Diplomatic Immunity

“Hm. Ambushing Dubauer with a hypospray aboard the Idris suggests itself to my mind as a simpler alternate possibility.”

“It would.” Bel sighed. “And it would cost me my job if Watts found out I'd helped you. If Dubauer's innocent of wrongdoing, it would certainly complain to the quaddie authorities, afterward.”

“Dubauer's not innocent. At the very least, it's lied about its cargo.”

“Not necessarily. Its manifest just reads, Mammals, genetically altered, assorted . You can't say they aren't mammals.”

“Transporting minors for immoral purposes, then. Slave trading. Hell, I'll think of something.” Miles waved Roic and Bel off to wait, and took over the Kestrel 's wardroom again.

He seated himself, adjusted the security cone, and took a long breath, trying to round up his galloping thoughts. There was no faster way to get a tightbeam message, however coded, from Quaddiespace to Barrayar than via the commercial system of links. Message beams were squirted at the speed of light across local space systems between wormhole jump point stations. An hour's, or a day's, messages were collected at the stations and loaded on either scheduled dedicated communications ships, jumping back and forth on a regular schedule to squirt them across the next local space region, or, on less traveled routes, on whatever ship next jumped through. The round trip for a beamed message between Quaddiespace and the Imperium would take several days, at best.

He addressed the message triply, to Emperor Gregor, to ImpSec Chief Allegre, and to ImpSec galactic operations headquarters on Komarr. After a sketchy outline of the situation so far, including assurances of his assailant's bad aim, he described Dubauer, in as much detail as possible, and the startling cargo he'd found aboard the Idris . He requested full details on the new tensions with the Cetagandans that Gregor had alluded to so obliquely, and appended an urgent plea for information, if any, on known Cetagandan operatives and operations in Quaddiespace. He ran the results through the Kestrel 's ImpSec encoder and squirted it on its way.

Now what? Wait for an answer that might be entirely inconclusive? Hardly . . .

He jumped in his chair when his wrist com buzzed. He gulped and slapped it. “Vorkosigan.”

“Hello, Miles.” It was Ekaterin's voice; his heart rate slowed. “Do you have a moment?”

“Not only that, I have the Kestrel 's comconsole. A moment of privacy, if you can believe it.”

“Oh! Just a second, then . . .” The wrist com channel closed. Shortly, Ekaterin's face and torso appeared over the vid plate. She was wearing that flattering slate-blue thing again. “Ah,” she said happily. “There you are. That's better.”

“Well, not quite.” He touched his fingers to his lips and transferred the kiss in pantomime to the image of hers. Cool ghost, alas, not warm flesh. Belatedly, he asked, “Where are you?” Alone, he trusted.

“In my cabin on the Prince Xav . Admiral Vorpatril gave me a nice one. I think he evicted some poor senior officer. Are you all right? Have you had your dinner?”

“Dinner?”

“Oh, dear, I know that look. Make Lieutenant Smolyani at least open you a meal tray before you go off again.”

“Yes, love.” He grinned at her. “Practicing that maternal drill?”

“I was thinking of it more as a public service. Have you found something interesting and useful?”

“Interesting is an understatement. Useful—well—I'm not sure.” He described his find on the Idris , in only slightly more colorful terms than the ones he'd just sent off to Gregor.

Ekaterin's eyes grew wide. “Goodness! And here I was all excited because I thought I'd found a fat clue for you! I'm afraid mine's just gossip, by comparison.”

“Gossip away, do.”

“Just something I picked up over dinner with Vorpatril's officers. They seemed a pleasant group, I must say.”

I'll bet they made themselves pleasant. Their guest was beautiful, cultured, a breath of home, and the first female most of them had spoken to in weeks. And married to the Imperial Auditor, heh. Eat your hearts out, boys.

“I tried to get them to talk about Lieutenant Solian, but hardly anyone knew the man. Except that one fellow remembered that Solian had had to step out of a weekly fleet security officers' meeting because he'd sprung a nosebleed. I gather that Solian was more embarrassed and annoyed than alarmed. But it occurred to me that it might be a chronic thing with him. Nikki had them for a while, and I had them occasionally for a couple of years when I was a girl, though mine went away on their own. But if Solian hadn't taken himself to his ship's medtech to get fixed yet, well, it might be another way someone could have obtained a tissue sample from him for that manufactured blood.” She paused. “Actually, now I think on it, I'm not so sure that is a help to you. Anyone might have grabbed his used nose rag out of the trash, wherever he'd been. Although I supposed that if his nose was bleeding, at least he had to have been alive at the time. It seemed a little hopeful, anyway.” Her thoughtful frown deepened. “Or maybe not.”

“Thank you,” said Miles sincerely. “I don't know if it's hopeful or not either, but it gives me another reason to see the medtechs next. Good!” He was rewarded with a smile. He added, “And if you come up with any thoughts on Dubauer's cargo, feel free to share. Although only with me, for the moment.”

“I understand.” Her brows drew down. “It is stunningly strange. Not strange that the cargo exists—I mean, if all the haut children are conceived and genetically engineered centrally, the way your friend the haut Pel described it to me when she came as an envoy to Gregor's wedding, the haut women geneticists have to be exporting thousands of embryos from the Star Cr?che all the time.”

“Not all the time,” Miles corrected. “Once a year. The annual haut child ships to the outlying satrapies are all dispatched at the same time. It gives all the top haut-lady planetary consorts like Pel, who are charged with conducting them, a chance to meet and consult with each other. Among other things.”

She nodded. “But to bring this cargo all the way here—and with only one handler to look after them . . . If your Dubauer, or whoever it is, really does have a thousand babies in tow, I don't care if they're normal human or ghem or haut or what, it had better have several hundred nursemaids waiting for them somewhere.”

“Truly.” Miles rubbed his forehead, which was aching again, and not just from the exploding possibilities. Ekaterin was right about that meal tray, as usual. If Solian could have tossed away a blood sample anywhere, any time . . .

“Oh, ha!” He rummaged in his trouser pocket and pulled out his handkerchief, forgotten there since this morning, and opened it on the heavy brown stain. Blood sample, indeed. He didn't have to wait for ImpSec HQ to get back to him on this identification. He would have undoubtedly remembered this accidental specimen eventually without the prompting. Whether before or after the efficient Roic had cleaned his clothes and returned them ready to don again, now, that was another question, wasn't it? “Ekaterin, I love you dearly. And I need to talk to the Prince Xav 's surgeon right now .” He made frantic kissing motions at her, which elicited that entrancing enigmatic smile of hers, and cut the com.

CHAPTER TEN

Miles made an urgent heads-up call to the Prince Xav ; a short delay followed while Bel negotiated clearance for the Kestrel 's message drone. Half a dozen armed Union Militia patrol vessels still floated protectively between Graf Station and Vorpatril's fleet lying in frustrated exile several kilometers off. It would not have done for Miles's precious sample to be shot out of space by some quaddie militia guard with a double quota of itchy trigger fingers. Miles didn't relax until the Prince Xav reported the capsule safely retrieved and taken inboard.

He finally settled down at the Kestrel 's wardroom table with Bel, Roic, and some military-issue ration trays. He ate mechanically, barely tasting the admittedly not-very-tasty hot food, one eye on the vid display still fast forwarding through the Idris 's lock records. Dubauer, it appeared,