Erased. Let the punishment fit the crime.
Miles shivered.
* * *
The luxurious lift van banked over the palace of the Imperial Governor of Rho Ceta, the sprawling complex shimmering in the night. The vehicle began to drop into the vast dark garden, laced with veins of lights along its roads and paths, which lay to the east of the buildings. Miles stared in fascination out his window as they swooped down, then up over a small range of hills, trying to guess if the landscape was natural, or artificially carved out of Rho Ceta's surface. Partly carved, at any rate, for on the opposite side of the rise a grassy bowl of an amphitheater sheltered in the slope, overlooking a silky black lake a kilometer across. Beyond the hills on the lake's other side, Rho Ceta's capital city made the night sky glow amber.
The amphitheater was lit only by dim, glowing globes lavishly spread across its width: a thousand haut lady force bubbles, set to mourning white, damped to the barest visible luminosity. Among them, other pale figures moved softly as ghosts. The view turned from his sight as the driver of the van swung it about and brought it down to a gentle landing a few meters inward from the lake shore at one edge of the amphitheater.
The van's internal lighting brightened just a little, in red wavelengths designed to help maintain the passengers' dark adaptation. In the aisle across from Miles and Ekaterin, ghem-General Benin turned from his window. It was hard to read his expression beneath the formalized swirls of black-and-white face paint that marked him as an Imperial ghem-officer, but Miles took it for pensive. In the red light, his uniform glowed like fresh blood.
All in all, and even taking into account his sudden close personal introduction to Star Crèche bioweapons, Miles wasn't sure if he'd have cared to trade recent nightmares with Benin. The past weeks had been exhausting for the senior officer of the Celestial Garden's internal security. The child-ship, carrying Star Crèche personnel who were his special charge, vanishing en route without a trace; garbled reports leaking back from Guppy's scrambled trail hinting not only at breathtaking theft, but possible biocontamination from the Crèche's most secret stores; the disappearance of that trail into the heart of an enemy empire.
No wonder that by the time he had arrived in Rho Cetan orbit last night to interrogate Miles in person—with exquisite courtesy, to be sure—he'd looked as tired, even under the face paint, as Miles felt. Their contest for the possession of Russo Gupta had been brief. Miles certainly sympathized with Benin's strong desire, with the ba plucked from his hands by the Star Crèche, for someone to take his frustrations out on—but, first, Miles had given his Vor word, and secondly, he discovered, he could apparently do no wrong on Rho Ceta this week.
Nevertheless, Miles wondered where to drop Guppy when this was all over. Housing him in a Barrayaran jail was a useless expense to the Imperium. Turning him loose back on Jackson's Whole was an invitation for him to return to his old haunts, and employment—no benefit to the neighbors, and a temptation to Cetagandan vengeance. He could think of one other nicely distant place to deposit a person of such speckled background and erratic talents, but was it fair to do that to Admiral Quinn . . . ? Bel had laughed, evilly, at the suggestion, till it had to stop to breathe.
Despite Rho Ceta's key place in Barrayaran strategic and tactical considerations, Miles had never set foot on the world before. He didn't now, either, at least not right away. Grimacing, he allowed Ekaterin and ghem-General Benin to help him from the van into a floater. In the ceremony to come, he planned to stand on his feet, but a very little experimentation had taught him that he had better conserve his endurance. At least he wasn't alone in his need for mechanical aid. Nicol hovered, shepherding Bel Thorne. The herm sat up and managed its own floater controls, only the oxygen tube to its nose betraying its extreme debilitation.
Armsman Roic, his Vorkosigan House uniform pressed and polished, took up station behind Miles and Ekaterin, at his very stiffest and most silent. Spooked half to death, Miles gauged. Miles couldn't blame him.
Deciding he represented the whole of the Barrayaran Empire tonight, and not just his own House, Miles had elected to wear his plain civilian gray. Ekaterin seemed tall and graceful as a haut in some flowing thing of gray and black; Miles suspected under-the-table female sartorial help from Pel, or one of Pel's many minions. As ghem-General Benin led the party forward, Ekaterin paced beside Miles's floater, her hand resting lightly upon his arm. Her faint, mysterious smile was as reserved as ever, but it seemed to Miles as though she walked with a new and firm confidence, unafraid in the shadowed dark.
Benin stopped at a small group of men, glimmering up out of the murk like specters, who were gathered a few meters from the lift van. Complex perfumes drifted from their clothing through the damp air, distinct, yet somehow not clashing. The ghem-general meticulously introduced each member of the party to the current haut governor of Rho Ceta, who was of the Degtiar constellation, cousin in some kind to the present Empress. The governor, too, was dressed, as were all the haut men present, in the loose white tunic and trousers of full mourning, with a multilayered white over-robe that swept to his ankles.
The former occupant of this post, whom Miles had once met, had made it plain that outlander barbarians were barely to be tolerated, but this man swept a low and apparently sincere bow, his hands pressed formally together in front of his chest. Miles blinked, startled, for the gesture more resembled the bow of a ba to a haut than the nod of a haut to an outlander.
"Lord Vorkosigan. Lady Vorkosigan. Portmaster Thorne. Nicol of the Quaddies. Armsman Roic of Barrayar. Welcome to Rho Ceta. My household is at your service."
They all returned suitably civil murmurs of thanks. Miles considered the wording—my household, not my government, and was reminded that what he was seeing tonight was a private ceremony. The haut governor was momentarily distracted by the lights on the horizon of a shuttle dropping from orbit, his lips parting at he peered up into the glowing night sky, but the craft banked disappointingly away toward the opposite side of the city. The governor turned back, frowning.
A few minutes of polite small talk between the haut governor and Benin—formal wishes for the continued health of the Cetagandan emperor and his empresses, and somewhat more spontaneous-sounding inquiries after mutual acquaintances—was broken off again as another shuttle's lights appeared in the wide predawn dark. The governor swung around to stare again. Miles glanced back over the silent crowd of haut men and haut lady bubbles scattered like white flower petals across the bowl of the hillside. They emitted no cries, they scarcely seemed to move, but Miles felt rather than heard a sigh ripple across their ranks, and the tension of their anticipation tighten.
This time, the shuttle grew larger, its lights brightening as it boomed down across the lake, which foamed in its path. Roic stepped back nervously, then forward again nearer to Miles and Ekaterin, watching the bulk of it loom almost above them. Lights on its sides picked out upon the fuselage a screaming-bird pattern, enameled red, that glowed like flame. The craft landed on its extended feet as softly as a cat, and settled, the chinks and clinks of its heated sides contracting sounding loud in the breathless, waiting stillness.
"Time to stand up," Miles whispered to Ekaterin, and grounded his floater. She and Roic helped hoist him out of it to his feet, and step forward to stand at attention. The close-cut grass, beneath his booted soles, felt like thick fine carpeting; its scent was damp and mossy.
A wide cargo hatch opened, and a ramp extended itself, illuminated from beneath in a pale, diffuse glow. First down it drifted a haut lady bubble—its force field not opaque, as the others, but transparent as gauze. Within, its float chair could be seen to be empty.
Miles murmured to Ekaterin, "Where's Pel? Thought this was all her . . . baby."
"It's for the Consort of Rho Ceta who was lost with the hijacked ship," she whispered back. "The haut Pel will be next, as she conducts the children in the dead consort's place.
Miles had met the murdered woman, bri
efly, a decade ago. To his regret, he could remember little more of her now than a cloud of chocolate-brown hair that had tumbled down about her, stunning beauty camouflaged in an array of other haut women of equal splendor, and a ferocious commitment to her duties. But the float chair seemed suddenly even emptier.
Another bubble followed, and yet more, and ghem-women and ba servitors. The second bubble drew up beside the haut governor's group, grew transparent, and then winked out. Pel in her white robes sat regally in her float chair.
"Ghem-General Benin, as you are charged, please convey now the thanks of Emperor the haut Fletchir Giaja to these outlanders who have brought our Constellations' hopes home to us."
She spoke in a normal tone, and Miles didn't see the voice pickups, but a faint echo back from the grassy bowl told him their words were being conveyed to all assembled here.
Benin called Bel forward; with formal words of ceremony, he presented a high Cetagandan honor to the Betan, a paper bound in ribbon, written in the Emperor's Own Hand, with the odd name of the Warrant of the Celestial House. Miles knew Cetagandan ghem-lords who would have traded their own mothers to be enrolled on the year's Warrant List, except that it wasn't nearly that easy to qualify. Bel dipped its floater for Benin to press the beribboned roll into its hands, and though its eyes were bright with irony, murmured thanks to the distant Fletchir Giaja in return, and kept its sense of humor, for once, under full control. It probably helped that the herm was still so exhausted it could barely hold its head upright, a circumstance for which Miles had not expected to be grateful.
Miles blinked, and suppressed a huge grin, when Ekaterin was next called forward by ghem-General Benin and bestowed with a like beribboned honor. Her obvious pleasure was not without its edge of irony either, but she returned an elegantly worded thank you.
"My Lord Vorkosigan," Benin spoke.
Miles stepped forward a trifle apprehensively.
"My Imperial Master, the Emperor the haut Fletchir Giaja, reminds me that true delicacy in the giving of gifts considers the tastes of the recipient. He therefore charges me only to convey to you his personal thanks, in his own Breath and Voice."
First prize, the Cetagandan Order of Merit, and what an embarrassment that medal had been, a decade ago. Second prize, two Cetagandan Orders of Merit? Evidently not. Miles breathed a sigh of relief, only slightly tinged with regret. "Tell your Imperial Master from me that he is entirely welcome."
"My Imperial Mistress, the Empress the haut Rian Degtiar, Handmaiden of the Star Crèche, also charged me to convey to you her own thanks, in her own Breath and Voice."
Miles bowed perceptibly lower. "I am at her service in this."
Benin stepped back; the haut Pel moved forward. "Indeed. Lord Miles Naismith Vorkosigan of Barrayar, the Star Crèche calls you up."
He'd been warned about this, and talked it over with Ekaterin. As a practical matter, there was no point in refusing the honor; the Star Crèche had to have about a kilo of his flesh on private file already, collected not only during his treatment here, but from his memorable visit to Eta Ceta all those years back. So with only a slight tightening of his stomach, he stepped forward, and permitted a ba servitor to roll back his sleeve and present the tray with the gleaming sampling needle to the haut Pel.
Pel's own white, long-fingered hand drove the sampling needle into the fleshy part of his forearm. It was so fine, its bite scarcely pained him; when she withdrew it, barely a drop of blood formed on his skin, to be wiped away by the servitor. She laid the needle into its own freezer case, held it high for a moment of public display and declaration, closed it, and set it away in a compartment in the arm of her float chair. The faint murmur from the throng in the amphitheater did not seem to be outrage, though there was, perhaps, a tinge of amazement. The highest honor any Cetagandan could achieve, higher even than the bestowal of a haut bride, was to have his or her genome formally taken up into the Star Crèche's banks—for disassembly, close examination, and possible selective insertion of the approved bits into the haut race's next generation.
Miles, rolling his sleeve back down, muttered to Pel, "It's prob'ly nurture, not nature, y'know."
Her exquisite lips resisted an upward crook to form the silent syllable, Sh.
The spark of dark humor in her eye was veiled again as if seen through the morning mist as she reactivated her force shield. The sky to the east, across the lake and beyond the next range of hills, was turning pale. Coils of fog curled across the waters of the lake, its smooth surface growing steel gray in reflection of the predawn luminescence.
A deeper hush fell across the gathering of haut as through the shuttle's door and down its ramp floated array after array of replicator racks, guided by the ghem-women and ba servitors. Constellation by constellation, the haut were called forth by the acting consort, Pel, to receive their replicators. The Governor of Rho Ceta left the little group of visiting dignitaries/heroes to join with his clan, as well, and Miles realized that his humble bow, earlier, had not been any kind of irony after all. The white-clad crowd assembled were not the whole of the haut race residing on Rho Ceta, just the fraction whose genetic crosses, arranged by their clan heads, bore fruit this day, this year.
The men and women whose children were here delivered might never have touched or even seen each other till this dawn, but each group of men accepted from the Star Crèche's hands the children of their getting. They floated the racks in turn to the waiting array of white bubbles carrying their genetic partners. As each constellation rearranged itself around its replicator racks, the force screens turned from dull mourning white to brilliant colors, a riotous rainbow. The rainbow bubbles streamed away out of the amphitheater, escorted by their male companions, as the hilly horizon across the lake silhouetted itself against the dawn fire, and above, the stars faded in the blue.
When the haut reached their home enclaves, scattered around the planet, the infants would be given up again into the hands of their ghem nurses and attendants for release from their replicators. Into the nurturing crèches of their various constellations. Parent and child might or might not ever meet again. Yet there seemed more to this ceremony than just haut protocol. Are we not all called on to yield our children back to the world, in the end? The Vor did, in their ideals at least. Barrayar eats its children, his mother had once said, according to his father. Looking at Miles.
So, Miles thought wearily. Are we heroes here today, or the greatest traitors unhung? What would these tiny, high haut hopefuls grow into, in time? Great men and women? Terrible foes? Had he, all unknowing, saved here some future nemesis of Barrayar—enemy and destroyer of his own children still unborn?
And if such a dire precognition or prophecy had been granted to him by some cruel god, could he have acted any differently?
He sought Ekaterin's hand with his own cold one; her fingers wrapped his with warmth. There was enough light for her to see his face, now. "Are you all right, love?" she murmured in concern.
"I don't know. Let's go home."
EPILOGUE
They said good-bye to Bel and Nicol at Komarr orbit.
Miles had ridden along to the ImpSec Galactic Affairs transfer station offices here for Bel's final debriefing, partly to add his own observations, partly to see that the ImpSec boys did not fatigue the herm unduly. Ekaterin attended too, both to testify and to make sure Miles didn't fatigue himself. Miles was hauled away before Bel was.
"Are you sure you two don't want to come along to Vorkosigan House?" Miles asked anxiously, for the fourth or fifth time, as they gathered for a final farewell on an upper concourse. "You missed the wedding, after all. We could show you a very good time. My cook alone is worth the trip, I promise you." Miles, Bel, and of course Nicol hovered in floaters. Ekaterin stood with her arms crossed, smiling slightly. Roic wandered an invisible perimeter as if loath to give over his duties to the unobtrusive ImpSec guards. The armsman had been on continuous alert for so long, Miles thought, he'd forgotten how to take a
shift off. Miles understood the feeling. Roic was due at least two weeks of uninterrupted home leave when they returned to Barrayar, Miles decided.
Nicol's brows twitched up. "I'm afraid we might disturb your neighbors."
"Stampede the horses, yeah," said Bel.
Miles bowed, sitting; his floater bobbed slightly. "My horse would like you fine. He's extremely amiable, not to mention much too old and lazy to stampede anywhere. And I personally guarantee that with a Vorkosigan liveried armsman at your back, not the most benighted backcountry hick would offer you insult."
Roic, passing nearby in his orbit, added a confirming nod.
Nicol smiled. "Thanks all the same, but I think I'd rather go someplace where I don't need a bodyguard."
Miles drummed his fingers on the edge of his floater. "We're working on it. But look, really, if you—"
"Nicol is tired," said Ekaterin, "probably homesick, and she has a convalescing herm to look after. I expect she'll be glad to get back to her own sleepsack and her own routine. Not to mention her own music."
The two exchanged one of those League of Women looks, and Nicol nodded gratefully.
"Well," said Miles, yielding with reluctance. "Take care of each other, then."
"You, too," said Bel gruffly. "I think it's time you gave up those hands-on ops games, hey? Now that you're going to be a daddy and all. Between this time and the last time, Fate has got to have your range bracketed. Bad idea to give it a third shot, I think."
Miles glanced involuntarily at his palms, fully healed by now. "Maybe so. God knows Gregor probably has a list of domestic chores waiting for me as long as a quaddie's arms all added together. The last one was wall-to-wall committees, coming up with, if you can believe it, new Barrayaran bio-law for the Council of Counts to approve. It took a year. If he starts another one with, 'You're half Betan, Miles, you'd be just the man'— I think I'll turn and run."
Bel laughed; Miles added, "Keep an eye on young Corbeau for me, eh? When I toss a protégé in to sink or swim like that, I usually prefer to be closer to hand with a life preserver."