Shards of Honor (Vorkosigan Saga) (10 page)

"Anything. Anything but oatmeal or blue cheese," she amended hastily.

The yeoman disappeared into the back room, returning a few minutes later with two steaming bowls of a stew-like substance, and real bread with genuine vegetable oil spread. Cordelia fell on it wolfishly.

"How is it?" asked the yeoman in a toneless voice, hunching down into his shoulders.

"S'delishoush," she said around a large mouthful. "S'wonderful."

"Really?" He straightened up. "You really like it?"

"Really." She stopped to shove a few spoonfuls into the dazed Dubauer. The taste of the warm food cut across his postseizure sleepiness, and he chewed away with something like her enthusiasm.

"Here—can I help you feed him?" the yeoman offered.

Cordelia beamed upon him like the sun. "You certainly may."

In less than an hour she had learned that the yeoman's name was Nilesa, heard most of his life's history, and been offered the complete, if severely limited, range of dainties a Barrayaran field kitchen had to offer. The yeoman was evidently as starved for praise as his fellows were for home cooking, for he followed her around racking his brain for small personal services to offer her.

Vorkosigan came in by himself, to sit wearily down beside Cordelia.

"Welcome back, sir," the yeoman greeted him. "We thought the Betans had killed you."

"Yes, I know." Vorkosigan waved away this by-now-familiar greeting. "How about some food?"

"What'll you have, sir?"

"Anything but oatmeal."

He, too, was served with bread and stew, which he ate without Cordelia's appetite, for the fever and stimulant combined to kill it.

"How did things work out with Commander Gottyan?" Cordelia asked him quietly.

"Not bad. He's back on the job."

"How did you do it?"

"Untied him, and gave him my plasma arc. I told him I couldn't work with a man who made my shoulder blades itch, and this was the last chance I was going to give him for instant promotion. Then I sat down with my back to him. Sat there for about ten minutes. We didn't say a word. Then he gave the arc back, and we walked back to camp."

"I wondered if something like that might work. Although I'm not sure I could have done it, if I were you."

"I don't think I could have done it either, if I wasn't so damned tired. It felt good to sit down." His tone became slightly more animated. "As soon as they get the arrests made, we'll lift off for the
General
. It's a fine ship. I'm assigning you the visiting officer's cabin—Admiral's Quarters, they call it, although it's no different from the others." Vorkosigan pushed the last bites of stew around in the bottom of his dish. "How was your food?"

"Wonderful."

"That's not what most people say."

"Yeoman Nilesa has been most kind and thoughtful."

"Are we talking about the same man?"

"I think he just needs a little appreciation for his work. You might try it."

Vorkosigan, elbows on the table, propped his chin on his hands and smiled. "I'll take it under advisement."

They both sat silent, tired and digesting, at the simple metal table. Vorkosigan leaned back in his chair with his eyes closed. Cordelia leaned on the table with her head pillowed on one arm. In about half an hour Koudelka entered.

"We've got Sens, sir," he reported. "But we had—are having—a little trouble with Radnov and Darobey. They tumbled on to it, somehow, and escaped into the woods. I have a patrol out searching now."

Vorkosigan looked as if he wanted to swear. "Should have gone myself," he muttered. "Did they have any weapons?"

"They both had their disruptors. We got their plasma arcs."

"All right. I don't want to waste any more time down here. Recall your patrol and seal all the cavern entrances. They can find out how they like spending a few nights in the woods." His eyes glinted at the vision. "We can pick them up later. They've nowhere to go."

*
     
*
     
*

Cordelia pushed Dubauer ahead of her into the shuttle, a bare and rather decrepit troop transport, and settled him in a free seat. With the arrival of the last patrol the shuttle seemed crammed with Barrayarans, including the huddled and subdued prisoners, hapless subordinates of the escaped ringleaders, bound in back. They all seemed such large and muscular young men. Indeed, Vorkosigan was the shortest one she'd seen so far.

They stared at her curiously, and she caught snatches of conversation in two or three languages. It wasn't hard to guess their content, and she smiled a bit grimly. Youth, it appeared, was full of illusions as to how much sexual energy two people might have to spare while hiking forty or so kilometers a day, concussed, stunned, diseased, on poor food and little sleep, alternating caring for a wounded man with avoiding becoming dinner for every carnivore within range—and with a coup to plan for at the end. Old folks, too, of thirty-three and forty plus. She laughed to herself, and closed her eyes, shutting them out.

Vorkosigan returned from the forward pilot's compartment and slid in beside her. "Are you doing all right?"

She gave him a nod. "Yes. Rather overwhelmed by all these herds of boys. I think you Barrayarans are the only ones who don't carry mixed crews. Why is that, I wonder?"

"Partly tradition, partly to maintain an aggressive outlook. They haven't been annoying you?"

"No, amusing me only. I wonder if they realize how they are used?"

"Not a bit. They think they are the emperors of creation."

"Poor lambs."

"That's not how I'd describe them."

"I was thinking of animal sacrifice."

"Ah. That's closer."

The shuttle's engines began to whine, and they rose into the air. They circled the cratered mountain once, then struck east and upward to the sky. Cordelia watched out the window as the land they had so painfully traversed on foot swept under them in as many minutes as they had taken days. They soared over the great mountain where Rosemont lay rotting, close enough to see the snowcap and glaciers gleaming orange in the setting sun. They passed on east through nightrise, and dead of night, the horizon curved away, and they broke into the perpetual day of space.

As they approached the
General Vorkraft
's parking orbit Vorkosigan left her again to go forward and supervise. He seemed to be receding from her, absorbed back into the matrix of men and duty from which he had been torn. Well, surely they would have some quiet times together in the months ahead. Quite a few months, by what Gottyan had said.
Pretend you're an anthropologist
, she told herself,
studying the savage Barrayarans. Think of it as a vacation—you wanted a long vacation after this Survey tour anyway. Well, here it is.
Her fingers were picking loose threads from the seat, and she stilled them with a slight frown.

They made their docking very cleanly, and the mob of hulking soldiers rose, gathered their equipment, and clattered out. Koudelka appeared at her elbow, and informed her he was assigned as her guide. Guard, more likely—or babysitter—she did not feel very dangerous this moment. She gathered Dubauer and followed him aboard Vorkosigan's ship.

It smelled different from her Survey ship, colder, full of bare unpainted metal and cost-effective shortcuts taken out of comfort and decor, like the difference between a living room and a locker room. Their first destination was sickbay, to drop off Dubauer. It was a clean, austere series of rooms, much larger even proportionally than her Survey ship's, prepared to handle plenty of company. It was nearly deserted now, but for the chief surgeon and a couple of corpsmen whiling away their duty hours doing inventory, and a lone soldier with a broken arm kicking his heels and kibitzing. Dubauer was examined by the doctor, whom Cordelia suspected was more expert at disruptor injuries than her own surgeon, and turned over to the corpsmen to be washed and bedded down.

"You're going to have another customer shortly," Cordelia told the surgeon, who was one of Vorkosigan's four men over forty. "Your captain has a really filthy infection going on his shin. It's gone systemic. Also, I don't know what those little blue pills are you fellows have in your medkits, but by what he said the one he took this morning ought to be running out just about now."

"That damned poison," the doctor bitched. "Sure, it's effective, but they could find something less wearing. Not to mention the trouble we have hanging on to them."

Cordelia suspected this last was the crux of the matter. The doctor busied himself setting up the antibiotic synthesizer and preparing it for programming. Cordelia watched the expressionless Dubauer put to bed, the start, she saw, of an endless series of hospital days as straight and same as a tunnel to the end of his life. The cold whispering doubt of whether she had done him a service would be forever added to her inventory of night thoughts. She dawdled around him for a while, covertly waiting for the arrival of her other ex-charge.

Vorkosigan came in at last, accompanied, in fact supported, by a couple of other officers she had not yet met, and giving orders. He had obviously cut his timing too fine, for he looked frighteningly bad. He was white, sweating, and trembling, and Cordelia thought she could see where the lines on his face would be when he was seventy.

"Haven't you been taken care of yet?" he asked when he saw her. "Where's Koudelka? I thought I told him—oh, there you are. She's to have the Admiral's Cabin. Did I say that? And stop by stores and get her some clothes. And dinner. And a new charge for her stunner."

"I'm fine. Hadn't you better lie down yourself?" said Cordelia anxiously.

Vorkosigan, still on his feet, was wandering around in circles like a wind-up toy with a damaged mainspring. "Got to let Bothari out," he muttered. "He'll be hallucinating by now."

"You just did that, sir," reminded one of the officers. The surgeon caught his eye, and jerked his head meaningfully toward the examining table. Together they intercepted Vorkosigan in his orbit, propelled him semiforcibly to it, and made him lie down.

"It's those damned pills," the surgeon explained to Cordelia, taking pity on her alarmed look. "He'll be all right in the morning, except for lethargy and a hell of a headache."

The surgeon turned back to his task, to cut the taut trouser away from the swollen leg and swear under his breath at what he found beneath. Koudelka glanced over the surgeon's shoulder, then turned back to Cordelia with a false smile pinned over a green face.

Cordelia nodded and reluctantly withdrew, leaving Vorkosigan in the hands of his professionals. Koudelka, seeming to enjoy his role as courier even though it had caused him to miss the show of his captain's return on board, led her off to stores for clothing, disappeared with her stunner, and dutifully returned it fully charged. It seemed to go against his grain.

"There's not a whole lot I could do with it anyway," she said at the dubious look on his face.

"No, no, the old man said you were to have it. I'm not going to argue with him about prisoners. It's a sensitive subject with him."

"So I understand. I might point out, if it will help your perspective, that our two governments are not at war as far as I know, and that I am being unlawfully detained."

Koudelka puzzled over this attempted readjustment of his point of view, then let it bounce harmlessly off his impermeable habits of thought. Carrying her new kit, he led her to her quarters.

Chapter Five

Stepping out of her cabin door next morning, she found a guard posted. The top of her head was level with his broad shoulders, and his face reminded her of an overbred borzoi, narrow, hook-nosed, with his eyes too close together. She realized at once where she had seen him before, at a distance in a dappled wood, and had a moment of residual fear.

"Sergeant Bothari?" she hazarded.

He saluted her, the first Barrayaran to have done so. "Ma'am," he said, and fell silent.

"I want to go to sickbay," she said uncertainly.

"Yes, ma'am." His voice was a deep bass, monotonous in its cadence. He executed a neat turn and led off. Guessing that he had relieved Koudelka as her guide and keeper, she pattered after him. She was not quite ready to attempt light conversation with him, so asked him no questions en route. He offered her only silence. Watching him, it occurred to her that a guard on her door might be as much to keep others out as her in. Her stunner seemed suddenly heavy on her hip.

At sickbay she found Dubauer sitting up and dressed in insignialess black fatigues like the ones she had been issued. His hair had been cut, and he had been shaved. There was certainly nothing wrong with the physical care he was receiving. She spoke to him a while, until her own voice began to sound inane in her ears. He looked at her, but gave little other reaction.

She caught a glimpse of Vorkosigan in a private chamber off the main ward, and he motioned her to enter. He was dressed in plain green pajamas of the standard design, and was sitting up in bed stabbing away with a light pen at a computer interface swung over it. Curiously, although he was clothed almost civilian style, bootless and weaponless, her impression of him was unchanged. He seemed a man who could carry on stark naked, and only make those around him feel overdressed. She smiled a little at this private image, and greeted him with a sketchy wave. One of the officers who had escorted him to sickbay last night was standing by the bed.