Lois Bujold - Cryoburn

She dismayed him with delay by shuffling to her tall cupboard and returning with an unlabeled square glass bottle. She poured a… shot, Miles fancied, into her own cup, and, after a pause, raised her brows at Miles. “Want any freshener?”

“Er, no thanks. Just coffee.” It sluiced down his throat, tonic enough all on its own. Jin sat back on the other swivel chair, contentedly munching rolls and swiveling with a steady squeak-squeak-squeak that made Suze wince and take a long swallow of her doctored drink.

Her scowl returned, contemplating Miles. He wasn’t sure what he’d said to wind her up, just when he’d thought he was winning her favor. Clearly, she wasn’t merely someone lucky enough to have salvaged a working comconsole, but a leader of sorts in this odd secret community.

“Jin can take you to Ayako’s Cafe,” she said suddenly. “You can call your friends to come get you from there.”

Jin sat up and protested, “But I haven’t shown him how Gyre flies, yet!”

“He can’t stay here, Jin.”

Jin wilted.

It was plain Suze liked Miles even less as a kidnapped conference delegate than as a mere lost tourist with a weakness for recreational hallucinogens. He decided to try another lure. “I came to that conference to learn about Kibou-daini’s cryo-law and science, but actually ended up being hand-fed some very slick pitches for various cryocorps franchises. After four days of it, a lot of the delegates were ready to sign contracts on the spot. In a way, the extremists’ attack was a fortunate misfortune. I was sent here by my employer to make a complete report on your cryonics system, but it seems I was missing some rather large pieces.”

“Then you’d best be on your way to hunt for them, hadn’t you?”

And what kind of piece are you? To be sure, Puzzle . “Actually, now the conference is over, my time is my own. But I could use another day of rest from yesterday’s ordeal, if Jin is willing. Although I do need to report in to one fellow. Jin, if I gave you directions, do you think you could hand-carry a letter across town for me, and give it to a man?”

Jin perked up. “Sure! Uh… maybe. What part of town?”

“East side.”

“Um… yah, I could do that.”

Miles decided to ignore the faint tinge of doubt in his voice. “Where are we now, by the way?”

“South side,” said Jin.

“Go yourself,” said Suze. “I’ll give you the tube-tram fare. Just don’t come back.”

“And when the police ask me where I’ve been, what shall I tell them?”

Her face grew grimmer. “Tell them you were lost.”

“I could—if it were worth my while.”

The snort this time was savage. “If we had money for bribes, would we be here ?”

“You mistake my meaning, ma’am. My coin is information. Although, you know, you’re the second person on Kibou who’s tried to bribe me. Is this some sort of local custom?”

Her mouth worked. “Who was the first?”

“WhiteChrys.”

“Impressive.”

“It impressed me, although not in the way they intended. Small gifts are for selling things. Large gifts are for hiding things. It made me very, very curious.”

“So did you take your large gift, Vorkosigan-san?”

He did not bother correcting it to Vorkosigan-sama , or possibly -dono ; at least she had the pronunciation right. “At that level, a scornful no is not only shortsighted, but potentially dangerous. I think a day or two of rest here might be good for my health.”

“And how do I know that letter to your friend won’t bring more trouble down on us ?”

“It won’t if I say not. I outrank him.”

Her lips twisted. “Yah, you have that swagger, don’t you?”

And Suze had undoubtedly seen a lot of upper management swagger in her time. Miles wondered if her bosses had realized how closely they were observed.

Jin had been following this exchange with anxious squeakings of his chair. “I could take his letter, Suze! I don’t mind a bit.”

Miles opened a hand to Suze, half persuasion, half plea. “Think it through. You lose no secrecy you haven’t lost already”—he cut the unless you propose to have me murdered —no point in planting suggestions—“and you gain my gratitude.”

“And what’s that worth?”

On Barrayar, quite a lot . But they were not, as Roic had several times pointed out, on Barrayar. “I’ll think of something.”

Her eyebrows signaled severe skepticism. But she spoke instead to Jin: “Didn’t Yani tell you to leave him out there? See what trouble comes of good deeds, Jin!” Miles wasn’t sure if this counted for a yea or a nay, but she heaved a sigh and went on, “Take Vorkosigan-san down to the storerooms and find him something to write with. And on.”

Jin shot eagerly to his feet. Miles made his thanks and followed him out before Suze could change her mind.

Jin watched, shifting from foot to foot, as Miles-san, as he’d decided to think of him, because that last name was a jaw-breaker, sorted through the few half-empty boxes of notepaper on the shelf in the storeroom. It was mostly the kind that old ladies used for writing formal thank-you notes, decorated with flowers and such, though Jin eyed one that bore puppies with a certain covetousness. With a quirk of his eyebrows, the little man made his selection, then turned to testing pens from the box of assorted discards. He found two that worked, stuck them in his pocket, and looked around.

“This place looks like a junk shop. Or the attic of Vorkosigan House…”

“Whenever anybody has findings that they don’t want, they bring them down here for anybody to use,” Jin explained. “Or else when… um.” When they go downstairs to Tenbury for the last time, but he couldn’t say that. He wasn’t sure he was even supposed to know that.

Miles-san’s gaze caught. “Ah! Shoes!” He limped over to the pile. Jin tagged along, and helpfully also began sorting. The galactic’s feet were a little smaller than his own, but then, Jin had had to find replacement shoes here just a month ago, when his toes had pushed through his last pair like spring shoots through soil. The ladies’ fancy shoes were all useless even to most of the ladies here, and tended to accumulate, but Miles found a pair of sport shoes that fit at last. They were a girly flowered print, but he didn’t seem to notice as he shoved them on and fastened the straps. “That’s better. Now I can move.” He turned, scanning the stores more closely. “Huh. Canes!”

He went to the collection leaning in a corner and picked though it, passing up some sturdy medical ones with multiple rubber feet, and others that were too long. He made his final choice by sweeping them around like swords and thwacking them against the wall, so that Jin wasn’t sure if he was looking for a prop or a weapon. But just in case it was the former, Jin led him back to his rooftop home by the inside route, up the emergency stairs and out the exchanger tower door.

Miles-san took over the table and chair, set out his paper, and frowned, face intent. The he bent and began scratching with the pen, with occasional long, thoughtful pauses. Jin had cleaned out the chickens’ boxes, counted the chicks just in case any had found the parapet again, and brushed Lucky before the man finished writing, sealed the note, and looked up, squinting around.

“Do you have a clean sharp knife? Or pin, or needle?”

“I’ll look.” Jin eventually found a little scalpel in the half-a-medicine-kit he’d once collected, and handed it over. Miles-san eyed it, shrugged, and to Jin’s alarm poked his thumb with the sharp end. After squeezing out a drop of blood, he bent and pressed it over the flap, leaving a clear thumbprint across the line, which he then circled and initialed.