Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen

Chapter Eight

On the grim anniversary that week that Jole had not marked on his calendar, he only saw Cordelia at a joint morning meeting between military and civil engineers to discuss Gridgrad infrastructure, or, more accurately, lack of infrastructure, and whose fault it was going to be. It ran long. In the hallway afterward, she touched his hand in passing, looking away; he caught hers and squeezed, and hers spasmed hard before opening again.

“Will you be all right, tonight?” he murmured.

She nodded shortly. “Dinner at the Betan consulate. I expect to be lobbied, and lobby back unmercifully. Immigration issues. You?”

“A queue of tightbeam reports from Ops HQ to read. Some to answer. Desplains and I are arm-wrestling over jump-point station logistics this week.”

“Good luck pinning him down. I mean to stop in at the rep center on the way home, after, for a quick visit. Just…” Her throat moved.

“…because.”

“Yeah.”

In this place, all he could give her was a nod, so he did. Her lips twitched up in silent understanding. As a smile, it was a travesty; as acknowledgement, sufficient unto the day.

Jole was able to organize another jaunt to inspect Lake Serena that weekend, though only a day-trip. To his regret, it was too breezy for the crystal canoe, but to his delight, the breeze sped the little sailboat around to the leeward side of the peninsula, where they found a quiet nook to tie up under some trees that bent to trail curtaining branches in the water. It was almost like a bower woven of wood, and decidedly more inviting for an intimate hour than bobbing around rudderless out in the open. The new radial-repellant spray seemed to work well, its brisk masking perfume more redolent of camp life than ballrooms. Alas for his late fantasy, the boat was notably less comfortable than the old bed, but a determined, if sometimes giggling, cooperation overcame all obstacles. Even a barked elbow failed to impede his blissful post-coital snooze, while his pillowing Cordelia seemed content to drift in quiet meditations of her own.

They shoved off again at length with just time for one tack across the wider part of the lake. As they approached the opposite shore, the sound of power-hammering drifted out over the water.

“Looks like Sergeant Penney’s getting a neighbor,” Cordelia observed, shading her eyes with the flat of her hand.

“And a mere five kilometers away,” Jole agreed. “I wonder if he’ll think Lake Serena is becoming too crowded?”

Her lips turned up. “His own fault, then, for renting his place and allowing Kayburg to find out about it.”

By Vorbarr Sultana standards, Kareenburg boasted little in the way of fine dining, but midweek they managed to engineer a not-too-working dinner at the same terrace restaurant where Cordelia had so upended his life recently with the gametes offer. They nibbled and talked through a fine fair sunset, and watched the town lights come on below in competition with the stars above. The stars were still winning, but probably not for much longer.

At one point, Cordelia bent forward with laughter at some turn of phrase, reaching out to touch his arm, but then her glance shifted beyond Jole’s shoulder toward the nearby table where her ImpSec bodyguard lurked attentively, and she withdrew her hand and straightened with a sigh.

“It’s not that the ImpSec duenna-corps that Chief Allegre sends me aren’t all nice, earnest boys and girls, but sometimes I wish I could drop them all in an oubliette. Why don’t I have an oubliette?” she added, as if suddenly struck by this lack. “I could have designed one into the Viceroy’s Palace when we were building it, easily enough. No foresight.”

He laughed. “It would go with your moniker.”

“I have a moniker?”

“Haven’t you heard it? They call you the Red Queen.”

She blinked and tossed back her last sip of wine. “Wasn’t she the chess piece who went around yelling ‘Off with their heads’? Or is it a bio-evolutionary reference?”

“I believe the bloodthirsty queen was a playing card. The chess queen was known for her sprinting.”

“You do wonder sometimes what they were ingesting, back on Old Earth. But yes, I certainly do have to run as fast as I can to stay in the same place. Though I suppose I could hope it’s for my hair. Is it intended as a compliment, or the reverse?”

“That seems to be malleable according to the tone of voice in which it is delivered.” Though he had come down sharply on one grumbler who had used it pejoratively in his hearing.

“Well…there have been worse political nicknames in Barrayaran history.”

“Mm,” said Jole, not disagreeing. Speaking of security, he was himself the recipient of a painfully polite memo from the local head of ImpSec-Sergyar, Colonel Kosko, pointing out that Jole’s own last physical-security short course was many years overdue for a refresher, and would he please not let the Vicereine’s notorious carelessness on the subject override his own mature judgment. That Kosko had sent a memo, and not just dropped a word in his ear when they’d seen each other in person, betrayed either a shrewd sense of just how unwelcome such comments were in his superior’s hearing, or a nervous desire for documentation. “But you do have to allow that if you were killed on their watch, there’d be nothing for the poor bastards to do, once the forms were filed and the court-martials concluded, but eat their own nerve disruptors. En masse.”

She grimaced. “If Aral had been assassinated back in Vorbarr Sultana…” She did not quite complete the thought. She didn’t have to.

“Possibly.” He shrugged. “My feelings would hardly have been less complicated.”

She tapped his arm firmly, this time, in a gesture of strong negation. “Sergyar is safer. At least in terms of organized plots. Disorganized plots, well…”

“It only takes one nutcase to decide that you, not he, are the reason his life sucks, and set out to even the score. Nutcases are not in short supply here.”

She sighed in agreement. “Even though everything else seems to be.”

“Indeed. Did you get any reply yet from your son Mark about entrepreneurs we could lure to Gridgrad to set up a materials plant? The offer of land?”

“He says he’ll put the word out, but he notes that as the land does not seem to come with streets, buildings, utilities, or a workforce, it’s not quite the bait one would hope.”

After dinner, they rode back to the Viceroy’s Palace in her vicereinal groundcar, driven by the alert bodyguard. They did not shed this appurtenance until they reached the double front doors, where he was smoothly excluded by Armsman Rykov. Cordelia led Jole upstairs to the door of her personal office—her public office was now in the converted barracks across the back garden. It made a short and pretty walk to work.

“I will be in conference with the Admiral, Ryk,” she told her seneschal. “Interruption level, mm, three, I think.”

Must involve emergency medical teams, Jole recalled, right.

“Yes, milady. Sir.” Rykov maintained his usual expressionlessness, for which Jole was grateful. Cordelia closed the door on it with a bright smile.

As Jole’s imagination was cycling between actual confidential conferencing for which he’d somehow missed the memo, or rude but riveting visions involving the use of her comconsole desk for purposes its makers had never intended, Cordelia led onward to the far door, which proved to open into a full bathroom and from there into a modest bedroom overlooking the back garden.

“Ah,” he said, enlightened. “You moved.” If only across the hallway.

“Yes. The big suite”—the one she’d shared with Aral and, now and then, them with him—“was too big. I took a leaf from the Vorkosigan House generational shuffle and converted it into a guest suite.”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever been in here.” Entirely unhaunted.

“You might have, but I redecorated. Alys and Ekaterin advised.” That explained the serene style, now overlain with a practical clutter that was more Cordelia. Both aspects comforted him, and he moved into her welcoming arms without delay.

It was after midnight when Rykov let him back out the front doors. His lightflyer was parked across the drive, and so this was why she’d told him to come to the Palace and they’d ride to dinner together—planning ahead. Nicely smooth.

“Cordelia asked me to tell you she didn’t expect any more duties for you tonight, and you could turn in.”

“Very good, sir.” Rykov hesitated. “Do you plan to be having many more conferences with the Vicereine?”

God, I hope so, Jole managed to keep from blurting. He hadn’t been drunk even earlier, right after dinner, but he felt a little inebriated still. “Cordelia…” He hesitated in turn. “Has indicated that she would actually prefer something more open, but I think discretion”—is a hard habit to break—“might be better advised.” At least for now.

“I am always,” stated Rykov, with a direct stare at him, “in favor of discretion.”

Allies of a sort, then? I’ll try not to make your job any harder than it already is seemed a mildly idiotic thing to say, so Jole returned only an acknowledging nod.

Letting himself into his own base apartment later, he looked around with new eyes. The prior Admiral of Sergyar Fleet had brought a family along and stayed in larger digs, a house off-base. Even after his latest promotion, Jole had contented himself with the same rather Spartan apartment in the senior bachelor officers’ building he’d occupied ever since he’d first been assigned to local space. All right, it was on a third-floor corner, and better supplied with windows; otherwise, the living room, single bedroom, bath and kitchenette were standardized and compact. A place to sleep, wash, keep his clothes, and grab breakfast. A base cleaning service and laundry allowed him to dispense with the bâtman that would otherwise be due his rank. He entertained at the officers’ mess, or assorted Kareenburg venues, or occasionally for formal functions jointly with the Vicereine at the Palace. A quarter of his time was spent on upside rotation anyway.

He tried to imagine bringing Cordelia here for a conference—Aral had visited now and again, as their opportunities arose—but, really. Besides, he lacked a Rykov to guard their privacy. And if Cordelia brought her armsman along, where would they stow him? Aral had excluded his own occasional outriders at the door with ruthless and utterly unselfconscious courtesy, sending them off to patrol on their own for imaginary hazards, or read in the downstairs lobby, or whatever they chose until he called them back. It wasn’t Vor arrogance, exactly, but whatever it was, prole Jole had never quite caught the knack. And…however misguidedly, Jole suspected his being alone with the Vicereine in his quarters would be seen differently than his being alone with the Viceroy.

After failing to imagine Cordelia here, he was suddenly struck by how much more out-of-place an infant would be. Let alone three of them. Family quarters. He would have to move to the base family quarters, he supposed. How would he—they—Jole and Sons fit in over there? There must be a few single parents in the crowd—how did they manage? Well, there was Fyodor Haines and his fractious Freddie, but Freddie was fifteen, outwardly mobile. The general—not yet a general then, of course, just a mid-grade officer—had not after all attempted to raise his infants himself, from scratch.

Was Cordelia’s model any help to Jole? Their two situations did not feel precisely parallel. He wasn’t sure what personal funds she held. The jointure of a count’s widow was not rigidly set, but constrained by law and custom to a range, never below a certain minimum nor above a certain maximum. Aral would certainly not have chosen the most straitened option for her. He might even have suspected Cordelia’s choice of more children, in the event of his premature death, and provided for it consciously.

There could have been no such thought for Jole, no place in Vor tradition or custom for this technological option, though one might perhaps stretch various provisions Vor lords sometimes made for their acknowledged bastards. But Jole’s sons would be legal and legitimate, properly fathered even in Barrayaran law, laboriously updated as it was. His lips twisted in dry amusement at that thought.

A Barrayaran admiral’s pay, though not generous by civilian or even galactic military standards, was expected to support a family, and normally did. Even an admiral’s retirement half-pay was less frugal than that of the prole household Jole had grown up in. His simple tastes had left him with more savings than he’d ever had the time to spend. It was merely a matter for careful management. Making do. You get what you pay for. He could choose to pay for this.

It wasn’t a father’s support this vision was missing, but a mother’s labor.

Jole’s childhood home had certainly not included servants. Yet even Cordelia, undeniably female, who’d grown up just as middling-prole and servant-less on Beta Colony, wasn’t planning to go it alone. Seventy-six might have something to do with that, true. Or just good sense.

On the other hand, Cordelia shared that noted Vorkosigan genius for personnel. If finding household help was a new challenge for Jole, Cordelia, forty years a high-Vor lady, even if simulated, certainly knew how by now. The obvious solution was to get her to find someone for him—hah. Problem solved. One did not reach Jole’s rank without learning how to delegate. He grinned, but his smile faded.

The nature of his work was a subtler problem. By oath, he owed the Emperor his time, his energy, his best efforts, and, if necessary, his life, all on an instant’s notice. How did that square with his taking on a twenty-year project of such profound responsibility? On the other hand, any parent, at any time, could be as unexpectedly run over by a groundcar. Maybe this wasn’t such a civilian versus military dilemma after all. Maybe it was a fundamental human risk. Which didn’t make it less intractable.

It came to Jole, staring around as he began to undress, that this space, however convenient it had been for his recent past, was much too small to hold his future. If he chose the great gamble.

Cordelia walked across the garden to the Vicereine’s Office the first morning of the next week in an exceptionally good mood. She and Oliver had managed an overnight at Shack One that past weekend, and found that its rustic delights not only stood up to repetition, but were enhanced by preparedness. They managed one sail devoted to actual sailing, and took out the crystal canoe that evening for a combination of sunset-watching and examination of the local lake fauna—Oliver had acquired a field guide and, while she steered them gently over the quiet shallows, attempted to match the exotic creatures he was seeing below with the images called up on his holo. The database, he informed her indignantly after this exercise, was entirely inadequate. She’d serenely agreed, while wondering how such a detail-oriented mind had managed to avoid the sciences all his life heretofore. Drawn away by all the pains and needs of Barrayar, as she had once been? Perhaps. He’d had the canoe out again alone early the following morning while she blissfully slept in, which she’d counted as a plus for both of them.

“Good morning, Ivy!” she cheerily greeted her executive secretary as she strolled into the outer office.

Ivy looked up from her comconsole, raised her eyebrows, and smiled back. Ivy Utkin also qualified as an old Sergyar hand, having arrived nearly two decades ago with her engineering-officer spouse and stayed on when he’d mustered out here. She’d held this post for about five years, shy and nervous at first but slowly growing into her tasks, and she’d been a life-saver for Cordelia all through the miserable stresses of Aral’s death and its aftermaths. Her children were mostly grown, but the experience of raising them while following the drum had endowed her with the brisk efficiency of someone who got everything done now, because she could be interrupted by the next emergency at any moment. Which made her an ideal fit for the Viceroy’s Office, to be sure. Also, she didn’t take her work home with her, which meant she didn’t bring more for her boss back.

“Your revised morning schedule is on your com,” Ivy reported. “First meeting in thirty minutes, the water quality people.” Ivy rose to follow her into the inner office. “Blaise is already here.”

Cordelia tried not to feel less cheery at this, and gave Blaise Gatti, who was perusing a hand-reader but jumped to his feet as she entered, as good a smile as the one she’d given Ivy. They settled into their usual chairs, three-around by the window overlooking the garden side of the building, and Cordelia braced herself for the morning briefing.

Blaise was new, having held the post of Press Officer for less than a year. And young, barely thirty. And excessively energetic. He had an interesting background as half-Komarran, born in the domes to a Komarran father and a francophone Barrayaran mother, and had arrived here after an early career with assorted Komarran news services upon the recommendation of one of Empress Laisa’s Toscane relatives, proving that nepotism was not solely a Barrayaran way of life. Cordelia wasn’t sure if it was because somebody’d thought she’d needed a younger face to represent the young colony, because his half-blood status would be less of an issue here, or because it was assumed that, after a lifetime of dealing with Aral and Miles, she’d know how to handle an adult hyperactive.

Her and Aral’s prior press officer had been an older fellow, much in the stodgy mode of the Barrayaran official news services from which he’d been recruited, who’d done exactly as he was told and nothing else, a quality she’d learned to appreciate more after he’d taken his lack of excitement home with him upon retirement. Blaise, well…she was still trying to get across to him that his job for her was not to create publicity, but rather, to make it go away. She wasn’t sure if he regarded his post as a culmination or a stepping stone, but she wouldn’t be surprised if Sergyar ended up seducing him as it had so many others. Including me?

“First thing to come in over the weekend,” Ivy began, “is a petition from something calling itself the Kareenburg Committee of Concerned Parents, asking you to declare deliberate worm scarification a misdemeanor.”

Cordelia had heard of the custom only peripherally—the latest local youth-fashion craze. The so-called worms were a Sergyaran parasite that, upon burrowing into the skin of a human host, became confused in its life-cycle by the rich alien biochemistry it encountered there. Instead of producing crops of new baby worms and dying, they settled in, still in their juvenile form, and hypertrophied. Tiny in their natural habitat, they grew in the adipose tissues to, usually, several centimeters long and a few thick, sluggishly twitching, though some whoppers had been recorded, upon surgical removal, at thirty centimeters and nearly a kilo in weight. Their main effects upon their human hosts were general debilitation, some allergic reactions, swelling, and disgust and horror, plus dangerous secondary infections following amateur attempts to dig them out. Old Sergyar hands could be identified by their arrays of faded worm scars. Overseeing the development and distribution of an effective anthelmintic vaccine had been one of Cordelia’s early triumphs as vicereine, she’d felt.

Some new young Sergyarans, apparently feeling deprived of their chance at this dramatic frontier debility, were now deliberately introducing the worms into their skins in attempts to grow them into artistic patterns. She’d seen a few pictures of the results. They mainly inspired her to want to invest some money in a plastic surgery clinic, but, all right, one or two human palettes had indeed been dramatic. And disgusting, of course. She gathered that was part of the point.

“You know, Aral and I went to a great deal of trouble to eradicate the worm plague…” And if she and Aral had made their first grim trek across Sergyar at a later season, they might have been the ones to discover the species themselves, but as it was that dubious distinction had been left for the early Barrayaran military occupation. Poor sods.

Ivy shrugged sympathetically.

“Nevertheless, I decline to get suckered into attempting to promulgate sumptuary regulations. And I’m not calling it cruelty to animals, either. Why is this even on my desk? Shouldn’t this have gone to the Kayburg town council?”

“It did, I understand,” said Ivy. “They ducked.”

“I see.” Cordelia frowned. Youth fashions were short-lived by their nature. Surely this would go away on its own by the time, say, Aurelia was Freddie Haines’s age…?

Blaise put in, “This could be an opportunity to please a vocal block of active and responsible subjects.”

“What, a bunch of parents who want me to do their jobs for them? And have you considered how the devil such a regulation could possibly be enforced? What an utterly pointless waste of political capital that would be. No.”

Blaise rubbed his chin, and switched tacks obediently. “Alternatively, I suppose refusal could be taken as tacit support of young people’s rights of self-determination. That could be popular, too.”

“I don’t see people, young or otherwise, as having a right to be idiots. It’s just impractical to try to stop them, unless they’re hurting somebody, and this sport—extreme art?—does not appear to be lethal. But it’s not my patch, as Oliver would say.”

“So…what do you want to say to them?”

Cordelia answered literally, and with some passion: “Don’t you people have some real work to do?”

Blaise looked taken aback. “I…are you sure, Vicereine?” And, after another moment, “Er…which ones?”

Ivy put her hand over her mouth, mercifully.

“All of them. But that was a joke, Blaise. Although nonetheless true.” Cordelia sighed. “Just bounce it back down with the standard The Viceroy’s Office declines to hear, Ivy. No comments. Tempted as I am to make some.”

“Yes, Your Excellency.” Ivy bent her head and made a note, incidentally hiding her smile. She looked back up. “Second, an invitation for you to speak at the twelfth anniversary of the founding of SWORD.”

“What?” asked Blaise.

“The Sex WOrkers’ Rights and Dignity association,” Cordelia clarified. She smiled in fond reminiscence. “At the time Aral and I first arrived as joint viceroys, a grubby stretch of Kayburg out by the base was having a bit of a crime wave. Some very unpleasant men had taken control of the sex trade, and were making things difficult for everyone. The military wives were complaining, the officers were unhappy with the debasing effects on their subordinates, there were beatings, adulterated drinks and bad drugs, crooked gambling, a couple of murders, the usual. Aral took the base side and I took the civil side. I decided that the quickest and most long-term solution would be to unionize the girls, and the few fellows, of course. It took a little while to get the idea across, but they cottoned on and self-organized very well, once they had some real protection.”

“Was it, er, dangerous?” Blaise inquired, staring at her.

“It took me a bit of doing to get some of the stupider pimps to actually make threats in front of witnesses. At that point, they had officially committed treason, and they entered a world of hurt of which they’d never before dreamed. ImpSec does have its uses, sometimes. A couple of the smarter ones tried moving directly to action, which, alas, proved fatal. The very smartest one rolled over and cooperated, and in fact is still in the trade—he joined the Union, too. Proved to be one of their better organizers, once he’d figured out the new rules.

“Once the initial issues were settled, I was able to import a team of Licensed Practical Sexuality Therapists from Beta Colony on short-term contracts to do some wholesale sex education for the Union and its members. And, obliquely, their customers. Most of the customers really liked the new regime—safer, among other things. And better and nicer in other ways, too, I gather. Certainly healthier. Unsurprisingly. A few soldiers couldn’t adjust, and tried complaining up their chain of command. Got some support from enough of the old guard to give them a chip on their shoulders. Aral very kindly undertook to knock it off. Held a meeting. Brief, as he was the only speaker. Very few words. Showed a short vid of his public execution of the very first commander of the Sergyar base, the officer who had permitted the abuses of the Escobaran POWs quartered here, back during that war.” Cordelia grimaced in sudden, too-vivid memory. And not of the vid. “He said the room was very quiet when he was done.”

“Oh,” said Blaise. “Er.” After a distracted moment he added, “Shouldn’t it be called SHEATH?”

“Hah. You try to think of a name to go with that acronym.”

Ivy glanced at her chrono. “About the speech?”

Cordelia sighed. “I am so burned out on speaking. They deserve better. See if you can persuade Dr. Tatiana to find something good for them.” One of the Betan therapists who had stayed on. The Tatiana part was a professional name; the doctorate was real. She was one of Cordelia’s favorite Betan ex-pats, whom she frequently invited to Palace social events when she needed someone to enliven the party. Ivy nodded and made another note.

The secretary glanced at her panel and remarked, “The Red Creek murder-case appeals trial has been delayed another week.”

Some of the light seemed to drain out of the morning. Cordelia said, “Part of me is glad. Part of me wants to get it over with. I hope they finish it off on that level.”

Blaise perked up. “Is it likely to reach the Viceroy’s Office, do you think? That could be big news.”

By Sergyaran standards only, Cordelia reflected. She shrugged. “Most capital cases eventually do, as we’re the last stop for appeals. Petitions for pardon or commutation by that time, usually. Except for Vor charged with treason, which could go to Vorbarr Sultana, but we haven’t had any of those, thankfully. The Sergyaran courts do a pretty good job of sorting out the facts. I am so grateful for fast-penta. I can’t imagine how horrific these decisions must have been back when there was real uncertainty over whether the perpetrator had been correctly identified.” She added after a moment, “Fortunately, our criminal capital cases are few. Aral and I only had to deal with a couple a year. Far more Sergyarans manage to kill each other by accident than by intent. I suppose the numbers will inevitably change as the population grows.”

The Red Creek case was especially ugly. And stupid, as these things tended to be. A woman’s boyfriend had killed her in a domestic brawl, so far so crime-of-passion. The woman, Cordelia gathered from the reports she’d seen so far, had been in her own scattered way a piece of work herself. But then, in a panic, the man had also pursued her two small witnessing children through the house and murdered them as well, then tried to hide all the bodies by burning the place to the ground. His first trial had been local and short. The appeal didn’t look too hopeful for him, either.

Blaise said, cautiously, “Will that also be a The Viceroy’s Office declines to hear, then?”

“Oh, Aral and I always went over all the material the courts and any other source we could find could supply. First separately, then together. Watched the recordings of the penta-interrogations. Once, we even repeated an interrogation ourselves, to be certain.” Cordelia’s lips thinned at the unpleasant memory. “‘Declines to hear’ is just a shorthand for ‘We’re not going to reverse the court’s decision.’ We had some pretty intense debates sometimes, coming as we did from, so to speak, two very different legal traditions.

“The Betans would consider something like this a matter for nonvoluntary sociopath therapy. Up to and including neurological rewiring, if there were underlying physical deficits discovered. Of course, Beta has far fewer such cases to start with, as in”—Cordelia almost said our culture, but it hadn’t really been hers since the Pretender’s War, had it—“that culture, therapies would be supplied at a much earlier stage. Barrayaran legal theory, according to Aral, holds that humans have a natural right to revenge, but that leads to blood-feuds, so subjects cede their natural right to their overlords, who are beyond revenge, in exchange for justice administered on their behalf. Which derails the blood-feuds, but obliges the overlords in turn to actually supply the justice. He took that very seriously.”

“Who, uh, won these debates?” Blaise asked.

“‘Winning’ is a null concept, here. There was never any good prize. We were able to see our way to a few commutations. The rest were declined. Once, I was all set for a test case—I was going to send a convicted man to Beta Colony, paid for out of my own purse, for full-on nonvoluntary therapy. To demonstrate the feasibility of importing that system to Sergyar. Instead, he managed, with some difficulty, to commit suicide a couple of days before he was due to be shipped out. Irrationally terrified, or just being Barrayaran, it was hard to tell.” Was there a difference? “So I’m still looking for a test case.” She wasn’t sure the Red Creek matter was it, though. Or that I would/wouldn’t pull the trigger on this jerk myself was the right metric. “I’ve considered offering the next convicted person a choice, death or therapy, but that feels awfully like ducking out of my Imperially mandated responsibility.”

Blaise said slowly—slowly was good, in his case—“I suppose I had not thought about it from that vantage. What it must feel like to hold life or death in your hands.”

Cordelia drummed her fingers on her chair arm, and frowned. “When I was about your age, I earned my first Betan Astronomical Survey ship command. For every blind wormhole jump my ship’s probe-pilot made, the final go-or-no-go decision was mine.” Jumping into death, or the splendor of scientific discovery? Most often, of course, jumping into nothing much, or just more jumps. No wonder she’d never found gambling for money to be interesting. “They were volunteers, of course. We all were, out there. It’s…something that comes up on the supervisory level of a lot of professions.” The military most of all, she supposed.

She added after a moment, thinking back to Blaise’s remark that had triggered this spate of reminiscence, “Nevertheless, this Office will not make theater out of lives.” Ah, wasn’t that very like something Aral had said, decades ago?

Blaise looked frustrated, but did not argue. Ivy glanced at him and tapped her chrono.

“Press report for the weekend,” he dutifully began. One of his jobs—his main job, from Cordelia’s point of view—was to watch the local civilian news feeds and filter up anything she needed-to-know. Better him than her, and it entirely suited his ferretlike attention span. ImpSec performed a similar task, behind the scenes, but their focus was different. “Top of the list are the Lake Serena rumors.”

Cordelia blinked. Now it was her turn for a cautious tone. “Lake Serena rumors?”

“From your repeated inspection trips out there with Admiral Jole, recently. There are several. First is that it is being planned as a new development site, perhaps for a military installation. It’s started a flurry of land speculation out in that sector—you can probably look for a spate of proposals submitted to the Office soon.”

“Two of them popped up on my comconsole this morning,” Ivy confirmed this. “I wondered where they were coming from.” She regarded Cordelia with alert interest.

We were just taking some time off! Cordelia converted this indignant protest into a leading, “Hm, and…?”

“Next, that some new hazard has been discovered out that way. Biological or volcanic. The Kareenburg development community has been denying that one as loudly as they can.”

“Ah, well, they would. I think we can leave them to get on with it. Anything else?”

“Oh, that Lake Serena has been discovered to have a carbon dioxide inversion zone, like that weird lake south of Mount Stewart.”

Cordelia had managed to get that one named Lake Lethal on the map, in hopes of discouraging settlers. An utterly fascinating place, scientifically speaking. Lethal was a deep lake with volcanic gas seepage under it. The weight of the water, above, acted like a cap on a soda water bottle, trapping the gas until, every fifty or a hundred years, some chain reaction of a disturbance released it all at once. The colorless, odorless, heavy gas then erupted from the water and spread through the low places nearby, asphyxiating any animal life that unluckily chanced to be present. It was especially dangerous in windless conditions.

“Good grief, Serena is much too shallow for that!”

“Do you want me to issue a denial to that effect?”

“Lord, no. The conspiracy theorists would go wild, and we’d never hear the end of it. Let the science boffins at the university correct them. Or try to correct them.” Sergyar’s sole university was, well, not quite as primitive as Penney’s Shack One, but it certainly was trying hard to get big education out of tiny budgets. Cordelia slung it what support she could. “Dignified silence, that’s the ticket.”

Blaise, with a kicked-puppy look, stopped mentally writing a bulletin. “What was it all about, then? Is it secret?”

“Not at all. Admiral Jole very kindly…took me sailing. It’s something we used to enjoy with Aral, you know. Because a nice day off outdoors helps keep people sane and happy. So I can come back to a week of this”—a vague wave around took in the Viceroy’s Office as an entity as well as a building—“and not be driven as mad as Emperor Yuri. Think of it as…nautical therapy, or something.” We were dating, dammit! She wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or piqued that this didn’t seem to be part of the gossip.

Ivy shot her a curious look, but then it was time to break things up and go tend to the water-fight. Cordelia only wished it could be with real water, and not with words. More words.