Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen

Chapter Eleven

This was not the day off that Jole had expected, but if he couldn’t flex in the face of tactical setbacks, he was in the wrong line of work. Cordelia had gone out on another fast-flying trip to Gridgrad to show her daughter-in-law the proposed site for the new Viceroy’s Palace—and garden—and have a consult with the young city architect brought in to manage the planning.

“I know everyone is leaning on the boy for maximum economic efficiency, but we need to persuade him to leave room for parks and gardens,” Cordelia had informed Jole in her hurried morning comconsole call. “Nothing makes a city civil like the injection of some country, paradoxically. I know it all looks like country now, but that won’t last. You have to plan ahead.” She added after a reflective moment, “And parking. And a bubble-car system. With adequate plumbing. Because wherever people are, they always want to get somewhere else, and generally hit the lav on the way.”

“With facilities for parents trailing little children,” Ekaterin’s voice put in from offsides, in a tone of muted passion. Sounds of young Vorkosigans having, apparently, a minor riot penetrated from farther rooms in the Palace. A muffled paternal bellow was either quelling the disorder or fomenting it.

“Yes,” said Cordelia. “Some architects’ designs look very snazzy, but when you drive down to the details you find they seem to think people are born fully formed out of their own heads at age twenty-two, never to reproduce. And vanish silently away at age seventy, I could add.”

“Should you have a more experienced designer?” Jole asked doubtfully.

“Question is, could I get a more experienced designer, to which the answer was, alas, no.” She sighed, then cheered up. “But this one seems to learn fast. And I don’t have to make death threats to get him to listen, unlike some older Barrayaran types more set in their ways, so there’s that.”

And she had departed in haste trailing, like a billowing banner, fretful staff frantically triaging schedule changes.

This left Jole with a blank day to fill with something that would block his temptation to go back to the office and annoy Bobrik with kibitzing over his shoulder by comconsole. His apartment made a peaceful refuge, although, after about an hour spent perusing more science journals from the Uni, he found himself growing restless. For a man accustomed to the cramped facilities of Barrayaran warships, he could hardly call the place too small. Too…something. Not enough something? Not enough Cordelia. He buried his impulse to replay the message from Desplains for a third time—it wasn’t going to change—in another half hour of reading, at which point he found an excuse to escape.

The University of Kareenburg was as grandly and deceptively named as the Viceroy’s Palace, Jole reflected, as he parked and walked toward the motley collection of buildings clinging to a slope on what had used to be the outskirts of town. The school had been started less than two decades ago in, as usual, a collection of ex-military field shelters. Since then it had acquired three newish buildings in a blocky, utilitarian style, plus a clinic that had grown into Kareenburg’s main hospital. Training medtechs locally was a high priority, along with other hands-on technical skills needed by the young colony from and for a population that could not, for the most part, afford to send their children offworld for education. The U. of K. lacked dormitories for backcountry students, who instead lived scattered among local households like soldiers quartered upon an occupied town. The field shelters still lingered, repurposed for the nth time to house departments unable to elbow their way into the newer buildings.

The Department of Biology, being needed to help train aspiring medtechs—and soon, it was hoped, physicians—rated an entire second-floor corridor in one of the newer blocks. Jole flagged down a man dressed in Kayburg-casual trousers, shirtsleeves, and sandals, hurrying along carrying a lavatory plunger.

“Pardon me, but could you tell me where to find—ah.” Not the janitor. Recognition kicked in from holos in the articles Jole had been reading. “Dr. Gamelin, I presume?”

The man paused. “Yes, I’m Gamelin.” He squinted back in brief puzzlement, as if Jole’s was a face he knew but couldn’t quite place. If Jole had been in uniform instead of civvies, Gamelin might have hit it. “Can I help you?” He squinted harder. “Parent? Student…? Admissions is in the next building over.” His accent was Barrayaran, a hint of South Continent lingering in his voice.

“Neither, at present.” Either, ever? There was yet another new train of thought in his crowded station. “Oliver Jole. Admiral, Sergyar Fleet.”

“Ah.” Gamelin’s spine straightened, for whatever atavistic reason—Jole didn’t think he was an old Service man—and he switched the plunger over and offered an egalitarian handshake, as if between priests of two dissimilar faiths. “And what can the Department of Biology do for Sergyar Fleet today? Did the Vicereine send you?”

“No, I’m here on my own time, today. Although the Vicereine may be indirectly responsible. I’ve been reading—”

Jole was interrupted as a taut, tanned, middle-aged woman dressed in shorts and sandals dashed up. “You found it! Thanks!” She plucked the plunger unceremoniously from Gamelin’s hand. “Where?”

“Dissection lab.”

“Ha. I should have guessed.”

Gamelin put in, “Admiral Jole, may I present our bilaterals expert, Dr. Dobryni.”

The woman looked Jole up and down with rising eyebrows and a growing smile, and nodded. “You’re very bilateral, aren’t you? So pleased! Can’t stay.” Sandals slapping, she continued her gallop up the corridor and swung in at a doorway, calling back, “Welcome to the U! Don’t come in!” The door slammed behind her.

With an effort, Jole returned his attention to the department chief. “I’ve been reading your departmental journal on Sergyaran native biology, and enjoying some of the articles very much.” Gamelin himself was one of the more lucid contributors, as well as being listed as supervising editor.

Gamelin brightened right up. “Excellent! I didn’t think our journal had much reach beyond a few sister institutions, a small circle of local enthusiasts, and some obscure Nexus xenobiologists.”

“I think I’d call myself an interested layperson,” Jole said. “Like the Vicereine.”

“Oh, the Vicereine is a lot more than a layperson,” Gamelin assured him. “Fortunately. She really understands what we’re trying to do, here. Such an improvement over some of our prior Imperial administrators.” He grimaced in some unfond memory. “Not that she can’t be demanding, but at least her requests aren’t ludicrous.”

“She claims her Betan Astronomical Survey training is very out-of-date.”

Gamelin waved a negating hand. “She’s structurally very sound. As for the details, we all grow out-of-date practically as fast as we learn. And then we work very hard at helping others to become so, too.” A brief grin.

“In fact, that was what I’d been wanting to ask about. I wondered if you had anyone doing more work on the biota in and around Lake Serena.”

“Not at present,” said Gamelin. “Everyone we could spare has been dispatched to Gridgrad. Trying to get ahead of the builders, you know. No one wants a repeat of something like the worm plague, or worse.”

“I can see that.” So much for his vague plan of finding the expert and turning him or her upside down to shake out the latest science.

A man popped out of the stairwell, spotted Gamelin, and trotted up, waving his arms. “Ionnas! Julie stole my gene scanner for her damned students again! Make her give it back before they break it—again.”

Gamelin sighed. “If we’re ever to teach them not to break our equipment, they need some equipment to practice on. You know that.”

“Then give her your scanner!”

“Not a chance.” Gamelin met the man’s glower without embarrassment, then seemed to relent. “But you can use mine this afternoon. I haven’t a prayer of getting to it myself. Meetings. Put it back when you’ve finished.”

“Eh.” Mollified, the man made off, with a grudging “Thanks!” tossed over his shoulder.

“Defend it from Julie!” Gamelin called after, which won a snigger as the man turned out of sight.

“Equipment wars,” sighed Gamelin, turning back to Jole. “Do you have them in your line?”

“Pretty much the same thing, yes,” allowed Jole, smiling.

“It will be worse next week, when the Escobaran invasion arrives.”

Jole blinked. “That sounds more like my patch. Shouldn’t I have had a memo?”

Gamelin was nonplussed for only a moment. “Oh!” he laughed. “Not in force. The City University of Nuovo Valencia sends a party of grad students and related riffraff each year to do some work here. Which would be fine, but in order to save freight charges, they try as much as possible to equip themselves on this end. Makes for more-than-scientific competition.”

“And scientific jealousy?”

“Oh, hardly that!” said Gamelin fervently. “I’d welcome anyone.” He added after a moment of judicious thought, “Well, maybe not Cetagandans. Unless they brought their own equipment.” Another contemplative moment. “And left it. Like after their pullout from the Occupation. That could be all right.”

“Would you like me to drop a hint at the consulate?”

It was Gamelin’s turn to snigger, then pause. “Oh, wait. Coming from you, that wasn’t a joke.”

“Only about half,” Jole admitted.

Gamelin shook his head. “I came here to do basic survey science, myself, almost twenty years back. Housekeeping science, but I knew I was never going to be some brilliant hotshot. Do you know when I get to do any? Weekends. Maybe. This little department fully classifies, catalogs, and cross-references about two thousand new species a year.”

“That…sounds impressive,” Jole hazarded.

“Does it? At this rate, we should have Sergyar’s entire biome mapped in about, oh, roughly five thousand years.”

“In the course of five thousand years,” said Jole, “I expect you’ll have a little more help.”

“That’s certainly the hope.” He stared away, as if at some distant vision. “And then there’s Sergyaran paleontology. How did it all get this way? To say We’ve barely scratched the surface is an understatement. Our rock-hounds break down in tears, regularly. Overwhelmed.”

“Do Sergyaran radials even fossilize?” wondered Jole. “It would seem like trying to fossilize jelly.”

Gamelin threw his hands up, and exclaimed with barely suppressed anguish, “Who knows? Not us!” He glanced at his chrono. “I would love to show you around, Admiral, but I have a meeting with some students shortly. Meanwhile, what—oh, right, Lake Serena, you said.”

“Yes, I’ve been out there several times lately. The underwater life is very curious stuff, some of it very beautiful, but much of it doesn’t match up with anything in the field guide.”

“Yes, well, there’s a reason for that.” Gamelin looked briefly abstracted. “I think I can give you something to help. Follow me.”

Gamelin led off down the corridor past a couple of busy-looking lab rooms to what proved, when he flung wide the door, to be a crowded equipment closet. He plunged into its depths to emerge a few minutes later. “Here!” He passed a large, heavily loaded plastic bag into Jole’s arms.

Jole looked up, confused. “Hm?”

“Collecting equipment. There’s a vid guide in there somewhere, should be, with all the how-to. We developed it last year for an advanced class of some Kayburg city school biology students. Some of them have come back to us with some really helpful prizes, too. Great kids.” Gamelin looked up happily. “For your next trip out to Lake Serena.”

This was, Jole reflected, a very Sergyaran version of assistance. It reminded him of Cordelia, somehow, which made him smile back in turn. “I see.”

Gamelin cocked his head. “That said, the Uni has been fielding the damnedest questions from the Kayburg public about Lake Serena, lately. Carbon dioxide inversion layer, really! Serena is much too shallow.”

“Yes, I know.”

“So, um…is there some other reason for your interest in the area? That we ought to know about? On the q.t.? Because if there’s a problem, we’re sure to get thrown into the breach, and while public service is part of the university’s mandate, it’s a lot easier to supply if we get some advance warning.” Gamelin rocked on his heels, as if trying to look inviting and worthy of confidences.

“My interest is purely personal.”

“Hm.” A disbelieving smile, though not disrespectful. “We all have our duties, I suppose.” He glanced again at his chrono. “And mine are upon me. I really must run. Please do call again, Admiral Jole! I promise you a better tour!”

And he trotted away.

Jole shook his head, readjusted his bundle, and made his way more slowly toward the end stairs. Scientific excitement at the U. of K., it seemed, had edged over into scientific hypomania, and who could blame them? He thought of old metaphors like kids in a candy store, but it seemed inadequate. Kids on a candy planet, maybe. Had the mood on Cordelia’s old Survey ship been as electric as this? He suspected so.

As he passed a half-open doorway, a heartbroken female voice howled in high anguish, “What have you done to my worms?”

Jole jerked to a halt. Apparently, he possessed an embedded spinal reflex in response to female screams. Not a bad trait, on the whole. But in this case, perhaps he could overrule instinct by the application of higher mental functions? Like prudence. Or maybe cowardice. Curiosity threatened to trump the whole set, but he wrestled that down as well. All the way to the end of the corridor, where he turned back.

He eased the door open a bit wider and peeked through. A man and a woman were standing together at a lit lab hood, staring down with dismay into a large tray. As he watched, the man bent to peer more closely at whatever lay within.

“Huh!” he said slowly. “That’s weird…”

The no-longer-screaming woman, eyes narrowing, echoed his motion. “Hmm…!”

Whatever was going on here, Jole decided, he did not wish to go down in scientific history as the man who had interrupted it. He trod softly away.

Dusk was gathering in Kayburg when Cordelia and Ekaterin arrived back from the trip to Gridgrad. As Rykov pulled up the car, Cordelia spotted Oliver just strolling around to the Palace front. The canopy rose, and he paused to courteously help them out: Cordelia, to steal a handclasp, and Ekaterin, because she was burdened with the remains of the day in the form of her portable workstation, a briefcase, and a stack of long rolled flimsies.

“Am I early?” Oliver asked.

“No, we’re running late,” Cordelia replied. “It was an extremely productive excursion, though.”

Rykov drove the car away as Frieda opened the doors to let them all in.

“Do I still have six children and a husband?” Ekaterin inquired of her, and she smiled back.

“I believe so, milady. They’re all out on the back patio. I wouldn’t let them bring all those dirty rocks inside.”

“It never hurts to do a headcount…” She offloaded her supplies, and they trooped through to the patio, where all the lights were on. “Hm. We seem to have added some.”

Cordelia’s six grandchildren were spread out all over the space, accompanied not only by Freddie, but half-a-dozen other Kayburg young teens, intently looking over piles of broken slate and geodes. Miles was sitting back in a padded chair with a master-of-all-he-surveys air, occasionally directing events with his cane. That he was actually sitting, rather than hunkering down on the floor with them, suggested that her advised plan of take them all out to the country and run them around till they’re tired had worked across the board, good.

“Who are the spares?” Ekaterin asked.

“I believe they are friends of Freddie’s,” said Cordelia, recognizing the crew from the brush-fire incident. Yes, there was even Bean Plant No. 3, shining a hand light across a piece of slate and squinting. “I’m not quite sure how they got added, though.”

“Fyodor Haines calls them the human hexaped,” Oliver supplied. “Six heads, twelve legs, and moving as one body, although…that doesn’t exactly work out even if they were two hexapeds. Still an apt metaphor.”

“Perhaps xeno-anatomy is not the general’s strong suit,” said Cordelia, as Miles spotted them, hoisted himself up, and came over, smiling. He was actually using his cane as more than a conductor’s baton, which told its own tale to an experienced maternal eye. She reminded herself that she knew better than to comment on this. He exchanged a satisfying uxorial kiss with Ekaterin, which he managed to make look smooth despite their height differential. Cordelia experienced a moment of envy. She would have liked to have kissed Oliver hello…

“Successful day?” Ekaterin asked Miles.

“Brilliant,” he assured her. He added to Cordelia, “That geology teacher you recommended led us to an excellent spot. The whole crew ran up and down the ravine banging rocks together for hours. Helen and Alex were a little standoffish at first, but then Selig and Simone, in the course of trying to brain each other, discovered what Miss Hanno assured us was an entirely new fossil species. Very excited, she was. After that, the competition was on. It took some negotiating to get their special rock away from them, but we managed to trade off some sparkly purple geodes, and the crisis was averted. Sharp dealers, for age two. I wonder if they’re going to take after Mark and Kareen?”

“Any damages?” asked Ekaterin.

“Nothing permanent. Scrapes, a few banged fingers and bruises, some blood and sweat, but, as the medkit seemed an object of almost equal interest, surprisingly few tears. Lizzie now not only wants to be a paleontologist, she knows how to spell it.”

“Good!” said Cordelia. “It’s about time we got some scientists in the family.”

“She wanted to be a medtech, yesterday,” Ekaterin pointed out.

“And a jump pilot last week,” said Miles. “Perhaps she’ll be a Barrayaran Renaissance-woman.”

“Sounds more like Betan Astronomical Survey to me,” said Cordelia, a bit smugly.

Ekaterin stared around uneasily at all the piles of detritus with rapt heads bent over them. “Are they going to want to take all those rocks home on the jumpship?”

“Probably,” sighed Miles. “Or maybe they could be persuaded to leave them as a museum exhibit at Grandmama’s house.”

“Oh, thanks,” muttered Cordelia, which made him smirk.

“They’re not wanted for a real museum?” said Ekaterin.

“Miss Hanno took possession of the three new specimens,” Miles assured her. “The rest are apparently common.”

“Three! In one afternoon?”

“It’s Sergyar,” Cordelia told her. “Where you literally can’t turn over a rock without discovering something new. Have I mentioned that I love this place?” Except for its politics, but those were a human import.

Adult conversation was then interrupted by a general rush to show the two arriving women all the best new prizes, and collect praise for their discoverers’ cleverness. At length, with some regret, Cordelia broke up the party in favor of dinner—the Kayburg locals sent home, the resident Vorkosigans dispatched upstairs to wash. She told Frieda to supply Oliver with a real drink of his choice and, leaving the tidying of her grandchildren to the parent who had allowed them to get untidy, galloped back downstairs in record time. This round, she managed to grab a hello kiss.

“And how was your trip, Your Excellentness?” Oliver asked her.

“Also brilliant, I must say. And exhausting. I worked Ekaterin ruthlessly, but she seemed to enjoy a whole day with wall-to-wall grownups to talk to, so I hope she isn’t feeling too exploited. Although she was.”

“And, ah…did you get any of that personal girl-gab you were hoping for?”

She made a face. “I meant to. There just wasn’t time.” She added after a moment, “I’m thinking I might get a chance to bring up the subject later tonight. Of us, I mean. Do you mind?”

His fortifying intake of breath did not sound like enthusiastic endorsement. “Miles is your chain-of-command. To state the thuddingly obvious, you know him better than I ever will. Your judgment call on this one.”

“Ha. He can be remarkably opaque at times, even to me.”

“And Ekaterin?”

“Ekaterin…has more distance.” And, Cordelia reflected, also the experience of having been a Barrayaran widow, though spared the public speeches. “I don’t see a problem there.”

“So even you don’t know which way your son will jump?”

“I’m not giving him a Betan vote, love.” She added, as he failed to look anything but wary, “Any imagined disloyalty to Aral could be thwarted by telling him the whole story, you realize.”

Which only made him look even more closed. “I’m…not ready for that. I don’t…I have never wanted to get between you and your family. Between Aral and you, and your family.”

“Which consisted, in the early days, of Miles alone.” Well, and Ivan, more distantly. And Gregor. All right, Oliver had a point, there. Poor outsider stepchild that he obviously thought he was, in that context.

His brows went up. “Are you listening to yourself? Miles, the Army of One?”

She had to laugh. “All right, all right. Well, I’ll wing it, then.”

“Just don’t put me to the blush.”

She brushed her fingertips across his face. “Hey, I like your blushes.”

“I know.” He caught and kissed the fingertips in passing. “And I would cheerfully hold my breath till I turned scarlet to make you smile. Or snicker, as the case may be. But still.”

It was his privacy, too, that he was placing in her hands. She nodded understanding. “May I just point out, the trip to the Prince Serg is going to be an overnight excursion. The viceregal jump-pinnace is more spacious than a fast courier, but it would be handy if we could bunk together, don’t you think?”

This won a smile at last. “Very efficient, yes.”

They still jerked a little apart, by whatever accursed ridiculous reflex, as Miles wandered in. “Ah,” he said, looking curiously at Oliver. “You’re still here. Anything going on?”

“I invited Oliver to join us for dinner.”

“You sure? I don’t think you’ll be able to get much business in.”

“I plan to forbid business at the table tonight,” said Cordelia, widening her eyes for emphasis.

Miles laughed and opened his hand in concession. “Understood.”

In the event, between exchanging tales of Chaos Colony and of the latest activities back in the Vorkosigans’ home district, the dinner conversation was quite lively. Cordelia wasn’t sure if Oliver was being unusually quiet, or if he just couldn’t get a word in edgewise. He did spend time coaxing actual speech from some of the younger members of the party, with the same even-handed ease he might have applied to a diplomatic soiree. And listening with the same multi-leveled attention, Cordelia thought.

Another excursion upstairs oversaw the younger children put to bed and the older ones occupied, and Cordelia, trailed in a bit by Miles and Ekaterin, was at last able to rejoin Oliver back downstairs in one of the cozier public rooms for grownup after-dinner drinks. She plunked herself down next to him on the couch where he’d been waiting, thinking, You could put your arm around me now, Oliver, but he didn’t take the telepathic hint. Miles and Ekaterin sat together on the couch across the low table; Frieda served them, and then, at Cordelia’s nod and wave, discreetly retreated.

Oliver continued to be rather reserved, even by Oliver standards. It couldn’t be something brewing at work that was on his mind; he was supposed to have taken the day off. Cordelia would be peeved if she found out that had not been the case. She tried, “And so what did you do all day, Oliver?”

This, happily, triggered an amusing anecdote from him about a trip out to the Uni, where things sounded to be proceeding as usual for the Uni. Ekaterin seemed very interested, though Miles might have preferred to swap tales about Sergyar Fleet. But it was Miles, spinning his emptied glass in his fingertips, who asked, “Why the interest in Lake Serena?”

“I took your mother out to sail.”

“Ah. Da used to like that.”

“Yes, he taught me how, back when.”

“Me, too. Though I confess I preferred grandfather’s horses, when I was younger.”

Cordelia perked up in the hope that this might lead into some more personal revelations, but instead Oliver went off into an enthusiastic description of the Serena lake life as observed through the crystal canoe. The flash of self-forgetfulness brought his considerable charm to the fore, and Ekaterin smiled.

“But you can’t be planning development out that way,” said Miles. “Mother is trying to get people to move away from the local tectonics.”

Cordelia abandoned patience as unrewarding. “Actually, Oliver and I are dating.”

Miles stared. The silence stretched just a little too long, though Ekaterin raised her eyebrows, looked back and forth between Cordelia and Jole, and ventured, “Congratulations!” Miles closed his mouth.

In another moment, he opened it again. “Er…what exactly do you mean by dating? In this context.”

“Screwing, dear,” Cordelia replied, in her flattest Betan tones.

“…Ah.” He added after a moment, “Thank you for the clarification.” I think, said his expression, though not his mouth.

Ekaterin, glancing aside at her spouse, suppressed what sounded suspiciously like a snicker. Oliver was still lying low, metaphorically, but a slight smile twitched his lips. And no blush. To Cordelia’s delight, he finally leaned back and stretched an arm around her shoulders along the top of the sofa, in a claiming gesture. His chin came up, and he regarded Miles blandly.

“Is this…publicly known? Around here?” Miles asked cautiously.

“I haven’t sent out a press release, no. I did tell Gregor, when I messaged him about Aurelia. And Alys and Simon, of course.”

“They all three knew? And didn’t tell me? When did I become a security risk?” Miles sounded indignant. He added after a moment, “Though that explains why Gregor kept saying that if I wanted to know any more, I needed to ask you. I thought he was hinting that he wanted me to investigate…something.”

Perhaps he was. Cordelia didn’t say that out loud.

Miles’s brows drew down. More. “Aren’t you worried about political fallout? Locally? Or even further afield.” He hesitated. “I could see some enemy getting up charges of conflict of interest, if the two top people in Sergyar space were known to, er, be in bed with one another.”

“The…” With a glance at Oliver, who had gone inexpressive again, Cordelia regretfully edited out the word she wanted, three. “The two top people in Sergyar space were in bed together for a decade. I’d think people would be used to it. I wasn’t just Vicereine because I was your father’s wife; it was always a co-appointment.”

Miles made an impatient Yes, I know, hand wave.

“That sort of complaint is usually made when one partner is seen to be illegitimately parasitizing the other’s power base. It would take some very convoluted thinking to see Oliver and me as anything other than a working team.”

“That wouldn’t stop them, if they were determined to be hostile.”

“Neither, in my experience, would anything else I did or didn’t do.”

Oliver put in, unexpectedly, “One of your father’s aphorisms was Don’t let your enemy choose your ground. He didn’t mean it only militarily.”

“Still less a hypothetical enemy,” said Cordelia dryly. “On hypothetical ground. Anyway, what could they do? Pressure for my resignation?” She considered this not-unlikely scenario. “That actually could infuriate me, come to think. Getting stuck in this job for extra time just to prove to some wastes-of-oxygen that they weren’t running the show. Gah.”

Miles played with his empty glass. Still trying to think up a logical reason that he could slide in under his floating unease and justify his emotions? Cordelia wasn’t sure whether to let him or not. He was an experienced tactical pathfinder. A good thing—as long as he was on your side.

“If my family is happy for me,” stated Cordelia, hanging the challenge in air, “the Sergyaran public, or any other, can go hang.”

Ekaterin still looked concerned. Given her natural reserve bordering on shyness, this wasn’t a surprise. Not for the first time, Cordelia wondered how such a woman had managed to marry a man so far outside her comfort zone. Though I’m so glad she did. “My aunt Vorthys once remarked to me that the first attack on any woman who is a public figure is usually sexual slander.”

Cordelia shrugged. “The Professora is a wise woman and an excellent historian, but that’s old news from my point of view. If there was any slander, sexual or otherwise, not whispered about us when Aral was regent, or even later when he was prime minister, it’s beyond my imagination. I don’t know how they thought we could find all that time.”

“That…is true,” said Miles reluctantly. “It was your Betan connection that mostly got them excited. And Da was always a target. I suppose he thought words weren’t as bad as grenades.”

We weren’t too fond of either one. “My old Betan Survey science training didn’t really fit me for Vorbarr Sultana politics, I admit. I’d always thought the very worst thing one could do was say or repeat anything that one hadn’t made sure was true. People’s lives could depend on one’s accuracy. To me, the rumor mill seemed not just cruel, but deranged.”

“It’s odd,” said Ekaterin. “The standard Barrayaran view of Betans is that they’re sex-obsessed, but when you go there, you discover they’re not.”

“Of course not. They don’t have to be,” said Cordelia.

Miles’s lips twisted up, but he did not pursue whatever objection he was entertaining to that.

Cordelia, frowning, said to him, “I’m sorry that you were disturbed by the slanders. You never said much…”

“It happened at school, mostly. Boys trying to get me going, when the mutie insults stopped working. I eventually taught them…not to. Ivan had it easier. He could just slug them. I couldn’t get him to slug them for me very often, except for the one time some twit accused Aunt Alys of sleeping with you. That…went off well. In a sense.” A vicious grin.

“Alys came in for a lot of criticism in her own right for not remarrying,” said Cordelia. “Still, at least that one credited me with good taste. I was flattered.”

“Grandfather once said to me, when I was upset about, God, I don’t even remember which one, ‘We’re Vorkosigans. If the charge isn’t at least murder or treason, it’s not worth rolling over in bed for.’ Then he thought a moment and changed it to, ‘Treason, anyway.’ And after another, ‘And sometimes not even then.’”

Cordelia chuckled darkly. “That was old Piotr. I can just hear him. That was pretty much Aral’s perspective, too. Probably where he got it from. The only one that really made him angry was the Butcher-of-Komarr slur. The rest just made him tired.”

“They made me angry,” Oliver muttered.

Miles glanced up at him. “Yeah, I suppose you were dropped right in it, during his prime ministership.”

“I wasn’t allowed to slug anyone, either.” After a glum moment of who-knew-what memories, Oliver added, “Very trying.”

In his era, there had been rumors about the prime minister’s handsome aide as well, in every imaginable combination of sexuality and/or dis/loyalty. Even, on the same principle of a stopped clock being right twice a day, a dark distorted imitation of the real story. Miles must have heard that one, too, and presumably dismissed it with the rest. Or given that Miles was mostly off-world by then, maybe not? Cordelia wasn’t sure how to ask. She glanced aside at Oliver, who showed no sign of wanting to seize the cue.

“It tailed off by the time I got to the Academy,” said Miles. “Well, mostly. Less of it, uglier when it popped up.”

“The regency was over by then. But it tailed off generally, over time,” said Cordelia. “Thankfully.”

Ekaterin said cautiously, “What about social reactions here? To the new children, too. Or do you care?”

“Not greatly, though I see no reason to invite harassment.” Cordelia shrugged. “Given Sergyar’s mixed population, that one is really hard to guess. In the Barrayaran Time of Isolation, widows still of fertile age were not only encouraged but pressured to remarry, to keep their contributions in the gene pool.”

A wry look crossed Ekaterin’s face. “Not just in the Time of Isolation, I’m sorry to say.”

Cordelia nodded, and continued, “Widows beyond childbearing age were not, presumably so they didn’t tie up a man ditto. They didn’t phrase it that way, of course, but that was the cumulative effect of all those weird social shibboleths, if you analyze them.”

“Mm,” said Miles, who, Cordelia guessed, had never before stopped to analyze them.

“We are not on Barrayar, it isn’t the Time of Isolation, and childbearing age is an exploded concept. A person can not only sequester gametes for decades, there’s the recombination of somatic cells at any age. Including posthumously, if someone thinks to freeze a tissue sample. One could in theory even draw eggs from a female infant, for that matter. Closer to home, there’s your clone-brother Mark.”

Miles made a random gesture of theoretical surrender at that last point. “True, but…won’t some people think Oliver is a bit, er, young for you?” The look on his face suggested that he was already imagining the jokes, and not being much amused in prospect.

“Thank you for not asking if I were too old for Oliver, at least,” said Cordelia tartly.

“Thank you twice,” Oliver observed from her side, his voice faintly amused. “I’ll be fifty shortly. You’re all invited to the birthday picnic, if you’re still here, by the way.”

Ekaterin said, “That sounds delightful.”

“I’m not sure about delightful, but it promises to be lively,” said Oliver ruefully. “A lot of the base families will be there. So there will be lots of other children.”

“Oh, good.”

Miles, outnumbered and edging toward capitulation, tried, “Though I suppose, if you do the math, it makes sense. Betan versus Barrayaran lifespans and all that.”

Ekaterin winced, but smiled valiantly.

Well, somebody had to say it. Cordelia turned to Oliver in a sudden resolve that had nothing to do with the amusement of tweaking Miles. Fiercely, she said, “Yes. If you only promise me one thing, Oliver, I want you to promise that you will outlive me.”

Oliver looked taken aback. “I’ll…try?” he hazarded. He rubbed his free hand across his mouth, and understanding grew in his eyes. The arm draped so tentatively across her shoulders tightened in silent support.

Miles took a minute to process that, but he got there eventually, Cordelia thought. “Oh,” he said. Ekaterin didn’t seem to have any trouble following at all; she gave her mother-in-law a somber, sororal nod.

The party broke up shortly thereafter, three members being very tired and the fourth…looking as though he had a lot to digest. At least Cordelia suffered no tag-alongs when she saw Oliver out. They shared an insufficient goodnight kiss.

He let out a pent breath. “Whew. That went…”

Well? Badly…?

“—more politically than I expected.”

“Miles is growing very countly these days.”

“I’m still not sure how he reacted, and I sat there and watched him.”

“At a guess…I think he’ll express any further doubts to our faces—although more likely to Ekaterin, poor girl—and present a solid front to outsiders.” Or so she fervently hoped.

“Me against my brother, my brother and me against the world?”

“That certainly sums up Miles and Mark in a nutshell. So he’s had the practice.”

“I’d say I couldn’t wait to see that,” he sighed, “but I really think I could.”

Cordelia snickered.

“Will I see you before tomorrow evening at the base?”

Where they would all depart for her jump-pinnace, and thence for the Prince Serg. “Afraid not. My staff has a long list of things for me to attend to before I escape them for one whole day, with only a mere three dozen tightbeam channels to reach me.” A day bracketed by two onboard nights, by whatever happy accident of efficient orbital calculations. Though considering that Oliver had used to schedule the most overworked man in Vorbarr Sultana, perhaps she should drop the accident from that.

He departed for his groundcar, and she turned back inside, thinking, So, that was the second wormhole jump survived. How many more, to navigate them all safely home?