Cetaganda

'As what?' asked the haut Pel in a practical tone.

Rian stared into the air a moment, and replied, 'As collections of human genomic materials from your various satrapies, requested by the Lady before her death, and received by us in trust for the Star Creches experimental files.'

'That will do nicely on this end,' nodded the haut Pel. 'And on the other end?'

'Tell your governors . . . we discovered a serious error in the copy, which must be corrected before the genome can be released to them.'

'Very good.'

The meeting broke up, the women activating their float-chairs, though not yet their private bubbles, and leaving in twos and threes in a murmur of intense discussion. Rian and the haut Pel waited until the room emptied, and Miles perforce waited with them.

'Do you still want me to try and retrieve the Key for you?' Miles asked Rian. 'Barrayar remains vulnerable until we nail the satrap governor with solid proof, data a clever man can't diddle. And I especially don't like the toehold he seems to have in your own security.'

'I don't know,' said Rian. 'The return of the gene banks cannot take less than a day. I'll . . . send someone for you, as we did tonight.'

'We'll be down to two days left, then. Not much margin. I'd rather go sooner than later.'

'It cannot be helped.' She touched her hair, a nervous gesture despite its grace.

Watching her, he searched his heart. The impact of his first mad crush was surely fading, in this drought of response, to be replaced by … what? If she had slaked his thirst with the least little drop of affection, he would be hers body and soul right now. In a way he was glad she wasn't faking anything, depressing as it was to be treated like a ba servitor, his loyalty and obedience assumed. Maybe his proposed disguise as a ba had been suggested by his subconscious for more than practical reasons. Was his back-brain trying to tell him something?

'The haut Pel will return you to your point of origin,' Rian said.

He bowed. 'In my experience, milady, we can never get back to exactly where we started, no matter how hard we try.'

She returned nothing to this but an odd look, as he rode out again on the haut Pel's float-chair.

Pel carried him through the Celestial Garden as before, in reverse. He wondered if she was as uncomfortable with their compressed proximity as he was. He made a stab at light conversation.

'Did the haut-ladies make all this plant and animal life in the garden? Competing, like the ghem bioesthetics fair? I was particularly impressed by the singing frogs, I must say.'

'Oh, no,' said the haut Pel. 'The lower life-forms are all ghem work. That's their highest reward, to have their art incorporated into the Imperial garden. The haut only work in human material.'

He didn't recall seeing any monsters around. 'Where?'

'We mostly field-test ideas in the ba servitors. It prevents the accidental release of any genomic materials through sexual routes.'

'Oh.'

'Our highest honor is for a favorable gene complex we have developed to be taken up into the haut-genome itself.'

It was like some golden rule in reverse—never do unto yourself what you have not first tried on another. Miles smiled, rather nervously, and did not pursue the subject further. A groundcar driven by a ba servitor waited for the haut Pel's bubble at the side entrance to the Celestial Garden, and they were returned to Lady d'Har's penthouse by more normal routes.

Pel let him out of her bubble in another private nook, in an unobserved moment, and drifted away again. He pictured her reporting back to Rian—Yes, milady, I released the Barrayaran back into the wild as you ordered. I hope he will be able to find food and a mate out there. . . . He sat on a bench overlooking the Celestial Garden, and meditated upon that view until Ivan and Ambassador Vorob'yev found him.

They looked, respectively, scared and angry. 'You're late,' said Ivan. 'Where the hell did you go?'

'I almost called out Colonel Vorreedi and the guards,' added Ambassador Vorob'yev sternly.

'That would have been . . . futile,' sighed Miles. 'We can go now.'

'Thank God,' muttered Ivan.

Vorob'yev said nothing. Miles rose, wondering how soon the ambassador and Vorreedi were going to stop taking Not yet for an answer.

Not yet. Please, not yet.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

There was nothing he would have liked more than a day off, Miles reflected, but not today. The worst was the knowledge that he'd done this to himself. Until the consorts completed their retrieval of the gene banks, all he could do was wait. And unless Rian sent a car to the embassy to pick him up, a move so overt as to be vigorously resisted by both sets of Imperial Security, it was impossible for Miles to make contact with her again until the Gate-song Ceremonies tomorrow morning at the Celestial Garden. He grumbled under his breath, and called up more data on his suite's comconsole, then stared at it unseeing.

He wasn't sure it was wise to give Lord X an extra day either, for all that this afternoon would contain a nasty shock for him when his consort came to take away his gene bank. That would eliminate his last chance of sitting tight, and gliding away with bank and Key, perhaps dumping his old centrally appointed and controlled consort out an airlock en route. The man must realize now that Rian would turn him in, even if it meant incriminating herself, before letting him get away. Assassinating the Handmaiden of the Star Creche hadn't been part of the Original Plan, Miles was fairly sure. Rian had been intended to be a blind puppet, accusing Miles and Barrayar of stealing her Key. Lord X had a weakness for blind puppets. But Rian was loyal to the haut, beyond her own self-interest. No right-minded plotter could assume she would stay paralyzed for long.

Lord X was a tyrant, not a revolutionary. He wanted to take over the system, not change it. The late Empress was the real revolutionary, with her attempt to divide the haut into eight competing sibling branches, and may the best superman win. The Ba Lura might have been closer to its mistress's mind than Rian allowed. You can't give power away and keep it simultaneously. Except posthumously.

So what would Lord X do now? What could he do now, but fight to the last, trying anything he could think of to avoid being brought down for this? It was that or slit his wrists, and Miles didn't think he was the wrist-slitting type. He would still be searching for some way to pin it all on Barrayar, preferably in the form of a dead Miles who couldn't give him the lie. There was even still a faint chance he could bring that off, given the Cetagandan lack of enthusiasm for outlanders in general and Barrayarans in particular. Yes, this was a good day to stay indoors.

So would the results have been any better if Miles had publicly turned over the decoy Key and the truth on the very first day? No . . . then the embassy and its envoys would be mired right now in false accusations and public scandal, and no way to prove their innocence. If Lord X had picked any other delegation but Barrayar's upon which to plant his false Key—say, the Marilacans, the Aslunders, or the Vervani—his plan might yet be running along like clockwork. Miles hoped sourly that Lord X was Very, Very Sorry that he'd targeted Barrayar. And I'm going to make you even sorrier, you sod.

Miles's lips thinned as he turned his attention back to his comconsole. The satrap governors' ships were all to the same general plan, and a general plan, alas, was all the Barrayaran embassy data bank had available without tapping in to the secret files. Miles shuffled the holovid display though the various levels and sections of the ship. If I were a satrap governor planning revolt, where would I hide the Great Key? Under ray pillow? Probably not.

The governor had the Key, but not the Key's key, so to speak; Rian still possessed that ring. If Lord X could