Borders of Infinity

your father requires you to attend on him in the upper pavilion.'

Pym's expression was perfectly bland. Miles swallowed, and waited for the scarlet heat he could feel in his face to recede. 'Quite,' he shrugged. 'The fire's almost out. I'll clean it up later. Don't … let anybody else touch it.'

He marched past Pym and didn't look back.

The pavilion was a simple structure of weathered silver wood, open on all four sides to catch the breeze, this morning a few faint puffs from the west. Good sailing on the lake this afternoon, maybe. Only ten days precious home leave left, and much Miles wanted to do, including the trip to Vorbarr Sultana with his cousin Ivan to pick out his new lightflyer. And then his first assignment would be coming through—ship duty, Miles prayed. He'd had to overcome a major temptation, not to ask his father to make sure it was ship duty. He would take whatever assignment fate dealt him, that was the first rule of the game. And win with the hand he was dealt.

The interior of the pavilion was shady and cool after the glare outside. It was furnished with comfortable old chairs and tables, one of which bore the remains of a noble breakfast—Miles mentally marked two lonely-looking oil cakes on a crumb-scattered tray as his own. Miles's mother, lingering over her cup, smiled across the table at him.

Miles's father, casually dressed in an open-throated shirt and shorts, sat in a worn armchair. Aral Vorkosigan was a thick-set, grey-haired man, heavy-jawed, heavy-browed, scarred. A face that lent itself to savage caricature—Miles had seen some, in Opposition press, in the histories of Barrayar's enemies. They had only to draw one lie, to render dull those sharp penetrating eyes, to create everyone's parody of a military dictator.

And how much is he haunted by Grandfather? Miles wondered. He doesn't show it much. But then, he doesn't have to. Admiral Aral Vorkosigan, space master strategist, conqueror of Komarr, hero of Escobar, for sixteen years Imperial Regent, supreme power on Bar-rayar in all but name. And then he'd capped it, confounded history and all self-sure witnesses and heaped up honor and glory beyond all that had gone before by voluntarily stepping down and transferring command smoothly to Emperor Gregor upon his majority. Not that the Prime Ministership hadn't made a dandy retirement from the Regency, and he was showing no signs yet of stepping down from that.

And so Admiral Aral's life took General Piotr's like an overpowering hand of cards, and where did that leave Ensign Miles? Holding two deuces and the joker. He must surely either concede or start bluffing like crazy. . . .

The hill woman sat on a hassock, a half-eaten oil cake clutched in her hands, staring open-mouthed at Miles in all his power and polish. As he caught and returned her gaze her lips pressed closed and her eyes lit. Her expression was strange—anger? Exhilaration? Embarrassment? Glee? Some bizarre mixture of all? And what did you think I was, woman?

Being in uniform (showing off his uniform?), Miles came to attention before his father. 'Sir?'

Count Vorkosigan spoke to the woman. 'That is my son. If I send him as my Voice, would that satisfy you?'

'Oh,' she breathed, her wide mouth drawing back in a weird, fierce grin, the most expression Miles had yet seen on her face, 'yes, my lord.'

'Very well. It will be done.'

What will be done? Miles wondered warily. The Count was leaning back in his chair, looking satisfied himself, but with a dangerous tension around his eyes hinting that something had aroused his true anger. Not anger at the woman, clearly they were in some sort of agreement, and—Miles searched his conscience quickly—not at Miles himself. He cleared his throat gently, cocking his head and baring his teeth in an inquiring smile.

The Count steepled his hands and spoke to Miles at last. 'A most interesting case. I can see why you sent her up.'

'Ah . . .' said Miles. What had he got hold of? He'd only greased the woman's way through Security on a quixotic impulse, for God's sake, and to tweak his father at breakfast. '. . . ah?' he continued noncommittally.

Count Vorkosigan's brows rose. 'Did you not know?'

'She spoke of a murder, and a marked lack of cooperation from her local authorities about it. Figured you'd give her a lift on to the district magistrate.'

The Count settled back still further, and rubbed his hand thoughtfully across his scarred chin. 'It's an infanticide case.'

Miles's belly went cold. I don't want anything to do with this. Well, that explained why there was no baby to go with the breasts. 'Unusual . . . for it to be reported.'

'We've fought the old customs for twenty years and more,' said the Count. 'Promulgated, propagandized … In the cities, we've made good progress.'

'In the cities,' murmured the Countess, 'people have access to alternatives.'

'But in the backcountry—well—little has changed. We all know what's going on, but without a report, a complaint—and with the family invariably drawing together to protect its own—it's hard to get leverage.'

'What,' Miles cleared his throat, nodded at the woman, 'what was your baby's mutation?'

'The cat's mouth,' the woman dabbed at her upper lip to demonstrate. 'She had the hole inside her mouth, too, and was a weak sucker, she choked and cried, but she was getting enough, she was. …'

'Hare-lip,' the Count's off-worlder wife murmured half to herself, translating the Barrayaran term to the galactic standard, 'and a cleft palate, sounds like. Harra, that's not even a mutation. They had that back on Old Earth. A … a normal birth defect, if that's not a contradiction in terms. Not a punishment for your Barrayaran ancestors' pilgrimage through the Fire. A simple operation could have corrected—' Countess Vorkosigan cut herself off. The hill woman was looking anguished.

'I'd heard,' the woman said. 'My lord had made a hospital to be built at Hassadar. I meant to take her there, when I was a little stronger, though I had no money. Her arms and legs were sound, her head was well- shaped, anybody could see—surely they would have—' her hands clenched and twisted, her voice went ragged, 'but Lem killed her first.'

A seven-day walk, Miles calculated, from the deep Dendarii Mountains to the lowland town of Hassadar. Reasonable, that a woman newly risen from childbed might delay that hike a few days. An hour's ride in an aircar. . . .

'So one is reported as a murder at last,' said Count Vorkosigan, 'and we will treat it as exactly that. This is a chance to send a message to the farthest corners of my own district. You, Miles, will be my Voice, to reach where it has not reached before. You will dispense Count's justice upon this man—and not quietly, either. It's time for the practices that brand us as barbarians in galactic eyes to end.'

Miles gulped. 'Wouldn't the district magistrate be better qualified … ?'

The Count smiled slightly. 'For this case, I can think of no one better qualified than yourself.'

The messenger and the message all in one; Times have changed. Indeed. Miles wished himself elsewhere, anywhere—back sweating blood over his final examinations, for instance. He stifled an unworthy wail, My home leave . . . !

Miles rubbed the back of his neck. 'Who, ah … who is it killed your little girl?' Meaning, who is it I'm expected to drag out, put up against a wall, and shoot?

'My husband,' she said tonelessly, looking at—through—the polished silvery floorboards.

I knew this was going to be messy. . . .

'She cried and cried,' the woman went on, 'and wouldn't go to sleep, not nursing well—he shouted at me to shut her up—'

'Then?' Miles prompted, sick to his stomach.

'He swore at me, and went to go sleep at his mother's. He said at least a working man could sleep there. I hadn't slept either. . . .'

This guy sounds like a real winner. Miles had an instant picture of him, a bull of a man with a bullying manner—nevertheless, there was something missing in the climax of the woman's story.