fermata

[isthisart]

Linya sees Dr. Cheung onto a ship other than the Ariel, which agrees to tote him to Komarr very, very slowly, knocking him out for each jump and having someone look after him when he comes around green in the gills. It's not going to be a fun trip for him, but it's better than trying to collaborate with a multi-week conversational turnaround time. It's pricey - the ship has nonperishable cargo with no deadline at its destination and already employs a medtech, but still - but she thinks it's worth it.

Her business on Earth concluded, she examines the list of tourist attractions she didn't get around to, determines that none of them are worth sticking around for, and gets on a much faster vessel and goes all the way home. The first thing she does when there is go looking for whichever of the Count or Countess is easiest to find.

Comments

[thisvorlunatic]

"There you go, then. And then I suppose we decide when we want to start him... I confess I'm still nervous about the parenting aspect of this operation."

[isthisart]

"He'll be precocious; I don't know if that helps or does the very opposite."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I don't know either."

[isthisart]

"I've been taking notes from Ekaterin's example and I am not particularly intimidated, but there's no rush. Any halfway decent replicator can be bought well in advance and permitted to collect dust in a closet until you're good and ready."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yeah. That sounds good to me."

[isthisart]

She kisses his forehead. "But he is going to be outrageously cute."

[thisvorlunatic]

"In the best family tradition."

[isthisart]

"With his dad's eyes and everything."

[thisvorlunatic]

[isthisart]

Time passes. They're at Vorkosigan Surleau, so when Linya isn't working or hand-feeding her husband she takes the lightflyer up to zoom around and think. She writes a song about nothing in particular.

She says to Miles, after a few more days:

"How's your war story supply?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Nigh bottomless. Let's see. Would you like the story of why I'm never visiting Jackson's Whole again? Or the story of how the Dendarii pulled off the third biggest prisoner-of-war escape in history?"

[isthisart]

"Those both sound fascinating. Can I have them in the same volume?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"They're not actually all that connected, except that some ass from Accounting decided to grill Illyan about what he spent on them, so they're fresh in my mind. Would you like them in chronological order?"

[isthisart]

"Sure."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Right. So Jackson's Whole is, well, a hole. How much do you know about the place? Do I need to explain what various Houses do and who runs them or will you be sufficiently informed if I just say 'Fell, Ryoval, and Bharaputra'?"

[isthisart]

"I haven't made much of a study of the place. I don't plan to ever visit, on the grounds that it is not a civilized planet. But I know Bharaputra's specialty."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Heh. So. Fell does weapons. Ryoval does ghastly prostitution, often in the form of custom bioengineered sex-slaves. At the time of my first, latest, and hopefully last visit, Baron Fell was a man named Georish Stauber, half-brother to Baron Ryoval. Not that I knew that genealogical detail going in. Do you also know about the Jacksonian brain-transplant business?"

[isthisart]

She makes a face. "Yes. If Dr. Cheung gets anywhere I may be able to render it partially obsolete."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I will happily dance on its partial metaphorical grave. Anyway. Ryoval was on his second body at the time; Fell still on his first. And Fell had just had an attempted transplant-clone assassinated before the operation could be carried out. Fell suspected Ryoval, because they hate each other. The mission that dropped me in the middle of this mess was to pick up a geneticist, Dr. Hugh Canaba, who wanted to quit House Bharaputra. My cover was a Dendarii resupply at House Fell. I took the Ariel, me and Thorne went to schmooze with Baron Fell at one of his parties, and Thorne immediately developed an enormous crush on a quaddie musician Fell had performing - do you know quaddies?"

[isthisart]

"I've heard of them. I haven't met any."

[thisvorlunatic]

"She played the, what was it, double-sided hammer dulcimer, quite exquisitely. Thorne was infatuated. Then Ryoval sauntered along and made remarks about how he'd like to purchase her, and Fell made remarks about how he would ever so politely rather Ryoval go jump in a lake, and Thorne got into an offended rant about how selling people is illegal, and Ryoval decided that this was the height of humour and proceeded to bait it expertly for a few minutes until I had to drag it back onto the ship."

[isthisart]

"What a lovely place to live, if only the rent weren't so high," mutters Linya.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Quite. So. Canaba then called me up demanding an in-person audience before his covert pickup, which I was forced to grant because he threatened not to show up otherwise, and my orders were very clear on the subject of getting that man off the planet and onto Barrayar. He's still around, by the way, I can tell you his new name if you promise not to let on that you know anything at all about where he came from. Canaba spun me a tale about how he'd been part of a team commissioned to create a super-soldier by mixing human and animal genes, and he'd stored some samples of his other work in the last living prototype of this failed project, for unclear reasons. Then House Bharaputra sold the beast to House Ryoval. Canaba wanted me to sneak in, grab his samples, kill the critter, and sneak out again. I tried to buy the prototype first, but Ryoval decided to take the opportunity to demand that I trade him an illicitly obtained gene sample from Fell's quaddie musician. I declined this honour, and therefore had to go with the sneak-in-and-grab method."

[isthisart]

"Why did he want the super-soldier killed?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Because he was a selfish arrogant ass. Well, and all the other prototypes had died agonizing deaths of premature old age and this one was slated to do the same after an unknown period of time spent in Ryoval's sex dungeons, so he imagined he was doing it a favour in the asking."