Lois Bujold - The Warrior's Apprentice

"I like being bored," said Bothari morosely.

Miles grinned, secretly relieved at not being taken more strictly to task for his "Dendarii Mercenaries" outbreak. Well, the brief moment of fantasy was probably harmless enough.

The three of them found Elena stalking back and forth across Mrs. Naismith's living room. Two bright spots of color burned in her cheeks, her nostrils flared, and she was muttering under her breath. She transfixed Miles with an angry glare as he entered. "Betans!" she bit out in a voice of loathing.

This only let him half off the hook. "What's the matter?" he inquired cautiously.

She took another turn around the room, stiff-legged, as if trampling bodies underfoot. "That awful holovid," she glowered. "How can they—oh, I can't even describe it."

Ah ha, she found one of the pornography channels, thought Miles. Well, it had to happen eventually. "Holovid?" he said brightly.

"How could they permit such horrible slanders on Admiral Vorkosigan, and Prince Serg, and our forces? I think the producer should be taken out and shot! And the actors—and the scriptwriter—we would at home, by God …"

Not the pornography channel, evidently. "Uh, Elena—just what have you been looking at?"

His grandmother was seated, with a fixed nervous smile, in her float chair. "I tried to explain that it's fictionalized—you know, to make the history more dramatic …"

Elena gave vent to an ominous rattling hiss; Miles gave his grandmother a pleading look.

"The Thin Blue Line," Mrs. Naismith explained cryptically.

"Oh, I've seen that one," said Mayhew. "It's a rerun."

Miles recalled the docudrama vividly himself; it had first been released two years ago, and had contributed its mite to making his school visit to Beta Colony the sometimes surreal experience it had been. Miles's father, then-Commodore Vorkosigan, had begun the aborted Barrayaran invasion of Beta Colony's ally Escobar 19 years ago as a Staff officer. He had ended, upon the catastrophic deaths of the co-commanders Admiral Vorrutyer and Crown Prince Serg Vorbarra, as commander of the armada. His brilliant retreat was still cited as exemplary, in the military annals of Barrayar. The Betans naturally took a different view of the affair. The blue in the title of the docudrama referred to the color of the uniform worn by the Betan Expeditionary Force, of which Captain Cordelia Naismith had been a part.

"It's—it's .. ." Elena turned to Miles. "There isn't any truth in it—is there?"

"Well," said Miles, equable from years of practice in coming to terms with the Betan version of history, "some. But my mother says they never wore the blue uniforms until the war was practically over. And she swears up and down, privately, that she didn't murder Admiral Vorrutyer, but she won't say who did. Protests too much, I think. All my father will ever say about Vorrutyer is that he was a brilliant defensive strategist. I've never been quite sure what to make of that, since Vorrutyer was in charge of the offense. All my mother says about him is that he was a bit strange, which doesn't sound too bad, until I reflect that she's a Betan; They've never said a word against Prince Serg, and Father was on his staff and knew him, so I guess the Betan version of him is mainly a crock of war propaganda."

"Our greatest hero," cried Elena. "The Emperor's father—how dare they—"

"Well, even on our side, consensus seems to be that we were overreaching ourselves, to try and take Escobar, on top of Komarr and Sergyar."

Elena turned to her father, as the resident expert. "You served with my lord Count at Escobar, sir! Tell her—" a toss of her head indicated Mrs. Naismith, "it isn't so!"

"I don't remember Escobar," replied the Sergeant stonily, in a tone unusually flat and unencouraging even for him. "No point to that—" he jerked one large hand, thumb hooked in his belt, toward the holovid viewer. "It was wrong for you to see that."

The tension in Bothari's shoulders disturbed Miles, and the set look about his eyes. Anger? Over an ephemeral holovid which she had seen before, and ignored as readily as Miles had?

Elena paused, diverted and confused. "Don't remember? But …"

Something clicked in Miles's memory—the medical discharge, at last accounted for? "I didn't realize—were you wounded at Escobar, Sergeant?" No wonder he's twitchy about it, then.

Bothari's lips moved about the beginning of the word, wounded. "Yes," he muttered. His eyes shifted away from Miles and Elena.

Miles gnawed his lip. "Head wound?" he inquired in a burst of surmise.

Bothari's gaze shifted back to Miles, quellingly. "Mm."

Miles permitted himself to be quelled, hugging this new prize of information to himself. A head wou nd would account for much, that had long bemused him in his leigeman.

Taking the hint, Miles changed the subject firmly. "Be that as it may," he swept Elena a courtly bow—whatever happened to plumed hats, for men?—"I got my cargo."

Elena's irritation vanished instantly in pleased interest. "Oh, grand! And have you figured out how to get it past the blockade yet?"

"Working on it. Would you care to do some shopping for me? Supplies for the trip. Put the orders in to the ship chandlers—you can do it from here on the comconsole, Grandmother'll show you how. Arde has a standard list. We need everything—food, fuel cells, emergency oxygen, first-aid supplies—and at the best price you can get. This thing is going to wipe out my travel allowance, so anything you can save—eh?" He gave his draftee his most encouraging smile, as if the offer of two full days locked in struggle with the electronic labyrinth of Betan business practices was a high treat.

Elena looked doubtful. "I've never outfitted a ship before."

"It'll be easy," he assured her airily. "Just bang into it—you'll have it figured out in no time. If I can do it, you can do it." He zipped lightly over this argument, giving her no time to reflect on the fact that he had never outfitted a ship either. "Figure for Pilot Officer, Engineer, the Sergeant, me, and Major Daum, for eight weeks, and maybe a little margin, but not too much—remembering the budget. We boost the day after tomorrow."

"All right—when…?" she snapped to full alertness, thunder in the crimp of her black winging eyebrows. "What about me? You're not leaving me behind while you—"

Metaphorically, Miles slunk behind Bothari and waved a white flag. "That's up to your father. And Grandmother, of course."

"She's welcome to stay with me," said Mrs. Naismith faintly. "But Miles—you just got here …"

"Oh, I still mean to make my visit, ma'am," Miles reassured her. "We'll just reschedule our return to Barrayar. It's not like I had to—to get back in time for school or anything."

Elena stared at her father, tight-lipped with silent pleading. Bothari blew out his breath, his gaze turning calculatingly from his daughter to Mrs. Naismith to the holovid viewer, then inward to what thoughts or memories Miles could not guess. Elena barely restrained herself from hopping up and down in agitation. "Miles—my lord—you can order him to—"

Miles flicked a hand palm-out, and gave a tiny shake of his head, signalling, wait.

Mrs. Naismith glanced at Elena's anxiety, and smiled thoughtfully behind her hand. "Actually, dear, it would be lovely having you all to myself for a time. Like having a daughter again. You could meet young people—go to parties—I have some friends over in Quartz who could take you desert-trekking. I'm too old for the sport myself, now, but I'm sure you'd enjoy it …"

Bothari flinched. Quartz, for example, was Beta Colony's principle hermaphrodite community, and although Mrs. Naismith herself typified hermaphrodites as "people who are pathologically incapable of making up their minds," she bristled in patriotic Betan defense of them at Bothari's open Barrayaran revulsion to the sex. And Bothari had personally carried Miles home unconscious from more than one Betan party. As for Miles's nearly disastrous desert-trek . .. Miles shot his grandmother a look of thanks from crinkling eyes. She acknowledged it with a puckish nod, and smiled blandly at Bothari.