"Yes, I've . . . heard a little. I guess your life has been quite an adventure."
"Not an adventure," he corrected. "A disaster, maybe." He wondered what his life would look like, reflected in her eyes. Something shinier. . . . "Maybe when I get back I can tell you a bit about it." If he got back. If he brought this off.
I'm not a nice person. You should know that, before.
Before what? The more over-extended their acquaintance became, the harder it would be to tell her his repellent secrets.
"Look, I . . . you have to understand." God, he sounded just like Bothari-Jesek, working up to her confession. "I'm kind of a mess, and I'm not just talking about my outsides." Hell, hell, and what had this nice young virgin to do with the arcane subtleties of psycho-programming tortures, and their erratic results? What right had he to put horrors in her head? "I don't even know what I should tell you!"
Now
was too soon, he could feel that clearly. But
later
might be too late, leaving her feeling betrayed and tricked. And if he continued this conversation one more minute, he'd drift into abject-blurting mode, and lose the one bright, un-poisoned thing he'd found.
Kareen tilted her head in puzzlement. "Maybe you ought to ask the Countess."
"Do you know her well? To talk to?"
"Oh, yes. She and my mother are best friends. My mother used to be her personal bodyguard, before she retired to have us."
Mark sensed the shadowy league of grandmothers again. Powerful old women with genetic agendas. . . . He felt obscurely that there were some things a man ought to do for himself. But on Barrayar, they used go-betweens. He had in his camp an ambassadoress-extraordinary to the whole female gender. The Countess would act for his good. Yeah, like a woman holding down a screaming child to get it a painful vaccination that would save it from a deadly disease.
How much did he trust the Countess? Did he dare trust her in this?
"Kareen . . . before I come back, do me a favor. If you get a chance to talk privately to the Countess, ask her what she thinks you ought to know about me, before we get better acquainted. Tell her I asked you to."
"All right. I like to talk with Lady Cordelia. She's sort of been my mentor. She makes me think I can do anything." Kareen hesitated. "If you're back by Winterfair, will you dance with me again at the Imperial Residence Ball? And not hide in the corner this time," she added sternly.
"If I'm back by Winterfair, I won't have to hide in the corner. Yes."
"Good. I'll hold you to your word."
"My word as Vorkosigan," he said lightly.
Her blue eyes widened. "Oh. My." Her soft lips parted in a blinding smile.
He felt like a man who'd gone to spit, and had a diamond pop accidently from his lips instead. And he couldn't call it back and re-swallow it. There must be a Vorish streak in the girl, to take a man's word so seriously.
"I have to go now," he said.
"All right. Lord Mark—be careful?"
"I—why do you say that?" He hadn't said a word about where he was going or why, he swore.
"My father is a soldier. You have that same look in your eyes that he gets, when he's lying through his teeth about some difficulty he's heading into. He can never fool my mother, either."
No girl had ever told him to
be careful
, as though she meant it. He was touched beyond measure. "Thank you, Kareen." Reluctantly, he cut the comm, with a gesture that was nearly a caress.
Mark and Bothari-Jesek hitched a ride from Barrayar back to Komarr on an ImpSec courier vessel very like the one they'd ridden before, the last favor, Mark swore, that he would ever ask of Simon Illyan. This resolve lasted till they arrived at Komarr orbit, where Mark found that the Dendarii had given him his Winterfair gift early. All of Medic Norwood's personal effects had finally arrived, shipped from the main Dendarii fleet.
ImpSec being ImpSec, they had opened it first. So much the better; they would hardly have let Mark touch it if they had not convinced themselves they'd already emptied it of all its secrets. With Bothari-Jesek's backing, Mark begged, bluffed, bullied and whined his way to access to it. With obvious reluctance, ImpSec admitted him under supervision to a locked room in their orbital HQ. But they admitted him.
Mark turned Bothari-Jesek loose to oversee the arrangements for the ship the Countess's agent had located. As a Dendarii shipmaster Bothari-Jesek was not only the most logical person for the logistical tasks, she was probably overkill. With barely a pang of conscience Mark dismissed her from his thoughts to plunge into his examination of his new treasure box. Alone in an empty room. Heavenly.
After his first excited pass through the material—which included old clothing, a disk library, letters, and souvenir knickknacks from Norwood's four years of Dendarii service—Mark, depressed, was inclined to allow ImpSec was right. There was nothing here of value. Nothing up any of the sleeves—ImpSec had checked; Mark set aside clothing, boots, mementos, and all the physical effects. It gave him a queer feeling to handle the old clothes, marked with the wear of a body that was gone forever. Too damned much mortality around here. He turned his attention instead to the more intellectual detritus of the medic's life and career: his library and technical notes. ImpSec had gone through this same focusing before him, he noted glumly.
He sighed, settling back in his station chair for a long slog. He desperately wanted Norwood to yield him the clue, if only so that a man he had inadvertently led to his death might not have died so in vain.
I never want to be a combat commander again. Ever.
He hadn't expected it to be obvious. But his connector, when he finally ran across it hours later, was just about as subliminal as they came. It was a note hand-jotted on a plastic flimsy stuck in a pile of similar notes, interspersed in a cryo-prep training manual for emergency medical technicians. All it said was,
See Dr. Durona at 0900 for laboratory materials.
Not
the
Durona . . . ?
Mark back-pedaled to Norwood's certifications and transcripts, part of the medic's computerized records he'd already seen in the ImpSec files on Barrayar. Norwood had taken his Dendarii cryonics training at a certain Beauchene Life Center, a respected commercial cryo-revival facility on Escobar. The name "Dr. Durona" did not appear anywhere among his immediate instructors. It did not appear on a listing of the Life Center's staff. It did not, in fact, appear anywhere at all. Mark checked it all again, to be sure.
There are probably lots of people named Durona on Escobar. It's not that rare a name. He clutched the flimsy anyway. It itched in his palm.
He called Quinn, aboard the
Ariel
moored nearby.
"Ah," she said, eyeing him without favor in the vid. "You're back. Elena said you were. What do you think you're doing?"
"Never mind that. Look, is there anyone here among the Dendarii, any medics or medtechs, who were trained at the Beauchene Life Center? Preferably at the same time as Norwood? Or near his time?"
She sighed. "There were three in his group. Red Squad's medic, Norwood, and Orange Squad's medic. ImpSec has already asked us about that, Mark."
"Where are they now?"
"Red Squad's medic was killed in a shuttle crash several months ago—"
"Agh!" He ran his hands through his hair.
"Orange Squad's man is here on the
Ariel.
"
"Right!" Mark crowed happily. "I have to talk to him." He almost said,
Put him on,
then remembered he was on ImpSec's private line and certainly being monitored. "Send a personnel pod to pick me up."
"One, ImpSec has already interrogated him, at great length, and two, who the hell are you to give orders?"
"Elena hasn't told you much, I see." Curious. Did Bothari-Jesek's dubious Armsman's oath then outrank her loyalties to the Dendarii? Or was she just too busy to chat? How much time had he been—he glanced at his chrono.
My God.
"I happen to be on my way to Jackson's Whole. Very soon. And if you are
very
nice to me, I
might
ask ImpSec to release you to me, and let you ride along as my guest. Maybe." He grinned breathlessly at her.
The smoldering look she gave him in return was more eloquent than the bluest string of swear words he'd ever heard. Her lips moved—counting to ten?—but no sound came out. When she did speak, her tone was clipped to a burr. "I'll have your pod at the station's hatch ring in eleven minutes."
"Thank you."
The medic was surly.
"Look, I've been through this. For hours on end. We're
done.
"
"I promise I'll keep it brief," Mark assured him. "Just one question."
The medic eyed Mark malignantly, perhaps correctly identifying him as the reason why he'd been stuck ship-bound in Komarr orbit for the last dozen weeks.
"When you and Norwood were taking your cryonics training at Beauchene Life Center, do you ever remember meeting a Dr. Durona? Handing out lab supplies, maybe?"
"The place was knee-deep in doctors. No. Can I go now?" The medic made to rise.
"Wait!"
"That was your one question. And the ImpSec goons asked it before you."
"And that was the answer you gave them? Wait. Let me think." Mark bit his lip anxiously. The name alone was not enough to hare off on, not even for him. There had to be more. "Do you ever remember . . . Norwood being in contact with a tall, striking woman with Eurasian features, straight black hair, brown eyes . . . extremely smart." He didn't dare to suggest an age. It could be anywhere between twenty and sixty.
The medic stared at him in astonishment. "Yeah! How did you know?"
"What was she? What was her relation with Norwood?"
"She was a student too, I think. He was chasing her for a time, playing off his military glamour to the hilt, but I don't think he caught her."
"Do you remember her name?"
"Roberta, or something like that. Rowanna. I don't remember."
"Was she from Jackson's Whole?"
"Escobaran, I thought." The medic shrugged. "The clinic had post-doc trainees from all over the planet to take residencies in cryo-revival. I never talked to her. I saw her with Norwood a couple of times. He might have figured we'd try to cut him out with her."
"So the clinic is a top place. With a wide reputation."
"We thought so."
"Wait here." Mark left the medic sitting in the
Ariel
's little briefing room, and rushed out to find Quinn. He hadn't far to rush. She was waiting in the corridor, her boot tapping.
"Quinn, quick! I need a visual off Sergeant Taura's helmet recorder from the drop mission. Just one still."
"ImpSec confiscated the originals."
"You kept copies, surely."
She smiled sourly. "Maybe."
"
Please,
Quinn!"
"Wait here." She returned promptly, and handed him a data disk. This time she followed him into the briefing room. Since the secured console wouldn't take his palm-print any more no matter how he wriggled it, Mark perforce let her power it up. He fast-forwarded Taura's visuals to the image he wanted. A close-up of a tall, dark-haired girl, her head turning, eyes wide. Mark blurred the background of the clone-crèche, in the view.
Only then did he motion the medic to look.
"Hey!"
"Is it her?"
"It's . . ." the medic peered. "She's younger. But it's her. Where did you get that?"
"Never mind. Thank you. I won't take any more of your time. You've been a great help."
The medic exited as reluctantly as he had entered, staring back over his shoulder.
"What's this all about, Mark?" Quinn demanded.
"When we're on my ship and on our way, I'll tell you. Not before." He had a head-start on ImpSec, and he wasn't going to give it up. If they were anything less than desperate, they'd never let him go, Countess or no Countess. It was quite fair; he didn't have any information ImpSec didn't, potentially. He'd just put it together a little differently.
"Where the hell did you get a ship?"
"My mother gave it to me." He tried not to smirk.
"The Countess? Rats! She's turning
you
loose?"
"Don't begrudge me my little ship, Quinn. After all, my parents gave my big brother a whole
fleet
of ships." His eyes gleamed. "I'll see you on board, as soon as Captain Bothari-Jesek reports it ready."
His
ship. Not stolen, nothing faked or false. His by right of legitimate gift. He who'd never had a birthday present, had one now. Twenty-two years' worth.
The little yacht was a generation old, formerly owned by a Komarran oligarch in the palmy days before the Barrayaran conquest. It had been quite luxurious, once, but obviously had been neglected for the past ten years or so. This did not represent hard times for the Komarran clan, Mark understood; they were in process of replacing it, hence the sale. The Komarrans understood business, and the Vor understood the relation between business and taxation. Business under the new regime had recovered much of its former vigor.
Mark had declared the yacht's lounge to be the mission-briefing room. He glanced around now at his invitees, draped variously over the furniture secured to the carpeted deck around a fake fireplace that ran a vid program of atavistic dancing flames, complete with infra-red radiance.
Quinn was there, of course, still in her Dendarii uniform. She had entirely overgrazed her fingernails and had taken to cheek-biting instead. Bel Thorne sat silent and reserved, a permanent bleakness emphasizing the fine lines around its eyes. Sergeant Taura loomed next to Thorne, big and puzzled and wary.
It was no strike-group. Mark wondered if he ought to have packed along more muscle . . . no. If there was one thing his first mission had taught him, it was that if you didn't have enough force to win, it was better not to engage force at all. What he
had
done was cream off the maximum expertise the Dendarii could supply on the subject of Jackson's Whole.