Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

Chapter Eighteen

Ivan woke the next morning to an empty bed, again, a depopulated flat, and a note on the coffeemaker: Gone driving. T. Which was better than no reassurance at all, but wouldn’t, Love, T. have been a better closing salutation? Not that he had ever ended any note to Tej with Love, I., so far, but then, he hadn’t ever gone out and left her with just some laconic, uninformative scrawl. She’d come in very late last night, too, after some family thing, and gone straight to sleep, with no talk and scarcely a cuddle.

He buttered his instant breakfast groats, which made him think back to the emergency impromptu wedding on Komarr, and wondered if the gelid grains would taste better with a shot of brandy poured over them instead. No. No drinking at dawn, that was a bad sign, not that this was dawn—merely midmorning. He tried Tej’s wristcom, without reply, and was dumped to her message bin. Dumped, that wasn’t a good word, either. Nor—memory intruded again, albeit not one of Tej—a good sign. When his would-be-breezy Hey, Tej, call me. Ivan, your husband, remember?, produced no response by the time he had shaved and dressed, he steeled himself and walked down the street to the Arqua-occupied hotel.

Shiv himself admitted him when he buzzed the door of their suite. “Ah. Ivan.” He called over his shoulder, “Udine, Tej’s Barrayaran is here.” He gestured Ivan in and to one of the sitting room’s upholstered chairs, and fetched coffee from a credenza; Ivan accepted it gratefully.

The Baronne shut down her comconsole, joined her husband on the small sofa facing Ivan, and cast her provisional son-in-law a cool smile of welcome.

“I just popped in to ask where Tej had gone,” Ivan explained. “She left me a note, but it didn’t say much.”

Udine answered, “She has kindly taken my mother and Amiri out for some touring. I don’t believe they had a set destination.”

Well, all right, that sounded pretty safe and benign, compared to yesterday’s…odd performance. Lady ghem Estif was not wholly alarming, for a haut woman, or ex-haut woman, and Amiri was surely the least Jacksonian of this crew. A doctor, after all, aspiring unworldly researcher to boot. But Ivan was beginning to regret getting Tej all those driving lessons. “Couldn’t you hire a driver?” Wondering if that sounded rude, he added, “I could help you find one.” Or Captain Raudsepp could, no doubt.

“Perhaps later on,” said Shiv. “But this gave Tej a chance to catch up with her favorite brother.”

“Ah,” said Ivan, unable to argue with that. Dead end. He cast around for another topic. One came up readily. “So, ah…how long are you folks planning to stay on Barrayar, anyway?”

“I expect that will rather depend on Pidge’s success in obtaining our emergency visa extension,” said Udine.

“Oh, yeah,” said Ivan. “How’s that going for you?”

“Moving along,” said Udine. “She thinks it may prove advantageous to hire a local lawyer; she said she’d know by tomorrow or the next day.”

“My, um, mother might be able to put you in touch with a good one,” Ivan suggested. Not that he necessarily wanted their stay extended. With one exception.

“Lady Alys has already made that offer,” said Udine brightly. “So helpful, your mother.”

“What will you all do if the extension is—” he started to say, denied, but switched on the fly to, “granted? You wouldn’t be planning to stay permanently, would you? Apply for immigration status, take oath as Barrayaran subjects? I should probably warn you, they take oaths pretty seriously around here.”

Udine smiled slightly. “I am aware.”

“It wouldn’t be my first choice,” said Shiv, gem-black eyes narrowing in his dark face in some unreadable emotion, “but if there is one thing my life has taught me, it’s the need to stay flexible. Barrayar is not a place I would ever have gone voluntarily, but I must say I’ve been agreeably surprised by what I’ve seen here. They do say travel broadens the mind. If none of our first-choice plans work out, we may simply have to develop some new…enterprise.” His carved lips drew back in a smile-like expression.

Ivan tried to imagine how a Jacksonian who had already once fought his way to the top of a major House defined that last term. Plus wife, don’t forget—they did seem to be a team. The only comparison he had was Miles’s Jacksonian-raised and relentlessly entrepreneurial clone-brother Mark, which was…not especially reassuring.

Ivan wondered if it was better to lay his cards right on the table—Just what are you people after under that park in front of ImpSec? Or let them assume him oblivious? Presumed obliviousness had served Ivan well many times in the past, after all. Perhaps he should split the difference. Just how close to tapped out were the Arquas, anyway? Could he ask Raudsepp? Morozov?

Hell, why not ask Shiv?

He leaned back and tented his hands, remembered where that gesture came from, almost put them down, but then left them up. “So…just how close are you folks to being tapped out, anyway? It’s been a pretty long run for you to get this far.” He just barely stopped his mouth from going on and apologizing for such a rude question, as Udine, at least, was nodding in rare approval.

Shiv’s eye-flick caught it, too. His thick shoulders gave a little shrug. “How much is enough depends on what you want to do with it. Venture capital—I believe you planetary agriculturalists would call it seed corn, ah, yes, that’s the term—if a man is reduced to consuming his startup stake, he has nothing to hazard for the next round. What do you people call your currency, marks—well, Barrayaran marks, Betan dollars, Cetagandan reyuls, doesn’t matter, the principle’s the same. There’s a saying in the Whole: it’s easier to turn one million into two million than it is to turn one into two.”

“The effective break-point for us,” put in Udine, “is enough to fund a credible attempt to retake House Cordonah. We are, shall we say, not without hidden resources and potential allies back in the Whole, but not if we arrive appearing to be disarmed, destitute, and desperate.”

“Whether you can climb up to success or are forced down to grubberdom depends on making your break-point,” said Shiv. “Both success and failure are feedback loops, that way. Me, I started as a gutter grubber. I don’t plan on going back down to that gutter again alive.”

Jacksonian determination glinted in Shiv’s eye, reminding Ivan, for a weird moment, of his cousin Miles. People for whom failure was psychologically tantamount to death, yeah.

Ivan had a few clues as to what forces had shaped Miles that way, putative child of privilege though he was. The chief of whom had been named General Count Piotr Vorkosigan, though Barrayar’s endemic hostility toward perceived mutations had certainly provided an on-going chorus to that appalling old man, whose every grudging grain of approval had been won by his mutie grandson by an equally appalling achievement, or at least some bone-cracking attempt at it. On Ivan’s personal youthful list of people to avoid, Great-uncle Piotr had been at the top. Not a ploy available to Miles, poor sawed-off sod.

So what had shaped and wound that same tight spring in Shiv? And Udine as well? Ivan wasn’t sure he wanted the tour.

“Isn’t enough to fund a small war also enough to, say, buy a nice tropical island and retire?” Ivan couldn’t help asking.

“Not while those Prestene bastards hold two of my children hostage,” said Shiv grimly.

“Not to mention my hair,” said Udine, plucking at her fringe. Shiv caught the nervous hand and kissed it, looking sideways at his wife, and for the first time Ivan wondered, What else besides the hair? Yet whatever had been done to her, in the unsavory hands of her enemies, Ivan was pretty sure the hair was going to be the only part ever mentioned aloud.

“Ah. Yeah,” said Ivan. No, it wasn’t just about money; there was blood on the line as well. Ivan understood blood, well enough.

But it did give Ivan a notion as to what the Arquas thought was under that park: enough to fund a small war. Or buy a tropical island, depending on one’s tastes in such things. And these two didn’t look to be going for the drinks with fruit on little sticks.

“But, ah—Tej wouldn’t really need to go back with you for that, would she? Surely it would be safer to leave her here on Barrayar.” With me.

“With you?” said Udine, raising an eyebrow and making Ivan twitch.

“I do, um…like her a lot,” Ivan managed. He wondered if So does my mother and sort-of-stepfather would be good to add, or if that would just up the bidding on the deal.

Udine sat back. “So you…like her enough to want her to forsake her family and stay with you—but do you like her enough to leave your family and go with her?”

Shiv, too, stared narrowly at him at this. “It’s true, he does have that Barrayaran military training. It is unclear how much he also has Barrayaran military experience, however.”

Ivan gulped, unnerved. “I’d be delighted to leave my family and go somewhere with Tej, just not…not Jackson’s Whole. Not my kind of place, y’know.”

“Hm,” said Shiv, opaquely. He eased back in his seat, though Ivan hadn’t noticed him tense.

Ivan said, “Look, I can support a wife here on Barrayar. And I know my home ground. On Jackson’s Whole, I’d be, what…destitute and disarmed. Not to mention out of my depth.”

“As Tej has been, here?” Udine inquired sweetly.

Shiv gave him the eyebrow thing. “A man should know himself, I suppose,” he said. “Me, I’ve been face flat, sucking gutter slime, three times in my life, and had to start again each time from scratch. I’m getting too old to enjoy shoveling that shit anymore, but I can’t say I don’t know how.”

This was not, Ivan sensed, a remark in Ivan’s favor, oblique though it sounded.

“I, as well,” murmured Udine, “though only once. I do not mean to let this present contretemps stand as twice.”

“But you left your original family,” Ivan tried. “To go with Shiv. Your new husband. Didn’t you? Anyway, left your planet.”

Udine’s voice went dry. “More evicted than left, in the event. We were fleeing the Barrayaran military conquest of Komarr, at the time.”

“Although that worked out surprisingly well,” Shiv murmured. “In the long run.” That passing hand grip again, on the sofa between them.

Her eyes grew amused, and turned back on Ivan. “Yes, I suppose I should thank you Barrayarans for that. Ejecting me out of my rut.”

“I wasn’t born yet,” Ivan put in, just in case.

Dare he ask them, straight out, Are you planning to take Tej away? What if the answer was Yes, certainly? Did Tej think she had a vote? Did they think Tej had a vote? Or Ivan?

No, Jacksonians didn’t have votes; they had deals. For the first time, Ivan wondered uneasily what he had to offer at the Great House scale of play. His personal wealth, though doubtless impressive to some prole or grubber, would barely tweak their scanners. His blood was more hazard than hope, the main question being how far it would splash in a crunch. And he wasn’t a candidate for conscription into their system, as they had hinted, not under any circumstances. Which left—what?

Udine’s gaze strayed to her abandoned comconsole. The suite was awfully quiet, Ivan realized. Where were all the rest of the clan this morning, and what were they doing? “Well, don’t let us keep you, Captain Vorpatril.”

From what? But Ivan took the hint, and stood. “Right-oh. Thanks for the coffee. If you hear from Tej before I do, ask her to call me, huh?” He tapped his wristcom meaningfully.

“Certainly,” said Udine.

Shiv saw him back to the door. “As it so happens,” he said, eyeing Ivan shrewdly, “we do have a little side deal in progress here on Barrayar. If it is successful, it will certainly aid our departure.” And if you want to see the back of Clan Arqua, maybe you’d better do your bit to see it is successful, huh? seemed to hang in the air, implied.

“I sure hope everything works out,” Ivan responded. Shiv merely looked amused at that manifest vagueness.

Ivan retreated down the hotel corridor.

He rather thought he might also see the back of Clan Arqua by just waiting and letting nature, or at least Customs & Immigration, take its course. Deportation, that was the ticket. And he, personally, wouldn’t have to lift a finger. And Tej would not be included in the roundup, because she had, what had Lady ghem Estif called it, umbrella residency as a spouse, all right and tight and no argument there.

If she chose.

Yeah.

It seemed to Ivan that he needed to court his wife. Promptly. In the next, what was it, ten days. If he could catch her in passing, in this spate of Arqua chores. But how can I court her when no one even gives me a chance to see her?

Tej parked the rented groundcar and stared dubiously around the dim underground garage. After yesterday’s dance in the park, and some sharp debate over city maps, Pearl had found this place—by the simple method of walking around and looking—under one of the few commercial buildings near ImpSec HQ, which was otherwise mainly ringed by assorted stodgy government offices. This building housed mostly offices as well: attorneys, a satellite communications company, an architectural firm, a terraforming consultant, financial managers of various sorts. The two layers of garage were packed during the day, but relatively clear after hours and on the Barrayaran weekend, which this was.

This commercial building lay on a corner across the street from the backside, as it were, of the security headquarters. The far side, unfortunately, from the little park that had indeed been found to top Grandmama’s old lab site, or most of it; some of the lab had been mapped to run under the street fronting the headquarters. If ImpSec’s subbasements had been dug two dozen meters farther southeast, back in Mad Yuri’s day, they’d have cut right into the lab’s top corner. Tej didn’t see how they could have missed detecting it, but the Baronne claimed they must have. Dada…was perhaps persuading himself to believe.

As Tej, Amiri, and Grandmama exited the groundcar, Pearl detached herself from the shadow of a pillar and waved them over. Amiri removed a hefty valise from the trunk and followed.

“It’s looking good,” said Pearl. “Seems to be a storeroom for garage maintenance, in use, but no one has been in or out since I’ve been monitoring. I’ve adjusted the lock for us.”

She glanced around and led the way into a small, utilitarian chamber lit only, at the moment, by a cold light set on a metal shelf. The chamber and shelves seemed to contain stacks of various traffic barricades, buckets of paint, a ladder, and encouragingly dusty miscellanea. Pearl cracked a second cold light, doubling the eerie illumination.

“We need to leave it looking like no one has been in or out, too,” said Amiri. “At least for now. Where should we start?”

“Let’s shift these two shelves,” said Pearl. “We can shift them back, after. Here, Tej, take one end.”

Tej dutifully lifted her half of the grubby thing. When they were done, a large patch of concrete flooring lay exposed in the chamber’s corner.

From the valise, Amiri handed out breath masks, all marked with logos from the jumpship line the Arquas had traveled in on. Tej was under the impression that such safety devices were supposed to be handed back at the end of the voyage, but oh well. Waste not. He then donned biotainer gloves and removed a bottle from the valise; everyone else stood well back as he squatted and trailed a line of liquid in a smooth circle about a meter in diameter over the concrete, which began to bubble.

While the cutting fluid worked, he laid out other objects, including a long, mysterious padded case. Then they all stood back and stared for a while.

“All right,” he said at last, and he, Tej, and Pearl combined to lever the concrete slab out of its matrix and shove it aside. Revealed was a layer of pressed stones.

Pearl trundled up a waste bin, and she and Amiri and Tel then knelt and began prying up rocks—by hand. “You might have brought a shovel,” Tej grumbled.

“There should only be about a half a meter of this before we hit subsoil,” Amiri said. “Maybe less, if the contractor stinted.”

“Many hands make light the work,” Grandmama intoned, watching. At Tej’s irritated glance over her shoulder, she added, “It’s an old Earth saying I picked up.”

“No wonder everybody left the planet,” muttered Tej. Hired grubbers with power tools seemed a better deal for lightening a load to her.

“I would feel more secure if we could have found a place to rent or buy,” said Amiri. “Really proof against interruptions.”

“But this leaves no data trail,” said Pearl, perhaps defending her find.

This squabble continued intermittently until Tej found herself at the bottom of a half-meter-deep hole levering rocks out of identifiable dirt. Grandmama leaned over, shone the light down, and said, “That’s probably enough.” At least Amiri gave Tej a hand out. She pulled down her mask and sucked on a bleeding fingertip where her nail had broken.

Amiri brought the long box to the lip of the hole, took a deep breath, and knelt to open it.

“You don’t have to handle it like a live bomb,” Grandmama chided. “It’s quite inert until it’s activated.”

“If the stuff eats dirt, won’t it eat us?” said Amiri.

“Only if you are foolish enough to get it on yourself while it’s working,” said Grandmama. “Which I trust no grandchild of mine would be, especially after how many years of expensive Escobaran biomedical education?”

Amiri sighed and redonned his gloves. Tej ventured nearer to look more closely into the box.

It bore a label reading Mycoborer, experimental, GSA Patent Applied For. Do not remove from GalacTech Company premises without authorization, under penalty of immediate termination and criminal prosecution. Inside the box were layers of trays holding an array of thin, dark sticks, each about fifty centimeters long.

“How deep should we go for the first vertical shaft?” asked Amiri.

“Since Pearl’s location has given us the first two stories down for free, I think eight meters should be enough to start,” said Grandmama judiciously. “We may have to dogleg down more later, depending on what we find between, but that should put us approximately level with the top floor of my old laboratory bunker.”

“What diameter? A meter may not be very roomy, if we have to bring much stuff back up and out.”

“Mm, we may be able to drive a parallel or diagonal shaft later. For the moment, the chief urgency is to get someone inside to inventory what’s still there as swiftly as possible.”

If anything, Tej couldn’t help thinking.

“Right,” said Amiri, and gingerly took up a pair of cutters, measured eight centimeters along one of the sticks, and snipped it through. He then took a half-meter-long drilling rod, descended to the hole, and began twisting it down through the hard-packed soil. Everything still all by gloved hand.

“If we’re doing this,” said Tej, “then why do I have to spend all day tomorrow driving Star around to engineering and plumbing supply places?”

“To give your nice ImpSec people something to look at, dear,” said Grandmama. “They will be happier that way, I’m sure.”

“By the time they think we’re ready to start, we should be done,” said Pearl. “How did you find out about this”—she bent to peer at the label—“Mycoborer product, anyway?”

“I did some consulting a few years back for GalacTech Bioengineering, and struck up an acquaintance with one of the developers.”

“Did you steal it out of their labs?” asked Pearl, with an air of incipient admiration.

“By no means,” said Grandmama, with a bit of a sniff, possibly at so crude a concept. “But when I and your mother and Shiv thought of this possible resource, I remembered Carlo, and went to see him. He was happy to give me a large supply. I thought it might be needed.” Her tone was a touch smug.

Amiri slipped the stick down his new hole, eyed it for straightness, climbed out, and drew from his valise a liter bottle of perfectly ordinary household ammonia, apparently purchased from some local grocery. He descended again and gingerly poured about half of it in around the stick. It disappeared into the dark with a bare gurgle, only its pungent aroma rising, along with Amiri, from their little excavation. Tej hastily readjusted her mask.

Four people stood around the pit, staring.

“Nothing’s happening,” said Tej after a minute.

“I thought you said this would work fast,” said Pearl.

“It’s not instantaneous,” chided Grandmama. “Macro-biological processes seldom are.” She added after a while, as anything visible continued to not happen, “The Mycoborer was developed as a method of laying pipe without having to dig trenches; the genetic developer hopes it can be trained to build its own custom pipe as it goes, but that seems to lie in the future. For the moment, they’re happy to have it proceed in a straight route with uniform diameter.”

“Pipes,” said Tej, trying to picture this. “Will they be big enough for people to get through?”

“Some pipes are quite large,” said Grandmama. “For civic water tunnels and underground monorails, for example.”

“Oh,” said Tej. “Um…if it’s really alive, what stops it from just growing forever?”

“The tubular walls, which are composed of its own waste products, eventually choke it off,” said Grandmama. “Failing that, there is a suicide gene built-in after it loses enough telomeres, and failing that, there is ordinary senescence. And failing that, it can be sterilized by heat. Really, I was entirely in sympathy with poor Carlo over his frustration with the delays about the scaled-up outdoor testing. Those Earth regulatory agencies are so obstructive.”

Amiri blinked. “Wait. This stuff has never been tested?”

“Outdoors, no. It has been tested most extensively in Carlo’s laboratory.” She added pensively, “It is supposed to penetrate fairly swiftly through soil, subsoil, and clay. So-so through sand. Poor in limestone, stopped by granite and other igneous rocks and by most synthetic materials. It is possible we may be compelled to reroute a few times, if the Mycoborer comes up against unexpected subsoil inclusions.”

Amiri was staring downward, looking disconcerted. “Never been tested…and we’re betting the House on it?”

“It’s being tested now,” said Grandmama, in a voice of utmost reason. “And in a very tidy legal isolation from its Earth-based parent company, too. Biological isolation as well. Although I have promised to send Carlo a full report of the trial, sub rosa of course. That was, as dear Shiv would say, our deal.”

She took the cold light from Pearl, knelt, and squinted. “Ah,” she said, sounding suddenly satisfied. “Now you can start to see something.”

All Tej saw was what appeared to be a foam of black goo forming around the lip of the borer hole, but Amiri seemed vaguely impressed.

“No noise, no vibration, no power surges of any kind,” said Grandmama. “Silent and stealthy as a fungal filament. Nothing for sensors to detect, until we start to walk about down there. I trust you all can contain your chatter, when the time comes.”

“Great,” said Pearl. “Now can we go to lunch?”

“Excellent idea,” said Grandmama. “Certainly.”

“Is it safe to leave this stuff alone?” asked Amiri.

Grandmama shrugged. “If it’s not safe to leave, it’s not safe to stay with, now is it?”

“That’s…a point,” said Amiri reluctantly. He didn’t say what kind.

Tej helped shift the slab back, move the shelves, and tidy up. When they finished, there was no sign of their intrusion but a new crack in the concrete, which, since the floor had a few others, ought to pass visual inspection. They exited the garage into a cold afternoon rain, and then she had no attention left for anything but getting them all through Vorbarr Sultana traffic alive.

As a first step toward re-seducing Tej, Ivan had a splendid dinner waiting her return that evening. And waiting, slowly drying out. About two hours after she’d said she’d be home, the door at last slid open, and voices sounded. Ivan arose grumpily from the couch, schooled his face into a smile, and lost it again as not only Tej, but Rish and Byerly strode in. In the middle of a raging argument.

“—and stop putting bugs in my hair!” Rish snarled to By. “You’d think you were twelve!”

“If you would just talk to me, we wouldn’t have any need for this roundabout method of communication,” said By, his normally suave voice slipping a bit.

“And where do you get the we need, anyway? If I need to talk to you, I will, believe me!”

Tej rubbed her temples, as if they ached. “Hi, Ivan Xav,” she said in a dull voice. She did not advance to kiss him or, as had been her even more charming habit considering her fetching build, hug him. “Sorry I’m late. Things ran on.”

“What things?”

“Just things.”

“Well, dinner?” said Ivan brightly. Yeah, it looked to be hypoglycemia city all around, here.

“I had a late lunch,” said Tej.

“I’m going back to the hotel,” said Rish. Ivan didn’t even get out an Oh, good, before she went on, “Are you coming with me, Tej? Or do you want to stay here and be interrogated?”

Tej cast Ivan a grimace that had little in common with a smile, and a tired wave. “Yes, all right…”

“Wait!” Ivan called as they reversed direction, shedding By. “When will you be back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, will you be back here to sleep? Should I wait up?”

“I don’t know.”

“I won’t,” said Rish. “I’m going to bunk in with Em and Pearl. I suppose the hotel can give me a gel-mattress or something.” She glowered at Byerly, and padded past him without looking back. Tej trailed disconsolately. The door slid shut once more.

Silence fell. Ivan and By stared at one another.

Ivan said, “Weren’t you supposed to be the glib, debonair ImpSec agent, here?”

Byerly said a rude word. “Or not, as the case may be. She’s cut me off, she says. I suppose I shouldn’t have tried to slip in a few subtle questions during sex. She didn’t like it.”

“Ah,” said Ivan, and mentally edited his own planned ploy for later. If there was a later.

“But I am half maddened with curiosity. Arquas have been handing me off one to another for the past three days, all the same run-around going nowhere. They wouldn’t be working so hard if they didn’t have something to hide. Unless it’s a practical joke, I suppose.” He let out his breath in a huff and sloped over to fling himself on Ivan’s couch.

Ivan stuffed his hands in his pockets and followed, reluctantly. “Can’t you call for backup?”

“Did.” By put his head back, eyes closing. “ImpSec, it seems, is busy this week. Galactic, Domestic, Komarran, all the Affairs. That high-level diplomatic conference going on at the Residence, the big comconsole-net security convention downtown, prep for dear Laisa’s upcoming excursion with the crown prince to Komarr to see the grandparents—yes, they promise me help. At the end of the week. Or next week. Maybe. Meantime, I’m on my own. Just me and this ungodly herd of your in-laws.” His eyes opened, and shot a look of unmerited blame Ivan-ward. “To whom I am already outed.”

Ivan had seldom seen By emit so much emotion at one time. Granted, it was all one emotion, frustration, but still. Byerly-the-Smooth was decidedly ruffled.

“I’ve cozied up to every Arqua,” said By, closed-eyed and addressing the ceiling once more. “Staked out the hotel. Planted bugs, which have either yielded nothing but rubbish, or gone fuzzy altogether. They’re spotting them, all right. God. What haven’t I tried?”

Ivan hesitated. “Simon?”

By made to raise his head, but it fell back. He did open his eyes again. “Are you nuts?”

“No, listen…” Ivan described his excursion yesterday to the park in front of ImpSec, the dance practice, Simon’s security street theater, and what seemed the pertinent bits of his strange conversation this morning with the Baron and the Baronne. By sat up and clasped his hands between his knees, listening hard.

“Simon and Shiv have some deal going on, I’d swear it,” said Ivan. “Or something. Going back to that first night in Simon’s study.”

“And they think there’s something buried, where, under ImpSec HQ? What, for God’s sake?”

“I don’t know. Something big enough to fund a small war. And old enough…I hesitate to guess how old, but what say a hundred years? Occupation, maybe? Or should I say Ninth Satrapy?”

“That’s before ImpSec was built.”

“Simon ought to know.” But did he remember?

“If Simon Illyan is up to something, we shouldn’t bump his elbow,” By declared firmly.

“I’m…not so sure.”

By’s eyes narrowed. “I thought he was just playing befuddled.”

So, By had spotted that. Good on By. “He does do that. He’s got half of Vorbarr Sultana believing he’s as addled as an egg, and my mother his caretaker. And the people they report to.”

“Right…”

“But sometimes he…shorts out, just a little. You can tell when it’s real, because it’s the only time he tries to hide it.”

“Oh.” By frowned. “I suppose you would know. Seeing him close up and all.”

“Mostly it’s seeing my mother. She gets this kind of brittle look around her eyes, when she’s covering for him.”

“But that’s just little memory lapses, right?”

“It’s Illyan. You want to try to guess what goes on in his head?” Ivan gave it a beat. “Or do you want to go ask?” That’s what Simon had once told Ivan to do, after all, in so many words. If Barrayar’s Foremost Former Authority gave you advice…

“No,” said By frankly. He hesitated. “But I’ll go if you’ll go with me.”

“What are we, a couple of women getting up a posse to go to the lav?”

“Why do women travel in herds like that, anyway?”

Ivan said glumly, “Delia Galeni, back when she was Delia Koudelka, once told me they go together to critique their dates.”

“Really?” By blinked.

“Not sure. She might have just been trying to wind me up, at the time.”

“Ah. Sounds like Delia.” Byerly waved a limp hand. “All right. Lead on.”

Ivan sighed, and pulled him up.

Then made him help eat the dehydrated dinner first, because Ivan had cooked it himself, dammit. But definitely without the seducing part. He left the dishes in the sink.