
by Lois McMaster Bujold
Miles contemplated the image of the globe glowing above the vid plate, crossed his arms, and stifled queasiness. The planet of Jackson's Whole, glittering, wealthy, corrupt.... Jacksonians claimed their corruption was entirely imported-if the galaxy were willing to pay for virtue what it paid for vice, the place would be a pilgrimage shrine. In Miles's view this seemed rather like debating which was superior, maggots or the rotten meat they fed off. Still, if Jackson's Whole didn't exist, the galaxy would probably have had to invent it. Its neighbors might feign horror, but they wouldn't permit the place to exist if they didn't find it a secretly useful interface with the sub-economy.
The planet possessed a certain liveliness, anyway. Not as lively as a century or two back, to be sure, in its hijacker-base days. But its cutthroat criminal gangs had senesced into Syndicate monopolies, almost as structured and staid as little governments. An aristocracy, of sorts. Naturally. Miles wondered how much longer the major Houses would be able to fight off the creeping tide of integrity.
House Dyne, detergent banking-launder your money on Jackson's Whole. House Fell, weapons deals with no questions asked. House Bharaputra, illegal genetics. Worse, House Ryoval, whose motto was "Dreams Made Flesh," surely the damndest-Miles used the adjective precisely-procurer in history. House Hargraves, the galactic fence, prim-faced middlemen for ransom deals-you had to give them credit, hostages exchanged through their good offices came back alive, mostly. And a dozen smaller syndicates, variously and shiftingly allied.
Even we find you useful. Miles touched the control and the vid image vanished. His lip curled in suppressed loathing, and he called up his ordnance inventory for one final check of his shopping list. A subtle shift in the vibrations of the ship around him told him they were matching orbits-the fast cruiser Ariel would be docking at Fell Station within the hour.
His console was just extruding the completed data disk of weapons orders when his cabin door chimed, followed by an alto voice over its comm, "Admiral Naismith?"
"Enter." He plucked off the disk and leaned back in his station chair.
Captain Thorne sauntered in with a friendly salute. "We'll be docking in about thirty minutes, sir."
"Thank you, Bel."
Bel Thorne, the Ariel's commander, was a Betan hermaphrodite, man/woman descendant of a centuries-past genetic-social experiment every bit as bizarre, in Miles's private opinion, as anything rumored to be done for money by House Ryoval's ethics-free surgeons. A fringe effort of Betan egalitarianism run amok, hermaphroditism had not caught on, and the original idealists' hapless descendants remained a minority on hyper-tolerant Beta Colony. Except for a few stray wanderers like Bel. As a mercenary officer Thorne was conscientious, loyal, and aggressive, and Miles liked him/her/it-Betan custom used the neuter pronoun-a lot. However....
Miles could smell Bel's floral perfume from her. Bel was emphasizing the female side today. And had been, increasingly, for the five days of this voyage. Normally Bel chose to come on ambiguous-to-male, soft short brown hair and chiselled, beardless facial features counteracted by the grey-and-white Dendarii military uniform, assertive gestures, and wicked humor. It worried Miles exceedingly to sense Bel soften in his presence.
Turning to his computer console's holovid plate, Miles again called up the image of the planet they were approaching. Jackson's Whole looked demure enough from a distance, mountainous, rather cold-the populated equator was only temperate-ringed in the vid by a lacy schematic net of colored satellite tracks, orbital transfer stations, and authorized approach vectors. "Have you ever been here before, Bel?"
"Once, when I was a lieutenant in Admiral Oser's fleet," said the mercenary. "House Fell has a new baron since then. Their weaponry still has a good reputation, as long as you know what you're buying. Stay away from the sale on neutron hand grenades."
"Heh. For those with strong throwing arms. Fear not, neutron hand grenades aren't on the list." He handed the data disk to Bel.
Bel sidled up and leaned over the back of Miles's station chair to take it. "Shall I grant leaves to the crew while we're waiting for the baron's minions to load cargo? How about yourself? There used to be a hostel near the docks with all the amenities, pool, sauna, great food..." Bel's voice lowered. "I could book a room for two."
"I'd only figured to grant day passes." Necessarily, Miles cleared his throat.
"I am a woman, too," Bel pointed out in a murmur.
"Among other things."
"You're so hopelessly monosexual, Miles."
"Sorry." Awkwardly, he patted the hand that had somehow come to rest on his shoulder.
Bel sighed and straightened. "So many are."
Miles sighed too. Perhaps he ought to make his rejection more emphatic-this was only about the seventh time he'd been round with Bel on this subject. It was almost ritualized by now, almost, but not quite, a joke. You had to give the Betan credit for either optimism or obtuseness... or, Miles's honesty added, genuine feeling. If he turned round now, he knew, he might surprise an essential loneliness in the hermaphrodite's eyes, never permitted on the lips. He did not turn round.
And who was he to judge another, Miles reflected ruefully, whose own body brought him so little joy? What did Bel, straight and healthy and of normal height, if unusual genital arrangements, find so attractive in a little half-crippled part-time crazy man? He glanced down at the grey Dendarii officer's uniform he wore. The uniform he had won. If you can't be seven feet tall, be seven feet smart. His reason had so far failed to present him with a solution to the problem of Thorne, though.
"Have you ever thought of going back to Beta Colony, and seeking one of your own?" Miles asked seriously.
Thorne shrugged. "Too boring. That's why I left. It's so very safe, so very narrow...."
"Mind you, a great place to raise kids." One corner of Miles's mouth twisted up.
Thorne grinned. "You got it. You're an almost perfect Betan, y'know? Almost. You have the accent, the in-jokes..."
Miles went a little still. "Where do I fail?"
Thorne touched Miles's cheek; Miles flinched.
"Reflexes," said Thorne.
"Ah."
"I won't give you away."
"I know."
Bel was leaning in again. "I could polish that last edge..."
"Never mind," said Miles, slightly flushed. "We have a mission."
"Inventory," said Thorne scornfully.
"That's not a mission," said Miles, "that's a cover."
"Ah ha." Thorne straightened up. "At last."
"At last?"
"It doesn't take a genius. We came to purchase ordnance, but instead of taking the ship with the biggest cargo capacity, you chose the Ariel-the fleet's fastest. There's no deader dull routine than inventory, but instead of sending a perfectly competent quartermaster, you're overseeing it personally."
"I do want to make contact with the new Baron Fell," said Miles mildly. "House Fell is the biggest arms supplier this side of Beta Colony, and a lot less picky about who its customers are. If I like the quality of the initial purchase, they could become a regular supplier."
"A quarter of Fell's arms are Betan manufacture, marked up," said Thorne. "Again, ha."
"And while we're here," Miles went on, "a certain middle-aged man is going to present himself and sign on to the Dendarii Mercenaries as a medtech. At that point all Station passes are cancelled, we finish loading cargo as quickly as possible, and we leave."
Thorne grinned in satisfaction. "A pick-up. Very good. I assume we're being well-paid?"
"Very. If he arrives at his destination alive. The man happens to be the top research geneticist of House Bharaputra's Laboratories. He's been offered asylum by a planetary government capable of protecting him from the long arms of Baron Luigi Bharaputra's enforcers. His soon-to-be-former employer is expected to be highly irate at the lack of a month's notice. We are being paid to deliver him to his new masters alive and not, ah, forcibly debriefed of all his trade secrets.
"Since House Bharaputra could probably buy and sell the whole Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet twice over out of petty cash, I would prefer we not have to deal with Baron Luigi's enforcers either. So we shall be innocent suckers. All we did was hire a bloody medtech, sir. And we shall be irate ourselves when he deserts after we arrive at fleet rendezvous off Escobar."
"Sounds good to me," conceded Thorne. "Simple."
"So I trust," Miles sighed hopefully. Why, after all, shouldn't things run to plan, just this once?
The purchasing offices and display areas for House Fell's lethal wares were situated not far from the docks, and most of House Fell's smaller customers never penetrated further into Fell Station. But shortly after Miles and Thorne placed their order-about as long as needed to verify a credit chit-an obsequious person in the green silk of House Fell's uniform appeared, and pressed an invitation into Admiral Naismith's hand to a reception in the Baron's personal quarters.
Four hours later, giving up the pass cube to Baron Fell's major domo at the sealed entrance to the station's private sector, Miles checked Thorne and himself over for their general effect. Dendarii dress uniform was a grey velvet tunic with silver buttons on the shoulders and white edging, matching grey trousers with white side piping, and grey synthasuede boots-perhaps just a trifle effete? Well, he hadn't designed it, he'd just inherited it. Live with it.
The interface to the private sector was highly interesting. Miles's eye took in the details while the major domo scanned them for weapons. Life-support-in fact, all systems-appeared to be run separately from the rest of the station. The area was not only scalable, it was detachable. In effect, not Station but Ship-engines and armament around here somewhere, Miles bet, though it could be lethal to go looking for them unescorted. The major domo ushered them through, pausing to announce them on his wrist comm: "Admiral Miles Naismith, commanding, Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet. Captain Bel Thorne, commanding the fast cruiser Ariel, Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet." Miles wondered who was on the other end of the comm.
The reception chamber was large and gracefully appointed, with iridescent floating staircases and levels creating private spaces without destroying the illusions of openness. Every exit (Miles counted six) had a large green-garbed guard by it trying to look like a servant and not succeeding very well. One whole wall was a vertigo-inducing transparent viewport overlooking Fell Station's busy docks and the bright curve of Jackson's Whole bisecting the star-spattered horizon beyond. A crew of elegant women in green silk saris rustled among the guests offering food and drink.
Grey velvet, Miles decided after one glance at the other guests, was a positively demure choice of garb. He and Bel would blend right into the walls. The thin scattering of fellow privileged customers wore a wide array of planetary fashions. But they were a wary bunch, little groups sticking together, no mingling. Guerrillas, it appeared, did not speak to mercenaries, nor smugglers to revolutionaries; the Gnostic Saints, of course, spoke only to the One True God, and perhaps to Baron Fell.
"Some party," commented Bel. "I went to a pet show with an atmosphere like this once. The high point was when somebody's Tau Cetan beaded lizard got loose and ate the Best-In-Show from the canine division."
"Hush," Miles grinned out of the corner of his mouth. "This is business."
A green-sari'd woman bowed silently before them, offering a tray. Thorne raised a brow at Miles-do we... ?
"Why not?" Miles murmured. "We're paying for it, in the long run. I doubt the baron poisons his customers, it's bad for business. Business is emperor, here. Laissez-faire capitalism gone completely over the edge." He selected a pink tid-bit in the shape of a lotus and a mysterious cloudy drink. Thorne followed suit. The pink lotus, alas, turned out to be some sort of raw fish. It squeaked against his teeth. Miles, committed, swallowed it anyway. The drink was potently alcoholic, and after a sip to wash down the lotus he regretfully abandoned it on the first level surface he could find. His dwarfish body refused to handle alcohol, and he had no desire to meet Baron Fell while either semi-comatose or giggling uncontrollably. The more metabolically fortunate Thorne kept beverage in hand.
A most extraordinary music began from somewhere, a racing rich complexity of harmonics. Miles could not identify the instrument-instruments, surely. He and Thorne exchanged a glance, and by mutual accord drifted toward the sound. Around a spiraling staircase, backed by the panoply of station, planet, and stars, they found the musician. Miles's eyes widened. House Ryoval's surgeons have surely gone too far this time....
Little decorative colored sparkles defined the spherical field of a large null-gee bubble. Floating within it was a woman. Her ivory arms flashed against her green silk clothes as she played. All four of her ivory arms.... She wore a flowing, kimono-like belted jacket and matching shorts, from which the second set of arms emerged where her legs should have been. Her hair was short and soft and ebony black. Her eyes were closed, and her rose-tinted face bore the repose of an angel, high and distant and terrifying.
Her strange instrument was fixed in air before her, a flat polished wooden frame strung across both top and bottom with a bewildering array of tight gleaming wires, soundboard between. She struck the wires with four felted hammers with blinding speed, both sides at once, her upper hands moving at counterpoint to her lowers. Music poured forth in a cascade.
"Good God," said Thorne, "it's a quaddie."
"It's a what?"
"A quaddie. She's a long way from home."
"She's-not a local product?" "By no means."
"I'm relieved. I think. Where the devil does she come from, then?"
"About two hundred years ago-about the time hermaphrodites were being invented," a peculiar wryness flashed across Thorne's face, "there was this rush of genetic experimentation on humans, in the wake of the development of the practical uterine replicator. Followed shortly by a rush of laws restricting such, but meanwhile, somebody thought they'd make a race of free fall dwellers. Then artificial gravity came in and blew them out of business. The quaddies fled-their descendants ended up on the far side of nowhere, way beyond Earth from us in the Nexus. They're rumored to keep to themselves, mostly. Very unusual, to see one this side of Earth. H'sh." Lips parted, Thorne tracked the music.
As unusual as finding a Betan hermaphrodite in a free mercenary fleet, Miles thought. But the music deserved undivided attention, though few in this paranoid crowd seemed to even be noticing it. A shame. Miles was no musician, but even he could sense an intensity of passion in the playing that went beyond talent, reaching for genius. An evanescent genius, sounds woven with time and, like time, forever receding beyond one's futile grasp into memory alone.
The outpouring of music dropped to a haunting echo, then silence. The four-armed musician's blue eyes opened, and her face came back from the ethereal to the merely human, tense and sad.
"Ah," breathed Thorne, stuck its empty glass under its arm, raised hands to clap, then paused, hesitant to become conspicuous in this indifferent chamber.
Miles was all for being inconspicuous. "Perhaps you can speak to her," he suggested by way of an alternative.
"You think?" Brightening, Thorne tripped forward, swinging down to abandon the glass on the nearest handy floor and raising splayed hands against the sparkling bubble. The hermaphrodite mustered an entranced, ingratiating smile. "Uh..." Thorne's chest rose and fell.
Good God, Bel, tongue-tied? Never thought I'd see it. "Ask her what she calls that thing she plays," Miles supplied helpfully.
The four-armed woman tilted her head curiously, and starfished gracefully over her boxy instrument to hover politely before Thorne on the other side of the glittering barrier. "Yes?"
"What do you call that extraordinary instrument?" Thorne asked.
"It's a double-sided hammer dulcimer, ma'am-sir..." her servant-to-guest dull tone faltered a moment, fearing to give insult, "Officer."
"Captain Bel Thorne," Bel supplied instantly, beginning to recover accustomed smooth equilibrium. "Commanding the Dendarii fast cruiser Ariel. At your service. How ever did you come to be here?"
"I had worked my way to Earth. I was seeking employment, and Baron Fell hired me." She tossed her head, as if to deflect some implied criticism, though Bel had offered none.
"You are a true quaddie?"
"You've heard of my people?" Her dark brows rose in surprise. "Most people I encounter here think I am a manufactured freak." A little sardonic bitterness edged her voice.
Thorne cleared its throat. "I'm Betan, myself. I've followed the history of the early genetics explosion with a rather more personal interest." Thorne cleared its throat again, "Betan hermaphrodite, you see," and waited anxiously for the reaction.
Damn. Bel never waited for reactions, Bel sailed on and let the chips fall anyhow. / wouldn't interfere with this for all the world. Miles faded back slightly, rubbing his lips to wipe off a twitching grin as all Thorne's most masculine mannerisms reasserted themselves from spine to fingertips and outward into the aether.
Her head tilted in interest. One upper hand rose to rest on the sparkling barrier not far from Bel's. "Are you? You're a genetic too, then."
"Oh, yes. And tell me, what's your name?"
"Nicol."
"Nicol. Is that all? I mean, it's lovely."
"My people don't use surnames."
"Ah. And, uh, what are you doing after the party?"
At this point, alas, interference found them. "Heads up, Captain,"
Miles murmured. Thorne drew up instantly, cool and correct, and followed Miles's gaze. The quaddie floated back from the force barrier and bowed her head over her hands held palm-to-palm and palm-to-palm as a man approached. Miles too came to a polite species of attention.
Georish Stauber, Baron Fell, was a surprisingly old man to have succeeded so recently to his position, Miles thought. In the flesh he looked older than the holovid Miles had viewed of him at his own mission briefing. The baron was balding, with a white fringe of hair around his shiny pate, jovial and fat. He looked like somebody's grandfather. Not Miles's; Miles's grandfather had been lean and predatory even in his great age. And the old Count's title had been as real as such things got, not the courtesy-nobility of a Syndicate survivor. Jolly red cheeks or no, Miles reminded himself, Baron Fell had climbed a pile of bodies to attain this high place.
"Admiral Naismith. Captain Thorne. Welcome to Fell Station," rumbled the baron, smiling.
Miles swept him an aristocratic bow. Thorne somewhat awkwardly followed suit. Ah. He must copy that awkwardness next time. Of such little details were cover identities made. And blown.
"Have my people been taking care of your needs?"
"Thank you, yes." So far the proper businessmen.
"So glad to meet you at last," the baron rumbled on. "We've heard a great deal about you here."
"Have you," said Miles encouragingly. The baron's eyes were strangely avid. Quite a glad-hand for a little tin-pot mercenary, eh? This was a little more stroke than was reasonable even for a high-ticket customer. Miles banished all hint of wariness from his return smile. Patience. Let the challenge emerge, don't rush to meet what you cannot yet see. "Good things, I hope."
"Remarkable things. Your rise has been as rapid as your origins are mysterious."
Hell, hell, what kind of bait was this? Was the baron hinting that he actually knew "Admiral Naismith's" real identity? This could be sudden and serious trouble. No-fear outran its cause. Wait. Forget that such a person as Lieutenant Lord Vorkosigan, Barrayaran Imperial Security, ever existed in this body. It's not big enough for the two of us anyway, boy. Yet why was this fat shark smiling so ingratiatingly? Miles cocked his head, neutrally.
"The story of your fleet's success at Vervain reached us even here. So unfortunate about its former commander."
Miles stiffened. "I regret Admiral Oser's death."
The baron shrugged philosophically. "Such things happen in the business. Only one can command."
"He could have been an outstanding subordinate."
"Pride is so dangerous," smiled the baron.
Indeed. Miles bit his tongue. So he thinks I "arranged" Oser's death. So let him. That there was one less mercenary than there appeared in this room, that the Dendarii were now through Miles an arm of the Barrayaran Imperial Service so covert most of them didn't even know it themselves... it would be a dull Syndicate baron who couldn't find profit in those secrets somewhere. Miles matched the baron's smile and added nothing.
"You interest me exceedingly," continued the baron. "For example, there's the puzzle of your apparent age. And your prior military career."
If Miles had kept his drink, he'd have knocked it back in one gulp right then. He clasped his hands convulsively behind his back instead. Dammit, the pain lines just didn't age his face enough. If the baron was indeed seeing right through the pseudo-mercenary to the twenty-three-year-old Security lieutenant-and yet, he usually carried it off---
The baron lowered his voice. "Do the rumors run equally true about your Betan rejuvenation treatment?"
So that's what he was on about. Miles felt faint with relief. "What interest could you have in such treatments, my lord?" he gibbered lightly. "I thought Jackson's Whole was the home of practical immortality. It's said there are some here on their third cloned body."
"I am not one of them," said the baron rather regretfully.
Miles's brows rose in genuine surprise. Surely this man didn't spurn the process as murder. "Some unfortunate medical impediment?" he said, injecting polite sympathy into his voice. "My regrets, sir."
"In a manner of speaking." The baron's smile revealed a sharp edge. "The brain transplant operation itself kills a certain irreducible percentage of patients-"
Yeah, thought Miles, starting with 100% of the clones, whose brains are flushed to make room....
"-another percentage suffer varying sorts of permanent damage. Those are the risks anyone must take for the reward."
"But the reward is so great."
"But then there are a certain number of patients, indistinguishable from the first group, who do not die on the operating table by accident. If their enemies have the subtlety and clout to arrange it. I have a number of enemies, Admiral Naismith."
Miles made a little who-would-think-it gesture, flipping up one hand, and continued to cultivate an air of deep interest.
"I calculate my present chances of surviving a brain transplant to be rather worse than the average," the baron went on. "So I've an interest in alternatives." He paused expectantly.
"Oh," said Miles. Oh, indeed. He regarded his fingernails and thought fast. "It's true, I once participated in an... unauthorized experiment. A premature one, as it happens, pushed too eagerly from animal to human subjects. It was not successful."
"No?" said the baron. "You appear in good health."
Miles shrugged. "Yes, there was some benefit to muscles, skin tone, hair. But my bones are the bones of an old man, fragile." True. "Subject to acute osteo-inflammatory attacks-there are days when I can't walk without medication." Also true, dammit. A recent and unsettling medical development. "My life expectancy is not considered good." For example, if certain parties here ever figure out who "Admiral Naismith" really is, it could go down to as little as fifteen minutes. "So unless you're extremely fond of pain and think you would enjoy being crippled, I fear I must dis-recommend the procedure."
The baron looked him up and down. Disappointment pulled down his mouth. "I see."
Bel Thorne, who knew quite well there was no such thing as the fabled "Betan rejuvenation treatment," was listening with well-concealed enjoyment and doing an excellent job of keeping the smirk off its face. Bless its little black heart.
"Still," said the baron, "your... scientific acquaintance may have made some progress in the intervening years."
"I fear not," said Miles. "He died." He spread his hands helplessly. "Old age."
"Oh." The baron's shoulders sagged slightly.
"Ah, there you are, Fell," a new voice cut across them. The baron straightened and turned.
The man who had hailed him was as conservatively dressed as Fell, and flanked by a silent servant with "bodyguard" written all over him. The bodyguard wore a uniform, a high-necked red silk tunic and loose black trousers, and was unarmed. Everyone on Fell Station went unarmed except Fell's men; the place had the most strictly-enforced weapons regs Miles had ever encountered. But the pattern of calluses on the lean bodyguard's hands suggested he might not need weapons. His eyes flickered and his hands shook just slightly, a hyper-alertness induced by artificial aids-if ordered, he could strike with blinding speed and adrenalin-insane strength. He would also retire young, metabolically crippled for the rest of his short life.
The man he guarded was also young-some great lord's son? Miles wondered. He had long shining black hair dressed in an elaborate braid, smooth dark olive skin, and a high-bridged nose. He couldn't be older than Miles's real age, yet he moved with a mature assurance.
"Ryoval," Baron Fell nodded in return, as a man to an equal, not a junior. Still playing the genial host, Fell added, "Officers, may I introduce Baron Ryoval of House Ryoval. Admiral Naismith, Captain Thorne. They belong to the Illyrican-built mercenary fast cruiser in dock, Ry, that you may have noticed."
"Haven't got your eye for hardware, I'm afraid, Georish." Baron Ryoval bestowed a nod upon them, of a man being polite to his social inferiors for the principle of it. Miles bowed clumsily in return.
Dropping Miles from his attention with an almost audible thump, Ryoval stood back with his hands on his hips and regarded the null-gee bubble's inhabitant. "My agent didn't exaggerate her charms."
Fell smiled sourly. Nicol had withdrawn-recoiled-when Ryoval first approached, and now floated behind her instrument, fussing with its tuning. Pretending to be fussing with its tuning. Her eyes glanced warily at Ryoval, then returned to her dulcimer as if it might put some magic wall between them.
"Can you have her play-" Ryoval began, and was interrupted by a chime from his wrist comm. "Excuse me, Georish." Looking slightly annoyed, he turned half-away from them and spoke into it. "Ryoval. And this had better be important."
"Yes, m'lord," a thin voice responded. "This is Manager Deem in Sales and Demonstrations. We have a problem. That creature House Bharaputra sold us has savaged a customer."
Ryoval's Greek-statue lips rippled in a silent snarl. "I told you to chain it with duralloy."
"We did, my lord. The chains held, but it tore the bolts right out of the wall."
"Stun it."
"We have."
"Then punish it suitably when it awakes. A sufficiently long period without food should dull its aggression-its metabolism is unbelievable."
"What about the customer?"
"Give him whatever comforts he asks for. On the House."
"I... don't think he'll be in shape to appreciate them for quite some time. He's in the clinic now. Still unconscious."
Ryoval hissed. "Put my personal physician on his case. I'll take care of the rest when I get back downside, in about six hours. Ryoval out." He snapped the link closed. "Morons," he growled. He took a controlled, meditative breath, and recalled his social manner as if booting it up out of some stored memory bank. "Pardon the interruption, please, Georish."
Fell waved an understanding hand, as if to say, Business.
"As I was saying, can you have her play something?" Ryoval nodded to the quaddie.
Fell clasped his hands behind his back, his eyes glinting in a falsely benign smile. "Play something, Nicol."
She gave him an acknowledging nod, positioned herself, and closed her eyes. The frozen worry tensing her face gradually gave way to an inner stillness, and she began to play, a slow, sweet theme that established itself, rolled over, and began to quicken.
"Enough!" Ryoval flung up a hand. "She's precisely as described."
Nicol stumbled to a halt in mid-phrase. She inhaled through pinched nostrils, clearly disturbed by her inability to drive the piece through to its destined finish, the frustration of artistic incompletion. She stuck her hammers into their holders on the side of the instrument with short, savage jerks, and crossed her upper and lower arms both. Thorne's mouth tightened, and it crossed its arms in unconscious echo. Miles bit his lip uneasily.
"My agent conveyed the truth," Ryoval went on.
"Then perhaps your agent also conveyed my regrets," said Fell dryly.
"He did. But he wasn't authorized to offer more than a certain standard ceiling. For something so unique, there's no substitute for direct contact."
"I happen to be enjoying her skills where they are," said Fell. "At my age, enjoyment is much harder to obtain than money."
"So true. Yet other enjoyments might be substituted. I could arrange something quite special. Not in the catalog."
"Her musical skills, Ryoval. Which are more than special. They are unique. Genuine. Not artificially augmented in any way. Not to be duplicated in your laboratories."
"My laboratories can duplicate anything sir." Ryoval smiled at the implied challenge.
"Except originality. By definition."
Ryoval spread his hands in polite acknowledgment of the philosophical point. Fell, Miles gathered, was not just enjoying the quaddie's musical talent, he was vastly enjoying the possession of something his rival keenly wanted to buy, that he had absolutely no need to sell. One-upsmanship was a powerful pleasure. It seemed even the famous Ryoval was having a tough time coming up with a better-and yet, if Ryoval could find Fell's price, what force on Jackson's Whole could save Nicol? Miles suddenly realized he knew what Fell's price could be. Would Ryoval figure it out too?
Ryoval pursed his lips. "Let's discuss a tissue sample, then. It would do her no damage, and you could continue to enjoy her unique services uninterrupted."
"It would damage her uniqueness. Circulating counterfeits always brings down the value of the real thing, you know that, Ry," grinned Baron Fell.
"Not for some time," Ryoval pointed out. "The lead time for a mature clone is at least ten years-ah, but you know that." He reddened and made a little apologetic bow, as if he realized he'd just committed some faux pas.
By the thinning of Fell's lips, he had. "Indeed," said Fell coldly.
At this point Bel Thorne, tracking the interplay, interrupted in hot horror, "You can't sell her tissues! You don't own them. She's not some Jackson's Whole construct, she's a freeborn galactic citizen!"
Both barons turned to Bel as if the mercenary were a piece of furniture that had suddenly spoken. Out of turn. Miles winced.
"He can sell her contract," said Ryoval, mustering a glassy tolerance. "Which is what we are discussing. A private discussion."
Bel ignored the hint. "On Jackson's Whole, what practical difference does it make if you call it a contract or call it flesh?"
Ryoval smiled a little cool smile. "None whatsoever. Possession is rather more than nine points of the law, here."
"It's totally illegal!"
"Legal, my dear-ah-you are Betan, aren't you? That explains it," said Ryoval. "And illegal, is whatever the planet you are on chooses to call so and is able to enforce. I don't see any Betan enforcers around here to impose their peculiar version of morality on us all, do you, Fell?"
Fell was listening with raised brows, caught between amusement and annoyance.
Bel twitched. "So if I were to pull out a weapon and blow your head off, it would be perfectly legal?"
The bodyguard tensed, balance and center-of-gravity flowing into launch position.
"Quash it, Bel," Miles muttered under his breath.
But Ryoval was beginning to enjoy baiting his Betan interruptor. "You have no weapon. But legality aside, my subordinates have instructions to avenge me. It is, as it were, a natural or virtual law. In effect you'd find such an ill-advised impulse to be illegal indeed."
Baron Fell caught Miles's eye and tilted his head just slightly. Time to intervene. "Time to move on, Captain," Miles said. "We aren't the baron's only guests here."
"Try the hot buffet," suggested Fell affably.
Ryoval pointedly dropped Bel from his attention and turned to Miles. "Do stop by my establishment if you get downside, Admiral. Even a Betan could stand to expand the horizons of his experience. I'm sure my staff could find something of interest in your price range."
"Not any more," said Miles. "Baron Fell already has our credit chit."
"Ah, too bad. Your next trip, perhaps." Ryoval turned away in easy dismissal.
Bel didn't budge. "You can't sell a galactic citizen down there," gesturing jerkily to the curve of the planet beyond the viewport. The quaddie Nicol, watching from behind her dulcimer, had no expression at all upon her face, but her intense blue eyes blazed.
Ryoval turned back, feigning sudden surprise. "Why, Captain, I just realized. Betan-you must be a genuine genetic hermaphrodite. You possess a marketable rarity yourself. I can offer you an eye-opening employment experience at easily twice your current rate of pay. And you wouldn't even have to get shot at. I guarantee you'd be extremely popular. Group rates."
Miles swore he could see Thorne's blood pressure skyrocketing as the meaning of what Ryoval had just said sunk in. The hermaphrodite's face darkened, and it drew breath. Miles reached up and grasped Bel by the shoulder, hard. The breath held.
"No?" said Ryoval, cocking his head. "Oh, well. But seriously, I would pay well for a tissue sample, for my files."
Bel's breath exploded. "My clone-siblings, to be-be-some sort of sex-slaves into the next century! Over my dead body-or yours-you-"
Bel was so mad it was stuttering, a phenomenon Miles had never seen in seven years' acquaintance including combat.
"So Betan," smirked Ryoval.
"Stop it, Ry," growled Fell.
Ryoval sighed. "Oh, very well. But it's so easy."
"We can't win, Bel," hissed Miles. "It's time to withdraw." The bodyguard was quivering.
Fell gave Miles an approving nod.
"Thank you for your hospitality, Baron Fell," Miles said formally. "Good day, Baron Ryoval."
"Good day, Admiral," said Ryoval, regretfully giving up what was obviously the best sport he'd had all day. "You seem a cosmopolitan sort, for a Betan. Perhaps you can visit us sometime without your moral friend, here."
A war of words should be won with words. "I don't think so," Miles murmured, racking his brain for some stunning insult to withdraw on.
"What a shame," said Ryoval. "We have a dog-and-dwarf act I'm sure you'd find fascinating."
There was a moment's absolute silence.
"Fry 'em from orbit," Bel suggested tightly.
Miles grinned through clenched teeth, bowed, and backed off, Bel's sleeve clutched firmly in his hand. As he turned he could hear Ryoval laughing.
Fell's major domo appeared at their elbows within moments. "This way to the exit, please, officers," he smiled. Miles had never before been thrown out of any place with such exquisite politeness.
Back aboard the Ariel in dock, Thorne paced the wardroom while Miles sat and sipped coffee as hot and black as his own thoughts.
"Sorry I lost my temper with that squirt Ryoval," Bel apologized gruffly.
"Squirt, hell," said Miles. "The brain in that body has got to be at least a hundred years old. He played you like a violin. No. We couldn't expect to count coup on him. I admit, it would have been nice if you'd had the sense to shut up." He sucked air to cool his scalded tongue.
Bel made a disturbed gesture of acknowledgment and paced on. "And that poor girl, trapped in that bubble-I had one chance to talk to her, and I blew it-I blithered...."
She really had brought out the male in Thorne, Miles reflected wryly. "Happens to the best of us," he murmured. He smiled into his coffee, then frowned. No. Better not to encourage Thorne's interest in the quaddie after all. She was clearly much more than just one of Fell's house servants. They had one ship here, a crew of twenty; even if he had the whole Dendarii fleet to back him he'd want to think twice about offending Baron Fell in Fell's own territory. They had a mission. Speaking of which, where was their blasted pick-up? Why hadn't he yet contacted them as arranged? The intercom in the wall bleeped. Thorne strode to it. "Thorne here."
"This is Corporal Nout at the portside docking hatch. There's a... woman here who's asking to see you."
Thorne and Miles exchanged a raised-brows glance. "What's her name?" asked Thorne.
An off-side mumble, then, "She says it's Nicol."
Thorne grunted in surprise. "Very well. Have her escorted to the wardroom."
"Yes, Captain." The corporal failed to kill his intercom before turning away, and his voice drifted back, "... stay in this outfit long enough, you see one of everything."
Nicol appeared in the doorway balanced in a float chair, a hovering tubular cup that seemed to be looking for its saucer, enameled in a blue that precisely matched her eyes. She slipped it through the doorway as easily as a woman twitching her hips, zipped to a halt near Miles's table, and adjusted the height to that of a person sitting. The controls, run by her lower hands, left her uppers entirely free. The lower body support must have been custom-designed just for her. Miles watched her maneuver with great interest. He hadn't been sure she could even live outside her null-gee bubble. He'd expected her to be weak. She didn't look weak. She looked determined. She looked at Thorne.
Thorne looked all cheered up. "Nicol. How nice to see you again."
She nodded shortly. "Captain Thorne. Admiral Naismith." She glanced back and forth between them, and fastened on Thorne. Miles thought he could see why. He sipped coffee and waited for developments.
"Captain Thorne. You are a mercenary, are you not?"
"Yes...."
"And... pardon me if I misunderstood, but it seemed to me you had a certain... empathy, for my situation. An understanding of my position."
Thorne rendered her a slightly idiotic bow. "I understand you are dangling over a pit."
Her lips tightened, and she nodded mutely.
"She got herself into it," Miles pointed out.
Her chin lifted. "And I intend to get myself out of it."
Miles turned a hand palm-out, and sipped again.
She readjusted her float chair, a nervous gesture ending at about the same altitude it began.
"It seems to me," said Miles, "that Baron Fell is a formidable protector. I'm not sure you have anything to fear from Ryoval's, er, carnal interest in you as long as Fell's in charge."
"Baron Fell is dying." She tossed her head. "Or at any rate, he thinks he is."
"So I gathered. Why doesn't he have a clone made?"
"He did. It was all set up with House Bharaputra. The clone was fourteen years old, full-sized. Then a couple of months ago, somebody assassinated the clone. The baron still hasn't found out for sure who did it, though he has a little list. Headed by his half-brother."
"Thus trapping him in his aging body. What a... fascinating tactical maneuver," Miles mused. "What's this unknown enemy going to do next, I wonder? Just wait?"
"I don't know," said Nicol. "The Baron's had another clone started, but it's not even out of the replicator yet. Even with growth accelerators it'd be years before it would be mature enough to transplant. And... it has occurred to me that there are a number of ways the baron could die besides ill health between now and then."
"An unstable situation," Miles agreed.
"I want out. I want to buy passage out."
"Then why, he asked," said Miles dryly, "don't you just go plunk your money down at the offices of one of the three galactic commercial passenger lines that dock here, and buy a ticket?"
"It's my contract," said Nicol. "When I signed it back on Earth, I didn't realize what it would mean once I got to Jackson's Whole. I can't even buy my way out of it, unless the baron chooses to let me. And somehow... it seems to cost more and more just to live here. I ran a calculation... it gets much worse before my time is up."
"How much time?" asked Thorne.
"Five more years."
"Ouch," said Thorne sympathetically.
"So you, ah, want us to help you jump a Syndicate contract," said Miles, making little wet coffee rings on the table with the bottom of his mug. "Smuggle you out in secret, I suppose."
"I can pay. I can pay more right now than I'll be able to next year. This wasn't the gig I expected, when I came here. There was talk of recording a vid demo... it never happened. I don't think it's ever going to happen. I have to be able to reach a wider audience, if I'm ever to pay my way back home. Back to my people. I want... out of here, before I fall down that gravity well." She jerked an upper thumb in the general direction of the planet they orbited. "People go downside here, who never come up again." She paused. "Are you afraid of Baron Fell?"
"No!" said Thorne, as Miles said, "Yes." They exchanged a sardonic look.
"We are inclined to be careful of Baron Fell," Miles suggested. Thorne shrugged agreement.
She frowned, and maneuvered to the table. She drew a wad of assorted planetary currencies out of her green silk jacket and laid it in front of Miles. "Would this bolster your nerve?"
Thorne fingered the stack, flipped through it. At least a couple thousand Betan dollars worth, at conservative estimate, mostly in middle denominations, though a Betan single topped the pile, camouflaging its value to a casual glance. "Well," said Thorne, glancing at Miles, "and what do we mercenaries think of that?"
Miles leaned back thoughtfully in his chair. The kept secret of Miles's identity wasn't the only favor Thorne could call in if it chose. Miles remembered the day Thorne had helped capture an asteroid mining station and the pocket dreadnought Triumph for him with nothing but sixteen troops in combat armor and a hell of a lot of nerve. "I encourage creative financing on the part of my commanders," he said at last. "Negotiate away, Captain."
Thorne smiled, and pulled the Betan dollar off the stack. "You have the right idea," Thorne said to the musician, "but the amount is wrong."
Her hand went uncertainly to her jacket and paused, as Thorne pushed the rest of the stack of currency, minus the single, back to her. "What?"
Thorne picked up the single and snapped it a few times. "This is the right amount. Makes it an official contract, you see." Bel extended a hand to her; after a bewildered moment, she shook it. "Deal," said Thorne happily.
"Hero," said Miles, holding up a warning finger, "beware, I'll call in my veto if you can't come up with a way to bring this off in dead secret. That's my cut of the price."
"Yes, sir," said Thorne.
Several hours later, Miles snapped awake in his cabin aboard the Ariel to an urgent bleeping from his comconsole. Whatever he had been dreaming was gone in the instant, though he had the vague idea it had been something unpleasant. Biological and unpleasant. "Naismith here."
"This is the duty officer in Nav and Com, sir. You have a call originating from the downside commercial comm net. He says to tell you it's Vaughn."
Vaughn was the agreed-upon code name of their pick-up. His real name was Dr. Canaba. Miles grabbed his uniform jacket and shrugged it on over his black T-shirt, passed his hands futilely through his hair, and slid into his console station chair. "Put him through."
The face of a man on the high side of middle age materialized above Miles's vid plate. Tan-skinned, racially indeterminate features, short wavy hair greying at the temples; more arresting was the intelligence that suffused those features and quickened the brown eyes. Yep, that's my man, thought Miles with satisfaction. Here we go. But Canaba looked more than tense. He looked distraught.
"Admiral Naismith?"
"Yes. Vaughn?"
Canaba nodded.
"Where are you?" asked Miles.
"Downside."
"You were to meet us up here."
"I know. Something's come up. A problem."
"What sort of problem? Ah-is this channel secure?"
Canaba laughed bitterly. "On this planet, nothing is secure. But I don't think I'm being traced. But I can't come up yet. I need... help."
"Vaughn, we aren't equipped to break you out against superior forces-if you've become a prisoner-"
He shook his head. "No, it's not that. I've... lost something. I need help to get it back."
"I'd understood you were to leave everything. You would be compensated later."
"It's not a personal possession. It's something your employer wants very badly. Certain... samples, have been removed from my... power. They won't take me without them."
Dr. Canaba took Miles for a mercenary hireling, entrusted with minimum classified information by Barrayaran Security. So. "All I was asked to transport was you and your skills."
"They didn't tell you everything."
The hell they didn 't. Barrayar would take you stark naked, and be grateful. What was this?
Canaba met Miles's frown with a mouth set like iron. "I won't leave without them. Or the deal's off. And you can whistle for your pay, mercenary."
He meant it. Damn. Miles's eyes narrowed. "This is all a bit mysterious."
Canaba shrugged acknowledgment. "I'm sorry. But I must... Meet with me, and I'll tell you the rest. Or go, I don't care which. But a certain thing must be accomplished, must be... expiated." He trailed off in agitation.
Miles took a deep breath. "Very well. But every complication you add increases your risk. And mine. This had better be worth it."
"Oh, Admiral," breathed Canaba sadly, "it is to me. It is to me."
Snow sifted through the little park where Canaba met them, giving Miles something new to swear at if only he hadn't run out of invective hours ago. He was shivering even in his Dendarii-issue parka by the time Canaba walked past the dingy kiosk where Miles and Bel roosted. They fell in behind him without a word.
Bharaputra Laboratories were headquartered in a downside town Miles frankly found worrisome; guarded shuttleport, guarded syndicate buildings, guarded municipal buildings, guarded walled residential compounds; in between, a crazy disorder of neglected aging structures that didn't seem to be guarded by anyone, occupied by people who slunk. It made Miles wonder if the two Dendarii troopers he'd detailed to shadow them were quite enough. But the slithery people gave them a wide berth; they evidently understood what guards meant. At least during daylight.
Canaba led them into one of the nearby buildings. Its lift tubes were out-of-order, its corridors unheated. A darkly-dressed maybe-female person scurried out of their way in the shadows, reminding Miles uncomfortably of a rat. They followed Canaba dubiously up the safety ladder set in the side of a dead lift tube, down another corridor, and through a door with a broken palm-lock into an empty dirty room, greyly lit by an unpolarized but intact window. At least they were out of the wind.
"I think we can talk safely here," said Canaba, turning and pulling off his gloves.
"Bel?" said Miles.
Thorne pulled an assortment of anti-surveillance detectors from its parka and ran a scan, as the two guards prowled the perimeters. One stationed himself in the corridor, the second near the window.
"It scans clean," said Bel at last, as if reluctant to believe its own instruments. "For now." Rather pointedly, Bel walked around Canaba and scanned him too. Canaba waited with bowed head, as if he felt he deserved no better. Bel set up the sonic baffler.
Miles shrugged back his hood and opened his parka, the better to reach his concealed weapons in the event of a trap. He was finding Canaba extraordinarily hard to read. What were the man's motivations anyway? There was no doubt House Bharaputra had assured his comfort-his coat, the rich cut of his clothing beneath it, spoke of that -and though his standard of living surely would not drop when he transferred his allegiance to the Barrayaran Imperial Science Institute, he would not have nearly the opportunities to amass wealth on the side that he had here. So, he wasn't in it for the money. Miles could understand that. But why work for a place like House Bharaputra in the first place unless greed overwhelmed integrity?
"You puzzle me, Dr. Canaba," said Miles lightly. "Why this mid-career switch? I'm pretty well acquainted with your new employers, and frankly, I don't see how they could out-bid House Bharaputra." There, that was a properly mercenary way to put it.
"They offered me protection from House Bharaputra. Although, if you're it..." he looked doubtfully down at Miles.
Ha. And, hell. The man really was ready to bolt. Leaving Miles to explain the failure of his mission to Chief of Imperial Security Illyan in person. "They bought our services," said Miles, "and therefore you command our services. They want you safe and happy. But we can't begin to protect you when you depart from a plan designed to maximize your safety, throw in random factors, and ask us to operate in the dark. I need full knowledge of what's going on if I'm to take full responsibility for the results."
"No one is asking you to take responsibility."
"I beg your pardon, doctor, but they surely have."
"Oh," said Canaba. "I... see." He paced to the window, back. "But will you do what I ask?"
"I will do what I can."
"Happy," Canaba snorted. "God..." he shook his head wearily, inhaled decisively. "I never came here for the money. I came here because I could do research I couldn't do anywhere else. Not hedged round with outdated legal restrictions. I dreamed of breakthroughs... but it became a nightmare. The freedom became slavery. The things they wanted me to do... ! Constantly interrupting the things I wanted to do. Oh, you can always find someone to do anything for money, but they're second-raters. These labs are full of second-raters. The very best can't be bought. I've done things, unique things, that Bharaputra won't develop because the profit would be too small, never mind how many people it would benefit-I get no credit, no standing for my work-every year, I see in the literature of my field galactic honors going to lesser men, because I cannot publish my results..." He stopped, lowered his head. "I doubtless sound like a megalomaniac to you."
"Ah..." said Miles, "you sound quite frustrated."
"The frustration," said Canaba, "woke me from a long sleep. Wounded ego-it was only wounded ego. But in my pride, I rediscovered shame. And the weight of it stunned me, stunned me where I stood. Do you understand? Does it matter if you understand? Ah!" He paced away to the wall, and stood facing it, his back rigid.
"Uh," Miles scratched the back of his head ruefully, "yeah. I'd be glad to spend many fascinating hours listening to you explain it to me -on my ship. Outbound."
Canaba turned with a crooked smile. "You are a practical man, I perceive. A soldier. Well, God knows I need a soldier now."
"Things are that screwed up, eh?"
"It... happened suddenly. I thought I had it under control." "Go on," sighed Miles.
"There were seven synthesized gene-complexes. One of them is a cure for a certain obscure enzyme disorder. One of them will increase oxygen-generation in space station algae twenty-fold. One of them came from outside Bharaputra Labs, brought in by a man-we never found out who he really was, but death followed him. Several of my colleagues who had worked on his project were murdered all in one night, by the commandos who pursued him-their records destroyed-I never told anyone I'd borrowed an unauthorized tissue sample to study. I've not unravelled it fully yet, but I can tell you, it's absolutely unique."
Miles recognized that one, and almost choked, reflecting upon the bizarre chain of circumstances that had placed an identical tissue sample in the hands of Dendarii Intelligence a year ago. Terrence See's telepathy complex-and the main reason why His Imperial Majesty suddenly wanted a top geneticist. Dr. Canaba was in for a little surprise when he arrived at his new Barrayaran laboratory. But if the other six complexes came anywhere near matching the value of the known one, Security Chief Illyan would peel Miles with a dull knife for letting them slip through his fingers. Miles's attention to Canaba abruptly intensified. This side-trip might not be as trivial as he'd feared.
"Together, these seven complexes represent tens of thousands of hours of research time, mostly mine, some of others-my life's work.
I'd planned from the beginning to take them with me. I bundled them up in a viral insert and placed them, bound and dormant, in a live..." Canaba faltered, "organism, for storage. An organism, I thought, that no one would think to look at for such a thing."
"Why didn't you just store them in your own tissue?" Miles asked irritably. "Then you couldn't lose "em."
Canaba's mouth opened. "I... never thought of that. How elegant. Why didn't I think of that?" His hand touched his forehead wonderingly, as if probing for systems failure. His lips tightened again. "But it would have made no difference. I would still need to..." he fell silent. "It's about the organism," he said at last. "The... creature." Another long silence.
"Of all the things I did," Canaba continued lowly, "of all the interruptions this vile place imposed on me, there is one I regret the most. You understand, this was years ago. I was younger, I thought I still had a future here to protect. And it wasn't all my doing-guilt by committee, eh? Spread it around, make it easy, say it was his fault, her doing... well, it's mine now."
You mean it's mine now, thought Miles grimly. "Doctor, the more time we spend here, the greater the chance of compromising this operation. Please get to the point."
"Yes... yes. Well, a number of years ago, House Bharaputra Laboratories took on a contract to manufacture a... new species. Made to order."
"I thought it was House Ryoval that was famous for making people, or whatever, to order," said Miles.
"They make slaves, one-off. They are very specialized. And small-their customer base is surprisingly small. There are many rich men, and there are, I suppose, many depraved men, but a House Ryoval customer has to be a member of both sets, and the overlap isn't as large as you'd think. Anyway, our contract was supposed to lead to a major production run, far beyond Ryoval's capabilities. A certain subplanetary government, hard-pressed by its neighbors, wanted us to engineer a race of super-soldiers for them."
"What, again?" said Miles. "I thought that had been tried. More than once."
"This time, we thought we could do it. Or at least, the Bharaputran hierarchy was willing to take their money. But the project suffered from too much input. The client, our own higher-ups, the genetics project members, everybody had ideas they were pushing. I swear it was doomed before it ever got out of the design committee."
"A super-soldier. Designed by a committee. Ye gods. The mind boggles." Miles's eyes were wide in fascination. "So then what happened?"
"It seemed to... several of us, that the physical limits of the merely human had already been reached. Once a, say, muscle system has been brought to perfect health, stimulated with maximum hormones, exercised to a certain limit, that's all you can do. So we turned to other species for special improvements. I, for instance, became fascinated by the aerobic and anaerobic metabolism in the muscles of the thoroughbred horse-"
"What?" said Thorne, shocked.
"There were other ideas. Too many. I swear, they weren't all mine."
"You mixed human and animal genes?" breathed Miles.
"Why not? Human genes have been spliced into animals from the crude beginnings-it was almost the first thing tried. Human insulin from bacteria and the like. But till now, no one dared do it in reverse. I broke the barrier, cracked the codes... It looked good at first. It was only when the first ones reached puberty that all the errors became fully apparent. Well, it was only the initial trial. They were meant to be formidable. But they ended up monstrous."
"Tell me," Miles choked, "were there any actual combat-experienced soldiers on the committee?"
"I assume the client had them. They supplied the parameters," said Canaba.
Said Thorne in a suffused voice, "I see. They were trying to reinvent the enlisted man."
Miles shot Thorne a quelling glower, and tapped his chrono. "Don't let us interrupt, doctor."
There was a short silence. Canaba began again. "We ran off ten prototypes. Then the client... went out of business. They lost their war-"
"Why am I not surprised?" Miles muttered under his breath.
"-funding was cut off, the project was dropped before we could apply what we had learned from our mistakes. Of the ten prototypes, nine have since died. There was one left. We were keeping it at the labs due to... difficulties, in boarding it out. I placed my gene complexes in it. They are there still. The last thing I meant to do before I left was kill it. A mercy... a responsibility. My expiation, if you will."
"And then?" prodded Miles.
"A few days ago, it was suddenly sold to House Ryoval. As a novelty, apparently. Baron Ryoval collects oddities of all sorts, for his tissue banks-"
Miles and Bel exchanged a look.
"-I had no idea it was to be sold. I came in in the morning and it was gone. I don't think Ryoval has any idea of its real value. It's there now, as far as I know, at Ryoval's facilities."
Miles decided he was getting a sinus headache. From the cold, no doubt. "And what, pray, d'you want us soldiers to do about it?"
"Get in there, somehow. Kill it. Collect a tissue sample. Only then will I go with you."
And stomach twinges. "What, both ears and the tail?"
Canaba gave Miles a cold look. "The left gastrocnemius muscle. That's where I injected my complexes. These storage viruses aren't virulent, they won't have migrated far. The greatest concentration should still be there."
"I see." Miles rubbed his temples, and pressed his eyes. "All right. We'll take care of it. This personal contact between us is very dangerous, and I'd rather not repeat it. Plan to report to my ship in forty-eight hours. Will we have any trouble recognizing your critter?"
"I don't think so. This particular specimen topped out at just over eight feet. I... want you to know, the fangs were not my idea."
"I... see."
"It can move very fast, if it's still in good health. Is there any help I can give you? I have access to painless poisons..."
"You've done enough, thank you. Please leave it to us professionals, eh?"
"It would be best if its body can be destroyed entirely. No cells remaining. If you can."
"That's why plasma arcs were invented. You'd best be on your way."
"Yes." Canaba hesitated. "Admiral Naismith?"
"Yes...."
"I... it might also be best if my future employer didn't learn about this. They have intense military interests. It might excite them unduly."
"Oh," said Miles/Admiral Naismith/Lieutenant Lord Vorkosigan of the Barrayaran Imperial Service, "I don't think you have to worry about that."
"Is forty-eight hours enough for your commando raid?" Canaba worried. "You understand, if you don't get the tissue, I'll go right back downside. I will not be trapped aboard your ship."
"You will be happy. It's in my contract," said Miles. "Now you'd better get gone."
"I must rely on you, sir." Canaba nodded in suppressed anguish, and withdrew.
They waited a few minutes in the cold room, to let Canaba put some distance between them. The building creaked in the wind; from an upper corridor echoed an odd shriek, and later, a laugh abruptly cut off. The guard shadowing Canaba returned. "He made it to his ground car all right, sir."
"Well," said Thorne, "I suppose we'll need to get hold of a plan of Ryoval's facilities, first-"
"I think not," said Miles.
"If we're to raid-"
"Raid, hell. I'm not risking my men on anything so idiotic. I said I'd slay his sin for him. I didn't say how."
The commercial comconsole net at the downside shuttleport seemed as convenient as anything. Miles slid into the booth and fed the machine his credit card while Thorne lurked just outside the viewing angle and the guards, outside, guarded. He encoded the call.
In a moment, the vid plate produced the image of a sweet-faced receptionist with dimples and a white fur crest instead of hair. "House Ryoval, Customer Services. How may I help you, sir?"
"I'd like to speak to Manager Deem, in Sales and Demonstrations," said Miles smoothly, "about a possible purchase for my organization."
"Who may I say is calling?"
"Admiral Miles Naismith, Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet."
"One moment, sir."
"You really think they'll just sell it?" Bel muttered from the side as the girl's face was replaced by a flowing pattern of colored lights and some syrupy music.
"Remember what we overheard yesterday?" said Miles. "I'm betting it's on sale. Cheap." He must try not to look too interested.
In a remarkably short time, the colored glop gave way to the face of an astonishingly beautiful young man, a blue-eyed albino in a red silk shirt. He had a huge livid bruise up one side of his white face. "This is Manager Deem. May I help you, Admiral?"
Miles cleared his throat carefully. "A rumor has been brought to my attention that House Ryoval may have recently acquired from House Bharaputra an article of some professional interest to me. Supposedly, it was the prototype of some sort of new improved fighting man. Do you know anything about it?"
Deem's hand stole to his bruise and palpated it gently, then twitched away. "Indeed, sir, we do have such an article." "Is it for sale?"
"Oh, ye-I mean, I think some arrangement is pending. But it may still be possible to bid on it."
"Would it be possible for me to inspect it?"
"Of course," said Deem with suppressed eagerness. "How soon?"
There was a burst of static, and the vid image split, Deem's face abruptly shrinking to one side. The new face was only too familiar. Bel hissed under its breath.
"I'll take this call, Deem," said Baron Ryoval.
"Yes, my lord," Deem's eyes widened in surprise, and he cut out. Ryoval's image swelled to occupy the space available.
"So, Betan," Ryoval smiled, "it appears I have something you want after all."
Miles shrugged. "Maybe," he said neutrally. "If it's in my price range."
"I thought you gave all your money to Fell." Miles spread his hands. "A good commander always has hidden reserves. However, the actual value of the item hasn't yet been established. In fact, its existence hasn't even been established."
"Oh, it exists, all right. And it is... impressive. Adding it to my collection was a unique pleasure. I'd hate to give it up. But for you," Ryoval smiled more broadly, "it may be possible to arrange a special cut rate." He chuckled, as at some secret pun that escaped Miles. A special cut throat is more like it.
"Oh?"
"I propose a simple trade," said Ryoval. "Flesh for flesh."
"You may overestimate my interest, Baron." Ryoval's eyes glinted. "I don't think so."
He knows I wouldn't touch him with a stick if it weren't something pretty compelling. So. "Name your proposal, then."
"I'll trade you even, Bharaputra's pet monster-ah, you should see it, Admiral!-for three tissue samples. Three tissue samples that will, if you are clever about it, cost you nothing." Ryoval held up one finger. "One from your Betan hermaphrodite," a second finger, "one from yourself," a third finger, making a W, "and one from Baron Fell's quaddie musician."
Over in the corner, Bel Thorne appeared to be suppressing an apopleptic fit. Quietly, fortunately.
"That third could prove extremely difficult to obtain," said Miles, buying time to think.
"Less difficult for you than me," said Ryoval. "Fell knows my agents. My overtures have put him on guard. You represent a unique opportunity to get in under that guard. Given sufficient motivation, I'm certain it's not beyond you, mercenary."
"Given sufficient motivation, very little is beyond me, Baron," said Miles semi-randomly.
"Well, then. I shall expect to hear from you within-say-twenty-four hours. After that time my offer will be withdrawn." Ryoval nodded cheerfully. "Good day, Admiral." The vid blanked.
"Well, then," echoed Miles.
"Well what?" said Thorne with suspicion. "You're not actually seriously considering that-vile proposal, are you?"
"What does he want my tissue sample for, for God's sake?" Miles wondered aloud.
"For his dog and dwarf act, no doubt," said Thorne nastily.
"Now, now. He'd be dreadfully disappointed when my clone turned out to be six feet tall, I'm afraid." Miles cleared his throat. "It wouldn't actually hurt anyone, I suppose. To take a small tissue sample. Whereas a commando raid risks lives."
Bel leaned back against the wall and crossed its arms. "Not true. You'd have to fight me for mine. And hers."
Miles grinned sourly. "So."
"So?"
"So let's go find a map of Ryoval's flesh pit. It seems we're going hunting."
House Ryoval's palatial main biologicals facility wasn't a proper fortress, just some guarded buildings. Some bloody big guarded buildings. Miles stood on the roof of the lift-van and studied the layout through his night-glasses. Fog droplets beaded in his hair. The cold damp wind searched for chinks in his jacket much as he searched for chinks in Ryoval's security.
The white complex loomed against the dark forested mountainside, its front gardens floodlit and fairy-like in the fog and frost. The utility entrances on the near side looked more promising. Miles nodded slowly to himself and climbed down off the rented lift-van, artistically broke-down on the little mountain side-trail overlooking Ryoval's. He swung into the back, out of the piercing wind.
"All right, people, listen up." His squad hunkered around as he set up the holovid map in the middle. The colored lights of the display sheened their faces, tall Ensign Murka, Thorne's second-in-command, and two big troopers. Sergeant Laureen Anderson was the van driver, assigned to outside back-up along with Trooper Sandy Hereld and Captain Thorne. Miles harbored a secret Barrayaran prejudice against taking female troops inside Ryoval's, that he trusted he concealed. It went double for Bel Thorne. Not that one's sex would necessarily make any difference to the adventures that might follow in the event of capture, if even a tenth of the bizarre rumors he'd heard were true. Nevertheless... Laureen claimed to be able to fly any vehicle made by man through the eye of a needle, not that Miles figured she'd ever done anything so domestic as thread a needle in her life. She would not question her assignment.
"Our main problem remains, that we still don't know where exactly in this facility Bharaputra's creature is being kept. So first we penetrate the fence, the outer courts, and the main building, here and here." A red thread of light traced their projected route at Miles's touch on the control board. "Then we quietly pick up an inside employee and fast-penta him. From that point on we're racing time, since we must assume he'll be promptly missed.
"The key word is quietly. We didn't come here to kill people, and we are not at war with Ryoval's employees. You carry your stunners, and keep those plasma arcs and the rest of the toys packed till we locate our quarry. We dispatch it fast and quietly, I get my sample," his hand touched his jacket, beneath which rested the collection case that would keep the tissue alive till they got back to the Ariel. "Then we fly. If anything goes wrong before I get that very expensive cut of meat, we don't bother to fight our way out. Not worth it. They have peculiar summary ways of dealing with murder charges here, and I don't see the need for any of us to end up as spare parts in Ryoval's tissue banks. We wait for Captain Thorne to arrange a ransom, and then try something else. We hold a lever or two on Ryoval in case of emergencies."
"Dire emergencies," Bel muttered.
"If anything goes wrong after the butcher-mission is accomplished, it's back to combat rules. That sample will then be irreplaceable, and must be got back to Captain Thorne at all costs. Laureen, you sure of our emergency pickup spot?"
"Yes, sir." She pointed on the vid display.
"Everybody else got that? Any questions? Suggestions? Last-minute observations? Communications check, then, Captain Thorne."
Their wrist comms all appeared to be in good working order. Ensign Murka shrugged on the weapons pack. Miles carefully pocketed the blueprint map cube, that cost them a near-ransom from a certain pliable construction company just a few hours ago. The four members of the penetration team slipped from the van and merged with the frosty darkness.
They slunk off through the woods. The frozen crunchy layer of plant detritus tended to slide underfoot, exposing a layer of slick mud. Murka spotted a spy eye before it spotted them, and blinded it with a brief burst of microwave static while they scurried past. The useful big guys made short work of boosting Miles over the wall. Miles tried not to think about the ancient pub sport of dwarf tossing. The inner court was stark and utilitarian, loading docks with big locked doors, rubbish collection bays, and a few parked vehicles.
Footsteps echoed, and they ducked down in a rubbish bay. A red-clad guard passed, slowly waving an infra-red scanner. They crouched and hid their faces in their infra-red blank ponchos, looking like so many bags of garbage no doubt. Then it was tiptoe up to the loading docks.
Ducts. The key to Ryoval's facility had turned out to be ducts, for heating, for access to power-optics cables, for the comm system. Narrow ducts. Quite impassable to a big guy. Miles slipped out of his poncho and gave it to a trooper to fold and pack.
Miles balanced on Murka's shoulders and cut his way through the first ductlet, a ventilation grille high on the wall above the loading dock doors. Miles handed the grille down silently, and after a quick visual scan for unwanted company, slithered through. It was a tight fit even for him. He let himself down gently to the concrete floor, found the door control box, shorted the alarm, and raised the door about a meter. His team rolled through, and he let the door back down as quietly as he could. So far so good; they hadn't yet had to exchange a word.
They made it to cover on the far side of the receiving bay just before a red-coveralled employee wandered through, driving an electric cart loaded with cleaning robots. Murka touched Miles's sleeve, and looked his inquiry-This one? Miles shook his head, Not yet. A maintenance man seemed less likely than an employee from the inner sanctum to know where their quarry was kept, and they didn't have time to litter the place with the unconscious bodies of false trials. They found the tunnel to the main building, just as the map cube promised. The door at the end was locked as expected.
It was up on Murka's shoulders again. A quick zizz of Miles's cutters loosened a panel in the ceiling, and he crawled through-the frail supporting framework would surely not have held a man of greater weight-and found the power cables running to the door lock. He was just looking over the problem and pulling tools out of his pocketed uniform jacket when Murka's hand reached up to thrust the weapons pack beside him and quietly pull the panel back into place. Miles flung himself to his belly and pressed his eye to the crack as a voice from down the corridor bellowed, "Freeze!"
Swear words screamed through Miles's head. He clamped his jaw on them. He looked down on the tops of his troopers' heads. In a moment, they were surrounded by half-a-dozen red-clad black-trousered armed guards. "What are you doing here?" snarled the guard sergeant.
"Oh, shit!" cried Murka. "Please, mister, don't tell my CO you caught us in here. He'd bust me back to private!"
"Huh?" said the guard sergeant. He prodded Murka with his weapon, a lethal nerve disrupter. "Hands up! Who are you?"
"M'name's Murka. We came in on a mercenary ship to Fell Station, but the captain wouldn't grant us downside passes. Think of it-we come all the way to Jackson's Whole, and the sonofabitch wouldn't let us go downside! Bloody pure-dick wouldn't let us see Ryoval's!"
The red-tunic'd guards were doing a fast scan-and-search, none too gently, and finding only stunners and the portion of security-penetration devices that Murka had carried.
"I made a bet we could get in even if we couldn't afford the front door." Murka's mouth turned down in great discouragement. "Looks like I lost."
"Looks like you did," growled the guard sergeant, drawing back.
One of his men held up the thin collection of baubles they'd stripped off the Dendarii. "They're not equipped like an assassination team," he observed.
Murka drew himself up, looking wonderfully offended. "We aren't!"
The guard sergeant turned over a stunner. "AWOL, are you?"
"Not if we make it back before midnight." Murka's tone went wheedling. "Look, m' CO's a right bastard. Suppose there's any way you could see your way clear that he doesn't find out about this?" One of Murka's hands drifted suggestively past his wallet pocket.
The guard sergeant looked him up and down, smirking. "Maybe."
Miles listened with open-mouthed delight. Murka, if this works I'm promoting you....
Murka paused. "Any chance of seeing inside first? Not the girls even, just the place? So I could say that I'd seen it."
"This isn't a whorehouse, soldier boy!" snapped the guard sergeant.
Murka looked stunned. "What?"
"This is the biologicals facility."
"Oh," said Murka.
"You idiot, "one of the troopers put in on cue. Miles sprinkled silent blessings down upon his head. None of the three so much as flicked an eyeball upward.
"But the man in town told me-" began Murka.
"What man?" said the guard sergeant.
"The man who took m'money," said Murka.
A couple of red-tunic'd guards were beginning to grin. The guard sergeant prodded Murka with his nerve disrupter. "Get going, soldier boy. Back that way. This is your lucky day."
"You mean we get to see inside?" said Murka hopefully.
"No," said the guard sergeant, "I mean we aren't going to break both your legs before we throw you out on your ass." He paused and added more kindly, "There's a whorehouse back in town." He slipped Murka's wallet out of his pocket, checked the name on the credit card and put it back, and removed all the loose currency. The guards did the same to the outraged-looking troopers, dividing the assorted cash up among them. "They take credit cards, and you've still got till midnight. Now move!"
And so Miles's squad was chivvied, ignominiously but intact, down the tunnel. Miles waited till the whole mob was well out of earshot before keying his wrist comm. "Bel?"
"Yes," came back the instant reply.
"Trouble. Murka and the troops were just picked up by Ryoval's security. I believe the boy genius has just managed to bullshit them into throwing them out the back door, instead of rendering them down for parts. I'll follow as soon as I can, we'll rendezvous and regroup for another try." Miles paused. This was a total bust, they were now worse off than when they'd started. Ryoval's security would be stirred up for the rest of the long Jacksonian night. He added to the comm, "I'm going to see if I can't at least find out the location of the critter before I withdraw. Should improve our chances of success next round."
Bel swore in a heartfelt tone. "Be careful."
"You bet. Watch for Murka and the boys. Naismith out."
Once he'd identified the right cables it was the work of a moment to make the door slide open. He then had an interesting dangle by his fingertips while coaxing the ceiling panel to fall back into place before he dropped from maximum downward extension, fearful for his bones. Nothing broke. He slipped across the portal to the main building and took to the ducts as soon as possible, the corridors having been proved dangerous. He lay on his back in the narrow tube and balanced the blueprint holocube on his belly, picking out a new and safer route not necessarily passable to a couple of husky troopers. And where did one look for a monster? A closet?
It was at about the third turn, inching his way through the system dragging the weapon pack, that he became aware that the territory no longer matched the map. Hell and damnation. Were these changes in the system since its construction, or a subtly sabotaged map? Well, no matter, he wasn't really lost, he could still retrace his route.
He crawled along for about thirty minutes, discovering and disarming two alarm sensors before they discovered him. The time factor was getting seriously pressing. Soon he would have to-ah, there! He peered through a vent grille into a dim room filled with holovid and communications equipment. Small Repairs, the map cube named it. It didn't look like a repairs shop. Another change since Ryoval had moved in? But a man sat alone with his back to Miles's wall. Perfect, too good to pass up.
Breathing silently, moving slowly, Miles eased his dart-gun out of the pack and made sure he loaded it with the right cartridge, fast-penta spiked with a paralyzer, a lovely cocktail blended for the purpose by the Ariel's medtech. He sighted through the grille, aimed the needle-nose of the dart gun with tense precision, and fired. Bulls-eye. The man slapped the back of his neck once and sat still, hand falling nervelessly to his side. Miles grinned briefly, cut his way through the grille, and lowered himself to the floor.
The man was well-dressed in civilian-type clothes-one of the scientists, perhaps? He lolled in his chair, a little smile playing around his lips, and stared with unalarmed interest at Miles. He started to fall over.
Miles caught him and propped him back upright. "Sit up now, that's right, you can't talk with your face in the carpet now, can you?"
"Nooo..." The man bobbled his head and smiled agreeably.
"Do you know anything about a genetic construct, a monstrous creature, just recently bought from House Bharaputra and brought to this facility?"
The man blinked and smiled. "Yes."
Fast-penta subjects did tend to be literal, Miles reminded himself. "Where is it being kept?"
"Downstairs."
"Where exactly downstairs?"
"In the sub-basement. The crawl-space around the foundations."
We were hoping it would catch some of the rats, you see." The man giggled. "Do cats eat rats? Do rats eat cats... ?"
Miles checked his map-cube. Yes. That looked good, in terms of the penetration team getting in and out, though it was still a large search area, broken up into a maze by structural elements running down into the bedrock, and specially-set low-vibration support columns running up into the laboratories. At the lower edge, where the mountainside sloped away, the space ran high-ceilinged and very near the surface, a possible breakout point. The space thinned to head-cracking narrowness and then to bedrock at the back where the building wedged into the slope. All right. Miles opened his dart case to find something that would lay his victim out cold and nonquestionable for the rest of the night. The man pawed at him and his sleeve slipped back to reveal a wrist-comm almost as thick and complex as Miles's own. A light blinked on it. Miles looked at the device, suddenly uneasy. This room... "By the way, who are you?"
"Moglia, Chief of Security, Ryoval Biologicals," the man recited happily. "At your service, sir."
"Oh, indeed you are." Miles's suddenly-thick fingers scrabbled faster in his dart case. Damn, damn, damn.
The door burst open. "Freeze, mister!"
Miles hit the tight-beam alarm/self-destruct on his own wrist comm and flung his hands up, and the wrist comm off, in one swift motion. Not by chance, Moglia sat between Miles and the door, inhibiting the trigger reflexes of the entering guards. The comm melted as it arced through the air-no chance of Ryoval security tracing the outside squad through it now, and Bel would at least know something had gone wrong.
The security chief chuckled to himself, temporarily fascinated by the task of counting his own fingers. The red-clad guard sergeant, backed by his squad, thundered into what was now screamingly obvious to Miles as the Security Operations Room, to jerk Miles around, slam him face-first into the wall, and begin frisking him with vicious efficiency. Within moments he had separated Miles from a clanking pile of incriminating equipment, his jacket, boots, and belt. Miles clutched the wall and shivered with the pain of several expertly-applied nerve jabs and the swift reversal of his fortune.
The security chief, when un-penta'd at last, was not at all pleased with the guard sergeant's confession about the three uniformed men he had let go with a fine earlier in the evening. He put the whole guard shift on full alert, and sent an armed squad out to try and trace the escaped Dendarii. Then, with an apprehensive expression on his face very like the guard-sergeant's during his mortified admission-compounded with sour satisfaction, contemplating Miles, and drug-induced nausea-he made a vid call.
"My lord?" said the security chief carefully.
"What is it, Moglia?" Baron Ryoval's face was sleepy and irritated.
"Sorry to disturb you sir, but I thought you might like to know about the intruder we just caught here. Not an ordinary thief, judging from his clothes and equipment. Strange-looking fellow, sort of a tall dwarf. He squeezed in through the ducts." Moglia held up tissue-collection kit, chip-driven alarm-disarming tools, and Miles's weapons, by way of evidence. The guard sergeant bundled Miles, stumbling, into range of the vid's pick-up. "He was asking a lot of questions about Bharaputra's monster."
Ryoval's lips parted. Then his eyes lit, and he threw back his head and laughed. "I should have guessed. Stealing when you should be buying, Admiral?" he chortled. "Oh, very good, Moglia!"
The security chief looked fractionally less nervous. "Do you know this little mutant, my lord?"
"Yes, indeed. He calls himself Miles Naismith. A mercenary-bills himself as an admiral. Self-promoted, no doubt. Excellent work, Moglia. Hold him, and I'll be there in the morning and deal with him personally."
"Hold him how, sir?"
Ryoval shrugged. "Amuse yourselves. Freely."
When Ryoval's image faded, Miles found himself pinned between the speculative glowers of both the security chief and the guard sergeant.
Just to relieve feelings, a burly guard held Miles while the security chief delivered a blow to his belly. But the chief was still too ill to really enjoy this as he should. "Came to see Bharaputra's toy soldier, did you?" he gasped, rubbing his own stomach.
The guard sergeant caught his chief's eye. "You know, I think we should give him his wish."
The security chief smothered a belch, and smiled as at a beatific vision. "Yes..."
Miles, praying they wouldn't break his arms, found himself being frog-marched down a complex of corridors and lift tubes by the burly guard, followed by the sergeant and the chief. They took a last lift-tube to the very bottom, a dusty basement crowded with stored and discarded equipment and supplies. They made their way to a locked hatch set in the floor. It swung open on a metal ladder descending into obscurity.
"The last thing we threw down there was a rat," the guard sergeant informed Miles cordially. "Nine bit its head right off. Nine gets very hungry. Got a metabolism like an ore furnace."
The guard forced Miles onto the ladder and down it a meter or so by the simple expedient of striking at his clinging hands with a truncheon. Miles hung just out of range of the stick, eyeing the dimly lit stone below. The rest was pillars and shadows and a cold dankness.
"Nine!" called the guard sergeant into the echoing darkness. "Nine! Dinner! Come and catch it!"
The security chief laughed mockingly, then clutched his head and groaned under his breath.
Ryoval had said he'd deal with Miles personally in the morning, surely the guards understood their boss wanted a live prisoner. Didn't they? Didn't he? "Is this the dungeon?" Miles spat blood and peered around.
"No, no, just a basement," the guard sergeant assured him cheerily. "The dungeon is for the paying customers. Heh, heh, heh." Still chortling at his own humor, he kicked the hatch closed. The chink of the locking mechanism rained down; then silence.
The bars of the ladder bit chill through Miles's socks. He hooked an arm around an upright and tucked one hand into the armpit of his black T-shirt to warm it briefly. His grey trousers had been emptied of everything but a ration bar, his handkerchief, and his legs.
He clung there for a long time. Going up was futile; going down, singularly uninviting. Eventually the startling ganglial pain began to dull, and the shaking physical shock to wear off. Still he clung. Cold.
It could have been worse, Miles reflected. The sergeant and his squad could have decided they wanted to play Lawrence of Arabia and the Six Turks. Commodore Tung, Miles's Dendarii chief of staff and a certified military history nut, had been plying Miles with a series of classic military memoirs lately. How had Colonel Lawrence escaped an analogous tight spot? Ah, yes, played dumb and persuaded his captors to throw him out in the mud. Tung must have pressed that book-fax on Murka, too.
The darkness, Miles discovered as his eyes adjusted, was only relative. Faint luminescent panels in the ceiling here and there shed a sickly yellow glow. He descended the last two meters to stand on solid rock.
He pictured the newsfax, back home on Barrayar-Body of Imperial Officer Found in Flesh-Czar's Dream Palace. Death From Exhaustio? Dammit, this wasn't the glorious sacrifice in the Emperor's service he'd once vowed to risk, this was just embarrassing. Maybe Bharaputra's creature would eat the evidence.
With this morose comfort in mind, he began to limp from pillar to pillar, pausing, listening, looking around. Maybe there was another ladder somewhere. Maybe there was a hatch someone had forgotten to lock. Maybe there was still hope.
Maybe there was something moving in the shadows just beyond that pillar....
Miles's breath froze, then eased again, as the movement materialized into a fat albino rat the size of an armadillo. It shied as it saw him and waddled rapidly away, its claws clicking on the rock. Only an escaped lab rat. A bloody big rat, but still, only a rat.
The huge rippling shadow struck out of nowhere, at incredible speed. It grabbed the rat by its tail and swung it squealing against a pillar, dashing out its brains with a crunch. A flash of a thick claw-like fingernail, and the white furry body was ripped open from sternum to tail. Frantic fingers peeled the skin away from the rat's body as blood splattered. Miles first saw the fangs as they bit and tore and buried themselves in the rat's tissues.
They were functional fangs, not just decorative, set in a protruding jaw, with long lips and a wide mouth; yet the total effect was lupine rather than simian. A flat nose, ridged, powerful brows, high cheekbones. Hair a dark matted mess. And yes, fully eight feet tall, a rangy, tense-muscled body.
Climbing back up the ladder would do no good, the creature could pluck him right off and swing him just like the rat. Levitate up the side of a pillar? Oh, for suction-cup fingers and toes, something the bioengineering committee had missed somehow. Freeze and play invisible? Miles settled on this last defense by default-he was paralyzed with terror.
The big feet, bare on the cold rock, also had claw-like toenails. But the creature was dressed, in clothes made of green lab-cloth, a belted kimono-like coat and loose trousers. And one other thing.
They didn 't tell me it was female.
She was almost finished with the rat when she looked up and saw Miles. Bloody-faced, bloody-handed, she froze as still as he.
In a spastic motion, Miles whipped the squashed ration bar from his trouser thigh-pocket and extended it toward her in his outstretched hand. "Dessert?" he smiled hysterically.
Dropping the rat's stripped carcass, she snatched the bar out of his hand, ripped off the cover, and devoured it in four bites. Then she stepped forward, grabbed him by an arm and his black T-shirt, and lifted him up to her face. The clawed fingers bit into his skin, and his feet dangled in air. Her breath was about what he would have guessed. Her eyes were raw and burning. "Water!" she croaked.
They didn't tell me she talked.
"Um, um-water," squeaked Miles. "Quite. There ought to be water around here-look, up at the ceiling, all those pipes. If you'll, um, put me down, good girl, I'll try and spot a water pipe or something...."
Slowly, she lowered him back to his feet and released him. He backed carefully away, his hands held out open at his sides. He cleared his throat, and tried to bring his voice back down to a low, soothing tone. "Let's try over here. The ceiling gets lower, or rather, the bedrock rises... over near that light panel, there, that thin composite plastic tube-white's the usual color-code for water. We don't want grey, that's sewage, or red, that's the power-optics..." No telling what she understood, tone was everything with creatures. "If you, uh, could hold me up on your shoulders like Ensign Murka, I could have a go at loosening that joint there..." He made pantomime gestures, uncertain if anything was getting through to whatever intelligence lay behind those terrible eyes.
The bloody hands, easily twice the size of his own, grabbed him abruptly by the hips and boosted him upward. He clutched the white pipe, inched along it to a screw-joint. Her thick shoulders beneath his feet moved along under him. Her muscles trembled, it wasn't all his own shaking. The joint was tight-he needed tools-he turned with all his strength, in danger of snapping his fragile finger bones. Suddenly the joint squeaked and slid. It gave, the plastic collar was moving, water began to spray between his fingers. One more turn and it sheared apart, and water arced in a bright stream down onto the rock beneath.
She almost dropped him in her haste. She put her mouth under the stream, wide open, let the water splash straight in and all over her face, coughing and guzzling even more frantically than she'd gone at the rat. She drank, and drank, and drank. She let it run over her hands, her face and head, washing away the blood, and then drank some more. Miles began to think she'd never quit, but at last she backed away and pushed her wet hair out of her eyes, and stared down at him. She stared at him for what seemed like a full minute, then suddenly roared, "Cold!"
Miles jumped. "Ah... cold... right. Me too, my socks are wet. Heat, you want heat. Lessee. Uh, let's try back this way, where the ceiling's lower. No point here, the heat would all collect up there out of reach, no good..." She followed him with all the intensity of a cat tracking a... well... rat, as he skittered around pillars to where the crawl space's floor rose to genuine crawl-height, about four feet. There, that one, that was the lowest pipe he could find. "If we could get this open," he pointed to a plastic pipe about as big around as his waist, "it's full of hot air being pumped along under pressure. No handy joints though, this time." He stared at his puzzle, trying to think. This composite plastic was extremely strong.
She crouched and pulled, then lay on her back and kicked up at it, then looked at him quite woefully.
"Try this." Nervously, he took her hand and guided it to the pipe, and traced long scratches around the circumference with her hard nails. She scratched and scratched, then looked at him again as if to say, This isn't working!
"Try kicking and pulling again now," he suggested.
She must have weighed three hundred pounds, and she put it all behind the next effort, kicking then grabbing the pipe, planting her feet on the ceiling and arching with all her strength. The pipe split along the scratches. She fell with it to the floor, and hot air began to hiss out. She held her hands, her face to it, nearly wrapped herself around it, sat on her knees and let it blow across her. Miles crouched down and stripped off his socks and flopped them over the warm pipe to dry. Now would be a good opportunity to run, if only there were anywhere to run to. But he was reluctant to let his prey out of his sight. His prey? He considered the incalculable value of her left calf muscle, as she sat on the rock and buried her face in her knees.
They didn't tell me she wept.
He pulled out his regulation handkerchief, an archaic square of cloth. He'd never understood the rationale for the idiotic handkerchief, except, perhaps, that where soldiers went there would be weeping. He handed it to her. "Here. Mop your eyes with this."
She took it, and blew her big flat nose in it, and made to hand it back.
"Keep it," Miles said. "Uh... what do they call you, I wonder?"
"Nine," she growled. Not hostile, it was just the way her strained voice came out of that big throat. "... What do they call you?"
Good God, a complete sentence. Miles blinked. "Admiral Miles Naismith." He arranged himself cross-legged.
She looked up, transfixed. "A soldier? A real officer?" And then more doubtfully, as if seeing him in detail for the first time, "You?"
Miles cleared his throat firmly. "Quite real. A bit down on my luck just at the moment," he admitted.
"Me too," she said glumly, and sniffled. "I don't know how long I've been in this basement, but that was my first drink."
"Three days, I think," said Miles. "Have they not, ah, given you any food, either?"
"No." She frowned; the effect, with the fangs, was quite overpowering. "This is worse than anything they did to me in the lab, and I thought that was bad."
It's not what you don't know that'll hurt you, the old saying went. It's what you do know that isn't so. Miles thought of his map cube; Miles looked at Nine. Miles pictured himself taking this entire mission's carefully-worked-out strategy plan delicately between thumb and forefinger and flushing it down a waste-disposal unit. The ductwork in the ceiling niggled at his imagination. Nine would never fit through it....
She clawed her wild hair away from her face and stared at him with renewed fierceness. Her eyes were a strange light hazel, adding to the wolfish effect. "What are you really doing here? Is this another test?"
"No, this is real life." Miles's lips twitched. "I, ah, made a mistake."
"Guess I did too," she said, lowering her head.
Miles pulled at his lip and studied her through narrowed eyes. "What sort of life have you had, I wonder?" he mused, half to himself.
She answered literally. "I lived with hired fosterers till I was eight. Like the clones do. Then I started to get big and clumsy and break things-they brought me to live at the lab after that. It was all right, I was warm and had plenty to eat."
"They can't have simplified you too much if they seriously intended you to be a soldier. I wonder what your IQ is?" he speculated.
"A hundred and thirty-five."
Miles fought off stunned paralysis. "I... see. Did you ever get... any training?"
She shrugged. "I took a lot of tests. They were... OK. Except for the aggression experiments. I don't like electric shocks." She brooded a moment. "I don't like experimental psychologists, either. They lie a lot." Her shoulders slumped. "Anyway, I failed. We all failed."
"How can they know if you failed if you never had any proper training?" Miles said scornfully. "Soldiering entails some of the most complex, cooperative learned behavior ever invented-I've been studying strategy and tactics for years, and I don't know half yet. It's all up here." He pressed his hands urgently to his head.
She looked across at him sharply. "If that's so," she turned her huge clawed hands over, staring at them, "then why did they do this to me?"
Miles stopped short. His throat was strangely dry. So, admirals lie too. Sometimes, even to themselves. After an unsettled pause he asked, "Did you never think of breaking open a water pipe?"
"You're punished, for breaking things. Or I was. Maybe not you, you're human."
"Did you ever think of escaping, breaking out? It's a soldier's duty, when captured by the enemy, to escape. Survive, escape, sabotage, in that order."
"Enemy?" She looked upward at the whole weight of House Ryoval pressing overhead. "Who are my friends?"
"Ah. Yes. There is that... point." And where would an eight-foot-tall genetic cocktail with fangs run to? He took a deep breath. No question what his next move must be. Duty, expediency, survival, all compelled it. "Your friends are closer than you think. Why do you think I came here?" Why, indeed?
She shot him a silent, puzzled frown.
"I came for you. I'd heard of you. I'm... recruiting. Or I was. Things went wrong, and now I'm escaping. But if you came with me, you could join the Dendarii Mercenaries. A top outfit-always looking for a few good men, or whatever. I have this master-sergeant who... who needs a recruit like you." Too true. Sergeant Dyeb was infamous for his sour attitude about women soldiers, insisting that they were too soft. Any female recruit who survived his course came out with her aggression highly developed. Miles pictured Dyeb being dangled by his toes from a height of about eight feet.... He controlled his runaway imagination in favor of concentration on the present crisis. Nine was looking... unimpressed.
"Very funny," she said coldly, making Miles wonder for a wild moment if she'd been equipped with the telepathy gene complex-no, she predated that-"but I'm not even human. Or hadn't you heard?"
Miles shrugged carefully. "Human is as human does." He forced himself to reach out and touch her damp cheek. "Animals don't weep, Nine."
She jerked, as from an electric shock. "Animals don't lie. Humans do. All the time."
"Not all the time." He hoped the light was too dim for her to see the flush in his face. She was watching his face intently.
"Prove it." She tilted her head as she sat cross-legged. Her pale gold eyes were suddenly burning, speculative.
"Uh... sure. How?"
"Take off your clothes."
"... what?"
"Take off your clothes, and lie down with me as humans do. Men and women." Her hand reached out to touch his throat.
The pressing claws made little wells in his flesh. "Blrp?" choked Miles. His eyes felt wide as saucers. A little more pressure, and those wells would spring forth red fountains. I am about to die....
She stared into his face with a strange, frightening, bottomless hunger. Then abruptly, she released him. He sprang up and cracked his head on the low ceiling, and dropped back down, the stars in his eyes unrelated to love at first sight.
Her lips wrinkled back on a fanged groan of despair. "Ugly," she wailed. Her clawed nails raked across her cheeks leaving red furrows. "Too ugly... animal... you don't think I'm human-" She seemed to swell with some destructive resolve.
"No, no, no!" gibbered Miles, lurching to his knees and grabbing her hands and pulling them down. "It's not that. It's just, uh-how old are you, anyway?"
"Sixteen."
Sixteen. God. He remembered sixteen. Sex-obsessed and dying inside every minute. A horrible age to be trapped in a twisted, fragile, abnormal body. God only knew how he had survived his own self-hatred then. No-he remembered how. He'd been saved by one who loved him. "Aren't you a little young for this?" he tried hopefully.
"How old were you?"
"Fifteen," he admitted, before thinking to lie. "But... it was traumatic. Didn't work out at all in the long run."
Her claws turned toward her face again.
"Don't do that!" he cried, hanging on. It reminded him entirely too much of the episode of Sergeant Bothari and the knife. The Sergeant had taken Miles's knife away from him by superior force. Not an option open to Miles here. "Will you calm down?" he yelled at her.
She hesitated.
"It's just that, uh, an officer and gentleman doesn't just fling himself onto his lady on the bare ground. One... one sits down. Gets comfortable. Has a little conversation, drinks a little wine, plays a little music... slows down. You're hardly warm yet. Here, sit over here where it's warmest." He positioned her nearer the broken duct, got up on his knees behind her, tried rubbing her neck and shoulders. Her muscles were tense, they felt like rocks under his thumbs. Any attempt on his part to strangle her would clearly be futile.
I can't believe this. Trapped in Ryoval's basement with a sex-starved teenage werewolf. There was nothing about this in any of my Imperial training manuals.... He remembered his mission, which was to get her left calf muscle back to the Ariel alive. Dr. Canaba, if I survive you and I are going to have a little talk about this....
Her voice was muffled with grief and the odd shape of her mouth. "You think I'm too tall."
"Not at all." He was getting hold of himself a bit, he could lie faster. "I adore tall women, ask anyone who knows me. Besides, I made the happy discovery some time back that height difference only matters when we're standing up. When we're lying down it's, ah, less of a problem...." A rapid mental review of everything he'd ever learned by trial and error, mostly error, about women was streaming uninvited through his mind. It was harrowing. What did women want?
He shifted around and took her hand, earnestly. She stared back equally earnestly, waiting for... instruction. At this point the realization came over Miles that he was facing his first virgin. He smiled at her in total paralysis for several seconds. "Nine... you've never done this before, have you?"
"I've seen vids." She frowned introspectively. "They usually start with kisses, but..." a vague gesture toward her misshapen mouth, "maybe you don't want to."
Miles tried not to think about the late rat. She'd been systematically starved, after all. "Vids can be very misleading. For women-especially the first time-it takes practice to learn your own body responses, woman friends have told me. I'm afraid I might hurt you." And then you'll disembowel me.
She gazed into his eyes. "That's all right. I have a very high pain threshold."
But I don't.
This was mad. She was mad. He was mad. Yet he could feel a creeping fascination for the-proposition-rising from his belly to his brain like a fey fog. No doubt about it, she was the tallest female thing he was ever likely to meet. More than one woman of his acquaintance had accused him of wanting to go mountain-climbing. He could get that out of his system once for all....
Damn, I do believe she'd clean up good. She was not without a certain... charm was not the word-whatever beauty there was to be found in the strong, the swift, the leanly athletic, the functioning form. Once you got used to the scale of it. She radiated a smooth heat he could feel from here-animal magnetism? the suppressed observer in the back of his brain supplied. Power? Whatever else it was, it would certainly be astonishing.
One of his mother's favorite aphorisms drifted through his head. Anything worth doing, she always said, is worth doing well.
Dizzy as a drunkard, he abandoned the crutch of logic for the wings of inspiration. "Well then, doctor," he heard himself muttering insanely, "let us experiment."
Kissing a woman with fangs was indeed a novel sensation. Being, kissed back-she was clearly a fast learner-was even more novel. Her arms circled him ecstatically, and from that point on he lost control of the situation, somehow. Though some time later, coming up for air, he did look up to ask, "Nine, have you ever heard of the black widow spider?"
"No... what is it?"
"Never mind," he said airily.
It was all very awkward and clumsy, but sincere, and when he was done the water in her eyes was from joy, not pain. She seemed enormously (how else?) pleased with him. He was so unstrung he actually fell asleep for a few minutes, pillowed on her body.
He woke up laughing.
"You really do have the most elegant cheekbones," he told her, tracing their line with one finger. She leaned into his touch, cuddled up equally to him and the heat pipe. "There's a woman on my ship who wears her hair in a sort of woven braid in the back-it would look just great on you. Maybe she could teach you how."
She pulled a wad of her hair forward and looked cross-eyed at it, as if trying to see past the coarse tangles and filth. She touched his face in turn. "You are very handsome, Admiral."
"Huh? Me?" He ran a hand over the night's beard stubble, sharp features, the old pain lines... she must be blinded by my putative rank, eh?
"Your face is very... alive. And your eyes see what they're looking at."
"Nine..." he cleared his throat, paused. "Dammit, that's not a name, that's a number. What happened to Ten?"
"He died." Maybe I will too, her strange-colored eyes added silently, before her lids shuttered them.
"Is Nine all they ever called you?"
"There's a long biocomputer code-string that's my actual designation."
"Well, we all have serial numbers," Miles had two, now that he thought of it, "but this is absurd. I can't call you Nine, like some robot. You need a proper name, a name that fits you." He leaned back onto her warm bare shoulder-she was like a furnace, they had spoken truly about her metabolism-and his lips drew back on a slow grin. "Taura."
"Taura?" Her long mouth gave it a skewed and lilting accent."... it's too beautiful for me!"
"Taura," he repeated firmly. "Beautiful but strong. Full of secret meaning. Perfect. Ah, speaking of secrets..." Was now the time to tell her about what Dr. Canaba had planted in her left calf? Or would she be hurt, as someone falsely courted for her money-or his title-Miles faltered. "I think, now that we know each other better, that it's time for us to blow out of this place."
She stared around, into the grim dimness. "How?"
"Well, that's what we have to figure out, eh? I confess, ducts rather spring to my mind." Not the heat pipe, obviously. He'd have to go anorexic for months to fit in it, besides, he'd cook. He shook out and pulled on his black T-shirt-he'd put on his trousers immediately after he'd woke, that stone floor sucked heat remorselessly from any flesh that touched it-and creaked to his feet. God. He was getting too old for this sort of thing already. The sixteen-year-old, clearly, possessed the physical resilience of a minor goddess. What was it he'd gotten into at sixteen? Sand, that was it. He winced in memory of what it had done to certain sensitive body folds and crevices. Maybe cold stone wasn't so bad after all.
She pulled her pale green coat and trousers out from under herself, dressed, and followed him in a crouch until the space was sufficient for her to stand upright.
They quartered and re-quartered the underground chamber. There were four ladders with hatches, all locked. There was a locked vehicle exit to the outside on the downslope side. A direct breakout might be simplest, but if he couldn't make immediate contact with Thorne it was a twenty-seven-kilometer hike to the nearest town. In the snow, in his sock feet-her bare feet. And if they got there, he wouldn't be able to use the vidnet anyway because his credit card was still locked in the Security Ops office upstairs. Asking for charity in Ryoval's town was a dubious proposition. So, break straight out and be sorry later, or linger and try to equip themselves, risking recapture, and be sorry sooner? Tactical decisions were such fun.
Ducts won. Miles pointed upward to the most likely one. "Think you can break that open and boost me in?" he asked Taura.
She studied it, nodded slowly, the expression closing on her face. She stretched up and moved along to a soft metal clad joint, slipped her claw-hard fingernails under the strip, and yanked it off. She worked her fingers into the exposed slot and hung on it as if chinning herself. The duct bent open under her weight. "There you go," she said.
She lifted him up as easily as a child, and he squirmed into the duct. This one was a particularly close fit, though it was the largest he had spotted as accessible in this ceiling. He inched along it on his back. He had to stop twice to suppress a residual, hysteria-tinged laughing fit. The duct curved upward, and he slithered around the curve in the darkness only to find that it split here into a Y, each branch half-sized. He cursed and backed out.
Taura had her face turned up to him, an unusual angle of view.
"No good that way," he gasped, reversing direction gymnastically at the gap. He headed the other way. This too curved up, but within moments he found a grille. A tightly-fitted, unbudgable, unbreakable, and with his bare hands uncuttable grille. Taura might have the strength to rip it out of the wall, but Taura couldn't fit through the duct to reach it. He contemplated it a few moments. "Right," he muttered, and backed out again.
"So much for ducts," he reported to Taura. "Uh... could you help me down?" She lowered him to the floor, and he dusted himself futilely. "Let's look around some more."
She followed him docilely enough, though something in her expression hinted she might be losing faith in his admiralness. A bit of detailing on a column caught his eye, and he went to take a closer look in the dim light.
It was one of the low-vibration support columns. Two meters in diameter, set deep in the bedrock in a well of fluid, it ran straight up to one of the labs, no doubt, to provide an ultra-stable base for certain kinds of crystal generation projects and the like. Miles rapped on the side of the column. It rang hollow. Ah yes, makes sense, concrete doesn't float too well, eh? A groove in the side outlined... an access port? He ran his fingers around it, probing. There was a concealed... something. He stretched his arms and found a twin spot on the opposite side. The spots yielded slowly to the hard pressure of his thumbs. There was a sudden pop and hiss, and the whole panel came away. He staggered, and barely kept from dropping it down the hole. He turned it sideways and drew it out.
"Well, well," Miles grinned. He stuck his head through the port, looked down and up. Black as pitch. Rather gingerly, he reached his arm in and felt around. There was a ladder running up the damp inside, for access for cleaning and repairs; the whole column could apparently be filled with fluid of whatever density at need. Filled, it would have been self-pressure-sealed and unopenable. Carefully, he examined the inner edge of the hatch. Openable from either side, by God. "Let's go see if there's any more of these, further up."
It was slow going, feeling for more grooves as they ascended in the blackness. Miles tried not to think about the fall, should he slip from the slimy ladder. Taura's deep breathing, below him, was actually rather comforting, They had gone up perhaps three stories when Miles's chilled and numbing fingers found another groove. He'd almost missed it, it was on the opposite side of the ladder from the first. He then discovered, the hard way, that he didn't have nearly the reach to keep one arm hooked around the ladder and press both release catches at the same time. After a terrifying slip, trying, he clung spasmodically to the ladder till his heart stopped pounding. "Taura?" he croaked. "I'll move up, and you try it." Not much up was left, the column ended a meter or so above his head.
Her extra arm length was all that was needed-the catches surrendered to her big hands with a squeak of protest.
"What do you see?" Miles whispered.
"Big dark room. Maybe a lab."
"Makes sense. Climb back down and put that lower panel back on, no sense advertising where we went."
Miles slipped through the hatch into the darkened laboratory while Taura accomplished her chore. He dared not switch on a light in the windowless room, but a few instrument readouts on the benches and walls gave enough ghostly glow for his dark-adapted eyes that at least he didn't trip over anything. One glass door led to a hallway. A heavily electronically-monitored hallway. With his nose pressed to the glass Miles saw a red shape flit past a cross-corridor; guards here. What did they guard?
Taura oozed out of the access hatch to the column-with difficulty -and sat down heavily on the floor, her face in her hands. Concerned, Miles nipped back to her. "You all right?"
She shook her head. "No. Hungry."
"What, already? That was supposed to be a twenty-four hour rat-er, ration bar." Not to mention the two or three kilos of meat she'd had for an appetizer.
"For you, maybe," she wheezed. She was shaking. Miles began to see why Canaba had dubbed his project a failure. Imagine trying to feed a whole army of such appetites. Napoleon would quail. Maybe the raw-boned kid was still growing. Daunting thought.
There was a refrigerator at the back of the lab. If he knew lab techs... ah, ha. Indeed, in among the test tubes was a package with half a sandwich and a large, if bruised, pear. He handed them to Taura. She looked vastly impressed, as if he'd conjured them from his sleeve by magic, and devoured them at once, and grew less pale.
Miles foraged further for his troop. Alas, the only other organics in the fridge were little covered dishes of gelatinous stuff with unpleasant multi-colored fuzz growing in them. But there were three big shiny walk-in wall freezers lined up in a row. Miles peered through a glass square in one thick door, and risked pressing the wall pad that turned on the light inside. Within were row on row on row of labelled drawers, full of clear plastic trays. Frozen samples of some kind. Thousands-Miles looked again, and calculated more carefully-hundreds of thousands. He glanced at the lighted control panel by the freezer drawer. The temperature inside was that of liquid nitrogen. Three freezers... Millions of.... Miles sat down abruptly on the floor himself. "Taura, do you know where we are?" he whispered intensely.
"Sorry, no," she whispered back, creeping over.
"That was a rhetorical question. I know where we are."
"Where?"
"Ryoval's treasure chamber."
"What?"
"That," Miles jerked his thumb at the freezer, "is the baron's hundred-year-old tissue collection. My God. Its value is almost incalculable. Every unique, irreplaceable, mutant bizarre bit he's begged, bought, borrowed or stolen for the last three-fourths of a century, all lined up in neat little rows, waiting to be thawed and cultured and cooked up into some poor new slave. This is the living heart of his whole human biologicals operation." Miles sprang to his feet and pored over the control panels. His heart raced, and he breathed open-mouthed, laughing silently, feeling almost like he was about to pass out. "Oh, shit. Oh, God." He stopped, swallowed. Could it be done? These freezers had to have an alarm system, monitors surely, piped up to Security Ops at the very least. Yes, there was a complex device for opening the door-that was fine, he didn't want to open the door. He left it untouched. It was systems readout he was after. If he could bugger up just one sensor.... Was the thing broadcast-output to several outside monitor locations, or did they run an optic thread to just one? The lab benches supplied him with a small hand light, and drawers and drawers of assorted tools and supplies. Taura watched him in puzzlement as he darted here, there, taking inventory.
The freezer monitor was broadcast-output, inaccessible; could he hit it on the input side? He levered off a smoke-dark plastic cover as silently as he could. There, there, the optic thread came out of the wall, pumping continuous information about the freezer's interior environment. It fit into a simple standard receiver plug on the more daunting black box that controlled the door alarm. There'd been a whole drawer full of assorted optic threads with various ends and Y-adaptors.... Out of the spaghetti-tangle he drew what he needed, discarding several with broken ends or other damage. There were three optical data recorders in the drawer. Two didn't work. The third did.
A quick festoon of optic thread, a swift unplugging and plugging, and he had one freezer talking to two control boxes. He set the freed thread to talking to the datacorder. He simply had to chance the blip during transfer. If anyone checked they'd find all seemed well again. He gave the datacorder several minutes to develop a nice continuous replay loop, crouching very still with even the tiny hand light extinguished. Taura waited with the patience of a predator, making no noise.
One, two, three, and he set the datacorder to talking to all three control boxes. The real thread plugs hung forlornly loose. Would it work? There were no alarms going off, no thundering herd of irate security troops....
"Taura, come here."
She loomed beside him, baffled.
"Have you ever met Baron Ryoval?" asked Miles.
"Yes, once... when he came to buy me."
"Did you like him?"
She gave him an are-you-out-of-your-mind? look.
"Yeah, I didn't much care for him either." Restrained murder, in point of fact. He was now meltingly grateful for that restraint. "Would you like to rip his lungs out, if you could?"
Her clawed hands clenched. "Try me!"
"Good!" He smiled cheerily. "I want to give you your first lesson in tactics." He pointed. "See that control? The temperature in these freezers can be raised to almost 200 degrees centigrade, for heat sterilization during cleaning. Give me your finger. One finger. Gently. More gently than that." He guided her hand. "The least possible pressure you can apply to the dial, and still move... Now the next," he pulled her to the next panel, "and the last." He exhaled, still not quite able to believe it.
"And the lesson is," he breathed, "it's not how much force you use. It's where you apply it."
He resisted the urge to scrawl something like The Dwarf Strikes Back across the front of the freezer with a flow pen. The longer the baron in his mortal rage took to figure out who to pursue, the better. It would take several hours to bring all that mass in there from liquid nitrogen temperature up to well-done, but if no one came in till morning shift, the destruction would be absolute.
Miles glanced at the time on the wall digital. Dear God, he'd spent a lot of time in that basement. Well-spent, but still... "Now," he said to Taura, who was still meditating on the dial, and her hand, with her gold eyes glowing, "we have to get out of here. Now we really have to get out of here." Lest her next tactics lesson turn out to be, Don't blow up the bridge you're standing on, Miles allowed nervously.
Contemplating the door-locking mechanism more closely, plus what lay beyond-among other things, the sound-activated wall-mounted monitors in the halls featured automatic laser fire-Miles almost went to turn the freezer temperatures back down. His chip-driven Dendarii tools, now locked in the Security Ops office, might barely have handled the complex circuitry in the pried-open control box. But of course, he couldn't get at his tools without his tools... a nice paradox. It shouldn't surprise Miles, that Ryoval saved his most sophisticated alarm system for this lab's one and only door. But it made the room a much worse trap than even the sub-basement.
He made another tour of the lab with the filched hand light, checking drawers again. No computer-keys came to hand, but he did find a big, crude pair of cutters in a drawer full of rings and clamps, and bethought him of the duct grille that had lately defeated him in the basement. So. The passage up to this lab had merely been the illusion of progress toward escape.
"There's no shame in a strategic retreat to a better position," he whispered to Taura when she balked at re-entering the support column's dark tube. "This is a dead-end, here. Maybe literally." The doubt in her tawny eyes was strangely unsettling, a weight in his heart. Still don't trust me, eh? Well, maybe those who have been greatly betrayed need great proof. "Stick with me, kid," he muttered under his breath, swinging into the tube. "We're going places." Her doubt was merely masked under lowered eyelids, but she followed him, sealing the hatch behind them.
With the hand light, the descent was slightly less nasty than the ascent into the unknown had been. There were no other exits to be found, and shortly they stood on the stone they had started from. Miles checked the progress of their ceiling waterspout, while Taura drank again. The splattering water ran off in a flat greasy trickle downslope; given the vast size of the chamber, it would be some days before the pool collecting slowly against the lower wall offered any useful strategic possibilities, though there was always the hope it might do a bit to undermine the foundations.
Taura boosted him back into the duct. "Wish me luck," he murmured over his shoulder, muffled by the close confines.
"Goodbye," she said. He could not see the expression on her face; there was none in her voice.
"See you later," he corrected firmly.
A few minutes of vigorous wriggling brought him back to his grille. It opened onto a dark room stacked with stuff, part of the basement proper, quiet and unoccupied. The snip of his cutters, biting through the grille, seemed loud enough to bring down Ryoval's entire security force, but none appeared. Maybe the security chief was sleeping off his drug hangover. A scrabbling noise, not of Miles's own making, echoed thinly through the duct and Miles froze. He flashed his light down a side-branching tube. Twin red jewels flashed back, the eyes of a huge rat. He briefly considered trying to clout it and haul it back to Taura. No. When they got back to the Ariel, he'd give her a steak dinner. Two steak dinners. The rat saved itself by turning and scampering away.
The grille parted at last, and he squeezed into the storage room. What time was it, anyway? Late, very late. The room gave onto a corridor, and on the floor at the end, one of the access hatches gleamed dully. Miles's heart rose in serious hope. Once he'd got Taura, they must next try to reach a vehicle....
This hatch, like the first, was manual, no sophisticated electronics to disarm. It re-locked automatically upon closing, however. Miles jammed it with his clippers before descending the ladder. He aimed his light around-"Taura!" he whispered. "Where are you?"
No immediate answer; no glowing gold eyes flashing in the forest of pillars. He was reluctant to shout. He slapped down the rungs and began a silent fast trot through the chamber, the cold stone draining the heat through his socks and making him long for his lost boots.
He came upon her sitting silently at the base of a pillar, her head turned sideways resting on her knees. Her face was pensive, sad. Really, it didn't take long at all to begin reading the subtleties of feeling in her wolfish features.
"Time to march, soldier girl," Miles said.
Her head lifted. "You came back!"
"What did you think I was going to do? Of course I came back. You're my recruit, aren't you?"
She scrubbed her face with the back of a big paw-hand, Miles corrected himself severely-and stood up, and up. "Guess I must be." Her outslung mouth smiled slightly. If you didn't have a clue what the expression was, it could look quite alarming.
"I've got a hatch open. We've got to try to get out of this main building, back to the utility bay. I saw several vehicles parked there earlier. What's a little theft, after-"
With a sudden whine, the outside vehicle entrance, downslope to their right, began to slide upward. A rush of cold dry air swept through the dankness, and a thin shaft of yellow dawn light made the shadows blue. They shielded their eyes in the unexpected glare. Out of the bright squinting haze coalesced half-a-dozen red-clad forms, double-timing it, weapons at the ready.
Taura's hand was tight on Miles's. Run, he started to cry, and bit back the shout; no way could they outrun a nerve disrupter beam, a weapon which at least two of the guards now carried. Miles's breath hissed out through his teeth. He was too infuriated even to swear. They'd been so close....
Security Chief Moglia sauntered up. "What, still in one piece, Naismith?" he smirked unpleasantly. "Nine must have finally realized it's time to start cooperating, eh, Nine?"
Miles squeezed her hand hard, hoping the message would be properly understood as, Wait.
She lifted her chin. "Guess so," she said coldly.
"It's about time," said Moglia. "Be a good girl, and we'll take you upstairs and feed you breakfast after this."
Good, Miles's hand signalled. She was watching him closely for cues, now.
Moglia prodded Miles with his truncheon. "Time to go, dwarf. Your friends have actually made ransom. Surprised me."
Miles was surprised himself. He moved toward the exit, still towing Taura. He didn't look at her, did as little as possible to draw unwanted attention to their, er, togetherness, while still maintaining it. He let go of her hand as soon as their momentum was established.
What the hell... Miles thought as they emerged into the blinking dawn, up the ramp and onto a circle of tarmac slick with glittering rime. A most peculiar tableau was arranged there.
Bel Thorne and one Dendarii trooper, armed with stunners, shifted uneasily-not prisoners? Half a dozen armed men in the green uniform of House Fell stood at the ready. A float truck emblazoned with Fell's logo was parked at the tarmac's edge. And Nicol the quaddie, wrapped in white fur against the frost, hovered in her float chair at the stunner-point of a big green-clad guard. The light was grey and gold and chilly as the sun, lifting over the dark mountains in the distance, broke through the clouds.
"Is that the man you want?" the green-uniformed guard captain asked Bel Thorne.
"That's him." Thorne's face was white with an odd mixture of relief and distress. "Admiral, are you all right?" Thorne called urgently. Its eyes widened, taking in Miles's tall companion. "What the hell's that?"
"She is recruit-trainee Taura," Miles said firmly, hoping 1) Bel would unravel the several meanings packed in that sentence and 2) Ryoval's guards wouldn't. Bel looked stunned, so evidently Miles had got at least partly through; Security Chief Moglia looked suspicious, but baffled. Miles was clearly a problem Moglia thought he was about to get rid of, however, and he thrust his bafflement aside to deal with the more important person of Fell's guard captain.
"What is this?" Miles hissed at Bel, sidling closer until a red-clad guard lifted his nerve disrupter and shook his head. Moglia and Fell's captain were exchanging electronic data on a report panel, heads bent together, evidently the official documentation.
"When we lost you last night, I was in a panic," Bel pitched its voice low toward Miles. "A frontal assault was out of the question. So I ran to Baron Fell to ask for help. But the help I got wasn't quite what I expected. Fell and Ryoval cooked up a deal between them to exchange Nicol for you. I swear, I only found out the details an hour ago!" Bel protested at Nicol's thin-lipped glower in its direction.
"I... see." Miles paused. "Are we planning to refund her dollar?"
"Sir," Bel's voice was anguished, "we had no idea what was happening to you in there. We were expecting Ryoval to start beaming up a holocast of obscene and ingenious tortures, starring you, at any minute. Like Commodore Tung says, on hemmed-in ground, use subterfuge."
Miles recognized one of Tung's favorite Sun Tzu aphorisms. On bad days Tung had a habit of quoting the 4000-year-dead general in the original Chinese; when Tung was feeling benign they got a translation. Miles glanced around, adding up weapons, men, equipment. Most of the green guards carried stunners. Thirteen to... three? Four? He glanced at Nicol. Maybe five? On desperate ground, Sun Tzu advised, fight. Could it get much more desperate than this?
"Ah..." said Miles. "Just what the devil did we offer Baron Fell in exchange for this extraordinary charity? Or is he doing it out of the goodness of his heart?"
Bel shot him an exasperated look, then cleared its throat. "I promised you'd tell him the real truth about the Betan rejuvenation treatment."
"Bel..."
Thorne shrugged unhappily. "I thought, once we'd got you back, we'd figure something out. But I never thought he'd offer Nicol to Ryoval, I swear!"
Down in the long valley, Miles could see a bead moving on the thin gleam of monorail. The morning shift of bioengineers and technicians, janitors and office clerks and cafeteria cooks, was due to arrive soon. Miles glanced at the white building looming above, pictured the scene to come in that third floor lab as the guards deactivated the alarms and let them in to work, as the first one through the door sniffed and wrinkled his nose and said plaintively, "What's that awful smell?"
"Has 'Medtech Vaughn' signed aboard the Ariel yet?" Miles asked.
"Within the hour."
"Yeah, well... it turns out we didn't need to kill his fatted calf after all. It comes with the package." Miles nodded toward Taura.
Bel lowered its voice still further. "That's coming with us?"
"You'd better believe it. Vaughn didn't tell us everything. To put it mildly. I'll explain later," Miles added as the two guard captains broke up their tete-a-tete. Moglia swung his truncheon jauntily, heading toward Miles. "Meantime, you made a slight miscalculation. This isn't hemmed-in ground. This is desperate ground. Nicol, I want you to know, the Dendarii don't give refunds."
Nicol frowned in bewilderment. Bel's eyes widened, as it checked out the odds-calculating them thirteen to three, Miles could tell.
"Truly?" Bel choked. A subtle hand signal, down by its trouser seam, brought the trooper to full alert.
"Truly desperate," Miles reiterated. He inhaled deeply. "Now! Taura, attack!"
Miles launched himself toward Moglia, not so much actually expecting to wrestle his truncheon from him as hoping to maneuver Moglia's body between himself and the fellows with the nerve disruptors. The Dendarii trooper, who had been paying attention to details, dropped one of the nerve disrupter wielders with his first stunner shot, then rolled away from the second's return fire. Bel dropped the second nerve disrupter man and leapt aside. Two red guards, aiming their stunners at the running hermaphrodite, were lifted abruptly by their necks. Taura cracked their heads together, unscientifically but hard; they fell to hands and knees, groping blindly for their lost weapons.
Fell's green guards hesitated, not certain just whom to shoot, until Nicol, her angel's face alight, suddenly shot skyward in her float chair and dropped straight down again on the head of her guard, who was distracted by the fight. He fell like an ox. Nicol flipped her floater sideways as green-guard stunner fire found her, shielding herself from its flare, and shot upwards again. Taura picked up a red guard and threw him at a green one; they both went down in a tangle of arms and legs.
The Dendarii trooper closed on a green guard hand-to-hand, to shield himself from stunner blast. Fell's captain wouldn't buy the maneuver, and ruthlessly stunned them both, a sound tactic with the numbers on his side. Moglia got his truncheon up against Miles's windpipe and started to press, meanwhile yelling into his wrist comm, calling for back-up from Security Ops. A green guard screamed as Taura yanked his arm out of its shoulder socket and swung him into the air by the dislocated joint at another one aiming his stunner at her.
Colored lights danced before Miles's eyes. Fell's captain, focusing on Taura as the biggest threat, dropped to stunner fire from Bel Thorne as Nicol whammed her float chair into the back of the last green guard left standing.
"The float truck!" Miles croaked. "Go for the float truck!" Bel cast him a desperate look and sprinted toward it. Miles fought like an eel until Moglia got a hand down to his boot, drew a sharp, thin knife, and pressed it to Miles's neck.
"Hold still!" snarled Moglia. "That's better..." He straightened in the sudden silence, realizing he'd just pulled domination from disaster. "Everybody hold still." Bel froze with its hand on the float-truck's door pad. A couple of the men splayed on the tarmac twitched and moaned. "Now stand away from-glk," said Moglia.
Taura's voice whispered past Moglia's ear, a soft, soft growl. "Drop the knife. Or I'll rip your throat out with my bare hands."
Miles's eyes wrenched sideways, trying to see around his own clamped head, as the sharp edge sang against his skin.
"I can kill him, before you do," croaked Moglia.
"The little man is mine," Taura crooned. "You gave him to me yourself. He came back for me. Hurt him one little bit, and I'll tear your head off and then I'll drink your blood."
Miles felt Moglia being lifted off his feet. The knife clattered to the pavement. Miles sprang away, staggering. Taura held Moglia by his neck, her claws biting deep. "I still want to rip his head off," she growled petulantly, remembrance of abuse sparking in her eyes.
"Leave him," gasped Miles. "Believe me, in a few hours he's going to be suffering a more artistic vengeance than anything we can dream up."
Bel galloped back to stun the security chief at can't miss range while Taura held him out like a wet cat. Miles had Taura throw the unconscious Dendarii over her shoulder while he ran around to the back of the float truck and released the doors for Nicol, who zipped her chair inside. They tumbled within, dropped the doors, and Bel at the controls shot them into the air. A siren was going off somewhere in Ryoval's.
"Wrist comm, wrist comm," Miles babbled, stripping his unconscious trooper of the device. "Bel, where is our drop shuttle parked?"
"We came in at a little commercial shuttleport just outside Ryoval's town, about forty kilometers from here."
"Anybody left manning it?"
"Anderson and Nout."
"What's their scrambled comm channel?"
"Twenty-three."
Miles slid into the seat beside Bel and opened the channel. It took a small eternity for Sergeant Anderson to answer, fully thirty or forty seconds, while the float truck streaked above the treetops and over the nearest ridge.
"Laureen, I want you to get your shuttle into the air. We need an emergency pick-up, soonest. We're in a House Fell float truck, heading-" Miles thrust his wrist under Bel's nose.
"North from Ryoval Biologicals," Bel recited. "At about two hundred sixty kilometers per hour, which is all the faster this crate will go-"
"Home in on our screamer," Miles set the wrist comm emergency signal. "Don't wait for clearance from Ryoval's shuttleport traffic control, 'cause you won't get it. Have Nout patch my comm through to the Ariel"
"You got it, sir," Anderson's thin voice came cheerily back over his comm.
Static, and another few seconds excruciating delay. Then an excited voice, "Murka here. I thought you were coming out right behind us last night! You all right, sir?"
"Temporarily. Is 'Medtech Vaughn' aboard?"
"Yes, sir."
"All right. Don't let him off. Assure him I have his tissue sample with me."
"Really! How'd you-"
"Never mind how. Get all the troops back aboard and break from the station into free orbit. Plan to make a flying pick-up of the drop shuttle, and tell the pilot-officer to plot a course for the Escobar wormhole jump at max acceleration as soon as we're clamped on. Don't wait for clearance."
"We're still loading cargo...."
"Abandon any that's still unloaded."
"Are we in serious shit, sir?"
"Mortal, Murka."
"Right, sir. Murka out."
"I thought we were all supposed to be as quiet as mice here on Jackson's Whole," Bel complained. "Isn't this all a bit splashy?"
"The situation's changed. There'd be no negotiating with Ryoval for Nicol, or for Taura either, after what we did last night. I struck a blow for truth and justice back there that I may live to regret, briefly. Tell you about it later. Anyway, do you really want to stick around while I explain to Baron Fell the real truth about the Betan rejuvenation treatment?"
"Oh," Thorne's eyes were alight, as it concentrated on its flying, "I'd pay money to watch that, sir."
"Ha. No. For one last moment back there, all the pieces were in our hands. Potentially, anyway." Miles began exploring the readouts on the float-truck's simple control panel. "We'd never get everybody together again, never. One maneuvers to the limit, but the golden moment demands action. If you miss it, the gods damn you forever. And vice versa.... Speaking of action, did you see Taura take out seven of those guys?" Miles chortled in memory. "What's she going to be like after basic training?"
Bel glanced uneasily over its shoulder, to where Nicol had her float chair lodged and Taura hunkered in the back along with the body of the unconscious trooper. "I was too busy to keep count."
Miles swung out of his seat, and made his way into the back to check on their precious live cargo.
"Nicol, you were great," he told her. "You fought like a falcon. I may have to give you a discount on that dollar."
Nicol was still breathless, ivory cheeks flushed. An upper hand shoved a strand of black hair out of her sparkling eyes. "I was afraid they'd break my dulcimer." A lower hand stroked a big box-shaped case jammed into the float-chair's cup beside her. "Then I was afraid they'd break Bel...."
Taura sat leaning against the truck wall, a bit green.
Miles knelt beside her. "Taura dear, are you all right?" He gently lifted one clawed hand to check her pulse, which was bounding. Nicol gave him a rather strange look at his tender gesture, her float chair was wedged as far from Taura as it could get.
"Hungry," Taura gasped.
"Again? But of course, all that energy expenditure. Anybody got a ration bar?" A quick check found an only-slightly-nibbled rat bar in the stunned trooper's thigh pocket, which Miles immediately liberated. Miles smiled benignly at Taura as she wolfed it down; she smiled back as best she could with her mouth full. No more rats for you after this, Miles promised silently. Three steak dinners when we get back to the Ariel, and a couple of chocolate cakes for dessert....
The float-truck jinked. Taura, reviving somewhat, extended her feet to hold Nicol's dented cup in place against the far wall and keep it from bouncing around. "Thank you," said Nicol warily. Taura nodded.
"Company," Bel Thorne called over its shoulder. Miles hastened forward.
Two aircars were coming up fast behind them. Ryoval's security. Doubtless beefed up tougher than the average civilian police car-yes. Bel jinked again as a plasma bolt boiled past, leaving bright green streaks across Miles's retinas. Quasi-military and seriously annoyed, their pursuers were.
"This is one of Fell's trucks, we ought to have something to fling back at them." There was nothing in front of Miles that looked like any kind of weapons-control.
A whoomp, a scream from Nicol, and the float truck staggered in air, righted itself under Bel's hands. A roar of air and vibration-Miles cranked his head around frantically-one top back corner of the truck's cargo area was blown away. The rear door was fused shut on one side, whanging loose along the opposite edge. Taura still braced the float chair, Nicol now had her upper hands wrapped around Taura's ankles. "Ah," said Thorne. "No armor."
"What did they think this was going to be, a peaceful mission?" Miles checked his wrist comm. "Laureen, are you in the air yet?"
"Coming, sir."
"Well, if you've ever itched to red-line it, now's your chance. Nobody's going to complain about your abusing the equipment this time."
"Thank you, sir," she responded happily.
They were losing speed and altitude. "Hang on!" Bel yelled over its shoulder, and suddenly reversed thrust. Their closing pursuers shot past them, but immediately began climbing turns. Bel accelerated again; another scream from the back as their live cargo was thus shifted toward the now-dubious rear doors.
The Dendarii hand stunners were of no use at all. Miles clambered into the back again, looking for some sort of luggage compartment, gun rack, anything-surely Fell's people did not rely only on the fearsome reputation of their House for protection....
The padded benches along each side of the cargo compartment, upon which Fell's guard squad had presumably sat, swung up on storage space. The first was empty, the second contained personal luggage-Miles had a brief flash of strangling an enemy with someone's pajama pants, flinging underwear into thruster air-intakes-the third compartment was also empty. The fourth was locked.
The float truck rocked under another blast, part of the top peeled away in the wind, Miles grabbed for Taura, and the truck plummeted downward. Miles's stomach, and the rest of him, seemed to float upward. They were all flattened to the floor again as Bel pulled up. The float truck shivered and lurched, and all, Miles and Taura, the unconscious trooper, Nicol in her float chair, were flung forward in a tangle as the truck plowed to a tilted stop in a copse of frost-blackened scrub.
Bel, blood streaming down its face, clambered back to them crying "Out, out, out!" Miles stretched for the new opening in the roof, jerked his hand back at the burning touch of hot slagged metal and plastics. Taura, standing up, stuck her head out through the hole, then crouched back down to boost Miles through. He slithered to the ground, looked around. They were in an unpeopled valley of native vegetation, flanked by ropy, ridgy hills. Flying up the slot toward them came the two pursuing aircars, swelling, slowing-corning in for a capture, or just taking careful aim?
The Ariel's combat drop shuttle roared up over the ridge and descended like the black hand of God. The pursuing aircars looked suddenly much smaller. One veered off and fled, the second was smashed to the ground not by plasma fire but by a swift swat from a tractor beam. Not even a trickle of smoke marked where it went down. The drop shuttle settled demurely beside them in a deafening crackling crush of shrubbery. Its hatch extended and unfolded itself in a sort of suave, self-satisfied salute.
"Show-off," Miles muttered. He pulled the woozy Thorne's arm over his shoulder, Taura carried the stunned man, Nicol's battered cup stuttered through the air, and they all staggered gratefully to their rescue.
Subtle noises of protest emanated from the ship around him as Miles stepped into the Ariel's shuttle hatch corridor. His stomach twitched queasily from an artificial gravity not quite in synch with over-loaded engines. They were on their way, breaking orbit already. Miles wanted to get to Nav and Com as quickly as possible, though the evidence so far suggested that Murka was carrying on quite competently. Anderson and Nout hauled in the downed trooper, now moaning his way to consciousness, and turned him over to the medtech waiting with a float pallet. Thorne, who had acquired a temporary plas dressing for the forehead cut during the shuttle flight, sent Nicol in her damaged float chair after them and whisked off toward Nav and Com. Miles turned to encounter the man he least wanted to see. Dr. Canaba hovered anxiously in the corridor, his tanned face strained.
"You," said Miles to Canaba, in a voice dark with rage. Canaba stepped back involuntarily. Miles wanted, but was too short, to pin Canaba to the wall by his neck, and regretfully dismissed the idea of ordering Trooper Nout to do it for him. Miles pinned Canaba with a glare instead. "You cold-blooded double-dealing son-of-a-bitch. You set me up to murder a sixteen-year-old girl!"
Canaba raised his hands in protest. "You don't understand-"
Taura ducked through the shuttle hatch. Her tawny eyes widened in a surprise only exceeded by Canaba's. "Why, Dr. Canaba! What are you doing here?"
Miles pointed to Canaba. "You, stay there," he ordered thickly. He tampered his anger down and turned to the shuttle pilot. "Laureen?"
"Yes, sir?"
Miles took Taura by the hand and led her to Sergeant Anderson. "Laureen, I want you to take Recruit-trainee Taura here in tow and get her a square meal. All she can eat, and I do mean all. Then help her get a bath, a uniform, and orient her to the ship."
Anderson eyed the towering Taura warily. "Er... yes, sir."
"She's had a hell of a time," Miles felt compelled to explain, then paused and added, "Do us proud. It's important."
"Yes, sir," said Anderson sturdily, and led off, Taura following with an uncertain backward glance to Miles and Canaba.
Miles rubbed his stubbled chin, conscious of his stains and stink, fear-driven weariness stretching his nerves taut. He turned to the stunned geneticist. "All right, doctor," he snarled, "make me understand. Try real hard."
"I couldn't leave her in Ryoval's hands!" said Canaba in agitation. "To be made a victim, or worse, an agent of his, his merchandized depravities..."
"Didn't you ever think of asking us to rescue her?"
"But," said Canaba, confused, "why should you? It wasn't in your contract-a mercenary-"
"Doctor, you've been living on Jackson's Whole too damn long."
"I knew that back when I was throwing up every morning before going to work." Canaba drew himself up with a dry dignity. "But Admiral, you don't understand." He glanced down the corridor in the direction Taura had gone. "I couldn't leave her in Ryoval's hands. But I can't possibly take her to Barrayar. They kill mutants there!"
"Er..." said Miles, given pause. "They're attempting to reform those prejudices. Or so I understand. But you're quite right. Barrayar is not the place for her."
"I had hoped, when you came along, not to have to do it, to kill her myself. Not an easy task. I've known her... too long. But to leave her down there would have been the most vile condemnation..."
"That's no lie. Well, she's out of there now. Same as you." If we can keep so.... Miles was frantic to get to Nav and Com and find out what was happening. Had Ryoval launched pursuit yet? Had Fell? Would the space station guarding the distant wormhole exit be ordered to block their escape?
"I didn't want to just abandon her," dithered Canaba, "but I couldn't take her with me!"
"I should hope not. You're totally unfit to have charge of her. I'm going to urge her to join the Dendarii Mercenaries. It would seem to be her genetic destiny. Unless you know some reason why not?"
"But she's going to die!"
Miles stopped short. "And you and I are not?" he said softly after a moment, then more loudly, "Why? How soon?"
"It's her metabolism. Another mistake, or concatenation of mistakes. I don't know when, exactly. She could go another year, or two, or five. Or ten."
"Or fifteen?"
"Or fifteen, yes, though not likely. But early, still." "And yet you wanted to take from her what little she had? Why?"
"To spare her. The final debilitation is rapid, but very painful, to judge from what some of the other... prototypes, went through. The females were more complex than the males, I'm not certain... But it's a ghastly death. Especially ghastly as Ryoval's slave."
"I don't recall encountering a lovely death yet. And I've seen a variety. As for duration, I tell you we could all go in the next fifteen minutes, and where is your tender mercy then?" He had to get to Nav and Com. "I declare your interest in her forfeit, doctor. Meanwhile, let her grab what life she can."
"But she was my project-I must answer for her-"
"No. She's a free woman now. She must answer for herself."
"How free can she ever be, in that body, driven by that metabolism, that face-a freak's life-better to die painlessly, than to have all that suffering inflicted on her-"
Miles spoke through his teeth. With emphasis. "No. It's. Not."
Canaba stared at him, shaken out of the rutted circle of his unhappy reasoning at last.
That's right, doctor, Miles's thought glittered. Get your head out of your ass and look at me. Finally.
"Why should... you care?" asked Canaba.
"I like her. Rather better than I like you, I might add." Miles paused, daunted by the thought of having to explain to Taura about the gene complexes in her calf. And sooner or later they'd have to retrieve them. Unless he could fake it, pretend the biopsy was some sort of medical standard operating procedure for Dendarii induction -no. She deserved more honesty than that.
Miles was highly annoyed at Canaba for putting this false note between himself and Taura and yet-without the gene complexes, would he have indeed gone in after her as his boast implied? Extended and endangered his assigned mission just out of the goodness of his heart, yeah? Devotion to duty, or pragmatic ruthlessness, which was which? He would never know, now. His anger receded, and exhaustion washed in, the familiar post-mission down-too soon, the mission was far from over, Miles reminded himself sternly. He inhaled. "You can't save her from being alive, Dr. Canaba. Too late. Let her go. Let go."
Canaba's lips were unhappily tight, but, head bowing, he turned his hands palm-out.
"Page the Admiral," Miles heard Thorne say as he entered Nav and Com, then "Belay that," as heads swivelled toward the swish of the doors and they saw Miles. "Good timing, sir."
"What's up?" Miles swung into the com station chair Thorne indicated. Ensign Murka was monitoring ship's shielding and weapons systems, while their Jump pilot sat at the ready beneath the strange crown of his headset with its chemical cannulae and wires. Pilot Padget's expression was inward, controlled and meditative; his consciousness fully engaged, even merged, with the Ariel. Good man.
"Baron Ryoval is on the com for you," said Thorne. "Personally."
"I wonder if he's checked his freezers yet?" Miles settled in before the vid link. "How long have I kept him waiting?"
"Less than a minute," said the com officer.
"Hm. Let him wait a little longer, then. What's been launched in pursuit of us?"
"Nothing, so far," reported Murka.
Miles's brows rose at this unexpected news. He took a moment to compose himself, wishing he'd had time to clean up, shave, and put on a fresh uniform before this interview, just for the psychological edge. He scratched his itching chin and ran his hands through his hair, and wriggled his damp sock toes against the deck matting, which they barely reached. He lowered his station chair slightly, straightened his spine as much as he could, and brought his breathing under control. "All right, bring him up."
The rather blurred background to the face that formed over the vid plate seemed faintly familiar-ah yes, the Security Ops room at Ryoval Biologicals. Baron Ryoval had arrived personally on that scene as promised. It took only one glance at the dusky, contorted expression on Ryoval's youthful face to fill in the rest of the scenario. Miles folded his hands and smiled innocently. "Good morning, Baron. What can I do for you?"
"Die, you little mutant!" Ryoval spat. "You! There isn't going to be a bunker deep enough for you to burrow in. I'll put a price on your head that will have every bounty hunter in the galaxy all over you like a second skin-you'll not eat or sleep-I'll have you-"
Yes, the baron had seen his freezers all right. Recently. Gone entirely was the suave contemptuous dismissal of their first encounter. Yet Miles was puzzled by the drift of his threats. It seemed the baron expected them to escape Jacksonian local space. True, House Ryoval owned no space fleet, but why not rent a dreadnought from Baron Fell and attack now? That was the ploy Miles had most expected and feared, that Ryoval and Fell, and maybe Bharaputra too, would combine against him as he attempted to carry off their prizes.
"Can you afford to hire bounty hunters now?" asked Miles mildly. "I thought your assets were somewhat reduced. Though you still have your surgical specialists, I suppose."
Ryoval, breathing heavily, wiped spittle from his mouth. "Did my dear little brother put you up to this?"
"Who?" said Miles, genuinely startled. Yet another player in the game... ? "Baron Fell."
"I was... not aware you were related," said Miles. "Little brother?"
"You lie badly," sneered Ryoval. "I knew he had to be behind this."
"You'll have to ask him," Miles shot at random, his head spinning as the new datum rearranged all his estimates. Damn his mission briefing, which had never mentioned this connection, concentrating in detail only on House Bharaputra. Half-brothers only, surely-yes, hadn't Nicol mentioned something about "Fell's half-brother"?
"I'll have your head for this," foamed Ryoval. "Shipped back frozen in a box. I'll have it encased in plastic and hang it over my-no, better. Double the money for the man who brings you in alive. You will die slowly, after infinite degradation-"
In all, Miles was glad the distance between them was widening at high acceleration.
Ryoval interrupted his own tirade, dark brows snapping down in sudden suspicion. "Or was it Bharaputra who hired you? Trying to block me from cutting in on their biologicals monopoly at the last, not merging as they promised?"
"Why, now," drawled Miles, "would Bharaputra really mount a plot against the head of another House? Do you have personal evidence that they do that sort of thing? Or-who did kill your, ah, brother's clone?" The connections were locking into place at last. Ye gods. It seemed Miles and his mission had blundered into the middle of an on-going power struggle of byzantine complexity. Nicol had testified that Fell had never pinned down the killer of his young duplicate.... "Shall I guess?"
"You know bloody well," snapped Ryoval. "But which of them hired you? Fell, or Bharaputra? Which?"
Ryoval, Miles realized, knew absolutely nothing yet of the real Dendarii mission against House Bharaputra. And with the atmosphere among the Houses being what it apparently was, it could be quite a long time before they got around to comparing notes. The longer the better, from Miles's point of view. He began to suppress, then deliberately released, a small smile. "What, can't you believe it was just my personal blow against the genetic slave trade? A deed in honor of my lady?"
This reference to Taura went straight over Ryoval's head; he had his idea-fixee now, and its ramifications and his rage were an effective block against incoming data. Really, it should not be at all hard to convince a man who had been conspiring deeply against his rivals, that those rivals were conspiring against him in turn.
"Fell, or Bharaputra?" Ryoval reiterated furiously. "Did you think to conceal a theft for Bharaputra with that wanton destruction?"
Theft? Miles wondered intently. Not of Taura, surely-of some tissue sample Bharaputra had been dealing for, perhaps? Oh ho....
"Isn't it obvious?" said Miles sweetly. "You gave your brother the motive, in your sabotage of his plans to extend his life. And you wanted too much from Bharaputra, so they supplied the method, placing their super-soldier inside your facility where I could rendezvous with her. They even made you pay for the privilege of having your security screwed! You played right into our hands. The master plan, of course," Miles buffed his fingernails on his T-shirt, "was mine."
Miles glanced up through his eyelashes. Ryoval seemed to be having trouble breathing. The baron cut the vid connection with an abrupt swat of his shaking hand. Blackout.
Humming thoughtfully, Miles went to get a shower.
He was back in Nav and Com in fresh grey-and-whites, full of salicylates for his aches and contusions and with a mug of hot black coffee in his hands as antidote to his squinting red eyes, when the next call came in.
So far from breaking into a tirade like his half-brother, Baron Fell sat silent a moment in the vid, just staring at Miles. Miles, burning under his gaze, felt extremely glad he'd had the chance to clean up. So, had Baron Fell missed his quaddie at last? Had Ryoval communicated to him yet any part of the smouldering paranoid misconceptions Miles had so lately fanned to flame? No pursuit had yet been launched from Fell Station-it must come soon, or not at all, or any craft light enough to match the Ariel's acceleration would be too light to match its firepower. Unless Fell planned to call in favors from the consortium of Houses that ran the Jumppoint Station.... One more minute of this heavy silence, Miles felt, and he would break into uncontrollable blither. Fortunately, Fell spoke at last.
"You seem, Admiral Naismith," Baron Fell rumbled, "whether accidentally or on purpose, to be carrying off something that does not belong to you."
Quite a few somethings, Miles reflected, but Fell referred only to Nicol if Miles read him right. "We were compelled to leave in rather a hurry," he said in an apologetic tone.
"So I'm told." Fell inclined his head ironically. He must have had a report from his hapless squad commander. "But you may yet save yourself some trouble. There was an agreed-upon price for my musician. It's of no great difference to me, if I give her up to you or to Ryoval, as long as I get that price."
Captain Thorne, working the Ariel's monitors, flinched under Miles's glance.
"The price you refer to, I take it, is the secret of the Betan rejuvenation technique," said Miles.
"Quite."
"Ah... hum." Miles moistened his lips. "Baron, I cannot."
Fell turned his head. "Station commander, launch pursuit ships-"
"Wait!" Miles cried.
Fell raised his brows. "You reconsider? Good."
"It's not that I will not tell you," said Miles desperately, "it's just that the truth would be of no use to you. None whatsoever. Still, I agree you deserve some compensation. I have another piece of information I could trade you, more immediately valuable."
"Oh?" said Fell. His voice was neutral but his expression was black.
"You suspected your half-brother Ryoval in the murder of your clone, but could not chain any evidence to him, am I right?"
Fell looked fractionally more interested. "All my agents and Bharaputra's could not turn up a connection. We tried."
"I'm not surprised. Because it was Bharaputra's agents who did the deed." Well, it was possible, anyway.
Fell's eyes narrowed. "Killed their own product?" he said slowly.
"I believe Ryoval struck a deal with House Bharaputra to betray you," said Miles rapidly. "I believe it involved the trade of some unique biological samples in Ryoval's possession; I don't think cash alone would have been worth their risk. The deal was done on the highest levels, obviously. I don't know how they figured to divide the spoils of House Fell after your eventual death-maybe they didn't mean to divide it at all. They seem to have had some ultimate plan of combining their operations for some larger monopoly of biologicals on Jackson's Whole. A corporate merger of sorts." Miles paused to let this sink in. "May I suggest you may wish to reserve your forces and favors against enemies more, er, intimate and immediate than myself? Besides, you have all our credit chit but we have only half our cargo. Will you call it even?"
Fell glowered at him for a full minute, the face of a man thinking in three different directions at once. Miles knew the feeling. He then turned his head, and grated out of the corner of his mouth, "Hold pursuit ships."
Miles breathed again.
"I thank you for this information, Admiral," said Fell coldly, "but not very much. I shall not impede your swift exit. But if you or any of your ships appear in Jacksonian space again-"
"Oh, Baron," said Miles sincerely, "staying far, far away from here is fast becoming one of my dearest ambitions."
"You're wise," Fell growled, and moved to cut the link.
"Baron Fell," Miles added impulsively. Fell paused. "For your future information-is this link secured?"
"Yes."
"The true secret of the Betan rejuvenation technique-is that there is none. Don't be taken in again. I look the age I do, because it is the age I am. Make of it what you will."
Fell said absolutely nothing. After a moment a faint, wintry smile moved his lips. He shook his head and cut the com.
Just in case, Miles lingered on in sort of a glassy puddle in one corner of Nav and Com until the Comm Officer reported their final clearance from Jumppoint Station traffic control. But Miles calculated Houses Fell, Ryoval, and Bharaputra were going to be too busy with each other to concern themselves with him, at least for a while. His late transfer of information both true and false among the combatants-to each according to his measure-had the feel of throwing one bone to three starving, rabid dogs. He almost regretted not being able to stick around and see the results. Almost.
Hours after the Jump he woke in his cabin, fully dressed but with his boots set neatly by his bed, with no memory of how he'd got there. He rather fancied Murka must have escorted him. If he'd fallen asleep while walking alone he'd surely have left the boots on.
Miles first checked with the duty officer as to the Ariel's situation and status. It was refreshingly dull. They were crossing a blue star system between Jump points on the route to Escobar, unpeopled and empty of everything but a smattering of routine commercial traffic. Nothing pursued them from the direction of Jackson's Whole. Miles had a light meal, not sure if it was breakfast, lunch, or dinner, his bio-rhythm being thoroughly askew from shiptime after his downside adventures. He then sought out Thorne and Nicol. He found them in Engineering. A tech was just polishing out the last dent in Nicol's float chair.
Nicol, now wearing a white tunic and shorts trimmed with pink piping, lay sprawled on her belly on a bench watching the repairs. It gave Miles an odd sensation to see her out of her cup, it was like looking at a hermit crab out of its shell, or a seal on the shore. She looked strangely vulnerable in one-gee, yet in null gee she'd looked so right, so clearly at ease, he'd stopped noticing the oddness of the extra arms very quickly. Thorne helped the tech fit the float cup's blue shell over its reconditioned antigrav mechanism, and turned to greet Miles as the tech proceeded to lock it in place.
Miles sat down-bench from Nicol. "From the looks of things," he told her, "you should be free of pursuit from Baron Fell. He and his half-brother are going to be fully occupied avenging themselves on each other for a while. Makes me glad I'm an only child."
"Hm," she said pensively.
"You should be safe," Thorne offered encouragingly.
"Oh-no, it's not that," Nicol said. "I was just thinking about my sisters. Time was I couldn't wait to get away from them. Now I can't wait to see them again."
"What are you plans now?" Miles asked.
"I'll stop at Escobar, first," she replied. "It's a good nexus crossing, from there I should be able to work my way back to Earth. From Earth I can get to Orient IV, and from there I'm sure I can get home."
"Is home your goal now?"
"There's a lot more galaxy to be seen out this way," Thorne pointed out. "I'm not sure if Dendarii rosters can be stretched to include a ship's musician, but-"
She was shaking her head. "Home," she said firmly. "I'm tired of fighting one-gee all the time. I'm tired of being alone. I'm starting to have nightmares about growing legs."
Thorne sighed faintly.
"We do have a little colony of downsiders living among us now," she added suggestively to Thorne. "They've fitted out their own asteroid with artificial gravity-quite like the real thing downside, only not as drafty."
Miles was faintly alarmed-to lose a ship commander of proven loyalty-
"Ah," said Thorne in a pensive tone to match Nicol's. "A long way from my home, your asteroid belt."
"Will you return to Beta Colony, then, someday?" she asked. "Or are the Dendarii Mercenaries your home and family?"
"Not quite that passionate, for me," said Thorne. "I mainly stick around due to an overwhelming curiosity to see what happens next." Thorne favored Miles with a peculiar smile.
Thorne helped load Nicol back into her blue cup. After a brief systems check she was hovering upright again, as mobile-more mobile-than her legged companions. She rocked and regarded Thorne brightly.
"It's only three more days to Escobar orbit," said Thorne to Nicol rather regretfully. "Still-seventy-two hours. 4,320 minutes. How much can you do in 4,320 minutes?"
Or how often, thought Miles dryly. Especially if you don't sleep. Sleep, per se, was not what Bel had in mind, if Miles recognized the signs. Good luck-to both of them.
"Meanwhile," Thorne maneuvered Nicol into the corridor, "let me show you around the ship. Illyrican-built-that's out your way a bit, I understand. It's quite a story, how the Ariel first fell into Dendarii hands-we were the Oseran Mercenaries, back then-"
Nicol made encouraging noises. Miles suppressed an envious grin, and turned the other way up the corridor, to search out Dr. Canaba and arrange the discharge of his last unpleasant duty.
Bemusedly, Miles set aside the hypospray he'd been turning over in his hands as the door to sickbay sighed open. He swivelled in the medtech's station chair and glanced up as Taura and Sergeant Anderson entered. "My word," he murmured.
Anderson sketched a salute. "Reporting as ordered, sir." Taura's hand twitched, uncertain whether to attempt to mimic this military greeting or not. Miles gazed up at Taura and his lips parted with involuntary delight. Taura's transformation was all he'd dreamed of and more.
He didn't know how Anderson had persuaded the stores computer to so exceed its normal parameters, but somehow she'd made it disgorge a complete Dendarii undress kit in Taura's size: crisp grey-and-white pocketed jacket, grey trousers, polished ankle-topping boots. Taura's face and hair were clean enough to outshine her boots. Her dark hair was now drawn back in a thick, neat, and rather mysterious braid coiling up the back of her head-Miles could not make out where the ends went-and glinting with unexpected mahogany highlights.
She looked, if not exactly well-fed, at least less rawly starving, her eyes bright and interested, not the haunted yellow flickers in bony caverns he'd first seen. Even from this distance he could tell that re-hydration and the chance to brush her teeth and fangs had cured the ketone-laced breath that several days in Ryoval's sub-basement on a diet of raw rats and nothing had produced. The dirt-encrusted scale was smoothed away from her huge hands, and-inspired touch-her clawed nails had been, not blunted, but neatened and sharpened, and then enamelled with an iridescent pearl-white polish that complemented her grey-and-whites like a flash of jewelry. The polish had to have been shared out of some personal stock of the sergeant's.
"Outstanding, Anderson," said Miles in admiration.
Anderson smirked proudly. "That about what you had in mind, sir?"
"Yes, it was." Taura's face reflected his delight straight back at him. "What did you think of your first wormhole jump?" he asked her.
Her long lips rippled, what happened when she tried to purse them, Miles guessed. "I was afraid I was getting sick, I was so dizzy all of a sudden, till Sergeant Anderson explained what it was."
"No little hallucinations, or odd time-stretching effects?"
"No, but it wasn't-well, it was quick, anyway."
"Hm. It doesn't sound like you're one of the fortunates-or unfortunates-to be screened for Jump pilot aptitudes. From the talents you demonstrated on Ryoval's landing pad yesterday morning, Tactics should be loathe to lose you to Nav and Com." Miles paused. "Thank you, Laureen. What did my page interrupt?"
"Routine systems checks on the drop shuttles, putting them to bed. I was having Taura look over my shoulder while I worked."
"Right, carry on. I'll send Taura back to you when she's done here."
Anderson exited reluctantly, clearly curious. Miles waited till the doors swished closed to speak again. "Sit down, Taura. So your first twenty-four hours with the Dendarii have been satisfactory?"
She grinned, settling herself carefully in a station chair, which creaked. "Just fine."
"Ah." He hesitated. "You understand, when we reach Escobar, you do have the option to go your own way. You're not compelled to join us. I could see you got some kind of start, downside there."
"What?" Her eyes widened in dismay. "No! I mean... do I eat too much?"
"Not at all! You fight like four men, we can bloody well afford to feed you like three. But... I need to set a few things straight, before you make your trainee's oath." He cleared his throat. "I didn't come to Ryoval's to recruit you. A few weeks before Bharaputra sold you, do you remember Dr. Canaba injecting something into your leg? With a needle, not a hypospray."
"Oh, yes." She rubbed her calf half-consciously. "It made a knot."
"What, ah, did he tell you it was?"
"An immunization."
She'd been right, Miles reflected, when they'd first met. Humans did lie a lot. "Well, it wasn't an immunization. Canaba was using you as a live repository for some engineered biological material. Molecularly bound, dormant material," he added hastily as she twisted around and looked at her leg in disquiet. "It can't activate spontaneously, he assures me. My original mission was only to pick up Dr. Canaba. But he wouldn't leave without his gene complexes."
"He planned to take me with him?" she said in thrilled surprise. "So I should thank him for sending you to me!"
Miles wished he could see the look on Canaba's face if she did. "Yes and no. Specifically, no." He rushed roughly on before his nerve failed him. "You have nothing to thank him for, nor me either. He meant to take only your tissue sample, and sent me to get it."
"Would you rather have left me at-is that why Escobar-" she was still bewildered.
"It was your good luck," Miles plunged on, "that I'd lost my men and was disarmed when we finally met. Canaba lied to me, too. In his defense, he seems to have had some dim idea of saving you from a brutal life as Ryoval's slave. He sent me to kill you, Taura. He sent me to slay a monster, when he should have been begging me to rescue a princess in disguise. I'm not too pleased with Dr. Canaba. Nor with myself. I lied through my teeth to you down in Ryoval's basement, because I thought I had to, to survive and win."
Her face was confused, congealing, the light in her eyes fading. "Then you didn't... really think I was human-"
"On the contrary. Your choice of test was an excellent one. It's much harder to lie with your body than with your mouth. When I, er, demonstrated my belief, it had to be real." Looking at her, he still felt a twinge of lurching, lunatic joy, somatic residual from that adventure-of-the-body. He supposed he always would feel something-male conditioning, no doubt. "Would you like me to demonstrate it again?" he asked half-hopefully, then bit his tongue. "No," he answered his own question. "If I am to be your commander-we have these non-fraternization rules. Mainly to protect those of lower rank from exploitation, though it can work both-ahem!" He was digressing dreadfully. He picked up the hypospray, fiddled with it nervously, and put it back down.
"Anyway, Dr. Canaba has asked me to lie to you again. He wanted me to sneak up on you with a general anesthetic, so he could biopsy back his sample. He's a coward, you may have noticed. He's outside now, shaking in his shoes for fear you'll find out what he intended for you. I think a local zap with a medical stunner would suffice. I'd sure want to be conscious and watching if he were working on me, anyway." He flicked the hypospray contemptuously with one finger.
She sat silent, her strange wolfish face-though Miles was getting used to it-unreadable. "You want me to let him... cut into my leg?" she said at last.
"Yes."
"Then what?"
"Then nothing. That will be the last of Dr. Canaba for you, and Jackson's Whole and all the rest of it. That, I promise. Though if you're doubtful of my promises, I can understand why."
"The last..." she breathed. Her face lowered, then rose, and her shoulders straightened. "Then let's get it over with." There was no smile to her long mouth now.
Canaba, as Miles expected, was not happy to be presented with a conscious subject. Miles truly didn't care how unhappy Canaba was about it, and after one look at his cold face, Canaba didn't argue. Canaba took his sample wordlessly, packaged it carefully in the bio-tainer, and fled with it back to the safety and privacy of his own cabin as soon as he decently could.
Miles sat with Taura in sickbay till the medical stun wore off enough for her to walk without stumbling. She sat without speaking for a long time. He watched her still features, wishing beyond measure he knew how to re-light those gold eyes.
"When I first saw you," she said softly, "it was like a miracle. Something magic. Everything I'd wished for, longed for. Food. Water. Heat. Revenge. Escape." She gazed down at her polished claws, "Friends..." and glanced up at him, "... touching."
"What else do you wish for, Taura?" Miles asked earnestly.
Slowly she replied. "I wish I were normal."
Miles was silent too. "I can't give you what I don't possess myself," he said at length. The words seemed to lie in inadequate lumps between them. He roused himself to a better effort. "No. Don't wish that. I have a better idea. Wish to be yourself. To the hilt. Find out what you're best at, and develop it. Hopscotch your weaknesses. There isn't time for them. Look at Nicol-"
"So beautiful," sighed Taura.
"Or look at Captain Thorne, and tell me what 'normal' is, and why I should give a damn for it. Look at me, if you will. Should I kill myself trying to overcome men twice my weight and reach in unarmed combat, or should I shift the ground to where their muscle is useless, 'cause it never gets close enough to apply its strength? I haven't got time to lose, and neither have you."
"Do you know how little time?" demanded Taura suddenly.
"Ah..." said Miles cautiously, "do you?"
"I am the last survivor of my creche mates. How could I not know?" Her chin lifted defiantly.
"Then don't wish to be normal," said Miles passionately, rising to pace. "You'll only waste your precious time in futile frustration. Wish to be great! That at least you have a fighting chance for. Great at whatever you are. A great trooper, a great sergeant. A great quartermaster, for God's sake, if that's what comes with ease. A great musician like Nicol-only think how horrible if she were wasting her talents trying to be merely normal." Miles paused self-consciously in his pep talk, thinking, Easier to preach than practice....
Taura studied her polished claws, and sighed. "I suppose it's useless for me to wish to be beautiful, like Sergeant Anderson."
"It is useless for you to try to be beautiful like anyone but yourself," said Miles. "Be beautiful like Taura, ah, that you can do. Superbly well." He found himself gripping her hands, and ran one finger across an iridescent claw, "Though Laureen seems to have grasped the principle, you might be guided by her taste."
"Admiral," said Taura slowly, not releasing his hands, "are you actually my commander yet? Sergeant Anderson said something about orientation, and induction tests, and an oath...."
"Yes, all that will come when we make fleet rendezvous. Till then, technically, you're our guest."
A certain sparkle was beginning to return to her gold eyes. "Then -till then-it wouldn't break any Dendarii rules, would it, if you showed me again how human I am? One more time?" It must be, Miles thought, akin to the same drive that used to propel men to climb sheer rock faces without an antigrav belt, or jump out of ancient aircraft with nothing to stop them going splat but a wad of silk cloth. He felt the fascination rising in him, the death-defying laugh. "Slowly?" he said in a strangled voice. "Do it right this time? Have a little conversation, drink a little wine, play a little music? Without Ryoval's guard squad lurking overhead, or ice cold rock under my..."
Her eyes were huge and gold and molten. "You did say you liked to practice what you were great at."
Miles had never realized how susceptible he was to flattery from tall women. A weakness he must guard against. Sometime.
They retired to his cabin and practiced assiduously till halfway to Escobar.

