symphony

[isthisart]

The day of the party approaches. Linya learns a Barrayaran-original solo piano symphony, adds some flourishes of her own where the composer has marked that it may be played "freely", memorizes the whole thing, and arranges to be playing it on the grand piano when party guests file in on the day of. She smiles and nods at them and takes note of how they arrange themselves in the room; there are thirteen minutes in the piece unless she decides she needs an extra three (if there seem to be a lot of stragglers; if there isn't a good path to the people she wants to meet and around the people she wants to avoid) and takes the repeat at the end to prolong it.

She doesn't wind up taking the repeat; the end of the symphony without it has her playing the final chord when Lord Auditor Vorthys is nearer than anyone she's hoping to evade. She counts out the beats, holds for a moment longer, and then lifts her hands from the keyboard. She has decided that given her choice of titles she's going to address this particular guest as -

"Professor Vorthys."

Comments

[isthisart]

"Any production worth producing. Even if the invasion had somehow, bloodlessly, overnight, acquired Barrayar, the integration project would have been -" Linya pauses, unable to think of a polite word for "a clusterfuck". She shakes her head in lieu of generating alternative vocabulary. "And even if the bloodless overnight acquisition was accompanied by seamless magical cultural integration, why? I don't think anyone involved was motivated by the desire to see Barrayar or Barrayarans grow and thrive. It doesn't have galactic strategic importance, there is nowhere to go from here but to turn around and leave the same way one comes in. Cetaganda isn't overwhelmingly hemmed in for need of living space; no one was planning to park excess proles on your excess wilderness and work diligently on converting the soil and beating back the native wildlife so they'd have a place to raise children or open clusters of restaurants or what have you. It just looked like an easy target to people with bad judgment, obviously, and the decisionmakers - were acquisitive, wanted to look accomplished to the people who judged them, didn't need a better reason and so didn't trouble to turn one up or pause for its lack."

[first_loyalty]

"...that might be the most insightful analysis of the Cetagandan invasion I've ever heard," says Ekaterin, blinking. "I mean - I don't want to give the impression that it's competing with very much, but - I feel like I understand things that I didn't before."

[isthisart]

"...Really?"

[first_loyalty]

"Yes. I... haven't heard very many people seriously thinking about, well, what the Cetagandans were thinking. I think."

[isthisart]

"Some of them may have had more complex thought processes, but I guarantee a lot of them thought let's go conquer that technologically backward planet and we'll be home in time for lunch and the Emperor will give us the Order of Merit and a haut-wife apiece."

[first_loyalty]

She giggles slightly. "Oh, dear. One is almost tempted to feel sorry for them. If it weren't for - the details of what they wre trying to do."

[isthisart]

"I'm not particularly tempted. I'm reasonably sure that the same ghem-generals who didn't give a second thought to how the Barrayarans would feel about the matter also didn't spare a moment to wonder if their prospective wives were going to be willing participants."

[first_loyalty]

"Well - yes. I just have an instinctive sympathy for people who make poor decisions thinking they will be rewarded, and get the opposite."

[isthisart]

"Why?"

[first_loyalty]

"Because... it's easier to forgive stupidity than malice?"

[isthisart]

"Hmm - I have some sympathy for stupidity but less for thoughtlessness."

[first_loyalty]

"I... see what you mean."

[isthisart]

"Although it's possible I'd have less sympathy for stupidity if I had to endure more of it in close quarters than I've historically had to."

[first_loyalty]

"Have you had to endure a lot of thoughtlessness...?"

[isthisart]

"Some. Arbitrarily intelligent people can decide that they don't care."

[first_loyalty]

"And... what don't they care about?"

[isthisart]

"Well, for a ready-to-hand example - whether I wanted to conform to the standard laid out for me in its every particular."

[first_loyalty]

"Oh." She nods sympathetically.

[isthisart]

"I managed - obviously - but a more thoughtful setup might have some release valve for malcontents besides allowing a small fraction of one sex to occasionally get married and thereby leave behind anything we might have actually liked about our initial situation all in one motion."

[first_loyalty]

"Yes. It seems like... any amount of thought could have improved the situation. The definition of thoughtlessness, I suppose."

[isthisart]

"Exactly."

[first_loyalty]

"How would you improve that situation, if you could?"

[isthisart]

"If you put me in charge of haut social structures and we assumed everyone would go along with my plan? Well, then I'd want to think about it considerably more and talk to some people, but off the top of my head - I'd have an option for haut of either sex to demote themselves at will to ghem. No marriage required, you'd have to work out what clan to count them as belonging to or whether to count them as having clans at all but something could be worked out. Ghem are often motivated by things that keep them in more or less approved order - they want status and positions and advantageous marriages and so on - but they have none of the restrictions on their movement that were so annoying to me. They can emigrate or take up some economically productive activity if they want, they can associate with haut who want them around and with proles if they care to.

"If I'd been allowed to do that, I would probably have waited until I was a little older - no sense turning down the education and resources before I needed to trade them in for freedom of movement if the possibility would still be waiting for me when I was twenty-three or what have you. And then I'd have sold pens or opened a commercial genomics consultation clinic on Illyrica or performed music for audiences larger than whichever fifty haut were invited to this or that party. Or all of the above and then some. Without having to marry someone who - I've been very lucky, I love my husband, but I didn't exactly know Miles well when I seized on the idea of running off with him."

[first_loyalty]

"Hmm," says Ekaterin. "Not a solution I ever would have imagined, and I can't help thinking there would be trouble if someone tried it... but maybe it would be better for everyone if they had designed it that way from the start. Since the Cetagandans seem to design everything anyway."

[isthisart]

"Yes. Unfortunately, 'let's design the haut to like being haut in exactly the way we have arranged for being haut to be' is a strategy with a non-negligible failure rate."