A Civil Campaign

nod in amused agreement.

Lady Alys's eyes narrowed in calculation. 'Gregor, Laisa? Is that idea mutually acceptable?'

'It works for me,' said Gregor.

'I don't think my parents would mind going along with it,' said Laisa. 'Um . . . who would stand in for your parents, Gregor?'

'Count and Countess Vorkosigan will be taking their place on the wedding circle, of course,' said Gregor. 'I'd assume it would be them . . . ah, Miles?'

'Mother wouldn't blink,' said Miles, 'though I can't guarantee she wouldn't make rude comments about Barrayarans. Father . . .'

A more politically-guarded silence fell around the table. More than one eye drifted to Duv Galeni, whose jaw tightened slightly.

'Duv, Laisa.' Lady Alys tapped one perfectly enameled fingernail on the polished tabletop. 'Komarran socio-political response on this one. Frankly, please.'

'I have no personal objection to Count Vorkosigan,' said Laisa.

Galeni sighed. 'Any . . . ambiguity that we can sidestep, I believe we should.'

Nicely put, Duv. You'll be a politician yet. 'In other words, sending the Butcher of Komarr to ogle their nekkid sacrificial maiden would be about as popular as plague with the Komarrans back home,' Miles put in, since no one else could. Well, Ivan maybe. Lady Alys would have had to grope for several more moments to come up with a polite locution for the problem. Galeni shot him a medium-grateful glower. 'Perfectly understandable,' Miles went on. 'If the lack of symmetry isn't too obvious, send Mother and Aunt Alys as the delegation from Gregor's side, with maybe one of the female cousins from his mother Princess Kareen's family. It'll fly for the Barrayaran conservatives because guarding the genome always was women's work.'

The Barrayarans around the table grunted agreement. Lady Alys smiled shortly, and ticked off the item.

A complicated, and lengthy, debate ensued over whether the couple should repeat their vows in all four of Barrayar's languages. After that came thirty minutes of discussion on how to handle domestic and galactic newsfeeds, in which Miles adroitly, and with Galeni's strong support, managed to avoid collecting any more tasks requiring his personal handling. Lady Alys flipped to the next page, and frowned. 'By the way, Gregor, have you decided what you're going to do about the Vorbretten case yet?'

Gregor shook his head. 'I'm trying to avoid making any public utterance on that one for the moment. At least till the Council of Counts gets done trampling about in it. Whichever way they fall out, the loser's appeal will doubtless land in my lap within minutes of their decision.'

Miles glanced at his agenda in confusion. The next item read Meal Schedules . 'Vorbretten case?'

'Surely you've heard the scandal—' began Lady Alys. 'Oh, that's right, you were on Komarr when it broke. Didn't Ivan fill you in? Poor Ren?. The whole family's in an uproar.'

'Has something happened to Ren? Vorbretten?' Miles asked, alarmed. Ren? had been a couple of years ahead of Miles at the Academy, and looked to be following in his brilliant father's footsteps. Commodore Lord Vorbretten had been a star prot?g? of Miles's father on the General Staff, until his untimely, if heroic, death by Cetagandan fire in the war of the Hegen Hub a decade past. Less than a year later, old Count Vorbretten had died, some said in grief for the loss of his beloved eldest son; Ren? had been forced to give up his promising military career and take up his duties as Count of his family's District. Three years ago, in a whirlwind romance that had been the delight of Vorbarr Sultana, he'd married the gorgeous eighteen-year-old daughter of the wealthy Lord Vorkeres. Them what has, gets , as they said in the backcountry.

'Well . . .' said Gregor, 'yes and no. Um . . .'

'Um what ?'

Lady Alys sighed. 'Count and Countess Vorbretten, having decided it was time to start carrying out their family duties, very sensibly decided to use the uterine replicator for their first- born son, and have any detected defects repaired in the zygote. For which, of course, they both had complete gene scans.'

'Ren? found he was a mutie?' Miles asked, astonished. Tall, handsome, athletic Ren?? Ren?, who spoke four languages in a modulated baritone that melted female hearts and male resistance, played three musical instruments entrancingly, and had perfect singing pitch to boot? Ren?, who could make Ivan grind his teeth in sheer physical jealousy?

'Not exactly,' said Lady Alys, 'unless you count being one-eighth Cetagandan ghem as a defect.'

Miles sat back. 'Whoops.' He took this in. 'When did this happen?'

'Surely you can do the math,' murmured Ivan.

'Depends on which line it came through.'

'The male,' said Lady Alys. 'Unfortunately.'

Right. Ren?'s grandfather, the seventh Count-Vorbretten-to-be, had indeed been born in the middle of the Cetagandan occupation. The Vorbrettens, like many Barrayarans, had done what they needed to survive. . . . 'So Ren?'s great-grandma was a collaborator. Or . . . was it something nastier?'

'For what it's worth,' said Gregor, 'what little surviving documentation ImpSec has unearthed suggests it was probably a voluntary and rather extended liaison, with one—or more—of the high-ranking ghem-officers occupying their District. At this range, one can't tell if it was love, self-interest, or an attempt to buy protection for her family in the only coin she had.'

'It could have been all three,' said Lady Alys. 'Life in a war zone isn't simple.'

'In any case,' said Gregor, 'it seems not to have been a matter of rape.'

'Good God. So, ah, do they know which ghem-lord was Ren?'s ancestor?'

'They could in theory send his gene scan to Cetaganda and find out, but as far as I know they haven't elected to do so yet. It's rather academic. What is . . . something other than academic is the apparent fact that the seventh Count Vorbretten was not the son of the sixth Count.'

'They were calling him Ren? Ghembretten last week at HQ,' Ivan volunteered. Gregor grimaced.

'I'm astounded the Vorbrettens let this leak out,' said Miles. 'Or was it the doctor or the medtechs who betrayed them?'

'Mm, therein hangs yet more of the tale,' said Gregor. 'They had no intention of doing so. But Ren? told his sisters and his brother, thinking they had a right to know, and the young Countess told her parents. And from there, well, who knows. But the rumor eventually came to the ears of Sigur Vorbretten, who is the direct descendant of the sixth Count's younger brother, and incidentally the son-in-law of Count Boriz Vormoncrief. Sigur has somehow—and there's a counter-suit pending about his methods—obtained a copy of Ren?'s gene scan. And Count Vormoncrief has brought suit before the Council of Counts, on his son-in-law's behalf, to claim the Vorbretten descent and District for Sigur. And there it sits.'

'Ow. Ow! So . . . is Ren? still Count, or not? He was presented and confirmed in his person by the Council, with all the due forms—hell, I was there, come to think of it. A Count doesn't have to be the previous Count's son—there've been nephews, cousins, skips to other lines, complete breaks due to treason or war—has anyone mentioned Lord Midnight, the fifth Count Vortala's horse, yet? If a horse can inherit a Countship, I don't see what's the theoretical objection to a Cetagandan. Part- Cetagandan.'