Young Miles Read online

  "Somebody owes money to Arde?" asked the salvage operator, amazed.

  Miles drew himself up, looking offended. "Not money," he growled, as though he never touched the sordid stuff. "It's a debt of honor."

  The shuttleport administrator looked cautiously impressed; the pilot officer, pleased. The security woman looked dubious. The salvage operator looked extremely dubious. "How does that help me?" he asked bluntly.

  "I can talk Pilot Officer Mayhew out of your ship," said Miles, seeing his path opening before him, "if you'll provide me with the means of meeting him face-to-face." Elena gulped; he quelled her with a narrow, sideways flick of a glance.

  The four Betans looked one to another, as if responsibility could be shuffled off by eye contact. Finally the pilot officer said, "Well, what the hell. Does anybody have a better idea?"

  * * *

  In the control chair of the personnel shuttle the grey-haired senior pilot officer spoke—once again—into his comconsole. "Arde? Arde, this is Van. Answer me, please? I've brought up somebody to talk things over with you. He's going to come on board. All right, Arde? You're not going to do anything foolish now, are you?"

  Silence was his sole reply. "Is he receiving you?" asked Miles.

  "His comconsole is. Whether he's got the volume turned up, or is there, or awake, or—or alive, is anybody's guess."

  "I'm alive," growled a thick voice suddenly from the speaker, making them both start. There was no video. "But you won't be, Van, if you try to board my ship, you double-crossing son of a bitch."

  "I won't try," promised the senior pilot officer. "Just Mister, uh, Lord Vorkosigan, here."

  There was a moody silence, if the static-spattered hiss could be so described. "He doesn't work for that bloodsucker Calhoun, does he?" asked the speaker suspiciously.

  "He doesn't work for anybody," Van soothed.

  "Not for the Mental Health Board? Nobody's going to get near me with a damn dart gun—I'll blow us all to hell, first . . ."

  "He's not even Betan. He's a Barrayaran. Says he's been looking for you."

  Another silence. Then the voice, uncertain, querulous, "I don't owe any Barrayarans—I don't think . . . I don't even know any Barrayarans."

  There was an odd feeling of pressure, and a gentle click from the exterior of the hull, as they came in contact with the old freighter. The pilot waved a finger by way of signal at Miles, and Miles made the hatch connections secure. "Ready," he called.

  "You sure you want to do this?" whispered the pilot officer.

  Miles nodded. It had been a minor miracle, escaping the protection of Bothari. He licked his lips, and grinned, enjoying the exhilaration of weightlessness and fear. He trusted Elena would prevent any unnecessary alarm, planetside.

  Miles opened the hatch. There was a puff of air, as the pressure within the two ships equalized. He stared into a pitch-dark tunnel. "Got a hand light?"

  "On the rack there." The pilot officer pointed.

  Provided, Miles floated cautiously into the tube. The darkness skulked ahead of him, hiding in corners and cross corridors, and crowding in behind him as he passed. He threaded his way toward the Navigation and Communications Room, where his quarry was presumed to be lurking. The distance was actually short—the crew's quarters were small, most of the ship being given over to cargo space—but the absolute silence gave the journey a subjective stretch. Zero-gee was now having its usual effect on making him regret the last thing he'd eaten. Vanilla, he thought; I should have had vanilla.

  There was a dim light ahead, spilling into the corridor from an open hatch. Miles cleared his throat, loudly, as he approached. It might be better not to startle the man, all things considered.

  "Pilot Officer Mayhew?" he called softly, and pulled himself to the door. "My name is Miles Vorkosigan, and I'm looking for—looking for—" What the devil was he looking for? Oh, well. Wing it. "I'm looking for desperate men," he finished in style.

  Pilot Officer Mayhew sat strapped in his pilot's chair in a mournful huddle. Clutched in his lap were his pilot's headset, a half-full liter squeeze bottle of a gurgling liquid of a brilliant and poisonous green, and a box hastily connected by a spaghetti-mass of wiring to a half-gutted control panel and topped by a toggle switch. Quite as fascinating as the toggle box was a dark, slender, and by Betan law very illegal little needle gun. Mayhew blinked puffed and red-rimmed eyes at the apparition in his doorway, and rubbed a hand—still holding the lethal needler—over a three-day beard stubble. "Oh, yeah?" he replied vaguely.

  Miles was temporarily distracted by the needler. "How did you ever get that through Betan customs?" he asked in a tone of genuine admiration. "I've never been able to carry so much as a slingshot past 'em."

  Mayhew stared at the needler in his hand as if he'd just discovered it, like a wart grown unnoticed. "Bought it at Jackson's Whole once. I've never tried to take it off the ship. I suppose they'd take it away from me, if I tried. They take everything away from you, down there." He sighed.

  Miles eased into the room, and arranged himself cross-legged in midair, in what he hoped was a nice, nonthreatening sort of listening posture. "How did you ever get into this fix?" he asked, with a nod around that included the ship, the situation, and Mayhew's lap-full of objects.

  Mayhew shrugged. "Rotten luck. I've always had rotten luck. That accident with the RG 88—it was the moisture from those busted amphor tubes that soaked those dal bags that swelled and split the bulkhead and started the whole thing. The 'port cargo master didn't even get a slap on the wrist. Damn it, what I did or didn't have to drink wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference!" He sniffed, and drew a sleeve across his flushed face, looking alarmingly as if he were about to weep. It was a very disturbing thing to see in a man pushing, Miles estimated, forty years of age. Mayhew took a swig from his bottle instead, then with some dim remnant of courtesy offered it to Miles.

  Miles smiled politely and took it. Should he grab this chance to dump it out, in the interests of sobering Mayhew up? There were drawbacks to the idea, in free fall. It would have to be dumped into something else, if he were not to spend his visit dodging flying blobs of whatever-it-was. Hard to make it look like an accident. While he mulled, he sampled it, in the interests of scientific inquiry.

  He barely managed not to choke it into free fall, atomized. Thick, green herbal, sweet as syrup—he nearly gagged on the sweetness—perhaps 60% pure ethanol. But what was the rest of it? It burned down his esophagus, making him feel suddenly like an animated display of the digestive system, with all the different parts picked out in colored lights. Respectfully, he wiped the mouthpiece on his sleeve and handed the bottle to its owner, who tucked it back under his arm.

  "Thanks," Miles gasped. Mayhew nodded. "So how," Miles aspirated, then cleared his throat to a more normal tone, "what are you planning to do next? What are you demanding?"

  "Demanding?" said Mayhew. "Next? I don't—I'm just not going to let that cannibal Calhoun murder my ship. There isn't—there isn't any next." He rocked the box with the toggle switch on his lap, a miserable madonna. "Have you ever been red?" he asked suddenly.

  Miles had a confused vision of ancient Earth political parties. "No, I'm Vor," he said, not sure if that was the right response. But it seemed not to matter. Mayhew soliloquized on.

  "Red. The color red. Pure light I was, once, on the jump to some little hole of a place called Hespari II. There's no experience in life like a jump. If you've never ridden the lights in your brain—colors no man's ever put a name to—there are no words for it. Better than dreams, or nightmares—better than a woman—better than food or drink or sleep or breath—and they pay us for it! Poor deluded suckers, with nothing under their skulls but protoplasm . . ." He peered blurrily at Miles. "Oh, sorry. Nothing personal. You're just not a pilot. I never took a cargo to Hespari again." He focused on Miles a little more clearly. "Say, you're a mess, aren't you?"

  "Not as much of a mess as you are," Miles replied frankly, nettled. />
  "Mm," the pilot agreed. He passed his bottle back.

  Curious stuff, thought Miles. Whatever was in it seemed to be counteracting the usual effect ethanol had on him of putting him to sleep. He felt warm and energetic, as if it flowed right down to his fingers and toes. It was probably how Mayhew had kept awake for three days, alone in this deserted can.

  "So," Miles went on scornfully, "you haven't got a battle plan. You haven't asked for a million Betan dollars in small unmarked slips, or threatened to drop the ship through the roof of the shuttleport, or taken hostages, or—or anything constructive at all. You're just sitting up here, killing time and your bottle, and wasting your opportunities, for want of a little resolve, or imagination, or something."

  Mayhew blinked at this unexpected point of view. "By God, Van told the truth for once. You're not from the Mental Health Board. . . . I could take you hostage," he offered placatingly, swinging the needler toward Miles.

  "No, don't do that," said Miles hastily. "I can't explain, but—they'd overreact, down there. It's a bad idea."

  "Oh." The needler's aim drifted off. "But anyway, don't you see," he tapped his headset, attempting to explain, "what I want, they can't give me? I want to ride the jumps. And I can't, not any more."

  "Only in this ship, I gather."

  "This ship is going for scrap," his despair was flat, unexpectedly rational, "just as soon as I can't stay awake any more."

  "That's a useless attitude," scoffed Miles. "Apply a little logic to the problem, at least. I mean like this. You want to be a jump pilot. You can only be a jump pilot for an RG ship. This is the last RG ship. Ergo, what you need is this ship. So get it. Be a pilot-owner. Run your own cargos. Simple, see? May I have some more of that stuff, please?" One got used to the ghastly taste quite quickly, Miles found.

  Mayhew shook his head, clutching his despair and his toggle box to him like a familiar, comforting child's toy. "I tried. I've tried everything. I thought I had a loan. It folded, and anyway, Calhoun outbid me."

  "Oh." Miles passed the bottle back, feeling deflated. He gazed at the pilot, to whom he was now floating at right angles. "Well, all I know is, you can't give up. Shur—surrender besmirches the honor of the Vor." He began to hum a little, a snatch of some half-remembered childhood ballad: "The Siege of Silver Moon." It had a Vor lord in it, he recalled, and a beautiful witch-woman who rode in a magic flying mortar; they had pounded their enemies' bones in it, at the end. "Gimme another drink. I want to think. 'If thou wilt swear thyself to me, thy liege lord true to thee I'll be . . .'"

  "Huh?" said Mayhew.

  Miles realized he'd been singing aloud, albeit softly. "Nothing, sorry." He floated in silence a few minutes longer. "That's the trouble with the Betan system," he said after a time. "Nobody takes personal responsibility for anyone. It's all these faceless fictional corporate entities—government by ghosts. What you need is a liege lord, to take sword in hand and slice through all the red tape. Just like Vorthalia the Bold and the Thicket of Thorns."

  "What I need is a drink," said Mayhew glumly.

  "Hm? Oh, sorry." Miles handed the bottle back. An idea was forming up in the back of his mind, like a nebula just starting to contract. A little more mass, and it would start to glow, a proto star. . . . "I have it!" he cried, straightening out suddenly, and accidently giving himself an unwanted spin.

  Mayhew flinched, nearly firing his needler through the floor. He glanced uncertainly at the squeeze bottle. "No, I have it," he corrected.

  Miles overcame the spin. "We'd better do this from here. The first principle of strategy—never give up an advantage. Can I use your comconsole?"

  "What for?"

  "I," said Miles grandly, "am going to buy this ship. And then I shall hire you to pilot it."

  Mayhew stared in bewilderment, looking from Miles to the bottle and back. "You got that much money?"

  "Mm . . . Well, I have assets . . ."

  * * *

  A few minutes' work with the comconsole brought the salvage operator's face on the screen. Miles put his proposition succinctly. Calhoun's expression went from disbelief to outrage.

  "You call that a compromise?" he cried. "At cost! And backed by—I'm not a damned real estate broker!"

  "Mr. Calhoun," said Miles sweetly, "may I point out, the choice is not between my note and this ship. The choice is between my note and a rain of glowing debris."

  "If I find out you're in collusion with that—"

  "Never met him before today," Miles disclaimed.

  "What's wrong with the land?" asked Calhoun suspiciously. "Besides being on Barrayar, I mean."

  "It's like fertile farm country," Miles answered, not quite directly. "Wooded—one hundred centimeters of rain a year—" that ought to fetch a Betan, "barely three hundred kilometers from the capital."

  Downwind, fortunately for the capital. "And I own it absolutely. Just inherited it from my grandfather recently. Go ahead and check it through the Barrayaran Embassy. Check the climate plats."

  "This rainfall—it's not all on the same day or something, is it?"

  "Of course not," replied Miles, straightening indignantly. Not easy, in free fall. "Ancestral land—it's been in my family for ten generations. You can believe I'll make every effort to cover that note before I'll let my home ground fall from my hands—"

  Calhoun rubbed his chin irritably. "Cost plus twenty-five percent," he suggested.

  "Ten percent."

  "Twenty."

  "Ten, or I'll let you deal directly with Pilot Officer Mayhew."

  "All right," groaned Calhoun, "ten percent."

  "Done!"

  It was not quite that easy, of course. But thanks to the efficiency of the Betans' planetary information network, a transaction that would have taken days on Barrayar was completed in less than an hour, right from Mayhew's control room. Miles was cannily reluctant to give up the tactical bargaining advantage possession of the toggle box gave them, and Mayhew, after his first astonishment had worn off, became silent and loath to leave.

  "Look, kid," he spoke suddenly, about halfway through the complicated transaction. "I appreciate what you're trying to do, but—but it's just too late. You understand, when I get downside, they're not going to just be laughing this off. Security'll be waiting at the docking bay, with a patrol from the Mental Health Board right beside 'em. They'll slap a stun-net over me so fast—you'll see me in a month or two, walking around smiling. You're always smiling, after the M.H.B. gets done . . ." He shook his head helplessly. "It's just too late."

  "It's never too late while you're breathing," snapped Miles. He did the free-fall equivalent of pacing the room, shoving off from one wall, turning in midair, and shoving off from the opposite wall, a few dozen turns, thinking.

  "I have an idea," he said at last. "I'll wager it would buy time, time enough at least to come up with something better—trouble is, since you're not Barrayaran, you're not going to understand what you're doing, and it's serious stuff."

  Mayhew looked thoroughly baffled. "Huh?"

  "It's like this." Thump, spin, turn, straighten, thump. "If you were to swear fealty to me as an Armsman simple, taking me for your liege lord—it's the most straightforward of our oath relationships—I might be able to include you under my Class III diplomatic immunity. Anyway, I know I could if you were a Barrayaran subject. Of course, you're a Betan citizen. In any case, I'm pretty sure we could tie up a pack of lawyers and several days, trying to figure out which laws take precedence. I would be legally obligated for your bed, board, dress, armament—I suppose this ship could be classed as your armament—your protection, in the event of challenge by any other liegeman—that hardly applies, here on Beta Colony—oh, there's a passel of stuff, about your family, and—do you have a family, by the way?"

  Mayhew shook his head.

  "That simplifies things." Thump, spin, turn, straighten, thump. "Meanwhile, neither Security nor the M.H.B. could touch you, because legally you'd be like a part of m
y body."

  Mayhew blinked. "That sounds screwy as hell. Where do I sign? How do you register it?"

  "All you have to do is kneel, place your hands between mine, and repeat about two sentences. It doesn't even need witnesses, although it's customary to have two."

  Mayhew shrugged. "All right. Sure, kid."

  Thump, spin, turn, straighten, thump. "All-right-sure-kid. I thought you wouldn't understand it. What I've described is only a tiny part of my half of the bargain, your privileges. It also includes your obligations, and a ream of rights I have over you. For instance—just one for-instance—if you were to refuse to carry out an order of mine in the heat of battle, I would have the right to strike off your head. On the spot."

  Mayhew's jaw dropped. "You realize," he said at last, "the Mental Health Board's going to drop a net over you, too. . . ."

  Miles grinned sardonically. "They can't. Because if they tried, I could cry havoc to my liege lord for protection. And I'd get it, too. He's pretty touchy about who does what to his subjects. Oh, that's another angle. If you become a liegeman to me, it automatically puts you into a relationship with my liege lord, kind of a complicated one."

  "And his, and his, and his, I suppose," said Mayhew. "I know all about chains of command."

  "Well, no, that's as far as it goes. I'm sworn directly to Gregor Vorbarra, as a vassal secundus." Miles realized he might as well be talking gibberish, for all the meaning his words were conveying.

  "Who's this Greg-guy?" asked Mayhew.

  "The Emperor. Of Barrayar," Miles added, just to be sure he understood.

  "Oh."

  Typical Betan, thought Miles, they don't study anybody's history but Earth's and their own. "Think about it, anyway. It's not something you should just jump into."

  When the last voice-print had been recorded, Mayhew carefully disconnected the toggle box—Miles held his breath—and the senior pilot officer returned to convey them planetside.

  The senior pilot officer addressed Miles with a shade more respect in his voice. "I had no idea you were from such a wealthy family, Lord Vorkosigan. That was a solution to the problem I certainly hadn't anticipated. But perhaps one ship is just a bauble, to a Barrayaran lord."