Komarr

In addition to the ramp by which she'd entered and the door to the lavatory, there appeared to be two other airsealed exits from the bay. One was clearly a personnel lock to the exterior, next to the freight lock. Another went back into a section which might be offices, if this was indeed the center bay of the three. Ekaterin mentally traced a route through it to the nearest public corridor. Several Komarrans had come and gone through that door; perhaps they were all camping back there. In any case, it seemed more heavily populated than the door she'd come in. But closer. The control booth was a dead end.

Ekaterin eyed her fellow-widow. Strange to think that their different domestic paths had brought them both to the same place in the end. Madame Radovas looked tired and worn. This has been a nightmare for everyone.

'How do you imagine you're going to get away, after this?' Ekaterin asked her curiously. Will you take us along? Surely the Komarrans would have to.

Madame Radovas's lips thinned. 'We hadn't planned to. Till you two came along. I'm almost sorry. It was simpler before. Collapse the wormhole and die. Now it's all possibilities and distractions and worries again.'

'Worries? Worse than expecting to die?'

'I left three children back on Komarr. If I were dead, ImpSec would have no reason to … bother them.'

Hostages all round, indeed.

'Besides,' said Madame Radovas, 'I voted for it. I could do no less than my husband did.'

'You took a vote? On what? And how do you divide up Komarran-style voting shares in a revolt? You had to have taken everyone along—if anyone who knew anything had been left to be questioned under fast-penta, it would have been all up.'

'Soudha, Foscol, Cappell, and my husband were considered the primary shareholders. They decided I had inherited my husband's voting stock. The choices were simple enough—surrender, flee, or fight to the last. The count was three to one for this.'

'Oh? Who voted against it?'

She hesitated. 'Soudha.'

'How odd,' said Ekaterin, startled. 'He's your chief engineer now—doesn't that worry you?'

'Soudha,' said Madame Radovas tartly, 'has no children. He wanted to wait and try again later, as though there would be a later. If we do not strike now, ImpSec will shortly hold all our relatives hostage. But if we close the wormhole and die, there will be no one left for ImpSec to threaten with their harm. My children will be safer, even if I never see them again.' Her eyes were bleak and sincere.

'What about all the Barrayarans on Komarr and Sergyar who will never see their families again? Cut off, not ever knowing their fate …' Mine, for instance. 'They'll be the same as dead, to each other. It will be the Time of Isolation all over again.' She shivered in horror at the cascading images of shock and grief.

'So be glad you're on the good side of the wormhole,' Madame Radovas snapped. At Ekaterin's cold stare, she relented a little. 'It won't be like your old Time of Isolation at all. You have a fully developed planetary industrial base, now, and a much larger population, which has experienced a hundred-year-long inflow of new genes. There are plenty of other worlds which scarcely maintain any galactic contact, and they get along just fine.'

The Professora's eyes slitted open. 'I think you are underestimating the psychological impact.'

'What you Barrayarans do to each other, afterwards, is not my responsibility,' said Madame Radovas. 'As long as you can never do it to us again.'

'How … do you expect to die?' asked Ekaterin. 'Take poison together? Walk out an airlock?' And will you kill us first?

'I expect you Barrayarans will take care of those details, when you figure out what happened,' said Madame Radovas. 'Foscol and Cappell think we will escape, afterwards, or that we might be permitted to surrender. I think it will be the Solstice Massacre all over again. We even have our very own Vorkosigan for it. I'm not afraid.' She hesitated, as if contemplating her own brave words. 'Or at any rate, I'm too tired to care anymore.'

Ekaterin could understand that. Unwilling to murmur agreement with the Komarran woman, she fell silent, staring unseeing across the loading bay.

Dispassionately, she considered her own fear. Her heart beat, yes, and her stomach knotted, and her breath came a bit too fast. Yet these people did not frighten her, deep down, nearly as much as she thought they ought to.

Once upon a time, shortly after one of Tien's unfathomable uncomfortable jealous jags had subsided back to whatever fantasy world it came from, he'd earnestly assured her that he had thrown his nerve disrupter (illegally owned because he did not carry it in issuance from their District liege lord) from a bridge one night, and got rid of it. She hadn't even known he'd possessed it. These Komarrans were desperate, and dangerous in their desperation. But she had slept beside things that scared her more than Soudha and all his friends. How strange I feel.

There was a tale in Barrayaran folklore about a mutant who could not be killed, because he hid his heart in a box on a secret island far from his fortress. Naturally, the young Vor hero talked the secret out of the mutant's captive maiden, stole the heart, and the poor mutant came to the usual bad end. Maybe her fear failed to paralyze her because Nikki was her heart, and safe away, far from here. Or maybe it was because for the first time in her life, she owned herself whole.

A few meters away across the loading bay, Soudha crossed again to the novel device, aimed the remote at the float cradle, and adjusted its position fractionally. Cappell called some question from the other side of the bay, and Soudha set the remote down on the edge of the cradle and paced along one of the power cables, examining it closely, till he reached the wall slot Cappell was fussing over. They bent their heads together over some loose connection or other. Cappell yelled a question to the man in the glass booth, who shook his head, and went out to join them.

If I think about this, the chance will be gone. If I think about this, even my mutant's heart will fail me.

Had she the right to take this much risk upon herself? That was the real fear, yes, and it shook her to her core. This wasn't a task for her. This was a task for ImpSec, the police, the army, a Vor hero, anyone but her. Who are not here. But oh, if she tried and failed, she failed for all Barrayar, for all time. And who would take care of Nikki, if he lost both parents in the space of barely a week? The safe thing to do was to wait for competent grownup male people to rescue her.

Like Tien, yeah?

'Are you getting any warmer now, Aunt Vorthys?' Ekaterin asked. 'Have you stopped shivering?' She rose, and bent over her aunt with her back to Madame Radovas, and pretended to tuck the blanket tighter, while actually loosening it. Madame Radovas was shorter than Ekaterin, and slighter, and twenty-five years older. Now, Ekaterin mouthed to the Professora.

Moving smoothly but not suddenly, she turned, paced toward Madame Radovas, and flung the blanket over the woman's head as she jumped to her feet. The chair banged over backward. Another two paces and she was able to wrap her arms around the smaller woman, pinning her arms to her side. The stunner's beam splashed, buzzing, on the deck at their feet, and the nimbus made Ekaterin's legs tingle. She lifted Madame Radovas off her feet and shook her. The stunner clattered to the deck, and Ekaterin kicked it toward her aunt, who was fighting to get upright on her cot. Ekaterin flung the blanket-muffled Komarran woman away from her as hard as she could, turned, and sprinted for the float cradle.

She snatched up the remote control and spun away toward the glass control booth as fast as her legs could push her, her sweating bare feet firm against the smooth surface. The men at the wall outlet shouted and started toward her. She didn't look back.