“How long is this supposed to take?” asked Kou, in a voice that tried to sound measured, but came out very worried.
“I think he likes it where he is,” said Bothari. “Doesn’t want to come out in the cold.” This joke actually got through to Alys; her sobbing breath didn’t change, but her eyes flashed in a moment of gratitude. Bothari crouched, frowned judiciously, hunkered around to her side, placed a big hand on her belly, and waited for the next spasm. Then he leaned.
The infant’s head popped out, between Lady Vorpatril’s bloody thighs, quick as that.
“There,” said the sergeant, sounding rather satisfied. Koudelka looked thoroughly impressed.
Cordelia caught the head between her hands, and eased the body out with the next contraction. The baby boy coughed twice, sneezed like a kitten in the awed silence, inhaled, grew pinker, and emitted a nerve—shattering wail. Cordelia nearly dropped him.
Bothari swore at the noise. “Give me your swordstick, Kou.”
Lady Vorpatril looked up wildly. “No! Give him back to me, I’ll make him be quiet!”
“Wasn’t what I had in mind,” said Bothari with some dignity. “Though it’s an idea,” he added as the wails went on. He pulled out the plasma arc and heated the sword briefly, on low power. Sterilizing it, Cordelia realized.
Placenta followed cord on the next contraction, a messy heap on Kou’s jacket. She stared with covert fascination at the spent version of the supportive organ that had been of so much concern in her own case. Time. This rescue’s taken so much time. What are Miles’s chances down to now? Had she just traded her son’s life for little Ivan’s? Not-so-little Ivan, actually, no wonder he’d given his mother so much trouble. Alys must be blessed with an unusually wide pelvic arch, or she’d never have made it though this nightmare night alive.
After the cord drained white, Bothari cut it with the sterilized blade, and Cordelia self-knotted the rubbery thing as best she could. She mopped off the baby and wrapped him in their spare clean shirt, and handed him at last into Alys’s outstretched arms.
Alys looked at the baby and began crying again muffled sobs. “Padma said … I’d have the best doctors’ Padma said … there’d be no pain. Padma said he’d stay with me … damn you, Padma!” She clutched Padma’s son to her. In an altered tone of mild surprise, she added “Ow!” Infant mouth had found her breast, and apparently had a grip like a barracuda.
“Good reflexes,” observed Bothari.
Chapter Seventeen
“For God’s sake, Bothari, we can’t take her in there,” hissed Koudelka.
They stood in an alley deep in the maze of the caravanserai. A thick-walled building bulked an unusual three stories high in the cold, wet darkness. High on its stuccoed face, scabrous with peeling paint, yellow light glinted through carved shutters. An oil lamp burned dimly above a wooden door, the only entrance Cordelia could see.
“Can’t leave her out here. She needs heat,” replied the sergeant. He carried Lady Vorpatril in his arms; she clung to him, wan and shivering. “It’s a slow night anyway. Late. They’re closing down.”
“What is this place?” asked Droushnakovi. Koudelka cleared his throat. “Back in the Time of Isolation, when this was the center of Vorbarr Sultana, it was a lord’s Residence. One of the minor Vorbarra princes, I think. That’s why it’s built like a fortress. Now it’s a … sort of inn.”
Oh, so this is your whorehouse, Kou, Cordelia managed not to blurt out. Instead she addressed Bothari, “Is it safe? Or is it likely to be stocked with informers like that last place?”
“Safe for a few hours,” Bothari judged. “A few hours is all we have anyway.” He set Lady Vorpatril down, handing her off to Droushnakovi, and slipped inside after a muffled conversation through the door with some guardian. Cordelia tucked little Ivan more firmly to her, tugging her jacket over him for all the warmth she could share. Fortunately, he had slept quietly through their several-minutes hike from the abandoned building to this place. In a few moments Bothari returned, and motioned them to follow.
They passed through an entryway, almost like a stone tunnel, with narrow slits in the walls and holes every half-meter above. “For defense, in the old days,” whispered Koudelka, and Droushnakovi nodded understanding. No arrows or boiling oil awaited them tonight, though. A man as tall as Bothari, but wider, locked the door again behind them.
They came out in a large, dim room that had been converted into some sort of bar/dining room. It was occupied only by two dispirited-looking women in robes and a man snoring with his head on the table. As usual, an extravagant fireplace glowed with coals of wood.
They had a guide, or hostess. A rangy woman beckoned them silently toward the stairs. Fifteen years ago, or even ten years ago, she might have achieved a leggy aquiline look; now she was bony and faded, misclad in a gaudy magenta robe with drooping ruffles that seemed to echo her inherent sadness. Bothari swept up Lady Vorpatril and carried her up the steep stairs. Koudelka stared around uneasily, and seemed to brighten slightly upon not finding someone.
The woman led them to a room off an upstairs hallway. “Change the sheets,” muttered Bothari, and the woman nodded and vanished. Bothari did not set the exhausted Lady Vorpatril down. The woman returned in a few minutes, and whisked off the bed’s rumpled coverings and replaced them with fresh linens. Bothari laid Lady Vorpatril in the bed and backed up. Cordelia tucked the sleeping infant in her arm, and Lady Vorpatril managed a grateful nod.
The—housewoman, Cordelia decided she would think of her—stared with a spark of interest at the baby. “That’s a new one. Big boy, eh?” her voice swung to a tentative coo.
“Two weeks old,” stated Bothari in a repelling tone.
The woman snorted, hands on hips. “I do my bit of midwifery, Bothari. Two hours, more like.”
Bothari shot Cordelia an odd look, almost a flash of fear. The housewoman held up a hand to ward off his frown. “Whatever you say.”
“We should let her sleep,” said Bothari, “till we’re sure she isn’t going to bleed.”
“Yes, but not alone,” said Cordelia. “In case she wakes up disoriented in a strange place.” In the range of strange, Cordelia suspected, this place qualified as downright alien for the Vor woman.
“I’ll sit with her a while,” volunteered Droushnakovi. She glowered suspiciously at the housewoman, who was apparently leaning too near the baby for her taste. Cordelia didn’t think Drou was at all fooled by Koudelka’s pretense that they had stumbled into some sort of museum. Nor would Lady Vorpatril be, once she’d rested enough to regain her wits.
Droushnakovi plunked down in a shabby padded armchair, wrinkling her nose at its musty smell. The others withdrew from the room. Koudelka went off to find whatever this old building used for a lavatory, and to try and buy them some food. An underlying tang to the air suggested to Cordelia that nothing in the caravanserai was hooked up to the municipal sewerage. No central heating, either. At Bothari’s frown, the housewoman made herself scarce.
A sofa, a couple of chairs, and a low table occupied a space at the end of the hall, lit by a red-shaded battery-driven lamp. Wearily, Bothari and Cordelia sat there. With the pressure off for a moment, not fighting the strain, Bothari looked ragged. Cordelia had no idea what she looked like, but she was certain it wasn’t her best.
“Do they have whores on Beta Colony?” Bothari asked suddenly.
Cordelia fought mental whiplash. His voice was so tired the question sounded almost casual, except that Bothari never made casual conversation. How much had tonight’s violent events disturbed his precarious balance, stressed his peculiar fault lines? “Well … we have the L.P.S.T.s,” she answered cautiously. “I guess they fill some of the same social functions.”
“Ellpee Estees?”
“Licensed Practical Sexuality Therapists. You have to pass the government boards, and get a license. You’re required to have at least an associate degree in psychotherapy. Except that all three sexes take up
the profession. The hermaphrodites make the most money, they’re very popular with the tourists. It’s not … not a high social status job, but neither are they dregs. I don’t think we have dregs on Beta Colony, we sort of stop at the lower middle class. It’s like …” she paused, struggling for a cultural translation, “sort of like being a hairdresser, on Barrayar. Delivering a personal service to professional standards, with a bit of art and craft.”
She’d actually managed to boggle Bothari, surely a first. His brow wrinkled. “Only Betans would think you needed a bleeding university degree… . Do women hire them?”
“Sure. Couples, too. The … the teaching element is rather more emphasized, there.”
He shook his head, and hesitated. He shot her a sidelong look. “My mother was a whore.” His tone was curiously distant. He waited.
“I’d … about figured that out.”
“Don’t know why she didn’t abort me. She could have, she did those as well as midwifery. Maybe she was looking to her old age. She used to sell me to her customers.”
Cordelia choked. “Now … now that would not have been allowed, on Beta Colony.”
“I can’t remember much about that time. I ran away when I was twelve, when I got big enough to beat up her damned customers. Ran with the gangs, till I was sixteen, passed for eighteen, and lied my way into the Service. Then I was out of here.” His palms slid across each other, indicating how slick and fast his escape.
“The Service must have seemed like heaven, in comparison.”
“Till I met Vorrutyer.” He stared around vaguely. “There were more people around here, back then. It’s almost dead here now.” His voice went meditative. “There’s a great deal of my life I can’t remember very well. It’s like I’m all … patchy. Yet there are some things I want to forget and can’t.”
She wasn’t about to ask, What? But she made an I-am-listening noise, down in her throat.
“Don’t know who my father was. Being a bastard here is damn near as bad as being a mutant.”
“ ’Bastard’ is used as a negative description of a personality, but it doesn’t really have an objective meaning, in the Betan context. Unlicensed children aren’t the same thing, and they’re so rare, they’re dealt with on a case-by-case basis.” Why is he telling me all this? What does he want of me? When he started, he seemed almost fearful; now he looks almost contented. What did I say right? She sighed.
To her secret relief, Koudelka returned about then, bearing actual fresh sandwiches of bread and cheese, and bottled beer. Cordelia was glad for the beer; she’d have been dubious of the water in this place. She chased her first bite with a grateful swallow, and said, “Kou, we have to re—arrange. our strategy.”
He settled awkwardly beside her, listening seriously. “Yes?”
“We obviously can’t take Lady Vorpatril and the baby with us. And we can’t leave her here. We left five corpses and a burning groundcar for Vordarian’s security. They’re going to be searching this area in earnest. But for just a little while longer, they will still be hunting for a very pregnant woman. It gives us a time window. We have to split up.”
He filled a hesitant moment with a bite of sandwich. “Will you go with her, then, Milady?”
She shook her head. “I must go with the Residence team. If only because I’m the only one who can say, This is impossible now, it’s time to quit. Drou is absolutely required, and I need Bothari.” And, in some strange way, Bothari needs me. “That leaves you.”
His lips compressed bitterly. “At least I won’t slow you down.”
“You’re not a default choice,” she said sharply. “Your ingenuity got us in to Vorbarr Sultana. I think it can get Lady Vorpatril out. You’re her best shot.”
“But it feels like you’re running into danger, and I’m running away.”
“A dangerous illusion. Kou, think. If Vordarian’s goons catch her again, they’ll show her no mercy. Nor you, nor especially the baby. There is no ’safer.’ Only mortal necessity, and logic, and the absolute need to keep your head.”
He sighed. “I’ll try, Milady.”
“ ’Try’ is not good enough. Padma Vorpatril ’tried.’ You bloody succeed, Kou.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, Milady.”
Bothari left to scrounge clothing for Kou’s new persona of poor-young-husband-and-father. “Customers are always leaving things,” he remarked. Cordelia wondered what he could collect here in the way of street clothes for Lady Vorpatril. Kou took food in to Lady Vorpatril and Drou. He returned with a very bleak expression on his face, and settled again beside Cordelia.
After a time he said, “I guess I understand now why Drou was so worried about being pregnant.”
“Do you?” said Cordelia.
“Lady Vorpatril’s troubles make mine look … pretty small. God, that looked painful.”
“Mm. But the pain only lasts a day.” She rubbed her scar. “Or a few weeks. I don’t think that’s it.”
“What is, then?”
“It’s … a transcendental act. Making life. I thought about that, when I was carrying Miles. ’By this act, I bring one death into the world.’ One birth, one death, and all the pain and acts of will between. I didn’t understand certain Oriental mystic symbols like the Death-mother, Kali, till I realized it wasn’t mystic at all, just plain fact. A Barrayaran-style sexual ’accident’ can start a chain of causality that doesn’t stop till the end of time. Our children change us … whether they live or not. Even though your child turned out to be chimerical this time, Drou was touched by that change. Weren’t you?”
He shook his head in bafflement. “I wasn’t thinking about all that. I just wanted to be normal. Like other men.”
“I think your instincts are all right. They’re just not enough. I don’t suppose you could get your instincts and your intellect working together for once, instead of at cross-purposes ?”
He snorted. “I don’t know. I don’t know … how to get through to her now. I said I was sorry.”
“It’s not all right between you two, is it?”
“No.”
“You know what’s bothered me most, on the journey up here?” said Cordelia.
“No …”
“I couldn’t say goodbye to Aral. If … anything happens to me—or to him, for that matter—it will leave something hanging, unraveled, between us. And no way to ever make it right.”
“Mm.” He folded a little more into himself, slumped in the chair.
She meditated a bit. “What have you tried besides ’I’m sorry’? How about, ’How do you feel? Are you all right? Can I help? I love you,’ there’s a classic. Words of one syllable. Mostly questions, now I think on it. Shows an interest in starting a conversation, y’know?”
He smiled sadly. “I don’t think she wants to talk to me anymore.”
“Suppose,” she leaned her head back, and stared unseeing down the hallway. “Suppose things hadn’t taken such a wrong turn, that night. Suppose you hadn’t panicked. Suppose that idiot Evon Vorhalas hadn’t interrupted with his little horror show.” There was a thought. Too painful, that might—not—have—been. “Drop back to square one. There you were, cuddling happily.” Aral had used that word, cuddling. It hurt too much to think of Aral just now, too. “You part friends, you wake up the next morning, er, aching with unrequited love … what happens next, on Barrayar?”
“A go-between.”
“Ah?”
“Her parents, or mine, would hire a go-between. And then they’d, well, arrange things.”
“And you do what?”
He shrugged. “Show up on time for the wedding and pay the bill, I guess. Actually, the parents pay the bill.”
No wonder the man was at a loss. “Did you want a wedding? Not just to get laid?”
“Yes! But … Milady, I’m just about half a man, on a good day. Her family’d take one look at me and laugh.”
“Have you ever met her family? Have they met you?”
�
��No …”
“Kou, are you listening to yourself?”
He looked rather shamefaced. “Well …”
“A go-between. Huh.” She stood up.
“Where are you going?” he asked nervously.
“Between,” she said firmly. She marched down the hall to Lady Vorpatril’s door, and stuck her head in. Droushnakovi was sitting watching the sleeping woman. Two beers and the sandwiches sat untouched on a bedside table.
Cordelia slipped within, and closed the door gently. “You know,” she murmured, “good soldiers never pass up a chance to eat or sleep. They never know how much they’ll be called on to do, before the next chance.”
“I’m not hungry.” Drou too had a folded-in look, as if caught in some trap within herself.
“Want to talk about it?”
She grimaced uncertainly, and moved away from the bed to a settee in the far corner of the room. Cordelia sat beside her. “Tonight,” she said lowly, “was the first time I was ever in a real fight.”
“You did well. You found your position, you reacted—”
“No.” Droushnakovi made a bitter hand-chopping gesture. “I didn’t.”
“Oh? It looked good to me.”
“I ran around behind the building—stunned the two security men waiting at the back door. They never saw me. I got to my position, at the building’s corner. I watched those men, tormenting Lady Vorpatril in the street. Insulting and staring and pushing and poking at her … it made me so angry, I switched to my nerve disruptor. I wanted to kill them. Then the firing started. And … and I hesitated. And Lord Vorpatril died because of it. My fault—”
“Whoa, girl! That goon who shot Padma Vorpatril wasn’t the only one taking aim at him. Padma was so penta-soaked and confused, he wasn’t even trying to take cover. They must have double—dosed him, to force him to lead them back to Alys. He might as easily have died from another shot, or blundered into our own cross-fire.”
“Sergeant Bothari didn’t hesitate,” Droushnakovi said flatly.
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