An agony of despair twisted all the way from his gut to behind his eyes.
This could have been mine. If I hadn't screwed it up, this could have been my moment.
She was friendly, open, smiling, only because she did not know what he had done. And suppose he lied, suppose he tried, suppose he found himself contrary to all reason walking in Ivan's most drunken dream with this girl, and she invited him mountain-climbing, like Miles—what then? How entertaining would it be for her, to watch him choke half to death in all his naked impotence? Hopeless, helpless, hapless—the mere anticipation of that pain and humiliation, again, made his vision darken. His shoulders hunched. "Oh, for God's sake go away," he moaned.
Her blue eyes widened in startled doubt. "Pym warned me you were moody . . . well, all right." She shrugged and turned, tossing her head.
A couple of the little pink flowers lost their moorings and bounced down. Spasmodically, Mark clutched at them. "Wait—!"
She turned back, still frowning. "What?"
"You dropped some of your flowers." He held them out to her in his two cupped hands, crushed pink blobs, and attempted a smile. He was afraid it came out as squashed as the blossoms.
"Oh." She took them back—long clean steady fingers, short undecorated nails, not an idle woman's hands—stared down at the blooms, and rolled up her eyes as if unsure how to reattach them. She finally stuffed them unceremoniously through a few curls on top of her head, out of order of their mates and more precarious than before. She began to turn away again.
Say something, or you'll lose your chance!
"You don't wear your hair long, like the others," he blurted. Oh, no, she'd think he was criticizing—
"I don't have time to fool with it." Unconsciously compelled, her fingers raked a couple of curls, scattering more luckless vegetation.
"What do you do with your time?"
"Study, mostly." The vivacity his rebuff had so brutally suppressed began to leak back into her face. "Countess Vorkosigan has promised me, if I keep my class standing she'll send me to school on Beta Colony next year!" The light in her eyes focused to a laser-scalpel's edge. "And I can. I'll show them. If Miles can do what he does, I can do this."
"What do you know about what Miles does?" he asked, alarmed.
"He made it through the Imperial Service Academy, didn't he?" Her chin rose, inspired. "When everyone said he was too puny and sickly, and it was a waste, and he'd just die young. And then after he succeeded they said it was only his father's favor. But he graduated near the top of his class, and I don't think his father had anything to do with
that.
" She nodded firmly, satisfied.
But they had the die-young part right.
Clearly, she was not apprised of Miles's little private army.
"How old are you?" he asked her.
"Eighteen-standard."
"I'm, um, twenty-two."
"I know." She observed him, still interested, but more cautious. Her eye lit with sudden understanding. She lowered her voice. "You're very worried about Count Aral, aren't you?"
A most charitable explanation for his rudeness. "The Count my father," he echoed. That was Miles's one-breath phrase. "Among other things."
"Have you made any friends here?"
"I . . . don't quite know." Ivan? Gregor? His mother? Were any of them friends, exactly? "I've been too busy making relatives. I never had any relatives before, either."
Her brows went up. "Nor any friends?"
"No." It was an odd realization, strange and late. "I can't say as I missed friends. I always had more immediate problems."
Still do.
"Miles always seems to have a lot of friends."
"I'm not Miles," Mark snapped, stung on the raw spot. No, it wasn't her fault, he was raw all over.
"I can see that . . ." She paused, as the music began again in the adjoining ballroom. "Would you like to dance?"
"I don't know any of your dances."
"That's a mirror dance. Anybody can do the mirror dance, it's not hard. You just copy everything your partner does."
He glanced through the archway, and thought of the tall doors to the promenade. "Maybe—maybe outside?"
"Why outside? You wouldn't be able to see me."
"Nobody would be able to see me, either." A suspicious thought struck him. "Did my mother ask you to do this?"
"No . . ."
"Lady Vorpatril?"
"No!" She laughed. "Why ever should they? Come on, or the music will be over!" She took him by the hand and towed him determinedly through the archway, dribbling a few more flowers in her wake. He caught a couple of buds against his tunic with his free hand, and slipped them surreptitiously into his trouser pocket.
Help, I'm being kidnapped by an enthusiast . . . !
There were worse fates. A wry half-smile twitched his lips. "You don't mind dancing with a toad?"
"What?"
"Something Ivan said."
"Oh, Ivan." She shrugged a dismissive white shoulder. "Ignore Ivan, we all do."
Lady Cassia, you are avenged.
Mark brightened still further, to medium-gloomy.
The mirror dance was going on as described, with partners facing each other, dipping and swaying and moving along in time to the music. The tempo was brisker and less stately than the large group dances, and had brought more younger couples out onto the floor.
Feeling hideously conspicuous, Mark plunged in with Kareen and began copying her motions, about half a beat behind. Just as she had promised, it took about fifteen seconds to get the hang of it. He began to smile, a little. The older couples were quite grave and elegant, but some of the younger ones were more creative. One young Vor took advantage of a hand-pass to bait his lady by briefly sticking one finger up his nose and wriggling the rest at her; she broke the rule and didn't follow, but he mirrored her look of outrage perfectly. Mark laughed.
"You look quite different when you laugh," Kareen said, sounding startled. She cocked her head in bemusement.
He cocked his head back at her. "Different from what?"
"I don't know. Not so . . . funereal. You looked as if you'd lost your best friend, when you were hiding back there in the corner."
If only you knew.
She pirouetted; he pirouetted. He swept her an exaggerated bow; looking surprised but pleased, she swept one back at him. The view was charming.
"I'll just have to make you laugh again," she decided firmly. So, perfectly deadpan, she proceeded to tell him three dirty jokes in rapid succession; he ended up laughing at the absurdity of their juxtaposition with her maidenly airs as much as anything else.
"Where did you learn those?"
"From my big sisters, of course." She shrugged.
He was actually sorry when the music came to an end. This time he took the lead and urged her back into the next room for something to drink, and then out onto the promenade. After the concentration of the dance was over he'd become uncomfortably conscious of just how many people were looking at him, and it wasn't paranoid dementia this time. They'd made a conspicuous couple, the beautiful Kareen and her Vorkosigan toad.
It was not as dark outside as he'd hoped. In addition to the lights spilling from the Residence windows, colored spotlights in the landscaping were diffused by the fog to a gentle general illumination. Below the stone balustrade the slope was almost woods-like with old-growth bushes and trees. Stone-paved walkways zig-zagged down, with granite benches inviting lingerers. Still, the night was chilly enough to keep most people inside, which helped.
It was a highly romantic setting, to be wasted on him.
Why am I doing this?
What good was it to bait a hunger that could not feed? Just looking at her hurt. He moved closer anyway, more dizzy with her scent than with the wine and the dancing. Her skin was radiantly warm with the exercise; she'd light up a sniper-scope like a torch. Morbid thought. Sex and death seemed too close-connected, somewhere in the bottom of his brain. He was afraid.
Everything I touch, I destroy. I will not touch her.
He set his glass on the stone railing and shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets. His left fingertips compulsively rotated the little flowers he'd secreted there.
"Lord Mark," she said, after a sip of wine, "you're almost a galactic. If you were married, and going to have children, would you want your wife to use a uterine replicator, or not?"
"Why would any couple not choose to use a replicator?" he asked, his head spinning with this sudden new tack in conversation.
"To, like, prove her love for him."
"Good God, how barbaric! Of course not. I'd think it would prove just the opposite, that he didn't love
her.
" He paused. "That was a strictly theoretical question, wasn't it?"
"Sort of."
"I mean, you don't know anyone who's seriously having this debate—not your sisters or anything?" he asked in worry.
Not you, surely?
Some barbarian needed his head stuck in a bucket of ice water, if so. And held under for a good long time, like till he stopped wriggling.
"Oh, none of my sisters are married yet. Though it's not for lack of offers. But Mama and Da are holding out. It's a strategy," she confided.
"Oh?"
"Lady Cordelia encouraged them, after the second of us girls came along. There was a period soon after she immigrated here, when galactic medicine was really spreading out, and there was this pill you could take to choose the sex of your child. Everyone went crazy for boys, for a while. The ratio's evened up again lately. But my sisters and I are right in the middle of the girl-drought. Any man who won't agree in the marriage contract to let his wife use a uterine replicator is having a real hard time getting married, right now. The go-betweens won't even bother dealing for him." She giggled. "Lady Cordelia's told Mama if she plays the game well, every one of her grandchildren could be born with a Vor in front of their names."
"I see." Mark blinked. "Is that an ambition of your parents?"
"Not necessarily." Kareen shrugged. "But all else being equal, that prefix does give a fellow an edge."
"That's . . . good to know. I guess." He considered his wine, and did not drink.
Ivan came out of one of the ballroom doors, saw them both, and gave them a friendly wave, but kept on going. He had not a glass but an entire bottle swinging from his hand, and he cast a slightly hunted look back over his shoulder before disappearing down the walkway. Glancing over the balustrade a few minutes later, Mark saw the top of his head pass by on a descending path.
Mark took a gulp of his drink then. "Kareen . . . am I
possible
?"
"Possible for what?" She tilted her head and smiled.
"For—for women. I mean, look at me. Square on. I really do look like a toad. All twisted up, and if I don't do something about it soon, I'm going to end up as wide as I am . . . short. And on top of it all, I'm a clone." Not to mention the little breathing problem. Summed up that way, hurling himself head-first over the balustrade seemed a completely logical act. It would save so much pain in the long run.
"Well, that's all true," she allowed judiciously.
Dammit, woman, you're supposed to deny it all, to be polite.
"But you're
Miles's
clone. You have to have his intelligence, too."
"Do brains make up for all the rest? In the female view?"
"Not to every woman, I suppose. Just to the smart ones."
"
You're
smart."
"Yes, but it would be rude of me to say so." She raked her curls and grinned.
How the hell was he to construe that? "Maybe I don't have Miles's brains," he said gloomily. "Maybe the Jacksonian body-sculptors stupified me, when they were doing all the rest, to keep me under control. That would explain a
lot
about my life." Now there was a morbid new thought to wallow in.
Kareen giggled. "I don't think so, Mark."
He smiled wryly back at her. "No excuses. No quarter."
"Now you sound like Miles."
A young woman emerged from the ballroom. Dressed in some pale blue silky stuff, she was athletically trim, glowingly blonde, and nearly as tall as Ivan. "Kareen!" She waved. "Mama wants us all."
"
Now,
Delia?" said Kareen, sounding quite put-out.
"Yes." She eyed Mark with alarmingly keen interest, but drawn by whatever daughterly duty, swung back inside.
Kareen sighed, pushed away from the stonework upon which she had been leaning, dusted futilely at a snag in her raspberry gauze, and smiled farewell. "It was nice meeting you, Lord Mark."
"It was nice talking with you too. And dancing with you." It was true. He waved, more casually than he felt, as she vanished into the warm light of the Residence. When he was sure she was out of sight, he knelt and surreptitiously collected the last of the tiny flowers she had shed and stuffed them into his pocket with the rest.
She smiled at me. Not at Miles. Not at Admiral Naismith. Me, myself, Mark.
This was how it could have been, if he hadn't bankrupted himself at Bharaputra's.
Now that he was alone in the dark as he had wished, he discovered he didn't much care for it. He decided to go find Ivan, and struck off down the garden walkways. Unfortunately, the paths divided and re-divided, presumably to more than one destination. He passed couples who had taken to the sheltered benches despite the chill, and a few other men and women who'd just wandered down here for private talks, or to cool off. Which way had Ivan gone? Not this way, obviously; a little round balcony made a dead-end. He turned back.
Someone was following him, a tall man in red-and-blues. His face was in shadow. "Ivan?" said Mark uncertainly. He didn't think it was Ivan.
"So you're Vorkosigan's
clowne.
" Not Ivan's voice. But his skewed pronunciation made the intended insult very clear.
Mark stood square. "You've got that straight, all right," he growled. "So who in this circus are you, the dancing bear?"
"A Vor."
"I can tell that by the low, sloping forehead. Which Vor?" The hairs were rising on the back of his neck. The last time he'd felt such exhilaration combined with intense sickness to his stomach had been in the alley in the caravanserai. His heart began to pound.
But he's made no threat yet, and he's alone. Wait.