Miles in Love (14 page)

"Hm. Notify me first, please. I may want to ride along and observe."

"It could come at an odd hour."

"That's fine." He wanted to feed his back-brain on something besides second-hand data; he wanted action for his restless body. He wanted out of this apartment. He'd thought it had been uncomfortable that first night because the Vorsoissons were strangers, but that was as nothing to how awkward it had become now he'd begun to know them.

"Very well, my lord."

"Thank you, General. That's all for now." Miles cut the com.

With a sigh, he turned again to the stack of terraforming reports, starting with Waste Heat Management's excessively complete report on dome energy flows. It was only in his imagination that the gaze from a pair of outraged light blue eyes burned into the back of his head.

He had left the workroom door open with the thought—hope?—that if Madame Vorsoisson just happened to be passing by, and just happened to want to renew their truncated conversation, she might realize she had his invitation to do so. The awareness that this left him sitting alone with his back to the door came to Miles simultaneously with the sense that he was no longer alone. At a surreptitious sniff from the vicinity of the doorway, he fixed his most inviting smile on his face and turned his chair around.

It was Nikki, hovering in the frame and staring at him in uncertain calculation. He returned Miles's misdirected smile shyly. "Hello," the boy ventured.

"Hello, Nikki. Home from school?"

"Yep."

"Do you like it?"

"Naw."

"Ah? How was today?"

"Boring."

"What are you studying, that's so dull?"

"Nothin'."

What a joy such monosyllabic exchanges must be to his parents, paying for that exclusive private school. Miles's smile twisted. Reassured, perhaps, by the glint of humor in his eye, the boy ventured within. He looked Miles up and down more openly than he had done heretofore; Miles bore being Looked At.
Yes, you can get used to me, kiddo.

"Were you really a spy?" Nikki asked suddenly.

Miles leaned back, brows rising. "Now, wherever did you get that idea?"

"Uncle Vorthys
said
you were in ImpSec. Galactic operations," Nikki reminded him.

Ah, yes, that first night at the dinner table. "I was a courier officer. Do you know what that is?"

"Not . . . 'zactly. I thought a courier was a jumpship . . . ?"

"The ship is named after the job. A courier is a kind of glorified delivery man. I carried messages back and forth for the Imperium."

Nikki's brow wrinkled dubiously. "Was it dangerous?"

"It wasn't supposed to be. I generally got places only to have to turn around immediately and go back. I spent a lot of time en route reading. Composing reports. And, ah, studying. ImpSec would send these training programs along, that you were supposed to complete in your spare time, and turn back in to your superiors when you got home."

"Oh," said Nikki, sounding a little dismayed, possibly at the thought that even grownups weren't spared from homework. He regarded Miles more sympathetically. Then a spark rose in his eye. "But you got to go on
jumpships
, didn't you? Imperial fast couriers and things?"

"Oh, yes."

"
We
went on a jumpship, to come here. It was a Vorsmythe
Dolphin
-class 776 with quadruple-vortex outboard control nacelles and dual norm-space thrusters and a crew of twelve. It carried a hundred and twenty passengers. It was full up, too." Nikki's face grew reflective. "Kind of a barge, compared to Imperial fast couriers, but Mama got the jump pilot to let me come up and see his control room. He let me sit in his station chair and put on his headset." The spark had become a flame in the memory of this glorious moment.

Miles could recognize imprinting when he saw it. "You admire jumpships, I take it."

"I want to be a jump pilot when I grow up. Didn't you ever? Or . . . or wouldn't they let you?" A certain wariness returned to Nikki's face; had he been cautioned by the adults not to mention Miles's mutoid appearance?
Yes, let us all pretend to ignore the obvious. That ought to clarify the kid's worldview
.

"No, I wanted to be a strategist. Like my Da and my Gran'da. I couldn't have passed the physical for jump pilot anyway."

"My Da was a soldier. It sounded boring. He stayed on one base for practically the whole time.
I
want to be an Imperial pilot, in the fastest ships, and go places."

Very far away from here
. Yes. Miles understood
that
one, all right. It occurred to him suddenly that even if nothing else was done between now and then, a military physical would reveal Nikki's Vorzohn's Dystrophy. And even if it was successfully treated, the defect would disqualify him for military pilot's training.

"Imperial pilot?" Miles let his brows rise in apparent surprise. "Well, I suppose . . . but if you really want to go places, the military's not your best route."

"Why not?"

"Except for a very few courier or diplomatic missions, the military jump pilots just go from Barrayar to Komarr to Sergyar and back. Same old routes, round and round. And you have to wait forever for your turn on the roster, my pilot acquaintances tell me. Now, if you really want experience, going out with the Komarran trade fleets would take you much farther afield—all the way to Earth, and beyond. And they go out for much longer, and there are many more berths to be had. There are more kinds of ships. Pilots get a lot more time in the hot-seat.
And
when you get to the interesting places, you're a lot freer to look around."

"Oh." Nikki digested this thoughtfully. "Wait here," he commanded abruptly, and darted out.

He was back in moments cradling a box jammed with model jumpships. "This is the
Dolphin
-776 we went on," he held one up for Miles's inspection. He rummaged for another. "Did you ride on fast couriers like this one?"

"The Falcon-9? Yes, a time or two." A model caught Miles's eye; automatically, he slid down onto the floor beside Nikki, who was arranging his collection for fleet inspection. "Good God, is that an RG freighter?"

"It's an antique." Nikki held it out.

Miles took it, his eye lighting. "I owned one of the very last of these, when I was seventeen. Now,
that
was a barge."

"A . . . a model like this?" asked Nikki uncertainly.

"No, a jumpship."

"You owned a real jumpship? Your
self
?" He inhaled alarmingly.

"Mm, me and a bunch of creditors." Miles smiled in reminiscence.

"Did you get to pilot it? In normal space, I mean, not in jump space."

"No, I wasn't even up to piloting shuttles then. I learned how to do that later, at the Academy."

"What happened to the RG? Do you still have it?"

"Oh, no. Or . . . well, I'm not just sure. It met with an accident in Tau Verde local space, ramming, um, colliding with another ship. Twisted hell out of its Necklin field generator rods. It was never going to jump again after that, so I leased it as a local-space freighter, and we left it there. If Arde—he's a jump pilot friend of mine—ever finds a set of replacement rods, I told him he can have the old RG."

"You had a j
umpship
and you
gave it away
?" Nikki's eyes widened in astonishment. "Do you have any
more
?"

"Not at present. Oh, look, a
General
-class cruiser." Miles reached for it. "My father commanded one of those, once, I believe. Do you have any Betan Survey ships . . . ?"

Heads bent together, they laid out the little fleet on the floor. Nikki, Miles was pleased to find, was well-up on all the tech-specs of every ship he owned; he expanded wonderfully, his voice, formerly shy around Miles-the-weird-adult-stranger, growing louder and faster in his unselfconscious enthusiasm as he detailed his machinery. Miles's stock rose as he was able to claim personal acquaintance with nearly a dozen of the originals for the models, and add a few interesting nonclassified jumpship anecdotes to Nikki's already impressive fund of knowledge.

"But," said Nikki after a slight pause for breath, "how do you get to be a pilot if you're not in the military?"

"You go through a training school and an apprenticeship. I know of at least four schools right here on Komarr, and a couple more at home on Barrayar. Sergyar doesn't have one yet."

"How do you get in?"

"Apply, and give them money."

Nikki looked daunted. "A lot of money?"

"Mm, no more than any other college or trade school. The biggest cost is getting your neurological interface surgically installed. It pays to get the best on that one." Miles added encouragingly, "You can do anything, but you have to make your chances happen. There are some scholarships and indenture-contracts that can grease your way in, if you hustle for them. You do have to be at least twenty years old, though, so you have lots of time to plan."

"Oh." Nikki seemed to contemplate this vast span of time, equal again to his whole life so far, stretching out before him. Miles could empathize; suppose someone told him he had to wait thirty more years for something he passionately desired? He tried to think of something he passionately desired. That he could have. The field was depressingly blank.

Nikki began to replace his models in their padded box. As he nestled the Falcon-9 into its space, his fingers caressed its Imperial military decals. He asked, "Do you still have your ImpSec silver eyes?"

"No, they made me give 'em back when I was fi—when I resigned."

"Why d'you quit?"

"I didn't want to. I had health problems."

"So they made you be an Auditor instead?"

"Something like that."

Nikki groped around for some way to continue this polite adult conversation. "Do you like it?"

"It's a little early to tell. It seems to involve a lot of homework." He glanced up guiltily at the stack of report disks waiting for him on the comconsole.

Nikki gave him a look of sympathy. "Oh. Too bad."

Tien Vorsoisson's voice made them both jump. "Nikki, what are you doing in here? Get up off the floor!"

Nikki scrambled to his feet, leaving Miles sitting cross-legged and abruptly conscious that his recently-chilled body had stiffened up again.

"Are you pestering the Lord Auditor? My apologies, Lord Vorkosigan! Children have no manners." Vorsoisson entered and loomed over them.

"Oh, his manners are fine. We were having an interesting discussion on the subject of jump ships." Miles contemplated the problem of standing gracefully in front of a fellow Barrayaran, without any unfortunate lurch or stumble to give a false impression of disability. He stretched, sitting, by way of preparation.

Vorsoisson grimaced wryly. "Ah, yes, the most recent obsession. Don't step barefoot on one of those damn things, it'll cripp—it'll hurt. Well, every boy goes through that phase, I suppose. We all outgrow it. Pick up all that mess, Nikki."

Nikki's eyes were downcast, but narrowed in brief resentment at this, Miles could see from his angle of view. The boy bent to scoop up the last of his miniature fleet.

"Some people grow into their dreams, instead of out of them," Miles murmured.

"That depends on whether your dreams are reasonable," said Vorsoisson, his lips twitching in rather bleak amusement. Ah, yes. Vorsoisson must be fully aware of the secret medical bar between Nikki and his ambition.

"No, it doesn't." Miles smiled slightly. "It depends on how hard you grow." It was difficult to tell just how Nikki took that in, but he heard it; his eyes flicked back to Miles as he carried his treasure box toward the door.

Vorsoisson frowned, suspicious of this contradiction, but said only, "Kat sent me to tell everyone supper is ready. Go wash your hands, Nikki, and tell your Uncle Vorthys."

Miles's last family dinner with the Vorsoisson clan was a strained affair. Madame Vorsoisson made herself very busy with serving admittedly excellent food, her faintly harried pose as effective as a placard saying
Leave me alone.
The conversation was left to the Professor, who was abstracted, and Tien, who, bereft of direction, spoke forcefully and without depth of local Komarran politics, authoritatively explaining the inner workings of the minds of people he had never, so far as Miles could discern, actually met. Nikolai, wary of his father, did not pursue the subject of jumpships in front of him.

Miles wondered now how he could have mistaken Madame Vorsoisson's silence for serenity, that first night, or Etienne Vorsoisson's tension for energy. Until seeing those brief glimpses of her animation earlier today, he had not guessed how much of her personality was missing from view, or how much went underground in the presence of her husband.

Now that he knew what clues to look for, he could see the faint grayness underlying Tien's dome-pallor, and spot his betraying tiny physical twitches masked as a big man's clumsiness with small objects. At first Miles had feared the illness was hers, and he'd been nearly ready to challenge Tien to a duel for his failure to take immediate and massive measures to solve the problem. If Madame Vorsoisson had been
his
wife . . . But apparently Tien was playing these little delaying head-games with his own condition. Miles knew, none better, the bone-deep Barrayaran fear of any genetic distortion.
Mortal embarrassment
was more than a turn of phrase. He didn't exactly go around advertising his own invisible seizure-disorder, either—though he'd been privately relieved to have that secret out with her. Not that it mattered, now that he was leaving. Denial was Tien's choice, stupid though it seemed; maybe the man was hoping to be hit by a meteor before his disease manifested itself. Miles's stifled impulse toward homicide was renewed with the thought,
But he's chosen the same for her Nikolai.

Halfway through the main course—exquisitely aromatic vat-raised fish fillets baked on a bed of garlic potatoes—the door chimed. Madame Vorsoisson hastily rose to answer it. Feeling obscurely that it was bad security to send her off by herself, Miles followed. Nikolai, perhaps sensing adventure, tried to accompany them, but was roped back to face the remains of his dinner by his father. Madame Vorsoisson glanced at Miles over her shoulder, but said nothing.