Lois Bujold - Memory

Quinn might be almost happy on Komarr. Its domed cities were reminiscent of the space station upon which she had been born. True, most of Lord Vorkosigan's duties would keep him in a tight little circuit around Vorbarr Sultana. The capital drew all ambitious men like a gravity well. But one might maintain a second domicile on one of the stations here, a cozy little deep-space dacha. . . . It is far from the mountains.

He'd seen the Count and Countess off from this station yesterday, on their way back to Sergyar, having hitched a ride with them as far as Komarr in their government courier ship. Five days in the relatively uninterrupted confines of a jump-ship had actually given them time enough to talk, for a change. He had also seized the opportunity to beg an Armsman for himself from his father, the comfortable Pym by choice. The Countess grumbled they should have held out for Ma Kosti in exchange, but gave up her favorite Armsman to him nonetheless; the Count promised to send him a couple more in due time, chosen from those whose wives and families had been the most bitterly unhappy at having been forcibly transplanted from their familiar city to the wilds of Chaos Colony.

The crowd around the exit door from Customs Processing thickened, as inbound passengers began to spill through and hurry to their further destinations, or greet waiting parties with businesslike decorum or familial enthusiasm. Miles rose on his toes, futilely. Nine-tenths of this outrush dissipated before Quinn came striding through the doors, conservatively incognito in Komarran civilian fashion, a white padded silk jacket and trousers. The outfit set off her dark curls and brilliant brown eyes; but then, Quinn made anything she wore look great, including ripped fatigues and mud.

She too craned to look for him, murmured a "Heh," of satisfaction upon spotting him waving a hand behind a few other shoulders, and wove through the crowd. Her stride stretched as she neared; she dropped the gray duffel she swung and they embraced with an impact that nearly knocked Miles off his feet. The scent of her made up for any number of defective space station atmospheric filters. Quinn, my Quinn. After a dozen or so kisses, they parted just far enough to permit speech.

"So why did you ask me to bring all your stuff?" she demanded suspiciously. "I didn't like the sound of that."

"Did you?"

"Yes. It's stuck back in Customs. They choked on the contents, particularly all the weapons. I gave up arguing with them after a while—you're a Barrayaran, you sort them out."

"Ah, Pym." Miles gestured to his Armsman, like Miles dressed in discreet streetwear. "Take Commodore Quinn's receipts, and rescue my property from our bureaucracy, please. Address it to Vorkosigan House, and send it by commercial shipper. Then go on back to the hostel."

"Yes, my lord." Pym collected the data codes, and plunged back through the doors into Customs.

"Is that all your personal luggage?" Miles asked Quinn.

"As ever."

"Off to the hostel, then. It's a nice one." The best on the station, in fact, luxury class. "I, ah, got us a suite for tonight."

"You'd better have."

"Have you had dinner?"

"Not yet."

"Good. Neither have I."

A short walk brought them to the nearest bubble-car terminal, and a short ride to the hostel. Its appointments were elegant, its corridors wide and thickly carpeted, and its staff solicitous. The suite was large, for a space station, which meant nicely cozy for Miles's present purposes.

"Your General Allegre is generous," remarked Quinn, unloading her duffel after a quick reconnoiter of the sybaritic bathroom. "I may like working for him after all."

"I think you will, but this is on my bill tonight, not ImpSec's. I wanted someplace quiet where we could talk, before your official meeting with Allegre and the Galactic Affairs chief tomorrow."

"So … I don't quite understand this setup. I get one lousy message from you with you looking like a damned zombie, telling me Illyan caught up with you about poor Vorberg, and didn't I tell you so. Then a resounding silence, for weeks, and no answers to my messages to you, you rat. Then I get another one with you all chipper again, saying it's all right now, and I sure don't see the connection. Then I get this order to report to ImpSec on Komarr without delay, no explanations, no hint of what the new assignment is, except with this postscript from you to bring your whole kit with me when I come and put the freight charges on ImpSec's tab. Are you back in ImpSec, or not?"

"Not. I'm here as a consultant, to get you up and running with your new bosses, and vice versa. I, ah . . . have another job, now."

"I really don't understand. I mean, your messages are usually cryptic—"

"It's hard to send proper love letters, when you know everything you say is going to be monitored by ImpSec censors."

"But this time, it was frigging incomprehensible. What is going on with you?" Her voice was edged with the same suppressed fear Miles was feeling, Am I losing you? No, not fear. Knowledge.

"I tried to compose a message a couple of times, but it was . . . too complicated, and all the most important parts were things I didn't want to send tight-beam. The edited version came out sounding like gibberish. I had to see you face-to-face anyway, for, for a lot of reasons. It's a long story, and most of it is classified, a fact that I am going to completely ignore. I can, you know. Do you want to go down to the restaurant to eat, or order room service?"

"Miles," she said in exasperation. "Room service. And explanations."

He distracted her temporarily with the hostel's enormous menu, to buy a little more time to compose his thoughts. It didn't help any more than the previous weeks he'd spent composing those same thoughts, in their endless permutations. Miles put in their order and they settled side by side, facing one another, on the suite's smaller couch.

"To explain about my new job, I have to tell you something about how I acquired it, and why Illyan isn't Chief of ImpSec anymore. . . ." He told her the story of the past months, beginning with Illyan's breakdown, doubling back to explain about Laisa and Duv Galeni, growing excited and jumping up to gesture and pace when he described how he'd nailed Haroche at last. His seizure treatment. Gregor's job offer. All the easy stuff, the events, the facts. He did not know how to explain his inner journey; Elli was not, after all, Barrayaran. The food arrived, stopping Elli's immediate reaction. Her face was tense and introspective. Yes. We should all think before we speak tonight, love.

She did not take up her thread until the hostel's human servitor finished arranging the meal on their table, and bustled out again.

It was three bites before she spoke; Miles wondered if she was tasting her soup as little as he was tasting his. When she did, she began obliquely, in a carefully neutral tone. "Imperial Auditor . . . sounds like some kind of an accountant. It's not you, Miles."

"It is now. I took my oath. It's one of those Barrayaran terms that doesn't mean what you think it does. I don't know. . . . Imperial Agent? Special Prosecutor? Special Envoy? Inspector General? It's all of those things, and none of them. It's whatever . . . whatever Gregor needs it to be. It's extraordinarily open-ended. I can't begin to tell you how much it suits me."

"You never once mentioned it before, as your ambition."

"I never imagined the possibility. But it's not the sort of job that should ever be given to a man who is too ambitious for it. Willing, yes, but not ambitious. It … calls for dispassion, not passion, even with respect to itself."

She sat frowning over this for a full minute. At last, visibly gathering her courage, she took a more direct cut. "So where does it leave me, leave us? Does it mean you're never coming back to the Dendarii? Miles, I might never see you again." Only the smallest quaver edged her controlled voice.