Vaagen nodded. “We’ve worked together.”
“Then you know all about them!”
“Well—not exactly all. But, ah—in fact, he informs me that they are available. But you understand, I’m not an obstetrician.”
“You certainly aren’t,” said her man. “Milady, this man isn’t even a physician. He’s only a biochemist.”
“But you’re an obstetrician,” she pointed out. “So we have the whole team, then. Dr. Henri, and, um, Captain Vaagen here for Piotr Miles, and you, for the transfer.”
His lips were compressed, and his eyes held a very strange expression. It took her a moment to identify it as fear. “I can’t do the transfer, Milady,” he said. “I don’t know how. Nobody on Barrayar has ever done one.”
“You don’t advise it, then?”
“Definitely not. The possibility of permanent damage—you can, after all, begin again in a few months, if the soft-tissue scarring doesn’t extend to testicular—ahem. You can begin again. I am your doctor, and that is my considered opinion.”
“Yes, if somebody else doesn’t knock Aral off in the meantime. I must remember this is Barrayar, where they are so in love with death they bury men who are still twitching. Are you willing to try the operation?”
He drew himself up in dignity. “No, Milady. And that’s final.”
“Very well.” She pointed a finger at her doctor, “You’re out,” and shifted it to Vaagen, “you’re in. You are now in charge of this case. I rely on you to find me a surgeon—or a medical student, or a horse doctor, or somebody who’s willing to try. And then you can experiment to your heart’s content.”
Vaagen looked mildly triumphant; her former man looked furious. “We had better see what my Lord Regent has to say, before you carry his wife off on this wave of criminally false optimism.”
Vaagen looked a little less triumphant.
“You thinking of charging over there right now?” asked Cordelia.
“I’m sorry, Milady,” said the Residence man, “but I think we’d do best to quash this thing right now. You don’t know Captain Vaagen’s reputation. Sorry to be so blunt, Vaagen, but you’re an empire builder, and this time you’ve gone too far.”
“Are you ambitious for a research wing, Captain Vaagen?” Cordelia inquired.
He shrugged, embarrassed rather than outraged, so she knew the Residence man’s words to be at least half true. She gathered Vaagen in by eye, willing to possess him body, mind, and soul, but especially mind, and wondering how best to fire his imagination in her service.
“You shall have an institute, if you can bring this off. You tell him,” she jerked her head in the direction of the hall, toward Aral’s room, “I said so.”
Variously discomfited, angry, and hopeful, they withdrew. Cordelia lay back on the bed and whistled a little soundless tune, her fingertips continuing their slow abdominal massage. Gravity had ceased to exist.
Chapter Nine
She slept at last, toward the middle of the day, and woke disoriented. She squinted at the afternoon light slanting through the hospital room’s windows. The grey rain had gone away. She touched her belly, for grief and reassurance, and rolled over to find Count Piotr sitting at her bedside.
He was dressed in his country clothes, old uniform trousers, plain shirt, a jacket that he wore only at Vorkosigan Surleau. He must have come up directly to ImpMil. His thin lips smiled anxiously at her. His eyes looked tired and worried.
“Dear girl. You need not wake up for me.”
“That’s all right.” She blinked away blear from her eyes, feeling older than the old man. “Is there something to drink?”
He hastily poured her cold water from the bedside basin spigot, and watched her swallow. “More?”
“That’s enough. Have you seen Aral yet?”
He patted her hand. “I’ve talked to Aral already. He’s resting now. I am so sorry, Cordelia.”
“It may not be as bad as we feared at first. There’s still a chance. A hope. Did Aral tell you about the uterine replicator?”
“Something. But the damage has already been done, surely. Irrevocable damage.”
“Damage, yes. How irrevocable it is, no one knows. Not even Captain Vaagen.”
“Yes, I met Vaagen a little while ago.” Piotr frowned. “A pushing sort of fellow. New Man type.”
“Barrayar needs its new men. And women. Its technologically trained generation.”
“Oh, yes. We fought and slaved to create them. They are absolutely necessary. They know it, too, some of them.” A hint of self-aware irony softened his mouth. “But this operation you’re proposing, this placental transfer … it doesn’t sound too safe.”
“On Beta Colony, it would be routine.” Cordelia shrugged. We are not, of course, on Beta Colony.
“But something more straightforward, better understood—you would be ready to begin again much sooner. In the long run, you might actually lose less time.”
“Time … isn’t what I’m worried about losing.” A meaningless concept, now she thought of it. She lost 26.7 hours every Barrayaran day. “Anyway, I’m never going through that again. I’m not a slow learner, sir.”
A flicker of alarm crossed his face. “You’ll change your mind, when you feel better. What does matter now—I’ve talked to Captain Vaagen. There seemed no question in his mind there is great damage.”
“Well, yes. The unknown is whether there can be great repairs.”
“Dear girl.” His worried smile grew tenser. “Just so. If only the fetus were a girl … or even a second son … we could afford to indulge your understandable, even laudable, maternal emotions. But this thing, if it lived, would be Count Vorkosigan someday. We cannot afford to have a deformed Count Vorkosigan.” He sat back, as if he had just made some cogent point.
Cordelia wrinkled her brow. “Who is we?”
“House Vorkosigan. We are one of the oldest great houses on Barrayar. Never, perhaps, the richest, seldom the strongest, but what we’ve lacked in wealth we’ve made up in honor. Nine generations of Vor warriors. This would be a horrible end to come to, after nine generations, don’t you see?”
“House Vorkosigan, at this point in time, consists of two individuals, you and Aral,” Cordelia observed, both amused and disturbed. “And Counts Vorkosigan have come to horrible ends throughout your history. You’ve been blown up, shot, starved, drowned, burned alive, beheaded, diseased, and demented. The only thing you’ve never done is die in bed. I thought horrors were your stock in trade.”
He returned her a pained smile. “But we’ve never been mutants.”
“I think you need to talk to Vaagen again. The fetal damage he described was teratogenic, not genetic, if I understand him correctly.”
“But people will think it’s a mutant.”
“What the devil do you care what some ignorant prole thinks?”
“Other Vor, dear.”
“Vor, prole, they’re equally ignorant, I assure you.”
His hands twitched. He opened his mouth, closed it again, frowned, and said more sharply, “A Count Vorkosigan has never been an experimental laboratory animal, either.”
“There you go, then. He serves Barrayar even before he’s born. Not a bad start on a life of honor.” Perhaps some good would come of it, in the end, some knowledge gained; if not help for themselves, then for some other parents’ grief. The more she thought about it, the more right her decision felt, on more than one level.
Piotr jerked his head back. “For all you Betans seem soft, you have an appalling cold-blooded streak in you.”
“Rational streak, sir. Rationality has its merits. You Barrayarans ought to try it sometime.” She bit her tongue. “But we run ahead of ourselves, I think, sir. There are lots of d—” dangers, “difficulties yet to come. A placental transfer this late in pregnancy is tricky even for galactics. I admit, I wish there were time to import a more experienced surgeon. But there’s not.”
“Yes … yes … it may yet die, you’re right. No need to … but I’m afraid for you, too, girl. Is it worth it?”
