Lois Bujold - The Flowers of Vashnoi

“Mm.” Ekaterin wondered if that explained something about adolescence. “At that point, I suppose one has to invent the scientific method. Or learn it somehow.”

“I really didn’t get my head around that till I was seven or so,” Enrique confessed, as if it were a regrettable lag.

Ekaterin’s lips twitched. “You know, Enrique, I suspect you’re going to be a pretty good Da, when you come to it. In your own weird way.”

“Do you really think so?” Enrique brightened at this measured praise. “You and Miles seem very good at it. I mean, you two never seem to panic.”

“In Miles’s train, one learns to set a rather high bar for that.” She was not, for example, panicking here, now, yet. Chokingly uneasy wasn’t panic, was it?

If there was another human being within half a kilometer, it wasn’t apparent to Enrique’s scanner. Ekaterin gave up on it and eyed the distant deadfall. “Just how hot is this patch, really?”

“It’s on a bit of a spur, coming down from the ridge. We rejected this area for our test plot for just that reason. Rather well drained, I should think.”

“Hence rather well rinsed?”

“We could check the rangers’ rad map back in the lightflyer.” Belatedly he added, “Why do you ask?”

“Let’s see that map.”

They both clambered into the front seat—her new lightflyer was going to have to be decontaminated inside and out after this, drat it—and Ekaterin called up the vid projection. The grid of their current position showed none of the structures they’d just seen, and it should have, but yes, this patch was one of the cooler ones, interlaced with more distant hot spots and streaks according to the accidents of topography. Her Mark One Eyeball had guessed as much.

“When you say We rejected this area , just what do you mean?” asked Ekaterin.

“Well”—Enrique cleared his throat—“actually, Vadim said, ‘That area has too much elevation. Don’t waste time on it.’ Which was true. Do you think he, ah… knew about this place?”

“After ten years patrolling the zone? He has to.” Therefore deliberately concealing it—maybe even enabling it? Given how long this squatter homestead had plainly been here, maybe more people than Vadim had to know? It smells of collusion would be… reasoning ahead of their data, as Enrique would no doubt put it.

“You think he lied to me, then?”

“By omission, anyway.” Which was going to be a problem, later. Or sooner.

Enrique scowled.

Ekaterin blew out her breath, swung out of the flyer, and began to unseal her hood-and-mask from her suit.

“What are you doing?” asked Enrique, alarmed.

“Going to talk to that girl. She’s not come out. It’s cruel to leave her cowering and crying in the bushes.”

“I—your husband will be very upset with me if he finds out I let, um…”

Ekaterin pulled a stray stand of her dark hair free from the seal fasteners and tucked it behind her ear. “Let?” she murmured, dangerously. Then, taking a little pity on him: “You don’t need to mention it.” Which was a rather Milesean approach, come to think, and therefore cosmic justice.

“Vorkosigans,” muttered Enrique, and flung up his hands.

Ekaterin smiled at him, tucked her hood prominently under her arm, and aimed back toward the woods. “Stay here. Keep an eye out,” she added, more to give him a feeling of use and keep him from following than because she thought there was much more to discover.

“These people could be serial killers , you know!” Enrique called at her back, grumpily. “ Radioactive serial killers!” She waved without turning around.

Decontamination for her, after this jaunt, might now extend to an overnight at Hassadar General Hospital, she reflected without joy. The basic chelation treatment, while well understood and practiced there, was going to involve needles and peeing into measured pots and, probably somewhere, feces. It seemed overkill, given that all the children she ever planned to have were already gene-cleaned frozen embryos safely sequestered in a reproductive center in Hassadar, waiting for their parents to have—now, there was a black joke—time. Thank heavens for Aurie Pym, anyway.

Ekaterin walked, very slowly and quietly, up to within a few meters of the deadfall—three or four trees collapsed and rotting in a tangle, festooned with mostly-green vines, brillberry and feral grape—then sat cross-legged on the ground. She raised her chin and called, in what she hoped was her most maternal and soothing voice, “Hello. I’m sorry we scared you, back in that shed. My name is Ekaterin. What’s yours?”

Tense silence from the tangle.

“I’m not a ghost. I’m a live lady. This is just a hat, see?” She put the hood on and then off again, setting it aside. Miles, she couldn’t help thinking, would be naturally better at this sort of beguilement, as he had demonstrated on more than one occasion. But he wasn’t the Vorkosigan on the spot.

A faint rustle in the brillberry leaves. Ekaterin held herself still. If the child-woman bolted again, should she give chase? No, probably not. Where, after all, did the girl have to go? Well, the entire zone, all three thousand square kilometers of it, but… no, there. A round, sallow, worried face poked cautiously through the leaves. Stared. Blinked.

“You’re pretty,” said a rough, thin voice.

Ekaterin controlled an utterly automatic flinch. In the drawing rooms of Vorbarr Sultana, a personal compliment was almost invariably the preamble to a pitch, some campaign to enlist her to facilitate access to her husband’s ear. Well, and a few misguided attempts at dalliance most certainly not intended to come to Lord Vorkosigan’s attention, but she didn’t actually have to evaluate those. She was now about as far from those drawing rooms as it was possible to imagine. So she produced a straightforward, “It’s nice of you to say so,” in return.

“Are you a princess?”

“No.” Thankfully . And, Were you expecting one? They couldn’t get many princesses passing through these parts. Or maybe it was some skewed fairy-tale logic—if all princesses were beautiful females, then all beautiful females must be princesses? “So what is your name?”

A long hesitation. “Jadwiga.”

“That’s a pretty name.” Almost the only part of the girl that could be so described. As she crept farther out of the tangle, Ekaterin noted her neck was disfigured by a lumpy, discolored growth, as big as Ekaterin’s fist—goiter, thyroid cancer? Both? It explained the choked voice. And made Ekaterin swallow involuntarily.

“Is it?”

“Yes,” said Ekaterin firmly. So try a not-too-long shot—“Do you know Vadim Sammi, the ranger? I just met him for the first time a few days ago. Seemed like a good fellow.”

At this, the girl came all the way out of the vines, seating herself on the ground cross-legged in unconscious imitation of Ekaterin, if still well out of reach. Ah, name-dropping. It worked in Vorbarr Sultana, too.

“Do you live in that house up on the tree stumps? That’s a very clever way to build, here.”

A nod. It made the growth wobble rather horribly; Ekaterin managed not to react.

“Who all lives here with you? I think it’s good that you’re not alone.” Though Jadwiga was surely alone just now. Why? She hadn’t exactly been locked into that shed, since a person would only have had to lean on the door to break the stick barring it. But someone on the outside must have set it.

“Ma Roga. And Boris. And Ingisi, he’s my favorite.” The head tilted. “Where d’you live?”

“Hassadar, some of the time. And some of the time in Vorbarr Sultana. But my favorite is a place on the long lake just at the foot of the Dendarii Mountains, near Vorkosigan Surleau.”