The Vor Game

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “Afraid?” Miles raised his brows inquiringly.

  The corpsman straightened, in the unconscious posture of a man transmitting official bad news. That old they-told-me-to-say-this-it's-not-my-fault look. “You are ordered to report to the base commander's office as soon as I release you, sir."

  Miles considered an immediate relapse. No. Better to get the messy parts over with. “Tell me, corpsman, has anyone else ever sunk a scat-cat?"

  “Oh, sure. The grubs lose about five or six a season. Plus minor bog-downs. The engineers get real pissed about it. The commandant promised them next time he'd ... ahem!” The corpsman lost his voice.

  Wonderful, thought Miles. Just great. He could see it coming. It wasn't like he couldn't see it coming.

  * * * *

  Miles dashed back to his quarters for a quick change of clothing, guessing a hospital robe might be inappropriate for the coming interview. He immediately found he had a minor quandry. His black fatigues seemed too relaxed, his dress greens too formal for office wear anywhere outside Imperial HQ at Vorbarr Sultana. His undress greens’ trousers and half-boots were still at the bottom of the bog. He had only brought one of each uniform style with him; his spares, supposedly in transit, had not yet arrived.

  He was hardly in a position to borrow from a neighbor. His uniforms were privately made to his own fit, at approximately four times the cost of Imperial issue. Part of that cost was for the effort of making them indistinguishable on the surface from the machine cut, while at the same time partially masking the oddities of his body through subtleties of hand-tailoring. He cursed under his breath, and shucked on his dress greens, complete with mirror-polished boots to the knees. At least the boots obviated the leg braces.

  General Stanis Metzov, read the sign on the door, Base Commander. Miles had been assiduously avoiding the base commander ever since their first unfortunate encounter. This had not been hard to do in Ahn's company, despite the pared population of Kyril Island this month; Ahn avoided everybody. Miles now wished he'd tried harder to strike up conversations with brother officers in mess. Permitting himself to stay isolated, even to concentrate on his new tasks, had been a mistake. In five days of even the most random conversation, someone must surely have mentioned Kyril Island's voracious killer mud.

  A corporal manning the comconsole in an antechamber ushered Miles through to the inner office. He must now try to work himself back round to Metzov's good side, assuming the general had one. Miles needed allies. General Metzov looked across his desk unsmiling as Miles saluted and stood waiting.

  Today, the general was aggressively dressed in black fatigues. At Metzov's altitude in the hierarchy, this stylistic choice usually indicated a deliberate identification with The Fighting Man. The only concession to his rank was their pressed neatness. His decorations were stripped down to a mere modest three, all high combat commendations. Pseudo-modest; pruned of the surrounding foliage, they leapt to the eye. Mentally, Miles applauded, even envied, the effect; Metzov looked his part, the combat commander, absolutely, unconsciously natural.

  A fifty-fifty chance with the uniform, and I had to guess wrong, Miles fumed as Metzov's eye traveled sarcastically down, and back up, the subdued glitter of his dress greens. All right, so Metzov's eyebrows signaled, Miles now looked like some kind of Vorish headquarters twit. Not that that wasn't another familiar type. Miles decided to decline the roasting and cut Metzov's inspection short by forcing the opening. “Yes, sir?"

  Metzov leaned back in his chair, lips twisting. “I see you found some pants, Ensign Vorkosigan. And, ah ... riding boots, too. You know, there are no horses on this island."

  None at Imperial Headquarters, either, Miles thought irritably. I didn't design the damn boots. His father had once suggested his staff officers must need them for riding hobbyhorses, high horses, and nightmares. Unable to think of a useful reply to the general's sally, Miles stood in dignified silence, chin lifted, parade rest. “Sir."

  Metzov leaned forward, clasping his hands, abandoning his heavy humor, eyes gone hard again. “You lost a valuable, fully-equipped scat-cat as a result of leaving it parked in an area clearly marked as a Permafrost Inversion Zone. Don't they teach map-reading at the Imperial Academy any more, or is it to be all diplomacy in the New Service—how to drink tea with the ladies?"

  Miles called up the map in his mind. He could see it clearly. “The blue areas were labelled P.I.Z. Those initials were not defined. Not in the key or anywhere."

  “Then I take it you also failed to read your manual."

  He'd been buried in manuals ever since he'd arrived. Weather office procedurals, equipment tech-specs ... “Which one, sir?"

  “Lazkowski Base Regulations."

  Miles tried frantically to remember if he'd ever seen such a disk. “I ... think Lieutenant Ahn may have given me a copy ... night before last.” Ahn had in fact dumped an entire carton of disks out on Miles's bed in officers’ quarters. He was doing some preliminary packing, he'd said, and was willing Miles his library. Miles had read two weather disks before going to sleep that night. Ahn, clearly, had returned to his own cubicle to do a little preliminary celebrating. The next morning Miles had taken the scat-cat out....

  “And you haven't read it yet?"

  “No, sir."

  “Why not?"

  I was set up, Miles's thought wailed. He could feel the highly-interested presence of Metzov's clerk, undismissed, standing witness by the door behind him. Making this a public, not a private, dressing-down. And if only he'd read the damn manual, would those two bastards from the motor pool even have been able to set him up? Will or nil, he was going to get down-checked for this one. “No excuse, sir."

  “Well, Ensign, in Chapter Three of Lazkowski Base Regulations you will find a complete description of all the permafrost zones, together with the rules for avoiding them. You might look into it, when you can spare a little leisure from ... drinking tea."

  “Yes, sir.” Miles's face was set like glass. The general had a right to skin him with a vibra-knife, if he chose—in private. The authority lent Miles by his uniform barely balanced the deformities that made him a target of Barrayar's historically-grounded, intense genetic prejudices. A public humiliation that sapped that authority before men he must also command came very close to an act of sabotage. Deliberate, or unconscious?

  The general was only warming up. “The Service may still provide warehousing for excess Vor lordlings at Imperial Headquarters, but out here in the real world, where there's fighting to be done, we have no use for drones. Now, I fought my way up through the ranks. I saw casualties in Vordarian's Pretendership before you were born—"

  I was a casualty in Vordarian's Pretendership before I was born, thought Miles, his irritation growing wilder. The soltoxin gas that had almost killed his pregnant mother and made Miles what he was, had been a purely military poison.

  “—and I fought the Komarr Revolt. You infants who've come up in the past decade and more have no concept of combat. These long periods of unbroken peace weaken the Service. If they go on much longer, when a crisis comes there'll be no one left who's had any real practice in a crunch."

  Miles's eyes crossed slightly, from internal pressure. Then should His Imperial Majesty provide a war every five years, as a convenience for the advancement of his officers’ careers? His mind boggled slightly over the concept of “real practice.” Had Miles maybe acquired his first clue why this superb-looking officer had washed up on Kyril Island?

  Metzov was still expanding, self-stimulated. “In a real combat situation, a soldier's equipment is vital. It can be the difference between victory and defeat. A man who loses his equipment loses his effectiveness as a soldier. A man disarmed in a technological war might as well be a woman, useless! And you disarmed yourself!"

  Miles wondered sourly if the general would then agree that a woman armed in a technological war might as well be a man ... no, probably not. Not a Barrayaran of his generation.

  Metzo
v's voice descended again, dropping from military philosophy to the immediately practical. Miles was relieved. “The usual punishment for a man bogging a scat-cat is to dig it out himself. By hand. I understand that won't be feasible, since the depth to which you sank yours is a new camp record. Nevertheless, you will report at 1400 to Lieutenant Bonn of Engineering, to assist him as he sees fit."

  Well, that was certainly fair. And would probably be educational, too. Miles prayed this interview was winding down. Dismissed, now? But the general fell silent, squinty-eyed and thoughtful.

  “For the damage you did to the weather station,” Metzov began slowly, then sat up more decisively—his eyes, Miles could almost swear, lighting with a faint red glow, the corner of that seamed mouth twitching upward, “you will supervise basic-labor detail for one week. Four hours a day. That's in addition to your other duties. Report to Sergeant Neuve, in Maintenance, at 0500 daily."

  A slight choked inhalation sounded from the corporal still standing behind Miles, which Miles could not interpret. Laughter? Horror?

  But ... unjust! And he would lose a significant fraction of the precious time remaining to decant technical expertise from Ahn.... “The damage I did to the weather station was not a stupid accident like the scat-cat, sir! It was necessary to my survival."

  General Metzov fixed him with a very cold eye. “Make that six hours a day, Ensign Vorkosigan."

  Miles spoke through his teeth, words jerked out as though by pliers. “Would you have preferred the interview you'd be having right now if I'd permitted myself to freeze, sir?"

  Silence fell, very dead. Swelling, like a road-killed animal in the summer sun.

  “You are dismissed, Ensign,” General Metzov hissed at last. His eyes were glittering slits.

  Miles saluted, about-faced, and marched, stiff as any ancient ramrod. Or board. Or corpse. His blood beat in his ears; his chin jerked upward. Past the corporal, who was standing at attention doing a fair imitation of a waxwork. Out the door, out the outer door. Alone at last in the Administration Building's lower corridor.

  Miles cursed himself silently, then out loud. He really had to try to cultivate a more normal attitude toward senior officers. It was his bloody upbringing that lay at the root of the problem, he was sure. Too many years of tripping over herds of generals, admirals, and senior staff at Vorkosigan House, at lunch, dinner, all hours. Too much time sitting quiet as a mouse, cultivating invisibility, permitted to listen to their extremely blunt argument and debate on a hundred topics. He saw them as they saw each other, maybe. When a normal ensign looked at his commander, he ought to see a god-like being, not a, a ... future subordinate. New ensigns were supposed to be a subhuman species anyway.

  And yet ... What is it about this guy Metzov? He'd met others of the type before, of assorted political stripes. Many of them were cheerful and effective soldiers, as long as they stayed out of politics. As a party, the military conservatives had been eclipsed ever since the bloody fall of the cabal of officers responsible for the disastrous Escobar invasion, over two decades ago. But the danger of revolution from the far right, some would-be junta assembling to save the Emperor from his own government, remained quite real in Miles's father's mind, he knew.

  So, was it some subtle political odor emanating from Metzov that had raised the hairs on the back of Miles's neck? Surely not. A man of real political subtlety would seek to use Miles, not abuse him. Or are you just pissed because he stuck you on some humiliating garbage detail? A man didn't have to be politically extreme to take a certain sadistic joy in sticking it to a representative of the Vor class. Could be Metzov had been diddled in the past himself by some arrogant Vor lord. Political, social, genetic ... the possibilities were endless.

  Miles shook the static from his head, and limped off to change to his black fatigues and locate Base Engineering. No help for it now, he was sunk deeper than his scat-cat. He'd simply have to avoid Metzov as much as possible for the next six months. Anything Ahn could do so well, Miles could surely do too.

  * * * *

  Lieutenant Bonn prepared to probe for the scat-cat. The engineering lieutenant was a slight man, maybe twenty-eight or thirty years old, with a craggy face surfaced with pocked sallow skin, reddened by the climate. Calculating brown eyes, competent-looking hands, and a sardonic air which, Miles sensed, might be permanent and not merely directed at himself. Bonn and Miles squished about atop the bog, while two engineering techs in black insulated coveralls sat perched on their heavy hovercab, safely parked on a nearby rocky outcrop. The sun was pale, the endless wind cold and damp.

  “Try about there, sir,” Miles suggested, pointing, trying to estimate angles and distances in a place he had only seen at dusk. “I think you'll have to go down at least two meters."

  Lieutenant Bonn gave him a joyless look, raised his long metal probe to the vertical, and shoved it into the bog. It jammed almost immediately. Miles frowned puzzlement. Surely the scat-cat couldn't have floated upward....

  Bonn, looking unexcited, leaned his weight into the rod and twisted. It began to grind downward. “What did you run into?” Miles asked.

  “Ice,” Bonn grunted. “'Bout three centimeters thick right now. We're standing on a layer of ice, underneath this surface crud, just like a frozen lake except it's frozen mud."

  Miles stamped experimentally. Wet, but solid. Much as it had when he had camped on it.

  Bonn, watching him, added, “The ice thickness varies with the weather. From a few centimeters to solid-to-the-bottom. Midwinter, you could park a freight shuttle on this bog. Come summer, it thins out. It can thaw from seeming-solid to liquid in a few hours, when the temperature is just right, and back again."

  “I ... think I found that out."

  “Lean,” ordered Bonn laconically, and Miles wrapped his hands around the rod and helped shove. He could feel the scrunch as it scraped past the ice layer. And if the temperature had dropped a little more, the night he'd sunk himself, and the mud re-frozen, would he have been able to punch up through the icy seal? He shuddered inwardly, and zipped his parka half-up, over his black fatigues.

  “Cold?” said Bonn.

  “Thinking."

  “Good. Make it a habit.” Bonn touched a control, and the rod's sonic probe beeped at a teeth-aching frequency. The readout displayed a bright teardrop shape a few meters over. “There it is.” Bonn eyed the numbers on the readout. “It's really down in there, isn't it? I'd let you dig it out with a teaspoon, ensign, but I suppose winter would set in before you were done.” He sighed, and stared down at Miles as though picturing the scene.

  Miles could picture it too. “Yes, sir,” he said carefully.

  They pulled the probe back out. Cold mud slicked the surface under their gloved hands. Bonn marked the spot and waved to his techs. “Here, boys!” They waved back, hopped down off the hover-cab, and swung within. Bonn and Miles scrambled well out of the way, onto the rocks toward the weather station.

  The hovercab whined into the air and positioned itself over the bog. Its heavy-duty space-rated tractor beam punched downward. Mud, plant matter, and ice geysered out in all directions with a roar. In a couple of minutes, the beam had created an oozing crater, with a glimmering pearl at the bottom. The crater's sides began to slump inward at once, but the hovercab operator narrowed and reversed his beam, and the scat-cat rose, noisily sucking free from its matrix. The limp bubble shelter dangled repellently from its chain. The hovercab set its load down delicately in the rocky area, and landed beside it.

  Bonn and Miles trooped over to view the sodden remains. “You weren't in that bubble-shelter, were you, ensign?” said Bonn, prodding it with his toe.

  “Yes, sir, I was. Waiting for daylight. I ... fell asleep."

  “But you got out before it sank."

  “Well, no. When I woke up, it was all the way under.” Bonn's crooked eyebrows rose.

  “How far?"

  Miles's flat hand found the level of his chin. Bonn looked startled. “How'
d you get out of the suction?"

  “With difficulty. And adrenaline, I think. I slipped out of my boots and pants. Which reminds me, may I take a minute and look for my boots, sir?"

  Bonn waved a hand, and Miles trudged back out onto the bog, circling the ring of muck spewed from the tractor beam, keeping a safe distance from the now water-filling crater. He found one mud-coated boot, but not the other. Should he save it, on the off-chance he might have one leg amputated someday? It would probably be the wrong leg. He sighed, and climbed back up to Bonn.

  Bonn frowned down at the ruined boot dangling from Miles's hand. “You could have been killed,” he said in a tone of realization.

  “Three times over. Smothered in the bubble shelter, trapped in the bog, or frozen waiting for rescue."

  Bonn gave him a penetrating stare. “Really.” He walked away from the deflated shelter, idly, as if seeking a wider view. Miles followed. When they were out of earshot of the techs, Bonn stopped and scanned the bog. Conversationally, he remarked, “I heard—unofficially—that a certain motor-pool tech named Pattas was bragging to one of his mates that he'd set you up for this. And you were too stupid to even realize you'd been had. That bragging could have been ... not too bright, if you'd been killed."

  “If I'd been killed, it wouldn't have mattered if he'd bragged or not,” Miles shrugged. “What a Service investigation missed, I flat guarantee the Imperial Security investigation would have found."

  “You knew you'd been set up?” Bonn studied the horizon.

  “Yes."

  “I'm surprised you didn't call Imperial Security in, then."

  “Oh? Think about it, sir."

  Bonn's gaze returned to Miles, as if taking inventory of his distasteful deformities. “You don't add up for me, Vorkosigan. Why did they let you in the Service?"

  “Why d'you think?"

  “Vor privilege."

  “Got it in one."