Forward Momentum -- Chapter 11 (c)
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Gregor and Laisa left within the hour in an ImpSec aircar, taking Allegre, Vorlynkin, and Chandler; Khourakis and his squad trailed away behind them.
Much would begin humming in Vorbarr Sultana that night, as in the Celestial Garden. Those who remained felt density or pressure slacken in the darkness as the lights of the aircar and its escorts dwindled over the lake. No Vorkosigans were seen while the Vorthyses with Lady Alys and Simon Illyan walked in companionable silence, enjoying cool summer dark and pondering what they had witnessed before insects drove them inside again. Nor were Aral, Cordelia, or Miles in evidence when Pym and Ma Kosti generated yet another delicious meal of soup, cold meats, and desserts filled with early summer fruits, but as the diners drank coffee and nibbled idly at biscuits and tiny apricot tarts Ekaterin appeared, smiling apologies for dereliction as hostess. Alys waved her words away.
“Nonsense, dear. Apologies are the last things you owe anyone today. Is all well?”
Ekaterin sank into a chair. “I’ve finally got sleep-timers into all of them, so yes, all’s well. Or will be when they’ve had a solid twelve hours each.”
Helen entertained a brief vision of her niece mothering Aral and Cordelia to bed; from the gleam in her eye Alys shared the thought. Two concerned aunts noted the lines of strain now showing in Ekaterin’s face and the redness about her eyes; so did Georg.
“And what about you, my dear? Are you alright?”
Ekaterin smiled at them all. “Yes. Very much so. I’m just tired.”
“I’m not surprised. Where’s young Nikki?”
“Ma Pym has him for the evening. I believe he and Arthur are watching Lord Vortalon make his decision again and jointly composing a letter to the scriptwriters Miles promised them he’d send on his most Auditorial stationery.”
Everyone smiled. Georg looked as if he might continue, but Illyan beat him to it. “In my experience, Ekaterin, when Miles finished a mission he became rather irritable and depressed for a while. I hardly dare extrapolate to this, but you may find the same.”
She nodded gratitude for the warning as Alys offered support. “Cordelia will be herself again tomorrow. She has been braced against losing Aral for so many years, and this … relief was very unexpected.” Suddenly Alys grinned. “I doubt the planetary name bothered her. She once said Aral was the man she admired most in all the worlds and time, so she probably thinks everywhere should be named after him. But Star Crèche medical treatment to go with the fleet-command … I confess, I hadn’t seen that coming. Had you, dear?”
Ekaterin shook her head. “No, I don’t think anyone had.”
Illyan looked at her shrewdly. “But you knew about the name?”
“Only last night. Gregor used Laisa to get it out of him.”
“Ah.”
Helen’s brain was badly overloaded and she felt in need of her own bed, but this seemed to convey or confirm something to Illyan and Alys beyond surface meaning, so she stored the impression away. Belatedly she realised she and even Georg might be obstacles to conversation: her own security clearance had necessarily been raised as a Lord Auditor’s wife, and in the last year had rocketed with Ekaterin’s marriage to levels she’d never expected to enjoy, but being allowed to know and actually being told were not the same. There were old imperial and family matters under the surface here, she knew, into which Ekaterin had no right to admit her aunt and uncle unless in real need. But one thing tumbling in her brain might be brought to rest. “And the butter-bugs, dear? Did you know about them? I don’t know if anything in that whole extraordinary conversation surprised me more.” As she hoped, Ekaterin laughed and the strain-shadows in her face lightened while she spoke.
“Oh, the bugs. I’ve known about the idea since last year. So have you, Aunt Helen. Enrique seems to have thought of it almost as soon as he understood about Vorkosigan Vashnoi. He explained it all to me at length, very poetically.” Literally so, Helen recalled. She hadn’t actually read more than a stanza or two of the Escobaran’s proposal, cast in rhyme royal. “And he had such high hopes because of those strange bacteria the Cetagandans found that eat beta-radiation, but he couldn’t make it work at all, poor dear, because of high alpha-radiation and the bacteria having really odd genetics. So it was all stalled.” Beneath lines of strain Ekaterin’s face grew animated with her story, and Helen saw with shock and pride how her niece would look in thirty years, entertaining some high imperial gathering of the future with anecdotes of how the present disposition of things was achieved. A very great lady. Oh my. “I’d told Miles about it but wasn’t entirely sure he’d taken it in. You know how he is with Enrique, though the poor man has worshipped him since what Martya calls the Great Bugbutter Escape from Gustioz. Then last week Miles went to see him, out of the blue, and after he’d calmed him down and assured him Gustioz wasn’t back asked him what had stopped the radiation cleanup idea.”
Ekaterin gurgled with laughter, a lovely sound, as she had so improperly-no, most properly-done earlier, during a more critical conversation. Everyone smiled with her delight.
“As far as I can tell Miles airily promised Enrique he’d have the relevant laws of physics emended, then get him proper help with the bacteria. Now poor Enrique’s going to wake up one day and find not only has Miles done as he promised, but into the bargain he’s got haut Pel on his doorstep in her float-chair offering to consult.” Illyan snorted laughter with the others but looked oddly thoughtful, glad perhaps that the security implications of haut women swanning about Barrayar in force-bubbles would not be landing on his desk. Ekaterin sobered. “For me the olive trees were the real surprise. I don’t know where Miles came up with them.”
Alys smiled. “Captain Khourakis grew up in Vorharopoulos Athena, Ekaterin dear. His father’s an agronomy officer.”
“Oh, I see. Of course.”
Helen looked at her niece thoughfully. Of course? She was going to have to ponder long and hard an approach to writing history that could combine necessary public narratives with the kinds of individual awareness and far-flung data-networks this weekend had shown her as at the cutting-edge of events. But that could wait its day, and when after a little more talk Ekaterin began to flag Helen took quiet pleasure in helping her niece upstairs to a sleeptimer of her own.
Lying beside Georg a little later in restful silence, holding hands, the dialogue in their eyes was bright with memories of the world they had seen changed, and grateful wonder at new hopes that unfolded. She slept like a log.
Breakfast was quiet. Aral, Cordelia, and Miles were all there, looking better for rest but still in a kind of shock. Helen had got on well with Cordelia since meeting her last year amid the disaster of Miles’s first dinner-party for Ekaterin, and had greatly enjoyed their conspiratorial relationship in shepherding manic son and wounded niece towards a wedding-circle. This morning, for all her usual Betan health, Cordelia showed the weight of her sixty-six years and said little, though her hand kept wandering to touch Aral’s and her smiles drifted between puzzlement and joy.
Miles and Aral were also silent. Aral, Helen thought, was more contemplative than anything else, but in Miles she saw the truth of Illyan’s warning and wondered what it must be like for him to have won so fabulously all he had refashioned reality to obtain. Vertigo at apogee, he had once said to Ekaterin, and Helen suspected he looked down from his new heights not in triumph but with queasy awareness of how much further he now had to fall.
Alys and Illyan left immediately after breakfast. Georg had to be back in Vorbarr Sultana by lunchtime so they did not linger themselves. For fun, and in genuine admiration of the man, she offered Pym her hand as she said goodbye, hoping to goose his deadpan morning performance in best butler mode. But with a warm smile he took it, asking if his Arthur might come with Master Vorkosigan sometime to see the Professor’s laboratory, and another little deal was struck.
Then there were embraces, Ekaterin whispering gratitude to her aunt and uncle, and suddenly they were aboard, their ImpSec pilot lifting the old aircar off the ground. As they slowly gained altitude Helen saw the foreshortened figures of Aral and Miles walking side by side towards the little cemetery, where headstones glinted in low morning sunlight. A small feline shape trotted behind them, leading Ekaterin and Cordelia in procession. Then her view of the ground below blurred with greens that turned to gleaming silvers and browns as the aircar moved out over the shore of the lake.