needed more complications to getting everyone on their way home without being jailed, and if she wanted to use them on Prestene, that was between her and the Baron and Baronne. Nothing to do with Barrayar, right?”
“Weirder than that. Even.” Ivan blinked. “And a whole lot to do with Barrayar. Seems the beads on the brooch contained something like a hundred thousand sporulated genetic samples from Barrayarans born in the Vorbarra District before the end of the Time of Isolation. It was the bloody gene-survey library!”
“Oh. My.” Tej hesitated. “Will the Barrayarans be mad?”
“I’m…not sure. I mean, we never knew.”
“I suppose you do now. Byerly will have reported, right?”
“Yeah.” Ivan read on. “You could-well, not you, but someone crazy could- clone all our ancestors from those samples, you realize? I wonder if there was anyone famous in there?”
Tej tilted her head, considering this. “That might actually be made lucrative.”
“Buy your own clone of Prince Xav? Or worse, Mad Emperor Yuri…? Ye gods. No…!” His speeding eyes widened. “Lady ghem Estif offered to sell them back to the Star Creche!”
“That’s terrible!” said Tej, but went on in earnest critique, “She should have set up a bidding war between the Star Creche and Barrayar, at the very least! The Baronne could have advised her. What’s the point of having an auction with only one bidder?”
Ivan swallowed this practical Jacksonian view without gulping, much. Or at least without comment.
Tej added, with keen interest, “What did they offer her? I can’t believe By didn’t find out that.”
“He did. Ten million Betan dollars. Here’s where it all goes sideways. She set up a hand-off in a neutral location-House Dyne?”
Tej nodded. “That makes sense.”
“While Byerly was knocking himself out trying to steal the thing-ah, there you go, evidently he did offer to buy it, first-but he couldn’t get past her. Rish…apparently refused to take sides. So anyway, they dragged this Star Creche envoy, an actual haut lady, in her bubble and everything, though I’m not sure how you could tell-I wonder if it was Pel? — all the way out from Eta Ceta to the Whole, together with a suitcase full of bearer-credit-well not a suitcase, probably, doubtless an elegant little card, but anyway-and a platoon of really scary bodyguards. And the Dyne guy had the bond in hand, all cleared and ready to hand over. And Lady ghem Estif set the brooch down in a little force-bubble with, evidently, a hidden plasma charge, stood back, and set it off-blinding light, but no concussion-and turned it all to elemental gases. Right in front of them. By says he thought he was having a heart attack. And then he wished he’d had.”
“Wow!” said Tej.
“But why? Why would anyone, in effect, set fire to ten million Betan dollars?”
“Well, Grandmama…” Tej pursed her lips, then took a sip of fruity drink as she apparently thought this through. “Grandmama was really incensed at being culled from the haut, back when.”
“That was a hundred years ago! She’s held this grudge for over a century?”
Tej gave a nod. “It’s…it’s a girl thing,” she offered. “Ghem Estif-Arqua style.”
“Ye gods.” Should I keep this in mind?
Tej smiled a sharp little smile, and for a moment, he could see Shiv in her face. “What did my parents think about it all?”
Ivan read on. By could stand to have one of those accuracy-brevity-clarity tutorials, but maybe Allegre favored a different style. And he did still seem to have been quite upset when he’d composed this. Hysterical was probably not too strong a term. “The Baronne seems to have thought it wasteful. The Baron just laughed.”
“Despite all the mother-in-law jokes everyone tells,” Tej said meditatively, “Grandmama always did get along very well with Dada. I think it was because she spent the whole of her life up until the Barrayaran annexation of Komarr following all the rules, no matter how stupid they were, and being screwed over for it, and Dada finally taught her how to break them. And break away from them.”
“By wants to know, did either of us-meaning, probably, you-know? About the brooch, I think he’s asking, though it’s hard to tell.”
“Nope,” said Tej. “Tell him, sorry.”
“I guess.”
Ivan finally started on his own frosty fruity drink-nice kick-as Tej scrolled down. “Here’s one to me from your mother,” she said. “She and Simon are back safely from their big galactic trip, during which nobody tried to kill, kidnap, or otherwise vex anybody after all. Though she says she was a little afraid for some Tau Cetan customs inspectors at one point, but she got Simon calmed down…”
Simon and Lady Alys’s exile had not been nearly so summarily ordered as Ivan and Tej’s, a mere suggestion conveyed through Empress Laisa to her social secretary that she was overdue for a nice, long holiday. Though Ivan doubted that any Imperial nuances had been lost en route. Ivan remembered that part of his last conversation with Gregor, too.
Gregor had been pacing, exasperated, when he’d wheeled and burst out: “And Simon-what the hell?”
Ivan hesitated, while his hope that this might be a rhetorical question died a lonely death, then ventured, “I think he was bored, Gregor.”
“Bored!” Gregor jerked to a halt, taken aback. “I thought he was exhausted.”
“Right after the chip breakdown, sure.” Profoundly so. “For a while, everyone-even Mamere and Simon himself-assumed he was some fragile convalescent. But…quietly-he does everything quietly-he’s grown better.”
“I thank your mother for that, yes.”
Yeah, really. Ivan shied from trying to imagine the biography of a post-chip-Simon minus Alys, but it might have been a much shorter tale. “He’s fine when she’s with him. But she’s been going off to the Residence a lot, lately, leaving him to his own devices. And then Shiv came along and pushed all his old buttons, and, well, here we all are.”
Gregor contemplated the hereness of everyone, grimly. “I see.”
“I think he needs something to do. Not a full-time job. Occasional. Varied. Not too much like his old job.”
“That…will take some careful thought.”
Ivan hoped their long trip had given Gregor time for that thinking. He couldn’t help noticing, in retrospect, that despite the reported outbreak of Imperial sarcasm, it had been the Illyan Plan for the Arquas that Gregor had finally adopted, more or less. And that it seemed to be working, so far.
Tej, still reading-Mamere could be chatty-went on: “Oh, good, the new ImpSec building has been dedicated. Not built opposite the old one. They found another site. With fewer holes under it.”
“There’s a kindness,” Ivan put in. “Miles used to say that the one advantage of working in ImpSec HQ was that you couldn’t see ImpSec HQ.”
“They got Simon to cut the ribbon, ah, that’s sweet. She says they wanted to name it after him, but he declined the honor very firmly, so it’s going to go nameless for now.”
“I suppose they can circle back after he’s dead…” Ivan plowed on to his next letter. “Huh. Aunt Cordelia writes to me?”
“I really enjoyed meeting her and your Uncle Aral, when we stopped at Sergyar,” said Tej.
“She says she liked, you, too. And to be sure to allow time to stop again on our way back. She seems to assume we’ll be let to come back-that’s heartening. Simon and Mamere dropped in on their way home, too, evidently. Probably what triggered this. Simon and Aral enjoyed their trip out to see the new settlement…so glad for a chance to catch up with Alys…heard all about their nice visit to Beta Colony, yes, Mamere wrote me all about that, too… what? ”
“What what?” said Tej agreeably.
Mamere hadn’t written her only son everything about her trip to Beta Colony, evidently. “ She took Simon to the Orb? Or was it the other way around…? No, I guess not. Female collusion, I bet.” He read on, his face screwing up, then demanded of the auntless, and therefore blameless, air, “Why do you think you have to tell me these things, Aunt Cordelia?”
Tej’s lips twitched. “So what does she tell you?”
“They signed up for some sort of one-week deluxe instructional course. That doesn’t sound too…Role- playing? Because Mamere thought it might be easy for Simon to get into, on account of having done covert ops in
