“That’s precisely what this is, Illyan.” A trace of impatience rasped in Vorkosigan’s voice. “By my order, Aral Vorkosigan, Regent to His Imperial Majesty Gregor Vorbarra. Is that official enough?”
Illyan whistled softly, but his face snapped to blankness at Vorkosigan’s frown. “Yes, sir. Understood. Is there anything else?”
“That’s all. Just that one building.”
“Sir …” the hospital security commander said, “what if … General Vorkosigan refuses to halt when ordered?”
Cordelia could just picture it, some poor young guard being mowed down flat by all that history… .
“If your security people are indeed so overwhelmed by one old man, they may use force up to and including stunner fire,” said Aral tiredly. “Dismissed. Thank you.”
The ImpMil man nodded cautiously, and disconnected.
Illyan lingered in doubt a moment. “Is that a good idea, at his age? Stunning can be bad for the heart. And he’s not going to like it one bit, when we tell him there’s someplace he can’t go. By the way, why—?” Aral merely stared coldly at him, till he gulped, “Yes, sir,” saluted, and signed off.
Aral sat back, gazing pensively at the blank space where the vid images had glowed. He glanced up at Cordelia, and his lips twisted, a grimace of irony and pain. “He is an old man,” he said at last.
“The old man just tried to kill your son. What’s left of your son.”
“I see his view. I see his fears.”
“Do you see mine, too?”
“Yes. Both.”
“When push comes to shove—if he tries to go back there—”
“He is my past.” He met her eyes. “You are my future.
The rest of my life belongs to the future. I swear by my word as Vorkosigan.”
Cordelia sighed, and rubbed her aching neck, her aching eyes.
Koudelka rattled at the door, and stuck his head surreptitiously within. “Sir? The minister’s secretary wants to know—”
“In a minute, Lieutenant.” Vorkosigan waved him back out. “Let’s blow out of this place,” said Cordelia suddenly. “Milady?”
“ImpMil, and ImpSec, and ImpEverything, is giving me a bad case of ImpClaustrophobia. Let’s go down to Vorkosigan Surleau for a few days. You’ll recover better there yourself, it will be harder for all your dedicated minions,” she jerked her head at the corridor, “to get at you, there. Just you and me, boy.” Would it work? Suppose they retired to the scene of their summer happiness, and it wasn’t there anymore? Drowned in the autumn rains … She could feel the desperation in herself, seeking their lost balance, some solid center.
His brows rose in approval. “Outstanding idea, dear Captain. We’ll take the old man along.”
“Oh, must we—oh. Yes, I see. Quite. By all means.”
Chapter Ten
Cordelia woke slowly, stretched, and clutched the magnificent silky feather-stuffed comforter to her. The other side of the bed was empty—she touched the dented pillow—cold and empty. Aral must have tiptoed out early. She luxuriated in the sensation of finally having enough sleep, not waking to that stunned exhaustion that had clotted her mind and body for so long. This made the third night in a row she’d slept well, warmed by her husband’s body, both of them gladly rid of the irritating oxygen-fittings on their faces.
Their corner room, on the second floor of the old stone converted barracks, was cool this morning, and very quiet. The front window opened onto the bright green lawn, descending into mist that hid the lake and the village and hills of the farther shore. The damp morning felt comfortable, felt right, proper contrast to the feather comforter. When she sat up, the new pink scar on her abdomen only twinged.
Droushnakovi poked her head around the doorframe. “Milady?” she called softly, then saw Cordelia sitting up, bare feet hung out over the edge of the bed. Cordelia swung her feet back and forth, experimentally, encouraging circulation. “Oh, good, you’re awake.” Drou shouldered her way through the door, bearing a large and promising tray. She wore one of her more comfortable dresses, with a wide swinging skirt, and a warm padded vest with embroidery. Her footsteps sounded on the wide wooden floorboards, then were muffled on the handwoven rug as she crossed the room.
“I’m hungry,” said Cordelia in wonder, as the aromas from the tray tickled her nose. “I think that’s the first time in three weeks.” Three weeks, since that night of horrors at Vorkosigan House.
Drou smiled, and set the tray down at the table by the front window. Cordelia found robe and slippers, and made for the coffeepot. Drou hovered, seeming ready to catch her if she fell over, but Cordelia did not feel nearly so shaky today. She seated herself and reached for steaming groats and butter, and a pitcher of hot syrup the Barrayarans made from boiled-down tree sap. Wonderful food.
“Have you eaten, Drou? Want some coffee? What time is it?”
The bodyguard shook her blonde head. “I’m fine, Milady. It’s about elevenses.”
Droushnakovi had been part of the assumed background, for the past several days here at Vorkosigan Surleau. Cordelia found herself really looking at the girl for almost the first time since she’d left ImpMil. Drou was attentive and alert as ever, but with an underlying tension, that same bad-guard-slink—perhaps it was only because she was feeling better herself, but Cordelia selfishly wanted the people around her to be feeling better, too, if only not to drag her back down.
“I’m feeling so much less thick, today. I talked to Captain Vaagen yesterday, on the vid. He thinks he’s seen the first signs of molecular re-calcification in little Piotr Miles. Very encouraging, if you know how to interpret Vaagen. He doesn’t offer false hopes, but what little he does say, you can rely on.”
Drou glanced up from her lap, fixing a responding smile on her downcast features. She shook her head. “Uterine replicators seem so strange to me. So alien.”
“Not so strange as what evolution laid on us, ad lib empirical,” Cordelia grinned back. “Thank God for technology and rational design. I know whereof I speak, now.”
“Milady … how did you first know you were pregnant? Did you miss a monthly?”
“A menstrual period? No, actually.” She thought back to last summer. This very room, that unmade bed in fact. She and Aral could begin sharing intimacies there again soon, though with some loss of piquancy without reproduction as a goal. “Aral and I thought we were all settled here, last summer. He was retired, I was retired … no impediments. I was on the verge of being old for the organic method, which seemed the only one available here on Barrayar; more to the point, he wanted to start soon. So a few weeks after we were married, I went and had my contraceptive implant removed. Made me feel very wicked; at home I couldn’t have had it taken out without buying a license.”
“Really?” Drou listened with openmouthed fascination.
“Yes, it’s a Betan legal requirement. You have to qualify for a parents license first. I’ve had my implant since I was fourteen. I had a menstrual period once then, I remember. We turn them off till they’re needed. I got my implant, and my hymen cut, and my ears pierced, and had my coming-out party… .”
“You didn’t … start doing sex when you were fourteen, did you?” Droushnakovi’s voice was hushed.
“I could have. But it takes two, y’know. I didn’t find a real lover till later.” Cordelia was ashamed to admit how much later. She’d been so socially inept, back then… . And you haven’t changed much, she admitted wryly to herself.
“I didn’t think it would happen so fast,” Cordelia went on. “I thought we’d be in for several months of earnest and delightful experiment. But we caught the baby first try. So I still haven’t had a menstrual period, here on Barrayar.”
“First try,” echoed Drou. Her lip curled in introspective dismay. “How did you know you’d … caught? The nausea?”
“Fatigue, before nausea. But it was the little blue dots …” Her voice faltered, as she studied the girl’s twisted-up features. “Dr
ou, are all these questions academic, or do you have some more personal interest in the answers?”
Her face almost crumpled. “Personal,” she choked out.
“Oh.” Cordelia sat back. “D’you … want to talk about it?’
“No … I don’t know… .”
“I presume that means yes,” Cordelia sighed. Ah, yes. Just like playing Mama Captain to sixty Betan scientists back on Survey, though queries about pregnancy were perhaps the one interpersonal trouble they’d never laid in her lap. But given the Really Dumb Stuff that rational and select group had sprung on her from time to time, the feral Barrayaran version ought to be just … “You know I’ll be glad to help you any way I can.”
“It was the night of the soltoxin attack,” she sniffled. “I couldn’t sleep. I went down to the refectory kitchen to get something to eat. On the way back upstairs I noticed a light on in the library. Lieutenant Koudelka was in there. He couldn’t sleep either,”
Kou, eh? Oh, good, good. This might be all right after all. Cordelia smiled in genuine encouragement. “Yes?”
“We … I … he … kissed me.”
“I trust you kissed him back?”
“You sound like you approve.”
“I do. You are two of my favorite people, you and Kou. If only you’d get your heads straight … but go on, there has to be more.” Unless Drou was more ignorant than Cordelia believed possible.
“We … we … we …”
“Screwed?” Cordelia suggested hopefully.
“Yes, Milady.” Drou turned scarlet, and swallowed. “Kou seemed so happy … for a few minutes. I was so happy for him, so excited, I didn’t care how much it hurt.”
Ah, yes, the barbaric Barrayaran custom of introducing their women to sex with the pain of unanesthesized defloration. Though considering how much pain their reproductive methods later entailed, perhaps it constituted fair warning. But Kou, in the glimpses she’d had of him, hadn’t seemed as happy as a new lover ought to be either. What were these two doing to each other? “Go on.”
“I thought I saw a movement in the back garden, out the door from the library. Then came the crash upstairs—oh, Milady! I’m so sorry! If I’d been guarding you, instead of doing that—”
“Whoa, girl! You were off-duty. If you hadn’t been doing that, you’d have been in bed asleep. No way is the soltoxin attack your fault, yours or Kou’s. In fact, if you hadn’t been up and, and more or less dressed, the would-be assassin might have gotten away.” And we wouldn’t be anticipating yet another public beheading, or whatever, God help us. One part of Cordelia wished they’d gone for seconds, and never looked out the damned window. But Droushnakovi had enough consequences to deal with right now without those mortal complications.
“But if only—”
“If onlys have been thick in the air around here, these last weeks. I think it’s time to replace them with some Now-we-go-ons, frankly.” Cordelia’s mind caught up with herself at last. Drou was Barrayaran; Drou therefore didn’t have a contraceptive implant. It didn’t sound like that idiot Kou had offered an alternative, either. Drou had therefore spent the last three weeks wondering … “Would you like to try one of my little blue dots? I have lots left.”
“Blue dots?”
“Yes, I started to tell you. I have a packet of these little diagnostic strips. Bought them in Vorbarr Sultana last summer at an import shop. You pee on one, and if the dot turns blue, you’re in. I only used up three, last summer.” Cordelia went to her dresser drawer, and rooted through it. for the obsolete supplies. “Here.” She handed one to Drou. “Go relieve yourself. And your mind.”
“Do they work so soon?”
“After five days.” Cordelia held up her hand. “Promise.”
Staring worriedly at the little strip of paper, Droushnakovi vanished into Cordelia and Aral’s bathroom, off the bedroom. She emerged in a few minutes. Her face was glum, her shoulders slumped.
What does this mean? Cordelia wondered in exasperation. “Well?”
“It stayed white.”
“Then you aren’t pregnant.”
“Guess not.”
“I can’t tell if you’re glad or sorry. Believe me, if you want to have a baby, you’d do much better to wait a couple years till they get a bit more medical technology on-line around here.” Though the organic method had been fascinating, for a time… .
“I don’t want … I want … I don’t know … Kou’s hardly spoken to me since that night. I didn’t want to be pregnant, it would destroy me, and yet I thought maybe he would, would … be as excited and happy about it as he was about the sex, maybe. Maybe he’d come back and—oh, things were going so well, and now they’re so spoiled!” Her hands were clenched, face white, teeth gritted.
Cry, so I can breathe, girl. But Droushnakovi regained her self-control. “I’m sorry, Milady. I didn’t mean to spill all this stupidity on you.”
Stupidity, yes, but not unilateral stupidity. Something this screwed up had to have taken a committee. “So what is the matter with Kou? I thought he was just suffering from soltoxin-guilt, like everyone else in the household.” From Aral and myself on down.
“I don’t know, Milady.”
“Have you tried something really radical, like asking him?”
“He hides, when he sees me coming.”
Cordelia sighed, and turned her attention to getting dressed. Real clothes, not patient robes, today. There in the back of Aral’s closet were her tan trousers from her old Survey uniform, hung up. Curiously, she tried them on. Not only did they fasten, they were loose. She had been sick.
Rather aggressively, she left them on, and chose a long-sleeved flowered smock-top to go with them. Very comfortable. She smiled at her slim, if pale, profile in the mirror.
“Ah, dear Captain.” Aral stuck his head in the bedroom door. “You’re up.” He glanced at Droushnakovi. “You’re both here. Better still. I think I need your help, Cordelia. In fact, I’m certain of it.” Aral’s eyes were alight with the strangest expression. Amazement, bemusement, worry? He let himself in. He was wearing his standard gear for off-duty time at Vorkosigan Surleau, old uniform trousers and a civilian shirt. He was trailed by a tense and miserable Koudelka, dressed in neat black fatigues with his red lieutenant’s tabs bright on the collar. He clutched his swordstick. Drou backed to the wall, and crossed her arms.
“Lieutenant Koudelka—he tells me—wishes to make a confession. He is also, I suspect, hoping for absolution,” said Aral.
“I don’t deserve that, sir,” Koudelka muttered. “But I couldn’t live with myself anymore. This has to come out.” He stared at the floor, meeting no one’s eyes. Droushnakovi watched him breathlessly. Aral eased over and sat on the edge of the bed beside Cordelia.
“Hold on to your hat,” he murmured to her out of the corner of his mouth. “This one took me by surprise.”
“I think I may be way ahead of you.”
“That wouldn’t be a first.” He raised his voice. “Go ahead, Lieutenant. This won’t be any easier for being dragged out.”
“Drou—Miss Droushnakovi—I came to turn myself “in. And to apologize. No, that sounds trivial, and believe me, I don’t think it trivial. You deserve more than apology, I owe you expiation. Whatever you want. But I’m sorry, so sorry I raped you.”
Droushnakovi’s mouth fell open for a full three seconds, then shut so hard Cordelia could hear her teeth snap. “What?!”
Koudelka flinched, but never looked up. “Sorry … sorry,” he mumbled.
“You. Think. You. What?!” gasped Droushnakovi, horrified and outraged. “You think you could—oh!” She stood rigid now, hands clenched, breathing fast. “Kou, you oaf! You idiot! You moron! You-you-you—” Her words sputtered off. Her whole body was shaking. Cordelia watched in utter fascination. Aral rubbed his lips thoughtfully.
Droushnakovi stalked over to Koudelka and kicked his swordstick out of his hand. He almost fell, with a startled “Huh?”, clutching at it a
nd missing as it clattered across the floor.
Drou slammed him expertly into the wall, and paralyzed him with a nerve thrust, her fingers jammed up into his solar plexus. His breath stopped.
“You goon. Do you think you could lay a hand on me without my permission? Oh! To be so, to be so, so, so—” Her baffled words dissolved into a scream of outrage, right next to his ear. He spasmed.
“Please don’t break my secretary, Drou, the repairs are expensive,” said Aral mildly.
“Oh!” She whirled away, releasing Koudelka. He staggered and fell to his knees. Hands over her face, biting her fingers, she stomped out the door, slamming it behind her. Only then did she sob, sharp breaths retreating up the hallway. Another door slammed. Silence.
“I’m sorry, Kou,” said Aral into the long lull. “But it doesn’t look as though your self-accusation stands up in court.”
“I don’t understand.” Kou shook his head, crawled after his swordstick, and climbed very shakily to his feet.
“Do I gather you are both talking about what happened between you the night of the soltoxin attack?” Cordelia asked.
“Yes, Milady. I was sitting up in the library. Couldn’t sleep, thought I’d run over some figures. She came in. We sat, talked… . Suddenly I found myself… well … it was the first time I’d been functional since I was hit by the nerve disruptor. I thought it might be another year, or forever—I panicked, I just panicked. I … took her … right there. Never asked, never said a word. And then came the crash from upstairs, and we both ran out into the back garden and … she never accused me, next day. I waited and waited.”
“But if he didn’t rape her, why did she get so angry just now?” asked Aral.
“But she’s been mad,” said Koudelka. “The looks she’s given me, these last three weeks …”
“The looks were fear, Kou,” Cordelia advised him.
“Yes, that’s what I thought.”
“Because she was afraid she was pregnant, not because she was afraid of you,” Cordelia clarified.
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