Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (28 page)

Cordelia blew out her breath. Jole’s brows couldn’t climb any higher. He observed slowly, “That…certainly puts a different spin on all our military self-congratulations for throwing the ghem off our world, back then.”

“
Oh
, yes.”

“No wonder Gregor’s been delaying this,” said Cordelia. “It must feel like brooding a bomb.”

“Yes, he keeps wondering and waiting for the right diplomatic time to let it hatch. Most useful or least destructive moment, whichever. Given haut lifespans, all the principals aren’t dead even yet. So is it history, or is it politics? I keep thinking such secrets should be out on the table, and then…I think some more.”

“So, Ekaterin is right,” murmured Cordelia. “We continue to exist at the discretion of the haut.”

“Yeah, that’s the problem,” said Miles. “Anybody got a solution?”

“Out of my own head? No,” said his mother. “Except to continue to improve our broad scientific and bio expertise, and not just at the top. Which is a process that has to start at the primary school education level.” She sighed. “When
everything
is a priority,
nothing
is, but at least that one underlies all others. Thus, you would think people could agree on it, but. People.”

“It seems the haut aren’t interested in real estate alone—ah.” Miles broke off, as the herd of his children and their escorts appeared around the corner, finding their way back to the parental home base. Jole supposed that to Cordelia, the younger crewmen looked like children as well. He only had to squint a bit to see them that way himself.

In light of the conversation just interrupted, he didn’t have to work too hard to interpret the introspective, disquieted looks on the adults’ faces, regarding their offspring’s approach.
Terror, once removed
. He stared around one last time at the creaky old warship as they all started to make their way to the flex tubes.

If his life’s calling had been to defend Barrayar, and he did not think that notion was wholly self-delusion, had he been in the wrong line of work for the past thirty years?

* * *

The Vorkosigan family was safely delivered back to the base in the Kareenburg dawn. Oliver stopped by his apartment; Cordelia shepherded the rest on to the Viceroy’s Palace. She then spent the rest of the morning playing catch-up with all the duties that could not be accomplished by comconsole, mostly meeting with people petitioning her to provide them with goods or services, generally for free. It made her feel wearily maternal. She tried to extract as many chores as possible in return.

Such tasks were pleasant enough when she could actually supply their wants; less so when, more commonly, she couldn’t; and least of all when she was presented with multiple irreconcilably conflicting agendas. She wondered if being the parent of an only child had unfitted her for such situations. On the other hand, maybe all the practice at being vicereine would ready her for her rematch with motherhood. It was a consoling notion.

As she made her way back across the garden for the planned family lunch, she spotted Alex sitting alone on a secluded bench, kicking his heels—metaphorically as well as literally? Alex’s quiet demeanor was usually camouflaged by the uproar of his siblings, but when one saw him alone like this, it sprang out. She angled amiably over to him.

“Hey, kiddo.”

He looked up. “Hi, Granma.” As she continued to loom, he obligingly scooted over on the bench, and she sat down beside him. They both looked out into the variegated foliage and a winding path that might have gone on for kilometers, rather than meters.

“What’s everyone up to?” she asked, as a less-invasive version of
Why are you all alone out here?

Alex gave a defensive kid-shrug nonetheless. But he answered, “Mama’s working on the garden project for you. Da went off to the base to see Admiral Jole about that war-gaming thing they were talking about. Helen and the rest of the girls are inside playing with Freddie.”

Leaving Alex odd-male-out? It was unfortunate that Selig was too young to be a companion for him. Miles’s idea of starting all his children as one fell squadron seemed a little less insane, in this retrospect.

“Did you enjoy the trip out to the old flagship?”

“Yeah, it was pretty interesting.” Perhaps worried that this sounded flat, he offered, “I liked the parts when Admiral Jole talked about Granda the best.”

“Those were my favorite bits, too.” She hesitated, then tried, “So why the long face today? Tuckered out?”

His nose wrinkled, but he waved this explanation-sparing notion away. Either not yet adept at personal subterfuge, or too honest, he sighed, “Not that. It’s just Da.”

Cordelia groped for neutral-yet-inviting wording. “What’s he up to now?”

“Nothing new. He was just going on about the Academy, again. He does that.”

Interesting description. At least Alex recognized that this family obsession was as much about Miles as it was about himself. Cordelia detected Ekaterin’s hand, there.

“He wants to encourage you, you know. He had so much trouble gaining entry himself due to his soltoxin damage, and went to such, really,
extraordinary
lengths to get around the barriers in his path that, well…he wants it to be easier for you.”

“I get that, it’s just…” Alex trailed off. “He makes it seem as much a, a thing as being count.”

“An unavoidable historical necessity?”

Alex’s brows scrunched down. “I guess. I mean, all the counts’ heirs went there, like, back since forever.”

“This is not technically true. The Imperial Service Academy didn’t actually exist till after the end of the Time of Isolation. Before that, officers were trained by an apprenticeship system. Including your great-grandfather Piotr.” Granted, Piotr’s apprenticeship had been during a real war, as a sort of genius-autodidact with very few seniors able to advise him in that beleaguered new Barrayar. Piotr had made it up as he went along, and his world had perforce followed. There was a
lot
of Piotr in Miles, Cordelia reflected, not for the first time.

“But Granda went there. And Da. And Uncle Ivan. And Uncle Gregor, and Uncle Duv Galeni, who isn’t even Vor, and everybody.”

“Not your Uncle Mark,” Cordelia offered. She perhaps deserved the Look she received in return.

“Uncle Mark’s different.”

“Very different,” she conceded, “yet genetically identical to your da. Biology isn’t destiny, you know.”

“He even looks different.”

“Yes, he goes to some trouble about that.” Mark worked to keep his formidable weight up as consciously as some people worked to keep theirs down, if more pleasurably. That this somatic choice disturbed the hell out of his progenitor-brother was more feature than bug, Cordelia gathered.

Alex focused on some unseen vision, apparently between his feet. “Not Great-uncle Vorthys, though.”

The Professor, as everyone called Dr. Vorthys, was Ekaterin’s late mother’s brother, and a galactic-class engineer in his own right. Perhaps Alex’s world was not as devoid of nonmilitary male role models as all that? Cordelia suddenly smiled. “Come into the house with me. I have something to show you. Just you.”

Alex followed her dutifully, but looking curious.

She led him up to her private office, closed the door, and cleared the small conference table. She then unlocked a tall cabinet stacked with wide, flat drawers.
I haven’t had this open for over three years.
She hesitated, then began pulling out sheet after sheet, some plastic flimsies but most real fiber-paper, all sizes from torn scraps to wide folios that half covered the table. Alex watched, then drifted up to tentatively finger them.

“These are your Granda Aral’s drawings,” she told him.

“I knew he drew pictures,” Alex offered. “He drew some of Helen and me once, I remember, when you were visiting for Winterfair.” That must have been on their last joint trip home, Cordelia calculated. “I didn’t know he drew so
many
.”

“For a long time, he didn’t,” said Cordelia. “He told me once he started when he was very young—younger even than you. But those were all lost. And some in his teens—those were mostly lost, too, but he kept a few hidden away. He didn’t really take it up again, as a hobby, till after the regency. More after we came to Sergyar.”

“Did he paint, too?”

“A little. I tried once to interest him in vid imaging, but he seemed to want that direct tactile connection. Something he did with his own hands and eye and brain and nothing else.” Belonging to no one else? Aral had spent so much of his life as a wholly-owned servant of the Imperium, perhaps it was natural to want to keep some tiny reserve sequestered.

Alex leaned his elbows on the table, staring more closely. “Why didn’t he show them to anybody? Or give them away? There’s so many. Didn’t anybody want them?”

“He showed them to a few people. Me, Oliver, Simon sometimes. I’m sure quite a few people would have wanted them, but not…not for the drawings themselves. They’d have wanted them because the Lord Regent or the Admiral or the Count had made them, or worse, to sell for money.” She paused. “He said it would be like that bicycle-riding bear someone was parading around the district, once. It wasn’t that the bear was
good
at bicycling, it was just the novelty of a bear riding at all.”

“They look pretty good to
me
.”

“You’re…not wrong.” Even for age eleven.

Alex sorted down through the stacks, handling the paper with reassuring care. “There’s lots of buildings. Is that Hassadar Square? Oh, look, here’s your Viceroy’s Palace! That’s good.”

Cordelia looked over his shoulder. “Especially considering it hadn’t been built yet, yes.” She swallowed, and launched her pitch. “Your granda never went to war, you know. War came to him. And he learned to deal with it because he had to. If his older brother hadn’t been killed, if he’d never become the heir, if Mad Yuri’s war had never happened, I suspect he might have gone on to be…possibly not an artist, but I’d bet an architect. Probably one of those men who takes on vast public projects, as complicated and demanding as commanding an army, because all that Vorkosigan energy would have found its path somehow.” Like a river running in flood down from his own Dendarii mountains, bursting its banks. “Building Barrayar in another way.”

Alex’s face had gone still. “But I am the heir.”

“But living, now, in the Barrayar your granda remade, which is not like the one he inherited.
You
have more choices. You have all the choices you can imagine. It would have pleased him very much to know that was a gift he gave you. That your life
didn’t
need to be like his.” She hesitated. “Nor like your da’s, or his granda’s, or like anyone’s but your own. To the top of your bent. Whatever that bent turns out to be.”

It was hard to tell how he processed that. The boy was almost as reserved as his mother. Miles’s mobile young face had revealed all his urgent soul, usually; this had spoiled her as a parent, Cordelia suspected. But Alex’s hand crept to the papers, and he said cautiously, “Can I have some of these?”

“In due course, you will inherit all of them. I’m so glad to know you’re interested. But if you would like a few to take with you now, you could pick out the ones you like best and I could have them made up into a kind of scrapbook for you, to protect them along the way.” Archival-grade backing and what-not—someone on staff would have a clue.

“I’d like that,” he said, in a voice so soft she had to bend her head to hear.

“Then it shall be so. Take your time.” She retreated to her comconsole to give him room to explore unhurried. Watching him covertly over the vid display, she tried to guess if this had been a good idea or not. Probably so, because they had to break off for lunch before he’d finished. Curiously, he did not mention the project over the dining table, not that he could much get a word in once the whole clan was gathered.

Surrounded by them all, she was reminded of the old parental curse—
May you have six children just like you
. Except that this curse seemed to have gone awry. Miles would have reveled at six children just like himself; he’d have known exactly what to do. Instead, he seemed to have received six children, none in the least like himself, and furthermore, each one different from all the others. As parental revenges went, this was actually
much better
.

Back in her personal office, she took up her reader and started on the next report, trying to make herself as unobtrusive as possible while Alex continued his quiet survey. She kept her ears pricked for his occasional noises of surprise or interest, or his undervoiced commentary. They were close to the time she would have to break this off and go back across the garden, when he said, “Oh, here’s you, Granma! Why aren’t you wearing any clothes? Were you swimming?”

Cordelia just kept herself from bolting up out of her chair, converting it into a casual approach. She should probably have locked
that
drawer, except there was no way to secure them individually, just the whole cabinet at once. “Artists are encouraged to draw nudes,” she said. “The human body is supposed to be the hardest thing to get really right. I posed for Aral when he wanted to practice.”

“It looks pretty good. I mean, it looks like you. And here’s Admiral Jole, too. I suppose you’d have to practice drawing both men and women.”

“That’s right.” The erotic edge to the portraits clearly escaped him. There were a few more down in that stack, she recalled, the tenor of which no one could mistake; she confiscated the pile under the pretext of picking it up to look through.

“Are there any herms, then? There ought to be herms, too. And maybe quaddies. And those water people. And heavy-worlders.”

“I think Aral lacked a live model. Consul Vermillion wasn’t here yet.” Would Vermillion have volunteered to pose if she’d hinted for it? Maybe so. Too late, as were so many things.

The next sheet down had a sketch of her and Oliver together, clearly in bed. That would have been harder to explain. She plucked out a couple of her, Oliver, and a few other people unexceptionably dressed, and set them down to distract Alex while she whisked the remainder out of sight. He would inherit them someday—she could never bear to destroy them—but not yet.