Cordelia's Honor (52 page)

"After some beating around the bush, hinting . . . well, to cut it short, the General first asked, then ordered, then tried to bribe Dr. Henri to open the stopcock. To destroy the fetus. The mutation, he calls it. We threw him the hell out. He swore he'd be back."

She was shaking, down in her belly, though she kept her face blank. "I see."

"I want that old man kept
out
of my lab, Milady. And I don't care how you do it. I don't need this kind of crap coming down. Not from that high up."

"I'll see . . . wait here." She wrapped her robe around her own green pajamas more tightly, seated her oxygen tube more firmly, and walked carefully across the corridor. Aral, half-casual in uniform trousers and a shirt, sat at a small table by his window. The only sign of his continued patient-hood was the oxygen tube up his nose, treatment for his own lingering soltoxin pneumonia. He was conferring with a man while Koudelka took notes. The man was not, thank God, Piotr, but merely some ministerial secretary of Vortala's.

"Aral. I need you."

"Can it wait?"

"No."

He rose from his chair with a brief "Excuse me a moment, gentlemen," and trod across the hall in her wake. Cordelia closed the door behind them.

"Captain Vaagen, please tell Aral what you just told me."

Vaagen, looking a degree more nervous, repeated his tale. To his credit, he did not soften the details. A weight seemed to settle on Aral's shoulders as he listened, rounding and hunching them.

"Thank you, Captain. You were correct to report this. I will take care of it immediately."

"That's all?" Vaagen glanced at Cordelia in doubt.

She opened her palm to him. "You heard the man."

Vaagen shrugged, and saluted himself out.

"You don't doubt his story?" asked Cordelia.

"I've been listening to the Count my father's thoughts on this subject for a week, love."

"You argued?"

"He argued. I just listened."

Aral returned to his own room, and asked Koudelka and the secretary to wait in the corridor. Cordelia sat on his bed and watched as he punched up codes on his comconsole.

"Lord Vorkosigan here. I wish to speak simultaneously to the Security chief, Imperial Military Hospital, and Commander Simon Illyan. Get them both on, please."

A brief wait, as each man was located. Judging from the fuzzy background in the vid, the ImpMil man was in his office somewhere in the hospital complex. They tracked Illyan down at a forensic laboratory in ImpSec HQ.

"Gentlemen." Aral's face was quite expressionless. "I wish to revoke a Security clearance." Each man attentively prepared to make notes on their respective comconsoles. "General Count Piotr Vorkosigan is to be denied access to Building Six, Biochemical Research, Imperial Military Hospital, until further notice. Notice from me personally."

Illyan hesitated. "Sir—General Vorkosigan has absolute clearance, by Imperial order. He's had it for years. I need an Imperial order to countermand it."

"That's precisely what this is, Illyan." A trace of impatience rasped in Vorkosigan's voice. "By my order, Aral Vorkosigan, Regent to His Imperial Majesty Gregor Vorbarra. Is that official enough?"

Illyan whistled softly, but his face snapped to blankness at Vorkosigan's frown. "Yes, sir. Understood. Is there anything else?"

"That's all. Just that one building."

"Sir . . ." the hospital security commander said, "what if . . . General Vorkosigan refuses to halt when ordered?"

Cordelia could just picture it, some poor young guard being mowed down flat by all that history. . . .

"If your security people are indeed so overwhelmed by one old man, they may use force up to and including stunner fire," said Aral tiredly. "Dismissed. Thank you."

The ImpMil man nodded cautiously, and disconnected.

Illyan lingered in doubt a moment. "Is that a good idea, at his age? Stunning can be bad for the heart. And he's not going to like it one bit, when we tell him there's someplace he can't go. By the way, why—?" Aral merely stared coldly at him, till he gulped, "Yes, sir," saluted, and signed off.

Aral sat back, gazing pensively at the blank space where the vid images had glowed. He glanced up at Cordelia, and his lips twisted, a grimace of irony and pain. "He is an old man," he said at last.

"The old man just tried to kill your son. What's left of your son."

"I see his view. I see his fears."

"Do you see mine, too?"

"Yes. Both."

"When push comes to shove—if he tries to go back there—"

"He is my past." He met her eyes. "You are my future. The rest of my life belongs to the future. I swear by my word as Vorkosigan."

Cordelia sighed, and rubbed her aching neck, her aching eyes.

Koudelka rattled at the door, and stuck his head surreptitiously within. "Sir? The minister's secretary wants to know—"

"In a minute, Lieutenant." Vorkosigan waved him back out.

"Let's blow out of this place," said Cordelia suddenly.

"Milady?"

"ImpMil, and ImpSec, and ImpEverything, is giving me a bad case of ImpClaustrophobia. Let's go down to Vorkosigan Surleau for a few days. You'll recover better there yourself, it will be harder for all your dedicated minions," she jerked her head at the corridor, "to get at you, there. Just you and me, boy." Would it work? Suppose they retired to the scene of their summer happiness, and it wasn't there anymore? Drowned in the autumn rains . . . She could feel the desperation in herself, seeking their lost balance, some solid center.

His brows rose in approval. "Outstanding idea, dear Captain. We'll take the old man along."

"Oh, must we—oh. Yes, I see. Quite. By all means."

Cordelia woke slowly, stretched, and clutched the magnificent silky feather-stuffed comforter to her. The other side of the bed was empty—she touched the dented pillow—cold and empty. Aral must have tiptoed out early. She luxuriated in the sensation of finally having enough sleep, not waking to that stunned exhaustion that had clotted her mind and body for so long. This made the third night in a row she'd slept well, warmed by her husband's body, both of them gladly rid of the irritating oxygen-fittings on their faces.

Their corner room, on the second floor of the old stone converted barracks, was cool this morning, and very quiet. The front window opened onto the bright green lawn, descending into mist that hid the lake and the village and hills of the farther shore. The damp morning felt comfortable, felt right, proper contrast to the feather comforter. When she sat up, the new pink scar on her abdomen only twinged.

Droushnakovi poked her head around the doorframe. "Milady?" she called softly, then saw Cordelia sitting up, bare feet hung out over the edge of the bed. Cordelia swung her feet back and forth, experimentally, encouraging circulation. "Oh, good, you're awake." Drou shouldered her way through the door, bearing a large and promising tray. She wore one of her more comfortable dresses, with a wide swinging skirt, and a warm padded vest with embroidery. Her footsteps sounded on the wide wooden floorboards, then were muffled on the handwoven rug as she crossed the room.

"I'm hungry," said Cordelia in wonder, as the aromas from the tray tickled her nose. "I think that's the first time in three weeks." Three weeks, since that night of horrors at Vorkosigan House.

Drou smiled, and set the tray down at the table by the front window. Cordelia found robe and slippers, and made for the coffeepot. Drou hovered, seeming ready to catch her if she fell over, but Cordelia did not feel nearly so shaky today. She seated herself and reached for steaming groats and butter, and a pitcher of hot syrup the Barrayarans made from boiled-down tree sap. Wonderful food.

"Have you eaten, Drou? Want some coffee? What time is it?"

The bodyguard shook her blonde head. "I'm fine, Milady. It's about elevenses."

Droushnakovi had been part of the assumed background, for the past several days here at Vorkosigan Surleau. Cordelia found herself really looking at the girl for almost the first time since she'd left ImpMil. Drou was attentive and alert as ever, but with an underlying tension, that same bad-guard-slink—perhaps it was only because she was feeling better herself, but Cordelia selfishly wanted the people around her to be feeling better, too, if only not to drag her back down.

"I'm feeling so much less thick, today. I talked to Captain Vaagen yesterday, on the vid. He thinks he's seen the first signs of molecular re-calcification in little Piotr Miles. Very encouraging, if you know how to interpret Vaagen. He doesn't offer false hopes, but what little he does say, you can rely on."

Drou glanced up from her lap, fixing a responding smile on her downcast features. She shook her head. "Uterine replicators seem so strange to me. So alien."

"Not so strange as what evolution laid on us, ad lib empirical," Cordelia grinned back. "Thank God for technology and rational design. I know whereof I speak, now."

"Milady . . . how did you first know you were pregnant? Did you miss a monthly?"

"A menstrual period? No, actually." She thought back to last summer. This very room, that unmade bed in fact. She and Aral could begin sharing intimacies there again soon, though with some loss of piquancy without reproduction as a goal. "Aral and I thought we were all settled here, last summer. He was retired, I was retired . . . no impediments. I was on the verge of being old for the organic method, which seemed the only one available here on Barrayar; more to the point, he wanted to start soon. So a few weeks after we were married, I went and had my contraceptive implant removed. Made me feel very wicked; at home I couldn't have had it taken out without buying a license."

"Really?" Drou listened with openmouthed fascination.

"Yes, it's a Betan legal requirement. You have to qualify for a parent's license first. I've had my implant since I was fourteen. I had a menstrual period once then, I remember. We turn them off till they're needed. I got my implant, and my hymen cut, and my ears pierced, and had my coming-out party. . . ."

"You didn't . . . start doing sex when you were fourteen, did you?" Droushnakovi's voice was hushed.

"I could have. But it takes two, y'know. I didn't find a real lover till later." Cordelia was ashamed to admit how much later. She'd been so socially inept, back then. . . .
And you haven't changed much,
she admitted wryly to herself.

"I didn't think it would happen so fast," Cordelia went on. "I thought we'd be in for several months of earnest and delightful experiment. But we caught the baby first try. So I still haven't had a menstrual period, here on Barrayar."

"First try," echoed Drou. Her lip curled in introspective dismay. "How did you know you'd . . . caught? The nausea?"

"Fatigue, before nausea. But it was the little blue dots . . ." Her voice faltered, as she studied the girl's twisted-up features. "Drou, are all these questions academic, or do you have some more personal interest in the answers?"

Her face almost crumpled. "Personal," she choked out.

"Oh." Cordelia sat back. "D'you . . . want to talk about it?"

"No . . . I don't know. . . ."

"I presume that means yes," Cordelia sighed. Ah, yes. Just like playing Mama Captain to sixty Betan scientists back on Survey, though queries about pregnancy were perhaps the one interpersonal trouble they'd never laid in her lap. But given the Really Dumb Stuff that rational and select group had sprung on her from time to time, the feral Barrayaran version ought to be just . . . "You know I'll be glad to help you any way I can."

"It was the night of the soltoxin attack," she sniffled. "I couldn't sleep. I went down to the refectory kitchen to get something to eat. On the way back upstairs I noticed a light on in the library. Lieutenant Koudelka was in there. He couldn't sleep either."

Kou, eh? Oh, good, good.
This might be all right after all. Cordelia smiled in genuine encouragement. "Yes?"

"We . . . I . . . he . . . kissed me."

"I trust you kissed him back?"

"You sound like you
approve
."

"I do. You are two of my favorite people, you and Kou. If only you'd get your heads straight . . . but go on, there has to be more." Unless Drou was more ignorant than Cordelia believed possible.

"We . . . we . . . we . . ."

"Screwed?" Cordelia suggested hopefully.

"Yes, Milady." Drou turned scarlet, and swallowed. "Kou seemed so happy . . . for a few minutes. I was so happy for him, so excited, I didn't care how much it hurt."

Ah, yes, the barbaric Barrayaran custom of introducing their women to sex with the pain of unanesthesized defloration. Though considering how much pain their reproductive methods later entailed, perhaps it constituted fair warning. But Kou, in the glimpses she'd had of him, hadn't seemed as happy as a new lover ought to be either. What were these two doing to each other? "Go on."

"I thought I saw a movement in the back garden, out the door from the library. Then came the crash upstairs—oh, Milady! I'm so sorry! If I'd been guarding you, instead of doing
that
—"

"Whoa, girl! You were off-duty. If you hadn't been doing
that
, you'd have been in bed asleep. No way is the soltoxin attack your fault, yours or Kou's. In fact, if you hadn't been up and, and more or less dressed, the would-be assassin might have gotten away."
And we wouldn't be anticipating yet another public beheading, or whatever, God help us.
One part of Cordelia wished they'd gone for seconds, and never looked out the damned window. But Droushnakovi had enough consequences to deal with right now without those mortal complications.

"But if only—"

"
If onlys
have been thick in the air around here, these last weeks. I think it's time to replace them with some
Now-we-go-ons,
frankly." Cordelia's mind caught up with herself at last. Drou was Barrayaran; Drou therefore didn't have a contraceptive implant. It didn't sound like that idiot Kou had offered an alternative, either. Drou had therefore spent the last three weeks wondering . . . "Would you like to try one of my little blue dots? I have lots left."