Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen - eARC Read online

  “Any more questions? Are you ready for the next step?” Tan inquired jovially.

  Jole searched his mouth with his tongue for an answer without finding one; in any case, Tan didn’t wait, but motioned his VIP visitor along after him. He dodged aside to pick up some objects Jole could not quite make out, then brought him to another closed, blank door, labeled Paternity Room, with a sliding slot bearing the words un/occupied. A magnetized flip label read Clean on one side and Do Not Disturb on the other, to which Tan flipped it.

  “Here is your sample jar,” Tan announced, handing it across, “properly labeled as you see. The fluid inside will keep your semen alive and healthy until it can be processed. Check the label for accuracy, please.”

  Jole squinted and found his name and numbers duly recorded on the side. “Right…correct, that is.”

  “In the event of, so to speak, shyness, you will find a number of aids inside. I can also issue you a single-dose aphrodisiac nasal spray. We used to put them out in a basket, but they kept disappearing, so we had to go to rationing—my apologies.” Tan held out a small ampoule.

  Somewhat hypnotized by now, Jole warily accepted it. Tan opened the door and ushered him inside.

  “Take all the time you need. Come find me personally when you’re done,” Tan told him, his tones brightly encouraging. The door shut, leaving Jole alone in the quiet, dimly lit little room. He heard the slight scrape of the slot-label sliding to occupied.

  The chamber contained a comfortable-looking armchair, a straight chair, and a narrow cot with a fitted sheet. A shelf offered a line-up of sex toys, most of which Jole had encountered less depressingly in other contexts, all with little paper ribbons around them proclaiming their sterilized state. The room also contained a holovid player—a quick check of the contents found a number of titles Jole recognized from barracks and shipboard life, plus a few that seemed highly unlikely to ever have played to that audience. Which made him wonder, just for a moment, what equivalents were passed around in the ISWA barracks, and if there were any of the women he dared to ask. Not Vorinnis, anyway. Maybe the colonel, if they ever got drunk enough together. The vid also offered an array of slide shows of beautiful young women, a few of beautiful young men, one of beautiful young herms, one of rather eye-grabbing beautiful young obese ladies, and others that became increasingly more otherly—this had been programmed by the galactic crew. A few more collections of images were downright repulsive, and a couple were simply incomprehensible, though Jole considered himself a traveled man. What none of them seemed, just at the moment, was arousing in any way. He shut the machine off.

  I’ve been doing this since I was thirteen. It shouldn’t be hard. Which, in fact, it wasn’t—he’d never been more limp in his life.

  He sat down on the edge of the cot, examined the instructions on the collection jar, and considered the nasal spray. It seemed like cheating, letting down the side, unbecoming to a manly, virile Imperial officer. Did he get any slack for being almost fifty?

  This had to be the most un-erotic, not to mention unromantic, place he’d ever been in. What kind of bizarre irony was it, that it should also be the one to fulfill the main biological purpose of his ever having had a sexuality in the first place?

  I could have done this when I was twenty…But he’d added thirty years of exposure to hard radiation, biological hazards, and chemical toxins atop them, here and there in his varied military career. God knew what insults his gonads had accumulated, starting with the space accident that had put him in hospital at ImpMil in his twenties. Jole also recalled, in an ancient untethered scrap of memory from his training days, some fellows who’d been working with experimental microwave weaponry making jokes about fathering only girls…Even if he were in the most traditional relationship imaginable, he’d still want to be doing it this way. Surely no preventable defects or diseases was the foremost birthday gift any father could give to his firstborn son…er, hypothetical child.

  Hell with this. His own brain, his mind and memories, were surely stocked with all the images he could ever need.

  He considered Aral. Surely there was a treasure-house of the most erotic memory imaginable. The range of things the man had been willing to try…And it would be weirdly appropriate, somehow. That beloved face laughed at him from the past, hugely amused at his present contretemps, but was too-quickly overlain with the cold, clay, empty version last viewed under glass in a chilled coffin, so wrong…and if he followed those worn thoughts down the spiral any farther, he’d end up weeping, not wanking. No.

  Giving up, he broke the seal on the nasal spray and thrust it up each nostril in turn. The mist was cold and odorless, and appeared to do nothing. Now what?

  Unbidden, a memory popped into his head of Cordelia, striding down an upstairs hallway of Vorkosigan House wearing only a towel, slung around her hips like a Betan sarong. Himself, tumbling out of a doorway in a panic. What emergency had it been, a fire alarm? Bomb threat…? He couldn’t recall. He did remember the towel, oh yes. She’d worn her bare skin like space armor. Some armsman or servant had, sadly, soon handed her another towel. Suppose, instead of adding a towel, one were taken away…? That…was suddenly more interesting.

  It seemed wrong to star her so in his mind-theater, but dammit, it was her fault that he was in this position in the first place. She could just put up with it.

  She wore the long, swinging red hair of Aral’s wife in the memory-scrap, though. Perhaps…he could picture her with it cut short. Short and curling. Yes, that felt better. And he could do without the Vorkosigan House fire drill of excited servants and armsmen, and, for that matter, without Vorkosigan House. This left his composite Cordelia standing in a blank whiteness. She raised her eyebrows at him, Surely you can do better than this, kiddo…

  Yes, he could. He imagined his little sailboat, the first one he had owned on Sergyar, out on the local lake where he’d used to launch it. Out in the middle, far from any shore. Angled sunlight. Wind dead calm, because he had better things to wrestle with than the sails and tiller, just now. Cordelia sat on the forward bench and grinned at him, and unfolded the towel to sit upon. Oh, and no wristcoms on either of them. They’d left those ashore. Neither his office nor hers could reach them.

  What else? She might like some chilled white wine; he handed her a glass, and she tilted it up. “Excellent,” she pronounced, and she was certainly a shrewd judge. She looked up at him, intensely amused. She tossed her towel, and a few others, down in the center of the boat, neatly lined up along the keel, because she had a keen appreciation of the rules of physics as applied to small boats, and most everything else. She plunked herself atop them in that downright way she had of moving, the despair of her Barrayaran social arbiter friend, Lady Alys. Cordelia stretched herself to the light like a cat, and her face was free of strain or grief. “Oliver,” she breathed, and the syllables of his name were warm in her mouth. She extended a sturdy arm above her bare torso, and her hand turned imperiously over. “Come here,” she commanded throatily…

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, Jole emerged from the little room with his jar in his hand, lid screwed down tight. He blinked in the bright light, checked his fly, and trod off to find Dr. Tan. He didn’t feel drunk. His walk—he tested it against the lines of the cheap floor tiles—was perfectly straight. But he felt simultaneously disembodied, and wholly in his body, a walking contradiction. No wonder they have to ration that stuff.

  Tan greeted him with a pleased “Ah!” when Jole located him again at his desk. He took the jar and set it down without ceremony.

  “When, ah…can I find out if I made the grade?” Jole asked.

  “I’ll put it in right away, and call you personally with the report…perhaps not today, but no later than tomorrow morning?”

  Jole made sure the physician had his personal comcode.

  “I expect it will be fine,” Tan assured whatever look was on his face—Jole tried for blander. “Three hundred million to four are
pretty good odds, after all.” Tan hesitated. “About the leftovers—the clinic has a small but steady demand for high-grade high-achieving male gametes. You certainly meet all the criteria for physical health and intelligence and so on, despite your age. Would you care to donate the excess to our catalog? Anonymously, of course.” Tan blinked amiably. “I rather think your face would sell.”

  Jole flinched. Well, Cordelia had warned him about this part of the conversation, in a way, hadn’t she? “My face is not that anonymous, on Sergyar. I…let’s get through the evaluation first, eh?”

  “Very well. But do think about it, Admiral.” Tan abandoned his office to walk Jole all the way to the front door, a sign of something.

  Jole stood once more in the sunlit side street, feeling as though he’d just been put through a wormhole jump. Backwards. He contemplated the prospect of his lightflyer uneasily. He should have asked Tan how long it took that mist-drug to clear the system, but he wasn’t going back inside now. He felt clearheaded, but that could be an illusion. Perhaps a walk around would help metabolize it, like other inebriants. He turned and made for the main street, a block off.

  It occurred to him, belatedly, that Cordelia had several times mentioned that she was a replicator birth herself, back on high-tech Beta Colony. That meant that her father, then-Lieutenant Miles Mark Naismith of the Betan Astronomical Survey, had once been through an experience very like the one Jole had just endured. And her mother the female equivalent, Jole supposed, though the women’s version seemed more simply medical. More invasive, as he dimly understood it, but at least they didn’t have to dragoon their libidos into cooperation. Did that make it better, or worse? On the other hand, they’d got Cordelia out of the deal, in the end. That…had worked out well.

  Anyway, Jole himself was still at the gathering-data stage, really. The final decision would not be made till tomorrow, or much farther in the future if he chose to have his sample frozen. He had not hit any point of no return yet.

  He passed a young colonial family on the sidewalk; she pushed a stroller with a cranky toddler, he bore a chest pack holding a sleeping infant, its slack little hands limp on his shirt. Jole wondered briefly what was the point of avoiding carrying children around during the nine months of gestation, and then turning around and lugging them like this when they’d escaped into the wild and were even heavier, but it seemed something that humans liked to do, because they kept doing it. He tried to imagine himself in the young father’s place. Could that be his child? Grandchild, a dry part of his brain noted. Shut up.

  He stepped aside around an elderly gentleman idly waiting for his dog to finish what dogs did at a lamppost. A dog. Maybe a dog would be simpler, saner…easier to explain. Many famous senior officers in history had sported famous pets/mounts/mistresses/plants…well, perhaps not plants. Although there was a certain cadre of fellows, after their twenty or twice-twenty years of service were up, who threw themselves into gardening. The more flamboyant live accessories seemed to be part of the mystique or public relations of command. Jole had always traveled lighter.

  A few blocks of walking brought him out of Kareenburg’s central business area, and he found himself staring across the street to the so-called Viceroy’s Palace. The name was misleading—it was actually a low, rambling house. Surrounded, true, by a remarkable garden, gift of the Vicereine’s even more remarkable daughter-in-law, which was growing up lushly these days to lend color and privacy, or the illusion of it. The old, hand-painted sign still hung by the gate.

  The original Viceroy’s Palace had been a relocated field shelter, much to the dismay of the first Viceroy. His unhappy successors had made do with several field shelters, stuck together in assorted arrays. These had at length been followed by a semi-fortified prefabricated dwelling of remarkable ugliness. The present Vicereine, in the first year of her and her husband’s reign, had ordered it knocked flat and the site cleared, and started over with a saner and far more elegant design. The barracks at the back of the premises, which had housed Count Vorkosigan’s personal armsmen during his tenure, were now converted to various Viceregal offices; the sole remaining armsman lived in the main house with a few other principal servants.

  On impulse, Jole crossed the street and presented himself to the lone gate guard—another reduction from Aral’s day. The premises’ current security was thinner and much more discreet. Jole didn’t mind the second, but wasn’t so sure he approved of the first.

  The gate guard, who knew him well, saluted. “Admiral Jole, sir.”

  “Afternoon, Fox. Is Her Excellency home to visitors?”

  “I’m sure she’s at home to you, sir. Go on in.”

  Jole strolled on up the curving drive. He almost turned around again when he spotted the array of parked vehicles, many of them with diplomatic stickers from the assorted planetary consulates based in Kareenburg, that marked some kind of diplomatic meeting—ah, yes, the welcoming reception for the new Escobaran consul was this afternoon, wasn’t it. Jole had dumped the task of representing the Sergyaran military forces upon his downside base commander, to give the two men a chance to get acquainted in a less fraught setting before they had to sort out some inevitable contretemps involving, to choose an unfortunately unhypothetical example, off-duty soldiers with too much to drink and galactic tourists insufficiently briefed on the fine points of Barrayaran culture. Far better that they should first meet in the Vicereine’s garden than in a hospital or, worse, the Kareenburg municipal guard’s morgue. These elegant soirees had more than one practical function.

  Perversely, being blocked from a chance to talk with Cordelia heightened his anxiety to do so. He continued on the walkway around the house, noting one security man in uniform and another pretending to weed, who made note of him with nods of greeting in turn, till the familiar murmur of voices and clink of glassware guided him to the patio and terrace that flowed out into the garden. Perhaps a hundred well-dressed people were scattered about, clutching little plates and talking. He hesitated on the fringe. Happily, Cordelia was in sight, wearing something light and flowing for the balmy afternoon, and her glance found him after only a moment. She immediately detached herself from the half-dozen people clustered around her and made her way to his side.

  “Oliver,” she said warmly. “How did your visit to the rep center go?”

  “Mission accomplished, ma’am,” he told her with a mock, but not mocking, salute. Her brows flicked up in pleased surprise. “I…we need to talk, but obviously not now.”

  “This thing is winding down, actually. If you can hang on for about half an hour, I should be able to start getting rid of them. Or you could come back later.”

  He had work on his schedule for this evening, unfortunately. “I’m not in uniform,” he said in doubt.

  “Oh, let these paranoid galactics experience a nonthreatening Barrayaran officer for a change. It will widen their world-views.”

  “That seems counterproductive, somehow. The whole point of having us all Imperially out here is to make our wormhole jump-points uninviting to the uninvited.”

  She grinned. “You look fine. Go do the pretty. I know you know how.” She strolled away, and several persons with agendas hidden or otherwise bee-lined for her.

  Jole felt himself falling with the ease of long practice back into diplomatic-aide mode. He did check in first with his base commander, General Haines, who was properly attired in full dress greens, looking suitably broad and wall-like. The tall boots would be hot and sweaty, Jole was sure.

  “Ah, Oliver, you’re here!” said the general. “Didn’t think you could make it. Is there anything afoot?” And, hopefully, “Can I leave now?”

  “No and no. I’m just dropping by.” He glanced around the party, which had reached a relaxed and tipsy stage. “What did you think of the new Escobaran consul?”

  “Seems sensible enough, if young. At least he only has one sex, thank God.”

  Jole followed Haines’s eye to the familiar, androgynous figure
of Betan consul, now chatting with the Vicereine. Consul Vermillion was a Betan hermaphrodite, one of that planet’s bioengineered, double-sexed…you couldn’t call them a species, nor a race…Jole settled on minority. If the herm’s assignment here had been intended as a cultural challenge to the local Barrayarans, it had fallen flat under the Vicereine’s amused eye. Quite a few of the consulate personnel in Kareenburg were young diplomats on the make; if they didn’t screw up on Sergyar, they had a shot at a more prestigious—and less forgiving—embassy posting in Vorbarr Sultana. The Vicereine had confided to Jole that she thought Consul Vermillion might very well be the next Betan ambassador to present portfolio to Emperor Gregor, a notion that made her eyes glint in an appealing but slightly alarming fashion.

  A server paused to offer Jole a drink on a tray. “Your usual, sir?”

  “Thank you, Frieda.” Jole took a sip. Fizzy water, ice, and whatever mixer was available in the bar to give it a camouflaging color—he had been trained not to drink alcohol in any place that might offer diplomatic ambush back in his days as aide to the Prime Minister, and the habit had stuck.

  “Ah, your Vorinnis girl is around here somewhere—there she is.” General Haines nodded to a short figure in ISWA dress greens, which entailed skirts which were, Jole understood, not as uncomfortable in this heat as trousers and boots. She stood awkwardly on the other side of the garden gripping an untasted drink. “I had to explain to her that a last-minute personal invitation from the Vicereine did, actually, outrank her afternoon’s filing.”

  “Good. They only met in passing the other day. Did you present her yet?”

  “A while ago. She seemed a tad tongue-tied.”

  “Well, Cordelia will get her over that in due course. See she gets home to base as well, please; I have an, uh…unscheduled conference scheduled with the Vicereine after this.”