Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen

Chapter Twelve

Cordelia rose in the night to pee, then found, to her familiar frustration, that she couldn’t get back to sleep. She stepped over to her private office to find a boring report to read. Spoiled for choice, she settled on something financial, and herself into the comfy chair. Half an hour into this, not bored enough yet, she looked up as a soft knock sounded on her door.

“You awake in there?” Miles’s voice called quietly.

“I am for you. Enter.”

He slid around the door. He was wearing an old T-shirt and loose ship-knit skivvies by way of pajamas, and, as he moved across the room to the chair she waved at, used his cane without any attempt to disguise his need for it. He sat with a small oof.

“You look…fried.” Face lined, eyes shadowed, gray-flecked hair in disarray.

“Eh. Seizure.” He shrugged dismissively.

“Induced, or, er, natural?” His idiosyncratic seizure disorder still lingered from his episode of cryofreezing that had also bounced him out of his military career, over a decade ago. Almost a decade-and-a-half, now, wasn’t it? He could control it with a somewhat alarming stimulator cooked up by his ImpMil neurology team, which triggered the fits in a selected time and place, rather than allowing them to occur as a random and dangerous inconvenience. This worked—as long as he used the device in a timely fashion.

“Induced. I hate the hangover, but my levels were getting high, and I didn’t want to risk spoiling the trip out to the Serg.”

“I’m glad you’ve grown some sense.”

His lips tweaked. “Ekaterin insisted. Actually.”

“Sensible of you to marry her, then.”

“Oh, yes.”

“I thought you slept like a brick, after those.”

“They upwhack my brain sleep chemistry. Sometimes it’s out like a light, other times it’s insomnia central.”

“Ah. Welcome to my club.”

“Yeah, but I’m not, what is it, seventy-six?”

“Bang on. Very good.”

“You did have a birthday recently. I remember, because we sent vids of the kids.”

“Best present, that.”

He smiled a little, and tapped his cane against the floor. “While not sleeping, I got to thinking about our conversation earlier tonight.”

“Ah?” She set her reader aside and sat back, concealing her anxiety. Don’t lead the witness.

“Some of those old slanders back in Vorbarr Sultana.”

“That does not exactly narrow the field, love.”

He inclined his head. “I suppose not.” He took a breath. “In particular, the ones about Ges Vorrutyer. And Da. When they were younger.”

Huh. Not the one she’d just braced for, then. This was much older news than Oliver.

“Thing is, I didn’t get this one just from people who were obviously trying to wind me up.” A longer hesitation. “So…were they, er, lovers, or not? I mean, they were brothers-in-law.”

“This…isn’t something Aral ever saw fit to confirm or deny to you?”

He looked extremely uncomfortable. “I never asked.” And after a moment, “But he never volunteered a denial, either. He did sometimes. The Komarr massacre, for example. He never stopped being enraged about that one.”

“There was a hell of a lot there to be enraged about.”

“Oh, yeah.”

Cordelia sighed. “So…do you think I have either a right or a duty to tell you something Aral never saw fit to? Do you think you have a right to know?” It was not, she hoped he understood, a rhetorical question.

He flung his hands wide. “A right? Or a need? But I’d think if it wasn’t true, several people could have just said so. And if it is…there might be a couple of people I owe an apology to. You can’t slander the dead, they say.”

“Rubbish. Of course you can. You just can’t be successfully prosecuted for it in a court of law.”

His lips twisted in dry concession of the point.

“The short answer could be misleading,” she said. “The longer one…requires a little context.”

He leaned his head back in the chair. “I’m not in a hurry.”

“It doesn’t make a very restful bedtime story.”

“Not much from that era on Barrayar does.”

A laugh puffed through her lips. “Really.” She drew a longer breath. “I know you’re aware that after most of their family was slaughtered by Mad Emperor Yuri’s death squad—God, Aral would have been just about Alex’s age, wouldn’t he?—General Count Piotr the Emperor-Unmaker kept him pretty much bolted to his hip for the whole civil war. You can now understand why, I expect.”

Miles’s eyes flickered, as he perhaps pictured himself in Piotr’s place and Alex in Aral’s. His face went rather grim.

“After his resultant extraordinarily high-level military apprenticeship had ended with the Dismemberment, Aral was dumped out into that generation’s version of your officers’ academy. Still a half-formed institution at that time. Ges and Aral were both second cousins and friends at that stage, and probably neither of them anything a Betan would call sane. Even without the adolescence.”

“I…can’t actually argue with that.”

“Apparently, same-sex sexual experimentation by male youth was tolerated in that context—well, it was never illegal on Barrayar, just socially disapproved, which I’m not sure is better or worse, since there wouldn’t have been any legal protections, either—but anyway, still expected to be kept out of sight. Exactly what old Piotr thought he was about, to arrange Aral’s marriage to Ges’s sister, I cannot fathom. His own mother was a Vorrutyer, so maybe it seemed, I don’t know, an unexceptionably traditional family alliance. Or maybe he had some more complex scheme, trying to use the marriage to detach Ges. He—quite correctly—seems to have pegged young Ges as toxic, by that time. But I can’t imagine that Piotr expected to engineer the bloody disaster that he did.”

“Was there a secret duel? About her fidelity?”

“Two of them. Aral told me this himself, and I’ve no doubt it was true.”

Miles whistled. “Illegal as hell…”

“Wildly. But they seem to have led directly to her mysterious suicide.”

“Da told me once…” Miles hesitated. “Back that time when, in the court of capital gossip, I was rumored to have made away with Ekaterin’s first husband. God that was annoying. But anyway. He said that he was never totally certain that Piotr hadn’t murdered her. Fixing his mistake, as it were. What a hellish thing to suspect about your da. And never any way to be sure…He said he couldn’t ask.”

“Not talking to each other seems to have been a Vorkosigan family tradition.”

“I…kinda had to give Da that one.”

“Mm.” Cordelia drew breath in through her nose. “In any case, for two or three years after her death Aral and Ges conducted what sounds to have been an extremely lurid, alcohol-soaked, and blatantly public affair.” A match made in some special Barrayaran hell, between a proto-sadist and a man bent on self-destruction. Eh, maybe Miles didn’t need that many details. “I don’t gather it was aimed at Piotr, but he certainly would have been in the crossfire. The final breakup-fight drew blood. Aral pulled up, and put his career back together. Ges continued his descent. Although not, alas, militarily. His subsequent positions of authority…did the Imperial Service much harm.”

“Da told you all this?”

“Some, plus I put things together from other sources. It was amazing how many people thought I should be told all about it, when I first came to Barrayar, even though it had been two decades ago by then. Even Admiral Ges, in the twenty minutes before his, er, fortunate demise. The results invariably disappointed them.” Ges most of all, perhaps…she set her teeth and avoided smiling. “I should perhaps make clear that, as old flames go, my objections to Ges were to his personality, not his gender.”

Miles’s shrug conceded, Betan standards, sure. “So is it still a slander if it’s true?”

“The same set of facts…can be presented neutrally, can be spun up into hype, or can be deployed in a way that is damaging and hurtful, depending on the agenda of the person recounting them. Although I do think the fact that the episode was never a secret—at least, not to the generation that was there at the time—pulled its teeth significantly.”

“It bit me.” Miles scowled. “Da told me most everything about that bad period himself, except he left out Ges. I mean…I’m half-Betan, aren’t I? I wasn’t even a kid when we had that conversation, of course you wouldn’t tell a kid, but I was thirty.” He wrinkled his nose in a complicated species of dismay. “Instead, I was left to be…wrong.”

Cordelia rubbed her neck, which was beginning to ache. “That happens, when two people are so profoundly important to each other. Consider the possibility…that he cared just as desperately how you judged him, as you ever cared about how he judged you.”

“Hm.”

“Try this.” Cordelia bit her lip. “Think of the three most boneheaded, regrettable things you ever did.”

“Only three? I can think of more.”

“Overachievement is not needed for this exercise,” she said dryly. “The top three will do.”

“Still spoilt for choice, but…all right.” He settled back, rolling his cane in his hands, his lips thinning at some passing memory.

“So, how old will Selig and Simone need to be before you tell them all about it? Ten?”

“Of course not! That’s way too young for moral horrors.” He added after a moment, “Or any other horrors, if I can help it.”

“Twenty?”

“Twenty…is a very distracted age,” he ventured, obviously seeing where she was going with this and not much caring for the view.

“Thirty?”

“…maybe.” That shifty look, so familiar from his adolescence, flickered over his features.

“Forty?”

“Forty might do,” he conceded, wryly.

“Aral should have gone for thirty-nine, apparently.”

“Eh.” The pained grunt was a small noise, rather like the ones he made when he was getting up and down, these days.

“Turning it around, how old would you have to be to feel comfortable telling me those top three?”

He looked vaguely alarmed. “Two you know. The other one…is pretty obsolete by now.”

“I’m not asking you to confess, love. Just asking you to make an effort to see your da as human, not superhuman. That’s too high a pedestal to fall from.”

“I guess so. Huh.” He bent forward and rested his chin on his cane. “I know so. I do know.” A longer hesitation. “I wonder what I’m doing to drive my kids crazy?”

“Isn’t teenagery on the horizon? They may start to tell you, soon. Or you could observe for yourself.”

He winced. Sighed. “Any other advice, O Seeress?”

“Since you ask directly?” She shrugged. “Nothing very original, I’m afraid. Forgive as you would be forgiven, and whatever you want to say, don’t leave it for too late.”

A dry laugh. “That last was one of my top three, actually.”

“It is for many people.”

Miles sat back, silent for a while. “I…he always seemed so self-sufficient. So strong. I missed the heart-attack uproar, being cryofrozen. Hearing about it so much later, when everything was on the mend…maybe I didn’t…”

“Strong, yes. The other…nobody can sustain that much strength, that long, all by themselves. But I think you know that by now.”

He tilted his head in concession, and smiled slightly. Thinking of Ekaterin?

A few of Miles’s silver hairs gleamed in the lamplight, and Cordelia blinked, bemused. “Next year, you will be the same age Aral was when I first met him. Your hair has just about the same amount of gray in it.”

“Does it?” He frowned and plucked at it, making a futile attempt to see up. “Maybe it’ll be all white by the time I’m eighty, too.”

I hope so, Cordelia thought, and her breath caught sharp. No, do not let your fears eat the happiness in front of you. Or your grief consume your future? That was harder.

Despite herself, Cordelia yawned. “Think you could sleep now?”

He stretched, rolling his shoulders. “Yeah, maybe.”

“You can sleep in as long as you like, tomorrow morning.”

“But you can’t, I am reminded.” He took his cane and levered himself to his feet, and made his way to the door. “G’night, then.”

“Good night. Sleep well, kiddo.”

“Good luck on yours, too.” He made a hand-wave of acknowledgment, and wandered out. No Thank you, no I’m so glad we had this little chat. Unsurprising, all things considered.

But a moment later, he stuck his head back inside the door. “So when are you going to tell Aurelia all these lurid tales?”

The boy bites back!

…Good.

“When she’s old enough to ask. I suppose.” Or never. Let the future be freed of the heavy hand of the past through the power of selective amnesia? It wasn’t the worst approach, in Cordelia’s lengthening experience.

Miles vented a short laugh and withdrew. Cordelia sighed unease and turned out the light.

The morning meetings in the Offices of the Viceroyalty went reasonably briskly, Cordelia being fatigued from her disrupted night’s sleep and disinclined to suffer diversions, and already starting to fantasize about an early escape that afternoon. Back at her comconsole, she found that the usual virtual mountain of items flagged for her attention had been reduced to a virtual hillock, Thank you, Ivy. And not even any hidden volcanoes, till she came to the last item on the list.

“Those smarmy sons-of-bitches,” she snarled when she’d taken her first survey-scan, apparently less under her breath than she thought, because Ivy called cautiously through the open door between their respective domains, “You, ah…get down to the Plas-Dan proposal, did you?”

“Yes.” Cordelia unset her teeth, and wondered if there was space in her budget to slip in another raise for her executive secretary. If this had been placed first on the list, she wouldn’t have had the concentration to get through the rest nearly as quickly.

An outside eye would have found the proposal unexceptionable, certainly. Plas-Dan wanted to set up a second materials manufacturing plant at Gridgrad. Gridgrad certainly needed one. Plas-Dan, smugly sure of their current monopoly, made a list of demands for support in this enterprise that…weren’t actually impossible, though they were certainly stiff. It was rather like a man holding himself for ransom. Well, that ploy had worked for them once, hadn’t it?

And, for lack of another option, Cordelia might just have to roll over and give it all to them. Or else watch her plan to shift the capital grind to, if not a halt, a glacial pace. “Gah.”

She read through it again. None of the details changed the broad outline. The most she could do was mark it Received, hold pending review. Not that reading it for a third time would alter anything. She couldn’t pull a competing bid out of her ear.

She composed and sent off a reminder tightbeam message on the subject to Mark, and another to certain friends back in Vorbarr Sultana, and even one to Komarr, but if the first set she’d dispatched had failed to stir up anything, she wasn’t sure how the reprise could. Holding an answer till she returned from the Prince Serg the day after tomorrow was unlikely to give her industrial nemesis any sleepless nights in the interim, as they could do the same tactical calculations she could. It didn’t even yield the satisfaction of petty revenge. She held it all the same.

A little while later, as she was beginning to imagine she would make that early escape after all, and wondering how and what the kids and grandkids were doing on the other side of the garden, Ivy buzzed her desk. She could have just stuck her head around the door; Cordelia realized why not when she said, formally, “Vicereine, Mayor Kuznetsov is here to see you.”

Making it easier to brush the man off, if Cordelia was so inclined. She was entirely inclined, but she couldn’t really justify it. She needed to establish bridges with him, now that Yerkes was out. Yerkes had been fairly obstreperous at times, but at least broken in. Personally, Cordelia had voted for Moreau. The disappointment was not a new experience; back in her younger days as a Betan citizen, it had seemed to Cordelia that she was usually outvoted. I mean, Steady Freddie, really! It had taken years for the Betan electorate to finally get rid of the clot.

Cordelia sighed, and said, “Send him in.”

Kuznetsov was flanked by an older woman, whom Cordelia recognized as one of the town council members. But they did the work of running Kayburg so the Imperial government didn’t have to, always a point in their favor. They exchanged greetings; Cordelia fixed a friendly smile on her face and waved them to the comfy chairs on the opposite side of her comconsole desk. The pair looked determined and nervous. Cordelia canned her usual easy opening of And what can His Imperial Majesty’s government do for Kareenburg today? with a more neutral—if still inviting, because she wanted to move this along—“And what do you wish me to hear today, Mayor, Councilor?”

Kuznetsov leaned forward to place a somewhat battered readpad atop the black glass of her comconsole desk. “This,” he said portentously, “is a formal petition protesting the proposed removal of the Imperial planetary capital from historic Kareenburg to a lesser provincial town. We have so far collected over five thousand signatures, and can certainly obtain more. If they are in fact needed, to give a louder voice to those we serve.”

“Very good practice for you in democratic procedures,” Cordelia observed, not touching it. Some older Barrayaran immigrants didn’t trust such galactic doings; others took to it with alacrity, reinventing every possible method of cooking a vote with dizzying speed. The electorally experienced Komarrans had an edge, there. The cadre of more-ethical local election volunteers was keeping up with the arms race, but only just.

“As a Betan,” said the councilwoman, Madame Noyes, “you surely cannot turn this aside.”

Cordelia leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “I haven’t been a Betan for over four decades, but yes, I do understand. Your procedure is good. Your issue, however, is bad.”

“Stealing the capital from us will strangle Kareenburg’s growth,” argued Kuznetsov. “Extinguish its chance at glory!”

Precisely, Cordelia thought, but said aloud, “No one is suggesting knocking the place down. Everything that’s here will still be here. Including the base and the civilian shuttleport, which are growth taps that will not be shut off.” Anyway, not soon enough. She pursed her lips. “Consider also that size isn’t the only driver of fame. What’s the population here today, around forty thousand? Same as Florence, Italy, at the height of the Renaissance. So where’s our Leonardo da Vinci? Our Michelangelo?” She did not add, Where’s our Brunelleschi?, Aral’s very favorite lunatic creator of Old Earth, because planting brilliant architecture in doomed Kayburg would be tragic.

“We were the first—and foremost—colonial settlement on Sergyar,” said Kuznetsov. “Our history is central to this world.”

“Yes, I was there,” said Cordelia, a little dryly. Kuznetsov had been in nappies, somewhere back on Barrayar, she estimated. Noyes could have been his elder cousin. “History, yes; glorious, no. Kayburg, or rather, the base, started as a concealed military supplies depot and, soon after, a shuttle tarmac and an ugly POW camp. And some really ugly events. The abortive invasion of Escobar was not Barrayar’s most shining hour, you know. No one involved was thinking about rational settlement plans at the time, because they were all caught up in the old War Party’s schemes. The peaceful settlement of one of the best Earthlike planets discovered in two generations barely ticked their meters, probably because it offered too high a ratio of hard work to glory grabbing. Not to mention slow returns.”

Kuznetsov, no Vor, at least had to shrug his shoulders in agreement at this one. He was not allergic to work, either, as far as Cordelia had been able to discern; he was, after all, doing the job he was paid for right now. Alas.

“Mount Thera has not erupted for thousands of years,” argued Noyes. “It could be thousands more before it does it again.”

“Hundreds of years,” Cordelia corrected. “The big blowout that took off its top was a thousand years back, but there have been minor eruptions since. The event-survey timeline for the past several thousand years is publicly posted.” Still being revised as new data arrived, not fast enough. Need more people. “It’s not dead, just dormant, and as the rift continues to shift and widen under it, long-term predictions are tricky. No, it’s not going off in the next ten years, or I really would be trying to evacuate Kayburg. The next hundred? Maybe. The next two hundred? Almost certainly.”

“There are cities on Old Earth that have lived for thousands of years beside volcanoes more active than this one,” said Kuznetsov. “They rebuild and go on.”

“Yes, but they were originally sited before plate tectonics was discovered. People back then thought such geologic catastrophes were punishments from their gods, having no better explanation. After that conceptual breakthrough, it was just inertia. And shortsightedness. And the sunk-cost fallacy. We don’t have the excuse of ignorance. The sunk-cost will never be smaller than now. And inertia is in part a product of mass which, yes, I am trying to reduce.”

“By crippling the future of Kareenburg!” objected Kuznetsov.

Cordelia stifled the urge to tear her hair. “The future of Kareenburg is a lava flow.” She frowned. “If the earthquakes don’t get it first. Although Aral once remarked to me, when we were discussing the subject, ‘Earthquakes don’t kill people; contractors kill people.’ I thought he had a point, but still.”

“The earthquakes we get here barely rattle my dishes,” said Noyes. “Once or twice a year!”

Hadn’t she been here for the ground-cracker a decade ago? “No, the seismic activity in the rift is nearly continuous. People just don’t notice the deep or minor ones. I know my volcanology team feeds the raw data onto the government net in real-time. Anyone can look at it.” She laid her palm out flat on the cool black glass of her desktop. Because clenching her fist might be construed as hostile.

Noyes sniffed. “Obscure scientific gobbledygook! Any lie could be hidden in it, and who could tell?”

Cordelia stared. “On the contrary, all our posted explanations are written in language a ten-year-old could understand. And that’s not a figure of speech. I have Blaise Gatti go find a classroom of ten-year-olds to test them on. Their reading comprehension is surprisingly good.” Gatti had at first been taken aback by his assignment, but had quickly got into the spirit of the thing. The classrooms now quite looked forward to his visits, she understood. “There’s even a tutorial post on interpreting the charts and graphs, right there.”

“So,” said Noyes coldly. “Your much-lauded progressivism is a sham, isn’t it, Vicereine? Five thousand voices, swept aside at a Vor word.”

“Look.” Cordelia leaned forward, clasping her hands on the desktop. “There is no political solution to this, because it’s not a political problem. Asteroids—Admiral Jole’s people can fix asteroids, bless them. Not volcanoes. It’s a different order of magnitude.” Well, unless the asteroid were near-planet-sized, but Cordelia had learned not to undercut her own arguments with excessive precision. “Gregor grants the office of Viceroy many powers, but not superpowers. I can’t stop continental drift.” She added reflectively, “Which would be a supremely bad idea for the long-term health of the Sergyaran biosphere even if I could, actually.”

“But you could stop the capital from shifting away from us,” said Kuznetsov.

If I were shortsighted, vicious, or stupid, sure. She sighed, and shoved the signature recorder back toward its presenters. “I suggest you take your petition up to the lip of the old caldera and present it to the mountain. It, not I, will determine the long-term outcome, here. Though if you get an answer, run.”

“Very funny,” said Kuznetsov, with understandable bitterness. “I’m sorry that you see the economic hardships you plan to visit upon the residents of Kareenburg as a joke.”

“Hardship is an exaggeration. A significant number of people aren’t going to make as much profit out of Kayburg as they thought they would, this is true. This is not the same thing as starvation.”

Looking equally indignant, Noyes grabbed the pad back. “You haven’t heard the end of this, Vicereine.”

I should be so lucky. “There is much about Kayburg that I have loved, myself. The Viceroy’s Palace is a home that I built, and it and its gardens contain some of the happiest memories of my life.” As well as the most devastating one ever, but that was no business of theirs. “It will be more than a little heartbreaking to leave it behind. Aral and I always did our best for the place in the time we had. But if I want to do my best for its people, they need to learn to shift ground.”

Her petitioners, recognizing that the stalemate wasn’t going to be broken today, finally shifted themselves out, still grumbling. But at least they left, so that Cordelia could, too.

Exiting her office a short time later, Cordelia found Blaise chatting over Ivy’s desk, and no other petitioners waiting.

Ivy looked up. “On your way? Have a safe trip!”

“Thanks! It should be extremely interesting.”

“I don’t suppose you need a press officer along?” Blaise asked in faint hope.

“Sorry, I’m full up with family. Not everything needs to be a PR opportunity, you know.” She took pity on his doleful look, which he had deployed at her to his benefit more than once. “You can write up a small squib. Run it past me before you release it.”

Accepting this consolation prize, he nodded. It would likely be a large article by the time he was done, but the subject seemed safe and the history lesson useful. Although she’d have to cross-check any mention of the mothballing procedures with the military censors, so that it didn’t work out to be a notice to the Nexus at large, Here, come steal our stuff! Let me show you how!

About to make for the outer door, Cordelia hesitated, recognizing an opportunity. Waste not, want not. “By the way, I should probably mention a recent development to you both. Admiral Jole and I have started dating. This isn’t secret, but it is private, so treat it accordingly. But Blaise, if you run across anything, er, pertinent to the subject in your scans, do let me know.” There. Blindsiding averted. Virtue of a sort, or at least a duty discharged. Like a visit to the dentist.

Blaise looked pole-axed. “Er…?” he managed. “Really?”

Ivy sat up in equal astonishment, and more open curiosity. “Gentleman Jole, the dog who does nothing in the nighttime, really? How did that happen?”

Cordelia wasn’t sure if Ivy’s uncertain smile was salacious or just bemused. In any case, it seemed to indicate that if Cordelia wanted someone with whom to discuss Oliver’s fine points, rather the way old Count Piotr had gone on and on with certain cronies about his horses, she would find a willing volunteer ready to hand. This had considerably more appeal than trying to expound on Oliver to Miles, certainly. And Ivy could keep her counsel.

“We’ll do lunch about that sometime,” Cordelia promised. Which would be sandwiches at her desk, probably. “Have your people call my people.”

Ivy mock-saluted, her smile growing firmer.

“You don’t think there will be any…any issues?” Blaise tried. “The late Viceroy…” Cordelia wasn’t sure what he saw in her face that stopped that sentence, but at least it did.

I will eviscerate anyone who tries to make an issue out of this wasn’t something Cordelia could say. Or do either, she supposed glumly. “I have no idea. Hence your heads-up on a subject that would otherwise be no one else’s business.” Including yours hung implied. “You might spend some thought on how to turn it into old, boring, uninteresting non-news, though, just in case.”

A faint professional whimper.

Cordelia grinned and blew out.

Getting her family into orbit turned out not to be such a circus as Cordelia had feared. Miles, after all, had also had experience moving small armies. The exercise was aided by the decision to leave the two toddlers and Taurie back at the Palace with their nanny, the phalanx of regular staff, ImpSec, and Rykov as experienced seneschal. The older three who came along, plus Freddie, were seriously outnumbered and surrounded by the adults. As long as Miles stayed on the grownups’ side, Cordelia figured they were safe. The military crew manning her pinnace and its shadowing courier vessel were all cheery to be racking up more space-duty hours on their logs, not to mention as excited to be visiting the historic vessel as their seniors. With both the Vicereine and their Fleet Admiral aboard, their service grew alarmingly keen.

After the miniature convoy had broken orbit, dinner was laid on in the ship’s compact observation lounge. It was split between two tables; the four kids had their own, plus a couple of sacrificial junior officers and senior techs for them to interrogate, leaving the other table—of the elder Vorkosigans, Oliver, those senior officers who weren’t on duty, and the Vicereine’s personal physician—to get on with boring grownup talk. Which wasn’t so boring as all that, although tomorrow night Cordelia promised herself that she would jump tables.

The talk, unsurprisingly, turned to their destination. Oliver stuck to the official versions of his war stories, very practiced by now; Miles kept a straight face, mostly, though he coughed wine once. The heroic role of the free mercenary fleet in holding the Vervain wormhole till the Prince Serg and the ships of the extremely ad hoc Hegen Hub Alliance could arrive to relieve them in the victory-snatched-from-debacle was, of course, known to all the military folk here.

“So what were you doing during the lead-up to the Cetagandan invasion of Vervain, Count Vorkosigan?” asked Captain Aucoin. “You were a very junior officer then, I believe? ImpSec, wasn’t it?”

Miles cleared his throat. “I can say that I was working as an ImpSec intelligence pathfinder in the Hub at the time. Further details must wait another three years, I’m afraid. At least any coming from me.” When one of the interim marker-dates, which generally ran in five-year increments, for sensitive information to age out of classification was passed at a quarter-century. Was Miles counting down the days? Probably. Although there were some aspects that would have to wait the full fifty, Cordelia was certain. Fifty years seemed a shorter time than it had used to.

“Your reticence is fairly pointless,” observed Aucoin. “Given all those Vervani holodramas.”

And Cordelia had seen them all; Miles had a collection, which he had insisted on sharing with his family—sometimes including Gregor, or, lately, his historian friend ImpSec Commodore Galeni, who did have the clearance—and critiquing the errors in excruciating detail. Aral had not been above helping, in a rumbling sort of way, or sometimes critiquing the critique.

“I know,” sighed Miles. “Three more years nonetheless.”

Aucoin came off-point like a disappointed bird dog. Before he could evolve another probe that wasn’t actually in violation of security regs, Oliver shifted the subject smoothly: “But since you are here, Miles, would you like to repeat your war-gaming exercise that you did a few years back about repelling theft attempts from our mothballing yards?”

Which was how Miles had capped his Auditorial investigation of the busted theft ring, back when, incidentally giving him an excuse to extend his family stay, and to terrorize a select group of Sergyar Fleet’s baby officers.

Miles sat up with all the glistening enthusiasm of a trout striking a lure. “Can we do it live-action? It would take me some prep time, but I’ll bet I could surprise—”

“Sims,” said Oliver. “You can run through more scenarios in less time, that way.”

And at much less cost, compared to letting Miles play toy soldiers with real soldiers, Cordelia reflected.

Miles tried, “Sims are good, too, but there’s nothing like removing the virtual from the reality to uncover all those snags nobody thought of.”

“While I agree with you in principle,” said Admiral Jole firmly, “sims.”

The military half of the table then fell into a vigorous discussion of various ways to set up this valuable training exercise, which diverted them all handily till the end of the meal. Ekaterin, Cordelia, and her staff physician didn’t have to endure too long, though, as the kids finished their own meal and grew restive and the junior officers had to go do some actual work. And Oliver, she thought, had as much motivation as she did to seek an early bedtime.

His time alone—at last!—with Cordelia was everything Jole had pictured during those long weeks on his upside tour, if not where and when he’d pictured. The unregulation double bed in her regulation cabin was all the world they needed, for an hour or so. She charitably let him go first to the lav, not sized for two, after. When she came out later, she looked surprised to find him not snoring in a post-coital coma, as she’d obviously anticipated when she’d kissed him goodnight on her way to wash up, but lying on his back with one arm flung behind his neck, staring up into the dimness.

“You’re quiet tonight,” she said, snuggling in under the covers and arranging her head on his chest, ear to his heart. “Thinking about the past?”

“No. The future.” He bent his neck to kiss her hair, then finally said, “Something came up at work.”

She raised her head and gave him an admonitory scowl, sideways. “You were supposed to be taking your week off. A balanced life for health and all that.”

He snorted.

“Anything that affects my patch?”

“Mm…Yes. No. Maybe.”

She appeared to consider this disordered ambiguity. “Would it help to talk it out? Aral used to use me for a sounding board all the time. Or an oubliette to rant into, as needed. If you tell me which parts are confidential, they’ll stay that way.”

He had no doubt of that. “I had a private message from Admiral Desplains. He’s headhunting his replacement at Ops HQ. He says he thinks I’m in the weight class for it, if I want to put my name in the hat.”

She went still, except for a careful blink. “So…have you sent your reply?”

“Not yet.”

Her brows twitched. “Haven’t decided? Or decided but delaying?”

No yes maybe. “Haven’t decided.”

She rolled away from him, up on her elbow. Long familiarity made her bare body no distraction, if still a delight. It was the concern in her face that locked his eye. “If it were an enthusiastic yes, surely you’d be packing for Barrayar right now.”

“Well, not right now…” His lips tweaked despite his unsettled mood. “There are in any case a few intervening steps. Such as finding my own replacement. Though Bobrik could be ready to move up.” Had to be, in an emergency. “D’you think you could work with him?”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “Not as easily—or as pleasurably—as with you, but I could adjust. It wouldn’t be for much longer in any case.” She did not say, But what about us? She did say, “What would you do with your embryos?”

“Just so.” As Aral used to remark, when caught in some fork. He bit his lip, not happily.

“I—” She stopped herself. Went on, “Shall I have a go at helping you sort it out? Or would you rather I didn’t?”

If he hadn’t wanted this offer, he could have kept his mouth shut, right? “Are you an unbiased adjudicator?”

“No, but I could pretend to be one for a short stretch.” As if in preparation, she moved slightly away from him, leaving a cool space down the edge of his body.

“I’ve been spinning my wheels for two days on my own,” he sighed. “Poke away.”

“Well…” Her mouth scrunched in thought. “Try a hypothetical. If Desplains had offered you this five months ago—at Winterfair, say—what would you have done?”

He thought back to those barren days of worn mourning. They seemed improbably long ago, from this vantage. Mourning could be buried in work, he knew, trapped alive in its coffin. “I’d have said yes,” he replied, surprised at his certainty. “Despite—no, because of the challenge. It would have been—not a decision of despair—it would have seemed a chance to break out of a kind of dry stasis. Move forward into…something. An unknown.” Might there have been new people on that road as well? A new lover, maybe even a spouse? In that milieu, he’d no doubt that he’d have been targeted, and could have chosen from propinquity. He recalled Cordelia’s laughing voice, once, misquoting, It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a high rank must be in want of a partner.

Although any man who would trade a Cordelia in the hand for any number of birds in the bush would have to be insanely stupid. Granted, there was no accounting for taste. But then, five months ago, she’d not been in his hand, had she? Because he had not yet lifted it out for her. Or grasped her hand lifted out to him, whichever it had been. It was a bit of a blur now. Hold on, hold on, we have to stop this falling business, it can’t end well…

He took a breath. “And then you offered me a completely different unknown future. So now I have two mysterious paths and only one pair of feet.”

She moved back a little more, as if primly trying to be unseductive and fair. It didn’t quite work, given the naked and all, but he respected the effort.

“I keep thinking,” he went on, “that Aral would have encouraged me to take this. Ops, that is. I’m not sure he envisioned…the other.” Might he have intended Jole and Cordelia to inherit each other? Hoped, even? But the embryos part, no. He suppressed an amused and painful pang at the thought that he would never get to watch Aral’s face while Cordelia proposed it to him.

She shrugged. “We all had other plans. Which went the way of most plans. But, yes, I’m sure you’re right. He’d have been delighted for your promotion. We might even have gone back to the district, then.”

Jole nodded, having had just that vision himself. “He was always concerned about my career. Sometimes even more than I was. Leaving Vorbarr Sultana felt like being sent away, almost discarded, despite the visits on leave, but he was right—I needed that new space to grow into. And not just for career development.”

“He was always good at personnel,” Cordelia agreed. Dryly? Sadly? Or just a statement of fact? “Though in this case, I always suspected him of a touch of magical thinking—protecting your career as a proxy for protecting you.”

“Hm.” Jole could understand that better now than he had all those years ago, certainly.

“For what it’s worth, even then he was muttering about that job for you in the district someday. Like trying to put down a book yet keeping your finger on your place in it. A bit contorted.”

Jole had to smile a little. “I made a sooner someday by coming to Sergyar.”

“Thankfully.” She twitched, as if to move to kiss him, but seemed to remember her assumed neutrality just in time. “So—are you setting this up in your head as some sort of self-arm-wrestling, right hand against left, between pleasing him and pleasing me?”

Jole hunched under that too-shrewd observation. “Might be. Some. I know it makes no sense, you don’t have to say that—”

She gave a pensive wave of her free hand. “Not that, it’s just…Miles and his grandfather Piotr had a, call it a conflicted relationship, when he was younger. Credit to Piotr, even at his age, and however painfully, he grew into the challenge. Aral didn’t give him any other choice, true. It was the mutie heir or none. When Piotr died when Miles was seventeen, Miles spent, well, quite a few years thereafter bending his life in knots still trying to please the old man. Miles being Miles, he managed to twist it around to please himself as well. But it was heartbreaking to watch.”

“Multitasking, a Vorkosigan family trait?”

That won a smirk. She went on, “It seems to have worn off, lately. Or maybe just been assimilated. He doesn’t flinch anymore when someone calls him Count. Or look around for the real count.” She paused, and lifted her hand to brush his face. “Or the real admiral.”

He took her point, but…“Is that supposed to clarify anything?”

She sighed. “Maybe not. Except to say, I’ve watched someone dear to me work through these issues before. Burning his life as an offering to the dead. We all survived somehow, but sometimes—only just barely.” She smiled. “Fortunately, you are not so inventive in getting yourself killed as Miles was. I’m pretty sure you’d survive Ops. And vice versa. Desplains is not wrong.”

He nodded shortly. They both knew that wasn’t the real question. “Wasn’t there some folk tale about a horse starving to death, equidistant between two bales of hay?”

She scrubbed at her hair. “So, which bale is bigger? Or closer? One must calibrate for distance, after all.”

“Ops is closer. Oddly. Easier, though it seems absurd to say so. But I can’t really know, can I? It’s more like…two bales of unknown size each behind a closed door.” The lady or the tiger? “I don’t think this metaphor is helping, either.” He tried another, more direct assault. “Duty, or happiness? Selfishness,” he corrected. “And how could a man be happy knowing he’d left a duty abandoned?”

“Ah,” said Cordelia. Her smile grew sad.

“I should answer Desplains soon.”

“Ah.”

“It’s not the sort of offer a man gets twice. There are other officers waiting to move up.”

“Ah.”

“Though retiring as Admiral of Sergyar Fleet—that’s already much farther than I’d ever dreamed of advancing in my lifetime.”

“Ah.”

“And what does ah mean?” he asked, slightly exasperated.

“It’s sort of like biting my tongue, but less painful.”

“Ah,” he returned, which did at least make her laugh.

“Thank you for confiding in me,” she said, rather formally considering their state of undress. “It will keep me from making up dire alternate explanations for your distraction.”

“Do I seem distracted?”

“Only to someone who knows you very well.”

Did anyone in his life know him better, more intimately? You can’t make new old friends, they said. Well, you could, but it took a very long time. And time ran out, eventually. “The embryos could not go with me to Vorbarr Sultana.”

“Probably not.”

“And you would not.”

“…No. I’ve made my choices. It’s Sergyar for me.”

“So, unlike your Miles, I can’t have it both ways. There might be other rewards in that other future, but not…these.” This bed was not exactly the most unbiased place to pick for this conversation, he realized belatedly. Although he couldn’t picture having it in either of their offices.

“The embryos would stay safely frozen for a decade. More,” she offered, in her adjudicator-voice. “Barring volcanoes, and none are predicted that soon. And I would—” She cut herself off. Shook her head. Closed her lips.

“Would?” he prodded.

“I was about to say, I would still be here. But not frozen in time like the embryos. The most I can say is that I plan to be here.”

Nor could he ask her to wait, locking herself in cold stasis for him. Now or never seemed overly dramatic, but now or no guarantees was only justice. Realistic. Sensible. And other depressing, grownup adjectives.

So back around they came to Square One. “Any further thoughts?”

“I’m afraid I’ve come to the end of my capacity for neutral adjudication. Sorry.”

No, she was not going to release him from responsibility for his own decision. It was much as he’d figured this conversation would go. Did he want her to passionately beg him to stay? Demand that he throw it all over for love and life? It was not the Vorkosigan style, and yet…she’d done exactly that, once—career, family, roots all discarded when she’d left Beta Colony for Barrayar. No—for Aral. Without a backward glance? Maybe not.

“If you could have known everything, back then, before you came to Barrayar, would you still have chosen?” he asked her suddenly.

She fell silent a moment, considering this. “Then? Maybe not. I’d have been too much of a coward. Now? Yes. There’s a paradox for you. Although really it’s no more than saying that I’m satisfied with my life. Changing anything would wish people I’ve loved out of existence, and yet…there would have been other people, I suppose. Who now will never be.”

And there was Cordelia, summed. Not the empire would have fallen, but people, just people, called into existence or erased by the chances of her life. He did not know if she thought more simply, or more deeply, than anyone else he’d ever known. Maybe both.

He gathered her to him, and reached over her to turn off the light. He did not quite know when their breathing synchronized in sleep.