A Civil Campaign

wanting to puke by now, as long as she didn't look too closely at their pale pulsing abdomens. Kareen held out the bug to the gardener, and began a tolerably close copy of Mark's Better Butter Bugs for a Brighter Barrayar sales talk.

Though Madame Vorsoisson's eyebrows went up, she didn't shriek, faint, or run away at her first sight of a butter bug. She followed Kareen's explanation with interest, and was even willing to hold the bug and feed it a maple leaf. There was something very bonding about feeding live things, Kareen had to admit; she would have to keep that ploy in mind for future presentations. Enrique, his interest piqued by the voices drifting past his comconsole discussing his favorite subject, wandered over and did his best to queer her pitch by adding long, tedious technical footnotes to Kareen's streamlined explanations. The garden designer's interest soared visibly when Kareen got to the part about future R&D to create a Barrayaran-vegetation-consuming bug.

'If you could teach them to eat strangle-vines, South Continent farmers would buy and keep colonies for that alone,' Madame Vorsoisson told Enrique, 'whether they produced edible food as well or not.'

'Really?' said Enrique. 'I didn't know that. Are you familiar with the local planetary botany?'

'I'm not a fully-trained botanist—yet—but I have some practical experience, yes.'

'Practical,' echoed Kareen. A week of Enrique had given her a new appreciation for the quality.

'So let's see this bug manure,' the gardener said.

Kareen led her to the bin and unsealed the lid. The woman peered in at the heap of dark, crumbly matter, leaned over, sniffed, ran her hand through it, and let some sift out through her fingers. 'Good heavens.'

'What?' asked Enrique anxiously.

'This looks, feels, and smells like the finest compost I've ever seen. What kind of chemical analysis are you getting off it?'

'Well, it depends on what the girls have been eating, but—' Enrique burst into a kind of riff on the periodic table of the elements. Kareen followed the significance of about half of it.

Madame Vorsoisson, however, looked impressed. 'Could I have some to try on my plants at home?' she asked.

'Oh, yes,' said Kareen gratefully. 'Carry away all you want. There's getting to be rather a lot of it, and I'm really beginning to wonder where would be a safe place to dispose of it.'

'Dispose of it? If this is half as good as it looks, put it up in ten-liter bags and sell it! Everyone who's trying to grow Earth plants here will be willing to try it.'

'Do you think so?' said Enrique, anxious and pleased. 'I couldn't get anyone interested, back on Escobar.'

'This is Barrayar. For a long time, burning and composting was the only way to terraform the soil, and it's still the cheapest. There was never enough Earth-life based compost to both keep old ground fertile and break in new lands. Back in the Time of Isolation they even had a war over horse manure.'

'Oh, yeah, I remember that one from my history class.' Kareen grinned. 'A little war, but still, very . . . symbolic.'

'Who fought who?' asked Enrique. 'And why?'

'I suppose the war was really over money and traditional Vor privilege,' Madame Vorsoisson explained to him. 'It had been the custom, in the Districts where the Imperial cavalry troops were quartered, to distribute the products of the stables free to any prole who showed up to cart it away, first-come first-served. One of the more financially pressed Emperors decided to keep it all for Imperial lands or sell it. This issue somehow got attached to a District inheritance squabble, and the fight was on.'

'What finally happened?'

'In that generation, the rights fell to the District Counts. In the following generation, the Emperor took them back. And in the generation after that—well, we didn't have much horse cavalry anymore.' She went to the sink to wash, adding over her shoulder, 'There is still a customary distribution every week from the Imperial Stables here in Vorbarr Sultana, where the ceremonial cavalry squad is kept. People come in their groundcars, and carry off a bag or two for their flower beds, just for old time's sake.'

'Madame Vorsoisson, I've lived for four years in butter bug guts,' Enrique told her earnestly as she dried her hands.

'Mm,' she said, and won Kareen's heart on the spot by receiving this declaration with no more risibility than a slight helpless widening of her eyes.

'We really need someone on the macro-level as a native guide to the native vegetation,' Enrique went on. 'Do you think you could help us out?'

'I suppose I could give you some sort of quick overview, and some ideas about where to go to next. But you'd really need a District agronomy officer—Lord Mark can surely access the one in the Vorkosigan's District for you.'

'There, you see already,' cried Enrique. 'I didn't even know there was such a thing as a District agronomy officer.'

'I'm not sure Mark does, either,' Kareen added doubtfully.

'I'll bet the Vorkosigans' manager, Tsipis, could guide you,' Madame Vorsoisson said.

'Oh, do you know Tsipis? Isn't he a lovely man?' said Kareen.

Madame Vorsoisson nodded instant agreement. 'I've not met him in person yet, but he's given me ever so much help over the comconsole with Lord Vorkosigan's garden project. I mean to ask him if I could come down to the District to collect stones and boulders from the Dendarii Mountains to line the stream bed—the water in the garden is going to take the form of a mountain stream, you see, and I fancied Lord Vorkosigan would appreciate the home touch.'

'Miles? Yes, he loves those mountains. He used to ride up into them all the time when he was younger.'

'Really? He hasn't talked much to me about that part of his life —'

Mark appeared at the door at that moment, tottering along under a large box of laboratory supplies. Enrique relieved him of it with a glad cry, and carried it off to the dry bench, and began unpacking the awaited reagents.

'Ah, Madame Vorsoisson,' Mark greeted her, catching his breath. 'Thank you for the maple chippings. They seem to be a hit. Have you met everyone?'

'Just now,' Kareen assured him.

'She likes our bugs,' said Enrique happily.

'Have you tried the bug butter yet?' Mark asked.

'Not yet,' Madame Vorsoisson said.

'Would you be willing to? I mean, you did see the bugs, yes?' Mark smiled uncertainly at this new potential customer/test subject.

'Oh . . . all right.' The gardener's return smile was a trifle crooked. 'A small bite. Why not.'

'Give her a taste test, Kareen.'

Kareen pulled one of the liter tubs of bug butter from the stack on the shelf, and pried it open. Sterilized and sealed, the stuff would keep indefinitely at room temperature. She'd harvested this batch just this morning; the bugs had responded most enthusiastically to their new fodder. 'Mark,