Cryoburn-ARC (26 page)

Raven lifted his first instrument and bent to his patient-turned-subject.

It was very quiet in the lift van for the first part of the trip back to the consulate. Jin's throat was choked with disappointment. Mina, strapped in the middle of the next seat to the rear, was pale and withdrawn. Vorlynkin negotiated traffic by hand till they were well away from Suze-san's, then linked to the municipal control grid and leaned back with a sigh.

He hitched around sideways to regard Jin and Mina both. "I'm really sorry about all this mix-up."

"It wasn't
your
fault," Jin conceded.

Vorlynkin opened his mouth to say something, evidently thought better of it, and substituted simply, "Thank you." After a moment he added, "Although if you two had been my daughter, I'd have been furious to have you dragged into something like this."

Before Jin could say,
But I thought we dragged you in,
Mina piped up eagerly, "You have a daughter? How old is she? Can she play with us?"

Vorlynkin grimaced. "Annah's six, so she probably would like to play with you, but I'm afraid not. She's on Escobar. With her mother."

"Are they coming back soon?" asked Mina.

"No." Vorlynkin hesitated. "We're divorced."

Both Jin and Mina flinched a little at the scary word.

"Why are you divorced?" asked Mina. If they'd been sitting together, Jin could have kicked her in the ankle to shut her up, but unfortunately she was out of reach.

Vorlynkin shrugged. "It wasn't anyone's fault, really. She was an Escobaran. I met her when I was stationed at the embassy there as a junior secretary. When we first married, I thought it was understood that she would follow where my career took me. But by the time I was offered the promotion and the transfer to the Barrayaran embassy on Pol, Annah had come along. And my wife changed her mind. With a baby to look out for, she didn't want to leave the security of her family and her homeworld. Or she didn't trust me enough. Or something."

After a silence, which Jin endured in faint embarrassment and Mina, apparently, in deep fascination, Vorlynkin added, "My ex-wife remarried recently. Another Escobaran. She wrote me that her new husband wants to adopt Annah. I don't know. It might be better for her than a father she sees for maybe three days every three years. It's hard to decide. To let go." He had been talking to his lap but, unexpectedly, he raised his shrewd blue glance to Jin and Mina. "What do you think?"

Mina blinked, and blurted, "I'd want my real daddy."

Vorlynkin didn't look terribly cheered by this reply. Jin said more cautiously, "It depends, I guess. If he's a nice guy or not."

"I assume so. I haven't met him yet. I suppose I ought to take some time and go do that, before signing off. Maybe visiting again would just confuse Annah. Surely she can't remember much about me."

"Don't you send her messages and stuff?" asked Mina, frowning.

"Sometimes."

Jin said slowly, "Couldn't you have chosen to stay with your wife back then? Instead of going to Pol?" Wherever that was. Pretty far from Escobar, it sounded like. "Being a diplomat isn't like being a soldier, is it? Aren't you allowed to quit?"

Vorlynkin gave Jin an ironic salute, just a finger-touch to his forehead, and Jin felt even more uncomfortable. Maybe he shouldn't have pointed that out?

"Yes, I could have made that choice. Then. I couldn't go back now, of course. That chance has gone beyond recall."

Mina's frown deepened to a scowl. "It sounds like you already picked."

"My younger self did, yes. I have to wonder about him, some days
.
.
." The autopilot beeped as they approached the consulate, and somewhat to Jin's relief Vorlynkin turned away to re-take the controls.

Back in the consulate kitchen, Vorlynkin fixed them all a snack, then went off to the officelike front room to see about something his clerk wanted. Mina snitched Lucky and went upstairs. Jin went outside to check on all his creatures. By the time he arrived in the bedroom he shared with his sister, she was curled up on her bed around the cat, possessively. Lucky endured being clutched like a stuffed toy without protest beyond a lazy tail-twitch or two.

Jin was much too old to take a nap in the daytime, but his bed did look awfully inviting. He supposed if he tried to take Lucky away from Mina, she'd just set up a screech. Maybe wait till she fell asleep? Her face was stiff and blotchy, her eyes red, as if she'd been crying.

As he sat on his bed and plotted his recapture of the cat, Mina sniffed and said, "They lied."

"Grownups always lie." Jin brooded. "
Mom
lied. She always said everything was going to be all right, and it
wasn't
."

"Huh." Mina curled tighter, face scrunching, and sniffed again. In a little while, both face and grip relaxed, and Jin bent over and fished Lucky back, careful not to wake Mina. He stroked the cat till she purred in concession to the trade, then went to curl up with her on his own bed. It was a nice bed, nicer than anything he'd had at Suze-san's, but he still wished he was back there. Maybe grouchy old Yani had been right after all to want to leave Miles-san in the street
.
.
.

He was wakened by Roic calling his name, big hand gently shaking his shoulder. Mina was already sitting up and rubbing the creases from her pillow out of her face. Lucky had gone off somewhere. The light on the carpet had shifted around. Jin glanced at the clock and realized that a couple of hours had slipped away.

"Sorry to wake you," said Roic. "M'lord wants you to take a look at something on the comconsole in the tight-room."

Roic waited patiently while both children visited the bathroom, making sure they'd washed their hands before following him downstairs. Now that he was getting used to the big man, Jin kind of liked Roic. For Miles-san, it must be like owning your own private grownup, following you around and doing stuff for you. Except you got to tell him what to do, instead of the other way around. Jin wished he owned a Roic.

There was a crowd in the strange sealable basement room where, Jin had figured out by now, the consulate kept all the nifty secret spy stuff. Miles-san and Vorlynkin sat at one comconsole. Raven-sensei had returned, and was bent over the long table along with Johannes, attending upon a small machine.

Jin dodged over to them. "What's that?"

"DNA scanner," said Johannes.

"Is that what you used to check Miles-sa—Lord Vorkosigan's thumbprint, that first day?"

"Yes."

"Handy," said Raven-sensei. "There should have been one at Madame Suze's, but evidently it was sold off or broken some time ago. I was afraid I was going to have to take the tissue sample to a commercial lab for even this basic data."

Jin's interest rose. "Could I make scans of my creatures' DNA on it?"

"It's not a toy," said Johannes. "We use it for making positive IDs of people wanting travel documents and so on." He looked at Jin and weakened. "You'll have to ask Counsel Vorlynkin."

Miles-san called Jin over to his comconsole, where Mina was already standing and shifting from foot to foot. Still-shots of four different men hovered in a row above the vid plate. Two had gray hair. One wore a white laboratory coat.

"Miss Mina, I'm hoping you can help us out, here," said Miles-san. "All these men are different Dr. Leibers who live around greater Northbridge. We've already eliminated the female Dr. Leibers, trusting none has made a trip to Beta Colony lately." His mouth twisted up at some joke that Jin didn't understand, although Roic did, judging from his short smile. "Do any of them look like the man you overheard talking to your mommy, that night? Or, do any of them definitely not look like him?"

Mina peered anxiously at the scans. "It was a long time ago. I don't really remember."

"Do you remember anything at all? Was your Dr. Leiber young, or old?"

"Oh, old."

"Gray hair?"

"No, black. I do remember that much. I'm not too good at telling grownups' ages. But he was real old. Thirty, maybe?"

Miles-san and Vorlynkin exchanged a look; the consul's lips twitched, but he didn't say anything.

"So, old but not gray." Miles-san tapped the vid controls, and the two gray-haired men vanished. The other two looked rather alike, with similar haircuts, except one's face was bonier and the other's more round.

"When I was a wee little kid," remarked Roic, watching over their shoulders, "there was a time I thought that any skinny old man I saw was my grandfather. It was pretty confusing."

"Nevertheless," said Miles-san. "Jin, do you remember ever seeing either of these two men in your mother's company? Even if you weren't introduced?"

Jin shook his head.

After a long hesitation, Mina pointed at bony-face. "That one. Maybe. The other one seems too fat."

"He might have gained weight," Jin offered helpfully, getting into the spirit of this.

"Show her scans of a hundred fellows," said Roic, "or even ten, and I doubt she'd be able to tell, m'lord. You're leading your witness."

"If we had to look at the entire pool of elderly gents of thirty on Kibou, that would doubtless be true," said Miles-san. "Fortunately, we have some other sorting constraints." He pointed at round-face. "This Dr. Leiber is an obstetrician at a replicator clinic in a northern suburb." His finger swung to bony-face. "
This
Dr. Leiber is a biochemist working for NewEgypt Cryonics. Given that Mina's witness does not positively eliminate him, that combination puts him at the top of my to-do list."

"What happened to your theory that the fellow must have fled?" asked Roic. "This Leiber doesn't look much like an activist. I mean—good salary, stock options, cryo-insurance. A company man, belike."

Miles-san sat back and rubbed his chin. "That is a problem, true. Maybe I was wrong, before."

Roic gave him a head-tilt, which induced a fleeting grin on Miles-san's face for no reason that Jin could see.

Johannes and Raven-sensei had finished their task at the table and taken over the satellite comconsole. Now Raven-sensei said, "Ah! Is there a face scan of her? I have fingerprints and footprints for back-up, but—no, we're not going to need them, are we."

Miles-san shoved his chair back with his feet and swung around. "What have you found over there?"

Roic bent and peered. "Aye, that does look like our woman, doesn't it? Look at her cheek bones. And her ears. And that same mole above her left eyebrow. This scan must have been taken pretty near the time she was frozen."

"Can't say as I'd noticed her ears
.
.
." Miles-san grabbed his cane and stood up to get a better view.

Jin wriggled in to look, too. Comparing the picture of the live, smiling woman with that still, alien figure they'd seen on the treatment table made him queasy all over again. Would his mother look all strange like that if she died for real?

"Good, this file has it all," said Raven-sensei. "Biographical data, medical history, date of cryoprep
.
.
.
well, her contract and her financial data would seem to be cross-referenced elsewhere. Alice Chen, poor unlucky woman. I suppose I'm glad to know her name."

"That was fast work," said Miles-san. "Good job."

"These patron data bases are pretty open to the public," said Johannes, though he straightened a little at the praise. "Anyone from lawyers to academics doing demographic studies to medical researchers to just genealogists scouting their family trees can get in." He sat back, staring into the screen of data the vid plate had flung up. "Looks like she was frozen about forty-five years ago. That's lucky. You get back more than about a century and the data banks tend to have holes, from one cause or another."

"Yeah, when I was, uh, working in my prior career, this planet used to be a favored source for untraceable false ID's," said Miles-san. "It was the only reason I'd ever heard of the place, before this investigation." He squinted and pointed to a line. "What the devil's that unpronounceable polysyllable?"

Raven-sensei looked. "Debilitating blood disease. Might have been why she chose to freeze a bit early."

"Cause of death, do you think?"

Raven-sensei shook his head. "No, it shouldn't have affected her revival. She would have needed treatment later, though."

"Could she have had it? Effective treatment, that is?"

"Oh, yes, that one's under control these days."

"So what," said Miles-san, "was a woman frozen nearly half a century ago doing in Lisa Sato's cryo-drawer with Lisa Sato's ID tag on her foot? It's plain she didn't get there by herself. While someone could have just cooked the drawer file numbers in the data banks, that damn tag pretty much guarantees it must have been a physical switch."

"Where are your Madame Chen's remains now, by the way?" said Consul Vorlynkin. "They really ought to be returned to her next of kin at some point. There may be an inheritance tied up, or who knows what. And her death is recent enough that someone still alive may have an emotional interest in her fate." He hesitated. "Not that I'm looking forward to the lawsuits."