A Civil Campaign

blighted we-will-discuss-this-later silence fell.

Lady Alys was alive to every nuance; her social self-control was such that only Miles and Illyan were close enough to her to detect her wince. Well able to set a tone no one dared ignore, she weighed in at last with, 'The presentation of the mirror repair as a wedding gift has proven most popular with—Miles, what has that animal got in its mouth?'

Miles's confused query of What animal? was answered before he even voiced it by the thump of multiple little feet across the dining room's polished floor. The half-grown black-and-white kitten was being chased by its all-black litter mate; for a catlet with its mouth stuffed full, it managed to emit an astonishingly loud mrowr of possession. It scrabbled across the wide oak boards, then gained traction on the priceless antique hand-woven carpet, till it caught a claw and flipped itself over. Its rival promptly pounced upon it, but failed to force it to give up its prize. A couple of insectoid legs waved feebly among the quivering white whiskers, and a brown-and-silver wing carapace gave a dying shudder.

'My butter bug!' cried Enrique in horror, shoved back his chair, and pounced, rather more effectively, on the feline culprit. 'Give it up, you murderess!' He retrieved the mangled bug, much the worse for wear, from the jaws of death. The black kitten stretched itself up his leg, and waved a frantic paw, Me, me, give me one too!

Excellent! thought Miles, smiling fondly at the kittens. The vomit bugs have a natural predator after all! He was just evolving a rapid-deployment plan for Vorkosigan House's guardcats when his brain caught up with itself. The kitten had already had the butter bug in its mouth when it had scampered into the dining room. Therefore—

'Dr. Borgos, where did that cat find that bug?' Miles asked. 'I thought you had them all locked down. In fact,' he glanced down the table at Mark, 'you promised me they would be.'

'Ah . . .' Enrique said. Miles didn't know what chain of thought the Escobaran was thumbing down, but he could see the jerk when he got to the end. 'Oh. Excuse me. There's something I have to check in the lab.' Enrique smiled unreassuringly, dropped the kitten on his vacated chair, spun on his heel, and hurried out of the dining room toward the back stairs.

Mark said hastily, 'I think I'd better go with him,' and followed.

Filled with foreboding, Miles set his napkin down, and murmured quietly, 'Aunt Alys, Simon, take over for me, would you?' He joined the parade, pausing only long enough to direct Pym to serve more wine. Lots more. Immediately.

Miles caught up with Enrique and Mark at the door of the laundry- cum-laboratory one floor below just in time to hear the Escobaran's cry of Oh, no! Grimly, he shouldered past Mark to find Enrique kneeling by a large tray, one of the butter bug houses, which now lay at an angle between the box upon which it had been perched, and the floor. Its screen top was knocked askew. Inside, a single Vorkosigan-liveried butter bug, which was missing two legs on one side, scrambled about in forlorn circles but failed to escape over the side-wall.

'What happened?' Miles hissed to Enrique.

'They're gone ,' Enrique replied, and began to crawl around the floor, looking under things. 'Those cursed cats must have knocked the tray over. I'd pulled it out to select your presentation bugs. I wanted the biggest and best. It was all right when I left it . . .'

'How many bugs were in this tray?'

'All of them, the entire genetic grouping. About two hundred individuals.'

Miles stared around the lab. No Vorkosigan-liveried bugs were visible anywhere. He thought about what a large, old, creaky structure Vorkosigan House really was. Cracks in the floors, cracks in the walls, tiny fissures of access everywhere; spaces under the floorboards, behind the wainscoting, up in the attics, inside the old plastered walls . . .

The worker bugs , Mark had said, would just wander about till they died, end of story . . . 'You still have the queen, presumably? You can, ah, recover your genetic resource, eh?' Miles began to walk slowly along the walls, staring down intently. No brown-and-silver flashes caught his straining eye.

'Um,' said Enrique.

Miles chose his words carefully. 'You assured me the queens couldn't move.'

'Mature queens can't move, that's true,' Enrique explained, climbing to his feet again, and shaking his head. 'Immature queens, however, can scuttle like lightning.'

Miles thought it through; it took only a split-second. Vorkosigan- liveried vomit bugs. Vorkosigan-liveried vomit bugs all over Vorbarr Sultana .

There was an ImpSec trick, which involved grabbing a man by the collar and giving it a little half-twist, and doing a thing with the knuckles; applied correctly, it cut off both blood circulation and breath. Miles was absently pleased to see that he hadn't lost his touch, despite his new civilian vocation. He drew Enrique's darkening face down toward his own. Kareen, breathless, arrived at the lab door.

'Borgos. You will have every one of those god-damned vomit bugs, and especially their queen, retrieved and accounted for at least six hours before Count and Countess Vorkosigan are due to walk in the door tomorrow afternoon. Because five hours and fifty-nine minutes before my parents arrive here, I am calling in a professional exterminator to take care of the infestation, that means any and all vomit bugs left outstanding, do you understand? No exceptions, no mercy.'

'No, no! ' Enrique managed to wail, despite his lack of oxygen. 'You mustn't . . .'

'Lord Vorkosigan!' Ekaterin's shocked voice came from the door. It had some of the surprise effect of being hit from ambush by a stunner beam. Miles's hand sprang guiltily open, and Enrique staggered upright again, drawing breath in a huge strangled wheeze.

'Don't stop on my account, Miles,' said Kareen coldly. She stalked into the lab, Ekaterin behind her. 'Enrique, you idiot, how could you mention the Orb in front of my parents! Have you no sense?'

'You've known him for this long, and you have to ask?' said Mark direfully.

'And how did you—' her angry gaze swung to Mark, 'how did he find out about it anyway—Mark?'

Mark shrank slightly.

'Mark never said it was a secret—I thought it sounded romantic. Lord Vorkosigan, please! Don't call an exterminator! I'll get the girls all back, I promise! Somehow—' Tears welled in Enrique's eyes.

'Calm down, Enrique!' Ekaterin said soothingly. 'I'm sure,' she cast Miles a doubtful look, 'Lord Vorkosigan won't order your poor bugs killed. You'll find them again.'

'I have a time limit here . . .' Miles muttered through his teeth. He could just picture the scene, tomorrow afternoon or evening, of himself explaining to the returning Viceroy and Vicereine just what those tiny retching noises coming from their walls were. Maybe he could shove the task of apprising them onto Mark—

'If you like, Enrique, I'll stay and help you hunt,' Ekaterin volunteered sturdily. She frowned at Miles.

The sensation was like an arrow through his heart, Urk . Now there was a scenario: Ekaterin and Enrique with their heads heroically, and closely, bent together to save the Poor Bugs from the evil threats of the villainous Lord