Miles in Love (31 page)

Tuomonen looked at his flimsy, glanced uneasily at Miles, licked his lips, and said, "Your cases and Lord Vorkosigan's were found together in your vestibule. Were you planning to leave together?"

Shock and fury flushed through Miles in a hot wave.
Tuomonen, you dare—!
But the memory of sorting through all that mixed underwear under the eye of the ImpSec guard stopped his words; so, yes, it
could
have looked odd, to someone who didn't know what was going on. He converted his boiling words to a slow breath, which he let out in a trickle. Tuomonen's eyes flicked sideways, wary of that sigh.

Ekaterin blinked at him in some confusion. "I'd hoped to."

What?
Oh. "She means, at the same time," Miles gritted through his teeth to Tuomonen. "Not together. Try that."

"Was Lord Vorkosigan planning to take you away?"

"Away? Oh, what a lovely idea. Nobody was taking me away. Who would? I had to take myself away. Tien threw my aunt's skellytum over the balcony, but he didn't quite dare throw me. He wanted to, I think."

Miles was diverted to brood on these last words. How much physical courage had it taken her, to stand up to Tien at the last? Miles did not underestimate just what nerve it took face down large angry men who had the power to pick you up and pitch you across the room. Nerve and wit and never letting yourself get within arm's reach, nor blocked from the door. The calculations were automatic. And you had to stay in practice. For Ekaterin, it must have felt like landing a fully-loaded freight shuttle on her very first flying lesson.

Tuomonen, trying desperately for clarity and still with one eye on Miles, repeated, "Were you going to elope with Lord Vorkosigan?"

Her brows flew up. "No!" she said in astonishment.

No, of course not.
Miles tried to recapture his first properly stunned reaction to the accusation, except that it now came out,
What a great idea. Why didn't I think of it?
which rather blunted the fine edge of his outrage. Anyway, she'd never have run off with him. It was all he could do to get a Barrayaran woman to walk down the street with a sawed-off mutie like him . . . .

Oh hell. Have you fallen in love with this woman, idiot boy?

Um. Yeah.

He'd been falling for days, he realized in retrospect. It was just that he'd finally hit the ground. He should have recognized the symptoms.
Oh, Tuomonen. The things we learn under fast-penta.

He could finally see what Tuomonen was getting at, though, all complete. A nice neat little conspiracy: murder Tien, blame it on the Komarrans, run off with his wife over his dead body . . . "A most flattering scenario, Tuomonen," Miles breathed to the ImpSec captain. "Quick work on my part, considering I only met her five days ago. I thank you."
Was ever woman in this humor wooed? Was ever woman in this humor won? I think not.

Tuomonen shot him a flat-lipped glower. "If my guard could think of it, and I could think of it, so could someone else. Best to knock the notion in the head as soon as possible. It's not as though I could fast-penta you. My lord."

No, not even if Miles volunteered. His known idiosyncratic reaction to the drug, so historically useful in evading hostile interrogation, also made it impossible for him to use it clear himself of any accusation. Tuomonen was just doing his job, and doing it well. Miles leaned back, and growled, "Yeah, yeah, all right. But you're optimistic, if you think even fast-penta is fast enough to compete with titillating rumor. As a courtesy to his Imperial Majesty's Auditors' reputations, do have a word with that guard of yours after this."

Tuomonen didn't argue, or pretend to misunderstand. "Yes, my lord."

Temporarily undirected, Ekaterin was burbling along on her free-association tangent. "I wonder if the scars below his belt are as interesting as the ones above. I could hardly have got him out of his trousers in that bubble-car, I suppose. I had a chance last night, and I didn't even think of it. Mutie Vor. How does he do it . . . ? I wonder what it would be like to sleep with someone you actually liked . . . ?"

"Stop," said Tuomonen belatedly. She fell silent and blinked at him.

Just when it was getting really interesting . . . 
Miles quelled a narcissistic, or perhaps masochistic, impulse to encourage her to go on in this strain. He'd invited himself along on this interrogation to keep
ImpSec
from abusing its opportunities.

"I'm finished, my lord," Tuomonen said aside to him in a low voice. He did not quite meet Miles's eyes. "Is there anything else you think I should ask, or that you wish to ask?"

Could you ever love me, Ekaterin?
Alas, questions of future probability were unanswerable, even under fast-penta.

"No. I would ask you to note, nothing she's said under fast-penta substantially contradicts anything she's told us straight out. The two versions are in fact unusually congruent, compared to other interrogations in my experience."

"Mine as well," Tuomonen allowed. "Very good." He motioned to the silently waiting medtech. "Go ahead and administer the antagonist."

The woman stepped forward, adjusted the new hypospray, and pressed it against the inside of Ekaterin's arm. The lizard-hiss of the anti-drug going in licked Miles's ears. He counted Ekaterin's heartbeats again, one, two, three . . . 

It was a horribly vampiric thing to watch, as if life itself were being sucked out of her. Her shoulders drew in, her whole body hunched in renewed tension, and she buried her face in her hands. When she raised it again, it was flushed and damp and strained, but she was not weeping, merely utterly exhausted, and closed again. He had thought she would weep.
Fast-penta doesn't hurt, eh?
Couldn't prove it now.

Oh, Milady. Can I ever make you look that happy without drugs
? Of more immediate importance, would she forgive him for being a party to her ordeal?

"What a very odd experience," Madame Vorsoisson said neutrally. Her voice was hoarse.

"It was a well-conducted interview," Miles assured the room at random. "All things considered. I've . . . seen much worse."

Tuomonen gave him a dry look, and turned to Ekaterin. "Thank you, Madame Vorsoisson, for your cooperation. This has been extremely useful to the investigation."

"Tell the investigation it is welcome."

Miles was not just sure how to interpret that one. Instead he said to Tuomonen, "That
will
be all for her, won't it?"

Tuomonen hesitated, obviously trying to sort out whether that was a question or an order. "I hope so, my lord."

Ekaterin looked across at Miles. "I'm sorry about the suitcases, Lord Vorkosigan. I never thought how it might look."

"No, why should you have?" He hoped his voice didn't sound as hollow as it felt.

Tuomonen said to Ekaterin, "I both suggest and request you rest for a while, Madame Vorsoisson. My medtech will stay with you for about half an hour, to be sure you're fully recovered and don't have any further drug reactions."

"Yes, I . . . that would probably be wise, Captain." Rubbery-legged, she rose; the medtech went to her side and escorted her off toward her bedroom.

Tuomonen shut down his vid recorder. He said gruffly, "Sorry about that last round of questions, my Lord Auditor. It was not my intention to offer an insult to either you or Madame Vorsoisson."

"Yeah, well . . . don't worry about it. What's next, from ImpSec's point of view?"

Tuomonen's weary brow wrinkled. "I'm not sure. I wanted to make certain I conducted this interrogation myself. Colonel Gibbs has everything in hand at the Terraforming offices, and Major D'Emorie hasn't called to complain yet about anything at the experiment station. What we
need
next, preferably, is for the field agents to catch up with Soudha and his friends."

"I can't be in all three places," Miles said reluctantly. "Barring an arrest coming through . . . the Professor is en route, and has had the advantage of a full night's sleep. You, I believe, have had none. My field instincts say this is the time to knock off for a while. Do I need to make that an order?"

"No," Tuomonen assured him earnestly. "You have your wrist-comm, I have mine . . . Field has our numbers and orders to report the news. I'll be glad to get home for a meal, even if it is last night's dinner. And a shower." He rubbed his stubbled chin.

He finished packing the recorder, exchanged farewells with Miles, and went off to consult with his guards, hopefully to apprise them of Madame Vorsoisson's change of status from suspect/witness to free woman.

Miles considered the couch, rejected it, and wandered into Ekaterin's—Madame Vorsoisson's . . . . Ekaterin's, dammit, in his mind if not on his lips—Ekaterin's workroom. Automatic lighting still sustained the assortment of young plantings on the trellised shelves in the corners. The grav-bed was gone; oh yes, he'd forgotten she'd had it removed. The floor looked remarkably inviting, though.

A flash of scarlet in the trash bin caught his eye. Investigating, he found the remains of the bonsai'd skellytum bundled up in a square of plastic sheeting, mixed with pieces of its pot and damp loose dirt. Curiously, he dug it out and cleared a place on Ekaterin's work table, and unrolled the plastic . . . botanical body bag, he supposed.

The fragments put him in mind of the soletta array and the ore ship, and also of a couple of the more distressing autopsies he'd recently reviewed. Methodically, he began to sort them out. Broken tendrils in one pile, root threads in another, shards of the poor burst barrel of the thing in another. The five-floor plunge had had something of the same effect on the liquid-conserving central structure of the skellytum as a sledgehammer applied to a watermelon. Or a needle-grenade exploding inside someone's chest. He picked out sharp potsherds, and made tentative tries at piecing the bits of plant into place, like a jigsaw puzzle. Was there a botanical equivalent of surgical glue, which could hold it all together again and allow it to heal? Or was it too late? A brownish tinge to the pale interior lumps suggested rot already in progress.

He brushed the damp soil from his fingers, and realized suddenly that he was touching Barrayar. This bit of dirt had come from South Continent, dug up, perhaps, from a tart old Vor lady's backyard. He dragged over the station chair from the comconsole, climbed precariously up onto it, and retrieved what proved to be an empty pan from an upper shelf. Safely on his feet again, he carefully gathered up as much of the soil as he could, and dumped it in the pan.

He stood back, hands on his hips, and studied his work so far. It made a sad pile. "Compost, my Barrayaran friend, you're destined to be compost, for all of me. A decent burial may be all I can do for you. Though in your case, that might actually be the answer to your prayers . . . ."

A faint rustle and an indrawn breath made him suddenly aware that he was not alone. He turned his head to find Ekaterin, on her feet again and pausing in the doorway. Her color looked better now than it had immediately after the interrogation, her skin not so puffy and lined, though she still looked very tired. Her brows were drawn down in puzzlement. "What are you doing, Lord Vorkosigan?"

"Um . . . visiting a sick friend?" Reddening, he gestured to his efforts laid out on her work bench. "Has the medtech released you?"

"Yes, she's just left. She was very conscientious."

Miles cleared his throat. "I was wondering if there was any way to put your skellytum back together. Seemed a shame not to try, seventy years old and all that." He drew back respectfully as she came up to the bench and turned over a fragment. "I know you can't sew it up like a person, but I can't help thinking there ought to be something. I'm afraid I'm not much of a gardener. My parents let me try, once, when I was a little kid, back behind Vorkosigan House. I was going to grow flowers for my Betan mother. Sergeant Bothari ended up doing the spade work, as I recall. I dug the seeds up twice a day to see if they'd sprouted yet. My plants did not thrive, for some reason. After that we gave up and turned it into a fort."

She smiled, a real smile, not a fast-penta grin.
We did not break her after all.

"No, you can't put it back together," she said. "The only way is to start over. What I could do is take the strongest root fragments—several of them, to make sure," her long hands sorted through his pile, "and set them to soak in a hormone solution. And then when it starts to put out new growth, repot it."

"I saved the dirt," Miles pointed out hopefully.
Idiot. Do you know what an idiot you sound like?

But she merely said, "Thank you." Following up on her words, she rummaged in her shelves and found a shallow basin, and filled it with water from the work bench's little sink. Another cupboard yielded a box of white powder; she sprinkled a tiny amount into the water and stirred it with her fingers. Taking a knife from her tool drawer, she trimmed the most promising root fragments and pushed them into the solution. "There. Maybe something will come of that." She stretched to set the basin carefully out of the way on the shelf Miles had had to reach by standing on the chair, and shook the pan of dirt into a plastic bag, which she sealed and put next to the basin. She then rolled up the decaying remains in their tarp again, to take over and shake into another bin; the plastic went back into the trash. "By the time I'd thought of this poor skellytum again, it would have gone out with the organic recycle, and been too late. I'd abandoned hope for it last night, when I thought I had to leave with just what I could carry."

"I didn't mean to burden you. Will it be awkward, to carry home on the jumpship?"

"I'll put it in a sealed container. By the time I reach my destination, it should be just about ready to replant." She washed and dried her hands; Miles followed suit.

Damn Tuomonen anyway, for forcing to Miles's consciousness a desire his back-brain had known very well was too unripe and out of season for any fruitful result.
Time is out of joint
, she'd said. Now he was going to have to deal with it. Now he was going to have to
wait
. How long?
How about till after Tien is buried, for starters?
His intentions were honorable enough, at least some of them were, but his timing was
lousy
. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and rocked on his heels.