Brothers in Arms

stripe in stock, in the natural colors, and I have samples of decorator colors that can be ordered in any size.'

'They did that to a cat?' Miles choked as Elli gathered up the whole huge boneless double-armful.

'Pet it,' the salesman instructed Elli eagerly.

She did so, and laughed. 'It purrs!'

'Yes. It also has programmable thermotaxic orientation—in other words, it snuggles up.'

Elli wrapped it around herself completely, black fur cascading over her feet like the train of a queen's robe, and rubbed her cheek into the silky shimmer. 'What won't they think of next? Oh, my. You want to rub it all over your skin.'

'You do?' muttered Miles dubiously. Then his eyes widened as he pictured Elli, in all her lovely skin, lolling on the hairy thing. 'You do?' he said in an entirely changed tone. His lips peeled back in a hungry grin. He turned to the salesman. 'We'll take it.'

The embarrassment came when he pulled out his credit card, stared at it, and realized he couldn't use it; It was Lieutenant Vorkosigan's, chock full of his embassy pay and utterly compromising to his present cover. Quinn, beside him, glanced over his shoulder at his hesitation. He tilted the card toward her to see, shielded in his palm, and their eyes met.

'Ah . . . no,' she agreed. 'No, no.' She reached for her wallet.

I should have asked the price first, Miles thought to himself as they exited the shop carting the unwieldy bundle in its elegant silver plastic wrappings. The package, the salesman had finally convinced them, did not require air-holes. Well, the fur had delighted Elli, and a chance to delight Elli was not to be lost for mere imprudence—or pride—on his part. He wanted to delight her. He would pay her back later.

But now, where could they go to try it out? He tried to think, as they exited the arcade and made their way to the nearest tubeway access port. He didn't want the night to end. He didn't know what he did want. No, he knew perfectly well what he wanted, he just didn't know if he could have it.

Elli, he suspected, didn't know how for his thought had taken him either. A little romance on the side was one thing; the change of career he was thinking of proposing to her—nice turn of phrase, that—would overturn her existence. Elli the space-born, who called all downsiders dirtsuckers in careless moments, Elli with a career agenda of her own. Elli who walked on land with all the dubious distaste of a mermaid out of water. Elli was an independent country. Elli was an island. And he was an idiot and this couldn't go on unresolved much longer or he would burst.

A view of Earth's famous moon, Miles figured, was what they needed, preferably shining on water. The town's old river, unfortunately, went underground in this sector, absorbed into arterial pipes below the 23rd-century building boom that had domed the half of the landscape not occupied by dizzily soaring spires and preserved historic architecture. Quietude, some fine and private place, was not easy to come by in a city of roiling millions.

The grave's a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace. . . . The deathly flashbacks to Dagoola had faded of late weeks, but this one took him unawares in an ordinary public lift tube descending to the bubble-car system. Elli was falling, torn out of his numb grip by a vicious vortex– design defect in the anti-grav system—swallowed by darkness—

'Miles, ow!' Elli objected. 'Let go of my arm! What's the matter?'

'Falling,' Miles gasped.

'Of course we're falling, this is the down-tube. Are you all right? Let me see the pupils of your eyes.' She grabbed a hand-grip and pulled them to the side of the tube, out of the central fast traffic zone. Midnight Londoners continued to flow past them. Hell had been modernized, Miles decided wildly, and this was a river of lost souls gurgling down some cosmic drain, faster and faster.

The pupils of her eyes were large and dark. . . .

'Do your eyes get dilated or constricted when you get one of your weird drug reactions?' she demanded worriedly, her face centimeters from his.

'What are they doing now?'

'Pulsing.'

'I'm all right.' Miles swallowed. 'The surgeon double-checks anything she puts me on, now. It may make me a little dizzy, she told me that.' He had not loosed his grip.

In the lift tube, Miles realized suddenly, their height difference was voided. They hung face to face, his boots dangling above her ankles—he didn't even need to hunt up a box to stand on, nor risk a twist in his neck— impulsively, his lips dove onto hers. There was a split-second wail of terror in his mind, like the moment after he'd plunged from the rocks into thirty meters of clear green water that he knew was icy cold, after he'd surrendered all choice to gravity but before the consequences engulfed him.

The water was warm, warm. . . . Her eyes widened in surprise. He hesitated, losing his precious forward momentum, and began to withdraw. Her lips parted for him, and her arm clamped around the back of his neck. She was an athletic woman; the grip was a non-regulation but effective immobilization. Surely the first time his being pinned to the mat had meant he'd won. He devoured her lips ravenously, kissed her cheeks, eyelids, brow, nose, chin—where was the sweet well of her mouth? there, yes. . . .

The bulky package containing the live fur began to drift, bumping down the lift tube. They were jostled by a descending woman who frowned at them, a teenage boy shooting down the center of the tube hooted and made rude, explicit gestures, and the beeper in Elli's pocket went off.

Awkwardly, they recaptured the fur and scrambled off the first exit they came to, and fled the tube's field through an archway onto a bubble-car platform. They staggered into the open and stared at each other, shaken. In one lunatic moment, Miles realized, he'd upended their carefully-balanced working relationship, and what were they now? Officer and subordinate? Man and woman? Friend and friend, lover and lover? It could be a fatal error.

It could also be fatal without the error; Dagoola had thrust that lesson home. The person inside the uniform was larger than the soldier, the man more complex than his role. Death could take not just him but her tomorrow, and a universe of possibilities, not just a military officer, would be extinguished. He would kiss her again—damn, he could only reach her ivory throat now—

The ivory throat emitted a dismayed growl, and she keyed open the channel on the secure comm link, saying, 'What the hell . . . ? It can't be you, you're here. Quinn here!'

'Commander Quinn?' Ivan Vorpatril's voice came small but clear. 'Is Miles with you?'

Miles's lips rippled in a snarl of frustration. Ivan's timing was supernatural, as ever.

'Yes, why?' said Quinn to the comm link.

'Well, tell him to get his ass back here. I'm holding a hole in the Security net for him, but I can't hold it much longer. Hell, I can't stay awake much longer.' A long gasp that Miles interpreted as a yawn wheezed from the comm link.

'My God, I didn't think he could really do it,' Miles muttered. He grabbed the comm link. 'Ivan? Can you really get me back in without being seen?'

'For about fifteen more minutes. And I had to bend regs all to hell and gone to do it, too. I'm holding down the guard post on the third sub-level, where the municipal power and sewer connections come through. I can loop the vid record and cut out the shot of your entry, but only if you get back here before Corporal Veli does. I don't mind putting my tail on the line for you, but I object to putting my tail on the line for nothing, you copy?'

Elli was studying the colorful holovid display mapping the tubeway system. 'You can just make it, I think.'

'It won't do any good—'

She grabbed his elbow and marched him toward the bubble cars, the firm gleam of duty crowding out the softer light in her eyes. 'We'll have ten more minutes together on the way.'

Miles massaged his face, as she went to credit their tokens, trying to rub his escaping rationality back through his skin by force. He looked up to see his own dim reflection staring back at him from the mirrored wall, shadowed by a pillar, face suffused with frustration and terror. He squeezed his eyes shut and looked again, moving in front of the pillar and staring. Most unpleasant—for a second, he had seen himself wearing his green Barrayaran uniform. Damn the pain pills. Was his subconscious trying to tell him something? Well, he didn't suppose he was in real trouble until a brain scan taken of him in his two different uniforms produced two different patterns.