Diplomatic Immunity

the bonus chit in her hand, she sort of smiled back and didn't deck him, though I could see it was a near thing. And then we bailed out. Hewlet and I wanted to take station leave and spend some of our bonus, but Gras-Grace said we could party later. And Firka said the Barrayaran Empire wasn't a healthy place for the likes of us to linger in.” A distracted laugh that had nothing to do with humor puffed from his lips. So. That startling scream when Miles had touched the test patch to Guppy's skin hadn't been overreaction, exactly. It had been a flashback. Miles suppressed a shudder. Sorry, sorry.

“It was six days out from Komarr, past the jump to Pol, before the fevers began. Gras-Grace guessed it first, from the way it started. She always was the quickest of us. Four little pink wheals, like some kind of bug bites, on the backs of Hewlet and Firka's hands, on her cheek, on my arm where the Cetagandan bastard had touched me. They swelled up to the size of eggs, and throbbed, though not as much as our heads. It only took an hour. My head hurt so bad I could hardly see, and Gras-Grace, who wasn't doing any better, helped me to my cabin so's I could get into my tank.”

“Tank?”

“I'd rigged up a big tank in my cabin, with a lid I could lock down from the inside, because the gravity on that old ship wasn't any too reliable. It was really comfortable to rest in, my own kind of water bed. I could stretch all the way out, and turn around. Good filtration system on the water, nice and clean, and extra oxygen sparkling up through it from a bubbler I'd rigged, all pretty with colored lights. And music. I miss my tank.” He heaved a sigh.

“You . . . appear to have lungs, as well. Do you hold your breath underwater, or what?”

Gupta shrugged. “I have these extra sphincter muscles in my nose and ears and throat that shut down automatically, when my breathing switches over. That's always kind of an awkward moment, the switch; my lungs don't always seem to want to stop. Or start again, sometimes. But I can't stay in my tank forever, or I'd end up pissing in the water I breathe. That's what happened then. I floated in my tank for . . . hours, I'm not sure how many. I don't think I was quite in my right mind, I hurt so bad. But then I had to piss. Really bad. So I had to get out.

“I damn near passed out when I stood. I threw up on the floor. But I could walk. I made it to my cabin's head, finally. The ship was still running, I could feel the right vibrations through my feet, but it had gone all quiet. Nobody talking or arguing or snoring, no music. No laughing. I was cold and wet. I put on a robe—it was one of hers that Gras-Grace had given me, because she claimed being fat made her hot, and I was always too cold. She said it was because my designers gave me frog genes. For all I know, that might be true.

“I found her body . . .” He stopped. The light-years-gone look in his eyes intensified. “About five steps down the corridor. At least, I thought it was her. It was her braid, floating on the . . . At least, I thought it was a body. The size of the puddle seemed about right. It stank like . . . What kind of hell-disease liquefies bones ?”

He inhaled, and continued unsteadily, “Firka had made it to the infirmary, for all the good it had done him. He was all flaccid, like he was deflating. And dripping. Over the side of the bunk. He stank worse than Gras-Grace. And he was steaming .

“Hewlet—what was left of him—was in his pilot's chair in Nav and Com. I don't know why he crawled up there, maybe it was a comfort to him. Pilots are strange that way. His pilot's headset kind of held his skull braced, but his face . . . his features . . . they were just sliding off. I thought he might have been trying to send an emergency message, maybe. Help us. Biocontamination aboard . But maybe not, because nobody ever came. Later I thought maybe he'd sent too much, and the rescuers stayed away on purpose. Why should the good citizens risk anything for us ? Just Jacksonian smuggler scum. Better off dead. Saves the trouble and expense of prosecution, eh?” He looked at no one, now.

Miles feared he was falling silent, spent. But there was so much more, desperately important, to know . . . He dared to play out a lead—”So. No shit, there you were, trapped on a drifting ship with three dissolving corpses including a dead jump pilot. How did you get away?”

“The ship . . . the ship was no good to me now, not without Hewlet. And the others. Let the bastard financers have it, biocontamination and all. Murdered dreams. But I figured I was everybody's heir, by that time. Nobody had anybody else, not to speak to. I would've wanted them to have my stuff, if it had been the other way around. I went round and collected everybody's movables, spare cash, credit chits—Firka had a huge cache. He would. And he had all our doctored IDs. Gras-Grace, well, she probably gave hers away, or lost it gambling, or spent it on toys, or let it slip through her fingers somehow. Which made her smarter than Firka, in the long run. Hewlet, I guess he'd drunk most of his. But there was enough. Enough to travel to the ends of the Nexus, if I was clever about it. Enough to catch up with that Cetagandan bastard, stern chase or no. With that heavy cargo, I didn't figure he'd be traveling all that fast.

“I took it all and loaded it in an escape capsule. Decontaminated it all, and me, a dozen times first, trying to get that horrible death smell off. I wasn't . . . I wasn't at my best and brightest, I don't think, but I wasn't that far gone. Once I was in the capsule, it wasn't so hard. They're designed to get injured idiots to safety, automatically following the local space beacons . . . I got picked up three days later by a passing ship, and told a bullshit story about our ship coming apart—they believed that when they looked up the Jacksonian registry. I'd stopped crying by then.” Tears were glistening at the corners of his eyes now. “Didn't mention the bio-shit, or they'd have jugged me good. They dropped me at the nearest Polian jump point station. From there I slipped away from the safety investigators and got me on the first ship I could bound for Komarr. I tracked the Cetagandan bastard's cargo by its mass to the Komarran trade fleet that had just pulled out. Ran a search to find a route that would catch me up to it at the first possible place. Which was here.” He stared around, blinking at his quaddie audience as if surprised to find them all still in the room.

“How did Lieutenant Solian get sucked into it?” Miles had been waiting with nerves stretched to twanging to ask that one.

“I thought I could just lie in wait and ambush the Cetagandan bastard as soon as he came off the Idris. But he never came off. Stayed holed up in his cabin, I guess. Smart scum. I couldn't get through customs or the ship's security—I wasn't a registered passenger or a guest of one, though I tried to butter up a few. Scared the shit out of me when the fellow I tried to bribe to get me on board threatened to turn me in. Then I got smart and got me a berth on the Rudra , to at least get me legal entry past customs into those loading bays. And to be sure I'd be able to follow along if the fleet pulled out suddenly, which it was overdue to do by then. I wanted to kill him myself, for Gras-Grace and Firka and Hewlet, but if he was going to get away, I thought, if I turned him in to the Barrayarans as a Cetagandan spy, maybe . . . something interesting might happen, anyway. Something he wouldn't like. I didn't want to leave my trace on the vid call record, so I caught the Idris 's security officer in person when he was out in the loading bay. Tipped him off. I wasn't sure if he believed me or not, but I guess he went to check.” Gupta hesitated. “He musta run into the Cetagandan bastard. I'm sorry. I'm afraid I got him melted. Like Gras-Grace and . . .” His litany ended in a shaken gulp.

“Is that when Solian had the nose bleed? When you were tipping him off?” Miles asked.

Gupta stared. “What are you, some kind of psychic?”

Check . “Why the faked blood on the docking bay floor?”

“Well . . . I'd heard the fleet was pulling out. They were saying that the poor bugger I'd got melted was supposed to have deserted, and they were writing him off, just like . . . like he didn't have a House or a Baron to put up any stake for him, and nobody cared. But I was afraid the Cetagandan bastard would pull another mid-space transfer, and I'd be stuck on the Rudra , and he'd get away . . . I thought it would focus attention back on the Idris , and what might be on it. I didn't dream those military morons would attack the quaddie station!”

“There were concatenating circumstances,” Miles said primly, made conscious, for the first time in what seemed a small eternity of evoked horrors, of the hovering quaddie officialdom. “You certainly triggered events, but you could not possibly have anticipated them.” He, too, blinked and looked around. “Er . . . did you have any questions, Chief Venn?”

Venn was giving him a most peculiar stare. He shook his head, slowly, from side to side.

“Uh . . .” A young quaddie patroller Miles had barely noticed enter during Guppy's urgent soliloquy held out a small, glittering object to his chief. “I have the fast-penta dose you ordered, sir . . . ?”