Miles tried to change the subject. "So what's up at your meeting with Vortala and Vann?"
"Oh, the usual. Their Imperial Lands Distribution committee wants favors for friends. I want their friends to present proof of competent usage plans."
"Ah." All South Continent matters, of no direct interest to the Vorkosigan's District. Miles wondered if he ought to pass the word to his father's Deputy that this would be the ideal week to lobby Gregor for favors for the District. In his current state of dreamy idiocy and sexual fog, the love-stricken Gregor might well grant anything. No . . . better for the Imperium to keep this temporary insanity a State secret. Marriage would cure Gregor quickly enough.
A Komarran Empress. God. What a nightmare for ImpSec. Illyan really would have that stroke he'd been threatening for years. "Have you warned Illyan about this yet?"
"I thought I'd send Lady Alys to apprise him, if things seemed hopeful. Fairly soon. She seems to have made it her department."
"She's the best ally and go-between you could have. Behave, and you'll keep her on your side. But have you thought through the political ramifications of this . . . marriage?" It was the first time anyone had spoken that word out loud, Miles realized.
"I've thought about nothing else for the past week. It could be a good thing, you know, Miles. A symbol of Imperial unity and all that."
It was more likely the Komarran underground would make it a symbol of Komarr being screwed again by Barrayar. Miles imagined the potential for vicious political satire, and winced. "Don't get your hopes up on that score."
Gregor shook his head. "At the last . . . none of that matters. I've finally found something for me. Really for me, not for the Imperium, not even for the Emperor. Just for me."
"Then grab it with both hands. And don't let the bastards take it away from you."
"Thank you," Gregor breathed.
Miles bowed himself out. He wondered if his new driver had killed anyone yet, and if the Count's car was still right-side-up. But mostly, he wondered how he could avoid Duv Galeni for the next few weeks.
CHAPTER TEN
It took Miles several days to extract himself from Ivan's clutches and escape south to the Vorkosigan's District alone, or almost alone. In the end, he formally pledged his word as Vorkosigan to Ivan that he wouldn't attempt either active or passive suicide stunts while gone. Ivan had reluctantly accepted this, but it was obvious from Martin's new wariness that Ivan had chosen to put an extra word in his ear about problems besides seizures to watch for in his employer, and, probably, some com numbers to call in case of emergencies or excessive weirdness. Now the kid thinks I'm crazy. Or at any rate, discharged because I was crazy, not crazy because I was discharged. Thanks, Ivan. But perhaps a few days in the peace and calm of Vorkosigan Surleau would ease Miles's mind, and Martin's too.
Miles knew they'd crossed the northern border of his home District when the first blue shadows of the Dendarii Mountains colored the horizon ahead of them, appearing out of the wavering air as suddenly as a mirage. "Turn to the east, here," Miles told Martin. "I've a mind to quarter the District. We'll pass just north of Hassadar. Have you ever been down this way before?"
"No, my lord." Dutifully, Martin banked the lightflyer into the morning sun; the canopy's polarization compensated for the glare. As Miles had suspected, Martin was shakier as a lightflyer pilot than a groundcar chauffeur. But the fail-safe systems made a lightflyer, a small, highly maneuverable, stripped-down cross between an antigrav sled and an airplane, almost impossible to crash. Somebody having a five-minute seizure might possibly manage the feat, though.
Sometimes the best way across a square was around three sides. . . . Not that the Vorkosigan's District was a square, exactly, more of a squashed, irregular parallelogram, some 350 kilometers from the northern strip of lowlands to the southern mountain passes, and about 500 kilometers east-to-west, skirting the mountain chain along its highest ranges. Only about the northern fifth was flat fertile plains, and of that, of course, only half was usable. The city of Hassadar appeared on their near-right; Miles directed Martin wide around the high-traffic areas, avoiding the complications of the city computer's navigational control of the lightflyer traffic.
"Hassadar's all right, I guess," said Vorbarr Sultana–born-and-bred Martin, gazing out over the city's earnest little effort at urban sprawl.
"It's as modern as any city on Barrayar," said Miles. "More modern than Vorbarr Sultana. Almost all of it was built after the Cetagandan Invasion, when my grandfather chose it for the new District capital."
"Yeah, but Hassadar's about all the District has," said Martin. "I mean, there's hardly anything else here."
"Well . . . if by anything you mean cities, no. It's landlocked away from any chance at the coastal trade. It's always been agricultural, as much so as the mountains permit."
"There's not much to do up there in the mountains, judging from the number of hillmen who come to Vorbarr Sultana looking for work," said Martin. "We make jokes about them. Like, what do you call a Dendarii hillgirl who can outrun her brothers? A virgin." Martin chuckled.
Miles did not. A distinct chill fell in the cabin of the lightflyer. Martin glanced sideways, and shrank in his seat. "Sorry, m'lord," he muttered.
"I've heard it before. I've heard them all." In fact, his father's Armsmen, all District men, used to make them up, but that was different, somehow. Some of them had been hillmen themselves, and not lacking in wit. "It's true that the Dendarii mountain folk have a lot fewer ancestors than you Vorbarr Sultana slugs, but that's because they failed to roll over and surrender to the Cetagandans." A slight exaggeration: the Cetagandans had occupied the lowlands, where they'd made handy targets for the hillmen led by the terribly young General Count Piotr Vorkosigan to descend upon. The Cetagandans should have moved their lines back fifty kilometers, instead of trying to push them up into the treacherous hills. The Vorkosigan's District had subsequently lagged behind others in development because it was among the most war-torn on Barrayar.
Well . . . that had been a good excuse two generations ago, even one generation ago. But now?
The Imperium plucks us Vorkosigans from our District, and uses us up, and never replaces what it borrows. And then makes jokes about our impoverishment. Odd . . . he'd never thought of his family's ardent service as a hidden tax on the District before.
Miles waited an extra ten minutes more than he'd originally intended to, then said, "Turn south here. Give us a thousand meters more of altitude, though."
"Yes, m'lord." The flyer banked to the right. After a few more minutes, the automated beacon on the ground detected them, and issued the standard bleat over the lightflyer's com, a recorded voice intoning, "Warning. You are entering a high radiation area. . . ."
Martin paled. "M'lord? Should I continue on this heading?"
"Yes. We're all right at this altitude. But it's been years since I flew over the center of the wastelands. It's always interesting to check and see how things are progressing down there."
The farmland had given way to woodland many kilometers back. Now the woodland grew more sparse, the colors odder and grayer, scraggly and blighted in some areas, strangely dense in others. "I own almost all of that, y'know," Miles went on, gazing down at it. "I mean, personally. Not a figure of speech because my father's the District Count. My grandfather left it to me. Not to my father like most of the rest of our property. I've always wondered what sort of a message to me that was supposed to be." Blighted land for a blighted scion, a comment on his early disabilities? Or resigned realization that Count Aral's life would run its course long before the blasted land recovered? "I've never set foot on it. I plan to put on radiation gear and visit it, sometime after I have children. They say there are some very strange plants and animals down there."
"There's no people, are there?" said Martin, staring downward in palpable unease. Without being told, he added a few hundred more meters of altitude.
"A few squatters and bandits, w
ho don't expect to live long enough to have cancer or children. The District rangers round them up and run them out, from time to time. It looks deceptively recovered, in spots. In fact, the radioactivity levels in some areas have dropped by half in my lifetime. When I'm old, this will just begin to be usable again."
"Ten more years, m'lord?" said Martin.
Miles's lips twitched. "I was thinking, like, fifty more years, Martin," he said gently.
"Oh."
After a few more minutes, he craned his neck and stared out the canopy past Martin. "There on your left. That blotch is the site of Vorkosigan Vashnoi, the old District capital. Huh. It's going gray-green now. It used to be all black, still, when I was a kid. I wonder if it still glows in the dark?"
"We can come back after dark and look," Martin offered, after a slight pause.
"No . . . no." Miles settled back in his seat, and stared ahead at the mountains rising to the south. "That's enough."
"I could power up some more," said Martin presently, as the moldy colors on the landscape below fell behind to be replaced by healthier greens and browns and golds. "See what this flyer can do." His tone was decidedly longing.
"I know what it can do," said Miles. "And I have no reason to hurry, today. Another time, perhaps."
Martin had dropped a number of such hints, obviously finding his employer's taste in travel staid and dull. Miles itched to take over the controls and give Martin a real thrill-ride, through the Dendarii Gorge. That triple-dip through the wild up-and-down drafts beside, and under, the main waterfall could force a sufficiently white-knuckled passenger to throw up.
Alas, even without the seizures, Miles didn't think he was physically or mentally—or morally—up to it anymore, not the way he and Ivan had used to do it, when slightly younger than Martin here. It was a miracle they hadn't killed themselves. At the time they had been convinced it was their superior Vorish skill, but in retrospect it looked more like divine intervention.
Ivan had started the game. Each cousin took a turn at the lightflyer's controls on runs through the deep winding gorge till the other either tapped out, martial arts–fashion, by banging on the dash, or else lost their last meal. For a proper run one had to disable several of the lightflyer's fail-safe circuits first, a trick Miles would just as soon Martin not learn about. Miles had pulled ahead of Ivan in the score early by the simple precaution of not eating first, till Ivan twigged to it and insisted they eat breakfast together, to assure fairness.
Miles won the final round by challenging Ivan to a night run. Ivan took the first turn, and brought them through alive, though he was white and sweating when they popped up over the last rim and leveled out.
Miles lined up for his run, and turned off the flyer's lights. All credit to Ivan's nerve, he didn't break and claw, screaming, for the (disabled) emergency-eject button till he realized his cousin was also flying the speed-pattern through the gorge with his eyes closed.
Miles, of course, didn't bother to mention he'd flown the identical pattern over sixty times in daylight during the prior three days, gradually darkening the canopy until fully opaqued.
That had been the last round of that game. Ivan never challenged him again.
"What are you smiling about, m'lord?" Martin inquired.
"Ah . . . nothing, Martin. Bank right here, and head up across the middle of that wooded area. I'm curious to see how my forest is getting along."
The absentee Vorkosigan sires had gone in heavily for low-supervision sorts of farming. After fifty years of forestry, the fine hardwood trees were almost ready for sustained selective cutting. In another ten years, say? Patches of oak, maple, elm, hickory, and vesper-birch vied in brilliance in the autumn sun. A dark green grace note was added here and there on the steep hillsides by the genetically engineered winter-hardy ebony, a new strain—or rather, new to Barrayar—imported just three decades ago. Miles wondered where it would all end up: in furniture, houses, and other common things? He hoped some of it at least would be used beautifully. For musical instruments, say, or sculpture or inlay.
Miles frowned at a column of smoke rising several ridges away. "Go over there," he told Martin, pointing. But upon arrival he discovered it was all right; it was just his terraforming crew, burning off another hillside of poisonous native scrub prior to treating the soil with organic waste of Earth-DNA origin and planting the tiny saplings.
Martin circled above them, and the half-dozen men in breath masks looked up and waved cordially, all unknowing who observed them. "Give them a wing-waggle back," Miles told Martin, who complied. Miles wondered what it would be like, to do that job all day every day, terraforming Barrayar the old low-tech way, meter by meter. But at least it would be easy to look back and measure your life's accomplishment.
They left the forest plantation and continued west over the rugged red-brown hills, all patched and embroidered here and there with Earth-descended colors, marking human habitation or feral growth. The gray mountains, snow-dusted, marched ever higher to their left. Miles settled back and closed his eyes a while, weary for no reason; he was eating and sleeping as well as he ever did. At last, at an inquiring murmur from Martin, he opened them to spot the distant glimmer of the long lake at Vorkosigan Surleau, winding some 40 kilometers westward through the patchy hills.
They passed over the village at the lake's foot, and the ruined and burned-out castle occupying the headland above it, that had been the original reason for the village's existence. Miles had Martin fly all the way to the headwaters and back before they circled to land on the Vorkosigans' property. There were easily a hundred new residences dotting the lakeside further up, around the curve of the few kilometers of shoreline belonging to his family, that were now owned by people from Hassadar or Vorbarr Sultana. They were the source of the population explosion of . . . well, at least a dozen boats marring, or decorating depending on your point of view, the blue surface of the waters. The village was growing too, serving the vacationers and retirees as well as the few Old Vor estates nearby.
The Vorkosigans' summer place had formerly been a long, two-story stone guard barracks for the castle, now converted to a graceful residence with a fine view over the lake. Miles had Martin bring the lightflyer down on the landing pad by the garage, over the ridge.
"To the house, my lord?" Martin inquired, unloading their bags.
This house at least had a caretaker couple in residence to keep it alive and maintain the extensive grounds; it would not have the dark and tomblike atmosphere of the mansion in the capital.
"No . . . leave those for now. I want to visit the stables first."
Miles led off down the path to the collection of outbuildings and Earth-green pastures in the first little valley back from the lake. The teenaged girl from the village who looked after the handful of remaining horses came out to greet them, and Martin, who had obviously been dutifully prepared to endure several days of unalleviated rural boredom in his eccentric lord's company, brightened right up. Miles left them to get acquainted, and went to the pasture gate.
His horse, who had picked up the rather unfortunate name of Fat Ninny from Miles's grandfather in the first few weeks of his life as a foal, came to greet Miles at his call, nickering, and Miles faithfully rewarded him with peppermints from his pocket. He petted the big roan's wide velvety nose. The beast, rising . . . twenty-three years old now?—had more gray among his red hairs, and wheezed from his canter across the pasture. So . . . dare he ride, with this seizure-thing? Probably not the sort of days-long camping trips up into the hills he most enjoyed. If he trained Martin to be his spotter, he could perhaps risk a few turns around the pastures. He wasn't likely to break any of his synthetic bones, falling off, and he trusted Ninny not to step on him.
Swimming, the other main pleasure of life at Vorkosigan Surleau, was right out. Sailing was dubious; he'd have to wear a life jacket constantly and take Martin. Could Martin even swim, let alone play life-guard to a seizuring man overboard while simultaneousl
y not letting the boat get away from him? It seemed rather a lot to ask. Well . . . the lake's waters were chilling with the onset of autumn anyway.
It was not by accident that Miles's thirtieth birthday came up the week following, while he lingered in quiet ennui by the lakeside. It was the best place to ignore the event, unlike the capital where he was likely to be plagued with acquaintances and relatives, or at least Ivan, ragging him on the topic, or worse, inflicting a party on him. Though Ivan would doubtless be restrained by the knowledge that his turn would be next, in a couple of months. Anyway, Miles would really only be one day older, just like any other day. Right?
The day in question dawned foggy and damp from the previous day's melancholy rains that had so suited Miles's mood, but it was apparent from the high pale blue directly overhead that the weather would develop into something warm and hazy and perfect. It was also apparent that he was not going to be permitted to ignore it all, when the first call of congratulations came over the house's comconsole from a primly amused Lady Alys. Could Ivan be far behind? If he didn't find some way to hide, he risked being tied up all day on the blasted thing.
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