Lois Bujold - Barrayar

Her own man had the look about his eyes of someone who had drawn the short straw, although his lips smiled. “My Lord Regent has asked me to inform you of the schedule of treatments, and so on. I’m afraid,” he cleared his throat, “that it would be best if we scheduled the abortion promptly. It is already unusually late in your pregnancy for it, and it would be as well for your recovery to relieve you of the physiological strain as soon as possible.”

“Is there nothing that can be done?” she asked hopelessly, already knowing the answer from their faces.

“I’m afraid not,” said her man sadly. The man from the Imperial Residence nodded confirmation.

“I ran a literature search,” said the captain unexpectedly, staring out the window, “and there was that calcium experiment. True, the results they got weren’t particularly heartening—”

“I thought we’d agreed not to bring that up,” glared the Residence man.

“Vaagen, that’s cruel,” said her own man. “You’re just raising false hopes. You can’t make the Regent’s wife into one of your hapless experimental animals for a lot of untried shots in the dark. You have your permission from the Regent for the autopsy—leave it at that.”

Her world turned right-side-up again in a second, as she looked at the face of the man with ideas. She knew the type; half-right, half-cocked, half-successful, flitting from one monomania to another like a bee pollinating flowers, gathering little fruit but leaving seeds behind. She was nothing to him, personally, but the raw material for a monograph. The risks she took did not appall his imagination, she was not a person but a disease state. She smiled upon him, slowly, wildly, knowing him then for her ally in the enemy camp.

“How do you do, Dr. Vaagen? How would you like to write the paper of a lifetime?”

The Residence man barked a laugh. “She’s got your number, Vaagen.”

He smiled back, astonished to be so instantly understood. “You realize, I can’t guarantee any results… .”

“Results!” interrupted her man. “My God, you’d better let her know what your idea of results is. Or show her the pictures—no, don’t do that. Milady,” he turned to her, “the treatment he’s discussing was last tried twenty years ago. It did irreparable damage to the mothers. And the results—the very best results you could hope for would be a twisted cripple. Perhaps much worse. Indescribably worse.”

“Jellyfish describes it pretty well,” said Vaagen.

“You’re inhuman, Vaagen!” snapped her man, with a glance her way to check the distress quotient.

“A viable jellyfish, Dr. Vaagen?” asked Cordelia, intent.

“Mm. Maybe,” he replied, inhibited by his colleagues’ angry glares. “But there is the difficulty of what happens to the mothers when the treatment is applied in vivo.”

“So, can’t you do it in vitro?” Cordelia asked the obvious question.

Vaagen shot a glance of triumph at her man. “It would certainly open up a number of possible lines of experiment, if it could be arranged,” he murmured to the ceiling.

“In vitro?” said the Residence man, puzzled. “How?”

“What, how?” said Cordelia. “You’ve got seventeen Escobaran-manufactured uterine replicators stored in a closet around here somewhere, carried home from the war.” She turned excitedly to Vaagen. “Do you happen to know a Dr. Henri?”

Vaagen nodded. “We’ve worked together.”

“Then you know all about them!”

“Well—not exactly all. But, ah—in fact, he informs me that they are available. But you understand, I’m not an obstetrician.”

“You certainly aren’t,” said her man. “Milady, this man isn’t even a physician. He’s only a biochemist.”

“But you’re an obstetrician,” she pointed out. “So we have the whole team, then. Dr. Henri, and, um, Captain Vaagen here for Piotr Miles, and you, for the transfer.”

His lips were compressed, and his eyes held a very strange expression. It took her a moment to identify it as fear. “I can’t do the transfer, Milady,” he said. “I don’t know how. Nobody on Barrayar has ever done one.”

“You don’t advise it, then?”

“Definitely not. The possibility of permanent damage—you can, after all, begin again in a few months, if the soft-tissue scarring doesn’t extend to testicular—ahem. You can begin again. I am your doctor, and that is my considered opinion.”

“Yes, if somebody else doesn’t knock Aral off in the meantime. I must remember this is Barrayar, where they are so in love with death they bury men who are still twitching. Are you willing to try the operation?”

He drew himself up in dignity. “No, Milady. And that’s final.”

“Very well.” She pointed a finger at her doctor, “You’re out,” and shifted it to Vaagen, “you’re in. You are now in charge of this case. I rely on you to find me a surgeon—or a medical student, or a horse doctor, or somebody who’s willing to try. And then you can experiment to your heart’s content.”

Vaagen looked mildly triumphant; her former man looked furious. “We had better see what my Lord Regent has to say, before you carry his wife off on this wave of criminally false optimism.”

Vaagen looked a little less triumphant.

“You thinking of charging over there right now?” asked Cordelia.

“I’m sorry, Milady,” said the Residence man, “but I think we’d do best to quash this thing right now. You don’t know Captain Vaagen’s reputation. Sorry to be so blunt, Vaagen, but you’re an empire builder, and this time you’ve gone too far.”

“Are you ambitious for a research wing, Captain Vaagen?” Cordelia inquired.

He shrugged, embarrassed rather than outraged, so she knew the Residence man’s words to be at least half true. She gathered Vaagen in by eye, willing to possess him body, mind, and soul, but especially mind, and wondering how best to fire his imagination in her service.

“You shall have an institute, if you can bring this off. You tell him,” she jerked her head in the direction of the hall, toward Aral’s room, “I said so.”

Variously discomfited, angry, and hopeful, they withdrew. Cordelia lay back on the bed and whistled a little soundless tune, her fingertips continuing their slow abdominal massage. Gravity had ceased to exist.

She slept at last, toward the middle of the day, and woke disoriented. She squinted at the afternoon light slanting through the hospital room’s windows. The grey rain had gone away. She touched her belly, for grief and reassurance, and rolled over to find Count Piotr sitting at her bedside.

He was dressed in his country clothes, old uniform trousers, plain shirt, a jacket that he wore only at Vorkosigan Surleau. He must have come up directly to ImpMil. His thin lips smiled anxiously at her. His eyes looked tired and worried.

“Dear girl. You need not wake up for me.”

“That’s all right.” She blinked away blear from her eyes, feeling older than the old man. “Is there something to drink?”

He hastily poured her cold water from the bedside basin spigot, and watched her swallow. “More?”

“That’s enough. Have you seen Aral yet?”

He patted her hand. “I’ve talked to Aral already. He’s resting now. I am so sorry, Cordelia.”

“It may not be as bad as we feared at first. There’s still a chance. A hope. Did Aral tell you about the uterine replicator?”

“Something. But the damage has already been done, surely. Irrevocable damage.”

“Damage, yes. How irrevocable it is, no one knows. Not even Captain Vaagen.”

“Yes, I met Vaagen a little while ago.” Piotr frowned. “A pushing sort of fellow. New Man type.”