Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (35 page)
Read Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen Online
Authors: Lois McMaster Bujold
“I don’t know if there are any more. She’s surely collected me.” More cider. More electrolyte. More cider. More oxygen.
“Aral collected me first.”
More stillness. Miles’s under-reaction was a bit worrying. Hard to read. Perhaps it was one of his old professional skills? But then he came out with, “How long ago?”
“What would you guess?” Because it never hurt to cross-check, or maybe it was just morbid curiosity.
Miles angled his chin up. “During the prime ministership, had to be. That was…risky. Did Illyan—no, of course Illyan knew. Who else? Besides not-me.”
“Quite a few people, really. It was all more discreet than secret. But you weren’t there much, during that period.”
“You were very self-effacing when I was.” Miles frowned. “Which I totally failed to notice. Huh. Logical, I guess.”
“Give yourself credit, half the time you were home you were on some very serious medical leaves. That does tend to concentrate the attention upon the self.”
Miles lifted his glass in toast to him. Ambiguously. “So when did my mother first collect you?”
“How much detail do you want?”
“Not…much. Just enough to understand.”
“Shortly after I followed Aral to Sergyar. It started as a birthday present for him, that first year.”
“Ah, yeah, that’s probably enough.” He drained his glass. “The Betans
do
have earrings for that one, you know.”
“Your mother pointed this out to us. Many times.”
“I’ll bet. Twenty years. Hell. That’s not a dalliance, that’s a damned marriage. You do realize that, Oliver?”
“By the end, I think we all did. Till death do us…” He broke off. Cleared his suddenly tight throat with another swig. His bottle was running low.
“And you went through that whole state funeral circus without ever letting on. Ran command on the cortege convoy…ye gods.” It was Miles’s turn to stop short. “At his funeral, I barely noticed you. I’m…sorry.”
“We were all walking around in shock. If there was ever a better occasion for charity, I can’t think of it. For oneself as well.”
Miles nodded jerkily. “So, I gather this thing has continued to date? Triped become biped?”
“No, in fact. There was a three-year hiatus. As we…lost our ways for a time. We’ve renewed on entirely new terms.”
“I see. I guess.” His brow wrinkled. “Although I don’t see why you should have stopped.”
“Grief does odd things to a person. And both our jobs were demanding. And…maybe we both needed time to become our new selves, before we could start over. It’s hard to explain. It makes sense to us, anyway.”
“If you say so.”
“So. Back to the eggs.”
“Oh. There really are eggs?”
“
Not quite
is a literal answer, though if you want technical details you’ll have to apply to Dr. Tan at Kayross. After her six girls were”—engendered? conceived?—“created, a scant handful of what Cordelia dubs eggshells were left over. Enucleated ova. Which she offered to me along with gametes from Aral to make crosses. She suggested I stick to sons, for legal reasons.”
Miles took a rather longer breath, this time. “All right.
That
I would not have guessed, I’ll grant you.” And, a little through his teeth, “
My mother
…”
After a moment he went on, “So is that what this is all about? You’re trying to decide whether to take her up on this?”
“No, that’s a done deal. Three male embryos are in the Kayross freezers with my name on them. Been there for a few months. My sons. Your half-brothers.”
Miles made an inarticulate noise, then swiped his hands through his hair in a gesture reminiscent of Cordelia at her more harassed. Sitting up straighter, he looked Jole in the eye. “So are you asking me for a vote? A veto?”
“Neither,” said Jole. The firmness of his voice surprised himself. “I’m telling you what I’m doing because…” He broke off.
Try to get it right. Or at the very least, try to get it true
. “I’ve been watching you since you were twenty years old, in snapshots. You’ve made a long journey since then.”
A jerk of Miles’s hand, starting with denial but ending in concession.
“Cordelia and Aral between them raised a good man, which I find encouraging.”
“I always imagined I was my own invention, you know. Although that’s because I was young and stupid. In my defense, I’ve got better.”
“Yes, it’s been fascinating to see you grow into a father. If you can do it…”
“Anybody can?” Miles finished for him.
“I was going to say, maybe I can, too,” said Jole.
“That’s only because you’re terminally diplomatic. Or maybe you just never let your ego get between yourself and your goals, I dunno. Scary trait, that.”
“Nonetheless, the results so far are pretty impressive. You have some good kids there, Miles.”
“
I
think so, but I don’t know if it’s because of or despite me. But I can tell you, it wasn’t my doing. Everybody has it wrong way round. Parents don’t make children—children make parents. They shape our behavior from the first wail. Mold us into what they need. It can be a pretty rough process, too.”
Jole’s eyebrows went up. “I’d not thought of it that way.” It seemed a strangely hopeful notion.
“Well, believe it. Though my whole life has been on-the-job training—I don’t know why I thought this should be any different.” He hesitated. “If earlier this evening was a demonstration, you do have the right reflexes for going on with.”
Jole’s turn for a head tilt.
If
, he began, but that word no longer applied. “When I have my children, I don’t want them to be cut off from their real family by unnecessary silences.” He amended after a moment, “Aral’s children. Even though he didn’t get a vote or a veto either.”
“He left his vote on that matter very explicitly to my mother. I see now why that clause of his will was made so clear. I could recognize his voice, cutting through the legalese.”
“And—if you are seen to accept them, others will fall in line.” Likely not all others, but enough, as Miles had put it, for going on with.
Miles took this in. “And if I don’t, ditto?”
“That as well.”
“I suppose that would grieve my mother,” Miles sighed.
“It would grieve me, as well.” And not just on Cordelia’s behalf, Jole was sobered to realize.
“Huh.”
Jole, with a grimace, finished off his electrolytes. His painkillers were beginning to fade.
“So, ah…” said Miles. His look Jole’s way grew coolly probing. “How does any of this square with your going back to Vorbarr Sultana to take over Ops? Which my mother didn’t tell me,” he hastened to add. “She didn’t break confidentiality; I guessed. Pissed her off, too.”
“Huh. That’s the one thing in all this that’s become easy. I’m not going.”
Miles’s eyes widened. “When did you decide this?”
“About four hours ago.”
Miles wrinkled his nose. “If my mother had known that was all it would take, I’m sure she’d have been willing to, I don’t know, set marshmallows on fire and fling them at you before now.”
Jole vented an involuntary chuckle. “Frighteningly, I can picture that. Though it wasn’t quite that sharp-cut a decision. Except that—this morning, I didn’t know, and tonight I do.” He added, “I prefer to tell Cordelia myself, by the way. If you don’t mind. I have a few duties to discharge first.”
Miles waved understanding. “Right-oh.” He added, “Can I tell Ekaterin? Because if I can’t, my head is going to explode.”
“Sergyar’s had enough explosions for one day. Go ahead. Caution her to—not secrecy, just discretion. I don’t plan to launch this till I’ve supported Cordelia through moving the capital and the base, and she stands down as Vicereine. The vagaries of the Service permitting, I’ll send in my resignation then as well.”
“And other people in Vorbarr Sultana? Key people, not a news bulletin.”
“That, I leave to your discretion. Count Vorkosigan. You have to live there, I don’t.”
Thankfully.
He wondered how much of this Miles would pass back to Desplains; it was bliss to not need to care.
Miles scratched his nose. “So…
does
Gregor know all this?”
“I believe your mother sent him a complete précis, yes.”
“Your side of things, too?”
“Yes.”
“Sonuvabitch.”
Jole wasn’t sure if that was a general comment or a specific description.
Miles went on plaintively, “So if Gregor
knew
, why did he all-but-dispatch me to investigate?”
“Why does he usually send you to investigate anything?”
“To poke into things. Find out what’s going on. Fix what I can. Report back.”
“Answered your own question?”
“You copied that rhetorical trick from my mother,” Miles grumbled.
“Did it work?”
“Yes.”
“Well then.”
Miles leaned back, recrossed his legs, tapped his fingers on his chair arm. Looked up. “So, ah…what are you planning to name them?”
Despite his weariness, a smile tugged up Jole’s lips.
I win
.
We all do
.
Chapter Seventeen
Cordelia walked across the garden to the Viceregal offices at midmorning, after sending Oliver off to the base hospital to see his burn specialist and get his dressings changed, pick up some clothes from his apartment, and come back without any detours allowed to
his
office. She’d sent Rykov to drive him with strict instructions to see that he both got there, and got back. She wondered if she could persuade him to start keeping a few changes of clothes over here, for their mutual convenience. Speaking of public declarations of private matters.
He’d come in last night from the garden unsurprisingly exhausted—trust Miles to wear a tired person altogether out, and what
had
they been saying to each other?—had a cat wash, and fallen into bed with a groan. There, thanks to the wonders of military pharmaceuticals, he had slept, rather than tossing in the wakeful agony his burns would otherwise have incurred. His start this morning had been…slow. Not quite the walking dead—his sleepy smile had seemed too contented for that—but she hoped he would be moving less stiffly by the time he returned.
Blaise and Ivy had both had big days at the picnic yesterday, Blaise by way of work and Ivy having invited all of her family she could round up. A fine time without serious injuries had apparently been had by all. Despite everything they were ready as usual with the morning agenda.
“I have a preliminary edit of the official vids from the picnic for you to approve,” Blaise reported. “There are a lot of private vids of the, er, unfortunate incendiary incident circulating on the planetary net this morning. I think it might be wise to include our own, with a more controlled spin, so to speak.”
“Do we
have
our own?”
“Yes, I happened to be in the area taking location shots of the parade ground, and of the fireworks staging process. I got some great angles on the action!”
Cordelia hadn’t guessed him for a thwarted war correspondent. “I don’t think Oliver would be too thrilled.”
“Oh, Admiral Jole came off
very
well. My surveys show that the shots of him protecting your grandchildren are the most popular of any, this morning.”
“Yes, they’re quite fine,” Ivy chimed in. “I captured the best ones in a file to keep.”
Cordelia couldn’t help herself. “Let’s see.”
Indeed, Oliver with his shirt off being quick-witted and heroic did make for some fine images. Cordelia contemplated them.
“You’re married, Ivy,” she said at last.
“Hey, I can
look
.”
“Yeh. Copy me that file, eh?”
Ivy gave her a sunny smile. “Certainly, Vicereine.”
Blaise’s expression had grown a bit confused. The two older women looked at each other, and did not enlighten him.
Cordelia said to Blaise, “Include them, but focus on the fireworks crew, and what a fine job they did in safely controlling the crisis. Sergyar’s military preparedness, yes, it works! and so on.”
“None of the fire actually fell inside the staging area, though.”
“And thank heavens for it. Spin, Blaise.”
He grinned and made notes.
She added, “And when you have a moment, round up all the raw shots you can collect of the cloud of radials, before, during, and after, and send them off to Dr. Gamelin at the Uni. He was all over me last night—previously unobserved animal behavior, apparently. Very excited, he was. Some theory about why those species always go to ground in electrical storms, and if they can be used for predictions. He’s not a man to waste a good natural experiment, I gather.” Cordelia approved. The Escobaran grad students the professor had been towing had been more appalled, and had needed to be reassured that this was not an everyday event.
Wait’ll they get to our temblors
, Cordelia thought, and,
The Sergyaran ecosystem. Not for sissies.
Although by far the most dangerous animal on the planet was an invasive species of ape. She might have to point that out.
She settled at her desk for the morning correspondence queue. About three down, her mood was dimmed by finding a follow-up message from Plas-Dan, being ingenuous about the nonreturn of their proposal, and prodding for a reply.
Haven’t any of you people studied game theory?
Defaulting on the Prisoner’s Dilemma, i.e., double-crossing your partner, only worked when the game consisted of
one
round. Life was not a set of discrete rounds in a game, but a continuous-flow process. Which they had no excuse for not understanding, because they had some procedures like that in their very own plant, no? Alas, she was dealing with management, not the engineers.
But they
needed
materials in Gridgrad…she permitted herself a small snarl, and set the message aside to fester a bit more. Though she really couldn’t hold it much longer.
A not-unwelcome interruption from Ivy, on the com and therefore signaled as refusable: “Vicereine? Attaché ghem Soren from the Cetagandan consulate is here to see you. No appointment, but he seems to feel it’s urgent.”
Well, maybe a little unwelcome. She had no idea what the fallout at his consulate had been from yesterday’s art debacle, as they’d been silent so far, but she supposed she needed to find out. “Send him in.”
Ghem Soren was washed up and in clean clothes, but looked decidedly underslept. His nose was swollen, and his bruised face missing his clan decal, curiously. He came to attention in front of her desk with the beaten air of miscreant soldier on discipline parade.
“Vicereine Vorkosigan. I am here to ask—no,
beg
—you to give me asylum on Sergyar.”
Cordelia blinked. She said cautiously, “Ah…why?”
“My consul is very angry with me. He is maintaining that he never gave me permission to set up my Discernment Garden, but in fact, he never
forbade
it. I am to be sent home on the next ship, where I will almost certainly be discharged from the diplomatic corps. There will be no future for me there except employment in my family’s business.” From his tone, he considered this a fate worse than, if not death, at least a serious hospitalization. “Nothing awaits me but disgrace!”
Cordelia, possessor of a longer view, made an effort of memory. When your young life offered its first disaster, naturally it loomed large. After you’d survived dozens, you basically just told the next one to take a number and get in line. In his current distracted state, she suspected ghem Soren would not appreciate this observation.
“Asylum seems an extreme step. You’d be renouncing your own citizenship, for one thing. Can’t you just apply for immigration status through normal channels?”
“I understand the legalities, Vicereine. But I’m being shipped out
tonight
. And I can’t afford to come back. My family would never give me the money.”
Were they poor ghem, clinging by their fingernails to their status like some poor Vor? Had they sacrificed to give their son his chance at helping reestablish the family’s place in the sun? “What does your family do?”
He reddened, and cleared his throat. Looked away. And mumbled, “My father and his brothers run a large plumbing supply company on Sigma Ceta.”
Cordelia took this in, revising her mental picture. It sounded more as if the older generation, making no headway in the standard roles apportioned to their class, had unified to say,
Screw the ghem game, we’re going for the money
. In which case Mikos was the throwback in the clutch, his role as a culture hero entirely self-appointed. She could understand the lack of appeal to him of going back to a rousing family chorus of
We told you so
.
“I did try another route first,” ghem Soren told her. “I asked Kaya Vorinnis to marry me, which would have given me a blood right to stay. But she said no.”
And I thought my morning couldn’t get any weirder…
“And, ah, how emphatically did she say no?”
He cleared his throat again. “Very…very emphatically, Your Excellency.”
Good for you, Kaya
. “Lieutenant Vorinnis seems very devoted to her career at this stage of her life.”
“She…indicated that, yes.”
Told you a refugee Cetagandan husband would be a bloody sheet-anchor to her promotion schedule, did she?
And so he’d turned to the next woman in line to try to get her to solve his problems for him?
You should be fixing your own life, kid, Cetagandan or not you’re thirty years old—
A chime from the comconsole desk, Ivy in the outer office passing through—what? Something more important than this, presumably. “Yes, Ivy?”
“Vid call for you, Vicereine—you’ll want to take this one. It’s Kareen Koudelka.”
Cordelia sat up, suddenly energized.
My favorite almost-daughter-in-law, here?
What
was
it with these surprise family visits this month, couldn’t anyone figure out how to send a tightbeam anymore, but this wasn’t a tightbeam—“Where’s she calling from?”
“Orbit. Commercial ship from Escobar, just arrived.”
“Put her through.” She swiveled her head to ghem Soren. “You…”
can go back to Sigma Ceta?
If she was ever going to be the evil queen around here that her detractors hypothesized, she really needed to upgrade her puppy-kicking skills. “—can wait in the outer office.”
He hunched out; as the door slid shut behind him, Kareen’s smiling face appeared over her vid plate, a decided improvement. Still as blond, blue-eyed, and all-girl’s-commando-team incisive as ever.
Sometimes, Mark-love, the universe does make restitution to us
. But he knew that.
“Kareen! Delighted to see you! Is Mark with you?”
“He’s following on.” Her grin widened. “He sent me ahead to find out where you want him to put your factory.”
Cordelia’s mouth opened in astonishment. “He’s found a competing bid? Where? I thought I’d turned every contact I had on both Komarr and Barrayar inside out, looking. He actually has something in view?”
“Better—in hand. It’s an Escobaran company, specializes in industrial construction.”
“Escobar! I hadn’t thought of trying—oh, my. Oh, this is going to make their consulate happy with us.”
“Good, because we’ll be wanting them to expedite the documentation. So, if that land offer at Gridgrad is still open, I have the company’s site engineer with me to do the prelim surveys.”
“Outstanding. How soon can they have things together?”
“Their designs are pre-fab. They build most of it in their own factories, then more-or-less drop the pieces from orbit. Snap them together like a set of blocks for really
big
kids. Once the site is leveled and plumbed, they could have the core structure in place in a week, and starting to run in two, depending on how fast they can source local raw materials.”
She’d meant how soon could they have the
bid
…“You can tell them they can count on every cooperation from
this
office. Getting anyone else to come through will be the usual struggle. But, oh my goodness, this could certainly blast open a bottleneck for us.”
Kareen nodded cheerfully.
It was a long shot, but…“You don’t suppose—find out if they can use a small mountain of plascrete mixer, can you?”
Her brows went up. “Why? Do you have a spare mountain of plascrete?”
“Not the ’crete, just the mixer. High-tech innovation for high-impact uses. Such as military shuttleports. Long story.”
Kareen frowned in new thought. “Not sure. It sounds like it may be a proprietary mix, in which case it might not be compatible with our stuff. Shoot me a copy of the tech specs, and I’ll run it past the engineers.”
Cordelia nodded, and sighed. She’d got the pony; it was perhaps unrealistic to expect it to come with the cherry on top as well. It looked more and more as if the final fate of that crap mixer was going to be as sandbags against future lava flows. “Will do. Send your man on down to Gridgrad and find my city planner—I’ll give you all his contact info in a moment. He’ll be
so
glad to see you. Him, rather.
You
are requested and required to come to the Viceroy’s Palace for dinner tonight. Miles and Ekaterin and the kids are all here, did you know?”
“Mark said something. Not sure where he got it from—it was either Miles or Ivan or Tante Alys.”
“You just caught them—they’ll be leaving again tomorrow. And there’s someone else…well, you’ve met Oliver Jole before.”
Kareen expression grew shrewdly interested. “I may have heard something about that, too. I’ll be interested to see how well family rumor matches fact.”
“Ah. So will I. From the other direction.”
“Wouldn’t miss it. Now I’ve got to dash—they’ll be unloading us shortly.”
“Give me a call when you get down to the civilian shuttleport. I’ll send Rykov for you.”
“Right. Love and kisses, Tante C. ’Bye.” Suiting actions to words, she blew a kiss and cut the com.
Cordelia let out a whoosh of breath.
And sometimes, Barrayaran nepotism works
for
you
. She sat back in a warm glow of creative revenge, already mentally composing an oh-so-polite go-to-hell memo for those Plas-Dan bastards. Oliver would be so
pleased
…
Her office door slid open; with careful trepidation, ghem Soren poked his head through. “Uh, Vicereine? My asylum…?”
He entered at her impatient gesture. She stared at him in a more benign mood than a few minutes ago. Perhaps…
Finally, she spoke. “Ever work in your family business?”
“Some. When I was young.”
“Are you willing to take work on Sergyar as a plumber? Because while we will certainly want artists in the future, we need plumbers right now.”
His eyes widened in a compound of dismay and hope. “Uh…yes?”
“All right!” She slapped her hand down on her comconsole desk, making him jump. “You pass the Vicereine Vorkosigan test for determination of purpose and flexibility of method. Sergyar wants you. This way.”
She breezed past him into the outer office and said, “Ivy, take this young man in hand and fix him up with the most innocuous grant of asylum you can make sound plausible.” Because she’d undoubtedly be dealing with his overlings tomorrow. It sounded as if his consulate was already on their back foot over this, though. Good. Because then she could hold off putting them there by trotting out bogus counteraccusations of deep-laid conspiracies involving bioweaponized attacks upon the Admiral of Sergyar Fleet and the Vicereine’s Own Family which, if she knew her people, someone was already floating out there in the rumor-net, right along with “Lake Serena is a carbon dioxide inversion zone and the government is concealing it!” And the dozens of other exotic fantasies that had so often made her morning briefing an exercise in the surreal.