Lois Bujold - The Warrior's Apprentice

"God knows," whispered Arde, "I don't know much about being a military officer." He took an angry breath. "But I do know you can't drag 200 and more people out on a limb with you like this and then go catatonic."

"You're right," Miles snarled back, "you don't know much."

He stamped off, stiff-backed, but shaken inside with the justice of Mayhew's complaint. He slammed into his cabin just in time to throw up in secret for the fourth time that week, the second since Bothari's death, resolve sternly to take up the work at hand immediately and no more nonsense, and fall across his bed to lay immobile for the next six hours.

He was getting dressed. Men who'd done isolated duty all agreed, you had to keep the standards up or things went to hell. Miles had been awake three hours now, and had his trousers on. In the next hour he was either going to try for his socks, or shave, whichever seemed easier. He contemplated the pig-headed masochism of the Barrayaran habit of the daily shave versus, say, the civilized Betan custom of permanently stunning the hair follicles. Perhaps he'd go for the socks.

The cabin buzzer blatted. He ignored it. Then the intercom, Elena's voice: "Miles, let me in."

He lurched to a sitting position, nearly blacking himself out, and called hastily, "Come!", which released the voice-lock.

She picked her way in across strewn clothing, weapons, equipment, disconnected chargers, rations wrappers, and stared around, wrinkling her nose in dismay. "You know," she said at last, "if you're not going to pick this mess up yourself you ought to at least choose a new batman."

Miles stared around too. "It never occurred to me," he said humbly. "I used to imagine I was a very neat person. Everything just put itself away, or so I thought. You wouldn't mind?"

"Mind what?"

"If I got a new batman."

"Why should I care?"

Miles thought it over. "Maybe Arde. I've got to find something for him to do, sooner or later, now he can't jump anymore."

"Arde?" she repeated dubiously.

"He's not nearly as slovenly as he used to be."

"Mm." She picked up a hand-viewer that was lying upside-down on the floor, and looked for a place to set it. But there was only one level surface in the cabin that held no clutter or dust. "Miles, how long are you going to keep that coffin in here?"

"It might as well be stored here as anywhere. The morgue's cold. He didn't like the cold."

"People are beginning to think you're strange."

"Let 'em think what they like. I gave him my word once that I'd take him back to be buried on Barrayar, if—if anything happened to him out here."

She shrugged angrily. "Why bother keeping your word to a corpse? It'll never know the difference."

"I'm alive," Miles said quietly, "and I'd know."

She stalked around the cabin, lips tight. Face tight, whole body tight—"I've been running your unarmed combat classes for ten days now. You haven't come to a single session."

He wondered if he ought to tell her about throwing up the blood. No, she'd drag him off to the medtech for sure. He didn't want to see the medtech. His age, the secret weakness of his bones—too much would become apparent on a close medical examination.

She went on. "Baz is doing double shifts, reconditioning equipment, Tung and Thorne and Auson are running their tails off organizing the new recruits—but it's all starting to come apart. Everybody's spending all their time arguing with everybody else. Miles, if you spend another week holed up in here, the Dendarii Mercenaries are going to start looking just like this cabin."

"I know. I've been to the staff meetings. Just because I don't say anything doesn't mean I'm not listening."

"Then listen to them when they say they need your leadership."

"I swear to God, Elena, I don't know what for." He ran his hands through his hair, and jerked up his chin. "Baz fixes things, Arde runs them, Tung and Thorne and Auson and their people do the fighting, you keep them all sharp and in condition—I'm the one person who doesn't do anything real at all." He paused. "They say? What do you say?"

"What does it matter what I say?"

"You came …"

"They asked me to come. You haven't been letting anyone else in, remember? They've been pestering me for days. They act like a bunch of ancient Christians asking the Virgin Mary to intercede with God."

A ghost of his old grin flitted across his mouth. "No, only with Jesus. God is back on Barrayar."

She choked, then buried her face in her hands. "Damn you for making me laugh!" she said, muffled.

He rose to capture her hands and make her sit beside him. "Why shouldn't you laugh? You deserve laughter, and all good things."

She did not answer, but stared across the room at the oblong silver box resting in the corner, at the bright scars on the far wall. "You never doubted her accusations," she said at last. "Not even for the first instant."

"I saw a lot more of him than you ever did. He practically lived in my back pocket for seventeen years."

"Yes …" her eyes fell to her hands, now twisting in her lap. "I suppose I never did see more than glimpses. He would come to the village at Vorkosigan Surleau and give Mistress Hysop her money once a month—he'd hardly ever stay more than an hour. Looking three meters tall in that brown and silver livery of yours. I'd be so excited, I couldn't sleep for a day before or after. Summers were heaven, because when your mother asked me up the lake to the summer place to play with you, I'd see him all day long." Her hands tightened to fists, and her voice broke. "And it was all lies. Faking glory, while all the time underneath was this—cess-pit."

He made his voice more gentle than he had ever known he could. "I don't think he was lying, Elena. I think he was trying to forge a new truth."

Her teeth were clenched and feral. "The truth is, I am a madman's rape-bred bastard, my mother is a murderess who hates the very shape of my shadow—I can't believe I've inherited no more from them than my nose and my eyes—"

There it was, the dark fear, most secret. He started in recognition, and dove after it like a knight pursuing a dragon underground. "No! You're not them. You are you, your own person—totally separate—innocent—"

"Coming from you, I think that's the most hypocritical thing I've ever heard."

"Huh?"

"What are you but the culmination of your generations? The flower of the Vor—"

"Me?" He stared in astonishment. "The culmination of degeneration, maybe. A stunted weed .. ." He paused; her face seemed a mirror of his own astonishment. "They do add up, it's true. My grandfather carried nine generations on his back. My father carried ten. I carry eleven—and I swear that last one weighs more than all the rest put together. It's a wonder I'm not squashed even shorter. I feel like I'm down to about half a meter right now. Soon I'll disappear altogether."

He was babbling, knew he was babbling. Some dam had broken in him. He gave himself over to the flood and boiled on down the sluice.

"Elena, I love you, I've always loved you—" She leaped like a startled deer, he gasped and flung his arms around her. "No, listen! I love you, I don't know what the Sergeant was but I loved him too, and whatever of him is in you I honor with all my heart, I don't know what is truth and I don't give a damn anymore, we'll make our own like he did, he did a bloody good job I think, I can't live without my Bothari, marry me!" He spent the last of his air shouting the last two words, and had to pause for a long inhalation.

"I can't marry you! The genetic risks—"

"I am not a mutant! Look, no gills—" he stuck his fingers into the corners of his mouth and spread it wide, "no antlers—" he planted his thumbs on either side of his head and wriggled his fingers.