A Civil Campaign

'Ah,' said Ekaterin faintly. 'That one. Yes. That one is very real.'

'Mama accused me of only doing short- term thinking, but I'm not! The butter bug project—it's like school all over again, short-term deprivation for a really major pay-off down the line. I've studied the analyses Mark did with Tsipis. It's not a get-rich-quick scheme. It's a get-rich-big scheme. Da and Mama don't have a clue how big. They imagine I've spent my time with Mark playing around, but I've been working my tail off, and I know exactly why. Meanwhile I have over a month's salary tied up in shares in the basement of Vorkosigan House, and I don't know what's happening over there! ' Her fingers were white where they gripped the table edge, and she had to stop for breath.

'I take it you haven't heard from Dr. Borgos, either?' said Martya cautiously to Ekaterin.

'Why . . . no.'

'I felt almost sorry for him. He was trying so hard to please. I hope Miles hasn't really had all his bugs killed.'

'Miles never threatened all his bugs,' Kareen pointed out. 'Just the escapees. As for me, I wish Miles had strangled him. I'm sorry you made him stop, Ekaterin.'

'Me!' Ekaterin's lips twisted with bemusement.

'What, Kareen,' scoffed Martya, 'just because the man revealed to everybody that you were a practicing heterosexual? You know, you really didn't play that one right, considering all the Betan possibilities. If only you'd spent the last few weeks dropping the right kind of hints, you could have had Mama and Da falling to their knees in thanks that you were only messing around with Mark. Though I do wonder about your taste in men.'

What Martya doesn't know about my sampling of Betan possibilities , Kareen decided firmly, won't hurt me . 'Or else they really would have locked me in the attic.'

Martya waved this away. 'Dr. Borgos was terrorized enough. It's really unfair to drop a normal person down in Vorkosigan House with the Chance Brothers and expect him to just cope.'

'Chance Brothers?' Ekaterin inquired.

Kareen, who had heard the jibe before, gave it the bare grimace it deserved.

'Um,' Martya had the good grace to look embarrassed. 'It was a joke that was going around. Ivan passed it on to me.' When Ekaterin continued to look blankly at her, she added reluctantly. 'You know—Slim and Fat.'

'Oh.' Ekaterin didn't laugh, though she smiled briefly; she looked as though she was digesting this tidbit, and wasn't sure if she liked the aftertaste.

'You think Enrique is normal?' said Kareen to her sister, wrinkling her nose.

'Well . . . at least he's a change from the sort of Lieutenant Lord Vor-I'm-God's-Gift-to-Women we usually meet in Vorbarr Sultana. He doesn't back you into a corner and gab on endlessly about military history and ordnance. He backs you into a corner and gabs on endlessly about biology, instead. Who knows? He might be good husband material.'

'Yeah, if his wife didn't mind dressing up as a butter bug to lure him to bed,' said Kareen tartly. She made antennae of her fingers, and wriggled them at Martya.

Martya snickered, but said, 'I think he's the sort who needs a managing wife, so he can work fourteen hours a day in his lab.'

Kareen snorted. 'She'd better seize control immediately. Yeah, Enrique has biotech ideas the way Zap the Cat has kittens, but it's a near-certainty that whatever profit he gets from them, he'll lose.'

'Too trusting, do you think? Would people take advantage of him?'

'No, just too absorbed. It would come to the same thing in the end, though.'

Ekaterin sighed, a distant look in her eyes. 'I wish I could work four hours at a stretch without chaos erupting.'

'Oh,' said Martya, 'but you're another. One of those people who pulls amazing things out of their ears, that is.' She glanced around the tiny, serene garden. 'You're wasted in domestic management. You're definitely R and D.'

Ekaterin smiled crookedly. 'Are you saying I don't need a husband, I need a wife? Well, at least that's a slight change from my sister-in-law's urgings.'

'Try Beta Colony,' Kareen advised, with a melancholy sigh.

The conversation grounded for a stretch upon this beguiling thought. The muted city street noises echoed over the walls and around the houses, and the slanting sunlight crept off the grass, putting the table into cool pre-evening shade.

'They really are utterly revolting bugs,' Martya said after a time. 'No one in their right mind will ever buy them.'

Kareen hunched at this discouraging non-news. The bugs did too work. Bug butter was science's almost-perfect food. There ought to be a market for it. People were so prejudiced. . . .

A slight smile turned Martya's lip, and she added, 'Though the brown and silver was just perfect. I thought Pym was going to pop.'

'If only I'd known what Enrique was up to,' mourned Kareen, 'I could have stopped him. He'd been babbling on about his surprise, but I didn't pay enough attention—I didn't know he could do that to the bugs.'

Ekaterin said, 'I could have realized it, if I'd given it any thought. I scanned his thesis. The real secret is in the suite of microbes.' At Martya's raised eyebrows, she explained, 'It's the array of bioengineered microorganisms in the bugs' guts that do the real work of breaking down what the bugs eat and converting it into, well, whatever the designer chooses. Enrique has dozens of ideas for future products beyond food, including a wild application for environmental radiation cleanup that might excite . . . well. Anyway, keeping the microbe ecology balanced—tuned, Enrique calls it—is the most delicate part. The bugs are just self- assembling and self-propelled packaging around the microbe suite. Their shape is semi-arbitrary. Enrique just grabbed the most efficient functional elements from a dozen insect species, with no attention at all to the aesthetics.'

'Most likely.' Slowly, Kareen sat up. 'Ekaterin . . . you do aesthetics.'

Ekaterin made a throwaway gesture. 'In a sense, I guess.'

'Yes, you do. Your hair is always right. Your clothes always look better than anyone else's, and I don't think it's that you're spending more money on them.'

Ekaterin shook her head in rueful agreement.

'You have what Lady Alys calls unerring taste , I think,' Kareen continued, with rising energy. 'I mean, look at this garden. Mark, Mark does money, and deals. Miles does strategy and tactics, and inveigling people into doing what he wants.' Well, maybe not always; Ekaterin's lips tightened at the mention of his name. Kareen hurried on. 'I still haven't figured out what I do. You—you do beauty. I really envy that.'

Ekaterin looked touched. 'Thank you, Kareen. But it really isn't anything that—'