A Civil Campaign

and suppliers, to not flush bug butter down the sink? So what if she looked on him as a sort of oversized repulsive fat butter bug that her sister had inexplicably taken for a pet. He had not the least doubt Martya could make the brains run on time. . . . 'Enrique?'

'Hm?' Enrique murmured, not looking up.

Mark got his attention by reaching over and switching off the vid, and explained Martya's offer.

'Oh, yes, that would be lovely,' the Escobaran agreed sunnily. He smiled hopefully at Martya.

The deal was struck, though Kareen looked as if she might be having second thoughts about sharing shares with her sister. Martya electing to return to Vorkosigan House with them on the spot, Mark and Enrique rose to make their farewells.

'Are you going to be all right?' Mark asked Kareen quietly, while Ekaterin was busy getting her bug designs downloaded for Enrique to carry off.

She nodded. 'Yeah. You?'

'I'm hanging on. How long will it take, d'you suppose? Till this mess gets resolved?'

'It's resolved already.' Her expression was disturbingly fey. 'I'm done arguing, though I'm not sure they realize it yet. I've had it. While I'm still living in my parents' house, I'll continue to hold myself honor-bound to obey their rules, however ludicrous. The moment I've figured out how to be somewhere else without compromising my long-range goals, I'll walk away. Forever, if need be.' Her mouth was grim and determined. 'I don't expect to be there much longer.'

'Oh,' said Mark. He wasn't exactly sure what she meant, or meant to do, but it sounded . . . ominous. It terrified him to think that he might be the cause of her losing her family. It had taken him a lifetime, and dire effort, to win such a place of his own. The Commodore's clan had looked to be such a golden refuge, to him . . . 'It's . . . a lonely place to be. On the outside like that.'

She shrugged. 'So be it.'

The business meeting broke up. Last chance . . . They were in the tiled hallway, with Ekaterin ushering them out, before Mark worked up the courage to blurt to her, 'Are there any messages I can take for you? To Vorkosigan House, I mean?' He was absolutely certain he would be ambushed by his brother on his return, given the way Miles had briefed him on his departure.

Renewed wariness closed down the expression on Ekaterin's face. She looked away from him. Her hand touched her bolero, over her heart; Mark detected a faint crackle of expensive paper beneath the soft fabric. He wondered if it would have a salutary humbling effect on Miles to learn where his literary effort was being stored, or whether it would just make him annoyingly elated.

'Tell him,' she said at last, and no need to specify which him , 'I accept his apology. But I can't answer his question.'

Mark felt he had a brotherly duty to put in a good word for Miles, but the woman's painful reserve unnerved him. He finally mumbled diffidently, 'He cares a lot, you know.'

This wrenched a short little nod from her, and a brief, bleak smile. 'Yes. I know. Thank you, Mark.' That seemed to close the subject.

Kareen turned right at the sidewalk, while the rest of them turned left to head back to where the borrowed Armsman waited with the borrowed groundcar. Mark walked backwards a moment, watching her retreat. She strode on, head down, and didn't look back.

* * *

Miles, who had left the door of his suite open for the purpose, heard Mark returning in the late afternoon. He nipped out into the hall, and leaned over the balcony with a predatory stare down into the black-and-white paved entry foyer. All he could tell at a glance was that Mark looked overheated, an inescapable result of wearing that much black and fat in this weather.

Miles said urgently, 'Did you see her?'

Mark stared up at him, his brows rising in unwelcome irony. He clearly sorted through a couple of tempting responses before deciding on a simple and prudent, 'Yes.'

Miles's hands gripped the woodwork. 'What did she say? Could you tell if she'd read my letter?'

'As you may recall, you explicitly threatened me with death if I dared ask her if she'd read your letter, or otherwise broached the subject in any way.'

Impatiently, Miles waved this off. 'Directly . You know I meant not to ask directly . I just wondered if you could tell . . . anything.'

'If I could tell what a woman was thinking just by looking at her, would I look like this ?' Mark made a sweeping gesture at his face, and glowered.

'How the hell would I know? I can't tell what you're thinking just because you look surly. You usually look surly.'Last time, it was indigestion . Although in Mark's case, stomach upset tended to be disturbingly connected with his other difficult emotional states. Belatedly, Miles remembered to ask, 'So . . . how is Kareen? Is she all right?'

Mark grimaced. 'Sort of. Yes. No. Maybe.'

'Oh.' After a moment Miles added, 'Ouch. Sorry.'

Mark shrugged. He stared up at Miles, now pressed to the uprights, and shook his head in exasperated pity. 'In fact, Ekaterin did give me a message for you.'

Miles almost lurched over the balcony. 'What,what ?'

'She said to tell you she accepts your apology. Congratulations, dear brother; you appear to have won the thousand-meter crawl. She must have awarded you extra points for style, is all I can say.'

'Yes! Yes!' Miles pounded his fist on the rail. 'What else? Did she say anything else?'

'What else d'you expect?'

'I don't know. Anything. Yes, you may call on me , or No, never darken my doorstep again , or something . A clue, Mark!'

'Search me. You're going to have to go fish for your own clues.'

'Can I? I mean, she didn't actually say I was not to bother her again?'

'She said, she couldn't answer your question. Chew on it, crypto- man. I have my own troubles.' Shaking his head, Mark passed out of sight, heading for the back of the house and the lift tube.

Miles withdrew into his chambers, and flung himself down in the big chair in the bay window overlooking the back garden. So, hope staggered upright again, like a newly revived cryo- corpse dizzied and squinting in the light. But not, Miles decided firmly, cryo-amnesiac. Not this time. He lived, therefore he learned.

I can't answer your question did not sound like No to him. It didn't sound like Yes either, of course. It sounded like . . . one more last chance. Through a miracle of grace, it seemed he was to be permitted to begin again. Scrape it all back to Square One and start over, right.

So, how to approach her? No more poetry, methinks. I was not born under a rhyming planet . Judging from yesterday's effort, which he had prudently removed from his wastebasket and burned this morning along with all the other awkward drafts, any verse flowing from his pen was likely to be ghastly. Worse: if by some chance he managed something good, she'd likely want