Cetaganda

'It wasn't hours. It was minutes. Sergeant Bothari had you out of there in practically no time.'

'It seemed like hours to me. I can still taste the dirt. It got stuffed up my nose, too.' Ivan rubbed his nose in memory. 'Mother would still be having the fit, if Aunt Cordelia hadn't sat on her.'

'We were stupid little kids. What has this got to do with anything?'

'Nothing, I suppose. I just woke up thinking about it, this morning.' Ivan stood up, fastened his tunic, and pulled it straight. 'I never believed I'd miss Sergeant Bothari, but I think I do now. Who's going to dig me out this time?'

Miles wanted to snap out a sharp rejoinder, but shivered instead. I miss Bothari too. He had almost forgotten how much, till Ivan's words hit the scar of his regret, that secret little pocket of anguish that never seemed to drain. Major mistakes . . . Dammit, a man walking a tight-wire didn't need someone shouting from the sidelines how far down the drop was, or what lousy balance he had. It wasn't like he didn't know; but what he most needed was to forget. Even a momentary loss of concentration—of self-confidence —of forward momentum, could be fatal. 'Do me a favor, Ivan. Don't try to think. You'll hurt yourself. Just follow orders, huh?'

I van bared his teeth in a non-smile, and followed Miles out the door.

They met with ghem-Colonel Benin in the same little conference room as before, but this time, Vorreedi rode shotgun personally, dispensing with the guard. The two colonels were just finishing the amenities and sitting down as Miles and Ivan entered, by which sign Miles hoped they'd had less time to compare notes than he and Ivan'd had. Benin was dressed again in his formal red uniform and lurid face paint, freshly and perfectly applied. By the time they'd all finished going through the polite greetings once more, and everyone was reseated, Miles had his breathing and heartbeat under control. Ivan concealed his nerves in an expression of blank benevolence that made him look, in Miles's opinion, remarkably sappy.

'Lord Vorkosigan,' ghem-Colonel Benin began. 'I understand you work as a courier officer.'

'When I'm on duty.' Miles decided to repeat the party line for Benin's benefit. 'It's an honorable task, that's not too physically demanding for me.'

'And do you like your duties?'

Miles shrugged. 'I like the travel. And, ah … it gets me out of the way, an advantage that cuts two ways. You know about Barrayar's backward attitude to mutations.' Miles thought of Yenaro s longing for a post. 'And it gives me an official position, makes me somebody'

'I can understand that, ' conceded Benin.

Yeah, I thought you would.

'But you're not on courier duty now?'

'Not this trip. We were to give our diplomatic duties our undivided attention, and, it was hoped, maybe acquire a little polish.'

'And Lord Vorpatril here is assigned to Operations, is that right?'

'Desk work,' Ivan sighed. 'I keep hoping for ship duty.'

Not really true, Miles reflected; Ivan adored being assigned to HQ at the capital, where he kept up his own apartment and a social life that was the envy of his brother-officers. Ivan just wished his mother Lady Vorpatril might be assigned ship duty, someplace far away.

'Hm.' Benin's hands twitched, as if in memory of sorting stacks of plastic flimsies. He drew breath, and looked Miles straight in the eyes. 'So, Lord Vorkosigan—the funeral rotunda was not the first time you saw the Ba Lura, was it?'

Benin was trying for the rattling unexpected straight shot, to unnerve his quarry. 'Correct,' Miles answered, with a smile.

Expecting denial, Benin already had his mouth open for the second strike, probably the presentation of some telling piece of evidence that would give the Barrayaran the lie. He had to close it again, and start over. 'If … if you wished to keep it a secret, why did you as much as flat tell me to look where I would be sure to find you? And,' his tone sharpened with baffled annoyance, 'if you didn't want to keep it a secret, why didn't you tell me about it in the first place?'

'It provided an interesting test of your competence. I wanted to know if it would be worth my while to persuade you to share your results. Believe me, my first encounter with the Ba Lura is as much a mystery to me as I'm sure it is to you.'

Even from beneath the gaudy face paint, the look Benin gave Miles reminded him forcibly of the look he got all too often from superiors. He even capitalized it in his mind, The Look. In a weird backhanded way, it made him feel quite comfortable with Benin. His smile became slightly cheerier.

'And . . . how did you encounter the Ba?' said Benin.

'What do you know so far?' 'Miles countered. Benin would, of course, keep something back, to cross-check Miles s story. That was quite all right, as Miles proposed to tell almost the whole truth, next.

'Ba Lura was at the transfer station the day you arrived. He left the station at least twice. Once, apparently, from a pod docking bay in which the security monitors were deactivated and unchecked for a period of forty minutes. The same bay and the same period in which you arrived, Lord Vorkosigan.'

'Our first arrival, you mean.'

'… Yes.'

Vorreedi's eyes were widening and his lips were thinning. Miles ignored him, for now, though Ivan's gaze cautiously shifted to check him out.

'Deactivated? Torn out of the wall, I'd call it. Very well, ghem-Colonel. But tell me—was our encounter in the pod dock the first or second time the Ba appeared to leave the station?'

'Second,' Benin said, watching him closely.

'Can you prove that?'

'Yes.'

'Good. It may be very important later that you can prove that.' Ha, Benin wasn't the only one who could cross-check the truth of this conversation. Benin, for whatever reason, was being straight with him so far. Turn and turnabout. 'Well, this is what happened from our point of view—'

In a flat voice, and with plenty of corroborative physical details, Miles described their confusing clash with the Ba. The only item he changed was to report the Ba reaching for its trouser pocket before he'd yelled his warning. He brought the tale up to the moment of Ivan's heroic struggle and his own retrieval of the loose nerve disrupter, and bounced it over to Ivan to finish. Ivan gave him a dirty look, but, taking his tone from Miles, offered a brief factual description of the Ba's subsequent escape.

Since it lacked face paint, Miles could watch Vorreedi's face darken, out of the corner of his eye. The man was too cool and controlled to actually turn purple or anything, but Miles bet a blood pressure monitor would be beeping in plaintive alarm right now.

'And why did you not report this at our first meeting, Lord Vorkosigan?' Benin asked again, after a long, digestive pause.

'I might,' said Vorreedi in a slightly suffused voice, 'ask you the same question, Lieutenant.' Benin shot Vorreedi a raised-brow look, almost putting his face paint in danger of smudging.

Lieutenant, not my lord; Miles took the point. 'The pod pilot reported to his captain, who will have reported to his commander.' To wit, Illyan; in fact, the report, slogging through normal channels, should be reaching Illyan's desk right about now. Three days more for an emergency query to arrive on Vorreedi's desk from home, six more days for a reply and return-reply. It would all be over before Illyan could do a damned thing, now. 'However, on my authority as senior envoy, I suppressed the incident for diplomatic reasons. We were sent with specific instructions to maintain a low profile and behave with maximum courtesy. My government considered this solemn occasion an important opportunity to send a message that we would be glad to see more normal trade and other relations, and an easing of tensions along our mutual borders. I did not judge that it would do anything helpful for our mutual tensions to open our visit with charges of an