Lois Bujold - Cryoburn

“Yes, sorry, I haven’t had time to return it to the rental place yet.”

“Excellent. Come around to the back of the row. There will be a sunken garage entry. We’ll meet you there. I have some heavy lifting for you.”

“On our way.”

Raven raised his eyebrows. “Isn’t that theft? Breaking and entering?”

“No, the homeowner let us in. Breaking and exiting, maybe. If it’s theft, I’m guessing it’s the second time around for this item. And while it’s not true that you can’t cheat an honest man, crooked men are less likely to complain to the authorities, afterward. I don’t think Leiber will tell anyone.” He went on, still peering underneath, “Did you spot any IDs on this thing?”

“Maker’s mark. It’s a common brand. Ah, here’s a serial number. That may help.”

“Later, yeah.” First things first. If I don’t know how to recognize and seize a tactical moment by now … He could be spectacularly wrong. Or spectacularly right. In any case, it’ll be spectacular .

By the time Johannes and Roic arrived with the van, they had the garage door open. Leaving muscle to do what muscle did best, Miles repaired upstairs to the kitchen and searched for something to write with, and on. A half-composed grocery list and a stylus came to hand. He thought, turned the list over, bent, and scribbled.

Roic came up to find him. “A bit awkward, but we horsed it in. Had to lean on the rear hatch to close it. What are you doing?”

“Leaving Leiber a note.” Miles affixed it to the refrigerator door.

“What t’ devil… ?” Roic bent to read it. “What kind of burglar leaves a note ?”

Miles was actually rather proud of the vague wording. Call on me at my consulate at your earliest convenience. Not even an initial in signature.

“We never finished our conversation,” Miles explained. “We now have something he wants. He’ll come. Saves putting a trace on him, at least. Damn. Johannes is the only one of us he hasn’t seen yet, but I need him for other tasks. You’ll be glad to know I now regret not having brought that ImpSec team you always want.”

“Cold comfort,” sighed Roic. “Why not just wait for Leiber to come back?”

“He won’t, not while we’re here. If I’ve guessed right he risked his job, maybe his life, to secure what we found in the basement. He’ll be skittish, till he has time to calm down and think it through.” And then he’ll be terrified .

After considerately closing the garage door behind them, they all piled back into the lift van. “To Madame Suze’s,” Miles directed Johannes. “Circuitously and sedately.”

Raven leaned over the seat back. “You know, if we’ve just stolen that poor man’s grandmother, we’re going to be very embarrassed.”

Miles grinned, exhilarated. “Then we’ll simply return her. Leave her on the lawn after dark. Or maybe ship her back anonymously. No, it would take a lot more than that to embarrass me.”

The thought was less amusing when Miles remembered yesterday morning’s debacle. He wasn’t sure if that noise from Roic was a sigh or a snort, but in either case, he elected to ignore it.

Back when he’d been a young municipal street guard for the town of Hassadar, Roic had undergone first-aid training. Later, after taking the solemn oath of a Count’s Armsman, he’d been sent off for a much more advanced course in military field aid. It had included how to do an emergency cryoprep, with practice on a disturbingly realistic and anatomically complete model person and fake cryo-fluid. It hadn’t given him nightmares. Helping shift Madame Sato’s body onto the procedure table, he wasn’t so sure that would remain the case.

Cutting away the protective caul and prepping the still form, Raven and Medtech Tanaka were too professional to permit much embarrassment on the helpless woman’s behalf. But she didn’t look like the model, she didn’t—quite—look like a corpse, and she didn’t look alive, either. Maybe no one had a slot in their old ape brain for this. Yet if he ever had to perform a cryoprep for real, God forbid, Roic suspected this experience would help him do a better job, knowing what all those rote steps were aimed at. He was conscious of an odd sense of privilege.

At least m’lord had made damned sure he had the right woman this time, after that unholy mess day before yesterday. Fortunately, he’d stopped short of bringing in those poor kids to ID his new prize last night, after they’d got her to Suze’s and unwrapped her. This time around, Jin and Mina hadn’t even been told she was found yet. When he’d asked m’lord, But which is better? M’lord had replied simply, Neither . Which just about summed it up.

Roic tried not to flinch as Raven punched the assorted tubings through thawed skin and carefully seated them in his vessels-of-choice. Roic did start at a brief rap on the door, and turned on his heel, alert.

Consul Vorlynkin stuck his head in. “Lord Vorkosigan, a message came—oh.”

“You didn’t bring the kids this time, did you?” demanded m’lord, alarmed.

“No, no. Johannes is baby-sitting. They still don’t know.”

“Whew. Though perhaps you could bring them over soon, if all goes well.”

“And if it doesn’t?” asked Vorlynkin grimly.

M’lord sighed. “Then maybe I can bring them.”

“You can come in,” said Raven over his shoulder, “but you have to put on a filtering mask. You can’t hang in the doorway like a cat.”

Ako hastened to hand Vorlynkin a mask, and helped him adjust it; he grimaced as the memoryseal bonded to his skin. He came cautiously up to the procedure table. “I did wonder what this was like.”

“Any problems so far?” m’lord asked. He was perched on a tall stool, partly to oversee the procedure, but mostly, Roic suspected, to block him from pacing.

“Not yet,” said Raven. He reached over and started the first flush of warmed, hyper-oxygenated IV fluid. His patient’s skin began to turn from clay gray to an ethereal ice-pale. Someone had made an unexpected effort to preserve her long hair, treated with gel and rolled in a wrapping; it lay curled like a snail shell above her shoulder. Ms. Chen’s hair had been cropped in a medically utilitarian bob.

Madame Sato was taller than Roic had expected, fully five-foot-eight. That and her dark hair gave her a slight, unsettling resemblance to m’lord’s wife Lady Ekaterin, actually, which Roic elected not to point out. Sato’s face was a rounder shape, if also stretched over a fine symmetrical scaffolding of jaw and cheekbone, and her body was thinner in a way that suggested stress rather than athleticism. An elf-lady strung out on bad drugs and bad company.

“She’s not what…” Vorlynkin stared, mesmerized. “I thought you said she’d look terrible. Skin flaking and bleeding, hair falling out and so on.”

“There wasn’t a thing wrong with her when they put her in cryo-stasis,” said Raven, “and this appears to have been first-class prep, and recent at that. When he arrived on our operating table, Lord Vorkosigan was in much worse shape than average. To put it mildly. I suppose someone has to be better, to keep the average balanced.”

“She looks like something out of a fairy tale.”

“What,” said m’lord, swinging one heel to tap upon a stool leg, “Snow White with just one dwarf?”

Vorlynkin reddened, an I-didn’t-say-that look in his eyes.

M’lord snickered at him. “Now all we need is a prince.”

“So who’s t’ frog?” asked Roic, secretly glad not to be alone in his fanciful impressions.

“Different fairy tale,” m’lord told him kindly. “I hope.”

Raven switched tubing, and the clear fluid was replaced with dark red. The ice-woman look slowly changed, the skin tone shifting through faint pinkness like a chill spring to a warmer gold-ivory, as though she was receiving a transfusion of summer. At length, Raven closed the exit line draining from her leg, sealing vein and skin with plastic bandage. Raven and Tanaka fussed about with the leads and wires and the strange cap. “Clear,” Raven called, looking up to be sure his amateur audience had stepped back. The snap of the electrical stimulus was quieter than Roic had expected, but still made him recoil.