Lois Bujold - Barrayar

“Poverty? Well, some people have more money than others, of course, but … no comconsoles?”

Vorkosigan was diverted from his interrogation. “Is not owning a comconsole the lowest standard of living you can imagine?” he said in wonder.

“It’s the first article in the constitution. ’Access to information shall not be abridged.’ “

“Cordelia … these people barely have access to food, clothing, and shelter. They have a few rags and cooking pots, and squat in buildings that aren’t economical to repair or tear down yet, with the wind whistling through the cracks in the walls.”

“No air—conditioning?”

“No heat in the winter is a bigger problem, here.”

“I suppose so. You people don’t really have summer… . How do they call for help when they’re sick or hurt?”

“What help?” Vorkosigan was growing grim. “If they’re sick, they either get well or die.”

“Die, if we’re lucky,” muttered Piotr. “Vermin.”

“You’re not joking.” She stared back and forth between the pair of them. “That’s horrible … why, think of all the geniuses you must be missing!”

“I doubt we’re missing very many, from the caravanserai,” said Piotr dryly.

“Why not? They have the same genetic complement as you,” Cordelia pointed out the, to her, obvious.

The Count went rigid. “My dear girl! They most certainly do not! My family have been Vor for nine generations.”

Cordelia raised her eyebrows. “How do you know, if you didn’t have gene typing till eighty years ago?”

Both the guard commander and the footman were acquiring peculiar stuffed expressions. The footman bit his lip.

“Besides,” she went on reasonably, “if you Vor got around half as much as those histories I’ve been reading imply, ninety percent of the people on this planet must have Vor blood by now. Who knows who your relatives are on your father’s side?”

Vorkosigan bit his linen napkin absently, his eyes gone crinkly with much the same expression as the footman, and murmured, “Cordelia, you can’t … you really can’t sit at the breakfast table and imply my ancestors were bastards. It’s a mortal insult here.”

Where should I sit? “Oh. I’ll never understand that, I guess. Oh, never mind. Koudelka, and Bothari.”

“Quite. Go on, duty officer.”

“Yes, sir. Well, sir, they were coming back, I was told, about an hour after midnight, when they were set on by a gang of area toughs. Evidently Lieutenant Koudelka was too well dressed, and besides there’s that walk of his, and the stick … anyway, he attracted attention. I don’t know the details, sir, but there were four deaths and three in the hospital this morning, in addition to the ones that got away.”

Vorkosigan whistled, very faintly, through his teeth. “What was the extent of Bothari’s and Koudelka’s injuries?”

“They … I don’t have an official report, sir. Just hearsay.”

“Say, then.”

The duty officer swallowed a little. “Sergeant Bothari has a broken arm, some broken ribs, internal injuries, and a concussion. Lieutenant Koudelka, both legs broken, and a lot of, uh … shock burns.” His voice trailed off. “What?”

“Evidently—I heard—their assailants had a couple of high-voltage shock sticks, and they discovered they could get some … peculiar effects on his prosthetic nerves with them. After they’d broken his legs they spent … quite a long time working him over. That’s how it was Commander Illyan’s men caught up with them. They didn’t clear off in time.”

Cordelia pushed her plate away and sat trembling. “Hearsay, eh? Very well. Dismissed. See that Commander Illyan is sent to me immediately he arrives.” Vorkosigan’s expression was introspective and grim.

Piotr’s was sourly triumphant. “Vermin,” he asserted. “You ought to burn them all out.”

Vorkosigan sighed. “Easier to start a war than finish it. Not this week, sir.”

Illyan attended on Vorkosigan within the hour, in the library, with his informal verbal report. Cordelia trailed in after them, to sit and listen.

“Sure you want to hear this?” Vorkosigan asked her quietly.

She shook her head. “Next to you, they are my best friends here. I’d rather know than wonder.”

The duty officer’s synopsis proved tolerably accurate, but Illyan, who had talked to both Bothari and Koudelka at the Imperial Military Hospital where they had been taken, had a number of details to add, in blunt terms. His puppy-dog face looked unusually old this morning.

“Your secretary was apparently seized with a desire to get laid,” he began. “Why he picked Bothari as a native guide, I can’t imagine.”

“We three are the sole survivors of the General Vorkraft ,” Vorkosigan replied. “It’s a bond, I suppose. Kou and Bothari always got on well, though. He appeals to Bothari’s latent fatherly instincts, maybe. And Kou’s a clean-minded boy—don’t tell him I said that, he’d take it as an insult. It’s good to be reminded such people still exist. Wish he’d come to me, though.”

“Well, Bothari did his best,” said Illyan. “Took him to this dismal dive, which I gather has a number of points in its favor from Bothari’s point of view. It’s cheap, it’s quick, and nobody talks to him. It’s also far removed from Admiral Vorrutyer’s old circles. No unpleasant associations. He has a strict routine. According to Kou, Bothari’s regular woman is almost as ugly as he is. Bothari likes her, it appears, because she never makes any noise. I don’t think I want to think about that.

“Be that as it may, Kou got mismatched with one of the other employees, who terrified him. Bothari says he asked for the best girl for him—hardly a girl, woman, whatever—and apparently Kou’s needs were misinterpreted. Anyway, Bothari was done and kicking his heels waiting while Kou was still trying to make polite conversation and being offered an assortment of delights for jaded appetites he’d never heard of before. He gave up and fled back downstairs at last, where Bothari was by this time pretty thoroughly tanked. He usually has one drink and leaves, it seems.

“Kou, Bothari, and this whore then got into an argument over payment, on the grounds that he’d burned up enough time for four customers versus—most of this won’t be in the official report, all right?—she couldn’t get his circuits working. Kou forked over a partial payment—Bothari’s still grumbling over how much, insofar as he can talk at all through that mouth of his this morning—and they retreated in disorder, a lousy time having been had by all.”

“The first obvious question that arises,” said Vorkosigan, “is, was the attack ordered by anyone from that establishment?”

“To the best of my knowledge, no. I threw a cordon around the place, once we’d found it, and questioned everyone inside under fast-penta. Scared the shit out of them all, I’m glad to say. They’re used to Count Vorbohn’s municipal guards, whom they bribe, or who blackmail them, and vice versa. We turned up a lot of information on petty crimes, none of which was of the least interest to us—do you want me to pass it on to the municipals, by the way?”

“Hm. If they’re innocent of the attack, just file it. Bothari may want to go back there someday. Do they know why they were questioned?”

“Certainly not! I insist my men work clean. We’re here to gather information, not pass it out.”

“My apologies, Commander. I should have known. Carry on.”

“Well, they left the place about an hour after midnight, on foot, and took a wrong turn somewhere. Bothari’s pretty upset about that. Thinks it’s his fault, for getting so drunk, Bothari and Koudelka both say they saw movements in the shadows for about ten minutes before the attack. So they were stalked, apparently, until they were manuevered into a high walled alley, and found themselves with six in front and six behind.