Lois McMaster Bujold Cordelia's Honor

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Seeing you that sick ... I haven't felt that helpless and useless since I was
eleven years old." That was the year Mad Yuri's death squad had murdered his
mother and brother. "Sh," she said in turn. "No, no ... s'all right now."
They took away all the rest of the tubes piercing her body the next morning,
except for the oxygen. Days of quiet routine followed. Her recovery was less
interrupted than Aral's. What seemed troops of men, headed by
Minister Vortala, came to see him at all hours. He had a secured comconsole
installed in his room, over medical protests. Koudelka joined him eight hours
a day, in the makeshift office.
Koudelka seemed very quiet, as depressed as everyone else in the wake of the
disaster. Though not as morbid as anyone who'd had to do with their failed
Security. Even Illyan shrank, when he saw her.
Aral walked her carefully up and down the corridor a couple of times a day.
The vibra-scalpel had made a cleaner cut through her abdomen than, say, your
average sabre-thrust, but it was no less deep. The healing scar ached less
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than her lungs, though. Or her heart. Her belly was not so much flat as
flaccid, but definitely no longer occupied. She was alone, uninhabited, she
was herself again, after five months of that strange doubled existence.
Dr. Henri came with a float chair one day, and took her on a short trip over
to his laboratory, to see where the replicator was safely installed. She
watched her baby moving in the vid scans, and studied the team's technical
readouts and reports. Their subject's nerves, skin, and eyes tested out
encouragingly, though Henri was not so sure about hearing, because of the tiny
bones in the ear. Henri and Vaagen were properly trained scientists, almost
Betan in their outlook, and she blessed them silently and thanked them aloud,
and returned to her room feeling enormously better.
When Captain Vaagen burst into her room the next afternoon, however, her heart
sank. His face was thunderously dark, his lips tight and harsh.
"What's wrong, Captain?" she asked urgently. "That second calcium run-did it
fail?"
"Too early to tell. No, your baby's the same, Milady. Our trouble is with your
in-law."
"Beg pardon?"
"General Count Vorkosigan came to see us this morning."
"Oh! He came to see the baby? Oh, good. He's so disturbed by all this new
life-technology. Maybe he's finally starting to work past those emotional
blocks. He embraces the new death-technologies readily enough, old Vor warrior
that he is. . . ."
"I wouldn't get too optimistic about him, if I were you, Milady." He took a
deep breath, taking refuge in a formality of stance, just black, not black-
humored this time. "Dr. Henri had the same idea you did. We showed the General
all around the lab, went over the equipment, explained our treatment theories.
We were absolutely honest, as we've been with you. Maybe too honest. He wanted
to know what results we were going to get. Hell, we don't know. And so we
said.
"After some beating around the bush, hinting . . . well, to cut it short, the
General first asked, then ordered, then tried to bribe Dr. Henri to open the
stopcock. To destroy the fetus. The mutation, he calls it. We threw him the
hell out. He swore he'd be back."
She was shaking, down in her belly, though she kept her face blank. "I
see."
"I want that old man kept out of my lab, Milady. And I don't care how you do
it. I don't need this kind of crap coming down. Not from that high up."
"I'll see . . . wait here." She wrapped her robe around her own green pajamas
more tightly, seated her oxygen tube more firmly, and walked carefully across
the corridor. Aral, half-casual in uniform trousers and a shirt, sat at a
small table by his window. The only sign of his continued patient-hood was the
oxygen tube up his nose, treatment for his own lingering soltoxin pneumonia.
He was conferring with a man while Koudelka took notes. The man was not, thank
God, Piotr, but merely some ministerial secretary of Vortala's.
"Aral. I need you."
"Can it wait?"
"No."
He rose from his chair with a brief "Excuse me a moment, gentlemen," and trod
across the hall in her wake. Cordelia closed the door behind them.
"Captain Vaagen, please tell Aral what you just told me."
Vaagen, looking a degree more nervous, repeated his tale. To his credit, he
did not soften the details. A weight seemed to settle on Aral's shoulders as
he listened, round-ing and hunching them.
"Thank you, Captain. You were correct to report this. I will take care of it
immediately."
"That's all?" Vaagen glanced at Cordelia in doubt.
She opened her palm to him. "You heard the man."
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Vaagen shrugged, and saluted himself out.
"You don't doubt his story?" asked Cordelia.
"I've been listening to the Count my father's thoughts on this subject for a
week, love."
"You argued?"
"He argued. I just listened."
Aral returned to his own room, and asked Koudelka and the secretary to wait in
the corridor. Cordelia sat on his bed and watched as he punched up codes on
his comconsole.
"Lord Vorkosigan here. I wish to speak simultaneously to the Security chief,
Imperial Military Hospital, and Commander Simon Illyan. Get them both on,
please."
A brief wait, as each man was located. Judging from the fuzzy background in
the vid, the ImpMil man was in his office somewhere in the hospital complex.
They tracked Illyan down at a forensic laboratory in ImpSec HQ.
"Gentlemen." Aral's face was quite expressionless. "I wish to revoke a
Security clearance." Each man attentively prepared to make notes on their
respective comconsoles.
"General Count Piotr Vorkosigan is to be denied access to Building Six,
Biochemical Research, Imperial Military Hospital, until further notice. Notice
from me personally."
Illyan hesitated. "Sir-General Vorkosigan has absolute clearance, by
Imperial order. He's had it for years. I need an Imperial order to countermand
it."
"That's precisely what this is, Illyan." A trace of impatience rasped in
Vorkosigan's voice. "By my order, Aral Vorkosigan, Regent to His Imperial
Majesty Gregor Vorbarra. Is that official enough?"
Illyan whistled softly, but his face snapped to blankness at Vorkosigan's [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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