Cetaganda Part 16

"What do you know so far?" 'Miles countered. Benin would, of course, keep something back, to cross-check Miles s story. That was quite all right, as Miles proposed to tell almost the whole truth, next.

"Ba Lura was at the transfer station the day you arrived. He left the station at least twice. Once, apparently, from a pod docking bay in which the security monitors were deactivated and unchecked for a period of forty minutes. The same bay and the same period in which you arrived, Lord Vorkosigan."

"Our first arrival, you mean."

"... Yes."

Vorreedi's eyes were widening and his lips were thinning. Miles ignored him, for now, though Ivan's gaze cautiously s.h.i.+fted to check him out.

"Deactivated? Torn out of the wall, I'd call it. Very well, ghem-Colonel. But tell me-was our encounter in the pod dock the first or second time the Ba appeared to leave the station?"

"Second," Benin said, watching him closely.

"Can you prove that?"

"Yes."

"Good. It may be very important later that you can prove that." Ha, Benin wasn't the only one who could cross-check the truth of this conversation. Benin, for whatever reason, was being straight with him so far. Turn and turnabout. "Well, this is what happened from our point of view-"

In a flat voice, and with plenty of corroborative physical details, Miles described their confusing clash with the Ba. The only item he changed was to report the Ba reaching for its trouser pocket before he'd yelled his warning. He brought the tale up to the moment of Ivan's heroic struggle and his own retrieval of the loose nerve disrupter, and bounced it over to Ivan to finish. Ivan gave him a dirty look, but, taking his tone from Miles, offered a brief factual description of the Ba's subsequent escape.

Since it lacked face paint, Miles could watch Vorreedi's face darken, out of the corner of his eye. The man was too cool and controlled to actually turn purple or anything, but Miles bet a blood pressure monitor would be beeping in plaintive alarm right now.

"And why did you not report this at our first meeting, Lord Vorkosigan?" Benin asked again, after a long, digestive pause.

"I might," said Vorreedi in a slightly suffused voice, "ask you the same question, Lieutenant." Benin shot Vorreedi a raised-brow look, almost putting his face paint in danger of smudging.

Lieutenant, not my lord; Miles took the point. "The pod pilot reported to his captain, who will have reported to his commander." To wit, Illyan; in fact, the report, slogging through normal channels, should be reaching Illyan's desk right about now. Three days more for an emergency query to arrive on Vorreedi's desk from home, six more days for a reply and return-reply. It would all be over before Illyan could do a d.a.m.ned thing, now. "However, on my authority as senior envoy, I suppressed the incident for diplomatic reasons. We were sent with specific instructions to maintain a low profile and behave with maximum courtesy. My government considered this solemn occasion an important opportunity to send a message that we would be glad to see more normal trade and other relations, and an easing of tensions along our mutual borders. I did not judge that it would do anything helpful for our mutual tensions to open our visit with charges of an unmotivated armed attack by an Imperial slave upon the Barrayaran special representatives."

The implied threat was obvious enough; despite Benin's face paint, Miles could tell that one had hit home. Even Vorreedi looked like he might be giving the pitch serious consideration.

"Can you... prove your a.s.sertions, Lord Vorkosigan?" asked Benin cautiously.

"We still have the captured nerve disruptor. Ivan?" Miles nodded to his cousin.

Gently, using only his fingertips, Ivan drew the weapon from his pocket and laid it gingerly on the table, and returned his hands demurely to his lap. He avoided Vorreedi's outraged eye. Vorreedi and Benin reached simultaneously for the nerve disruptor, and simultaneously stopped, frowning at each other.

"Excuse me," said Vorreedi. "I had not seen this before."

"Really?" said Benin. How extraordinary, his tone implied. "Go ahead." His hand dropped politely.

Vorreedi picked up the weapon and examined it closely, among other things checking to see that the safety lock was indeed engaged, before handing it equally politely to Benin.

"I'd be glad to return the weapon to you, ghem-Colonel," Miles went on, "in exchange for whatever information you are able to deduce from it. If it can be traced back to the Celestial Garden, that's not much help, but if it was something the Ba acquired en route, well... it might be revealing. This is a check that you can make more easily than I can." Miles paused, then added, "Who did the Ba visit from the station the first time?"

Benin glanced up from his close contemplation of the nerve disruptor. "A s.h.i.+p moored off- station."

"Can you be more specific?"

"No."

"Excuse me, let me re-phrase that. Could you be more specific if you chose to?"

Benin set the disruptor down, and leaned back, his expression of attention to Miles, if possible, intensifying.

He was silent for a long thoughtful moment before finally replying, "No, unfortunately. I could not." Rats. The three haut-governors' s.h.i.+ps moored off that transfer station were Ilsum Kety's, Slyke Giaja's and Este Rond's. This could have been the final line of his triangulation, but Benin didn't have it. Yet. "I'd be particularly interested in how traffic control, or what certainly pa.s.sed for traffic control, came to direct us to the wrong, or at any rate the first, pod dock."

"Why do you think the Ba entered your pod?" Benin asked in turn.

"Given the intense confusion of the encounter, I certainly would consider the possibility of it having been an accident. If it was arranged, I think something must have gone very wrong."

No s.h.i.+t, said Ivan's silent morose look. Miles ignored him.

"Anyway, ghem-Colonel, I hope this helps to anchor your time-table," Miles continued in a tone of finality. Surely Benin would be itching to run and check out his new clue, the nerve disrupter.

Benin didn't budge. "So what did you and the haut Rian really discuss, Lord Vorkosigan?"

"For that, I'm afraid you will have to apply to the haut Rian. She is Cetagandan to the bone, and so all your department." Alas. "But I think her distress at the death of the Ba Lura was quite genuine."

Benin's eyes flicked up. "When did you see enough of her to gauge the depth of her distress?"

"Or so I deduced." And if he didn't end this now he was going to put his foot in it so deep they'd need a hand-tractor to pull it out again. He had to play Vorreedi with the utmost delicacy; this was not quite the case with Benin. "This is fascinating, ghem-Colonel, but I'm afraid I'm out of time for this morning. But if you ever find out where that nerve disruptor came from, and where the Ba went to, I would be more than glad to continue the conversation." He sat back, folded his arms, and smiled cordially.

What Vorreedi should have done was announce loudly that they had all the time in the world, and let Benin continue to be his stalking-horse-Miles would have, in his place-but Vorreedi himself was clearly itching to get Miles alone. Instead, the protocol officer rose, signaling the official end to the interview. Benin, on emba.s.sy grounds as a guest, on sufferance-not his normal mode, Miles was sure-acceded without comment, rising to take his farewells.

"I will be speaking with you again, Lord Vorkosigan," Benin promised darkly.

"I certainly hope so, sir. Ah-did you take my other piece of advice, too? About blocking interference?"

Benin paused, looking suddenly a little abstracted. "Yes, in fact."

"How did it go?"

"Better than I would have expected."

"Good."

Benin's parting semi-salute was ironic, but not, Miles felt, altogether hostile.

Vorreedi escorted his guest to the door, but turned him over to the hall guard and was back in the little room before Miles and Ivan could make good their escape.

Vorreedi pinned Miles by eye. Miles felt a momentary regret that his diplomatic immunity did not extend to the protocol officer as well. Would it occur to Vorreedi to separate the pair of them, and break Ivan? Ivan was practicing looking invisible, something he did very well.

Vorreedi stated dangerously, "I am not a mushroom, Lieutenant Vorkosigan."

To be kept in the dark and fed on horses.h.i.+t, right. Miles sighed inwardly. "Sir, apply to my commander," meaning Illyan-Vorreedi's commander too, in point of fact-"be cleared, and I'm yours. Until then, my best judgment is to continue exactly as I have been."

"Trusting your instincts?" said Vorreedi dryly.

"It's not as if I had any clear conclusions to share yet."

"So... do your instincts suggest some connection between the late Ba Lura, and Lord Yenaro?"

Vorreedi had instincts too, oh, yes. Or he wouldn't be in this post. "Besides the fact that both have interacted with me? Nothing that I... trust. I'm after proof. Then I will... be somewhere."

"Where?"

Head down in the biggest privy you ever imagined, at the current rate. "I guess I'll know when I get there, sir."

"We too will speak again, Lord Vorkosigan. You can count on it." Vorreedi gave him a very abbreviated nod, and departed abruptly-probably to apprise Amba.s.sador Vorob'yev of the new complications in his life.

Into the ensuing silence, Miles said faintly, "That went well, all things considered."

Ivan's lip curled in scorn.

They kept silence on the trudge back to Ivan's room, where Ivan found a new stack of colored papers waiting on his desk. He sorted through them, pointedly ignoring Miles.

"I have to reach Rian somehow," Miles said at last. "I can't afford to wait. Things are getting too d.a.m.ned tight."

"I don't want anything more to do with any of this," said Ivan distantly.

"It's too late."

"Yes. I know." His hand paused. "Huh. Here's a new wrinkle. This one has both our names on it."

"Not from Lady Benello, is it? I'm afraid Vorreedi will count her off-limits now."

"No. It's not a name I recognize."

Miles pounced on the paper, and tore it open. "Lady d'Har. A garden party. What does she grow in her garden, I wonder? Could it be a double meaning-referencing the Celestial Garden? Hm. Awfully short notice. It could be my next contact. G.o.d, I hate being at haut Rian's mercy for every setup. Well, accept it anyway, just in case."

"It's not my first choice of how to spend the evening," said Ivan.

"Did I say anything about a choice? It's a chance, we've got to take it." He went on nastily, "Besides, if you keep leaving your genetic samples all over town, your progeny could end up being featured in next year's art show. As bushes."

Ivan shuddered. "You don't think they would-that's not why-uh, could they?"

"Sure. Why, when you're gone, they could re-create the operative body parts that interest them, to perform on command, to any scale-quite the souvenir. And you thought that kitten tree was obscene."

"There's more to it than that, coz," Ivan stated with injured dignity. His voice faded in doubt. "... you don't think they'd really do something like that, do you?"

"There's no more ruthless pa.s.sion than that of a Cetagandan artist in search of new media." He added firmly, "We're going to a garden party. I'm sure it's my contact with Rian."

"Garden party," conceded Ivan with a sigh. He stared off blankly into s.p.a.ce. After a minute he commented offhandedly, "Y'know, it's too bad she can't just get the gene bank back from his s.h.i.+p. Then he'd have the key but no lock. That'd fox him up but good, I bet."

Miles sat down in Ivan's desk chair, slowly. When he'd got his breath back, he whispered, "Ivan-that's brilliant. Why didn't I think of that before?"

Ivan considered this. "'Cause it's not a scenario that lets you play the lone hero in front of the haut Rian?"

They exchanged saturnine looks. For once, Miles's gaze s.h.i.+fted first. "I meant that as a rhetorical question," he said tightly. But he didn't say it very loudly.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

Garden party was a misnomer, Miles decided. He stared past Amba.s.sador Vorob'yev and Ivan as the three of them exited from an ear-popping ride up the lift tube and into the apparently open air of the rooftop. A faint golden sparkle in the air above marked the presence of a lightweight force-screen, blocking unwanted wind, rain, or dust. Dusk here, in the center of the capital, was a silver sheen in the atmosphere, for the half-kilometer high building overlooked the green rings of parkway surrounding the Celestial Garden itself.

Curving banks of flowers and dwarf trees, fountains, rivulets, walkways, and arched jade bridges turned the roof into a descending labyrinth in the finest Cetagandan style. Every turn of the walkways revealed and framed a different view of the city stretching to the horizon, though the best views were the ones that looked to the Emperors s.h.i.+mmering great phoenix egg in the city's heart. The lift-tube foyer, opening onto it all, was roofed with arching vines and paved in an elaborate inlay of colored stones: lapis lazuli, malachite, green and white jade, rose quartz, and other minerals Miles couldn't even name.

Looking around, it gradually dawned on Miles why the protocol officer had them all wearing their House blacks, when Miles would have guessed undress greens to be adequate. It was not possible to be overdressed here. Amba.s.sador Vorob'yev was admitted on sufferance as their escort, but even Vorreedi had to wait in the garage below, tonight. Ivan, looking around too, clutched their invitation a little tighter.

Their putative hostess, Lady d'Har, stood on the edge of the foyer. Apparently being inside her home counted the same as being inside a bubble, for she was welcoming her guests. Even at her advanced age, her haut-beauty stunned the eye. She wore robes in a dozen fine layers of blinding white, sweeping down and swirling around her feet. Thick silver hair flowed to the floor. Her husband, ghem- Admiral Har, whose bulky presence would normally have dominated any room, seemed to fade into the background beside her.

Ghem-Admiral Har commanded half the Cetagandan fleet, and his duty-delayed arrival for the final ceremonies of the Empress's funeral was the reason for tonight's welcome-home party. He wore his Imperial bloodred dress uniform, which he could have hung with enough medals to sink him should he chance to fall in a river. He'd chosen instead to one-up the compet.i.tion with the neck-ribbon and medallion of the deceptively simple-sounding Order of Merit. Clearing away the other clutter made this honor impossible for the viewer to miss. Or match. It was given, rarely, at the sole discretion of the Emperor himself. There were few higher awards to be had in the Cetagandan Empire. The haut-lady by his side was one of them, though. Lord Har would have pinned her to his tunic too, if he could, Miles felt, for all he had won her some forty years past. The Har ghem-clan's face paint featured mainly orange and green; the patterns lacked definition, crossing with the man's deeply age-lined features, and clas.h.i.+ng horribly with the red of the uniform.

Even Amba.s.sador Vorob'yev was awed by ghem-Admiral Har, Miles judged by the extreme formality of his greetings. Har was polite but clearly puzzled; Why are these outlanders in my garden? But he deferred to Lady d'Har, who relieved Ivan of his nervously proffered invitation with a small, cool nod, and directed them, in a voice age-softened to a honeyed alto, to where the food and drinks were displayed.

They strolled on. After he recovered from the shock of Lady d'Har, Ivan's head swiveled, looking for the young ghem-women he knew, without success. "This place is wall-to-wall old crusts," he whispered to Miles in dismay. "When we walked in, the average age here dropped from ninety to eighty- nine."

"Eighty-nine and a half, I'd say," Miles whispered back.

Amba.s.sador Vorob'yev put a finger to his lips, suppressing the commentary, but his eyes glinted in amused agreement.

Quite. This was the real thing; Yenaro and his crowd were shabby little outsiders indeed, by comparison, excluded by age, by rank, by wealth, by... everything. Scattered through the garden were half-a-dozen haut-lady bubbles, glowing like pale lanterns, something Miles had not yet seen outside the Celestial Garden itself. Lady d'Har kept social contact with her haut-relatives, or former relatives, it appeared. Rian, here? Miles prayed so.

"I wish I could have got Maz in," Vorob'yev sighed with regret. "How did you do this, Lord Ivan?"

"Not me," denied Ivan. He flipped a thumb at Miles.

Vorob'yev's brows rose inquiringly.

Miles shrugged. "They told me to study the power-hierarchy. This is it, isn't it?" Actually, he was not so sure anymore.

Where did power lie, in this convoluted society? With the ghem-lords, he would have said once without hesitation, who controlled the weapons, the ultimate threat of violence. Or with the haut- lords, who controlled the ghem, through whatever oblique means. Certainly not with the secluded haut- women. Was their knowledge a kind of power, then? A very fragile sort of power. Wasn't fragile power an oxymoron? The Star Creche existed because the Emperor protected it; the Emperor existed because the ghem-lords served him. Yet the haut-women had created the Emperor... created the haut itself... created the ghem, for that matter. Power to create... power to destroy... he blinked, dizzy, and munched on a canape in the shape of a tiny swan, biting off its head first. The feathers were made with rice flour, judging from the taste, the center a spicy protein paste. Vat-grown swan meat?

The Barrayaran party collected drinks, and began a slow circuit of the rooftop garden's walks, comparing views. They also collected stares, from the elderly ghem and haut scattered about; but none came up to introduce themselves, or ask questions, or attempt to start a conversation. Vorob'yev himself was only scouting, so far, Miles thought, but the man would surely pursue the evening's opportunities for contact-making soon. How Miles was to divest himself of the amba.s.sador when his own contact turned up, he was not sure. a.s.suming this was where his contact was to meet him, and it wasn't all just his hyperactive imagination, or- Or the next a.s.sa.s.sination attempt. They'd rounded some greenery to see a woman in haut- white, but with no haut-bubble, standing alone and staring out over the city. Miles recognized her from the heavy chocolate-dark braid falling down her back to her ankles, even at this three-quarters-turned view. The haut Vio d'Chilian. Was ghem-General Chilian here? Was Kety himself?

Ivan's breath drew in. Right. Except for their elderly hostess, this was the first time Ivan had seen a haut-woman outside her bubble, and Ivan lacked the... inoculation of the haut Rian. Miles found he could view the haut Vio this time with scarcely a tremor. Were the haut-women a disease that you could only catch once, like the legendary smallpox, and if you survived it you were immune thereafter, however scarred?

"Who is she?" whispered Ivan, enchanted.

"Ghem-General Chilian's haut-wife," Vorob'yev murmured into his ear. "The ghem-general could order your liver fried for breakfast. I would send it to him. The free ghem-ladies can entertain themselves as they please with you, but the married haut are strictly off-limits. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," said Ivan faintly.