A Civil Campaign

Galeni regarded him for a long moment, then said abruptly, 'About your clone.'

'Brother.'

'Yes, him. Do you know . . . do you understand . . . what the devil does he intend , with respect to Kareen Koudelka?'

'Is this ImpSec asking, or Duv Galeni?'

'Duv Galeni.' Galeni paused for a rather longer time. 'After the . . . ambiguous favor he did me when we first encountered each other on Earth, I was content to see him survive and escape. I wasn't even too shocked when I learned he'd popped up here, nor—now I've met your mother—that your family took him in. I'd even reconciled myself to the likelihood that we would meet, from time to time.' His level voice cracked a trifle. 'I wasn't expecting him to mutate into my brother-in-law!'

Miles sat back, his brows rising in partial sympathy. He refrained from doing anything so rude as, say, cackling. 'I would point out, that in an exceedingly weird sense, you are related already. He's your foster brother. Your father had him made; by some interpretations of the galactic laws on clones, that makes him Mark's father too.'

'This concept makes my head spin. Painfully.' He stared at Miles in sudden consternation. 'Mark doesn't think of himself as my foster brother, does he?'

'I have not so far directed his attention to that legal wrinkle. But think, Duv, how much easier it will be if you only have to explain him as your brother-in- law. I mean, lots of people have embarrassing in-laws; it's one of life's lotteries. You'll have all their sympathy.'

Galeni gave him a look of Very Limited Amusement.

'He'll be Uncle Mark,' Miles pointed out with a slow, unholy smile. 'You'll be Uncle Duv. I suppose, by some loose extension, I'll be Uncle Miles. And here I never thought I'd be anybody's uncle—an only child and all that.'

Come to think of it . . . if Ekaterin ever accepted him, Miles would become an instant uncle, acquiring three brothers-in-law simultaneously, all with attached wives, and a pack of nieces and nephews already in place. Not to mention the father-in-law and the stepmother-in-law. He wondered if any of them would be embarrassing. Or—a new and unnerving thought—if he was going to be the appalling brother-in-law . . .

'Do you think they'll marry?' asked Galeni seriously.

'I . . . am not certain what cultural format their bonding will ultimately take. I am certain you could not pry Mark away from Kareen with a crowbar. And while Kareen has good reasons to take it slowly, I don't think any of the Koudelkas know how to betray a trust.'

That won a little eyebrow-flick from Galeni, and the slight mellowing that any reminder of Delia invariably produced in him.

'I'm afraid you're going to have to resign yourself to Mark as a permanent fixture,' Miles concluded.

'Eh,' said Galeni. It was hard to tell if this sound represented resignation, or stomach cramp. In any case, he climbed to his feet and took his leave.

* * *

Mark, entering the black-and-white tiled entry foyer from the back hallway to the lift tubes, encountered his mother descending the front staircase.

'Oh, Mark,' Countess Vorkosigan said, in a just-the-man-I-want-to- see voice. Obediently, he paused and waited for her. She eyed his neat attire, his favorite black suit modified by what he trusted was an unthreatening dark green shirt. 'Are you on your way out?'

'Shortly. I was just about to hunt up Pym and ask him to assign me an Armsman-driver. I have an interview set up with a friend of Lord Vorsmythe's, a food service fellow who's promised to explain Barrayar's distribution system to me. He may be a future customer—I thought it might look well to arrive in the groundcar, all Vorkosiganly.'

'Very likely.'

Her further comment was interrupted by two half-grown boys rounding the corner: Pym's son Arthur, carrying a smelly fiber-tipped stick, and Jankowski's boy Denys, lugging an optimistically large jar. They clattered up the stairs past her with a breathless greeting of, 'Hello, milady!'

She wheeled to watch them pass, her eyebrows rising in amusement. 'New recruits for science?' she asked Mark as they thumped out of sight, giggling.

'For enterprise. Martya had a flash of genius. She put a bounty on escaped butter bugs, and set all the Armsmen's spare children to rounding them up. A mark apiece, and a ten-mark bonus for the queen. Enrique is back to work splicing genes full-time, the lab is caught up again, and I can return my attention to financial planning. We're getting bugs back at the rate of two or three an hour; it should be all over by tomorrow or the next day. At least, none of the children seem yet to have hit on the idea of sneaking into the lab and freeing Vorkosigan bugs, to renew their economic resource. I may devise a lock for that hutch.'

The Countess laughed. 'Come now, Lord Mark, you insult their honor. These are our Armsmen's offspring.'

'I would have thought of that, at their age.'

'If it weren't their liege-lord's bugs, they might have.' She smiled, but her smile faded. 'Speaking of insults . . . I wanted to ask you if you'd heard any of this vile talk going around about Miles and his Madame Vorsoisson.'

'I've been head-down in the lab for the last several days. Miles doesn't come back there much, for some reason. What vile talk?'

She narrowed her eyes, slipped her hand through his arm, and strolled with him toward the antechamber to the library. 'Illyan and Alys took me aside at the Vorinnis's dinner party last night, and gave me an earful. I'm extremely glad they got to me first. I was then cornered by two other people in the course of the evening and given garbled alternate versions . . . actually, one of them was trolling for confirmation. The other appeared to hope I'd pass it on to Aral, as he didn't dare repeat it to his face, the spineless little snipe. It seems rumors have begun to circulate through the capital that Miles somehow made away with Ekaterin's late husband while on Komarr.'

'Well,' said Mark reasonably, 'you know more about that than I do. Did he?'

Her eyebrows went up. 'Do you care?'

'Not especially. From everything I've been able to gather—between the lines, mostly, Ekaterin doesn't talk about him much—Tien Vorsoisson was a pretty complete waste of food, water, oxygen, and time.'

'Has Miles said anything to you that . . . that leaves you in doubt about Vorsoisson's death?' she asked, seating herself beside the huge antique mirror gracing the side wall.

'Well, no,' Mark admitted, taking a chair across from her. 'Though I gather he fancies himself guilty of some carelessness. I think it would have been a much more interesting romance if he had assassinated the lout for her.'

She sighed, looking bemused. 'Sometimes, Mark, despite all your Betan therapist has done, I'm afraid your Jacksonian upbringing still leaks out.'

He shrugged, unrepentantly. 'Sorry.'

'I am moved by your insincerity. Just don't repeat those no doubt honest sentiments in front of Nikki.'

'I may be Jacksonian, ma'am, but I'm not a complete loss.'