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]

"Male haut just go around with ghem guards in the same contexts ladies use bubbles, but it's much harder to ride those around at speed and crash into your friends."

[first_loyalty]

"Oh dear, yes."

[isthisart]

"I mean, I'm sure it's been tried, but probably not successfully."

[first_loyalty]

"It seems like the guards themselves might object, and it would be hard to arrange without their cooperation."

[isthisart]

"Yes. And the ones escorting little boys here and there work for the constellation, not for the little boys. By the time haut-lords employ their own retinues they're a bit old to sit on their shoulders and order a charge full speed ahead."

[first_loyalty]

"I'm sure the guards are happy about that," giggles Ekaterin.

[isthisart]

"I'd assume, yes. I've generally found it a little hard to get a clear read on how more or less anybody working for the haut felt about it. There are far too many clear expectations about how they ought to feel about it and this could be rather obscuring."

[first_loyalty]

"Oh. Hmm. Yes, I can see how that might be - like you said, obscuring."

[isthisart]

"The ghem at least have to have sought their jobs at some point with something north of indifference. I worry more about the ba servitors."

[first_loyalty]

"I don't know what one of those is," confesses Ekaterin.

[isthisart]

"I think they're very little known outside Cetaganda - outside haut circles in particular, I suppose. The ba are a class of sexless individuals every bit as engineered as the haut - often more so, because they're a testing ground for most new ideas for genetic tweaks - which do most of the day to day servitor work around constellations, private haut estates, and other relevant establishments. There is - nothing else for them to do and nowhere else for them to go, they are every bit as smart and talented and highly potentiated as haut are by express design, and - by some mechanism no one ever detailed to me - they turn out uniformly loyal and malleable servants who do everything from raising baby haut to cooking to chauffeuring to lab assistant work. It doesn't seem to actively distress any ba I have ever met, or I might have prioritized doing something about it over other projects, but it's somewhere in the neighborhood of tragedy in a quiet way. At least on a collective level haut indolence is self-inflicted; the same cannot be said of ba servitude."

[first_loyalty]

"...I can't help thinking that - you might not know if they were distressed," says Ekaterin. "They might not be inclined to let on."

[isthisart]

"Well, yes, of course, expectations for how they ought to feel about haut apply even more strongly to ba than ghem. But I am haut, so - if some ba who is in distress declines to communicate this in any way to any haut - then while they might benefit from help, I have no way to let them benefit from my help. Even a dramatic show of interest-in-helping-ba intending to gain their trust would have me making some sort of intervention in their lives without their cooperation."

[first_loyalty]

"I see. But... are they ever going to get any help from anyone who isn't haut?"

[isthisart]

"There are more ba than haut - by a factor of something like five or six, I think. They could do it themselves if they fomented sufficient dissent. Ba sometimes interact with ghem and even proles. And of the haut - Lisbet is very - sensible and methodical, but in a sort of - careful way accompanied by people skills that absolutely dwarf mine. I have a lot of high hopes for her tenure in various spheres, this one included. She has more coordination power than I could possibly have acquired in any span not measured in decades; if there is something that haut in general can do to be kinder to ba then she is likelier than I to find out what it is without upsetting any ba in the process and dramatically more able to effect its happening."

[first_loyalty]

"Oh. Well, that's good, then. Lisbet is... the Empress you mentioned before?" she hazards.

[isthisart]

"Yes, that's her. I imagine she'll have some spare time between stages of designing the next Emperor."

[first_loyalty]

"...Is that... what Cetagandan empresses do?"

[isthisart]

"That's a principal component of the job, yes. Design the Emperor, or possibly several Emperor-candidates for the existing Emperor to choose between; approve novel genomics projects and oversee less experimental creations; participate in the occasional awarding of haut-brides to worthy recipients."

[first_loyalty]

"On Barrayar we don't design our Emperors. They sort of - well, I suppose 'happen by accident' isn't quite right..."

[isthisart]

"Random assembly," supplies Linya. "Is I think a reasonably neutral term."

[first_loyalty]

"Random assembly. Yes, that sounds much better."

[isthisart]

"And the term of art I've been using for unengineered organisms is 'heirloom' - which is complimentary in every sense except for being originally meant to describe produce."

[first_loyalty]

"I see. Does that make me an... heirloom human? I've never thought of myself in terms of not being engineered before."

[isthisart]

"You are indeed an heirloom human," says Linya. "It wouldn't be a particularly useful term if there were no other genetic engineering products besides the haut, but there are also of course the ba, and the ghem get some engineering done, and there are plenty of things elsewhere in the galaxy where it's practiced. I'm sure all manner of things and people have been made on Jackson's Whole, for instance."