Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen - eARC Read online

  Oliver nodded in wry acknowledgment of this. “The more I learn about your first year on Barrayar, the more amazed I am that you stayed.”

  “I’d burnt my Betan bridges pretty thoroughly at the time, right after the Escobar war. But yes. In less than, what, the course of eighteen months, I’d met Aral—here, right on this planet, which I’d discovered, and which would be a Betan daughter colony right now if your fellows hadn’t got here a year earlier—helped him put down a military mutiny, escaped, got sent right back into the war against Barrayar, been a POW, went home, left home—fled it, I suppose. Found Aral, married him, both of us planning nothing more strenuous than to be retired in the backcountry and raise a pack of kids. And I very stupidly plunged into my one and only pregnancy. Then Emperor Ezar tossed him—both of us—into the damned regency. Then the first assassination attempt—did I ever tell you about that one? Sonic grenade, missed. And the second—which didn’t—the soltoxin gas grenade disaster. Then the emergency C-section, and Miles plunked into a scrounged uterine replicator by an utterly inexperienced surgeon—I swear that man was more scared than I was—and then the Pretender’s War, and all that mess. We finally decanted Miles in the spring, so damaged, poor tyke, and of course old Count Piotr went off like another grenade in that horrible fight about it with Aral, which ended with them not speaking for the next five years, and…and that was my first year on Barrayar, yes. No wonder I was exhausted.” She leaned her head back against the cushion and exhaled noisily. “But that was my secret evil selfish plan, when I came to Aral. We were going to have six kids together. It would have been terribly antisocial on Beta, with its strict population controls. He was always…Aral always knew, of course. That that had been my dream, shattered by events. And regretted that he couldn’t—give me what I’d given up so much to obtain. That was why we froze the gametes, when we had a breather.”

  “He’d always planned to give you more children, then.”

  “Say rather, hoped. We’d both pretty much given up on planning, by then. It never worked out.” She blinked. “Still didn’t. And yet…here we are. Forty years late. But here, by damn.” She scrubbed a hand through her unruly hair. “So what do you want? Really want, not just think is most prudent. Or worse, think is what I want.”

  “I think…” Oliver hesitated once more, then went on, “I think I want to place my genetic bet, as you put it. Go ahead with the assemblage and the fertilizations, all of them.”

  “Stake your claim on the future?”

  “Or at least get past to the next stage of fretting. I’m already tired of this one. Or if it turns out not to work—” He broke off that sentence partway.

  Did he mean to say, Be done with it? “You still wouldn’t be done with choosing. Since you’d have the option of purchasing some other enucleated eggshells. Or there are a couple of alternate techniques for assembling zygotes, a bit trickier.”

  He rubbed a hand over his brow. “Hadn’t thought of that. This keeps getting more tangled.”

  “Not indefinitely. If nothing else, the arrival of actual children replaces theory with practice. And time to fret with…lack of time to breathe, sometimes.”

  “The voice of experience?”

  “A database of one does not give me infinite expertise, alas. A fact that ought to give me pause, but I’m done waiting for this.”

  Light footsteps; Frieda poked her head around the shrubbery. “Do you need anything, milady? Sir?”

  Cordelia considered. “A real drink, I think. Not the apple juice and water. Glass of the white, if it’s not all put away by now. Oliver?”

  “My usual, thank you, Frieda.” The servant nodded and went off. At Cordelia’s raised brows he added, “Still on duty tonight. Or I’d like nothing better than to sit here with you and get sotted till midnight. Unfortunately, that only gives the illusion of solving one’s problems.”

  She said apologetically, “Didn’t mean to give you a problem, Oliver. Meant to give you a gift.”

  He snorted. “You knew precisely what you were doing.”

  She scratched her neck and grimaced. “Which actually does bring me to the next thing. If you tell Tan to go ahead with the fertilizations, next thing you do, before you so much as set foot in a shuttle again for your next upside rotation, is sit down and do the next-of-kin directive. Or destruction directive. Tan will give you the right forms—the clinic keeps them on file for every zygote in their possession.”

  “The…what directive?”

  “Zygotes are different legal entities than gametes. Gametes are property, part of your own body that happens to no longer be in it. Zygotes are a lawsuit waiting to happen. Inheritance issues, you know. From the moment of fertilization, even if you choose to freeze them all but especially if you choose to start one in a replicator, somebody needs to know where your kids, or potential kids, will end up if you go up in a ball of light, or, or slip in the shower, or whatever.”

  Oliver frowned. “That’s right. You told me once that your own father died in a shuttle accident. Not an example chosen at random, Cordelia?”

  She shrugged. “I still ride shuttles.

  “I…um. No, I hadn’t got that far in my thinking, I confess. Whom did you select? Miles, I expect?”

  “By default, yes. But also by design. I’m not totally happy with it—if I’d wanted my girls to be raised on Barrayar, I’d be doing this there, not here. I should add—if you were to fail to make a proper directive, their default guardian would be whoever is your next-of-kin. Which is who?”

  He looked rather taken aback. “My mother, I suppose. Or my eldest brother.”

  “Can you picture them raising your orphaned children?”

  “Mine? Maybe. At a stretch. Aral’s…” His face twisted up in a hard-to-interpret grimace. “If I’d had a traditional Barrayaran marriage, with children, I suppose I must have—well, wait, no. There might have been my hypothetical wife’s family to fall back on. Um.”

  Cordelia rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Let me ask you another question, then. Where do—did you—think your career is going in the next ten years? Where are you going?”

  His brows flicked up. He said in a cautious voice, “Do I take from all this that you mean to retire on Sergyar? Stay here as a permanent colonist?”

  “It is my planet…You understand, all of this is new thinking, since my life was cleaved in half three years ago. Before…before, I’d planned to go back to Barrayar, to the Vorkosigan’s District with Aral when he retired at last, to a medically supported, galactic-style very old age. His father, leathery old bastard that he was, lived into his late nineties with less help. Somehow in my head I thought Aral, with his new heart and all, would certainly do better. A hundred and ten at least. And then, one goddamn burst intracranial artery later, I was twenty-six years ahead of myself.” She shrugged sharply. “Plans. Never any good.”

  His hand went out to her, but fell back. “Yeah.”

  He was quiet for a long time; Frieda came back, distributed the drinks, and left them again, glancing curiously over her shoulder.

  “My twice-twenty years is coming up in a decade,” he began again at last. “I’d never planned to go for a three-times-twenty. I was going to start to think about my retirement, my second career, whatever, in, oh, another six or seven years, maybe. Where I would be, then…well, I’m in the Service. It’s not all up to me. As you have just pointed out, even being alive tomorrow is not up to me.”

  She looked away. “Aral once spoke of offering you a job in his district, after we went home. Actually, your pick of several. He had plans, you see.”

  “Ah.” Oliver took a swallow of his non-drink. “I expect I could have gone for that.” He continued after a moment, “I’ve no strong personal ties on Barrayar. My family and I were close enough before I left for the Academy at age eighteen, but since then we’ve all grown farther and farther apart. My home town was always enough for them. It…wasn’t, for me. My father died—you remember—
just before I was assigned to Sergyar. My mother has lived with my sister for years. My district has developed—last time I was back, everything I remembered fondly from my childhood was changed, built over. Gone. Sergyar…is starting to look pretty good to me, really.” His clear glance flicked up to her. “Would you be willing to stand godmother to me in this? Because…at least they’d be with their half-siblings. Slightly more than half-siblings.”

  “Entirely willing,” she assured him. “Note that the center’ll want a few more in-case-of options, in descending order of choice, so your family needn’t be excluded altogether.”

  “Can one revise the directive, later?”

  “Oh, yes. They suggest you review it yearly.”

  “Hm. Sensible enough.”

  She sipped more wine, put down her glass on the little table, drummed her fingers on the chaise arm. “If you were to—if you ever decide to—muster out on Sergyar, would you be willing to make that reciprocal?”

  His eyes flashed up at her, startled. “What, before Miles?”

  “Before Barrayar, at least.”

  His lips pursed. “But…you’d be dead. I can’t—that’s not—I have trouble imagining that.” Except, by the troubled look on his face, he was. He blinked suddenly. “Wait. You’re not just talking frozen embryos here, are you.”

  “Not after next week, no.”

  He blew out his breath. “That is possibly the most terrifying responsibility anyone has ever offered me. Not excepting ship command or being the last man standing between the Prime Minister and anything coming at him.” He blinked some more. “Pretty damned flattering, Cordelia. Are you in your right mind?”

  She smiled crookedly. “Who knows? That’s a hypothetical for now, note.”

  “Noted. But still…” He didn’t say still what.

  He did glance at his chrono, and scowled. “Blast. I have to get moving. I still have to go back to base and change. Who knew when I signed up for the space service that I would spend so much time arm-wrestling with contractors? Concrete by the kiloton. But my shuttles have to have somewhere to land.” He drained his drink and stood looking down at her, somewhat limply draped on the chaise. “Cordelia…” He hesitated.

  “Hm?”

  He seemed to swallow. Blurted, “Would you like to go sailing again sometime?”

  She sat up, surprised. Aral had taught him to sail, back in his twenties, and to enjoy the sport. She had actually preferred sailing with Oliver, as she’d been less likely to end up having an unscheduled swim due to a certain person’s addiction to pushing his envelopes. The memory made her catch her breath, and blink rapidly. “I haven’t been out on the water since…forever. I’d love it. I think I could clear my schedule, yes.” She paused, confused. “Wait. Didn’t you say you’d sold your boat last year?”

  “I’ll find something. If you can pry out the time.”

  “For this, I’ll pry it out with a chisel. Sounds delightful. Excellent, in fact.” She wallowed around on the chaise and held out her hand. “Help me up,” she commanded.

  A funny look crossed his face, but he leaned over, grabbed her hand, and civilly heaved. She found her feet, and her shoes, and walked him back to the house, where they parted company. You that way; we this way. But not for long, she reflected comfortably.

  * * *

  It was another three days before Jole had time to catch up with the Vicereine. He lured her out to the base with an offer of dinner at the officers’ mess, no special treat, and a chance to avoid Komarrans bearing pitches, which evidently was. At any rate, as he led her across the back shuttle runway toward the base’s far side, both of them squinting in the slanting sun, she was still going on about it.

  “Anything that would affect my patch?” he inquired of this complaint, as they trudged across the edge of the tarmac. In the distance, the mountain’s gouged-out side wavered in the reflected heat.

  “Not directly. It’s the usual—they want to institute extra planetary voting shares for persons making special material or investment contributions to the advancement of the colony, just like at home in their domes. Persons, coincidentally, who mostly would happen to be themselves. My counter-suggestion that we just grant everyone ten inalienable voting shares by moving the decimal point over was nixed by my advisors on the grounds that I would be perceived as mocking them. Which I would be. I would prefer to derail any move on a referendum before it gets rolling, though.”

  “Surely allowing a referendum would be safe. Everyone who is not them would vote against it, right?”

  “Possibly not. Enough optimistic people might be swayed by the statistically unlikely idea that they could be among the few to benefit to go along with it. Face it, one doesn’t up stakes and travel out to Sergyar to take on the work involved here without a certain innate optimism.” She amended as they strolled along, “Except for the Old Russian speakers, who are naturally gloomy at all times, as nearly as I can tell.”

  Jole’s lips curled up. “I think I can promise you that the subjects of your nascent local democracy experiments will not pursue you onto my Imperial base.”

  “You lie, but I don’t care…” She stared, nonplussed, as they arrived at their destination and stopped.

  “And what do you see here, Cordelia?” Jole gestured broadly around at the two-meter-high stacks of sacks confronting them. The stacks sat in turn on pallets arrayed out for dozens of meters in all directions, like a large-scale model of some geological feature, badlands dotted with mesas and channeled by ravines, except more regular. Zigzagging semi-randomly, Jole led her to the center of the maze.

  “Many, many bags of stuff. Not belonging to me, I point out prudently.”

  “Delivered by the contractor months early—that should have been our first clue—”

  “A contractor, early? Really? Already your tale begins to resemble some drunken hallucination.”

  He nodded glumly. “Although I haven’t started drinking yet. It was to be the plas mixer for the new runways on the second base, at—is it decided yet?”

  “Gridgrad.” She wrinkled her nose. “The residents may want to give that village a new name after this hits, but that, happily, will not be my problem. Unless they try to name it after Aral and make me come out and give another damned speech.”

  A good near-equatorial location, like Kareenburg, to the net energy benefit of shuttles striking for orbit. Jole was satisfied. At least with that aspect. The fact that the site was a tenth of the way around the planet…“And yet we are far from Gridgrad. Both in terms of time and distance. The earliest projection for starting the dig on the runway foundation was at least another year. Year and a half, realistically.”

  “And yet, I am failing to see the problem. The matrix mix would have had to be hauled from here to there sometime, yes?” She poked doubtfully at a bulging bag. “Unless someone starts a new materials manufacturing plant at Gridgrad awfully soon, which is not a proposal that has yet crossed my desk. Though I expect one will, in due course.”

  Jole shook his head. “The latest high-tech materials innovation, this. Very strong when set, yet resilient under repeated massive impacts, such as landing shuttles. Allowing the engineers to use half the volume and weight, and therefore cost, even at a higher price per ton. Per thousand-ton, for this sort of application.”

  She raised her brows at him, in standard Cordelia-challenge. “It’s plascrete. Lasts for centuries, right? And it’s not as if you’re suffering for storage space. You have square kilometers of empty base, if you want them, Imperially reserved for future barracks and runways. Though I should probably warn you, some Kareenburg developers are already starting to eye them covetously.”

  “Lasts only after it’s mixed and set.” Jole made another broad gesture. “The terms you are missing are ‘latest,’ ‘high-tech,’ and ‘innovation.’ The ingredients of the old-style plascrete are indeed remarkably durable. This crap, however, while lovely when fresh, undergoes chemical deterioration if not mixed with its
activator and placed by its best-by date. Which is less than a year from now. How long the manufacturer had this sitting around in their yard is anyone’s guess, but it’s been a while.”

  “Plascrete with planned obsolescence,” she said, in a tone of wry admiration. “Who knew?”

  “Not, unfortunately, the quartermaster officer who let it onto the base last week. Rattled, perhaps, by all the delivery vehicles blocking the main gate, he signed off on the loads without running them past the engineers. The first problem being, of course, that it was not supposed to be delivered here at all, but rather, at Gridgrad-to-be-disclosed.”

  “So they not only shift their dodgy stock, they duck a stiff extra delivery expense. Nice.”

  “And the base accounting department, who also didn’t check with the engineers, but only came out and counted the sacks to be sure they matched the invoice, was seized with a burst of unprecedented efficiency and paid the bill.”

  “A recoverable glitch, surely. The misdelivery address alone should put you on solid legal ground. Make them come and take it back, and recoup your credit. Aral would have.”

  “Aral would have threatened to make them eat it—and made them believe him.” Jole paused in brief retrospective envy of a command style that had always seemed beyond his touch, or at least his acting abilities. Aral’s trick had been that it was no trick. “I already have. Well, not the eat-it part. They claim that such a move would bankrupt their business—leaving them unable to deliver next year. And no other vendor to replace them, not for those volumes. I sent one of my more forensically inclined procurement fellows to check out that assertion, and he claims that it’s true.”

  Cordelia’s brow wrinkled. “Those fellows—Plas-Dan, isn’t it?—you’d think they’d know better than to piss in the bucket they’re trying to drink from.”

  Jole grinned at Aral’s old plaint about politics. Not one of his public utterances, to Jole’s regret. “You would, yet here we are. And—civilian colonists. Belonging, therefore, to you—Your Excellency. A word in your private ear, as it were.” His thoughts veered a bit—her private ears nestled coyly in her wild hair, when he studied them from this distance. Different somehow from when she’d worn her hair long, weighted down by its own mass or aristocratically bound back and adorned with live flowers.