Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (12 page)
Read Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen Online
Authors: Lois McMaster Bujold
Jole smiled a little, though the vision of having to work with some other civilian boss than Cordelia opened at his feet like an unexpected sinkhole in the road. He hadn’t really thought ahead to that aspect, had he? “I think you may find it harder to let go than you imagine. You’ve had it your own way on Sergyar with very little Imperial oversight. I know the Komarran Imperial Councilor gets far closer attention.”
“Well, Komarr.” She shrugged. “Anyway, the point is, there is some wriggle-room in my nine-month goal. Maybe some time to break in the new viceroy, before I run?”
Historically, Jole thought, such changes-of-command were usually more sharp-cut, reflected and reinforced by the elaborate formal hand-off ceremonies. And for good reasons. “You might not have to linger. If you’re on the same planet, they can always track you down for consults on the comconsole. You can run, but you can’t hide.”
Her lips twisted in new repugnance. “Hadn’t thought about that. Oh, lord, do you imagine they’ll still want
speeches
?”
He hid a laugh in a cough. “Probably. You’ll just have to learn to say no, Cordelia.”
“I say no to people all day long. They don’t like it one bit.”
“It’s true you’re at odds with a lot of the investment money and energy in Kareenburg, right now. You haven’t made a secret of your long-term plans for the place.”
She swiped her hands through her hair. “What part of ‘Let’s not site the planetary capital next to an active volcano’ do they find
hard
? This place should be a
nature reserve
. All right, maybe a historical park, later on. But then when that damned mountain next goes off it’ll only take out dozens or hundreds of people, not
millions
.”
“I’ve never disagreed,” he placated her. “I will be entirely willing to shift all of the downside Imperial Service headquarters and its economic impact to the new base—once it is built. An aim not aided by cost overruns before we even break ground, I must point out.” Hell, they were still building
Gridgrad
.
Lack of infrastructure
was an understatement.
Cordelia wrinkled her nose in doubt. “Is this overrun likely to prove fatal?”
“Not…really. I expect we’ll endure much worse before we’re done, unavoidably. And I’m fairly sure Plas-Dan realizes that as well as we do. It’s the sly
calculation
of this one that ticks me off.” He scowled.
“Is there any way you can recycle that stuff into some earlier project? At least recover
some
of your costs. Or break ground early?” She gave a frugal housewifely sniff. “Build the runway right now?”
“I wish. It’s not just materials, it’s labor.”
“You have an army. Of sorts.”
“And we’ll be using them, but untrained or trained-for-something-else grunt labor isn’t as useful as one would think. You still need experienced people to supervise, and to drill the crews to keep them from killing each other with the machinery.
If you think safety is expensive, try pricing an accident
, as the sign says. And it’s a multi-part puzzle much of which has to be assembled in strict order, and if a critical piece or person goes missing the whole parade grinds to a halt.” He pursed his lips in reflection. “And this is a relatively forgiving project, if a large one, in a forgiving environment. All my career I’ve ridden in jumpships,
trusting
them. And their manufacturers. I’m glad I didn’t know then what I know now. I’d have been paralyzed with terror.”
This won a laugh from her. “An empire built by the lowest bidders? I suppose that explains much.” She sighed. “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful. If I get any clever ideas, I’ll let you know.” She gave him a half-salute and cut the com.
He blew out his breath and sat back. He’d almost wished for some clever evil plot, which they could then engage to out-clever. It could be surprisingly hard to counter Plain Stupid. Even by heroic measures.
As he tapped open his calendar to make a note, his eye fell on a familiar date coming up next week, and his heart seemed to clench cold to half its size.
Three whole years already?
Of course Cordelia would have seen it coming too; of course she would not have mentioned it aloud. As far as he knew there weren’t any further formal civic observances planned, thankfully. On that first mortal anniversary there had been a dedication and a speech, which he had attended in support of the widowed Vicereine, but they’d had no chance to get drunk together afterward. Last year, they’d been running on separate tracks—he’d been off on the scheduled inspection tour of the military wormhole stations out toward Escobar, she’d been downside dealing with the colony crisis
du jour
. There was no tradition for this, either public or private, between them.
That makes us free, doesn’t it?
Perhaps, on that day, he might try to take her sailing…?
No
. Not on that day. He wanted a day where forgetting was
possible
. This weekend? That might not be too close.
And just what exactly do you mean by
sailing,
Oliver?
Half his mouth tried to smile. Comfort sex, they had once proved, was no comfort at all; they’d just distressed each other to breaking. And for all of the too-rare-in-retrospect extraordinary experiences they’d shared with Aral—the unholy
scheduling
they had required!—
sharing
Aral, had they ever really made love to each other? Had she ever once indicated that might be her desire? Had that strange, subliminal, never-spoken-aloud little distance she’d always kept even when they had touched skin-to-skin been for her sake, or his, or
his
?
And if he dared ask for more now, would he be putting their long friendship to the test, or to the torch? His lips quirked. No, that was too melodramatic for his downright Cordelia, wasn’t it? She’d just say no, or, more probably,
No, thank you
, and if he was particularly unlucky that hour, treat him to one of her hilariously dreadful Betan-style psychological cold-packs for his bruises. His ridiculous sense of risk was not for the degree of danger, just for the weight of the bet.
He reached for his comconsole and tapped into his address file. He hadn’t used this one for several years, but there it still was…his fingers seemed to move of their own accord, the assured, easy phrases falling from them quite as if his small, cold heart were not pushing into his throat.
Hello, Sergeant Penney. Do you still have your place, and do you still rent your boats? If so, I’d like to book an exclusive for this weekend, as I would have a special guest…
Chapter Six
Cordelia pressed her face eagerly to the aircar’s canopy as Lake Serena swung into view. Serena was the smallest, shallowest, and most biologically interesting of the chain of lakes skipping sporadically down the long rift valley south of Kareenburg. The fact that it was only the third-closest to the town-and-base had preserved it from development so far, and she rather selfishly hoped would do so for a while yet. It reminded her of Sergyar as she had first seen it forty-five years ago, wide and empty and inviting, except, as it had turned out, for a few (hundred) biological booby-traps. She doubted the scattered colonists had found and sprung them all yet, though they were certainly working on it steadily. She considered a pitch for medical school grads on the neighboring Nexus worlds:
Come practice in beautiful Kareenburg, where you will never be bored! Or entirely sure what you’re doing!
And didn’t
that
go for everyone here, all the way to the top…
“This was a
good
idea,” she said to Oliver, likewise craning his neck beside her, and he smiled a bit smugly.
“I was very glad to find Sergeant Penney was still out here. I’d got rather out of touch with him, after I’d traded up for my second boat.”
Oliver’s second sailboat had been a larger craft, suitable for ferrying less nautically inclined—or more creakily aging—guests in comfort on the bigger lake closest to town. He’d scarcely had it out since Aral’s death, and had finally sold it off to an enthusiastic civilian shuttle pilot who had spotted it gathering dust on its storage skid at the marina. Cordelia was glad for this renewed spurt of interest—getting outdoors was good for Oliver, not to mention getting away from a workload that would swallow him alive if he let it. He’d always been a detail-man, which was good up to a point—during that whole state-funeral circus, the five-ship cortege convoy had moved like clockwork under his personal command, and she’d have been ready to kiss his feet if she hadn’t been so numb—but without someone around to order him to stop, she wasn’t sure he ever would.
As the aircar banked, the homestead on the western shore peeked through Sergyar’s version of trees, echoes of their Earth counterparts despite their distinct biochemistry. Penney’s Place had started as a plank dock floating on old barrels and a jerry-built shack on a shady bluff above the water. A couple of larger and better shacks had not so much replaced as been added to them, marching up the shoreline like a hermit crab’s abandoned shells to climax, for the moment, in a low rambling house with a wide verandah lovingly hand-built out of local materials; the latter marking the arrival of Ma Penney in the retired twenty-year-man’s life. Camp cuisine had also taken a marked turn for the better about then, as Cordelia understood it. The couple now eked out a pleasant existence on Penney’s modest pension, Ma Penney’s garden, and holiday rentals of the old shacks and Penney’s boats to unfussy Kareenburg proles willing to, mostly, do for themselves.
The man himself appeared around the side of his house as Armsman Rykov brought the aircar down for a neat landing on a graveled patch. Penney wore tattered shorts, worn sport shoes, and a deep tan scarified by a few old plague-worm marks; he waved amiably. He was a stocky man about ten years older than Oliver, and had been among the earlier settlers to make their passage by the shortcut of mustering out of the Service right from here. At the time Cordelia and Aral had first arrived thirteen years back, Penney was already an old Sergyar hand, working on his second shack, but Cordelia hadn’t met him till after Oliver had found this place as a cheap and private slip to launch his sailboat. Foremost among Penney’s many virtues, from Cordelia’s point of view, had been his unruffled willingness to treat Oliver and his occasional incognito guests just like any other Kareenburg weekenders.
“How de’ do, Adm’ral Oliver. Ma’am. Ryk. Long time no see,” he greeted them as they clambered out of the aircar. Oliver and Cordelia received a retired-soldier salutelike gesture, the armsman a handclasp; those two had always rubbed along well, being of similar ages and service histories. There would probably be beer on the verandah, later, while Rykov’s principals bobbed about on the lake, and a good long exchange of mission-critical information, bragging and lies optional.
After the necessary preliminaries including a visit to the privy and the ritual offer and refusal of food—they’d brought their own picnic—they strolled down toward the dock. Cordelia veered aside abruptly. “Good heavens, what’s this lovely thing, Penney?”
It appeared to be a flawless crystal canoe, held up on sawhorses, but a tap on the hull gave the duller thump of some unbreakable plastic.
Penney smiled in satisfaction. “M’ stepson brought it to us—latest thing, he says. Transparent hulls for see-through rides—fellow who makes them up in New Hassadar wants to branch out to different shapes, soon as he can work out the prototypes. That plastic has positive buoyancy, too, so’s you can’t sink it for trying. It’s really popular with the guests—I mean to get a couple more soon, but he’s backordered.”
“Is it available today?”
Penney squinted out over the lake. “Maybe later? It’s a mite windy for it now anyways. Good for your sail, though.”
The wind was, indeed, picking up. Cordelia enjoyed its ruffle through her hair as they stepped down onto the creaking dock. Oliver frowned a little into the west, perhaps disappointed that it wasn’t brisker; but this was nearly ideal for her, although she admitted Aral would have found it tame.
“Your old boat’s held up well, Adm’ral,” said Penney, as he and Rykov helped them into it. “It’s proved good for my rentals—very stable, so the amateurs don’t turn it turtle and make me have to go out and rescue them. I’m thinking of offering it to that New Hassadar fellow as a model for his next design, maybe get a trade.”
“You’ve taken good care of her,” said Oliver in return appreciation.
Rykov pointed sternly to the float-belts lying across the seat, and Cordelia and Oliver dutifully put them on. Part of the many little tacit deals she had worked out with her armsman over time; she would play safe, and he would stay out of her hair. Rykov at least had learned to be sensible about what was a risk and what wasn’t, unlike the hyper-keen young ImpSec fellows Vorbarr Sultana kept sending out as the Vicereine’s official security, whom she occasionally wanted to beat to death with their own rulebook. She’d had to pull rank quite
firmly
to keep them from tagging along today.
A private life.
What a concept. Well, that was coming, if she had her way. She could hardly wait.
The old moves came back to her as Oliver raised the mainsail and she tended to the jib, letting it luff till Penney and Rykov shoved them off far enough out for her to drop the centerboard. Then Oliver tightened up the boom and took the tiller, and she hitched down the jib-sail line to its cleat, and they were off, skimming over the water. “Perfect!” she called back to him as she took the front seat, facing rearward. The lake was lovely, the distant striated cliffs striking, but scenery in this direction was even better, improved still further when he slid off his shirt to bare his spacer-pale (though more, these days, just office-pale) skin to the sun. All right, so he wasn’t twenty-seven anymore, but who was? And he’d never been
weedy
. It was good to see him looking so relaxed and happy, squinting into the light till the crow’s-feet seemed to wink at her.
“Too bad we couldn’t lose our wristcoms,” he sighed, with a glance at his.
Cordelia held up her own. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve set mine to ‘volcanoes.’”
“What?” he laughed.
“I’ve trained my staff. I have five levels of interruptions, ranging from one, ‘If you must know,’ two, ‘Diplomatic crisis,’ then three, ‘Has to involve emergency medical teams,’ through four, ‘Only in case of erupting volcanoes.’”
“What in the world is Level Five, then?”
“‘Family,’” Cordelia intoned. “Although, since they are all quite a number of wormhole jumps away, I’m usually safe there.”
“What level would you use for Emperor Gregor, then?”
“Oh, he’s family, too.”
“Ah. Yes. He would be.”
As the wind heeled the boat over and they picked up speed, she grinned back at him, exhilarated, and moved her weight to the side for balance, secure in the knowledge that
Oliver
would not make her hang bodily out on some stupid little rope, toes curled around the thwart and spine rigid, with the black water skidding under her butt like racing pavement. There were a few things in these Sergyaran lakes one did
not
want to swim with.
Oliver made the hand-signal warning,
Coming about
, and together they shifted everything to take them on a heading out past the opposite promontory and into the widest section of the lake.
Clear sailing
, indeed. He offered her a turn on the tiller, which she took, while he stretched out in the prow and smiled sleepily at her, then stared up at the sail and the sky as if trying to read the future there. Or maybe he was just reverting to worrying about his billion tons of assorted troubles in orbit, which would not be so fine. Counterproductive, even.
After a while she glanced to the west and frowned, not liking the future she was seeing edging up over the kilometers-distant rift wall. “Those clouds look pretty dark. Was this predicted?”
“There’s no front due. I checked.” He roused himself to follow her glance. “Local pop-up thunderstorm, I think.”
“Maybe it’ll pass to the south.”
“Eh…”
By mutual, unspoken assent, they switched to a course that would head them back past the peninsula toward Penney’s Place. This involved a lot more tacking and scrambling about, as the breeze shifted unfavorably. They weren’t
quite
back to shore when the wind whipped the water to whitecaps, the sky turned dark, and the cold rain began to pelt down in sheets. Oliver still brought the old boat into the dock under jib alone, perfectly aligned and without undue crashing. Penney and Rykov waited anxiously to receive the painter and tie ropes, and to help hoist the hooting Cordelia onto the slippery boards.
“We’ll put ’em to dry in the sun later!” Penney yelled over the wind’s bluster, helping Oliver wrestle down the sails. “This blow won’t last. Sorry for the timing, though!”
“Aye!”
Boat secured, they scrambled up the flat stepping stones on the bank to the somewhat alarming shelter of the lashing trees, and then, more prudently as the next sheet of rain hit them, to the front porch of old Shack One.
Cordelia shivered, and Oliver glanced at her in concern. “Cold, Cordelia? You shouldn’t be standing around wet.”
“You could come up to the house,” said Penney. Another sheet of rain blasted past, droplets ricocheting up onto the porch to brush their faces. He pursed his lips. “Or there’s a fire laid on in the shack—it might warm up quicker.”
“That sounds good,” said Cordelia, thinking about how the influx of wet guests might discombobulate Ma Penney, who, as she recalled from their prior meetings, did not share her spouse’s class-unconsciousness.
Oliver raised his brows and rubbed rainwater from his face. “Good thinking!” he said, and promptly took over, bundling her inside, starting the fire in the fieldstone fireplace, and dispatching the already sodden Rykov for their picnic cooler. Even after all these years, it gave Cordelia a Betan frisson to be
burning wood for warmth
, but the orange flames flickered up cheerily in the damp shadows, and she edged near and held her chilled hands to the radiant heat.
Penney’s first shack reminded Cordelia of many old cabins she had seen up in the Dendarii Mountains back in Aral’s district, though its one room was, if possible, even smaller. In the architectural progression up the shoreline from primitive to rustic to backcountry-comfortable, it possibly qualified as primordial, its plank door secured with a rope latch, its windows made of old bottles stuck in frames. But its roof, thickly shingled with random sheets of scrap plastic and metal, kept the rain out. It was furnished, at the moment, only with a lone bed, a table doubling as a washstand, and a few rickety chairs. A line was coiled on one wall, obviously Penney’s old clothes dryer. Oliver collected it and played it out past the fireplace to hook to the wall opposite, then put it to its intended use by flopping his wet shirt over it.
“You…?” he said, glancing at Cordelia.
Cordelia decided her sports bra qualified as a top by camping standards, and followed suit, or unsuit. She took off her squeaky wet deck shoes and sodden socks, as well, setting the first on the hearth and the latter over the line. Oliver nodded approval and imitated her.
A knock at the door heralded the return of Rykov with the cooler, and dry towels protected in plastic. He handed it all in, declining to stay; apparently the blow had interrupted his lunch up at the main house. Cordelia sent him back to his beer and company, and with luck some more dry towels from Ma Penney.
They pulled up the table and chairs in front of the fire and laid out sandwiches and fruit; a couple of thermoses even yielded a choice of hot coffee or tea. Oliver stretched his damp pale feet to the fire with a sigh of satisfaction. “This isn’t so bad.” He glanced across at her with a crooked smile. “Though not what I’d pictured, quite.”
“The mandate for today is
Get away from Kareenburg
,” said Cordelia. “Anything after that is gravy.”
Thoughtfully, Oliver extended her another sandwich, which she took. He said, “Good to see you getting your appetite back. I thought you’d lost too much weight. After.”
“Well…yes.” Cordelia chomped. Oliver drummed his fingers on the table and cast her another thin smile. An unusual silence fell. He sighed again, though this one sounded less satisfied than tentative. Cordelia sipped tea, sluicing out her mouth with its pleasant astringency, and studied him. Always an aesthetic pleasure. But he seemed a trifle on edge, opening his mouth as if to speak, then closing it again. Cordelia tried to imagine anything whatsoever that Oliver couldn’t say to her, after all these years, and came up blank. She essayed curiously, “What’s on your mind, Oliver?”