overture

[isthisart]

Nine days into their fourteen-day trip, the courier ship arrives in the Komarr system. Five more jumps to go. Miles is not yet capable of peeling himself off a willing Linya before he passes out (and willingness is in no short supply), and the resulting peculiar sleep schedule causes Ivan no end of giggling. Linya draws him diagrams of more complicated braids as aspirational goals (getting five and a half feet of slidy-soft hair to be in even the simplest braid properly is a little tricky), which induces Miles to spend most of a day fascinatedly braiding and rebraiding her hair in various configurations. She, meanwhile, writes pen software that eats standard comconsole software and renders it for pen-ability in what she thinks is a user-friendly manner, and works on Russian.

When they reach the Komarr system, there's a message squirt, bounced at lightspeed from the little ships that do nothing but dance back and forth from side to side of the intervening wormholes collecting and broadcasting data. It says that Captain Illyan invites Miles to supplement his mission report by bringing his wife along.

Comments

[isthisart]

"Hmm." Well, they're his parents. They are, in fact, parents at all; she's hardly one to talk. Her designer might not find out that she's left Cetaganda for months yet.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Anyway. I stand by my prediction that Mother's going to like you."

[isthisart]

"I hope you're right."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I often am!"

[isthisart]

"Any advice on winning over your father?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"He is... less transparent to me than Mother," sighs Miles. "I'm really not sure what he's going to think of you, which makes it very hard to give you any tips in advance, you see."

[isthisart]

"Mmm. Is there a shortlist of possibilities...?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Not exactly, no." He looks up at her, then away, trying to marshal his thoughts. "More like a long list of impossibilities. My father is a good man. I know he's not going to - disown me, try to have you deported, do anything physically dangerous... what I don't know is what he will do. Maybe he'll fire off a round or two of sarcasm and retreat in good order, like Illyan. But I don't think so; that's less his style. I... fear that he might see you as an irrevocable bad decision on my part, or a threat to my safety, or to Barrayar's. That he might try—and certainly fail—to convince me I should pack you off to Beta Colony as soon as possible. Or to somewhere more remote. But that doesn't seem quite right either. And thus we come back," his free hand makes a horizontal circling motion, "to 'I don't know'."

[isthisart]

"You are very categorically dismissing the possibility that I was a bad decision on your part," she points out.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yes," he says. "Should I not? Do you disagree?"

[isthisart]

"You were a good decision on my part, and I'm certainly willing to give this," she gestures generally at Barrayar around them, "a sincere try, because it seems it likely will suit the goals I had in mind to begin with and because I like you very much, but I feel quite sure that if a couple of months ago you'd written out a list of characteristics for your ideal Lady Vorkosigan you would not have described me, and some of the items on that list might turn out to be relevant."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I... tend not to put much stock in ideals," says Miles. "That kind, anyway. It's not possible to define perfection into existence. What would I look for in the ideal Lady Vorkosigan? Well, I admit I wouldn't have predicted the haut part, but - as you can perhaps tell from the fact that I married you - I'm rather enamoured of the whole package. I would stand in a circle of inexplicably dyed foodstuffs and swear to be your spouse and helpmeet, forsaking all others, united in love, giving aid where needed and accepting it where given, et cetera et cetera I always forget the bit at the end, for as long as we both shall live. And any external complainers can take a wormhole jump to hell." He pauses, then adds, "I promise to leave that last amendment out of the actual ceremony, if and when. Unless you think it'll add flair."

[isthisart]

Linya checks for witnesses, finds that while the street isn't exactly deserted no one nearby is paying them any attention, and decides to go ahead and scoop him up for a quick kiss to the forehead before she sets him back down.

"It does have some charm to it, but is perhaps tonally inappropriate," she says. "For a happy occasion."

[thisvorlunatic]

"It will be purely an unspoken addendum, then," he assures her. "If and when."

[isthisart]

"All right. I'm not going to hold you to any of this if there are, I don't know, traditional pitchforks and torches outside your house this time tomorrow carried by people who demand my summary export. But it's nice to know where your thoughts are on the matter."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Okay," he says, and kisses her hand.

[isthisart]

Linya thinks Miles is terribly cute.

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles thinks Linya is... is... is Linya, that's what.



"—Oh," he says, blinking, after they have walked a few more steps. "One thing does occur to me, about Father - it helps to be honest and direct. As it did with Illyan and will with Gregor. There's some sort of category to be drawn here, I'm sure, but the exact definition eludes me. Perhaps it's just... the observation that powerful men who react poorly when you're straight with them aren't worth being straight with in the first place."

[isthisart]

"By far my most natural state is to be honest and direct, so it is convenient that it will help with all these people. Do warn me if we come across anyone with whom I ought to be untrustworthy and sneaky."

[thisvorlunatic]

He laughs. "Will do."

[isthisart]

"Everything is going to be different here. I knew that, I sought it out on purpose, and it's taken a while to sink in on a properly visceral level. But I think I will manage. In the early days of the haut project someone said that well before the end goal was achieved you ought to be able to put a half-dozen haut five-year-olds on a half-terraformed planet and leave for thirty years, only to find that after twenty-five, they had become tired of waiting for you and were sitting on your doorstep. And I am not five and this planet is more than half-terraformed."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I'll help however I can," volunteers Miles. "Aid where needed, eh?"

[isthisart]

"Yes. I appreciate it very much. I imagine that if I were wandering Beta Colony alone, instead, I could get some form of official help, but my only previous brush with Betan bureaucracy did not leave me too favorably impressed. You are much friendlier."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Friendlier than Betan bureaucracy, that's me." He sketches a little bow in her direction, impressively managing not to break stride in the process.

[isthisart]

"To be dubiously fair to the fellow I interacted with the one time I bubbled up to the embassy to inquire if they could carry me off if I needed to be carried off, I did make the mistake of telling him that I was eight."