dissonance

[isthisart]

Dr. Cheung's at a funeral all day, so Linya decides to go up to London and see if Miles is out of his Mood.

Security has decided to be deeply unhelpful today. She is currently showing them various forms of ID and repeating in a slow, patient voice that she has been here before, there is not more than one of her, and she promises she is not there to assassinate her husband or whatever fool thing has them skittish today. Perhaps she shouldn't drop in while the captain's missing; it seems to make them worse. But she got in before while he was missing...

Comments

[isthisart]

"His excuse for not picking up your pen involved a fractured metacarpal. I imagine this was fictitious whether that would have been easy to do or not."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Probably. Because, again, broken bones make it difficult to do things."

[isthisart]

"I'm still not completely ruling out the possibility that in addition to Mark there is some cohort of other clones with increasingly obscure ancestral designations," says Linya, "even if Naismith isn't among their number."

"He's...?"

"Informed me," Linya says dryly to Galeni, "that my husband is both lieutenant and admiral, simultaneously, and that what I picked up in the street the other day was a convincing act."

"He kept his cover after you picked him up? Literally picked him up?"

"Yes. Incompletely. I was suspicious but didn't think he'd have had his mercenary fleet answer my job bid; apparently that was done without his oversight at all."

"Ah."

"I assume you knew about the double identity."

"Yes, I suppose it doesn't matter if I confirm it now."

[thisvorlunatic]

"There isn't actually a strong custom for third and so on sons," Miles mentions. "Although I think I read somewhere that some families have been known to start going through the great-grandparents in various contrived orders."

[isthisart]

"Well, that will be good to know if we find ourselves free to go and I manage to confirm your identity and we decant a little Aral Adri only to find that parenthood agrees with us overwhelmingly well and we want six," she sighs.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Now I'm tempted to start listing great-grandparents... I don't know Mother's side off the top of my head, but Father's grandfathers were Xav Aral Vorbarra and Demyan Antoly Vorkosigan."

[isthisart]

"Xav is Ivan's middle name, seems unnecessary duplicatory. Demyan isn't bad, Antoly's already on the list for Son Two..."

[thisvorlunatic]

"And then, let's see... Prince Xav's wife was Betan again, can't go back from there, but his father was Dorca Vorbarra, obviously. Come to think of it I don't think I know Dorca the Just's middle name. Then Grandfather's grandfathers were Pierre Vorrutyer whose middle name I don't remember either, and Piotr Isidor Vorkosigan. You get a lot of duplicates with this method, I'm discovering. A distinct flaw."

[isthisart]

"Yes. We might have to get a baby name book."

Galeni appears entirely nonplussed to be bearing witness to this conversation.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Or collect suggestions. God knows who from."

[isthisart]

"I am now imagining your father being very awkward about the question."

(Galeni looks, if anything, more nonplussed still.)

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yes, you do seem to bring that out in him."

[isthisart]

"Perhaps he'll get used to me eventually." She looks up at the light fixture. "Unless of course we are all shot the next time the door opens."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Unless that," agrees Miles. "But they'd have trouble hauling all the bodies away. Except mine - I'm nice and light."

[isthisart]

"Come to think of it Mark was heavier. Not outside normal range, but heavier."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Point in favour of my bones theory."

[isthisart]

"It is. That one probably wasn't fragile. I just don't see why they couldn't have made an arbitrary number, to swap in depending on what kind of scrutiny they expected or what, exactly, they were trying to do."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Cost. I've been to Jackson's Whole. Producing one accelerated clone is fucking expensive, beyond most people's means. Producing ten, beyond all but the richest. Producing fifty - at that point they might as well just buy several mercenary armies and wage open war. I might grant that they could have two, if they desperately wanted to, but they could only send one to Barrayar in my place - any theory that assumes they have the means to send both strongly implies they also have the means to swap them in for me without waiting for me to fall into their collective lap on Earth."

[isthisart]

"I don't know how they were funded," Linya points out.

"Komarran expatriates who got their money out early," mutters Galeni.

"...A large but probably not princely sum by the standards of Jackson's Whole, I'd imagine?"

Galeni nods.

"I will still want to sit down and have a long, long conversation in which you produce more trivia about our history than you had time to give them before you started Macbeth," Linya tells Miles, "but I will for the time being go on referring to my husband in the second person."

[thisvorlunatic]

He nods, semi-happily.

[isthisart]

"How much of a disaster is this going to be with Captain Illyan?" she wonders. "The having told me, I mean, rather than concocting an elaborate story that retained separation between you and Naismith."

[thisvorlunatic]

"At this point I'm inclined to say that if Illyan feels like complaining about my choices he can bugger himself," says Miles. "With a plasma arc. I suppose it's possible he might fire me, but if we all get out of this alive I very much doubt it."

[isthisart]

"What would you have done if you'd tried to sell me the story and I hadn't gotten the job bid? ...For that matter, did you wind up having to write your mother in case I did the same? I didn't, as it happens, but..."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Of course I wrote my mother. I - don't know what I would have done. Tried harder, probably."

[isthisart]

"I confess it's rather alarming that you were that good at lying to my face, even if I already had fair warning that you'd try it if you had to. Didn't even have the - flinch."