A Civil Campaign

The Countess said coolly, 'We'll discuss Mark presently. Right now, allow me to draw your attention to how intelligent and informed your daughter is. Granted, she had not your disadvantage of trying to construct her life in the emotional isolation and chaos of a civil war. You both bought her a better, brighter chance than that, and I doubt you're sorry for it.'

The Commodore shrugged grudging agreement. Mama sighed in something like negative nostalgia, not longing for the remembered past but relief at having escaped it.

'Just to pick one example not at random,' the Countess went on, 'Kareen, didn't you obtain your contraceptive implant before you began physical experimentation?'

Tante Cordelia was so bloody Betan . . . she just belted out things like that in casual conversation. Kareen and her chin rose to the challenge. 'Of course,' she said steadily. 'And I had my hymen cut and did the programmed learning course the clinic gave on related anatomy and physiology issues, and Gran-tante Naismith bought me my first pair of earrings, and we went out for dessert.'

Da rubbed his reddening face. Mama looked . . . envious.

'And I daresay,' Tante Cordelia went on, 'you wouldn't describe your first steps into claiming your adult sexuality as a mad secret scramble in the dark, full of confusion, fear and pain, either?'

Mama's negative-nostalgia look deepened. So did Mark's.

'Of course not!' Kareen drew the line at discussing those details with Mama and Da, although she was dying for a comfortable gossip with Tante Cordelia about it all. She'd been too shy to start with an actual man , so she'd hired a hermaphrodite Licensed Practical Sexuality Therapist whom Mark's counselor had recommended. The L.P.S.T. had explained to her kindly that hermaphrodites were extremely popular with young persons taking the introductory practical course for just that reason. It had all worked out really really well. Mark, anxiously hovering by his comconsole for her post-coital report, had been so pleased for her. Of course, his introduction to his own sexuality had included such ghastly trauma and tortures, it was only natural he be worried sick. She smiled reassuringly at him now. 'If that's Barrayar, I'll take Beta!'

Tante Cordelia said thoughtfully, 'It's not entirely that simple. Both societies seek to solve the same fundamental problem—to assure that all children arriving will be cared for. Betans make the choice to do it directly, technologically, by mandating a biochemical padlock on everyone's gonads. Sexual behavior seems open at the price of absolute social control on its reproductive consequences. Has it never crossed your mind to wonder how that is enforced? It should. Now, Beta can control one's ovaries; Barrayar, especially during the Time of Isolation, was forced to try to control the entire woman attached to them. Throw in Barrayar's need to increase its population to survive, at least as pressing as Beta's to limit its to the same end, and your peculiar gender-biased inheritance laws, and, well, here we all are.'

'Scrambling in the dark,' growled Kareen. 'No thank you.'

'We should never have sent her there. Withhim ,' Da grumbled.

Tante Cordelia observed, 'Kareen was committed to her student year on Beta before she ever met Mark. Who knows? If Mark hadn't been there to, ah, insulate her, she might have met a nice Betan and stayed with him.'

'Or it,' Kareen murmured. 'Or her.'

Da's lips tightened.

'These trips can be more one-way than you expect. I haven't seen my own mother face-to-face more than three times in the last thirty years. At least if she sticks with Mark, you may be certain Kareen will return to Barrayar frequently.'

Mama appeared very struck by this. She eyed Mark in new speculation. He essayed a hopeful, helpful smile.

Da said, 'I want Kareen to be safe. Well. Happy. Financially secure. Is that so wrong?'

Tante Cordelia's lips twisted up with sympathy. 'Safe? Well? That's what I wanted for my boys, too. Didn't always get it, but here we are anyway. As for happiness . . . I don't think you can give that to anyone, if they don't have it in them. However, it's certainly possible to give un –happiness—as you are finding.'

Da's frown deepened in a somewhat surly manner, quelling Kareen's impulse to loudly cheer on this line of reasoning. Better let the Baba handle this . . .

The Countess continued, 'As for that last . . . hm. Has anyone discussed Mark's financial status with you? Kareen, or Mark . . . or Aral?'

Da shook his head. 'I thought he was broke. I assumed the family made him an allowance, like any other Vor scion. And that he ran through it—like any other Vor scion.'

'I'm not broke ,' Mark objected strenuously. 'It's a temporary cash-flow problem. When I budgeted for this period, I wasn't expecting to be starting up a new business in the middle of it.'

'In other words, you're broke,' said Da.

'Actually,' Tante Cordelia said, 'Mark is completely self-supporting. He made his first million on Jackson's Whole.'

Da opened his mouth, but then shut it again. He gave his hostess a disbelieving stare. Kareen hoped it would not occur to him to inquire closely into Mark's method for winning this fortune.

'Mark has invested it in an interesting variety of more and less speculative enterprises,' Tante Cordelia went on kindly. 'The family backs him—I've just bought some shares in his butter bug scheme myself—and we'll always be here for emergencies, but Mark doesn't need an allowance.'

Mark looked both grateful and awed to be so maternally defended, as if . . . well . . . just so. As if no one had ever done so before.

'If he's so rich, why is he paying my daughter in IOUs?' demanded Da. 'Why can't he just draw something out?'

'Before the end of the period?' said Mark, in a voice of real abhorrence. 'And lose all that interest ?'

'And they're not IOUs,' said Kareen. 'They're shares!'

'Mark doesn't need money,' said Tante Cordelia. 'He needs what he knows money can't buy. Happiness, for example.'

Mark, puzzled but pliable, offered, 'So . . . do they want me to pay for Kareen? Like a dowry? How much? I will —'

'No, you twit!' cried Kareen in horror. 'This isn't Jackson's Whole— you can't buy and sell people . Anyway, dowries were what the girl's family gave the fellow, not the other way around.'

'That seems very wrong,' said Mark, lowering his brows and pinching his chin. 'Backwards. Are you sure?'

'Yes.'

'I don't care if the boy has a million marks,' Da began, sturdily and, Kareen suspected, not quite truthfully.

'Betan dollars,' Tante Cordelia corrected absently. 'Jacksonians do insist on hard currencies.'

'The galactic exchange rates on the Barrayaran Imperial mark have been improving steadily since the War of the Hegen Hub,' Mark started to explain. He'd written a paper on the subject last term; Kareen had helped proofread it. He could probably talk for a couple of hours about it. Fortunately, Tante Cordelia's raised finger staunched this threatened flow of nervous erudition.