Miles in Love (111 page)

" . . . one hundred eighty-nine, one-hundred-ninety, one-hundred ninety-one," Enrique counted, in a tone of great satisfaction.

Kareen paused in her task at the laboratory comconsole, and leaned around the display to watch the Escobaran scientist. Assisted by Martya, he was finishing the final inventory of recovered Vorkosigan liveried butter bugs, simultaneously reintroducing them into their newly cleaned stainless steel hutch propped open on the lab bench.

"Only nine individuals still missing," Enrique went on happily. "Less than five percent attrition; an acceptable loss for an accident of this unfortunate nature, I think. As long as I have
you
, my darling."

He turned to Martya, and reached past her to lift the jar containing the queen Vorkosigan butter bug, which had been brought in only last night by Armsman Jankowski's triumphant younger daughter. He tipped the jar and coaxed the bug out onto his waiting palm. The queen had grown some two centimeters longer during the rigors of her escape, according to Enrique's measurements, and now filled his hand and hung out over the sides. He held her up to his face, and made encouraging little kissing noises at her, and stroked her stubby wing carapaces with his fingertip. She clung on tightly with her claws, drawing blood, and hissed back at him.

"They make that noise when they're happy," Enrique informed Martya, in response to her doubtful stare.

"Oh," said Martya.

"Would you like to pet her?" He held out the giant bug invitingly.

"Well . . . why not?" Martya, too, attempted the experiment, and was rewarded by another hiss, as the bug arched her back. Martya smiled crookedly.

Privately, Kareen thought any man whose idea of a good time was to feed, pet, and care for a creature that mainly responded to his worship with hostile noises was going to get along great with Martya. Enrique, after a few more heartening chirps, tipped the queen into the steel hutch to be swarmed over, groomed, cosseted, and fed by her worker-progeny.

Kareen vented a mellow sigh, and returned her attention to deciphering Mark's scrawled notes on the cost-price analysis of their top five proposed food products.
Naming
them all was going to be a challenge. Mark's ideas tended to the bland, and there was no point in asking Miles, whose embittered suggestions all ran to things like
Vomit Vanilla
and
Cockroach Crunch.

Vorkosigan House was very quiet this morning. Any Armsmen that Miles hadn't borrowed had gone off with the Viceroy and Vicereine to some fancy political breakfast being held in honor of the Empress-to-be. Most of the staff had been granted the morning off. Mark had seized the opportunity—and Ma Kosti, who was becoming their permanent product development consultant—and left to look at a small dairy packaging plant in operation. Tsipis had found a similar packager in Hassadar that was moving to a larger location, and had drawn Mark's attention to their abandoned facility as a possible venue for the pilot plant for bug butter products.

Kareen's morning commute to work had been short. Last night, she'd claimed her first sleepover at Vorkosigan House. To her secret joy, she and Mark had been treated neither as children nor criminals nor idiots, but with the same respect as any other pair of adults. They'd closed Mark's bedroom door on what was no one's business but their own. Mark had gone off to his tasks whistling this morning—off-key, as he apparently shared his progenitor-brother's total lack of musical talent. Kareen hummed under her breath rather more melodically.

She broke off at a tentative knock on the laboratory doorframe. One of the maidservants stood there, looking worried. In general, Vorkosigan House's service staff avoided the laboratory corridor. Some were afraid of the butter bugs. More were afraid of the teetering stacks of one-liter bug butter tubs, now lining the hallway to over head-height on both sides. All had learned that to venture down here invited being dragged into the laboratory to taste test new bug butter products. This last hazard had certainly cut down on the noise and interruptions. This young lady, as Kareen recalled, shared all three aversions.

"Miss Koudelka, Miss Koudelka . . . Dr. Borgos, you have visitors."

The maid stepped aside to admit two men to the laboratory. One was thin, and the other was . . . big. They both wore travel-rumpled suits in what Kareen recognized from life with Enrique as the Escobaran style. The thin man, youngish-middle-aged or young with middle-aged mannerisms, it was hard to tell, clutched a folder stuffed with flimsies. The big one merely hulked.

The thin man stepped forward, and addressed Enrique. "Are you Dr. Enrique Borgos?"

Enrique perked up at the Escobaran accent, a breath of home no doubt after his long, lonely exile among Barrayarans. "Yes?"

The thin man flung up his free hand in a gesture of rejoicing. "At last!"

Enrique smiled with shy eagerness. "Oh, you have heard of my work? Are you, by chance . . . investors?"

"Hardly." The thin man grinned fiercely. "I am Parole Officer Oscar Gustioz—this is my assistant, Sergeant Muno. Dr. Borgos—" Officer Gustioz placed a formal hand upon Enrique's shoulder, "you are under arrest by order of the Cortes Planetaris de Escobar for fraud, grand theft, failure to appear in court, and forfeiture of posted bond."

"But," sputtered Enrique, "this is Barrayar! You can't arrest me here!"

"Oh, yes I can," said Officer Gustioz grimly. He flopped down the file folder on the lab stool Martya had just vacated, and flipped it open. "I have here, in order, the official arrest order from the Cortes," he began to turn over flimsies, all stamped and creased and scrawled upon, "the preliminary consent for extradition from the Barrayaran Embassy on Escobar, with the three intermediate applications, approved, the final consent from the Imperial Office here in Vorbarr Sultana, the preliminary and final orders from the Vorbarra District Count's office,
eighteen
separate permissions to transport a prisoner from the Barrayaran Imperial jump-point stations between here and home, and last but not least, the clearance from the Vorbarr Sultana Municipal Guard, signed by Lord Vorbohn himself. It took me over a month to fight my way through all this bureaucratic obstruction, and I am not spending another
hour
on this benighted world. You may pack one bag, Dr. Borgos."

"But," cried Kareen, "but Mark
paid
Enrique's bail! We bought him—he's
ours
now!"

"Forfeiture of bond does not erase criminal charges, Miss," the Escobaran officer informed her stiffly. "It adds to them."

"But—why arrest Enrique and not Mark?" asked Martya, puzzling through all this. She stared down at the stack of flimsies.

"Don't make suggestions," Kareen huffed at her under her breath.

"If you are referring to the dangerous lunatic known as Lord Mark Pierre Vorkosigan, Miss, I tried. Believe me, I tried. I spent a week and a half trying to get the documentation. He carries a Class III Diplomatic Immunity that covers him for nearly everything short of outright murder. In addition, I found I had only to pronounce his last name correctly to produce the most damn-all stone wall obtuseness from every Barrayaran clerk, secretary, embassy officer and bureaucrat I encountered. For a while, I thought I was going mad. At last, I became reconciled to my despair."

"The medications helped, too, I thought, sir," Muno observed amiably. Gustioz glowered at him.

"But
you
are not escaping me," Gustioz continued to Enrique. "One bag. Now."

"You can't just barge in here and take him away, with no warning or anything!" Kareen protested.

"Do you have any idea the effort and attention I had to expend to assure that he was
not
warned?" said Gustioz.

"But we
need
Enrique! He's
everything
to our new company! He's our entire research and development department. Without Enrique, there will never be any Barrayaran-vegetation-eating butter bugs!"

Without Enrique, they would have no nascent bug butter industry—her shares would be worth nothing. All her summer's work, all Mark's frantic organizational efforts, would be flushed down the drain. No profits—no income—no adult independence—no hot slippery fun sex with Mark—nothing but debts, and dishonor, and a bunch of smug family members all lining up to say
I told you so
 . . . "You can't take him!"

"On the contrary, miss," said Officer Gustioz, gathering up his stack of flimsies, "I can and I will."

"But what will happen to Enrique on Escobar?" asked Martya.

"Trial," said Gustioz in a voice of ghoulish satisfaction, "followed by jail, I devoutly pray. For a long, long time. I hope they append court costs. The comptroller is going to scream when I turn in my travel vouchers. It will be like a vacation, my supervisor said. You'll be back in two weeks, she said. I haven't seen my wife and family in two months . . ."

"But that's utterly wasteful," said Martya indignantly. "Why shut him up in a box on Escobar, when he could be doing humanity some real good
here
?" She was calculating the rapidly dwindling value of her shares too, Kareen guessed.

"That is between Dr. Borgos and his irate creditors," Gustioz told her. "I'm just doing my job. Finally."

Enrique looked terribly distressed. "But who will take care of all my poor little girls? You don't understand!"

Gustioz hesitated, and said in a disturbed tone, "There was no reference to any dependents in my orders." He stared in confusion at Kareen and Martya.

Martya said, "How did you get in here, anyway? How did you get past the ImpSec gate guard?"

Gustioz brandished his rumpled folder. "Page by page. It took forty minutes."

"He insisted on checking every one," Sergeant Muno explained.

Martya said urgently to the maid, "Where's Pym?"

"Gone with Lord Vorkosigan, miss."

"Jankowski?"

"Him, too."

"Anyone?"

"All the rest are gone with m'lord and m'lady."

"Damn! What about Roic?"

"He's sleeping, Miss."

"Fetch him down here."

"He won't like being waked up off-duty, miss . . ." the maid said nervously.

"Fetch him!"

Reluctantly, the maid started to drag herself out.

"Muno," said Gustioz, who'd watched this by-play with growing unease, "now." He gestured at Enrique.

"Yes, sir." Muno gripped Enrique by the elbow.

Martya grabbed Enrique's other arm. "No! Wait! You can't take him!"

Gustioz frowned at the retreating maid. "Let's go, Muno."

Muno pulled. Martya pulled back. Enrique cried, "Ow!" Kareen grabbed the first weaponlike object that came to her hand, a metal meter stick, and circled in. Gustioz tucked his folder of flimsies up under his arm and reached to detach Martya.

"Hurry!" Kareen screeched at the maid, and tried to trip Muno by thrusting the meter stick between his knees. The whole mob was circling around the stretching Enrique as the pivot-point, and she succeeded. Muno released Enrique, who fell toward Martya and Gustioz. In a wild attempt to regain his balance, Muno's hand came down hard on the corner of the bug hutch peeping over the lab bench.

The stainless steel box flipped into the air. One-hundred-ninety-two astonished brown-and-silver butter bugs were launched in a vast chittering madly fluttering trajectory out over the lab. Since butter bugs had the aerodynamic capacity of tiny bricks, they rained down upon the struggling humans, and crunch-squished underfoot. The hutch clanged to the floor, along with Muno. Gustioz, attempting to shield himself from this unexpected air assault, lost his grip on his folder; colorfully-stamped documents joined butter bugs in fluttering flight. Enrique howled like a man possessed. Muno just screamed, frantically batted bugs off himself, and tried to climb up on the lab stool.

"Now see what you've done!" Kareen yelled at the Escobaran officers. "Vandalism! Assault! Destruction of property! Destruction of a
Vor lord's
property, on Barrayar itself! Are you in trouble now!"

"Ack!" cried Enrique, trying to stand on tiptoe to reduce the carnage below. "My girls! My poor girls! Watch where you put your
feet
, you mindless murderers!"

The queen, who due to her weight had had a shorter trajectory, scuttled away under the lab bench.

"What are those horrible things?" yipped Muno, from his perch on the teetering stool.

"Poison bugs," Martya informed him venomously. "New Barrayaran secret weapon. Everywhere they touch you, your flesh will swell up, turn black, and fall off." She made a valiant attempt to introduce a chittering bug down Muno's trousers or collar, but he fended her off.

"They are not!" Enrique denied indignantly, from tiptoe.

Gustioz was down on the floor furiously gathering up flimsies and trying not to touch or be touched by the scattering butter bugs. When he rose, his face was scarlet. "Sergeant!" he bellowed. "Get down from there! Seize the prisoner! We leave
at once
."

Muno, overcoming his startlement and a little sheepish to be discovered in high retreat by his comrade, stepped carefully off the stool and grabbed Enrique in a more professional come-along style. He bundled Enrique out the lab door as Gustioz scooped up the last of his flimsies and jammed them back any-which-way into his folder.

"What about my one bag?" wailed Enrique, as Muno began to march him down the hall.

"I will buy you a damned toothbrush at the shuttleport," panted Gustioz, scrambling after. "And a change of underwear. I will buy them from my own pocket. Anything, but out, out!"

Kareen and her sister both hit the door at once, and had to sort themselves out. They stumbled into the corridor as their future biotech fortune was dragged away down it, still protesting that butter bugs were harmless and beneficial symbiotes. "We can't let him get away!" cried Martya.

A stack of bug butter tubs tumbled over on Kareen as she regained her balance, thumping off her head and shoulders and thudding to the floor. "Ow!" She caught a couple of the kilogram-plus cartons, and stared after the retreating men. She zeroed in on the back of Gustioz's head, hoisted a tub in her right hand, and drew back. Martya, fending off cascading tubs from the other wall, stared at her with widening eyes, nodded understanding, and took a similar grip on a missile of her own.