Komarr b-11

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  "Certainly, my lord. Shall I download everything we've acquired so far this morning on your secured channel?"

  "Yes, please," said Miles.

  "Especially the tech specs," put in Vorthys over his shoulder. "After I look at them, I may want to talk to the people at Bollan who are still there. May I trouble ImpSec to be sure none of the rest of them go on an extempore vacation before I get in touch with them, Colonel?"

  "Already been done, my lord."

  Still looking smug, Gibbs signed off, to be replaced by the promised financial and technical data. Vorthys tried to foist the financial records off on Miles, who promptly filed them and went to look at Vorthys's tech readouts.

  "Well," said Vorthys, when, after a cursory initial scan, he was able to pull up a holovid schematic, which rotated slowly and colorfully in three dimensions above his vid-plate. "What the hell is that?"

  "I was hoping you'd tell me," Miles breathed, now hanging in turn over the back of Vorthys's station chair. "Sure doesn't look like any Necklin rod I've ever seen." The lines turning in air sketched out a shape like a cross between a corkscrew and a funnel.

  "All the designs are slightly different," noted Vorthys, bringing up four more shapes to hang in series beside the first. "Judging by the dates, they were scaling up with each subsequent model."

  According to the attached measurements, the first three were relatively smaller, a couple of meters long and a meter or so wide. The fourth was double the dimensions of the third. The fifth, probably four meters wide at the larger end and six meters in length. Miles pictured the size of the assembly room doors in the building next to this one. Wherever that last one had been delivered to—four weeks ago?—it hadn't been here. And one did not leave a delicate precision device like a Necklin rod out in the wind and rain.

  "Those things generate Necklin fields?" said Miles. "What shape? With a pair of jumpship rods, the fields counter-rotate and fold the ship through five-space." He held his hands out parallel with each other, palm up, then pressed them inward, in the metaphor he'd been given, the field wrapped around the ship to create a five-space needle of infinitesimal diameter and unlimited length, to punch through that area of five-space weakness called a wormhole, and unfold again into three-space on the other side. He'd also been dragged through a more convincing mathematical demonstration, in his last term at the Academy, all details of which, never called on subsequently thereafter, had evaporated out of his brain shortly after the final exam. That was long before his cryo-revival, so it was one bit of memory loss he could not blame on the sniper's needle-grenade. "I used to know this stuff . . ." he muttered plaintively.

  Despite this broad hint, the Professor did not break into an enlightening lecture. He just sat in his station chair, his chin cupped in his palm. After a moment, he leaned forward and called up a dizzying succession of data files from the probable-cause investigation. "Ah. Here it is." A wriggly graph appeared, flanked by a list of elements and percentages running down one side. A fast pass through the data from Bollan produced another, similar list. The Professor leaned back. "I'll be damned."

  "What?" said Miles.

  "I did not expect to get this lucky. That," he pointed to the first graph, "is an analysis of the composition of a very melted and distorted mass fragment we picked up topside. It has nearly the same composition fingerprint as this fourth device, here. The figures which are a tiny bit off are just the sort of lighter and more volatile elements I'd expect to lose in such a melt. Huh. I didn't think we'd ever be able to reconstruct the source of those blobs. Now we don't have to."

  "If that was the fourth," said Miles slowly, "where's the fifth?"

  The Professor shrugged. "The same place as the first, second, and third?"

  "Do you have enough information from the inventory to reconstruct its power supply? At that point, we'd have the whole machine mapped, wouldn't we?"

  "Mm, maybe. It will certainly supply some parameters. How much power? Continuous, or phased? Bollan had to know, to supply the proper coupler . . . ah." He noodled again with the specs and fell into a study of the complicated diagram.

  Miles rocked impatiently on his heels. When he felt he could no longer maintain his respectful silence without the top of his head blowing off, he said, "Yes, but what does it do?"

  "Just what it says, presumably. Generates a five-space distortion field."

  "Which does what? To what?"

  "Ah." The Professor sank back in his station chair and rubbed his chin ruefully. "Answering that may take a little longer."

  "Can't we run comconsole simulations?"

  "To be sure. But to get the right answer, one must first correctly frame the question. I want—humph!—a mathematical physicist specializing in five-space theory. Probably Dr. Riva, she's at the University of Solstice."

  "If she's Komarran, ImpSec will object."

  "Yes, but she's here on-planet. I've consulted her before, when I investigated a politically suspicious wormhole jump accident on the Sergyar route two years ago. She thinks sideways better than any of the other five-space people I know."

  Miles was under the impression that all five-space math experts thought sideways to the rest of humanity, but he nodded understanding of the importance of this character trait.

  "I want her; I shall have her. But before I drag her out of her comfortable academic routine, I think I want to visit Bollan in person. Your Colonel Gibbs is very good, but he can't have asked all the questions."

  Miles considered denying personal ownership of ImpSec and anyone in it, but recognized ruefully that he was now identified as the authority on ImpSec among the Auditors just as Vorthys was identified as the engineering expert. It's an ImpSec problem, he pictured some future conclave of his colleagues concluding. Give it to Vorkosigan. "Right."

  The trip to Bollan Design's plant did not prove as enlightening as Miles had hoped. A hop in a suborbital shuttle to a dome one Sector west of Serifosa soon brought Miles and Vorthys face-to-face with Bollan's upset owners. Since they'd already thrown open all their records to ImpSec that morning, they had little more to offer the Imperial Auditors. The administrative people knew only of financial and contractual details with Soudha's mythical "private research institute" that had supposedly ordered the work; some techs who'd worked in the fabrication shop had very little to add to the specs already in Vorthys's possession. If the missing engineer had been as innocent of the true identity of the customer and purpose of the device as were the rest of the Bollan employees, he'd have had no reason to flee; Bollan Design had committed no crime that Miles could identify.

  However, the techs were able to recall dates of several visits from men answering to descriptions of Soudha, Cappell, and Radovas, definitely one from Soudha as recently as the previous week. Their supervisor had never included them in these conferences. They had been told never to discuss the odd Necklin generators outside their work group, as the devices were experimental and not yet patented, trade secrets soon to transmute into profit (or loss). The progression so far had looked a lot more like loss than profit.

  The customers had always picked up the finished devices from the plant themselves, not had them delivered anywhere. Miles made a note to find out if Waste Heat had owned their own large transport, and if not, to have ImpSec check out recent lift-van rentals of anything big enough to have hauled those last two generators.

  Nosing around the plant while the Professor went off to speak High Engineering to the bilingual, Miles felt himself increasingly drawn to the hypothesis that the chief designer had gone missing voluntarily. Upon closer examination it had been found that many of the man's personal notes had apparently gone with him. Bollan's plant security was not military grade, but it would be a stretch to imagine Soudha's hurried Komarrans first murdering the man, then smoothly and surgically removing quite so many comconsole records from quite so many locations without inside help. Anyway, Miles didn't wish the man dead in a ditch. He wished him very much alive, at the business
end of Tuomonen's hypospray. That was the trouble, people anticipated fast-penta now. Modern conspirators were a lot more tight-lipped than back in the bad old days of mere physical torture. Three days ago, if someone had told Miles that Gibbs was going to hand him what amounted to complete design specs of Soudha's secret weapon on a platter, he would have been delighted to imagine his case nearly solved. Ha.

  Miles and Vorthys arrived back at Ekaterin's apartment that light too late for dinner, but in time for a hand-made dessert obviously tailored to the Professor's tastes, involving chocolate, cream, and quantities of hydroponic pecans. They all sat around Ekaterin's kitchen table to devour it. Whatever Nikki had encountered from his playmates today, it hadn't been unpleasant enough to affect his appetite, Miles noted with approval.

  "How was school today?" Miles asked him, ashamed to let such a deadly boring triteness fall from his lips, but how else was he supposed to find out?

  "All right," Nikki said around a mouthful of cream.

  "Think you'll have any trouble tomorrow?"

  "Naw." The tone of his monosyllables had returned to its normal preadolescent adult-wary indifference; no more the breathy panicked edge of this morning.

  "Good," Miles said affably. Ekaterin's eyes were smiling, Miles noted out of the corner of his own. Good.

  When Nikki finished bolting his dessert and galloped off, she added wryly, "And how was work today? I wasn't sure if the extra hours represented progress, or the reverse."

  How was work today. Her tone seemed to apologize for the prosaic quality of the question. Miles wondered how to explain to her that he found it altogether delightful, and wished she'd do it again. And again and . . . Her perfume was making his reptile-brain want to roll over and do tricks, and he wasn't even sure she was wearing any. This mind-melting mixture of lust and domesticity was entirely novel to him. Well, half novel; he knew how to handle lust. It was the domesticity that had ambushed his guard. "We have advanced to new and surprising levels of bafflement," Miles told her.

  The Professor opened his mouth, closed it, then said, "That about sums it up. Lord Vorkosigan's hypothesis has proved correct; the embezzlement scheme was got up to support the production of a, um, novel device."

  "Secret weapon," Miles corrected. "I said secret weapon."

  The Professor's eyes glinted in amusement. "Define your terms. If it's a weapon, then what's the target?"

  "It's so secret," Miles explained to Ekaterin, "we can't even figure out what it does. So I'm at least half right." He glanced after Nikki. "I take it once Nikki got into his usual routine, things smoothed out?"

  "Yes. I'd been almost certain they would," said Ekaterin. "Thank you so much for your help this morning, Lord Vorkosigan. I'm very grateful that—"

  Miles was saved from certain embarrassment by the chime of the hall door. Ekaterin rose and went to answer it and the Professor followed, blocking Miles from his planned counterbid,

  How did things go with the estate law counselor? I was sure you could get on top of it. The ImpSec guard was now on post in the hallway, Miles reminded himself; he didn't need to make a parade out of this. Tucking the line away in his head for the next conversation-opener, he tapped open the airseal door and wandered out onto the balcony.

  Both sun and soletta had set hours ago. Only the city itself gave a glow to the night. A few pedestrians still crossed the park below, moving in and out of the shadows, hurrying on their way to or from the bubble-car platform, or strolling more slowly in pairs. Miles leaned on the railing and studied one sauntering couple, his arm draped across her shoulders, her arm circling his waist. In zero gee, a height difference like that would cancel out, by God. And how did the space-dwelling four-armed quaddies manage these moments? He'd met a quaddie musician once. He was certain there must be a quaddie equivalent to a grip so humanly universal . . .

  His idle envious speculations were derailed by the sound of voices within the apartment. Ekaterin was welcoming a guest. A man's voice, Komarran accented: Miles stiffened as he recognized the rabbity Venier's quick speech.

  "—ImpSec didn't take as long to release his personal effects as I would have imagined. So Colonel Gibbs said I might bring them to you."

  "Thank you, Venier," Ekaterin's voice replied, in the soft tone Miles had come to associate with wariness in her. "Just put the box down on the table, why don't you? Now, where did he go . . . ?"

  A clunk. "Most of it is nothing, styluses and the like, but I figured you would want the vidclipper with all the holos of you and your son."

  "Yes, indeed."

  "Actually, there is more to my visit than just cleaning out Administrator Vorsoisson's office." Venier took a deep breath. "I wanted to speak to you privately."

  Miles, who had been about to reenter the kitchen from the balcony, froze. Dammit, ImpSec had questioned and cleared Venier, hadn't they? What new secret could he be about to offer, and to Ekaterin of all people? If Miles entered, would he clam up?

  "Well . . . well, all right. Um, why don't you sit down?"

  "Thank you." The scrape of chairs.

  Venier began again, "I've been thinking about how awkward your situation here has become since the Administrator's death. I'm so very sorry, but I couldn't help being aware, watching you over the months, that things were not what they should have been between you and your late husband."

  "Tien . . . was difficult. I didn't realize it showed."

  "Tien was an ass," Venier stated flatly. "That showed. Sorry, sorry. But it's true, and we both know it."

  "It's moot now." Her tone was not encouraging.

  Venier forged on. "I heard about how he played fast and loose with your pension. His death has plunged you into a monstrous situation. I understand you are being forced to return to Barrayar."

  Ekaterin said slowly, "I plan to return to Barrayar, yes."

  He ought to clear his throat, Miles thought. Trip over a balcony chair. Pop back through the door and cry, Vennie, fancy meeting you here! He began breathing through his mouth, for silence, instead.

  "I realize this is a bad time to bring this up, much too soon," Venier went on. "But I've been watching you for months. The way you were treated. Practically a prisoner, in a traditional Barrayaran marriage. I could not tell how willing a prisoner you were, but now—have you considered staying on Komarr? Not going back into your cell? You have this chance, you see, to escape."

  Miles could feel his heart begin to beat, in a free-form panic. Where was Venier going with this?

  "I … the economics . . . our return passage is a death benefit, you see." That same wary softness.

  "I have an alternative to offer you." Venier swallowed; Miles swore he could hear the slight gurgle in his narrow neck. "Marry me. It would give you the legal protection you need to stay here. No one could force you back, then. I could support you, while you train up to your full strength, botany or chemistry or anything you choose. You could be so much. I can't tell you how it's turned my stomach, to see so much human potential wasted on that clown of a Barrayaran. I realize that for you it would have to start as a marriage of convenience, but as a Vor, that's surely not an alien idea for you. And it could grow to be more, in time, I'm certain it could. I know it's too soon, but soon you'll be gone and then it will be too late!"

  Venier paused for breath. Miles bent over, mouth still open, in a sort of silent scream. My lines! My lines! Those were all my lines, dammit! He'd expected Vorish rivals for Ekaterin's hand to come pouring out of the woodwork as soon as the widow touched down in Vorbarr Sultana, but my God, she hadn't even got off Komarr yet! He hadn't thought of Venier, or any other Komarran, as possible competition. He wasn't competition, the idea of Vennie as competition was laughable. Miles had more power, position, money, rank, all to lay at her feet when the time was finally ripe—Venier wasn't even taller than Ekaterin, he was a good four centimeters shorter—

  The one thing Miles couldn't offer, though, was less Barrayar. In that, Venier had an advantage Miles coul
d never match.

  There followed a long, terrifying silence, during which Miles's brain screamed, Say no, say no! say NO!

  "That's very kindly offered," Ekaterin said at last.

  What the hell is that supposed to mean? And was Venier wondering the same thing?

  "Kindness has nothing to do with it. I—" Venier cleared his throat again "—admire you very much."

  "Oh, dear."

  He added eagerly, "I've applied for the administrative position as head of terraforming here. I think I have a good chance, because of the disruption in the department, HQ is surely going to be looking for some continuity. Or if the mud has splattered on the innocent as well as the guilty, I'll do whatever I have to do to get another shot, a chance to clear my professional reputation—I can make Serifosa Sector a showcase, I know I can. If you stay, I can get you voting shares. We could do it together; we could make this place a garden. Stay here and help build a world!"

  Another long, terrifying silence. Then Ekaterin said, "I suppose you'd be assigned this apartment, if you succeeded to Tien's position."

  "It goes with it," said Venier in an uncertain voice. Right, that wasn't a selling point, though Miles wasn't sure if Venier knew it. I can hardly bear being in this place, she'd said.

  "You offer is kind and generous, Venier. But you have mistaken my situation, somewhat. No one is forcing me to return home. Komarr . . . I'm afraid these domes give me claustrophobia, anymore. Every time I pull on a breath mask, I'm going to think about the ugly way Tien died."

  "Ah," said Venier. "I can understand that, but perhaps, in time . . . ?"

  "Oh, yes. Time. Vor custom calls for a widow to mourn for one year." Miles could not guess what gesture, what facial expression, went with these words. A grimace? A smile?

  "Do you hold to that archaic custom? Must you? Why? I never understood it. I thought in the Time of Isolation they tried to keep all women married all the time."