Cryoburn

by Lois M. Bujold

  "But why send a child as a courier . . . ​?" Vorlynkin muttered. Jin wasn't sure if the question was addressed to him, so did not attempt to volunteer an answer. It didn't seem the time to explain about almost twelve, either. He was beginning to think that the less he said, the safer he would be.

  The other fellow-Lieutenant Johannes, Trev-san, whatever-stumped back into to the entry hall, waving the envelope at his boss. "This part's real. Now what, sir?"

  "We still have to find his armsman just the same-he seems to think Roic was taken. No change there with respect to the locals. I suppose we have to do exactly what this says. But send a holo of the letter to ImpSec Galactic Affairs on Komarr, priority, scrambled."

  The lieutenant looked hopeful. "Maybe they'll have an order. Some other order. One that makes more sense."

  "Not for some days. And think who they'd have to go to for an override." The two men looked at each other in mysterious perturbation. "We're still on our own, here."

  Jin diffidently cleared his throat. "Miles-san said I was to bring back a reply."

  "Yes," said the consul. "Wait there." He pointed to a spindly chair against the wall, one of a pair flanking a little bureau with silk flowers atop it, and a mirror above. Both men thumped downstairs again.

  Jin sat. Only the firmness and brevity of that Yes gave him the courage not to run away while he had this chance. However doubtful they were of Jin, they seemed to take Miles-san's letter seriously, which was a relief.

  He was left alone for a long time. He got up once, to peer into the rooms flanking the entry hall. One was a sort of living room, very fancy; the other was more severe and officelike. No sign of pets, not even a bird in a cage or a cat. He was glad he hadn't gone poking around searching for any when another man emerged from the back hall, looked at him in surprise, and said, "May I help you?"

  This fellow spoke in a normal Kibou accent, at least. Jin shook his head vigorously. "Lieutenant Johannes is seeing to, um, it. Me."

  The ease with which Jin spun off the lieutenant's name seemed to reassure the man. "Oh," he said, and wandered into the office, to sit at the comconsole and begin some sort of work there. Jin stayed in his seat after that.

  After a great deal more time, Vorlynkin came back. He held another sealed envelope in his hand, plain and businesslike, much bulkier than the one Jin had delivered.

  "Do you think you can give this back into the hand of Lord Vorkosigan-only?"

  Jin stood up. "I got this far."

  "So you did." With visible reluctance, the consul handed the envelope over. Jin stuffed it into his shirt once more, and lost no time in escaping.

  I didn't understand any of that. Jin looked back apprehensively as he passed out the iron gate once more. But he was glad Miles-san seemed to have some friends. Of a sort.

  Chapter Four

  As soon as he'd seen Jin safely over the parapet, Miles retraced his steps to the basement cafeteria, careful to make no wrong turns. He was apparently early for lunch, as only a few heads turned in suspicion to follow him. It occurred to him that he was less conspicuous here in his tattered garb than if he'd been wearing his full-on Imperial Auditor grays, a suit so severe as to signal Serious Person Here anywhere in the Nexus regardless of the vagaries of local fashion. Street Refugee Here was a much better choice for his current needs.

  The scattering of tables was divided from the cooking area by a long serving counter, with metal cupboards above. He made his way around it to find a sort of large electric samovar promising tea. Next to the dispenser was a mismatched collection of mugs, with a hand-lettered sign over it, Wash your cup! He couldn't quite tell if these were personally owned or up for grabs, which gave him a perfect opening for conversation with the woman, evidently Ako's replacement, who was stirring a ten-liter pot of soup.

  He addressed her, "May I use one of these?"

  She shrugged. "Go ahead. Wash it after, though." She tapped her spoon on the pot rim and laid it aside. "You new here?"

  "Very new."

  "Rules are, cook what you want, clean up after yourself, replace what you use, contribute money to the pantry when you can. Sign up on the cleaning duty roster on the front of the fridge."

  "Thanks. Just tea for now . . ." Miles took a sip. It was stewed, cheap, bitter, and served his purposes as a prop in both senses. "You been here long yourself?"

  "I came with my grandmother. It won't be much longer."

  As he was figuring out how to lead her on to parse that, a familiar, querulous voice sounded from beyond the counter: "That soup ready yet?" A tall, bent old man stooped to peer through the serving hatch. Impressive white mustachios drooped down, framing his frown, and wriggled as he spoke. Like an insect's palps, ah.

  "Another half hour," the woman called back. "Just go sit."

  "I believe I've met him," Miles murmured to her. "Name of Yani?"

  "Yah, that's him."

  Yani shuffled in to collect a mug of tea from the dispenser. He scowled at Miles.

  Miles returned a cheery smile. "Good morning, Yani."

  "So, you've sobered up. Good. Go home." Yani clutched his mug in two hands, to average out the shakes perhaps, and shuffled back to one of the tables. Miles, undaunted, followed and slid in across from him.

  "Why haven't you gone away?" asked Yani.

  "Still waiting for my ride. So to speak."

  "Aren't we all."

  "Jin says you're a revive. Did you really have yourself frozen a century ago?" That would have been just about at the end of Barrayar's Time of Isolation, on the verge of a torrent of new history all of which Yani had more-or-less slept through. "I would think the oral chroniclers around here would be all over you."

  Yani vented a bitter laugh. "Not likely. The people here are glutted with revive interviews. I thought the journals might pay me, but there are too many of us up walking around. Nobody wants us here. Everything costs too much. The city's too big. Settlement was supposed to be more spread out. Hell, I thought the terraforming would be halfway to the poles by now. The politics have gone all wrong, and nobody has any manners. . . ."

  Miles made encouraging noises. If there was one skill Miles had honed in his youth, it was how to please an old man by listening to his complaints. Yani needed no more than a nod to launch into a comprehensive denunciation of modern Kibou, a world with no need nor place for him. Some of his phrases were so practiced they came out in paragraphs, as if he'd told them over to anyone who would stop to listen. Which, by this point, was no one-the few other residents who drifted in gave Yani's table a wide berth. His rheumy eye brightened at this new audience who didn't show visible signs of wanting to chew through his own leg to get away, and Miles's suspect druggie status was temporarily forgotten.

  As Yani maundered on, Miles was thrown back in memory to his own grandfather. General Count Piotr Vorkosigan, planetary liberator, un-maker and re-maker of emperors, and cause of a lot of that history that Yani had missed, had sired his heir late in life, as had Miles's father, so that it was more nearly three generations between grandfather and grandson than two. Still, they had loved each other after their own peculiar fashion. How would Miles's life have altered if Piotr had been frozen when Miles was seventeen, instead of buried for real in the ground? His impending return always a promise, or a threat?

  Like a great tree the old general had been, but a tree did not only give shelter from the storm. How would Barrayar be different if that towering figure had not fallen, permitting sunlight to penetrate to the forest floor and new growth to flourish? What if the only way to effect change on Barrayar had been to violently destroy what had gone before, instead of waiting for the cycle of generations to gracefully remove it?

  For the first time, the notion occurred to Miles that it might not be vote-grubbing alone, nor even the lack of medical progress in reversing geriatric decay, that caused the cryocorps to freeze more patrons than they revived.

  Yani had now segued into a long screed about ho
w his cryocorp had cheated him, evidently by not delivering him into this new world physically youthful, rich, and famous, which was roughly where Miles had come in on this rant. Yani seemed a time-traveler who had found out the hard way that he did not like his destination any better than his point of departure, failed to notice the one common factor was himself, and now could not go back. So just how many like him were haunting the streets of Kibou? Miles made the emptiness of their mugs an excuse to grab both and take them for refills.

  As he was washing his mug and topping up Yani's, Miles murmured to the cook, "Is it true Yani was rejected for being a revive?"

  She snorted. "I daresay nobody wanted him around a hundred years ago, either. I don't know why he thought that would have changed."

  Miles muffled a smile. "I daresay."

  The half-smile caught her eye, and she looked at him more closely. "You're not very old. Are you sick?"

  Miles blinked. "Do I look that hung-over?"

  "I thought that might be why you were here."

  "Well, I have a chronic medical condition, but I don't much care to discuss it." How had she guessed? A seizure disorder hardly showed on the outside like, say, skin lesions. Miles suspected a conversation at cross-purposes, again, and that he'd just been handed a clue. So what was it?

  But before he could follow this up, she turned away and said, "Oh! Tenbury-san!"

  A lot of heads swiveled at the entry of a man in threadbare coveralls, a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and an enormous quantity of hair, but the looks were mostly followed up with brief nods or friendly waves. The greetings were returned as silently. The man trod into the kitchen area. He shoved his hand into his thatch of brown-gray beard to scratch his chin, greeted the cook with another nod, and held out a familiar carafe, which she took to rinse and refill with coffee. "Your lunch is all ready, Tenbury-san," she called over her shoulder. "Sack's in the fridge."

  The man grunted thanks and went to poke inside the industrial refrigerator. He was not, Miles, realized, actually of a bearlike build under all the mad hair, but lanky and pale. He pulled out a cloth sack, turned, and eyed Miles. "You're new."

  "I'm a friend of Jin's," Miles answered, not quite directly. Or at least, he collected me.

  "Really? Where is the boy?"

  "I sent him to run an errand for me."

  "Eh. Good. Time he did some work."

  "There's a faucet leaking in two-ten," the cook informed him.

  "Right, right. I'll bring my tools after dinner," said the man. He took the carafe and trod out.

  "Who was that?" Miles asked, as the cook picked up her spoon again.

  "Tenbury. He's the custodian here."

  Miles dimly remembered that term going by a few times earlier, and wondered if its meaning was as far outside the usual as Suze the Secretary's. But if he really wanted to know where the power came from and the sewage went to, now was his chance. Should he wait for Jin to broker an introduction? Miles didn't have infinite time to explore, here . . . ​his feet were already in motion, deciding for him.

  He waved his own thanks to the cook, dropped the refilled mug by Yani, rapped a friendly farewell on the tabletop, and made it to the door just in time to tail Tenbury's receding footsteps. The worn rubber soles on Miles's scavenged shoes were as silent as he'd hoped. Hinges squeaked; Miles nipped around the corner to discover a door closing again on another stairwell. He drew a breath and followed.

  The steps descended into stygian blackness. His breath quickened. To his intense relief, a sudden glow reflected off the walls ahead-Tenbury had unshipped a hand light. So, the man didn't see in the dark like a werewolf, good. At the fourth landing, the scrape of a heavy door being shoved open was followed by loss of the reflected light. Miles sped his steps, put out his hands, and found the handle. He opened this door more cautiously, turning sideways to slide through the gap and easing it closed with the minimum sound.

  The bobbing light receded to his right; he turned after it, thinking of will-o'-the-wisps luring unwary travelers to their doom. As he followed, he became aware of tiny twinkles dancing in the corners of his vision like floating fireflies, adding to the night-swamp effect. He blinked, and they resolved into scattered indicator lights, green for all's-well, tacking randomly up the corridor walls on either side.

  Reluctantly, Miles reached out and let his hand trace across the now-familiar bumps of closely-set banks of cryo-drawers. Except these were not abandoned and cleared, but working, or a portion of them were. Well insulated, the drawer faces were at room temperature-there was no danger of his skin freezing to the surface and trapping him in a growing cocoon of icicle-glass, really. He drew in his hands anyway, making his way down the center of the corridor by witch-light.

  He stopped short as, at the end of the corridor, another door opened. Ordinary office-lab-living-quarters glare temporarily blasted his eyes, making a nimbus around a hairy head that fortunately did not turn around. The door shut, and Miles was plunged into blackness once more. As his night vision came slowly back the dense dark was relieved, if that was the word, by the scattered green specks. He could just make out his corpse-light sleeves.

  So, he hadn't found the pumping station or the electrical transformers. He'd found the deeper secret of this place-working cryochambers. A number of mysteries fell neatly into place.

  Suze and companions were running a secret cryocorp. No-a cryo-cooperative. And, unless he missed his guess, unlicensed, untaxed, and uninspected. Clandestine, off the books in every way.

  Kibou-daini-a whole planet so obsessed with cheating death that even the street people managed to scavenge hope.

  Which beat living, and dying, in a cardboard box all to flinders, Miles had to admit. He opened his mouth in what might have been a silent laugh. And I thought I'd pulled some audacious stunts in my time . . .  How the hell Suze and whatever helpers she'd suborned had managed to palm an entire facility, back when this place was being decommissioned and stripped, its patrons shifted to the elegant new Cryopolis on the west end, gaudy with its floodlit pyramids, was a tale Miles was suddenly dying to hear.

  Bad choice of phrase, my Lord Auditor.

  Less than a third of the cryo-drawers in this corridor sported those glow-worm lights, and how many other corridors might there be? Plenty of room for more customers. And, because his mind worked that way, he considered how easy murder by cryo-drawer would be. The ultimate shell game, one live body hidden among hundreds of dead ones. Asphyxiation would come quickly in the sealed black box, even without the freezing, and no one would know where to look till much too late. . . . ​

  It's nothing I haven't undergone before.

  It was curious how much that reflection didn't help.

  He stepped forward to the end door, raised his hand to touch the cool metal surface, and just stood there for a minute. Then, curling his fingers into a fist, he knocked.

  The creak of a chair. The door opened partway, and a hairy face thrust through. "Yah?"

  "Tenbury-san?"

  "Just Tenbury. What did you want?"

  "To ask a few questions, if I may."

  Beneath shaggy brows, dark brown eyes narrowed. "Did you talk to Suze?"

  "Jin took me to see her this morning, yes."

  Tenbury's lips pursed amid their thatch. "Oh. All right." The door swung wide.

  Miles did not correct the misperception that Suze had therefore gated him into this covert community, but slipped inside at once.

  The room was part office, part control chamber for the banks of cryo-drawers, and part living space, or so the unmade bedroll by one wall and the piles of personal junk suggested. Beyond, another door stood open on what might be some sort of repairs facility. Miles glimpsed workbenches and racks of tools in its shadows. There was only one station chair, by which Miles guessed this Tenbury was less sociable than Suze, but the custodian politely gestured his guest into it and leaned against a control console. Miles would have preferred it the ot
her way around, so as not to risk a crick in his neck, nor the embarrassment of swinging his short legs above the floor. But he dared not impede the useful exchange he'd started, so he sat and half-smiled upward.

  Tenbury cocked his head, and echoed the cook's observation. "You look too young for us. You sick or something?"

  Miles repeated the reply that had seemed to work before: "I have an incurable seizure disorder."

  Tenbury winced in sympathy, but said, "You'd do better to go back to the docs. Off-planet, maybe."

  "I have. It was costly." Miles turned out his empty pockets as if to demonstrate.

  "That why you ended up here? Broke, are you?"

  "In a sense." It wasn't as if Miles was trying to beat a fast-penta interrogation through excessive literalism, yet he found himself oddly reluctant to lie outright to this man. "It's more complicated than that."

  "Yah, it always is.'

  "Can you show me what I might be getting into? If I stayed here, that is?"

  The hairy eyebrows jerked up. "You've nothing to worry about with my work. Come on, and you'll see."

  Tenbury led through his shop, which seemed half-engineeering-half-medical. Dismantled freezer parts lay strewn across a workbench. "I keep a portion of the chambers usable by cannibalizing the others," Tenbury explained.

  Miles encouraged the tech to expand upon the arcana of his craft with much the same noises he'd used on Yani, to better effect. When Miles had absorbed as much about how cryochambers were built as he could stand, he asked, "But won't you run out of parts?"

  "Not for a while yet. This facility was originally set up to serve twenty thousand patrons. In twenty years, we've only accumulated about a ten-percent occupancy. I admit we started much smaller, back when. We can go for decades yet. Till I'm gone, for sure."

  "And what then? Who are you relying on for your revivals?"

  "We don't need anyone to do the revivals, yet. Anyway, they're much trickier."

  Indeed. "Who does the cryoprep, then?"