Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen Read online

  “How can you tell the color of a rose from its scent?” said Vorinnis.

  “Cetagandans can,” said Oliver. “So can a lot of other people, with a little training. It’s not a superpower.”

  “And—oh, dear, I forget gardenia. Oliver? Help us out.”

  “Hope,” he intoned, blue eyes crinkling just a tiny bit, though he kept his face perfectly straight. “Lord ghem Soren is asking you for a date, Lieutenant. He hopes you will accept.” He handed the papers back to the girl.

  She accepted them, her face scrunching up in unfeigned bewilderment. “Good grief, why?”

  Cordelia’s brow wrinkled at this. It didn’t sound as though it boded well for either the ghem lord or the Vor lieutenant. She wasn’t sure whether to wince or sit back and watch the show. For now, she sat back.

  “Well, the ghem are very competitive,” said Oliver. “I know very little of this one yet, but as a general rule you may guess that he either wants to show you up, or show you off.”

  Vorinnis’s face stayed scrunched. “I’m not sure I follow that, sir.”

  Oliver rubbed his lips, meditatively. “Alternatively, I observe that a cultural attaché is often an unofficial spy. What slicker way to keep tabs on the competition’s boss than to date his secretary?”

  Vorinnis drew herself up in offense. “Sir! I would never!”

  “I didn’t suggest that you would, Lieutenant.”

  “That could cut both ways, of course,” Cordelia put in. “Is there any disinformation you want to feed the Cetagandan consulate this week, Oliver?”

  The lieutenant grew less stiff, considering this wrinkle.

  “Not especially. You?”

  “Not offhand. I’d have to think about it.”

  “But what should I do about this, sir?” said Vorinnis, waving her…prospective love letter? Bait? Cetagandans, not to mention run-of-the-mill, un-gene-modified humans, could also lie with flowers, after all.

  “We are not at war with Cetaganda, nor even, at the moment, in an especially tense diplomatic phase.”

  Not by Oliver’s standards, certainly, Cordelia reflected.

  “I’d say you are free to accept or decline as you wish, Lieutenant.”

  “Although should you wish to decline in an especially cutting fashion, I’m sure Admiral Jole can direct you to some useful reference materials,” Cordelia put in.

  “Oh, there’s an entire manual for military support staff to diplomatic outposts in the Cetagandan Empire, to which I call your attention just as general background reading, Lieutenant. Although I don’t recommend trying that route unless one is expert. Shows far too flattering an interest, you see.” He added after a moment, “Also, it’s very long and detailed.”

  “Have you read it, sir?”

  “I had to nearly memorize the damned thing, when I became aide to the Prime Minister. It ended up being relevant much sooner than I’d anticipated. Hegen Hub War, after all.”

  “I see, sir.” Vorinnis was getting a very thoughtful look, under her lowering brows. “So you’re saying this could be, um…career development? Know your enemy?”

  “Admiral Vorkosigan’s motto might as well have been Know Everything. No one could, but in his train, it wasn’t for lack of trying. I’ve brought the obvious cautions to your attention, and I expect you understand them. I think you can manage the rest.”

  “Sir. Uh, thank you, sir. Ma’am. For your time.” She returned an uncertain, if faintly bucked-up, smile, and a parting salute, and trailed away, turning her letter over once more.

  Cordelia removed her hand from her mouth as soon as she could decently contain her grin. “Oliver, you were encouraging that poor girl.”

  “Hey, that’s my job as a mentor. Alternatively, I might have been having mercy on that poor sod of a ghem lord.”

  “I am not at all sure that aiming a Vorinnis at him qualifies as a merciful gesture.”

  “Well, presumably, we will find out. At least, I hope she debriefs to me, later.”

  “I want all the gossip if she does. Oh, my.”

  “Should we meet by the town fountain with scrub brushes?”

  “I’ll bring my dirty laundry if you’ll bring yours.”

  He made an amused face. “I am not following that metaphor out any farther, thanks.” Fortunately, the arrival of dessert relieved him of the necessity. But he glanced up toward where the girl had gone, and his slight smile became a slight snicker.

  “Share the joke?” prodded Cordelia.

  “Her redolent letter just reminded me of an Aral-story. Oh, God, should I tell this one? I may be the only living witness.”

  “And if you drop dead, it’ll vanish out of the historical record? Tell, Oliver.” It couldn’t be one of the hard ones, if it was making him smirk like that.

  “Tell you, maybe. I can’t imagine sharing it with Vorinnis. Or anyone else, really.” He swallowed a bite of sherbet. “Right, so…in the aftermath of the Hegen Hub war, we spent a good deal of time stuck up in Vervain orbit. While young Gregor was downside wooing the Vervani to such good effect, Aral and I were sorting through the details—beating out the six-way cease-and-desist-fire and peace agreements. There was this one obnoxious Cetagandan envoy who seemed to imagine they could still jerk us around even though they had just lost. They would send all these hand-calligraphed notes, very formal and faux-respectful, which of course some poor sod then had to transcribe—”

  “That sod being yourself?”

  “Frequently, yes. For the, ah, hotter ones, at least. So we had a spate of these, each one smellier than the last—up to twelve scents at once, we had to send them down to the lab for chemical analysis to be sure, sometimes—most of which, if interpreted in the correct order, which for some reason he didn’t think we could do, worked out to assorted deadly insults. Aral was getting more and more impatient with this ghem ass, and as I was trying to decode the most recent, he finally said, ‘Just give me the damned thing,’ twitched it out of my hands, and took it into the lav. Where he proceeded to amend it with, er, his own personal scent mark.”

  Cordelia muffled a cackle with her napkin, turning it into a dainty choke. “I see.” And she could, oh, she just could. Pissed off, indeed.

  “‘They shouldn’t have any difficulty interpreting this reply,’ he said. And stuffed it back into its envelope as-was and had me hand-carry it back to the Cetagandan flagship. The envoy’s expression as he figured it out was one of the joys of my young life to date. I could just see his face drain, even under all the paint.”

  “Oh, my. And then what happened?”

  “Envoy didn’t say a word. But evidently, Aral was right about them taking the point. That twit vanished out of the delegation, and our next missive was much more conciliatory. And, er, odorless.”

  “You’re right, I never heard this one.”

  “Oh, that exchange so didn’t go into the official records. On either side, as far as I know. I thought it was perfect, although I suppose you had to have been there for all the aggravating lead-up to really understand the full impact. It did bring home to me that Aral was a man who would do anything for Barrayar. Without limit.”

  “That…is true.”

  “Aral wasn’t the least ashamed of the gesture—it certainly worked to put the wind up the Cetas—but I do think he was a little ashamed of losing his temper, later.”

  “Ah, yes. He had a thing about that.” Aral-stories, Cordelia thought. Slowly, that massive, complex presence was being reduced to Aral-stories. “I hate having to give public speeches about him,” she sighed. “Each neat little squared-up box of words, with all the messy bits cut off because they don’t fit, seems to make him smaller and simpler. Turning the man that was into the icon that they want.”

  “Maybe the icon that they need?”

  She shook her head. “I think they’d be better off to get used to dealing with the truth, myself.”

  He grimaced. “There were a lot of silences that seemed a burden to me at the
time…”

  She nodded understanding of what he was not saying.

  “—but damn if I’m not glad I don’t have to give those speeches.”

  “Aye.”

  Chapter Four

  Jole’s next morning was spent locked down in one of what looked to be an endless string of confidential meetings going over assorted contractors’ bids on the construction of the new base. Budget and Logistics did the initial triage, but all final approvals had to be run past Haines and Jole, with the B&L officers jockeying for their favorites. Sergyar Command’s B&L departmental needs and those of the Emperor were normally fairly congruent, but not always, and Jole had to remind himself now and then, as voices rose and the highlighted numbers were presented again in brighter colors, which side he was on.

  As they broke for a late lunch, he and Haines walked over to the officers’ mess together. Crossing the main quadrangle, Haines shaded his eyes and frowned at the distant mesa of plascrete pallets. “Have you managed to get any further with those Plas-Dan bastards?” he inquired.

  “The Vicereine has promised to sic some of her forensic accounting people on it. Depending on what she can come up with and how fast—I’m hoping for early next week—we should be able to devise something useful. In the long run, we need plascrete more than vengeance.”

  Haines grunted disconsolate concurrence. “Sucks some days, to have all these boys with guns and not be allowed to shoot anybody. It could be so cathartic.”

  Jole could only snort agreement.

  On the whole, Jole liked Fyodor Haines. The general had been assigned here only two years ago, and had so far proved the plodder type of officer, counting down the bare handful of years left to his twice-twenty—which meant, in the main, that everything got done on time and without unnecessary fuss. Vastly preferable for his actual peacetime duties than the thwarted-warrior type, which—an understandable antipathy to civilian contractors aside—Haines wasn’t.

  Haines’s domestic life was currently in some mysterious disarray; his wife of many years had stayed back on Barrayar when he’d been posted to Sergyar, ostensibly to care for aged and ailing parents, possibly due to having reached some abrupt breaking point about moving one more time to follow the drum. His two older sons were now in college, one on Barrayar, one on Komarr, which accounted for his current austere lifestyle and most of his pay, but his daughter had been shipped out to Sergyar a few months back to join her father. Jole was uncertain if this constituted a promissory note that his wife would soon follow, or if young Frederica Haines had been seconded as a marital spy. If the latter, her mother’s suspicions were unjust; if Haines’s stolid allegiance to his marriage oath didn’t keep him from attempting some adulterous liaison, his aversion to emotional uproar certainly would.

  As they cleared the cafeteria line and seized a small table by the windows, Haines said, “On another subject entirely, I have been commissioned as a scout.”

  “Oh?” Jole unfolded his paper napkin and contemplated his limp sandwich. But the regulation stew and the stiffly clotted pasta had been even less enticing, on this subtropical day.

  “Seems your officer corps is conspiring to throw you a surprise birthday party for your fiftieth. I could get behind the party idea, but I suggested you might not care so much for the surprise aspect.”

  “That’s pretty much correct,” Jole agreed. Although a part of him could not help being secretly touched, even if the conspirators’ main motivation was a transparent desire to get drunk and set off fireworks. It was like the inverse of a mutiny. “I’m actually not wild about either part. I was planning to ignore the day, myself. All those getting-older jokes.”

  “Been there, done that,” Haines, half-a-dozen years older than Jole, said without sympathy.

  Jole’s brow wrinkled. “It seems a few months early to be planning any such thing.”

  “Some of their notions seemed a touch grandiose. They wanted lead time.”

  “Bored, are they? I bet I could find them some more work.”

  Haines’s lips twitched. “The advantage of letting them set up something on base, besides the convenience, would be control. With Base Security in charge of the collateral damage, rather than the Kareenburg Municipal Guard.”

  “The advantage of letting them set up something fifty kilometers out in the desert would be that they couldn’t burn anything down.”

  “The catering would be less handy.”

  “Consider it a field exercise?”

  “Mm, maybe,” said Haines, judging by his narrowed eyes, drawn by this vision.

  “Kayburg Guard would have to be notified anyway,” Jole pointed out. “Given that the boys and girls will want to bring dates. Call it joint maneuvers. If you imply you’re considering downtown Kayburg as an alternate venue, they’ll fall all over themselves to help you set up out in the country instead.”

  Haines chuckled. “I like the way you think sometimes, Oliver. Remind me not to get crosswise to you in a debate.” He took a ruminative bite of stew, and added, “And families. Haul out the wives and families to the picnic, for ballast.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “You could bring a date.”

  The party idea took on a sudden new charm. “I could ask Vicereine Vorkosigan.”

  Haines pursed his lips judiciously. “Not what I would call a date, but that would set a tone, for sure.”

  It might at that, although possibly not the sedate one Haines was clearly hankering for. But then, Haines didn’t know Cordelia very well.

  “It wouldn’t settle any bets, though,” Haines added a bit morosely.

  Jole didn’t bother to pretend not to understand. “What, betting whether I’d show up with a woman or a man?” His tone grew a trifle biting. “I see a way we could collude to clean up on that one. I could ask Consul Vermillion, and we could wax them all.”

  Haines held up a contrite hand. “No business of mine, except that people ask me. As if I’d know!”

  “I…did not realize that,” Jole conceded. Although he didn’t see how he had anything to apologize for. Because I don’t have anything in the first place?

  Pared to its essentials, the Barrayaran officer corps favored heterosexual marital stability in its senior members mainly to cut down on the potential for ambient personal dramas slopping over into work, as they tended to do. But any nonstandard-issue personal life that supplied one’s superior officers with zero drama would do just as well, in Jole’s view. And it was a view he’d let be known, certainly. With an emphasis on the zero-drama part, because he’d thought that could stand to be underscored.

  “I may be sorry I asked, but what are the current rumors about my personal life?” Or lack of one.

  Haines shrugged. “They call you the dog who does nothing in the nighttime.”

  “Come again?”

  “Don’t look at me! I was told it’s a literary reference. Which probably accounts for it making no damn sense.” Haines scowled in retrospective suspicion. “A touch Cetagandan, if you ask me.”

  “I see.” Well, that could have been worse. The trouble with giving rumor nothing to chew on was that it freed it to make up anything. “Welcome to the fishbowl, Admiral Jole. Though it’s not as bad here as at Komarr Command. Or Home Fleet, God help ’em.” He’d aspired to Komarr Command once, the hot seat of the empire. And just where, in his last few years, had what had once been a driving youthful ambition drained away? Could it be that he was…content, here on Sergyar?

  “That is happily true,” Haines agreed.

  Jole considered the general. Fyodor was pretty level-headed, an experienced father, and a good sample of an average officer. And he knew how to be closed-mouthed. As a test subject, as Cordelia would no doubt put it, he could be nearly ideal. Jole tried the sentence once, secretly inside his mouth, for practice. And then quelled his doubts—his panic?—and let it fly: “Actually, for my fiftieth birthday, I was thinking of having a son.”

  Haines’s eyebrows went up, but
he did not, for example, fall off his not-very-comfortable cafeteria chair or have any other such overreaction. “Don’t you have a few preliminaries to get through first? Or have you managed to smuggle them past all your interested observers?”

  “Not as many as one would think. The Vicereine”—yes, hide behind Cordelia’s skirts—“has been pitching the virtues of that new rep center downtown. It seems all you have to do is walk in, present yourself, and buy a donated egg. All right, you do have to jump through a few hoops to prove yourself a, er, qualified purchaser. But it skips a lot of the other difficult middle steps.”

  “Dating, courtship, weddings? In-laws?” Haines’s mouth twisted up. “Seems like cheating, really.”

  “Galactics—I’m told—do it.” All the time was probably not technically correct.

  “Well, galactics,” said Haines vaguely.

  “I admit, when I picture the scenario, I keep seeing a boy of about, oh, seven. Age of reason and all that. One I could talk to, and do things with. I’m not sure how you get from the single-cell stage to that one, though.”

  Haines shrugged. “Having an infant aboard is no holiday, but any man who can learn to field-strip a weapon can learn to change a damn nappie. Just handle the kid gently but firmly, like an unexploded bomb. You wonder how some of those whiners would have dealt with the old horse cavalry days—manure by the metric ton, back then. I’ve no patience with a man who’s afraid to get his hands dirty. And at least babies more-or-less stay where you put them, at that age. Now, toddlers…suicidal maniacs, the lot of ’em, boy or girl. I’m so glad that stage is over.” He took a firm swallow of his iced tea. “I don’t know why you don’t have a mate—of whatever flavor—Oliver, and it’s no business of mine, but I will tell you, parenting is a team sport. You need backup, reserves. I admit, back when, it was more my wife’s family and the other base women trading favors than me, depending on where we were. But that does seem to me the one big flaw in your battle plan.”