Mirror dance (46 page)

"Ah." His head turned at their entry, and he smiled. He keyed up a light at his bedside, which cast a warmer pool of illumination that nonetheless failed to improve his color. "Dear Captain. Mark." The Countess bent to his bedside, and they exchanged a longer-than-formal kiss. The Countess swung herself up on the end of his bed and perched there cross-legged, arranging her long skirt. Casually, she began to rub his bare feet, and he sighed contentedly.

Mark advanced to about a meter distance. "Good afternoon, sir. How are you feeling?"

"Hell of a deal, when you can't kiss your own wife without running out of breath," he complained. He lay back, panting heavily.

"They let me into the lab to see your new heart," the Countess commented. "It's chicken-heart sized already, and beating away cheerfully in its little vat."

The Count laughed weakly. "How grotesque."

"
I
thought it was cute."

"
You
would."

"If you really want grotesque, consider what you want to do with the old one, after," the Countess advised with a wicked grin. "The opportunities for tasteless jokes are almost irresistible."

"The mind reels," murmured the Count. He glanced up at Mark, still smiling.

Mark took a breath. "Lady Cordelia has explained to you what I intend to do, hasn't she, sir?"

"Mm." The Count's smile faded. "Yes. Watch out for your back. Nasty place, Jackson's Whole."

"Yes, I . . . know."

"So you do." He turned his head to stare out the grey window. "I wish I could send Bothari with you."

The Countess looked startled. Mark could read her thought right off her face,
Has he forgotten Bothari is dead?
But she was afraid to ask. She pasted a brighter smile on her mouth instead.

"I'm taking Bothari-Jesek, sir."

"History repeats itself." He struggled to sit up on one elbow, and added sternly, "It had better not, boy, y'hear?" He relaxed back into his pillows before the Countess could respond and make him. Her face lost its tension; he was clearly a little fogged, but he wasn't so far out of it as to have forgotten his Armsman's violent death. "Elena's smarter than her father was, I'll give her that," he sighed. The Countess finished with his feet.

He lay back, brows drawn down, apparently struggling to think of more useful advice. "I once thought—I only found this out when I grew old, understand—that there is no more terrible fate than to become the mentor. To be able to tell how, yet not to do. To send your prote[aage[aa out, all bright and beautiful, to stand your fire . . . I think I've found a worse fate. To send your student out knowing damn well you haven't had a chance to teach
enough
. . . . Be smart, boy. Duck fast. Don't sell yourself to your enemy in advance, in your mind. You can only be defeated
here.
" He touched his hands to his temples.

"I don't even know who the enemy is, yet," said Mark ruefully.

"They'll find you, I suppose," sighed the Count. "People give themselves to you, in their talking, and in other ways, if you are quiet and patient and let them, and not in such a damn rush to give yourself to
them
you go bat-blind and deaf. Eh?"

"I guess so. Sir," said Mark, baffled.

"Huh." The Count had run himself completely out of breath. "You'll see," he wheezed. The Countess eyed him, swung herself off the bed, and stood up.

"Well," said Mark, and nodded briefly, "goodbye." His word hung in the air, insufficient.
Cardiac conditions are not contagious, dammit. What are you scared of?
He swallowed, and cautiously went nearer the Count. He had never touched the man except the once when trying to help load him onto the float bike. Afraid, emboldened, he held out his hand.

The Count grasped it, a brief, strong grip. His hand was big and square and blunt-fingered, a hand fit for shovels and picks, swords and guns. Mark's own hand seemed small and child-like, plump and pale by contrast. They had nothing in common but the grip.

"Confusion to the enemy, boy," whispered the Count.

"Turn-about is fair play, sir."

His father snorted a laugh.

Mark made one final vid-call that evening, his last night on Barrayar. He sneaked off to use the console in Miles's room, not in secret, exactly, but in private. He stared at the blank machine for ten minutes before spasmodically punching in the code he had obtained.

A middle-aged blonde woman's image appeared over the vid plate when the chime stopped. The remains of a striking beauty made her face strong and confident. Her eyes were blue and humorous. "Commodore Koudelka's residence," she answered formally.

It's her mother.
Mark choked down panic to quaver, "May I speak with Kareen Koudelka, please—ma'am?"

A blonde brow twitched. "I believe I know which one you are, but—who may I say is calling?"

"Lord Mark Vorkosigan," he got out.

"Just a moment, my lord." She left the range of the vid pick-up; he could hear her voice fading in the distance, calling "Kareen!"

There was a muffled bumping in the background, garbled voices, a shriek, and Kareen's laughing voice crying, "No, Delia, it's for me! Mother, make her go away! Mine, all mine! Out!" The sound of a door thumping closed on, presumably, flesh, a yelp, then a firmer and more final slam.

Panting and tousled, Kareen Koudelka arrived in range, and gave him a starry-eyed "Hi!"

If not
just
like the look Lady Cassia had given Ivan, it was a robust and blue near-cousin. Mark felt faint. "Hello," he said breathlessly. "I called to say goodbye." No, dammit, that was much too short—

"What?"

"Um, excuse me, that's not quite what I meant. But I'm going to be traveling off-planet soon, and I didn't want to leave without speaking to you again."

"Oh." Her smile drooped. "When will you come back?"

"I'm not sure. But when I do, I'd like to see you again."

"Well . . . sure."

Sure
, she said. What a lot of joyful assumptions were embedded in that
sure.
 

Her eyes narrowed. "Is there something wrong, Lord Mark?"

"No," he said hastily. "Um . . . was that your sister I heard in the background just now?"

"Yes. I had to lock her out, or she'd stand out of range and make faces at me while we talked." Her earnest air of injury was immediately spoiled when she added, "That's what I do to her, when fellows call."

He was a
fellow.
How . . . how
normal.
He led her on with one question after another, to talk about her sisters, her parents, and her life. Private schools and cherished children . . . The Commodore's family was well-to-do, but with some sort of Barrayaran-style work ethic driving a passion for education and accomplishment, an ideal of service running like an undercurrent, towing them all into their future. He went awash in her words, dreamily sharing. She was so peaceable and real. No shadow of torment, nothing spoiled or deformed. He felt like he was feeding, not his belly but his head. His brain felt warm and distended and happy, a sensation near-erotic but less threatening. Alas, after a time she became conscious of the disproportion in the conversation.

"Good heavens, I'm babbling. I'm sorry."

"No! I like listening to you talk."

"That's a first. In this family, I'm lucky to get a word in edgewise. I didn't talk till I was three. They had me tested. It turned out it was just because my sisters were answering everything for me!"

Mark laughed.

"Now they say I'm making up for lost time."

"I know about lost time," Mark said ruefully.

"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's 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
, like 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 damn 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, and settled 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.