"Pull," Miles said, and set his teeth.
Ivan grasped his boot by the ankle and heel, braced his knee against the end of the couch upon which Miles lay, and yanked dutifully.
"Yeow!"
Ivan stopped. "Does that hurt?"
"Yes, keep going, dammit."
Ivan glanced around Miles's personal suite. "Maybe you ought to go downstairs to the embassy infirmary again."
"Later. I am not going to let that butcher of a physician dissect my best boots. Pull."
Ivan put his back into it, and the boot at last came free. He studied it in his hand a moment, and smiled slowly. "You know, you're not going to be able to get the other one off without me," he observed.
"So?"
"So . . . give."
"Give what?"
"Knowing your usual humor, I'd have thought you'd be as amused by the idea of an extra corpse in the funeral chamber as Vorob'yev was, but you came back looking like you'd just seen your grandfather's ghost."
"The ba had cut its throat. It was a messy scene."
"I think you've seen messier corpses."
Oh, yes. Miles eyed his remaining booted leg, which was throbbing, and pictured himself limping through the corridors of the embassy seeking a less demanding valet. No. He sighed. "Messier, but no stranger. You'd have twitched too. We met the ba yesterday, you and I. You wrestled with it in the personnel pod."
Ivan glanced toward the comconsole desk drawer where the mysterious rod remained concealed, and swore. "That does it. We've got to report this to Vorob'yev."
"If it was the same ba," Miles put in hastily. "For all I know, the Cetagandans clone their servants in batches, and the one we saw yesterday was this one's twin or something."
Ivan hesitated. "You think so?"
"I don't know, but I know where I can find out. Just let me have one more pass at this, before we send up the flag, please? I've asked Mia Maz from the Vervani embassy to stop in and see me. If you wait . . . I'll let you sit in."
Ivan contemplated this bribe. "Boot!" Miles demanded, while he was thinking. Somewhat absently, Ivan helped pull it off.
"All right," he said at last, "but after we talk to her, we report to ImpSec."
"Ivan, I am ImpSec," snapped Miles. "Three years of training and field experience, remember? Do me the honor of grasping that I may just possibly know what I'm doing!" I wish to hell I knew what I was doing. Intuition was nothing but the subconscious processing of subliminal clues, he was fairly sure, but I feel it in my bones made too uncomfortably thin a public defense for his actions. How can you know something before you know it? "Give me a chance."
Ivan departed for his own room to change clothes without making any promises. Freed of the boots, Miles staggered to his washroom to gulp down some more painkillers, and skin out of his formal House mourning and into loose black fatigues. Judging by the embassy's protocol list, Miles's private chamber was going to be the only place he could wear the fatigues.
Ivan returned all too soon, breezily trim in undress greens, but before he could continue asking questions Miles couldn't answer or demanding justifications Miles couldn't offer, the comconsole chimed. It was the staffer from the embassy's lobby, downstairs.
"Mia Maz is here to see you, Lord Vorkosigan," the man reported. "She says she has an appointment."
"That's correct. Uh . . . can you bring her up here, please?" Was his suite monitored by embassy security? He wasn't about to draw attention by inquiring. But no. If ImpSec were eavesdropping, he'd certainly have had to deal with some stiff interrogation from their offices below-stairs by now, either via Vorob'yev or directly. They were extending him the courtesy of privacy, as yet, in his personal space—though probably not on his comconsole. Every public forum in the building was guaranteed to be bugged, though.
The staffer ushered Maz to Miles's door in a few moments, and Miles and Ivan hastened to get her comfortably seated. She too had stopped to change clothes, and was now wearing a formfitting jump suit and knee-length vest suitable for street wear. Even at forty-odd her form supported the style very nicely. Miles got rid of the staffer by sending him off with an order for tea and, at Ivan's request, wine.
Miles settled down on the other end of the couch and smiled hopefully at the Vervani woman. Ivan was forced offsides to a nearby chair. "Milady Maz. Thank you for coming."
"Just Maz, please." She smiled in return. "We Vervani don't use such titles. I'm afraid we have trouble taking them seriously."
"You must be good at keeping a straight face, or you could not function so well here."
Her dimple winked at him. "Yes, my lord."
Ah yes, Vervain was one of those so-called democracies; not quite as insanely egalitarian as the Betans, but they had a definite cultural drift in that direction. "My mother would agree with you," Miles conceded. "She would have seen no inherent difference between the two corpses in the rotunda. Except their method of arriving there, of course. I take it this suicide was an unusual and unexpected event?"
"Unprecedented," said Maz, "and if you know Cetagandans, you know just how strong a term that is."
"So Cetagandan servants do not routinely accompany their masters in death like a pagan sacrifice."
"I suppose the Ba Lura was unusually close to the Empress, it had served her for so long," said the Vervani woman. "Since before any of us were born."
"Ivan was wondering if the haut-lords cloned their servants."
Ivan cast Miles a slightly dirty look, for being made the stalking horse, but did not voice an objection.
"The ghem-lords sometimes do," said Maz, "but not the haut-lords, and most certainly never the Imperial Household. They consider each servitor as much a work of art as any of the other objects with which they surround themselves. Everything in the Celestial Garden must be unique, if possible handmade, and perfect. That applies to their biological constructs as well. They leave mass production to the masses. I'm not sure if it's a virtue or a vice, the way the haut do it, but in a world flooded with virtual realities and infinite duplication, it's strangely refreshing. If only they weren't such awful snobs about it."
"Speaking of things artistic," said Miles, "you said you had some luck identifying that icon?"
"Yes." Her gaze flicked up to fix on his face. "Where did you say you saw it, Lord Vorkosigan?"
"I didn't."
"Hm." She half-smiled, but apparently decided not to fence with him over the point just now. "It is the seal of the Star Crèche, and not something I'd expect an outlander to run across every day. In fact, it's not something I'd expect an outlander to run across any day. It's most private."
Check. "And hautish?"
"Supremely."
"And, um . . . just what is the Star Crèche?"
"You don't know?" Maz seemed a little surprised. "Well, I suppose you fellows have spent all your time studying Cetagandan military matters."
"A great deal of time, yes," Ivan sighed.
"The Star Crèche is the private name of the haut-race's gene bank."
"Oh, that. I was dimly aware of—do they keep backup copies of themselves, then?" Miles asked.
"The Star Crèche is far more than that. Among the haut, they don't deal directly with each other to have egg and sperm united and the resulting embryo deposited in a uterine replicator, the way normal people do. Every genetic cross is negotiated and a contract drawn between the heads of the two genetic lines—the Cetagandans call them constellations, though I suppose you Barrayarans would call them clans. That contract in turn must be approved by the Emperor, or rather, by the senior female in the Emperor's line, and marked by the seal of the Star Crèche. For the last half-century, since the present regime began, that senior female has been haut Lisbet Degtiar, the Emperor's mother. It's not just a formality, either. Any genetic alterations—and the haut do a lot of them—have to be examined and cleared by the Empress's board of geneticists, before they are allowed into the haut genome. You asked me if the haut-women had any power. The Dowager Empress had final approval or veto over every haut birth."
"Can the Emperor override her?"
Maz pursed her lips. "I truly don't know. The haut are incredibly reserved about all this. If there are any behind-the-scenes power struggles, the news certainly doesn't leak out past the Celestial Garden's gates. I do know I've never heard of such a conflict."
"So . . . who is the new senior female? Who inherits the seal?"
"Ah! Now you've touched on something interesting." Maz was warming to her subject. "Nobody knows, or at least, the Emperor hasn't made the public announcement. The seal is supposed to be held by the Emperor's mother if she lives, or by the mother of the heir-apparent if the dowager is deceased. But the Cetagandan emperor has not yet selected his heir. The seal of the Star Crèche and all the rest of the empress's regalia is supposed to be handed over to the new senior female as the last act of the funeral rites, so he has ten more days to make up his mind. I imagine that decision is the focus of a great deal of attention right now, among the haut-women. No new genomic contracts can be approved until the transfer is completed."
Miles puzzled this through. "He has three young sons, right? So he must select one of their mothers."
"Not necessarily," said Maz. "He could hand things over to an Imperial aunt, one of his mother's kin, as an interim move."
A diffident rap at Miles's door indicated the arrival of the tea. The Barrayaran embassy's kitchen had sent along a perfectly redundant three-tiered tray of little petit fours as well. Someone had been doing their homework, for Maz murmured, "Ooh, my favorite." One feminine hand dove for some dainty chocolate confections despite the Imperial luncheon they'd recently consumed. The embassy steward poured tea, opened the wine, and withdrew as discreetly as he had entered.
Ivan took a gulp from his crystal cup, and asked in puzzlement, "Do the haut-lords marry, then? One of these genetic contracts must be the equivalent of a marriage, right?"
"Well . . . no." Maz swallowed her third chocolate morsel, and chased it with tea. "There are several kinds of contracts. The simplest is for a sort of one-time usage of one's genome. A single child is created, who becomes the . . . I hesitate to use the term property . . . who is registered with the constellation of the male parent, and is raised in his constellation's crèche. You understand, these decisions are not made by the principals—in fact, the two parents may never even meet each other. These contracts are chosen at the most senior level of the constellation, by the oldest and presumably wisest heads, with an eye to either capturing a favored genetic line, or setting up for a desirable cross in the ensuing generation.
"At the other extreme is a lifetime monopoly—or longer, in the case of Imperial crosses. When a haut-woman is chosen to be the mother of a potential heir, the contract is absolutely exclusive—she must never have contracted her genome previously, and can never do so again, unless the emperor chooses to have more than one child by her. She goes to live in the Celestial Garden, in her own pavilion, for the rest of her life."
Miles grimaced. "Is that a reward, or a punishment?"
"It's the best shot at power a haut-woman can ever get—a chance of becoming a dowager empress, if her son—and it's always and only a son—is ultimately chosen to succeed his father. Even being the mother of one of the losers, a prince-candidate or satrap governor, is no bad deal. It's also why, in an apparently patriarchal culture, the output of the haut-constellations is skewed to girls. A constellation head—clan chief, in Barrayaran terminology—can never become an emperor or the father of an emperor, no matter how brightly his sons may shine. But through his daughters, he has a chance to become the grandfather of one. Advantages, as you may imagine, then accrue to the dowager empress's constellation. The Degtiar were not particularly important until fifty years ago."
"So the emperor has sons," Miles worked this out, "but everyone else is mad for daughters. But only once or twice a century, when a new emperor succeeds, can anyone win the game."
"That's about right."
"So . . . where does sex fit into all this?" asked Ivan plaintively.
"Nowhere," said Maz.
"Nowhere!"
Maz laughed at his horrified expression. "Yes, the haut have sexual relations, but it's purely a social game. They even have long-lasting sexual friendships that could almost qualify as marriages, sometimes. I was about to say there's nothing formalized, except that the etiquette of all the shifting associations is so incredibly complex. I guess the word I want is legalized, rather than formalized, because the rituals are intense. And weird, really weird, sometimes, from what little I've been able to gather of it all. Fortunately, the haut are such racists, they almost never go slumming outside their genome, so you are not likely to encounter those pitfalls personally."
"Oh," said Ivan. He sounded a little disappointed. "But . . . if the haut don't marry and set up their own households, when and how do they leave home?"
"They never do."
"Ow! You mean they live with, like, their mothers, forever?"
"Well, not with their mothers, of course. Their grandparents or great-grandparents. But the youth—that is, anyone under fifty or so—do live as pensioners of their constellation. I wonder if that is at the root of why so many older haut become reclusive. They live apart because they finally can."
"But—what about all those famous and successful ghem-generals and ghem-lords who've won haut-lady wives?" asked Miles.
Maz shrugged. "They can't all aspire to become Imperial mothers, can they? Actually, I would point out this aspect particularly to you, Lord Vorkosigan. Have you ever wondered how the haut, who are not noted for their military prowess, control the ghem, who are?"
"Oh, yes. I've been expecting this crazy Cetagandan double-decked aristocracy to fall apart ever since I learned about it. How can you control guns with, with, art contests? How can a bunch of perfumed poetasters like the haut-lords buffalo whole ghem-armies?"
Maz smiled. "The Cetagandan ghem-lords would call it the loyalty justly due to superior culture and civilization. The fact is that anyone who's competent enough or powerful enough to pose a threat gets genetically co-opted. There is no higher reward in the Cetagandan system than to be Imperially assigned a haut-lady wife. The ghem-lords are all panting for it. It's the ultimate social and political coup."
"You're suggesting the haut control the ghem through these wives?" said Miles. "I mean, I'm sure the haut-women are lovely and all, but the ghem-generals can be such hard-bitten cast-iron bastards—I can't imagine anyone who gets to the top in the Cetagandan Empire being that susceptible."
"If I knew how the haut-women do it," Maz sighed, "I'd bottle it and sell it. No, better—I think I'd keep it for myself. But it seems to have worked for the last several hundred years. It is not, of course, the only method of Imperial control, to be sure. Only the most overlooked one. I find that, in itself, significant. The haut are nothing if not subtle."
"Does the, uh, haut-bride come with a dowry?" Miles asked.
Maz smiled again, and polished off another chocolate confection. "You have hit upon an important point, Lord Vorkosigan. She does not."
"I'd think keeping a haut-wife in the style to which she is accustomed could get rather expensive."
"Very."
"So . . . if the Cetagandan emperor wished to depress an excessively successful subject, he could award him a few haut-wives and bankrupt him?"
"I . . . don't think it's done quite so obviously as all that. But the element is there. You are very acute, my lord."
Ivan asked, "But how does the haut-lady who gets handed out like a good-conduct medal feel about it all? I mean . . . if the highest haut-lady ambition is to become an Imperial monopoly, this has got to be the ultimate opposite. To be permanently dumped out of the haut-genome—their descendants never marry back into the haut, do they?"
"No," confirmed Maz. "I believe the psychology of it all is a bit peculiar. For one thing, the haut-bride immediately outranks any other wives the ghem-lord may have acquired, and her children automatically become his heirs. This can set up some interesting tensions in his household, particularly if it comes, as it usually does, in mid-life when his other marital associations may be of long standing."
"It must be a ghem-lady's nightmare, to have one of these haut-women dropped on her husband," Ivan mused. "Don't they ever object? Make their husbands turn down the honor?"
"Apparently it's not an honor one can refuse."
"Mm." With difficulty, Miles pulled his imagination away from these side-fascinations, and back to his most immediate worry. "That seal of the Star Crèche thing—I don't suppose you have a picture of it?"
"I brought a number of vids with me, yes, my lord," said Maz. "With your permission, we can run them on your comconsole."
Ooh, I adore competent women. Do you have a younger sister, milady Maz? "Yes, please," said Miles.
They all trooped over to the chamber's comconsole desk, and Maz began a quick illustrated lecture on haut crests and the several dozen assorted Imperial seals. "Here it is, my lord—the seal of the Star Crèche."
It was a clear cubical block, measuring maybe fifteen centimeters on a side, with the bird-pattern incised in red lines upon its top. Not the mysterious rod. Miles exhaled with relief. The terror that had been riding him ever since Maz had mentioned the seal, that he and Ivan might have accidentally stolen a piece of the Imperial regalia, faded. The rod was some kind of Imperial gizmo, obviously, and would have to be returned—anonymously, by preference—but at least it wasn't—
Maz called up the next unit of data, "And this object is the Great Key of the Star Crèche, which is handed over along with the seal," she went on.
Ivan choked on his wine. Miles, faint, leaned on the desk and smiled fixedly at the image of the rod. The original lay some few centimeters under his hand, in the drawer.
"And, ah—just what is the Great Key of the Star Crèche, m'la—Maz?" Miles managed to murmur. "What does it do?"
"I'm not quite sure. At one time in the past, I believe it had something to do with data retrieval from the haut gene banks, but the actual device may only be ceremonial by now. I mean, it's a couple of hundred years old. It has to be obsolete."
We hope. Thank God he hadn't dropped it. Yet. "I see."
"Miles . . ." muttered Ivan.
"Later," Miles hissed to him out of the corner of his mouth. "I understand your concern."
Ivan mouthed something obscene at him, over the seated Maz's head.
Miles leaned against the comconsole desk, and screwed up his features in a realistic wince.
"Something wrong, my lord?" Maz glanced up, concerned.
"I'm afraid my legs are bothering me, a bit. I had probably better pay another visit to the embassy physician, after this."
"Would you prefer to continue this later?" Maz asked instantly.
"Well . . . to tell you the truth, I think I've had about all the etiquette lessons I can absorb for one afternoon."
"Oh, there's lots more." But apparently he was looking realistically pale, too, for she rose, adding, "Far too much for one session, to be sure. Are your injuries much troubling you? I didn't realize they were that severe."
Miles shrugged, as if in embarrassment. After a suitable exchange of parting amenities, and a promise to call on his Vervani tutor again very soon, Ivan took over the hostly duties, and escorted Maz back downstairs.
He returned immediately, to seal the door behind him and pounce on Miles. "Do you have any idea how much trouble we're in?" he cried.
Miles sat before the comconsole, re-reading the official, and entirely inadequate, description of the Great Key, while its image floated hauntingly before his nose above the vid plate. "Yes. I also know how we're going to get out of it. Do you know as much?"
This gave Ivan pause. "What else do you know that I don't?"
"If you will just leave it to me, I believe I can get this thing back to its rightful owner with no one the wiser."
"Its rightful owner is the Cetagandan emperor, according to what Maz said."
"Well, ultimately, yes. I should say, back to its rightful keeper. Who, if I read the signs right, is as chagrined about losing it as we are in finding it. If I can get it back to her quietly, I don't think she's going to go around proclaiming how she lost it. Although . . . I do wonder how she did lose it." Something was not adding up, just below his level of conscious perception.
"We mugged an Imperial servitor, that's how!"
"Yes, but what was Ba Lura doing with the thing on an orbital transfer station in the first place? Why had it disabled the security monitors in the docking bay?"
"Lura was taking the Great Key somewhere, obviously. To the Great Lock, for all I know." Ivan paced around the comconsole. "So the poor sod cuts its throat the next morning 'cause it lost its charge, its trust, courtesy of us—hell, Miles. I feel like we just killed that old geezer. And it never did us any harm, it just blundered into the wrong place and had the bad luck to startle us."
"Is that what happened?" Miles murmured. "Really . . . ?" Is that why I am so desperately determined for the story to be something, anything, else? The scenario hung together. The old ba, charged with transporting the precious object, loses the Great Key to some outlander barbarians, confesses its disgrace to its mistress, and kills itself in expiation. Wrap. Miles felt ill. "So . . . if the Key was that important, why wasn't the ba traveling with a squadron of Imperial ghem-guards?"
"God Miles, I wish it had been!"
A firm knock sounded on Miles's door. Miles hastily shut down the comconsole and unsealed the door lock. "Come in."
Ambassador Vorob'yev entered, and favored him with a semi-cordial nod. He held a sheaf of delicately colored, scented papers in his hand.
"Hello, my lords. Did you find your tutorial with Maz useful?"
"Yes, sir," said Miles.
"Good. I thought you would. She's excellent." Vorobyev held up the colored papers. "While you were in session, this invitation arrived for you both, from Lord Yenaro. Along with assorted profound apologies for last night's incident. Embassy security has opened, scanned, and chemically analyzed it. They report the organic esters harmless." With this safety pronouncement, he handed the papers across to Miles. "It is up to you, whether or not to accept. If you concur that the unfortunate side-effect of the sculpture's power field was an accident, your attendance might be a good thing. It would complete the apology, repairing face all around."
"Oh, we'll go, sure." The apology and invitation were hand-calligraphed in the best Cetagandan style. "But I'll keep my eyes open. Ah . . . wasn't Colonel Vorreedi due back today?"
Vorob'yev grimaced. "He's run into some tedious complications. But in view of that odd incident at the Marilacan embassy, I've sent a subordinate to replace him. He should be back tomorrow. Perhaps . . . do you wish a bodyguard? Not openly, of course, that would be another insult."
"Mm . . . we'll have a driver, right? Let him be one of your trained men, have backup on call, give us both com links, and have him wait for us nearby."
"Very well, Lord Vorkosigan. I'll make arrangements," Vorob'yev nodded. "And . . . regarding the incident in the rotunda earlier today—"
Miles's heart pounded. "Yes?"
"Please don't break ranks like that again."
"Did you receive a complaint?" And from whom?
"One learns to interpret certain pained looks. The Cetagandans would consider it impolite to protest—but should unpleasant incidents pile high enough, not too impolite for them to take some sort of indirect and arcane retaliation. You two will be gone in ten days, but I will still be here. Please don't make my job any more difficult than it already is, eh?"
"Understood, sir," said Miles brightly. Ivan was looking intensely worried—was he going to bolt, pour out confessions to Vorob'yev? Not yet, evidently, for the ambassador waved himself back out without Ivan throwing himself at his feet.
"Nearby doesn't cut it, for a bodyguard," Ivan pointed out, as soon as the door sealed again.
"Oh, you're beginning to see it my way now, are you? But if we go to Yenaro's at all, I can't avoid risk. I have to eat, drink, and breathe—all routes for attack an armed guard can't do much about. Anyway, my greatest defense is that it would be a grievous insult to the Cetagandan emperor for anyone to seriously harm a galactic delegate to his august mother's funeral. I predict, should another accident occur, it will be equally subtle and non-fatal." And equally infuriating.
"Oh, yeah? When there's been one fatality already?" Ivan stood silent for a long time. "Do you think . . . all these incidents could possibly be related?" Ivan nodded toward the perfumed papers still in Miles's hand, and toward the comconsole desk drawer. "I admit, I don't see how."
"Do you think they could possibly all be unrelated coincidences?"
"Hm." Ivan frowned, digesting this. "So tell me," he pointed again to the desk drawer, "how are you planning to get rid of the Empress's dildo?"
Miles's mouth twitched, stifling a grin at the Ivan-diplomatic turn of phrase. "I can't tell you." Mostly because I don't know yet myself. But the haut Rian Degtiar had to be scrambling, right now. He fingered, as if absently, the silver eye-of-Horus ImpSec insignia pinned to his black collar. "There's a lady's reputation involved."
Ivan's eyes narrowed in scorn of this obvious appeal to Ivan's own brand of personal affairs. "Horseshit. Are you running some kind of secret rig for Simon Illyan?"
"If I were, I couldn't tell you, now could I?"
"Damned if I know." Ivan stared at him in frustration for another moment, then shrugged. "Well, it's your funeral."