Cetaganda

open the Great Key, he could do a data dump, possess himself of a duplicate of the information-contents, and maybe, in a pinch, return the original, divesting himself of material evidence of his treasonous plans. Or even destroy it, hah. But if the Key were easy to get open, he should have done this already, when his plans first began to go seriously wrong. So if he was still trying to access the Key, it ought to be located in some sort of cipher lab. So where on this vast ship was a suitable cipher lab . . . ?

The chime of his door interrupted Miles's harried perusal. Colonel Vorreedi's voice inquired, 'Lord Vorkosigan? May I come in?'

Miles sighed. 'Enter.' He'd been afraid all this comconsole activity would attract Vorreedi's attention. The protocol officer had to be monitoring from downstairs.

Vorreedi trod in, and studied the holovid display over Miles's shoulder. 'Interesting. What is it?'

'Just brushing up on Cetagandan warship specs. Continuing education, officer-style, and all that. The hope for promotion to ship duty never dies.'

'Hm.' Vorreedi straightened. 'I thought you might like to hear the latest on your Lord Yenaro.'

'I don't think I own him, but—nothing fatal, I hope,' said Miles sincerely. Yenaro might be an important witness, later; upon mature reflection Miles was beginning to regret not offering him asylum at the embassy.

'Not yet. But an order has been issued for his arrest.'

'By Cetagandan Security? For treason?'

'No. By the civil police. For theft.'

'It's a false charge, I'd lay odds. Somebody's trying to use the system to smoke him out of hiding. Can you find out who laid the charge?'

'A ghem-lord by the name of Nevic. Does that mean anything to you?'

'No. He's got to be a puppet. The man who put Nevic up to it is the man we want. The same man who supplied Yenaro with the plans and money for his fun-fountain. But now you have two strings to pull.'

'You imagine it to be the same man?'

'Imagination,' said Miles, 'has nothing to do with it. But I need proof, stand-up-in-court type proof.'

Vorreedi's gaze was uncomfortably level. 'Why did you guess the charge against Yenaro would be treason?'

'Oh, well … I wasn't thinking. Theft is much better, less flashy, if what his enemy wants is for the civil police to drag Yenaro out into the open where he can get a clear shot at him.'

Vorreedi's brows crimped. 'Lord Vorkosigan …' But he appeared to think better of whatever he'd been about to say. He just shook his head and departed.

Ivan wandered in later, flung himself onto Miles's sofa, put up his booted feet on the armrest, and sighed.

'You still here?' Miles shut down his comconsole, which was by now making him cross-eyed. 'I thought you'd be out making hay, or rolling in it, or whatever. Our last two days here and all. Or did you run out of invitations?' Miles jerked his thumb ceilingward, We may be bugged.

Ivan's lip curled, Screw it. 'Vorreedi has laid on more bodyguards. It kind of takes the spontaneity out of things.' He stared into the air. 'Besides, I worry about where I put my feet, now. Wasn't it some queen of Egypt who was delivered in a rolled-up carpet? Could happen again.'

'Could indeed,' Miles had to agree. 'Almost certainly will, in fact.'

'Great. Remind me not to stand next to you.'

Miles grimaced.

After a minute or two Ivan added, 'I'm bored.'

Miles chased him from his room.

The ceremony of Singing Open The Great Gates did not entail the opening of any gates, though it did involve singing. A massed chorus of several hundred ghem, both male and female, robed in white-on-white, arranged themselves near the eastern entrance inside the Celestial Garden. They planned to pass in procession around the four cardinal directions and eventually, later in the afternoon, finish at the north gate. The chorus stood to sing along an undulating area of ground with surprising acoustic properties, and the galactic envoys and ghem and haut mourners stood to listen. Miles flexed his legs, inside his boots, and prepared to endure. The open venue left lots of space for haut-lady bubbles, and they were out in force—some hundreds, scattered about the glade. How many haut-women did live here?

Miles glanced around his little delegation—himself, Ivan, Vorob'yev, and Vorreedi all in House blacks, Mia Maz dressed as before, striking in black and white. Vorreedi looked more Barrayaran, more officer-like, and, Miles had to admit, a lot more sinister out of his deliberately dull Cetagandan civvies. Maz rested one hand on Vorob'yev's arm and stood on tiptoe as the music started.

Breathtaking, Miles realized, could be a quite literal term—his lips parted and the hairs on the backs of his arms stood on end as the incredible sounds washed over him. Harmonies and dissonances followed one another up and down the scale with such precision, the listener could make out every word, when the voices were not simply wordless vibrations that seemed to crawl right up the spine, and ring in the back-brain in a succession of pure emotions. Even Ivan stood transfixed. Miles wanted to comment, to express his astonishment, but breaking into the absolute concentration the music demanded seemed some sort of sacrilege. After about a thirty-minute performance, the music came to a temporary close, and the chorus prepared to move gracefully off to its next station, followed more clumsily by the delegates.

The two groups took different routes. Ba servitors under the direction of a dignified ghem-lord major-domo shepherded the delegates to a buffet, to both refresh and delay them while the chorus set up for its next performance at the southern gate. Miles stared anxiously after the haut-lady bubbles, which naturally did not accompany the outlander envoys, but floated off in their own mob in yet a third direction. He was getting less distracted by the diversions of the Celestial Garden. Could one finally grow to take it entirely for granted? The haut certainly seemed to.

'I think I'm getting used to this place,' he confided to Ivan, as he walked along between him and Vorob'yev in the ragged parade of outlander guests. 'Or … I could.'

'Mm,' said Ambassador Vorob'yev. 'But when these pretty folks turned their pet ghem-lords loose to pick up some cheap new real estate out past Komarr, five million of us died. I hope that hasn't slipped your mind, my lord.'

'No,' said Miles tightly. 'Not ever. But . . . even you are not old enough to remember the war personally, sir. I'm really starting to wonder if we'll ever see an effort like that from the Cetagandan Empire again.'

'Optimist,' murmured Ivan.

'Let me qualify that. My mother always says, behavior that is rewarded is repeated. And the reverse. I think . . . that if the ghem-lords fail to score any new territorial successes in our generation, it's going to be a long time till we see them try again. An expansionist period followed by an isolationist one isn't a new historical phenomenon, after all.'

'Didn't know you'd taken up political science,' said Ivan.

'Can you prove your point?' asked Vorob'yev. 'In less than a generation?'

Miles shrugged. 'Don't know. It's one of those subliminal gut-feel things. If you gave me a year and a department, I could probably produce a reasoned analysis, with graphs.'

'I admit,' said Ivan, 'it's hard to imagine, say, Lord Yenaro conquering anybody.'

'It's not that he couldn't. It's just that by the time he ever got a chance, he'd be too old to care. I don't know. After the next isolationist period, though, all bets are off. When the haut are done with ten more generations of tinkering with themselves, I don't know what they'll be.' And neither do they. That was an odd realization. You mean no one is in charge here? 'Universal conquest may seem like a crude dull game from their childhood after that. Or else,' he added glumly, 'they'll be unstoppable.'

'Jolly thought,' grumbled Ivan.

A delicate breakfast offering was set up in a nearby pavilion. On the other side of it, the float-cars with the white silk upholstery waited to convey refreshed funeral envoys the couple of kilometers across the Celestial Garden to the South Gate. Miles nabbed a hot drink, refused with concealed loathing the offer of a pastry tray—his stomach was knotting with nervous anticipation—and watched the movements of the ba servitors with hawk-like attention. It has to break today. There's no more time. Come on, Rian! And how the devil was he to