“I want to touch your skin,” she told him, when they broke for breath. “It’s very pale, isn’t it? Is it smooth, or hairy? Are you that pale all over? Do you have silver veins like Pearl?” Where was Pearl . . . ?
“Here, let me show you.” He grinned again and zipped the bear suit down from neck to crotch. Both fur and skin peeled away, revealing glistening red muscle, white fascia, and the thin blue lines of veins.
“No, no, just the fur!” Tej cried in horror, backing up. “Not the skin too!”
“Oh, what?” said Vorpatril, in a tone of some bewilderment. He stared down, the bewilderment changing to dismay as the blackening crackle of a plasma arc burn spread out in a widening circle on his chest. Smoke and the smell of burning meat filled the air, and then it wasn’t Vorpatril anymore, but their ill-fated courier, Seppe, back on Fell Station. . . .
Tej gasped and awoke. She was in bed in the dark of Vorpatril’s flat; Rish lay in silence beside her, unmoving, unaware, yet elegant even in sleep. Tej wanted to ask her where the Jewels had been flying to, but of course, people didn’t share each other’s dreams reciprocally. Tej wouldn’t wish hers on anyone else, certainly.
I’m glad to be out of that dream . . . Most of it. The beginning and the end were just like most of her dreams lately, altogether too much like her real life. The kiss, though, had warmed her right down to her loins. Hi there, loins. Haven’t heard from you for a while . . .
The strange rushing noise at the edge of her hearing resolved itself at last as the shower. It turned off, and then she could hear rustlings from the bathroom and its attendant dressing room/closet. In a while, a faint hiss sounded as the door slid aside, but the captain had evidently turned off the lights before he’d opened it. So as not to disturb his sleeping guests? Or, she wondered as his unshod footsteps wandered nearer to the bed, something more sinister?
She opened her eyes, turned, and stared up at his shadowed shape. He seemed to be fully dressed in his uniform again. No bear suit. His skin was firmly in place, good. Masked by fresh soap and depilatory cream, his scent was mildly aroused; as was her own, she supposed, but fortunately Rish was not awake to razz her on it.
“What?” she breathed.
“Oh,” he whispered back, “sorry to wake you. I’m just on my way out to HQ.”
“But it’s still dark.”
“Yeah, I know. Damn nineteen-hour days. Anything special you’d like me to bring back tonight?”
“Whatever you pick will be fine,” she said, with some confidence.
“All right. I’ll try not to be so late this time, but I never know what’ll come up, so don’t panic if I’m delayed. I’ll lock up behind me.” He made to tiptoe away.
“Captain Vorpatril!” She hardly knew what she wanted to say to him, but the dream-scent of burning flesh still unnerved her. She settled on a vague, “Be careful.”
He returned a nonplussed, “Uh . . . sure.”
The bedroom door closed behind him; she heard him rattling in the kitchenette, and then the sigh of the outer door, and then . . . then the flat sounded very empty.
Tej rolled back over, hoping for a sleep without dreams.
* * *
Despite everything, Ivan managed to arrive at Komarr downside HQ right on time that morning, half an hour before his boss was due—though more often than not Desplains managed to bollix that schedule by arriving early. Ivan started the coffee, sat at his secured comconsole, grimaced, and fired it up to find out what all had arrived in the admiral’s inbox since last shift.
Ivan had developed a personal metaphor for this first task (after the coffee) of the day. It was like opening one’s door to find that an overnight delivery service had left a large pile of boxes on one’s porch, all marked “miscellaneous.” In reality, they were all marked “Urgent!” but if everything was urgent, in Ivan’s view they might as well all be labeled miscellaneous.
Each box contained one of the following: live, venomous, agitated snakes on the verge of escape; quiescent venomous snakes; nonvenomous garden snakes; dead snakes; or things that looked like snakes but weren’t, such as large, sluggish worms. It was Ivan’s morning duty to open each box, identify the species, vigor, mood, and fang-count of the writhing things inside, and sort them by genuine urgency.
The venomous, agitated snakes went straight to Desplains. The garden snakes were arranged in an orderly manner for his later attention. The dead snakes and the sluggish worms were returned to their senders with a variety of canned notes attached, with the heading From The Office of Admiral Desplains, ranging from patiently explanatory to brief and bitter, depending on how long it seemed to be taking the sender in question to learn to deal with his own damned wildlife. Ivan had a menu of Desplains’s notes, and it was his responsibility—and occasionally pleasure, because every job should have a few perks—to match the note to the recipient.
As he had both expected and feared, an urgent—of course—note from ImpSec Komarr with his full police interview of yesterday attached was nestled among this morning’s boxes. And the supply of venomous, agitated snakes in today’s delivery was disappointingly low.
After a brief struggle with his conscience, Ivan set the note in the garden-snakes file, although he did put it at the very bottom of the list. Desplains was possibly the sanest boss Ivan had ever worked for, and the least given to dramatics, and Ivan wished to preserve those qualities for as long as he could. Forever, by preference. So every once in a while, Ivan let something trivial but amusing filter through to the admiral, just to keep up his morale, and today seemed a good day to stick in a couple of those, as well. Ivan was still looking for a few more things he could legitimately enter when Desplains blew in, collected his coffee, and murmured, “Ophidian census today, Ivan?”
“All garden variety, sir.”
“Wonderful.” Desplains took a revivifying sip of fresh-brewed. Ivan wished he could remember which famous officer had once said, The Imperial Service could win a war without coffee, but would prefer not to have to. “What ever came of your interview with the dome cops yesterday?”
“I put the ImpSec note in File Three, sir.” File Three was the official designation of the garden-snakes crate, because, after all, sometimes Desplains did suffer a substitute aide, if Ivan was on leave or out ill or requisitioned for other, less routine duties, and some shorthands took too long to explain. “I expect you will want to look at it eventually.” Ivan made his tone very unpressing.
“Right-oh.”
“Meeting with Commodore Blanc and staff in thirty minutes,” Ivan reminded him. “I have the agenda ready.”
“Very well. Snakes aweigh.”
Ivan hit the send pad. “On your desk now.”
Desplains raised his coffee cup in salute and passed into his inner office.
He would never, Ivan reflected, ever want to be promoted to admiral, to be greeted the first thing every working day by a desk populated entirely by live, hissing snakes. Perhaps he could resign his commission if such a threat ever became imminent. Assuming he made it to that stately age without being court-martialed, a consummation depending closely in turn on his doubtful ability to avoid relatives associated with ImpSec bearing . . . gift pythons. Gift pythons with snazzy reticulated blue-and-gold skins this time, it seemed.
He bent to his comconsole and returned a crisp note to ImpSec Komarr: From the Office of Admiral Desplains: Urgent memo received and the date stamp. Hold pending review.
Chapter Six
“Tej, get away from that edge,” said Rish, irritably. “You’re making me nervous.”
“I’m only watching for Ivan Xav.” Tej gripped the balcony railing and craned her neck, studying the scurrying evening throng in the street far below. She’d had several false alarms already, of foreshortened dark-haired men in green uniforms exiting the bubble-car station and turning in her direction, but none of them had been the captain. Too old, too young, too stout, too slight, none with that particular rolling rhythm to his str
ide. None bearing bags. “Besides, he’s bringing dinner. I hope.”
Rish crossed her arms tighter. “If only the Baron and Baronne had known, they could have had all your parade of suitors offer you provisions, instead of those high House connections.”
Tej’s shoulders hunched. “I didn’t want high House connections. That was Star’s and Pidge’s passion, and Erik’s. And the Baronne’s. I thought there were enough Arquas trying to build economic empires. Family dinners got to be like board meetings, once they were all into it.” Tej had long since given up trying to get in a word at meals without a crowbar, certainly not about her own piddling interests, which, since they did not include schemes for House aggrandizement, interested no one else there.
Pidge, officially named Mercedes Sofia Esperanza Juana Paloma, was Tej’s other older even-sister, born in the era before the Baronne had finally made her spouse ease back on his inspirations, or maybe she’d hidden the book by the time the last few Arqua offspring were decanted from their uterine replicators, who knew? The Baronne always called her Mercedes; Dada, from the time she’d started precociously talking—and never again shut up, as far as Tej could tell—had dubbed her Little Wisdom as a play on Sofia, but as soon as her other siblings discovered that another meaning of Paloma was pigeon, her family nickname had stuck. Well, except when Erik transmuted it to Pudge, to get a rise out of her, which it reliably did.
Did you get out safely, Pidge? Have you made it to your assigned refuge yet? Or did your flight go as sour for you as mine did for me? Her elder sisters had supplied Tej with what she suspected was no more than the normal amount of adolescent hell, but she worried for them now with all that was left of her shredded heart. Erik . . . knowing that Erik had not got out, but not knowing how, had supplied the stuff of nightmares, both asleep and awake. Had he died fighting? Been captured and coldly executed? Tortured first? However it happened, he’s beyond all grief and pain and struggle and regret now. After all these months, Tej was beginning to be reconciled to that cold consolation, if only for want of any other. Amiri . . . her middle brother Amiri was still safe as far as Tej knew. And your hard-bought new life will not be betrayed through me, that’s an ironclad contract. Even if she made the deal only with her own overwrought imagination.
She rose on her toes and leaned out, causing Rish, who stood well back with her shoulders snug to the wall, to make a strained noise in her throat. “Oh, there he is! And he’s got lots of big bags!” Tej watched that long stride close Ivan Xav’s distance to the building’s entry till he turned in out of sight, then gave up her spy-vantage. When they went inside, Rish locked the glass door firmly behind them.
Vorpatril bustled in with the dinner and what proved to be sacks of groceries, and cheerfully emptied them out onto the counter while Rish rescued the restaurant containers and set the table.
“It’s Barrayaran Greekie, tonight,” he told the women. “Wasn’t easy to find. Got a tip about this place from one of the fellows out at HQ. A Barrayaran Greekie sergeant whose family’d been in the restaurant business back in his home District married a Komarran woman and retired here, set up shop. It comes highly recommended—we’ll see.”
“Barrayaran Greekie?” asked Rish, brows rising in puzzlement.
“The smallest of our main languages,” he told her. “The Firsters actually arrived in four disparate settlement groups—Russian, British, French and Greek, as their home regions on Old Earth were back then. Over the centuries of the Time of Isolation, everyone pretty much blended together genetically—founder effect, you know—but they kept up those languages, which still gave folks plenty to fight about. I think there were some more minor tongues as well, to start, but those got rubbed out in what you galactics call the Lost Centuries. Except we weren’t lost, we were all right there. It was just the Nexus that got misplaced.”
Tej considered this novel view as he continued unpacking sacks, including, she was glad to see, fresh fruit and teas and coffees and vat-dairy cream and milk. How many days was he planning for?
He added, “Fortunately, we kept a lot of the food styles. Modified.”
“But not mutated,” murmured Tej.
“Indeed not.” But his lips twitched, so her tiny joke hadn’t really offended him, good. He drew out another large carton and folded the bag. “More instant groats. They’re a traditional Barrayaran breakfast food, among other things.”
“I saw that little box in your cupboard. I wasn’t sure what a person was supposed to do with them.”
“Oh, is that why you weren’t eating them? Here, let me show you . . .” He drew boiling water from the heater tap and mixed up a small bowl of the stuff, and passed it around the table to sample as they sat to the new largess. Tej thought the little brown grains tasted like toasted cardboard, but perhaps they were some childhood comfort food of his, and she oughtn’t to criticize them.
Rish made a face, though. “A bit bland, don’t you think?”
“You usually add butter, maple syrup, cheese, all sorts of things. There’s also a cold salad with mint and chopped tomatoes and what-not. And they use them at weddings.”
The Greekie food, as he dished it out, looked more promising; her first bites delivered some quite wonderful aromas, flavors and textures. “How do they prepare your groats for weddings?”
“They don’t serve them. The grains get dyed different colors, and sprinkled on the ground for the wedding circle and what-not. Some sort of old fertility or abundance symbol, I suppose.”
It also seemed the food least likely to be regretted in that sacrifice, a suspicion Tej kept to herself.
Ivan Xav seemed much more relaxed tonight, and she couldn’t figure out quite why, except for the lack of his strange friend Byerly to stir him up. She would have thought that the revelation of her true identity would have alarmed him more, but maybe he disliked mysteries more than bad news?
“This is all right,” he said, leaning back replete when they’d demolished the Greekie dinner. “When I rented this place to sample the Solstice nightlife, I’d forgotten just how short the nights were. There’s time to either party or recover before work, but not both. So staying in actually suits, though not on your ownsome. That would be dull.”
He rose to go rummage at the comconsole. “My cousin told me about this dance thing you and Rish might like to see, if I can find an example . . .”
“Do you have a lot of cousins?” Tej asked, leaning over his shoulder. “Or just a lot of one cousin?”
He laughed at that last. “Both, actually. On my father’s side, there’s only my cousin Miles—not exactly a cousin, our grandmothers were sisters. That part of the family got pretty thinned out during Mad Yuri’s War, which came down soon after the end of the Occupation. I’ve half-a-dozen first cousins on my mother’s side, but they don’t live near the capital and I don’t see much of ’em. Ah, here we go!”
His search had turned up a recorded performance of the Minchenko Memorial Ballet Company, from a place called the Union of Free Habitats, or Quaddiespace. Tej had never heard of it, but as the vid started up Rish drifted in and said, “Oh! The gengineered four-armed people. Baron Fell had a quaddie musician, once. I saw a vid of one of her gigs. Played a hammer dulcimer with all four hands at once. But she jumped her contract and left, and no one’s heard of her since. I didn’t know they could dance . . .” Her face screwed up. “How do they dance, with no feet?”
“Free fall,” said Ivan Xav. “They live in it, work in it, dance in it . . . my cousin and his wife saw a live performance when they were out that way on, er, business last year—told me all about it, later. Very impressive, they said.”
Dance the quaddies did, it seemed, in zero-gee: hand to hand to hand to hand, singly, in pairs, but most amazingly, in groups, glittering colored costumes flashing through air. The Jewels gave the illusion of flying, at times—these dancers really flew, wheeling like flocks of bright birds. Both Rish and Tej watched in rapt fascination, Rish putting in mutters of exc
ited critique now and then, and bouncing on the edge of her chair at especially complex maneuvers, her arms waving in unconscious mimicry.
Tej shared the sofa with Ivan Xav. His arm, laid out along the back, crept nearer, easing down over her shoulders till she was quite snugged in by it. After a few moments of silent consideration, she declined to shrug it off. It threw her back into a memory of watching shows with Dada, in her childhood—how patient he must have been with her choices, in retrospect—snuggled into his warm side, a stouter one than Ivan Xav’s, but smelling equally, if rather differently, masculine. She wasn’t sure if the recollection helped or hurt, but there it was. For a little hour, some simulacrum of peace.
It ended soon enough, when Ivan Xav turned off the holovid at the close of the performance and Rish said, “So how long were you planning to stay on Komarr, Captain Vorpatril?”
“Mm? Oh.” He sat up, and Tej edged regretfully away. “This whole duty—the annual inspections and conferences—usually runs about ten days or so. I’ve been here, um, let me see . . .” His lips moved as he counted on his fingers. “Seven nights, so far, including this one. So not much longer. I trust that By will be done with his business sooner, though. Seemed like his pace was picking up.”
“So this safe house”—a graceful blue hand spiraled—“will go away when you do.”
“Uh . . .” he said. “I’m afraid so. Though I could book it an extra week for you, but . . . I figured to wait and see what By comes up with.”
Rish glanced significantly at Tej.
Ivan Xav cleared his throat. “Would you two consider making a deal with ImpSec? I mean, more than just with Byerly. I bet you know lots of things they’d like to share, for suitable considerations.”
Tej grimaced. “If there was one lesson both my parents took care to pound into me, it’s that it’s impossible to deal safely if the power differential between the two sides is too great. The high side just skins, and the low side gets stripped. Your ImpSec has no need to be nice to us.”