Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (33 page)

* * *

“Have you ever played boot polo, Oliver?” Ekaterin asked in curiosity as they were ushered to a row of canvas seats under an awning, reserved for the honored guests. Lesser watchers had taken to ground sheets laid out on the slope overlooking the playing field.

Jole shook his head. “Not me. I’m an officer.”

She looked surprised. “Is it against regs, then?”

He chuckled. “There are no regulations for boot polo. The game started back in the Time of Isolation as a camp and garrison pastime for bored soldiers. They made it up themselves for themselves out of what they had on hand, including the rules, such as they are—of which the first was
no officers allowed
. That’s part of why there’s no set number of players to a team, either, though in play they do try to keep the teams near-even.”

The Admiral and Vicereine’s party had arrived in time for the deciding match of the day, between the surviving teams of the prior rounds. As a result, the sides were more varied than usual, with the winners of the base men’s, the ISWA women’s, and the Kayburg town sets pitted against each other. Upholding Kayburg’s honor was the team from the municipal guard, mixed in gender, but salted with a few Service veterans who had obviously provided expertise. The base men, in the red T-shirts, were considered stronger but tireder, the ISWA women in blue lighter but smarter, and the yellow-shirted Kayburg team featured a pair of players, a large guard sergeant and a skinny female secretary, who had shown a killer knack for hooking. The secretary, Jole understood, was the more vicious, with a fiendish skill at rolling opposing players through the fire-radial mounds, of which today’s field boasted four, all rather flattened by now.

Cordelia leaned over to confide to Ekaterin, “Aral was the first Barrayaran to discover that underground species of radial, you know. On our opening hike here.”

Ekaterin looked suitably impressed; Jole tried not to laugh. He’d heard that story.

Miles escorted Taurie and Lizzie off for a look around; after a bit his voice floated back: “No, darling, you can’t pet the hexaped. It would bite your hand off, and then your Grandmama would execute it, which wouldn’t be fair to the poor beast, now would it?” A surly hiss underscored this.

Jole craned his neck; Ekaterin turned anxiously in her seat. Down on the sidelines stood a large cage containing one of the region’s iconic native creatures. It was about the mass of a pig, though with longer legs ending in clawed feet: six-limbed, flat-faced and neckless, with a sharp and heavy parrotlike beak. Its rust-red fur, Jole considered, was about the only attractive part of it, assuming you ignored the smell.

The mini-zoo expedition returned shortly, all hands still accounted for, Miles grinning. Jole watched him as he sat with an
oof
. “So why do we have a hexaped today? Did someone decide they needed a mascot?”

“I’m told there are a number of local rules here for wildlife hazards on the playing field.”

“This is true.”

“Trouble is, every creature able to move has evidently fled far from your noisy occupation. So a hunting party went out last night and
caught
some, so as to be able to release one per game onto the field. Keeping it fair and even, y’see.”

Jole made an amused face. “All right, the players are all armed with their sticks, but what about the innocent bystanders?”

“All the refs are carrying stunners. Though whether for obstreperous hexapeds or argumentative players, my informant didn’t quite make clear.”

“And, ah…how has this worked out so far?”

“Disappointingly, I was told. Almost all of them dashed straight through the crowd and ran off, except for one that went to ground in a hole in the creek bank and still hasn’t come out.”

“I see.” Jole grinned and took a swig of his hard cider. A float-pallet load of cases had been bestowed on them a bit ago by one of his officers from B&L, whose sister-in-law owned an orchard and cidery north of New Hassadar. After a long start-up, this was the first year of production, but only enough for the extended family—commercial amounts were hoped for next year, when they would also have to start pasteurizing. The brew was smooth and tasty, he had to admit, if also cloudy and a peculiar color—full of vitamins and animals, certainly. The Vicereine, always a supporter of colonial enterprise, had accepted the offering with pleasure, and the B&L officer had gone off to com his relatives and brag about it.

The crowd stirred as the players filed onto the field and a ref carried out the wooden ball, about the size of a cantaloupe and brightly painted. The original balls had often been cannon balls, readily found lying about in rusting stacks in old forts, but wood and even solid plastic was preferred these days because players could get a better loft and more distance with them. The painting was a tradition that had started during the Occupation.

“Hm,” said Jole.

Cordelia glanced at him.

“That’s the ghem Navitt clan face paint today, I see.” Very recognizable, even at a distance. “Any, ah, diplomatic concerns about that, Vicereine?”

Cordelia stared thoughtfully. “On the whole…no.”

“Right-oh, then.” Jole settled back and drank more cider.

A familiar, but surprising, voice hailed him from the side, “Admiral Jole!”

He turned and waved a welcome. “Dr. Gamelin, Dr. Dobryni! Glad you could make it.” The Uni bio department was the only outside group Jole himself had personally invited, after it had become clear that there was no keeping this blow-out from proliferating. The two professors were trailed by four others—from their ages, students; from their gawking, newbie visitors. He encouraged introductions, and indeed, they turned out to be those Escobaran grad students Gamelin had threatened, quite startled to find themselves meeting the Vicereine. From their expressions, this smiling, tousled woman in picnic clothes toasting them with local cider was not what they had expected. Cordelia was an effect Jole never tired of watching.

“We heard you had a hexaped!” said Dr. Dobryni.

“Yes, and very bilateral it is, too. Right over there.” Jole pointed cordially. “Help yourselves.”

Ciders in hand—one student was looking
very
hard at the murk, clearly wishing for a bioscanner—they shuffled off to marvel at the biota, and soon Jole heard Dobryni’s voice drifting back, “No, don’t try to pet it…”

Thwacks and cries drew their attention back to the field.

“What odds d’you give today?” Miles asked him.

“Well, the base boys are bigger and rougher, but they also have more standing issues with the Kayburg guard. The ISWA girls are smaller—which may be an advantage in this heat—can you speak to that?”

“Sometimes true. No doubt why high command sent me to the arctic, on my first assignment.”

Jole chuckled. “And they’ve probably been drinking less all day. And the women’s teams are generally better at keeping their attention on getting the ball in their basket, instead of disabling opposing players. So I wouldn’t count them out.”

Miles explained aside to Ekaterin: “With three teams, the obvious strategy is to hang back and let the other two wear each other down, then swoop in. Everybody knows this, so they pay attention to not letting each other slack off. For a game so devoted to bashing each other, it’s remarkably cooperative.” Though such cooperation could shift around suddenly and rapidly.

“Are they allowed to hit each other with those sticks?” A clatter echoed from the field. The sticks resembled field hockey sticks, but with a larger, curved blade, the better for scooping up the cranium-sized ball and lobbing it.

“Well, there’s no hitting, grabbing, or tackling. Or bludgeoning. But tripping—hooking—is permitted. If a player’s stick breaks, they’re not allowed to replace it till the next goal change, so there’s some motive not to get too carried away.”

The goals were three baskets sited around the field according the evil ingenuity of the crew laying it out. Today, one was out on the far side of the field, one was fastened to the highest point of the rocky outcrop, and one was stuck down in the creek bed, under water. With each point scored the teams rotated baskets, to keep the playing field even.

Taurie, watching the players shift and run, bounced with excitement. Lizzie went off to covet her neighbor’s hexaped and pelt the biologists with questions. Could they be tamed to ride? Pull a cart…? The disappointing scientific consensus was not, but human attempts to domesticate Sergyaran creatures were barely begun, so what might the future bring…?

“Where are all the twins?” Jole asked, finally noticing that Ekaterin was actually sitting down for a change, and that the cloud of chaos surrounding the Vorkosigans was oddly reduced.

“Gone off with their nanny and two ImpSec minders to that swimming hole upstream. I hope they’re all right.” She glanced uneasily at her wristcom.

The organizers had dammed the creek with rocks three days ago and allowed it to fill up to provide a pool for the picnickers—cleared of skatagators and other aquatic biohazards—and, not secondarily, to provide a water reservoir for the fireworks tonight, just in case.

Jole had glimpsed it earlier. He sighed. “I suppose it really doesn’t have enough scope to try out the bateau.” Cordelia smiled and drank more cider. That trial would have to wait for another day.
There will be time
, Jole told himself, and then,
Will there?

Miles studied him sideways. “Nice boat, that.”

“Gorgeous.”

“Be kind of hard to fit in a space officer’s luggage allotment, though.”

His mother frowned at him. “At Oliver’s rank, I’m sure his allotment could be expanded to include anything up to and including his lightflyer.”

“Eh, I suppose.” Miles subsided.

It’s not my biggest possessions that are the hitch
, Jole reflected.
It’s the three smallest.

Cries of triumph and outrage sounded from the field as the ersatz head was lobbed into a goal basket, and he returned his attention to the game.

* * *

In due course, the boot polo slammed to its close-fought close, and Cordelia handed out the award ribbons and the donated cases of beer. The blue shirts won today, to the applause of their dates, spouses, and kids, who carried them off in triumph to, probably, fix dinner. The losing teams glumped away, a good portion of them to the med tent. If they’d kept their minds more on the game in front of them and less on old outside grudges, Jole thought the final results might have been different, but so it went.

There had been a wail of protest midgame from Lizzie at the waste of a perfectly good hexaped, bought off with a consoling paternal murmur of,
It’s all right, honey, it’s just run off home to all its brother and sister hexapeds
, which seemed to suffice. Jole found himself taking mental notes on the spin-doctoring technique.

Then it was time to gather up their party and go to their designated roasting pit node and eating area. Jole was just as glad to be strolling in late. Their dinner group was loaded with the same senior tech officers responsible for the crystal bateau, whose idea of setting up a campsite ran to such suggestions as, “Hey, let’s try speed-starting the fire with an infusion of pure oxygen!” Because inside every senior tech officer was a junior tech officer who’d been on a short leash for a long time.

However, everything had settled down by the time Jole, Cordelia, and the Vorkosigan clan arrived to be distributed among a couple of dozen portable tables. The side dishes were a pleasant mix of contributions from family potlucks and the base mess. The roast was about half a cow, resurrected from the fire pit to either a divine culinary apotheosis, or a gruesome field dissection, depending on one’s point of view—Lizzie’s was right at the servers’ elbows, asking questions. Since that crew included two ship’s surgeons and three medtechs, the resemblance to a teaching autopsy grew marked.

Special vat-meat briskets were provided for the moderns, headed by but not limited to Cordelia. She sighed at her Barrayaran family’s unselfconscious carnivory, but passed no censure. In due course, Alex and Helen were cleaned of their coating of grease and sauce and, trailed by their ImpSec minder, a female sergeant named Katsaros, allowed to go find Freddie.

The level rays of evening, throwing long shadows through the slender trees, shifted toward sunset and the swift twilight of the tropics. Unlike in higher latitudes, no one here was going to have to wait till going-on-midnight for the final official treat of the day. Which suggested to Jole that a midevening getaway with Cordelia might actually gift them with some real private time before their well-earned exhaustion set in. Was this too ambitious a fantasy for a man of—he barely winced anymore—fifty? Around the picnic area, the fizz of sparklers and snap and squeal of bottle rockets and other small private fireworks enlivened the air, foretastes of the booming pleasures to come.

Jole was mellowing out with his umpteenth bottle of cold cider—it wasn’t that high in alcohol, but people kept
handing
them to him—when Cordelia’s wristcom chimed with the ImpSec code.

By her side, Jole came uneasily alert as she raised the comlink to her lips. “Vorkosigan here.”

“Vicereine? Sergeant Katsaros here. We’re having a bit of a situation over by that Cetagandan attaché’s, um, art installation. It’s under control now, but I think we need you. Neither of the kids were hurt, really.”

That last fetched her; she was on her feet and moving in an instant. Jole lumbered up to pursue her, more for intense curiosity than any belief that Cordelia was going to need his slightly inebriated help. Miles and Ekaterin were delayed by their scramble to make sure the other four children were still present and accounted for at the dinner, and covered, before they could follow on. Cordelia waved them back with a, “I’ll call you if you’re wanted!”

Cordelia and Jole headed at a jog-trot out of the picnic grove and across the open area in front of the viewing stand, now undergoing its final decorations for the upcoming fireworks. Beyond the clearing, he could see the roped-off staging area where the official display was being prepared under the supervision of a volunteer crew of base explosives experts. The evening crowd was thickening rather than thinning down, as a lot of not-necessarily-invited Kayburgers streamed in for the promise of a show pushed right up to the borderline between
fireworks
and
munitions
.