façade

[isthisart]

Linya gradually feels her way around being proper friends with Ekaterin, not wishing to wreck things with a premature "will you be my Second at my duplicate wedding" request. There is companionable gardening. There is, when Linya and Jocelyn make an unexpected sudden breakthrough in causing the nibs to behave, which holds when they fabricate a prototype and test it out, a fountain pen for Ekaterin. (In addition to Miles's and Count Vorkosigan's. And one for Emperor Gregor, which has got to be worth all the R&D in advertising alone.) When Miles's legs are more or less completely healed, they skip off to Vorkosigan Surleau for a few days and he teaches her to fly a lightflyer, which she enjoys very much and picks up very quickly. Linya writes Miles a song. (It has no words, she doesn't feel up to lyrics, but it is very pretty and slightly different every time she plays/sings it.) With the nibs handled and all the Barrayaran languages learned Linya spends more time reading textbooks and signs up for a university placement exam to see how far ahead into advanced classes on various things she can skip, and awaits her results.

And snuggles her tiny Barrayaran.

Comments

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles contemplates this spectacle.

Miles pictures his original mission plan written on a plastic flimsy, and pictures himself taking that flimsy and crumpling it into a ball and stuffing it down a waste chute.

This creature, this Seven, is far from the doomed genetic mistake that Dr. Canaba described. He walks, he talks, he washes, he weeps; Miles can think of no viable definition of human from which this - man? boy? how old is he? - should be excluded. He is surprised by the strength of his own protective feelings.

When Seven unclasps the heat pipe and rubs at his eyes, Miles moves closer, seeking some of that warmth for himself. And answers. God, for some answers.

"They - um - call you Seven?" The old joke about who Six is afraid of flashes through his mind. He suppresses it as wildly inappropriate.

[ofthestars]

"Yeah. What do they call you?" he inquires, shifting to one side to allow Miles a spot in the cozy breeze.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Admiral Miles Naismith."

[ofthestars]

"Hm," says Seven. "I always thought officers would be... bigger."

[thisvorlunatic]

...Despite himself, Miles giggles.

"You're not the only one," he confides. "It's hell sometimes, trying to get people to pay attention. I have to be twice as spectacular as the next guy."

[ofthestars]

Seven nods thoughtfully.

"What did you do to get thrown down here?"

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles does a rapid evaluation of how much truth he can safely get away with. He fears strong reactions if he reveals the exact parameters of his mission.

"I was... actually looking for you," he says. "I'd heard something about some kind of super-soldier prototype being sold to Ryoval - actually, come to think, the first I heard of it was when the Baron got a call about what I suspect is what got you thrown down here. Three days or so ago, wasn't it? There was a, um, customer...? Described as 'mercifully unconscious'."

[ofthestars]

Seven displays teeth. The 'fangs' description may have been exaggerated, but not by all that much.

"I'm surprised he lived. Go on."

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles manages not to gulp.

"So - so anyway, it seems to me that nobody deserves to be sold to Ryoval, and it seems to me that I could productively offer you a job, if I managed to get you away from him. I tried buying you first, but he didn't want to sell. Tried breaking in next - I got as far as interrogating their security chief before they caught me. I think they threw me in with you for ironic purposes, but I might as well make the most of it while I'm here... how do you feel about joining the Dendarii Mercenaries? We feed our recruits," he says, which he imagines will be a strong temptation. "And clothe them and house them and arm them and train them. Real soldier's training - I expect you haven't had a lot of that. What do you say?"

[ofthestars]

Seven looks around contemplatively at their surroundings.

Then he shrugs.

"I'm out of rats. Might as well. You get me out of here, I'll join your thing."

[thisvorlunatic]

"We'll get each other out of here," he promises. "Recruit-trainee... look, do you like being called Seven?"

[ofthestars]

He shakes his head.

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles free-associates - beast, maze -

"Asterion," he says decisively, climbing to his chilled and aching feet. "Recruit-trainee Asterion. Let's have a look around."

[ofthestars]

Asterion smiles. It is infinitely less terrifying than the previous example.

[thisvorlunatic]

God, but Miles's heart aches...

"How old are you, Recruit-trainee Asterion?"

[ofthestars]

He claws his hair out of his face and follows Miles into the dark. "Fifteen and three months, standard."

[thisvorlunatic]

A veritable child, younger even than Miles was when he launched his premature galactic military career. Miles vividly recalls being fifteen and a freak. The well of his sympathy deepens.

"I got in here through the ducts. My team would boost me up, and I'd scurry around until I found out how to open the door they were stuck behind, then come back to collect them. I'm thinking of employing a similar strategy on the way out, provided we can find a duct for me to scurry into. How well do you know this hole in the ground?"

[ofthestars]

"Pretty well." He points out various features. "There's the ladder you came down, and three more, there and there and there - only one of them has a handle up top, and that's been locked every time I've tried it. There's a few different kinds of pillars all over the place. Over by the far end there's a big door that looks like it's supposed to roll up, but the controls to roll it up with don't work, or I couldn't get them to."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Right," says Miles. "So..." He thinks aloud. "We can head straight out the door, if I can get it open. And trek twenty-seven kilometers barefoot through the snow to the nearest settlement, with no money or comm equipment to call for a ride at the end of it. Or we can hang around and look for some promising ducts and see if we can't make off with something useful. The kit they took away from me when they caught me would be a prime start. I think I'm going to go with ducts on this one. Agreed?"

[ofthestars]

Asterion ponders, then nods.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Right," says Miles.

He begins an intensive search of the various available openings. The likeliest prospect, once Asterion has torn off the grille and delivered him into it, proves to be a bust; in one direction it splits into two smaller branches through which he could not hope to fit, and in the other direction, it ends in a grille that resists the strongest pressure he dare apply with his bare, fragile hands. His leg bones having recently been reinforced, he considers trying to kick it out, but doubts he could muster enough leverage in the awkward curve of the duct. Dejectedly, he inches back out again.

[ofthestars]

His recruit-trainee reaches up unasked to help him return safely to the ground.

"No good?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"No good," he confirms, shaking his head. "Need something else..." For lack of anything better to do, he starts pacing back toward the previous most likely duct, ruled out because Asterion's sharper night vision spotted that the passage above the grille was too flat to admit even so pre-squashed a human as Miles.

Something catches his eye on one of the larger, fancier support columns. He changes direction and heads toward it to inspect the groove in the near side.

"Does this look like a panel that comes off to you?" he mutters, half to himself. "It does to me..." He knocks on the side of the column and gets back a hollow echo. "Right..." A minute's careful prodding reveals a pair of recessed buttons on either side of the mysterious outline, which when he presses them simultaneously cause the outlined panel to pop off in his hands, nearly overbalancing him and a moment later nearly tumbling from his grip into the column's unlit depths.

[ofthestars]

Asterion catches it and helps him set it down outside the column, then regards him with a mildly impressed expression.

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles grins, buoyed by his success.

"All right, you're the one who can see in the dark - want to poke your head in there and tell me what we're looking at?"