Miles in Love (95 page)

"Oh." Nikki frowned thoughtfully at Miles. "Can
you
use fast-penta? Lieutenant Vormoncrief . . . said you couldn't. And that it was
very convenient
." Nikki precisely mimicked Vormoncrief's sneer in these last two words.

"On myself, you mean? Ah, no. I have a screwy response to it that renders it unreliable. Which was very handy in my ImpSec days, but isn't so good right now. In fact, it's damned
in
convenient. But I wouldn't be allowed to be publicly questioned and cleared about your da's death even if it did work, because of certain security issues involved. Nor privately, in front of you alone, for the same reason."

Nikki was silent for a little, then said abruptly, "Lieutenant Vormoncrief called you
the mutie lord
."

"A lot of people do. Not to my face."

"He doesn't know I'm a mutie too. So was my da. Doesn't it make you mad when they call you that?"

"When I was your age, it bothered me a lot. It doesn't seem very relevant anymore. Now that there's good gene cleaning available, I wouldn't pass on any problems to my children even if I were a dozen times more damaged." His lips twisted, and he carefully didn't look at Ekaterin. "Assuming I can ever persuade some daring woman to marry me."

"Lieutenant Vormoncrief wouldn't want us . . . wouldn't want Mama if he knew I was a mutie, I bet."

"In that case, I urge you to tell him right away," Vorkosigan shot back, deadpan.

Mirabile
, this won a brief, sly grin from Nikki.

Was this the trick of it? Secrets so dire as to be unspeakable, thoughts so frightening as to make clear young voices mute, kicked out into the open with blunt ironic humor. And suddenly the dire didn't loom so darkly any more, and fear shrank, and anyone could say anything. And the unbearable seemed a little easier to lift.

"Nikki, the security issues I mentioned make it impossible to tell you everything."

"Yeah, I know." Nikki hunched again. "It's 'cause I'm nine."

"Nine, nineteen, or ninety wouldn't matter on this one. But I do think it's possible to tell you a good deal more than you know now. I'd like to have you talk to a man who does have authority to decide how many details are proper and safe for you to hear. He also lost a father under tragic circumstances at an early age, so he's been where you stand now. If you're willing, I'll set up an appointment."

Who did he mean? One of the high-ranking ImpSec men, it had to be. But judging from her own unpleasant brushes with ImpSec on Komarr, Ekaterin couldn't imagine any of them voluntarily parting with directions to the Great Square, let alone this.

"All right . . ." said Nikki slowly.

"Good." A little gleam of relief flickered in Miles's eyes, and faded again. "In the meanwhile . . . I expect this slander may come round to you again. Maybe from an adult, maybe from someone your own age who overhears the adults talking about it. The story will likely get garbled and changed around in a lot of strange ways. Do you know how you are going to deal with it?"

Nikki looked briefly fierce. He made a swipe with his fist. "Punch 'em in the nose?"

Ekaterin winced in guilt; Miles caught her cringe.

"I would hope for a more mature and reasoned response from you," Vorkosigan intoned piously to Nikki, one eye on her. Drat the man for making her laugh at a moment like this! Possibly it had been too long since anyone had punched
him
in the nose? Satisfaction twitched his lip at her choke.

He went on more seriously, "May I suggest instead you simply tell whoever it may be that the story isn't true, and refuse to discuss it further. If they persist, tell them they have to talk with your mother, or your uncle or aunt Vorthys. If they still persist, go
get
your mother or uncle or aunt. You don't need me to tell you this is some pretty ugly stuff, here. No thinking, honorable adult should be dragging you into it, but unfortunately all that means is that you're likely to find yourself badgered by unthinking adults."

Nikki nodded slowly. "Like Lieutenant Vormoncrief." Ekaterin could almost see the relief afforded Nikki by being presented with this conceptual slot into which to tuck his late tormentor.
United against a common enemy.

"To put it as politely as possible, yes."

Nikki fell into a digestive silence. After letting him mull a little, Miles suggested they all repair to the kitchen for a fortifying snack, adding that the box of new kittens had just been moved to what was becoming its traditional place next to the stove. The depth of his strategy was revealed when, after Ma Kosti plied both Nikki and Ekaterin with food-rewards that would produce positive conditioning in rocks, the cook took the boy to the other end of the long room, leaving Miles and Ekaterin an almost-private moment.

Ekaterin, sitting on the stool next to Miles's, leaned her elbows on the counter and stared down the kitchen. Over by the stove, Ma Kosti and the fascinated Nikki were kneeling over the box of furry mewing bundles. "Who is this man you think Nikki should see?" she asked quietly.

"Let me make sure first he'll be willing to do what we need, and can make the time available," Miles answered cautiously. "You and Nikki will go in together, of course."

"I understand, but . . . I was thinking, Nikki tends to withdraw around strangers. Make sure this fellow grasps that just because Nikki goes monosyllabic doesn't mean he's not desperately curious."

"I'll make sure he understands."

"Does he have much experience with children?"

"Not as far as I know." Miles gave her a rueful smile. "But perhaps he'll be grateful for the practice."

"Under the circumstances, I find that unlikely."

"Under the circumstances, I'm afraid you're right. But I trust his judgment."

The myriad other questions which lay between them had to wait, as Nikki came bouncing back with the news that all newborn kittens' eyes were blue. The near-hysteria which had crumpled his face when they'd first arrived was erased. This kitchen made a fair barometer of his internal state; pleasantly distracted by food and pets, he was clearly much calmer. That he now could
be
so diverted was telling, Ekaterin judged.
I was right to come to Miles. How did Illyan know?

Ekaterin let Nikki burble on till he ran down, then said, "We should go. My aunt will be wondering what happened to us." The hasty note she'd penned had told where they'd gone, but not why; Ekaterin had been far too upset at the time to even try to include the details. She looked forward without pleasure to explaining this whole hideous mess to her uncle and aunt, but at least they knew the truth, and could be counted upon to share her outrage.

"Pym can drive you," Miles offered immediately.

He made no attempt to trap her here this time, she noted with dark amusement. Not a slow learner, indeed?

Promising to call her when he'd cleared Nikki's interview, Miles handed them personally into the rear compartment of the groundcar, and watched them out the gates. Nikki was quiet on this trip, too, but the silence was much less fraught now.

After a little, he gave her an odd, appraising look. "Mama . . . did you turn Lord Vorkosigan down 'cause he's a mutie?"

"No," she replied at once, and firmly. His brows bent. If he didn't get a more explicit answer, he would likely make up his own, she realized with an inward sigh. "You see, when he hired me to make his garden, it wasn't because he wanted a garden, or thought I was good at the work. He just thought it would give him a chance to see me a lot."

"Well," said Nikki, "that makes sense. I mean, it did, didn't it?"

She managed not to glower at him. Her work meant nothing to him—what did? If you could say anything to anyone . . . "Would you like it, if somebody promised to help you become a jump pilot, and you worked your heart out studying, and then it turned out they were tricking you into doing something else?"

"Oh." The light glimmered, dimly.

"I was angry because he'd tried to manipulate me, and my situation, in a way I found invasive and offensive." After a short, reflective pause, she added helplessly, "It seems to be his
style
." Was it a style she could learn to live with? Or was it a style he could bloody well learn not to try on her? Live, or learn?
Can we have some of both?

"So . . . d'you like him? Or not?"

Like
was surely not an adequate word for this hash of delight and anger and longing, this profound respect laced with profound irritation, all floating on a dark pool of old pain. The past and the future, at war in her head. "I don't know. Some of the time I do, yes, very much."

Another long pause. "Are you
in love
with him?"

What Nikki knew of adult love, he'd mostly garnered off the holovid. Part of her mind readily translated this question as code for,
Which way are you going to jump, and what will happen to me?
And yet . . . he could not share or even imagine the complexity of her romantic hopes and fears, but he certainly knew how such stories were supposed to Come Out Right.

"I don't know. Some of the time. I think."

He favored her with his Big People Are Crazy look. In all, she could only agree.

_M
iles had obtained copies of archives from the Council of Counts covering all the contested succession debates from the last two centuries. Together with a stack of gleanings from Vorkosigan House's own document room, they spread themselves over two tables and a desk in the library. He was deeply engrossed in a hundred-and-fifty-year-old account of the fourth Count Vorlakial's family tragedy when Armsman Jankowski appeared at the door from the anteroom and announced, "Commodore Galeni, m'lord."

Miles looked up in surprise. "Thank you, Jankowski." The Armsman gave him an acknowledging nod, and withdrew, closing the double doors discreetly behind himself.

Galeni trod across the great library, and regarded the scattering of papers, parchments, and flimsies with an ex-historian's alert eye. "Cramming, are you?" he inquired.

"Yes. Now, you had that doctorate in Barrayaran history. Do any really interesting District succession squabbles spring to your memory?"

"Lord Midnight the horse," Galeni replied at once. "Who always voted `neigh.' "

"Got that one already." Miles waved at the pile on the far end of the inlaid table. "What brings you here, Duv?"

"Official ImpSec business. Your requested analyst's report, My Lord Auditor, regarding certain rumors about Madame Vorsoisson's late husband."

Miles scowled, reminded. "ImpSec is late off the mark. This would have done a lot more good yesterday. Not a hell of a lot of point to order
me
to back off, and then let Ekaterin and Nikki be subjected to that surprise harassment—in her own home, good God—by that idiot Vormoncrief."

"Yes. Illyan told Allegre. Allegre told me. I wish
I
had someone to tell . . . I was still pulling in informants' reports and cross-checks as of midnight last night, thank you very much, my lord. I wasn't able to calculate anything like a decent reliability score till late yesterday."

"Oh. Oh, no, Allegre didn't put you on this . . . slander matter personally, did he? Sit, sit." Miles waved Galeni to a chair, which the Komarran pulled up around the corner of the table from Miles.

"Of course he did. I was an eyewitness to your ghastly dinner party, which seems to have launched the whole thing, and more to the point, I'm already in the need-to-know pool regarding the Komarr case." Galeni seated himself with a tired grunt; his eye automatically began to scan the documents sideways. "There was no way Allegre would add another man to that pool if he could possibly avoid it."

"Mm, makes sense, I guess. But I'd hardly think you'd have
time
."

"I didn't," said Galeni bitterly. "I've been putting in an extra half shift after dinner nearly every day since I was promoted to head of Komarran Affairs.
This
came out of my sleep cycle. I'm considering abandoning meals and just hanging a food tube over my desk, which I could suck on now and then."

"I'd think Delia would put her foot down, after a while."

"Yes, and that's another thing," Galeni added, in an aggravated tone.

Miles waited a beat, but Duv did not elaborate. Well, and did he really need to? Miles sighed. "Sorry," he offered.

"Yes, well. From ImpSec's point of view, I have excellent news. No evidence has yet surfaced indicating any leak of the classified matters surrounding Tien Vorsoisson's death. No names, no hints of . . . technical activities, not even rumors of financial chicanery. There continues to be a complete and most welcome absence of Komarran conspirators of any stripe from any of the several scenarios of your murder of Vorsoisson."

"
Several
scenarios—! How many versions are circulating—no, don't tell me. It would just raise my blood pressure to no good purpose." Miles gritted his teeth. "So, what, am I supposed to have made away with Vorsoisson—a man twice my size—through some devilish ex-ImpSec trick?"

"Perhaps. In the one version concocted so far where you were not pictured as acting alone, the only henchmen posited were vile and corrupt ImpSec personnel. In your pay."

"This could only have been imagined by someone who never had to fill out one of Illyan's arcane expenditure-and/or-income reports," Miles growled.

Galeni shrugged amused agreement.

"And were there—no, let me tell you," Miles said. "There were no leaks traced from the Vorthys's household."

"None," Galeni conceded.

Miles grumbled a few satisfied swear words under his breath. He knew he hadn't misestimated Ekaterin. "Do me a personal favor and be sure to highlight that fact in the copy of this you send up to Allegre, eh?"

Galeni opened his hand in a carefully noncommittal gesture.

Miles blew out his breath, slowly. No leaks, no treasons: just idle malice and circumstance. And a touch of theoretical blackmail. Upsetting to himself, to his parents when it came to them, as it soon must, upsetting to the Vorthyses, to Nikki, to Ekaterin. They had
dared
to upset Ekaterin with this . . . He carefully ignored his simmering fury. Rage had no place in this. Calculation and implacable action did.