Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen

Chapter Fourteen

Diverting Miles via the targeted application of war game sims seemed to Jole to go well that morning. He pulled Kaya off her leave to set up the show in one of the base tactics rooms, a skill-building task she seemed to resent not at all, which incidentally also assured she couldn’t be elbowed out of a front-row seat. On the theory that some opportunities should be less optional than others, he made sure to tap a few officers he judged needed to be waked up from sleepy habits in a military backwater that could become a frontwater on very short notice. The remaining slots filled in quickly as word got around, if only from a curiosity to meet Admiral Vorkosigan’s son.

Thus Jole not only entertained his VIP guest, but escaped having to actually converse with him, until, breaking for lunch, Miles said, “So, show me that dodgy plascrete you and Mother were complaining about.”

So, once again, Jole led a Vorkosigan on a trudge out to the mesas of stacked pallets, moldering gently in the tropical sun. The maze, he observed from the tell-tale bits of detritus scattered about in some nooks, seemed to have been attracting other denizens of the base looking for a private talk, tryst, or party. He made a mental note to make sure base security was keeping an eye on it. Yet another reason to shift the damned crap, if only he could figure out an economically favorable place or person to shift it to.

To Jole’s faint alarm, Miles, clutching his cane, insisted on climbing a stack to look around. He seemed to have the same curiosity and instinct for the high ground as a cat, without a cat’s supple ability to land on its feet. Jole breathed a little easier when Miles sat down on the edge, dangling his legs and scooting into a comfortable position that put him just slightly higher than eye-to-eye with his host. Not exactly subtle, but Jole was willing to spot him the point. He leaned back on the stack opposite, crossed his arms, and waited.

In a close simulation of casual, Miles began, “So, did this posthumous-children scheme of my mother’s come as a surprise to you? I mean, what with the dating and all.”

So much for the plascrete as a conversational barrier, then. Or any other kind. “Yes,” Jole admitted. “I had no idea it was possible. Although we weren’t dating yet, when she arrived back from her Winterfair trip with the samples.” He hesitated. Where was Miles wanting to go with this? And did he really want to go along? “Ah—and you? Were you surprised?”

Miles tilted his hand back and forth in a no-yes-no gesture. “I always knew she’d wanted a daughter. Not instead of me, mind you, it wasn’t like that. In addition. She seemed content to take out that maternal mania on assorted Barrayaran girls she mentored over the years. I thought she’d given up the idea decades ago. I knew about the samples—they went past in the stream when I was doing executor duties for Da—but I had a million other things to attend to and that one, at least, was her problem not mine. And then I didn’t think anything more about it, and she didn’t say anything more about it.” He frowned at this last.

“She didn’t say anything to me, either, until after she’d ascertained their viability,” Jole offered. “That might have been what she was waiting for.” And if the samples had proved dead, would she have kept that grief locked silently in her own heart, never to be shared and thus halved? Sad but likely. It was his turn to frown.

“The real surprise is Sergyar,” Miles went on. “I thought she’d be coming home. And doing—I don’t know what. Something. Grandmothering, maybe. The kids are a little shortchanged in that department, with Da gone, and Ekaterin’s mother long gone, and her da ensconced down in South Continent. Although I suppose there’s her Aunt and Uncle Vorthys, in town. And her brothers, and their wives and kids, and Nikki, and Alys and Simon, and…well, I guess they aren’t as lacking in relatives as I was. I had old Count Piotr. And cousin Ivan, sometimes.” His brows drew down as he reflected on this generational disparity.

“I had the impression your district is Ekaterin’s patch, now,” said Jole mildly. “Are two countesses in one district anything like two women in one house?”

“My mother’s not evicted, dammit,” said Miles. “Surely she doesn’t think she is—does she?” Genuine dismay flashed in his glance down at Jole. “That’s not what this is about, is it?”

“I don’t think she feels that way, no,” said Jole. “I think it’s a more positive choice. She’s just getting back in touch with her old Betan Survey roots. She joined up to explore new worlds—so, Sergyar’s a new world—it’ll do.”

Miles’s grin flickered. “Like Barrayar before it? Could be.”

“You don’t mention your Betan relatives in that roster,” Jole observed curiously, shifting his back against his support-stack. “I know Cordelia keeps in some touch with her brother. And you have cousins there, yes?”

Miles, taken aback, shrugged. “Three of ’em. Though I never really met them till I went there for my school year at age fifteen. And they were all rather different ages than me which, at fifteen, matters. I’ve given up trying to keep track of their partners and sprogs, although Mother gets bulletins on them all from her mother that she feels obliged to pass along.”

Jole, the occasional victim of similar maternal reports on relatives he’d barely met and wouldn’t have recognized in the street, nodded understanding. Obituary column and all, as the extended family aged. It was only in recent years that he’d become able to recognize that as a clumsy expression of her sense of loss, and not a long-distance attempt to depress him. He’d grown better at writing back.

Miles frowned. “Maybe you have to be the right age to imprint on your relatives. If you’re not actually around each other enough when you’re young and feckless together, you miss the ship. The most you can become after that is adult acquaintances. With maybe extra emergency docking privileges,” he conceded. “If I were somehow stranded on Beta, say. Or if any of them were stranded on Barrayar—I suppose that’s reciprocal.”

Jole’s rural home district had been a place he couldn’t wait to escape, at age eighteen, and little about his rare visits back there had altered that view. It wasn’t as if his relationship with Aral or, later, with Aral and Cordelia had cut him off from his family much more than distance and his career had already done. And yet…to maintain the necessary political reticence, silences had always seemed safer than lies. And it was much easier to maintain silences when one didn’t engage in a conversation in the first place.

Would his sons, if he chose to have them on Sergyar, end up enjoying much the same untroubled distance to Jole’s prole family back on Barrayar as Miles had with his Betan cousins? Even more so with their Vor nieces and nephews, especially if knowledge of their relationship was suppressed? But what about their half-sisters, much closer in time and space? Silence could divide the siblings from each other as surely as light-years. But no, if Jole stayed on Sergyar, he’d want to make household arrangements as close to Cordelia as she would permit, throwing their offspring together as well. They’d be the girls next door, perhaps.

Which led to a fresh and more alarming reflection—given propinquity, Vorkosigan charisma, and the odds, when they grew to be teenagers, would some of them want to date? Now, there was a hazard of convenient silence that hadn’t crossed Jole’s mind before. He swallowed a horrified laugh that he had no desire to explain to Miles. Cordelia had a point about starting as you meant to go on. The anonymous-egg ploy was looking less tenable all the time.

Miles cleared his throat. Stared down at the dirt. Looked up. “So, ah—do you think you two will ever marry?”

If she asked me, I’d say yes, Jole thought without hesitation, startling himself. Which made it different from anything else Cordelia might ask of him, how? She could roll him out like a pastry—he resisted the sexual innuendo with only a slight twitch of his lips. The woman didn’t know her own strength, fortunately. But all his prior yesses had been so fabulously rewarded…He managed, “We haven’t discussed it.”

“Yet? Or ever?” He swung his heels in an absent rhythm against his sack-seat, a physical tic that ought to have looked juvenile, yet didn’t.

Jole couldn’t figure out if Miles was more concerned for his mother’s future or his father’s past, in this line of…interrogation, yes. At least the former ImpSec operative didn’t have a hypospray of fast-penta on him at the moment, as far as Jole knew. He stifled an urge to move farther out of reach. “Not any time soon, certainly. She’s been very definite about wanting to keep her daughters well clear of certain Barrayaran legal and custody issues. I doubt she’d even consider it till her youngest daughter comes of age, by which time whatever…arrangements we end up with will have been in place for decades, and the question will be pretty moot.”

Miles cocked his head. “Decades, huh? You thinking that long-term?”

“She certainly has to be, to embark on all this.” He allowed, “Although decades do seem to be passing faster than they used to. Maybe more so for her.”

Another twitch of a grin from Miles, who was not, after all, that much younger than Jole. He half-lidded his eyes, and ventured, “So…do you think you two would ever have a child together? By whatever technical intervention. Given how enchanted she seems with the idea of personally populating Sergyar. Possibly on the theory that if you want something done right, you need to do it yourself.”

Jole blinked, blindsided by this new notion. His imagination had been filled with his three potential sons. Might there be a daughter, too, in some more distant someday? It was an oddly mind-melting vision. “I’d think those slots are filled by what she has on ice already. You don’t imagine I could talk her into more, surely?”

Miles snorted. “Have you ever heard the phrase, like shooting fish in a barrel?” A reminiscent look came over his face. “Except, actually, that turns out not to be as easy as it sounds. I tried it once, when I was a kid down at Vorkosigan Surleau.”

“With what?” Jole couldn’t help asking, diverted by this vision of the young Miles. Would his half-brothers be anything like him? Minus the soltoxin damage, thankfully.

“I started with an old bow and arrows I’d found in a shed, but the results weren’t too satisfactory. Refraction in the water, plus the bow was too big for me and I was pretty awkward—I’m not sure I could have hit a real target at that age. Plus the fish were slippery buggers. The stunner that I filched from one of the armsmen didn’t work all that well, either—the water absorbed the charge. The fish just sort of…grew confused. Swam very oddly. I was just set to try a third test run with a plasma arc stolen ditto when they caught up with me. Sadly. I’ll bet that would have been spectacular.”

Jole choked a laugh. “Or lethal!” Betan science crossed with Barrayaran militarism made an appalling hybrid at age, what, six or seven, maybe?

Miles’s lips tweaked back. “Certainly for the fish. But, yes, steam burns and barrel shrapnel for anyone within range, I’m sure. Which would have certainly included me, though in my defense, I had also secured a dustbin lid.” He mimed this shield with a sweep of his arm.

Was this a good opening to confess to his frozen sons? Jole, with an effort, pushed himself as far as, “Do you like being a da?” Because nothing said this impromptu grilling had to go in only one direction.

Miles leaned back atop his stack, as if surprised in turn. “It’s had its hair-tearing moments, but—yeah, so far I like it a lot. Although it’s still a bit scary if I stop to think about it, which happily I don’t often have time to. My scope for really screwing up seems hugely expanded. Thank God for Ekaterin.”

It occurred to Jole that Miles, too, must once have undergone something like Jole’s venture to the rep center. Or maybe he’d had some sort of at-home arrangement—Vorkosigan House’s basement-level infirmary, made top-grade during Aral’s regency, was presumably kept up-to-date. Perhaps his bride had helped out, rendering the enterprise less lonesome. He wasn’t about to ask.

“I can’t imagine going it alone as a parent,” Miles went on, “although come to think I suppose old Piotr was forced to, when Yuri’s War left him with only my da. Half-grown by then, but still. It seems to have been rough sailing for both them. Disturbing to think that, by the time I came along, Piotr was said to have mellowed. Though it might have just been exhaustion.” The edge to his faint smile reminded Jole of knives. “They both did all right in the end, though. I guess people do, somehow.”

Cordelia’s mother had been a widowed parent, too, Jole recalled. He wondered why Miles didn’t trot her out as a counterexample as well. The Betan bereaved-family experience seemed to have been much smoother than the Barrayaran, and not only for the absence of a bloody civil war. There’s Cordelia’s model, he realized. Her mother. Consciously or unconsciously internalized? Either way, it had left her remarkably confident.

Miles’s expression grew more introspective. “My one regret was that I didn’t start my kids sooner. Couldn’t, I suppose, but…Lizzie and Taurie won’t remember Granda Aral, and of course Selig and Simone never had the chance to meet him at all. Well, he did come to look at the cryofreezer, soon after our marriage when Ekaterin and I had sequestered the six embryos, but that’s hardly the same thing.”

Jole tried to picture the scene. It must have fallen early in the joint Viceroy and Vicereine’s sojourn on Sergyar, during one of their trips home. He would have been left helping hold the fort here in what was now Bobrik’s seat. “How did he, er, seem to process it? All the technology?”

Miles wrinkled his nose. “Bemused. I guess. Pleased for us, really pleased, though with my mother standing right there he could hardly have expressed any doubts about the tech. For all that he had worked all his life to drag Barrayar up to galactic standards, medically and otherwise, I’m not sure he expected what that was really going to feel like to him personally. What it would mean to his House, to that central Vor…thing.” A ragged wave of Miles’s hands, as if futilely trying to encompass the complexity of his history. “He adored the kids when they finally arrived, of course.” He glanced away, over the sunlit tarmac. “I thought we’d have more time.”

Jole swallowed and, cravenly, said, “Speaking of time, if we want any for lunch…”

“Ah. Yes, I suppose.” Miles managed to wriggle down off the stack of sacks without breaking anything, and Jole managed not to annoy him by grabbing for him, a dual victory of sorts.

As they paced back toward the mess hall, Jole trying not to be obvious about shortening his steps, a strange ripple of feeling coursed through him, deep and confounding. Sunstroke, he tried to tell himself, but instead it came out, Please, be born soon. I want to meet you.

While there is still time.

Shaken, he walked on.

Miles arrived back at the Palace late for dinner after his war games; Cordelia ruthlessly carried off Ekaterin right afterward to steal a few more hours of civic garden planning, leaving Miles to deal with his offspring. They suffered no interruptions from explosions, fire alarms, or panicked people pounding on her office door, so she gathered his child-minding went smoothly. She’d readied herself for bed and was doing one last comconsole check—although really, if there was another task waiting, she didn’t want to know—when he stuck his head around her door, grunted a greeting, sloped in, and thumped down into a chair.

She sat back and regarded him doubtfully. “And so?” she prodded.

“Eh.” He did that thing with his feet; she wondered if he ought to be checked for restless leg syndrome. But they stilled, as if they had wound him up sufficiently for another whirr around the room, and he said, “Had a talk with your Oliver today.”

She noted the possessive. A good sign? Or was it more of a rejective, your Oliver, your problem…“Oh?”

“I grant you, he seems a nice fellow—always did—”

“I certainly think so.”

“But he’s not very forthcoming.”

She cast him a glinty-eyed maternal scowl across her desk. “Were you interrogating the poor man?”

“It wasn’t like that!”

Which she construed as, It was exactly like that.

“We just had a talk. Perfectly civil. Aired a few concerns. Well, I did, anyway. He listened. You could see he was thinking, but I’m damned if I know what.”

“He has a lot on his mind at the moment.” She smiled at a sudden memory. “Although it used to be fairly amusing to eavesdrop on him when he was cornered by Nexus diplomats at official functions. He grew very adept at getting more than he gave, to their dismay.”

Glumly, Miles rubbed his nose. “I certainly ended up talking more than listening.”

Cordelia’s lips twitched. “Well, that would be the problem then, wouldn’t it?”

He jerked up his chin and bared his teeth back at her.

“So what were you interrogating him about, that it proved so unsatisfactory?”

“Oh, just…plans for the future. His. Yours…”

“Miles—were you actually demanding to know his intentions?”

He scrunched a bit, looking shifty. “Not precisely. Well, sort of.”

“I think you’d best save those impulses for Helen’s suitors. They’ll doubtless be coming along any minute now.”

Miles gave a theatrical shudder. “Surely not yet.”

“You could be surprised. Anyway, Oliver’s plans are Oliver’s business.”

“But if he won’t talk about anything that involves you, and you won’t talk about anything that involves him, how the hell do I find out about…anything?” he protested.

“Maybe you don’t.”

He gave an offended snort. “You can’t feign that what you do doesn’t affect me. I don’t expect to have a Betan vote, but some basic information would be nice. At least enough for going on with!”

“I haven’t made a secret of my plans. I mean to move the capital, resign the viceroyship, build a home, and raise my girls. That should take me to my century. After that, who knows? Maybe I’ll revive my science career. Or retire for real. Or engage a harem to entertain me in my declining years. Foot rubs, lots of foot rubs.”

He was startled into a laugh. “Male or female harem?”

“I was thinking male, but I could be flexible.”

He appeared to be briefly distracted by this vision, but then, alas, came back on track. “But then what are Oliver’s plans?”

“He’s still working on them, and I’ll thank you to leave him alone while he does it. He’s a smart man. He’ll figure it out.”

“Figure what out? He seems to think you don’t want to marry him.”

“I don’t want to marry anyone, till the girls are launched. After that…will be a new world. Another new world.” Her, what…fifth? Sixth?

“Yeah, that’s what he said. So how come he knows that, and I don’t?”

“He’s not hard-of-listening?”

Miles drummed his fingers on the chair arms. The feet started up again.

Obviously, Oliver had not mentioned his boys yet, or this would be a much different and possibly more explosive conversation. Well, she’d registered her views about that; the rest was up to Oliver.

“Gregor said, if I wanted to know more, I should ask you. This implies that there’s more to know, or he wouldn’t have said any such thing, right?”

Cordelia was more inclined to interpret it as Gregor saying, sensibly, I’m not touching this with a stick. But the trouble with handing Miles a stick was that he’d take it and head straight to the nearest wasp nest, and what idiot had ever decided that importing Earth wasps to Barrayar would be a valuable addition to the ecosystem? Speaking of fellow invasive species. Little Miles, who had gritted his teeth through any number of broken bones, had actually cried for that encounter. Screamed, actually. It had taken a couple of hours and some scary drugs to get him settled down. After which Cordelia had taken a military stunner and a poison sprayer and made damn sure it would never happen again. Speak softly, and carry the right tool for the job.

But that same attitude was part of what had made the grownup Miles one of Gregor’s best Imperial investigators, later in life. He’d plumbed the depths of mysteries and drains with equal tenacity. She was beginning to get an inkling of why his suspects had so often tried to sting him.

“I am under no obligation to gratify your salacious curiosity,” she told him. “Just…channel your inner Betan and try to relax, all right? I expect all things to resolve themselves shortly.” One way or another, thank-you-I-think Admiral Desplains.

“So where does Oliver fit into all this?” The corner of his mouth tucked up. “Besides heading the harem, I suppose.”

Indeed, Oliver is diligent in all tasks he takes on. Cordelia quashed a smirk, and answered forthrightly, “Where he chooses. He has a certain career decision to make, which is not mine to discuss with you, after which…we’ll all know more.”

Miles pursed his lips. “Career decision? What career decision? He’s Admiral of Sergyar Fleet, for pity’s sake!” His eyes narrowed in rapid thought. “They wouldn’t move him out of the line at this stage of his career. Resign and go into diplomacy, like Ivan? He’d be good at that. Or—no. Has to be…Komarr Fleet, Home Fleet, Chief of Ops? Thibault is solid on Komarr, Kuprin just got promoted to Home Fleet last year, Desplains is…good grief, has he been offered Chief of Ops?”

Argh. She’d forgotten how quick Miles could be, and how eclectically informed. “Miles! I promised confidentiality! I had need-to-know as Vicereine. You don’t.”

“I need to know—wait, what? That would take him back to Vorbarr Sultana! What is this, hit-and-run love?” He sat up, suddenly seething with indignation. “He seduces you and takes off, and you’re not even trying to trip him on the way out the door?”

“First, we seduced each other, and second, he hasn’t made it to the door yet. And third, it is all much more complicated than that.”

“Which brings us back around to why is that?”

“A few days ago, you were glaring like a suspicious guard dog at him when we so much as snuggled. Have you switched sides?”

“I’m on your side,” he grumbled. “If I could figure out what it is.”

“I know, love,” she sighed. I just wish you’d be on my side more quietly, somewhere else.

“Chief of Ops,” he mused on, unhelpfully. “Wow. You do know, turning down a plum offer like that is something of a career-killer. They think you aren’t committed.”

“I am aware of the psychology of the high command, yes.”

“Not that Oliver’s career isn’t pretty…pretty mature as it stands.”

“That it is.”

A wistful look stole over his face—envy for the Imperial military life he’d once aspired to? Frankly, Cordelia thought Miles had been much better placed in ImpSec, where his erratic genius had found its full scope. Sticking him in the regulars would have been a disaster—had been, she recalled from the results of just such an early experiment. We all have our might-have-beens.

He rolled his cane in his hands, and conceded, “All right. Yeah. That is some serious decision for a working officer. Especially for a prole of his generation who came up out of nowhere.”

“If you were in his place, how would you make it?” she asked curiously.

“My life would have to have been radically different, for me to be in his place.”

“Granting that. But a speculative scenario. Say, you were courting Ekaterin, and she could not or would not leave Sergyar.”

“That…doesn’t quite work. Because any woman engaging herself to a senior Imperial officer would know she was taking on the package, presumably. It would be her choice to follow or stay, not his to stay or go. I mean, if he were under orders. Which isn’t quite the case here, yeah, true. The only decision I ever made that put my heart on the line like that…” He stopped rather abruptly.

“Mm?”

“Wasn’t about a woman,” he finished. He added after a meditative silence, “It was about ambition, though. Um. Yeah. I don’t think I envy Oliver his dilemma.”

Oh, kiddo. You have no idea.

He was watching her face, she realized. He offered, not quite facetiously enough, “I could help trip him if you want…”

Eee. “What I want is for Oliver to make a decision he won’t regret. I don’t think either of us can help him with that.” She managed to add, “Though I appreciate the thought. It was well-meant.” Potentially disastrous, but well-meant. “But if you really want to be helpful, go to bed, so I can.”

He snorted. “Yeah, yeah. I can take a hint.” To her relief, he clambered up and limped out, with a backward wave.

The best way to avoid another uncomfortable tête-à-tête with Cordelia’s inquisitive son, Jole decided, was to not let himself get caught alone with him. In pursuit of this plan, he invited Kaya and Fyodor along to the next day’s lunch in the upstairs dining room of the officers’ mess. Between fiendish hijacking sim schemes—Kaya was with Miles’s team on the attack side this afternoon—and Gridgrad gripes, avoiding the personal seemed easy, and Jole relaxed back in his chair and let his guests go at each other with his good will.

Until Kaya, after a brief lull while people remembered to chew and swallow, came out with, “What do you most want for your birthday picnic, Admiral?”

Taken by surprise, he answered honestly: “No casualties.”

“Amen,” Fyodor endorsed this, in a heartfelt growl. He had not yet said, out loud, I told you so in Jole’s hearing as the event had ballooned, but he had managed a few expressive silences along the way. An appreciative grin flicked over Miles’s face.

“The committee has a safety officer assigned,” Kaya assured him earnestly. “He’s liaising with the Kayburg Guard and everything. But no, seriously.”

The committee had obviously detailed Kaya as scout on this burning question, logically enough. Jole dragged his brain into gear. His first pick would be a day alone with Cordelia in Penney’s Shack One, obviously not on. His next would be a day alone, period, ensconced somewhere quiet and comfortable, feet up, perhaps with the next issue of the Uni’s bio journal and its endlessly strange explorations. A hike, preferably with Cordelia, in the backcountry might be fine, too—packing a picnic for two, not two thousand. He could go on, but probably shouldn’t.

Kaya plainly hoped for something simple and manageable, such as a bottle of his favorite liquor—a null set, alas—a pony ride, whatever. And if he didn’t come up with an answer, or at least a direction, he risked being lumbered with God-knew-what.

He’d hesitated a little too long. Fyodor, himself a veteran of a career’s worth of promotion parties and change-of-command ceremonies, and thus doubtless having no trouble figuring out his dilemma, snorted in amused fellow feeling. “Whatever happened to that lunatic scheme of yours of having a son for your fiftieth, Oliver? Although I suppose that’s not something the committee could supply. Unless you adopt one of the junior ensigns, which, let me tell you, could save you a world of steps.”

Miles went still, then blinked like a lizard. “Really? Did my mother get to you, Oliver?”

In so many ways. “She pitches the virtues of the new rep center to anyone who will listen. She gets very Betan about it.” Two perfectly true statements.

“But how would that square with…” He trailed off, giving Jole that disturbing laser-scanner look he could sometimes come out with, just when you thought he was squirreling off in some other direction or three.

We need to talk, thought Jole, and No, we don’t. In any case, not here, obviously. “Remember,” he said to Kaya, instead, “I have very limited storage space.” In his apartment at any rate, though he could probably tap odd corners of the base for stowing anything up to the size of a combat drop shuttle. Fyodor, to his relief, did not point this out.

“If you want to surprise him, try asking my mother for ideas,” Miles suggested helpfully.

Kaya took this in with a considering look. “I guess you two have known each other for a long time.”

“And so well,” Miles murmured. “One gathers.” Evaluating, again? Jole shot him a quelling frown.

Fyodor put in, “Right, you do know Oliver will be escorting the Vicereine to this shindig? Don’t leave her out of your ceremonies.”

“Yes, sir, knew that,” said Kaya. “We’ve asked her to award the prizes for the boot polo tournament.”

Boot polo was a prole infantry version of the old Vor cavalry polo, which had used, in its traditional incarnation, to be dubbed “Capture the Cetagandan’s Head.” Early in Cordelia’s service here as Vicereine, someone had once tried to redub it “Capture the Pretender’s Head” in her honor, but she had shut that down in a hurry. It involved three opposing teams of men in combat boots, armed with sticks, huffing after a beleaguered ball over a patch of marked-out but ungroomed terrain chosen for its maximum roughness. As were the men, Jole supposed.

“We will be having a medical tent, I trust?” he inquired mildly.

“Oh, yes, sir. With that many people, there’s bound to be something come up. We’ll have a full field team, set to handle anything from radial bites to indigestion to broken legs to heart attacks.” She cast Fyodor a special reassuring smile at that last, which Jole did not think he entirely appreciated.

Kaya and Fyodor mooted a few more bits of news about the picnic which, while it was not Jole’s favorite topic, at least beat More fun with uterine replicators with Miles sitting right there sucking everything in. The meal drew to a close without further awkward revelations.

Or almost. Jole hit the mess lav along with Fyodor before heading back to help referee the war game sims. As they were washing their hands Fyodor glanced around, ascertained they were alone, and said, “You likely ought to be told—there’s a rumor going around you’re not just escorting the Vicereine, you’re dating the Vicereine. Don’t know what you want to do to quash it, but, in your ear and all that.”

Already? Jole thought, but said only, “Really?”

Fyodor grunted. “Well, it was a more direct term than that. Doesn’t alter the heads-up.”

So, Cordelia. I guess we’re going to test your social theories. “For a change, rumor has it right.”

Fyodor’s eyebrows climbed. He was silent for a long moment, then said, “That’s flying high, prole boy. Don’t let your wings get singed.”

A brief smile turned Jole’s lips. I had my flying lessons long ago from Aral, who never let me fall. Had this altitude really become his home country? Perhaps not quite, and a little caution could make all the difference. Knowing when to stop was not exactly a Vorkosigan talent; maybe a Jole must supply. I am not drunk enough for these thoughts.

He said only, “I’m hoping for a soft landing.” But where?

Fyodor did not ask for further elaboration, and Jole did not volunteer it. He dried his hands and led out.