Cetaganda

'This will not take long.' Pel flicked off her force-screen. Miles heard a faint hiss, and a choking noise. The float-chair rocked. He popped up to find Pel with the guard slumped very awkwardly across her lap.

'Damn,' said Miles regretfully, 'we should have done this to Kety back in the first cabin—oh, well. Let me at that door pad.'

It was a standard palm-lock, but set to whom? Very few, maybe Kety and Vio only, but the guard must be empowered to handle emergencies. 'Move him up a little,' Miles instructed Pel, and pressed the unconscious man's palm to the read-pad. 'Ah,' he breathed in satisfaction, as the door slid aside without alarm or protest. He relieved the guard of his stunner, and tiptoed inside, the haut Pel floating after.

'Oh' huffed Pel in outrage. They had found the haut Nadina.

The old woman was sitting on a couch similar to the one in the previous cabin, wearing only her white bodysuit. The effects of a century or so of gravity were enough to sag even her haut body; taking away her voluminous outer wrappings seemed a deliberate indignity only barely short of stripping her naked. Her silver hair was clamped, half a meter from its end, in a device obviously borrowed from engineering and never designed for this purpose, but locked in turn to the floor. It was not physically cruel—the length of the rest of her hair still left her nearly two meters of turning room—but there was something deeply offensive about it. The haut Vio's idea, perhaps? Miles thought he knew how Ivan had felt, contemplating the kitten tree. It seemed a Wrong Thing to do to a little old lady (even one from a race as obnoxious as the haut) who reminded him of his Betan grandmother—well, not really, Pel actually seemed more like his Grandmother Naismith in personality, but—

Pel dumped the unconscious guard unceremoniously on the floor and rushed from her float-chair to her sister consort. 'Nadina, are you injured?'

'Pel!' Anyone else would have fallen on her rescuers neck in a hug; being haut, they confined themselves to a restrained, if apparently heartfelt, handclasp.

'Oh!' said Pel again, gazing furiously at the haut Nadina's situation. Her first action was to skin out of her own robes and donate about six underlayers to Nadina, who shrugged them on gratefully, and stood a little straighter. Miles completed a fast survey of the premises to be sure they were indeed alone, and returned to the women, who stood contemplating the hair-lock. Pel knelt and tugged at a few strands, which held fast.

'I've tried that,' sighed the haut Nadina. 'They won't come out even one hair at a time.'

'Where is the key to its lock?'

'Vio had it.'

Pel quickly emptied her sleeves of her mysterious arsenal; Nadina looked it over and shook her head.

'We'd better cut it,' said Miles. 'We have to go as quickly as possible.'

Both women stared at him in shock. 'Haut-women never cut their hair!' said Nadina.

'Um, excuse me, but this is an emergency. If we go at once to the ship's escape pods, I can pilot you both to safety before Kety awakes to his loss. Maybe even get away clean. Every second's delay costs us our very limited margin.'

'No!' said Pel. 'We must retrieve the Great Key first!'

He could not, unfortunately, send the two women off and promise to search for the Key on his own; he was the only qualified orbital pilot in the trio. They were going to have to stick together, blast it. One haut-lady was bad enough. Managing two was going to be worse than trying to herd cats. 'Haut Nadina, do you know where Kety keeps the Great Key?'

'Yes. He took me to it last night. He thought I might be able to open it for him. He was very upset when I couldn't.'

Miles glanced up sharply at her tone; there were no marks of violence on her face, at least. But her movements were stiff. Arthritis of age, or shock-stick trauma? He returned to the guard's unconscious body, and began searching it for useful items, code cards, weapons … ah. A folded vibra-knife. He palmed it out of sight, and returned to the ladies.

'I've heard of animals gnawing their legs off, to escape traps,' he offered cautiously.

'Ugh!' said Pel. 'Barrayarans.'

'You don't understand,' said Nadina earnestly.

He was afraid he did. They would stand here arguing about Nadina's trapped haut-hair until Kety caught up with them. . . . 'Look!' He pointed at the door.

Pel jerked to her feet, and Nadina cried, 'What?'

Miles snapped open the vibra-knife, grabbed the mass of silver hair, and sliced through it as close to the clamp as he could. 'There. Let's go.'

'Barbarian!' cried Nadina. But she wasn't going to go over the edge into hysterics; she shrieked her belated protest quite quietly, all things considered.

'A sacrifice for the good of the haut,' Miles promised her. A tear stood in her eye; Pel . . . Pel looked as if she were secretly grateful the deed had been done by him and not her.

They all boarded the float-chair again, Nadina half across Pel's lap, Miles clinging on behind. Pel exited the chamber and raised her force-screen again. Float-chairs were supposed to be soundless, but the engine whined protest at this overload. It moved forward with a disconcerting lurch.

'Down this way. Turn right here,' the haut Nadina directed. Halfway down the hall they passed an ordinary servitor, who stepped aside with a bow, and did not look back at them.

'Did Kety fast-penta you?' Miles asked Nadina. 'How much does he know of what the Star Creche suspects about him?'

'Fast-penta does not work on haut-women,' Pel informed him over her shoulder.

'Oh? How about on haut-men?'

'Not very well,' said Pel.

'Hm. Nevertheless.'

'Down here.' Nadina pointed to a lift tube. They descended a deck, and continued down another, narrower corridor. Nadina touched the silver hair piled in her lap, regarded the raggedly cut end with a deep frown, then let the handful fall with an unhappy, but rather final-sounding, snort. 'This is all highly improper. I trust you are enjoying your opportunity for sport, Pel. And that it will be brief.'

Pel made a non-committal noise.

Somehow, this was not the heroic covert ops mission that Miles had envisioned in his mind—blundering around Kety's ship in tow of a pair of prim, aging haut-ladies—well, Pel's allegiance to the proprieties was highly suspect, but Nadina appeared to be trying to make up for it. He had to admit, the bubble beat the hell out of his trying to disguise his physical peculiarities in the garb of a ba servitor, especially given that the ba appeared to be uniformly healthy and straight. Enough other haut-women were aboard that the sight of a passing bubble was unremarkable to staff and crew. . . .

No. We've just been lucky, so far.

They came to a blank door. 'This is it,' said Nadina.

No give-away guard this time; this was the little room that wasn't there. 'How do we get in?' asked Miles. 'Knock?'

'I suppose so,' said Pel. She dropped her force-screen just long enough to do so, then raised it again.

'I meant that as a.joke' said Miles, horrified. Surely no one was in there—he'd pictured the Great Key kept alone in some safe or coded compartment—

The door opened. A pale man with dark rings under his eyes, dressed in Kety's livery, pointed a device at the bubble, read off the electronic signature that resulted, and said, 'Yes, haut Vio?'

'I … have brought the haut Nadina to try again,' said Pel. Nadina grimaced in disapproving editorial.

'I don't think we're going to need her,' said the liveried man, 'but you can talk to the General.' He stood aside to let them pass within.

Miles, who had been calculating how to knock the man out with Pel's aerosol again, started his calculations over. There were three men in the floating cipher lab, yes. An array of equipment, festooned with temporary cables,