Was what worth what? How could she know? Her lungs burned. She smiled wearily at him, and shook her head, which ached with tight pressure in her temples and neck.
“Father,” came a raspy voice from the doorway. Aral leaned there, in his green pajamas, a portable oxygenator stuck up his nose. How long had he stood there? “I think Cordelia needs to rest.”
Their eyes met, over Piotr. Bless you, love… .
“Yes, of course.” Count Piotr gathered himself together, and creaked to his feet. “I’m sorry, you’re quite correct.” He pressed Cordelia’s hand one more time, firmly, with his dry old-man’s grip. “Sleep. You’ll be able to think more clearly later.”
“Father.”
“You shouldn’t be out of bed, should you?” said Piotr, drawn off. “Go back and lie down, boy… .” His voice drifted away, across the corridor.
Aral returned later, after Count Piotr had finally left.
“Was Father bothering you?” he asked, looking grim. She held out her hand to him, and he sat beside her. She transferred her head from her pillow to his lap, her cheek on the firm-muscled leg beneath the thin pajama, and he stroked her hair.
“No more than usual,” she sighed.
“I feared he was upsetting you.”
“It’s not that I’m not upset. It’s just that I’m too tired to run up and down the corridor screaming.”
“Ah. He did upset you.”
“Yes.” She hesitated. “In a way, he has a point. I was so afraid for so long, waiting for the blow to fall, from somewhere, nowhere, anywhere. Then came last night, and the worst was done, over … except it’s not over. If the blow had been more complete, I could stop, quit now. But this is going to go on and on.” She rubbed her cheek against the cloth. “Did Illyan come up with anything new? I thought I heard his voice out there, earlier.”
His hand continued to stroke her hair, in even rhythm. “He’d finished the preliminary fast-penta interrogation of Evon Vorhalas. He’s now investigating the old armory where Evon stole the soltoxin. It appears Evon might not have equipped himself so ad hoc unilaterally as he claimed. An ordnance major in charge there has disappeared, AWOL. Illyan’s not certain yet if the man was eliminated, to clear Evon’s path, or if he actually helped Evon, and has gone into hiding.”
“He might just be afraid. If it was dereliction.”
“He’d better be afraid. If he had any conscious connivance in this …” His hand clenched in her hair, he became aware of the pull, muttered, “Sorry,” and continued petting. Cordelia, feeling very like an injured animal, crept deeper into his lap, her hand on his knee.
“About Father—if he upsets you again, send him to me. You shouldn’t have to deal with him. I told him it was your decision.”
“My decision?” Her hand rested, without moving. “Not our decision?”
He hesitated. “Whatever you want, I’ll support you.”
“But what do you want? Something you’re not telling me?”
“I can’t help understanding his fears. But … there’s something I haven’t discussed with him yet, nor am I going to. The next child may not be so easy to come by as the first.”
Easy? You call this easy?
He went on, “One of the lesser—known side effects of soltoxin poisoning is testicular scarring, on the micro-level. It could reduce fertility below the point of no return. Or so my examining physician warns me.”
“Nonsense,” said Cordelia. “All you need is any two somatic cells and a replicator. Your little finger and my big toe, if that’s all they can scrape off the walls after the next bomb, could go on reproducing little Vorkosigans into the next century. However many our survivors choose to afford.”
“But not naturally. Not without leaving Barrayar.”
“Or changing Barrayar. Dammit.” His hand jerked back at the bite in her tone. “If only I had insisted on using the replicator in the first place, the baby need never have been at risk. I knew it was safer, I knew it was there—” Her voice broke.
“Sh. Sh. If only I had … not taken the job. Kept you at Vorkosigan Surleau. Pardoned that murderous idiot Carl, for God’s sake. If only we’d slept in separate rooms …”
“No!” Her hand tightened on his knee. “And I refuse to go live in some bomb shelter for the next fifteen years. Aral, this place has to change. This is unbearable.” If only I had never come here.
If only. If only. If only.
The operating room seemed clean and bright, if not so copiously equipped as galactic standard. Cordelia, wafting on her float pallet, turned her head sideways to take in as much detail as she could. Lights, monitors, an operating table with a catch-basin set beneath it, a tech checking a bubbling tank of clear yellow fluid. This was not, she told herself sternly, the point of no return. This was simply the next logical step.
Captain Vaagen and Dr. Henri stood sterile-garbed and waiting, beyond the operating table. Next to them sat the portable uterine replicator, a metal and plastic canister half a meter tall, studded with control panels and access ports. The lights on its sides glowed green and amber. Cleaned, sterilized, its nutrient and oxygen tanks recharged and ready … Cordelia eyed it with profound relief. The primitive Barrayaran back-to-the-apes style gestation was nothing but the utter failure of reason to triumph over emotion. She’d so wanted to please, to fit in, to try to become Barrayaran… . And so my child pays the price. Never again.
Dr. Ritter, the surgeon, was tall and dark-haired, with olive skin and long lean hands. Cordelia had liked his hands the first moment she saw them. Steady. Ritter and a medtech now positioned her over the operating table, and shifted the float pallet out from under her. Dr. Ritter smiled reassuringly. “You’re doing fine.”
Of course I’m fine, we haven’t even started yet, Cordelia thought irritably. Dr. Ritter was palpably nervous, though the tension somehow stopped at his elbows. The surgeon was a friend of Vaagen’s, whom Vaagen had strong-armed into this, after they’d spent a day running through a list of more experienced men who had refused to touch the case.
Vaagen had explained it to Cordelia. “What do you call four big bravos with clubs in a dark alley?”
“What?”
“A Vor lord’s malpractice suit.” He’d chuckled. Vaagen’s sense of humor was acid-black. Cordelia could have hugged him for it. He’d been the only person to crack a joke in her presence in the last three days, possibly the most rational and honest person she’d met since she’d left Beta Colony. She was glad he was here.
They rolled her to her side, and touched her spine with the medical stun. A tingle, and her cold feet felt suddenly warm. Her legs went abruptly inert, like bags of lard.
“Can you feel that?” asked Dr. Ritter.
“Feel what?”
“Good.” He nodded to the tech, and they straightened her out. The tech uncovered her stomach, and turned on the sterilizer-field. The surgeon palpated her, cross-checking the holovid monitors for the infant’s exact position within her.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be asleep through this?” Dr. Ritter asked her for the last time.
“No. I want to watch. This is my first child being born.” Maybe my only child being born.
He smiled wanly. “Brave girl.”
Girl, hell, I’m older than you. Dr. Ritter, she sensed, would rather not be watched. Tough.
Dr. Ritter paused, taking one last glance around as if mentally checklisting the readiness of his tools and people. And will and nerve, Cordelia guessed.
“Come on, Ritter my man, let’s get this over with,” said Vaagen, tapping his fingers impatiently. His tone was a peculiar mix, a little sarcastic prodding lilt over an underlying warmth of genuine encouragement. “My scans show bone sloughing already under way. If the disintegration gets too far advanced, I’ll have no matrix left to build from. Cut now, chew your nails later.”
“Chew your own nails, Vaagen,” said the surgeon genially. “Jog my elbow again and I’ll have my medtech put a speculum down your throat.”
Very old friends, Cordelia gauged. But the surgeon raised his hands, took a breath and a grip on his vibra- scalpel, and sliced her belly open in one perfectly controlled stroke. The medtech followed his motion smoothly with the surgical hand-tractor, clamping blood vessels; scarcely a cat-scratch of blood escaped. Cordelia felt pressure but no pain. Other cuts laid open her uterus.
