Lois Bujold - Cryoburn

Miles rubbed his knuckles across his mouth, and frowned. “There was no chance to go downside on my outbound trip, of course. Though I did snatch twenty minutes to talk in real time with Mother, from the orbital transfer station.”

“How was she?”

“No more harried than usual. I’d promised to stop on the way back, but my case ran a couple of weeks over what I’d initially planned—did that one to myself, true—and I might need to spend a few days on Komarr, setting up the trap for WhiteChrys with some folks, which also wasn’t in my initial plan. So I may have to wait till they come home for Winterfair, if they do, this year. Will you and Kareen be coming home then?”

“Not sure yet.”

“I was thinking you could pitch your new procedure to the Count-our-father in person.”

“We’ll see how good it’s looking at that point. We might actually have some preliminary results. Or not.”

A few passers-by turned their heads to stare at the two not-quite-twins, slouching, for the moment, in identical poses in their bolted-down chairs opposite each other. Miles studied his clone, in a little frisson of wonder he’d never quite lost.

“What?” said Mark, tilting his head in an invitation to be amused by his progenitor-brother’s infamous babble.

“Thinking about the uncle we neither of us ever knew. Our father’s older brother, who was killed in that same attack that took out our Barrayaran grandmother, in the opening salvo of Mad Yuri’s war. He was in his mid-teens, I believe. I was thinking how strange it was that I had a brother I never knew till I was an adult, and our father had a brother everyone had forgotten by the time he was an adult. Were you ever told anything about him at all, when you were being trained about Barrayar?”

Mark shrugged. “Just a name. No time was spent on him, when there was so much else to learn.”

“That’s about all I’ve ever gotten from Da, either. A painful period of his life, I gather. Maybe if you and Kareen do Winterfair, we can tag-team him and get him to disgorge more. Because I’m thinking… there’s hardly anyone else alive who knows anything about the fellow, by now.”

Mark nodded. “It’s a deal. If we come. Could be interesting. Or hair-raising.”

“Or both. I sometimes wonder how different things would be if he’d lived. Our father would never have become the count, for one. Maybe not even Lord Vorkosigan, if his brother had managed to pop an heir before our grandfather died. He’d have spent his life as Lord Aral.”

“I’ll bet he’d still have had a military career, though,” said Mark judiciously.

“Perhaps. Or perhaps, with the responsibility for our House taken up by someone else, he’d have felt freer to rebel. Do something else, be someone else.”

“Huh,” said Mark.

Miles fingered the holocube in his pocket. There was no point in pulling it out and showing it to Mark again, as he’d already done so. Twice. “You and Kareen planning kids yet? Not to mention marriage,” Miles added in an afterthought. The couple’s informal partnership, which would have been unremarkable on Beta Colony, had been a difficult pill for Kareen’s very Barrayaran parents to swallow, but after several years the senior Koudelkas seemed pretty reconciled. And Kareen had three older married sisters, all of whom had sprung at least one sprog, so there wasn’t the family pressure on her that there had been on, say, Miles.

“Children frighten me,” Mark confessed. “You had your Da as a role model, but all I ever had growing up was an insane Komarran terrorist who spent all his time trying to train me to be you.”

“Da spent a good bit of time trying to train me to be me, too,” said Miles, “but it wasn’t at all the same thing.”

Mark snorted. “Indeed.”

We can laugh about this now, sort of, Miles thought, pleased and bemused. What a journey that’s been. “You’d have Kareen for a co-parent,” Miles offered. “She’s one of the sanest people I know.”

“There is that,” Mark admitted. “So what’s your greatest terror, now you’re a Da yourself?”

“What if…” Miles pulled at his hair, looking up cross-eyed to see if he could spot any of the sneaky gray ones, but this cut was still too short. “What if my children find out I’m not really a grownup? How dreadfully disappointed would they be?”

This time, Mark laughed out loud. It was a very good sound, Miles thought, and he grinned back ruefully at his brother.

“I think your wife already knows,” said Mark.

“I’m afraid so.” Miles rubbed his lips. “Heh. D’you think Vorlynkin and Madame Sato will make a match of it?”

“Good God, how would I know?”

“I thought he had that look in his eye. Not as sure about her…” Which gave Miles a rather comradely feeling toward Vorlynkin, now he considered it. He wished the man luck.

Roic stiffened, peering down into the concourse.

“What?” said Miles.

“There’s Colonel Vorventa,” Roic answered. “Wonder what he wants?”

Miles leaned toward the railing and craned to see. The Barrayaran officer was, among other duties, senior ImpSec liaison from the local Barrayaran embassy on this main transfer station; Miles had dealt with him before, though more often with his predecessors. The colonel looked up, saw Roic, then Miles, waved in a wait-right-there sort of fashion, and made for the lift tubes at the end of the concourse. “Us, I’ll bet. Or me.” ImpSec would have known when their ship was coming in, of course.

“You, I hope,” said Mark. “I’ve had a few conversations with him. I don’t think he trusts me.”

“He’s actually pretty cosmopolitan, for a Barrayaran,” said Miles. “One of Da’s New Men. Blast, I hope he’s not bringing me more work.”

It was a compelling and unwelcome notion. If some fresh forest fire involving Barrayar’s interests had sprung up somewhere on this end of the Nexus, well, here was one of Gregor’s most notable firemen already halfway there. Miles’s lips twisted. No, I’ve just been! I want to go home now!

“That’s funny,” said Roic, in slow speculation. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him wearing his dress greens before.”

Miles hadn’t either. “That’s true. He always wears local civvies, and tries to blend in.”

Not today. Vorventa wore a high-necked military tunic in forest green, all his rank tags and decorations squarely in place, the green trousers with the red side-piping tucked neatly into mirror-polished riding boots, and a more inappropriate garb for a space station Miles could scarcely imagine. “Damn, but he looks shiny. Wonder what’s up?”

“We’ll find out in a minute,” said Mark, turning in his chair to watch the officer make his way among the tables toward them.

Vorventa’s steps slowed as he approached, and his eyes searched his quarry, though his face remained stiff. He halted at the table’s side, cast Mark and Roic a grave nod, came to attention, and offered Miles a very formal salute, though Miles was in no kind of uniform at all except his gray trousers and jacket.

The messenger moistened his lips, and said, “Count Vorkosigan, sir?”

Mark had once shot a man with a nerve disruptor; seen the surprised eyes go blank as the charge burned out the brain behind them. He didn’t know why watching Miles take in the news of their father’s death made that black memory surface. No buzz or crackle from a weapon here; just three quiet words.