Cordonah. We are, shall we say, not without hidden resources and potential allies back in the Whole, but not if we arrive appearing to be disarmed, destitute, and desperate.”
“Whether you can climb up to success or are forced down to grubberdom depends on making your break- point,” said Shiv. “Both success and failure are feedback loops, that way. Me, I started as a gutter grubber. I don’t plan on going back down to that gutter again alive.”
Jacksonian determination glinted in Shiv’s eye, reminding Ivan, for a weird moment, of his cousin Miles. People for whom failure was psychologically tantamount to death, yeah.
Ivan had a few clues as to what forces had shaped Miles that way, putative child of privilege though he was. The chief of whom had been named General Count Piotr Vorkosigan, though Barrayar’s endemic hostility toward perceived mutations had certainly provided an on-going chorus to that appalling old man, whose every grudging grain of approval had been won by his mutie grandson by an equally appalling achievement, or at least some bone- cracking attempt at it. On Ivan’s personal youthful list of people to avoid, Great-uncle Piotr had been at the top. Not a ploy available to Miles, poor sawed-off sod.
So what had shaped and wound that same tight spring in Shiv? And Udine as well? Ivan wasn’t sure he wanted the tour.
“Isn’t enough to fund a small war also enough to, say, buy a nice tropical island and retire?” Ivan couldn’t help asking.
“Not while those Prestene bastards hold two of my children hostage,” said Shiv grimly.
“Not to mention my hair,” said Udine, plucking at her fringe. Shiv caught the nervous hand and kissed it, looking sideways at his wife, and for the first time Ivan wondered, What else besides the hair? Yet whatever had been done to her, in the unsavory hands of her enemies, Ivan was pretty sure the hair was going to be the only part ever mentioned aloud.
“Ah. Yeah,” said Ivan. No, it wasn’t just about money; there was blood on the line as well. Ivan understood blood, well enough.
But it did give Ivan a notion as to what the Arquas thought was under that park: enough to fund a small war. Or buy a tropical island, depending on one’s tastes in such things. And these two didn’t look to be going for the drinks with fruit on little sticks.
“But, ah-Tej wouldn’t really need to go back with you for that, would she? Surely it would be safer to leave her here on Barrayar.” With me.
“With you?” said Udine, raising an eyebrow and making Ivan twitch.
“I do, um…like her a lot,” Ivan managed. He wondered if So does my mother and sort-of-stepfather would be good to add, or if that would just up the bidding on the deal.
Udine sat back. “So you… like her enough to want her to forsake her family and stay with you-but do you like her enough to leave your family and go with her?”
Shiv, too, stared narrowly at him at this. “It’s true, he does have that Barrayaran military training. It is unclear how much he also has Barrayaran military experience, however.”
Ivan gulped, unnerved. “I’d be delighted to leave my family and go somewhere with Tej, just not…not Jackson’s Whole. Not my kind of place, y’know.”
“Hm,” said Shiv, opaquely. He eased back in his seat, though Ivan hadn’t noticed him tense.
Ivan said, “Look, I can support a wife here on Barrayar. And I know my home ground. On Jackson’s Whole, I’d be, what…destitute and disarmed. Not to mention out of my depth.”
“As Tej has been, here?” Udine inquired sweetly.
Shiv gave him the eyebrow thing. “A man should know himself, I suppose,” he said. “Me, I’ve been face flat, sucking gutter slime, three times in my life, and had to start again each time from scratch. I’m getting too old to enjoy shoveling that shit anymore, but I can’t say I don’t know how.”
This was not, Ivan sensed, a remark in Ivan’s favor, oblique though it sounded.
“I, as well,” murmured Udine, “though only once. I do not mean to let this present contretemps stand as twice.”
“But you left your original family,” Ivan tried. “To go with Shiv. Your new husband. Didn’t you? Anyway, left your planet.”
Udine’s voice went dry. “More evicted than left, in the event. We were fleeing the Barrayaran military conquest of Komarr, at the time.”
“Although that worked out surprisingly well,” Shiv murmured. “In the long run.” That passing hand grip again, on the sofa between them.
Her eyes grew amused, and turned back on Ivan. “Yes, I suppose I should thank you Barrayarans for that. Ejecting me out of my rut.”
“I wasn’t born yet,” Ivan put in, just in case.
Dare he ask them, straight out, Are you planning to take Tej away? What if the answer was Yes, certainly? Did Tej think she had a vote? Did they think Tej had a vote? Or Ivan?
No, Jacksonians didn’t have votes; they had deals. For the first time, Ivan wondered uneasily what he had to offer at the Great House scale of play. His personal wealth, though doubtless impressive to some prole or grubber, would barely tweak their scanners. His blood was more hazard than hope, the main question being how far it would splash in a crunch. And he wasn’t a candidate for conscription into their system, as they had hinted, not under any circumstances. Which left-what?
Udine’s gaze strayed to her abandoned comconsole. The suite was awfully quiet, Ivan realized. Where were all the rest of the clan this morning, and what were they doing? “Well, don’t let us keep you, Captain Vorpatril.”
From what? But Ivan took the hint, and stood. “Right-oh. Thanks for the coffee. If you hear from Tej before I do, ask her to call me, huh?” He tapped his wristcom meaningfully.
“Certainly,” said Udine.
Shiv saw him back to the door. “As it so happens,” he said, eyeing Ivan shrewdly, “we do have a little side deal in progress here on Barrayar. If it is successful, it will certainly aid our departure.” And if you want to see the back of Clan Arqua, maybe you’d better do your bit to see it is successful, huh? seemed to hang in the air, implied.
“I sure hope everything works out,” Ivan responded. Shiv merely looked amused at that manifest vagueness.
Ivan retreated down the hotel corridor.
He rather thought he might also see the back of Clan Arqua by just waiting and letting nature, or at least Customs amp; Immigration, take its course. Deportation, that was the ticket. And he, personally, wouldn’t have to lift a finger. And Tej would not be included in the roundup, because she had, what had Lady ghem Estif called it, umbrella residency as a spouse, all right and tight and no argument there.
If she chose.
Yeah.
It seemed to Ivan that he needed to court his wife. Promptly. In the next, what was it, ten days. If he could catch her in passing, in this spate of Arqua chores. But how can I court her when no one even gives me a chance to see her?
Tej parked the rented groundcar and stared dubiously around the dim underground garage. After yesterday’s dance in the park, and some sharp debate over city maps, Pearl had found this place-by the simple method of walking around and looking-under one of the few commercial buildings near ImpSec HQ, which was otherwise mainly ringed by assorted stodgy government offices. This building housed mostly offices as well: attorneys, a satellite communications company, an architectural firm, a terraforming consultant, financial managers of various sorts. The two layers of garage were packed during the day, but relatively clear after hours and on the Barrayaran weekend, which this was.
This commercial building lay on a corner across the street from the backside, as it were, of the security headquarters. The far side, unfortunately, from the little park that had indeed been found to top Grandmama’s old lab site, or most of it; some of the lab had been mapped to run under the street fronting the headquarters. If ImpSec’s subbasements had been dug two dozen meters farther southeast, back in Mad Yuri’s day, they’d have cut right into the lab’s top corner. Tej didn’t see how they could have missed detecting it, but the Baronne claimed they
