The Vor Game

by Lois McMaster Bujold

“Then why are you here? Vor privilege gets sent to HQ."

  “Vorbarr Sultana is lovely this time of year,” said Miles agreeably. And how was his cousin Ivan enjoying it right now? “But I want ship duty."

  “And you couldn't arrange it?” said Bonn sceptically.

  “I was told to earn it. That's why I'm here. To prove I can handle the Service. Or ... not. Calling in a wolf pack from ImpSec within a week of my arrival to turn the base and everyone on it inside-out looking for assassination conspiracies—where, I judge, none exist—would not advance me toward my goal. No matter how entertaining it might be.” Messy charges, his word against their two words—even if Miles had pushed it to a formal investigation, with fast-penta to prove him right, the ruckus could hurt him far more in the long run than his two tormentors. No. No revenge was worth the Prince Serg.

  “The motor pool is in Engineering's chain of command. If Imperial Security fell on it, they'd also fall on me.” Bonn's brown eyes glinted.

  “You're welcome to fall on anyone you please, sir. But if you have unofficial ways of receiving information, it follows you must have unofficial ways of sending it, too. And after all, you've only my word for what happened.” Miles hefted his useless single boot, and heaved it back into the bog.

  Thoughtfully, Bonn watched it arc and splash down in a pool of brown melt-water. “A Vor lord's word?"

  “Means nothing, in these degenerate days.” Miles bared his teeth in a smile of sorts. “Ask anyone."

  “Huh.” Bonn shook his head, and started back toward the hover-cab.

  * * * *

  Next morning Miles reported to the maintenance shed for the second half of the scat-cat retrieval job, cleaning all the mud-caked equipment. The sun was bright today, and had been up for hours, but Miles's body knew it was only 0500. An hour into his task he'd begun to warm up, feel better, and get into the rhythm of the thing.

  At 0630, the deadpan Lieutenant Bonn arrived, and delivered two helpers unto Miles.

  “Why, Corporal Olney. Tech Pattas. We meet again.” Miles smiled with acid cheer. The pair exchanged an uneasy look. Miles kept his demeanor absolutely even.

  He then kept everyone, starting with himself, moving briskly. The conversation seemed to automatically limit itself to brief, wary technicalities. By the time Miles had to knock off and go report to Lieutenant Ahn, the scat-cat and most of the gear had been restored to better condition than Miles had received it.

  He wished his two helpers, now driven to near-twitchiness by uncertainty, an earnest good-day. Well, if they hadn't figured it out by now, they were hopeless. Miles wondered bitterly why he seemed to have so much better luck establishing rapport with bright men like Bonn. Cecil had been right, if Miles couldn't figure out how to command the dull as well, he'd never make it as a Service officer. Not at Camp Permafrost, anyway.

  * * * *

  The following morning, the third of his official punishment seven, Miles presented himself to Sergeant Neuve. The sergeant in turn presented Miles with a scat-cat full of equipment, a disk of the related equipment manuals, and the schedule for drain and culvert maintenance for Lazkowski Base. Clearly, it was to be another learning experience. Miles wondered if General Metzov had selected this task personally. He rather thought so.

  On the bright side, he had his two helpers back again. This particular civil engineering task had apparently never fallen on Olney or Pattas before either, so they had no edge of superior knowledge with which to trip Miles. They had to stop and read the manuals first too. Miles swotted procedures and directed operations with a good cheer that edged toward manic as his helpers became glummer.

  There was, after all, a certain fascination to the clever drain-cleaning devices. And excitement. Flushing pipes with high pressure could produce some surprising effects. There were chemical compounds that had some quite military properties, such as the ability to dissolve anything instantly including human flesh. In the following three days Miles learned more about the infrastructure of Lazkowski Base than he'd ever imagined wanting to know. He'd even calculated the point where one well-placed charge could bring the entire system down, if he ever decided he wanted to destroy the place.

  On the sixth day, Miles and his team were sent to clear a blocked culvert out by the grubs’ practice fields. It was easy to spot. A silver sheet of water lapped the raised roadway on one side; on the other only a feeble trickle emerged to creep away down the bottom of a deep ditch.

  Miles took a long telescoping pole from the back of their scat-cat; and probed down into the water's opaque surface. Nothing seemed to be blocking the flooded end of the culvert. Whatever it was must be jammed farther in. Joy. He handed the pole back to Pattas and wandered over to the other side of the road, and stared down into the ditch. The culvert, he noted, was something over half a meter in diameter. “Give me a light,” he said to Olney.

  He shucked his parka and tossed it into the scat-cat, and scrambled down into the ditch. He aimed his light into the aperture. The culvert evidently curved slightly; he couldn't see a damned thing. He sighed, considering the relative width of Olney's shoulders, Pattas's, and his own.

  Could there be anything further from ship duty than this? The closest he'd come to anything of a sort was spelunking in the Dendarii Mountains. Earth and water, versus fire and air. He seemed to be building up a helluva supply of yin, the balancing yang to come had better be stupendous.

  He gripped the light tighter, dropped to hands and knees, and shinnied into the drain.

  The icy water soaked the trouser knees of his black fatigues. The effect was numbing. Water leaked around the top of one of his gloves. It felt like a knife blade on his wrist.

  Miles meditated briefly on Olney and Pattas. They had developed a cool, reasonably efficient working relationship over the last few days, based, Miles had no illusions, on a fear of God instilled in the two men by Miles's good angel Lieutenant Bonn. How did Bonn accomplish that quiet authority, anyway? He had to figure that one out. Bonn was good at his job, for starters, but what else?

  Miles scraped round the curve, shone his light on the clot, and recoiled, swearing. He paused a moment to regain control of his breath, examined the blockage more closely, and backed out.

  He stood up in the bottom of the ditch, straightening his spine vertebra by creaking vertebra. Corporal Olney stuck his head over the road's railing, above. “What's in there, ensign?"

  Miles grinned up at him, still catching his breath. “Pair of boots."

  “That's all?” said Olney.

  “Their owner is still wearing ‘em."

  * * *

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Miles called the base surgeon on the scat-cat's comm link urgently requesting his presence with forensic kit, body bag, and medical transport. Miles and his crew then blocked the upper end of the drain with a plastic signboard forcibly borrowed from the empty practice field beyond. Now so thoroughly wet and cold that it made no difference, Miles crawled back into the culvert to attach a rope to the anonymous booted ankles. When he emerged, the surgeon and his corpsman had arrived. The surgeon, a big, balding man, peered dubiously into the drainpipe.

  “What could you see in there, ensign? What happened?"

  “I can't see anything from this end but legs, sir,” Miles reported. “He's got himself wedged in there but good. Drain crud up above him I'd guess. We'll have to see what spills out with him.

  “What the hell was he doing in there?” The surgeon scratched his freckled scalp.

  Miles spread his hands. “Seems a peculiar way to commit suicide.” Slow and chancy, as far as drowning yourself goes."

  The surgeon raised his eyebrows in agreement. Miles and the surgeon had to lend their weight on the rope to Olney, Pattas, and the corpsman, before the stiff form wedged in the culvert began to scrape free.

  “He's stuck,” observed the corpsman, grunting. The body jerked out at last with a gush of dirty water. Pattas and Olney stared from a distance; Miles glued himself to the s
urgeon's shoulder. The corpse, dressed in sodden black fatigues, was waxy and blue. His collar tabs and the contents of his pockets identified him as a private from Supply. His body bore no obvious wounds, but for bruised shoulders and scraped hands.

  The surgeon spoke clipped, negative preliminaries into his recorder. No broken bones, no nerve disrupter blisters. Preliminary hypothesis, death from drowning or hypothermia or both, within the last twelve hours. He flipped off his recorder and added over his shoulder, “I'll be able to tell for sure when we get him laid out back at the infirmary."

  “Does this sort of thing happen often around here?” Miles inquired mildly.

  The surgeon shot him a sour look. “I slab a few idiots every year. What d'you expect, when you put five thousand kids between the ages of eighteen and twenty together on an island and tell ‘em to go play war? I admit, this one seems to have discovered a completely new method of slabbing himself. I guess you never see it all."

  “You think he did it to himself, then?” True, it would be real tricky to kill a man and then stuff him in there.

  The surgeon wandered over to the culvert and squatted, and stared into it. “So it would seem. Ah, would you take one more look in there, ensign, just in case?"

  “Very well, sir.” Miles hoped it was the last trip. He'd never have guessed drain cleaning would turn out to be so ... thrilling. He slithered all the way under the road to the leaky board, checking every centimeter, but found only the dead man's dropped hand light. So. The private had evidently entered the pipe on purpose. With intent. What intent? Why go culvert-crawling in the middle of the night in the middle of a heavy rainstorm? Miles skinned back out and turned the light over to the surgeon.

  Miles helped the corpsman and surgeon bag and load the body, then had Olney and Pattas raise the blocking board and return it to its original location. Brown water gushed, roaring, from the bottom end of the culvert and roiled away down the ditch. The surgeon paused with Miles, leaning on the road railing and watching the water level drop in the little lake.

  “Think there might be another one at the bottom?” Miles inquired morbidly.

  “This guy was the only one listed as missing on the morning report,” the surgeon replied, “so probably not.” He didn't look like he was willing to bet on it, though.

  The only thing that did turn up, as the water level fell, was the private's soggy parka. He'd clearly tossed it over the railing before entering the culvert, from which it had fallen or blown into the water. The surgeon took it away with him.

  “You're pretty cool about that,” Pattas noted, as Miles turned away from the back of the medical transport and the surgeon and corpsman drove off.

  Pattas was not that much older than Miles himself. “Haven't you ever had to handle a corpse?"

  “No. You?"

  “Yes."

  “Where?"

  Miles hesitated. Events of three years ago flickered through his memory. The brief months he'd been caught in desperate combat far from home, having accidentally fallen in with a space mercenary force, was not a secret to be mentioned or even hinted at here. Regular Imperial troops despised mercenaries anyway, alive or dead. But the Tau Verde campaign had surely taught him the difference between “practice” and “real,” between war and war games, and that death had subtler vectors than direct touch. “Before,” said Miles dampingly. “Couple of times."

  Pattas shrugged, veering off. “Well,” he allowed grudgingly over his shoulder, “at least you're not afraid to get your hands dirty. Sir."

  Miles's brows crooked, bemused. No. That's not what I'm afraid of.

  Miles marked the drain “cleared” on his report panel, turned the scat-cat, their equipment, and a very subdued Olney and Pattas back in to Sergeant Neuve in Maintenance, and headed for the officers’ barracks. He'd never wanted a hot shower more in his entire life.

  * * * *

  He was squelching down the corridor toward his quarters when another officer stuck his head out a door. “Ah, Ensign Vorkosigan?"

  “Yes?"

  “You got a vid call a while ago. I encoded the return for you."

  “Call?” Miles stopped. “Where from?"

  “Vorbarr Sultana."

  Miles felt a chill in his belly. Some emergency at home? “Thanks."

  He reversed direction, and beelined for the end of the corridor and the vidconsole booth that the officers on this level shared.

  He slid damply into the seat and punched up the message. The number was not one he recognized. He entered it, and his change code, and waited. It chimed several times, then the vid-plate hissed to life. His cousin Ivan's handsome face materialized over it, and grinned at him.

  “Ah, Miles. There you are."

  “Ivan! Where the devil are you? What is this?"

  “Oh, I'm at home. And that doesn't mean my mother's. I thought you might like to see my new flat."

  Miles had the vague, disoriented sensation that he'd somehow tapped a line into some parallel universe, or alternate astral plane. Vorbarr Sultana, yes. He'd lived in the capital himself, in a previous incarnation. Eons ago.

  Ivan lifted his vid pick-up, and aimed it around, dizzyingly. “It's fully furnished. I took over the lease from an Ops captain who was being transferred to Komarr. A real bargain. I just got moved in yesterday. Can you see the balcony?"

  Miles could see the balcony, drenched in late afternoon sunlight the color of warm honey. The Vorbarr Sultana skyline rose like a fairytale city, swimming in the summer haze beyond. Scarlet flowers swarmed over the railing, so red in the level light they almost hurt his eyes. Miles felt like drooling into his shirtpocket, or bursting into tears. “Nice flowers,” he choked.

  “Yeah, m'girlfriend brought ‘em."

  “Girlfriend?” Ah yes, human beings had come in two sexes, once upon a time. One smelled much better than the other. Much. “Which one?"

  “Tatya."

  “Have I met her?” Miles struggled to remember.

  “Naw, she's new."

  Ivan stopped waving the vid pick-up around, and reappeared over the vid-plate. Miles's exacerbated senses settled slightly. “So how's the weather up there?” Ivan peered at him more closely. “Are you wet? What have you been doing?"

  “Forensic ... plumbing,” Miles offered after a pause.

  “What?” Ivan's brow wrinkled.

  “Never mind.” Miles sneezed. “Look, I'm glad to see a familiar face and all that,” he was, actually—a painful strange gladness, “but I'm in the middle of my duty day, here."

  “I got off-shift a couple of hours ago,” Ivan remarked. “I'm taking Tatya out for dinner in a bit. You just caught me. So just tell me quick, how's life in the infantry?"

  “Oh, great. Lazkowski Base is the real thing, y'know.” Miles did not define what real thing. “Not a ... warehouse for excess Vor lordlings like Imperial Headquarters."

  “I do my job!” said Ivan, sounding slightly stung. “Actually, you'd like my job. We process information. It's amazing, all the stuff Ops accesses in a day's time. It's like being on top of the world. It would be just your speed."

  “Funny. I've thought that Lazkowski Base would be just yours, Ivan. Suppose they could have got our orders reversed?"

  Ivan tapped the side of his nose and sniggered. “I wouldn't tell.” His humor sobered in a glint of real concern. “You, ah, take care of yourself up there, eh? You really don't look so good."

  “I've had an unusual morning. If you'd sod off, I could go get a shower."

  “Oh, right. Well, take care."

  “Enjoy your dinner."

  “Right-oh. ‘Bye."

  Voices from another universe. At that, Vorbarr Sultana was only a couple of hours away by sub-orbital flight. In theory. Miles was obscurely comforted, to be reminded that the whole planet hadn't shrunk to the lead-grey horizons of Kyril Island, even if his part of it seemed to have.

  * * * *

  Miles found it difficult to concentrate on the weather, the rest
of that day. Fortunately his superior didn't much notice. Since the scat-cat sinking Ahn had tended to maintain a guilty, nervous silence around Miles except when directly prodded for specific information. When his duty-day ended Miles headed straight for the infirmary.

  The surgeon was still working, or at least sitting, at his desk console when Miles poked his head around the doorframe. “Good evening, sir."

  The surgeon glanced up. “Yes, ensign? What is it?"

  Miles took this as sufficient invitation despite the unencouraging tone of voice, and slipped within. “I was wondering what you'd found out about that fellow we pulled from the culvert this morning."

  The surgeon shrugged. “Not that much to find out. His ID checked. He died of drowning. All the physical and metabolic evidence—stress, hypothermia, the hematomas—are consistent with his being stuck in there for a bit less than half an hour before death. I've ruled it death by misadventure."

  “Yes, but why?"

  “Why?” The surgeon's eyebrows rose. “He slabbed himself, you'll have to ask him, eh?"

  “Don't you want to find out?"

  “To what purpose?"

  “Well ... to know, I guess. To be sure you're right."

  The surgeon gave him a dry stare.

  “I'm not questioning your medical findings, sir,” Miles added hastily. “But it was just so damn weird. Aren't you curious?"

  “Not any more,” said the surgeon. “I'm satisfied it wasn't suicide or foul play, so whatever the details, it comes down to death from stupidity in the end, doesn't it?"

  Miles wondered if that would have been the surgeon's final epitaph on him, if he'd sunk himself with the scat-cat. “I suppose so, sir."

  Standing outside the infirmary afterward in the damp wind, Miles hesitated. The corpse, after all, was not Miles's personal property. Not a case of finders-keepers. He'd turned the situation over to the proper authority. It was out of his hands now. And yet...

  There were still several hours of daylight left. Miles was having trouble sleeping anyway, in these almost-endless days. He returned to his quarters, pulled on sweat pants and shirt and running shoes, and went jogging.