaterin checked her holocube map, very necessary in this fantastic maze of a place, and went off to ensure a hostel room for the night for herself and her aunt, and to drop off her luggage there. The hostel room was small but quiet, and should do nicely to give poor Aunt Vorthys time to recover from her jump sickness before completing the last leg of her journey. Ekaterin wished she’d had such a luxury available on her own inbound passage. Realizing that the last thing the Professora would want to face immediately was a meal, Ekaterin prudently paused for a snack in an adjoining concourse cafe, then went off to wait her ship’s docking in the disembarkation lounge nearest its assigned bay.

She selected a seat with a good view of the airseal doors, and faintly regretted not bringing her reader, in case of delays. But the station and its denizens were a fascinating distraction. Where were all these people going, and why? Most arresting to her eye were the obvious galactics, not-from-around-here in strange planetary garb; were they passing through for business, diplomacy, refuge, recreation? Ekaterin had seen two worlds, in her life; would she ever see more? Two, she reminded herself, was one more than most people ever got. Don’t be greedy.

How many had Vorkosigan seen…?

Her idle thoughts circled back to her own personal disaster, like a flood victim sorting through her ruined possessions after the waters have receded. Was the Old Vor ideal of marriage and family an intrinsic contradiction of a woman’s soul, or was it just Tien who’d been the source of her shrinkage? It was not clear how to sort out the answer without multiple trials, and marriage was not an experiment she cared to repeat. Yet the Professora seemed to be proof of the possible. She had public achievement-she was a historian, teacher, scholar in four languages-she had three grown children, and a marriage heading for the half-century mark. Had she made secret compromises? She had a solid place in her profession— might she have had a place at the top? She had three children-might she have had six?

We are going to have a race, Madame Vorsoisson. Do you wish to run with your right leg chopped off, or your left leg chopped off?

I want to run on both legs.

Aunt Vorthys had run on both legs, reasonably serenely— Ekaterin had lived in her household, and didn’t think she overidealized her aunt-but then, she’d been married to Uncle Vorthys. One’s career might depend solely on one’s own efforts, but marriage was a lottery, and you drew your lot in late adolescence or early adulthood at a point of maximum idiocy and confusion. Perhaps it was just as well. If people were too sensible, the human race might well come to an end. Evolution favored the maximum production of children, not of happiness.

So how did you end up with neither?

She snorted self-derision, then sat up as the doors slid open and people began trickling through. Most of the tide had passed when Ekaterin spotted the short woman with the wobbly step, assisted by a shipping line porter who saw her through the doors and handed her the leash of the float pallet holding her luggage. Ekaterin rose, smiling, and started forward. Her aunt looked thoroughly frazzled, her long gray hair escaping its windings atop her head to drift about her face, which had lost its usual attractive pink glow in favor of a greenish-gray tinge. Her blue bolero and calf-length skirt looked rumpled, and the matching embroidered travel boots were perched precariously atop the pile of luggage, replaced on her feet with what were obviously bedroom slippers.

Aunt Vorthys fell into Ekaterin’s hug. “Oh! So good to see you.”

Ekaterin held her out, to search her face. “Was the trip very bad?”

“Five jumps,” said Aunt Vorthys hollowly. “And it was such a fast ship, there wasn’t as much time to recover between. Be glad you’re one of the lucky ones.”

“I get a touch of nausea,” Ekaterin consoled her, on the theory that misery might appreciate company. “It passes off in about half an hour. Nikki is the lucky one-it doesn’t seem to affect him at all.” Tien had concealed his symptoms in grouchiness. Afraid of showing something he construed as weakness? Should she have tried to… It doesn’t matter now. Let it go. “I have a nice quiet hostel room waiting for you to lie down in. We can get tea there.”

“Oh, lovely, dear.”

“Here, why is your luggage riding and you walking?” Ekaterin rearranged the two bags on the float pallet and flipped up the little seat. “Sit down, and I’ll tow you.”

“If it’s not too dizzy a ride. The jumps made my feet swell, of all things.”

Ekaterin helped her aboard, made sure she felt secure, and started off at a slow walk. “I apologize for Uncle Vorthys dragging you all the way out here for me. I’m only planning to stay a few more weeks, you see.”

“I’d meant to come anyway, if his case went on much longer. It doesn’t seem to be going as quickly as he expected.”

“No, well… no. I’ll tell you all the horrible details when we get in.” A public concourse was not the venue for discussing it all.

“Quite, dear. You look well, if rather Komarran.”

Ekaterin glanced down at her dun vest and beige trousers. “I’ve found Komarran dress to be comfortable, not the least because it lets me blend in.”

“Someday, I’d love to see you dress to stand out.”

“Not today, though.”

“No, probably not. Do you plan on traditional mourning garb, when you get home?

“Yes, I think it would be a very good idea. It might save… save dealing with a lot of things I don’t want to deal with just now.”

“I understand.” Despite her jump sickness, Aunt Vorthys stared around with interest at the passing station, and began updating Ekaterin on the lives of her Vorthys cousins.

Her aunt had grandchildren, Ekaterin thought, yet still seemed late-middle-aged rather than old. In the Time of Isolation, a Barrayaran woman would have been old at forty-five, waiting for death-if she made it even that far. In the last century, women’s life expectancies had doubled, and might even be headed toward the triple-portion taken for granted by such galactics as the Betans. Had Ekaterin’s own mother’s early death given her a false sense of time, and of timing? I have two lives for my foremothers’ one. Two lives in which to accomplish her dual goals. If one could stretch them out, instead of piling them atop one another… And the arrival of the uterine replicator had changed everything, too, profoundly. Why had she wasted a decade trying to play the game by the old rules? Yet a decade at twenty did not seem quite a straight trade for a decade at ninety. She needed to think this through…