Diplomatic Immunity

Venn took it and gazed over at Adjudicator Leutwyn.

Leutwyn cleared his throat. “Remarkable. I do believe, Lord Auditor Vorkosigan, that is the first time I've ever seen a fast-penta interrogation conducted without the fast-penta.”

Miles glanced at Guppy, curled around himself in air, shivering a little. Smears of water still glistened at the corners of his eyes. “He . . . really wanted to tell somebody his story. He's been dying to for weeks. There was just no one in the entire Nexus he could trust.”

“Still isn't,” gulped the prisoner. “Don't get a swelled head, Barrayaran. I know nobody's on my side. But I missed my one shot, and he saw me. I was safe when he thought I was melted like the others. I'm a dead frog now, one way or another. But if I can't take him with me, maybe somebody else can.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Chief Venn said, “So . . . this Cetagandan bastard Gupta here is raving about, that he says killed three of his friends and maybe your Lieutenant Solian—you really think this is the same as the Betan transient, Dubauer, that you wanted us to pick up last night? So is he a herm, or a man, or what?”

“Or what,” answered Miles. “My medical people established from a blood sample I accidentally collected yesterday that Dubauer is a Cetagandan ba. The ba are neither male, female, nor hermaphrodite, but a genderless servant . . . caste, I guess is the best word, of the Cetagandan haut lords. More specifically, of the haut ladies who run the Star Cr?che, at the core of the Celestial Garden, the Imperial residence on Eta Ceta.” Who almost never left the Celestial Garden, with or without their ba servitors. So what's this ba doing way out here, eh? Miles hesitated, then went on, “This ba appears to be conducting a cargo of a thousand of what I suspect are the latest genetically modified haut fetuses in uterine replicators. I don't know where, I don't know why, and I don't know who for, but if Guppy's telling us the straight story, the ba has killed four people, including our missing security officer, and tried to kill Guppy, to keep its secret and cover its tracks.” At least four people .

Greenlaw's expression had grown stiff with dismay. Venn regarded Gupta, frowning. “I guess we'd better put out a public arrest call on Dubauer, then, too.”

“No!” Miles cried in alarm.

Venn raised his brows at him.

Miles explained hastily, “We're talking about a possible trained Cetagandan agent who may be carrying sophisticated bioweapons. It's already extremely stressed by the delays into which this dispute with the trade fleet has plunged it. It's just discovered it's made one bad mistake at least, because Guppy here is still alive. I don't care how superhuman it is, it has to be rattled by now. The last thing you want to do is send a bunch of feckless civilians up against it. Nobody should even approach the ba who doesn't know exactly what they're doing and what they're facing.”

“And your people brought this creature here, onto my station?”

“Believe me, if any of my people had known what the ba was before this, it would never have made it past Komarr. The trade fleet are dupes, innocent carriers, I'm sure.” Well, he wasn't that sure—checking that airy assertion was going to be a high-priority problem for counterintelligence, back home.

“Carriers . . .” Greenlaw echoed, looking hard at Guppy. All the quaddies in the room followed her stare. “Could this transient still be carrying that . . . whatever it was, infection?”

Miles took a breath. “Possibly. But if he is, it's too damned late already. Guppy has been running all over Graf Station for days, now. Hell, if he's infectious, he's just spread a plague along a route through the Nexus touching half a dozen planets.” And me. And my fleet. And maybe Ekaterin too. “I see two points of hope. One, by Guppy's testimony, the ba had to administer the thing by actual touch.”

The patrollers who'd handled the prisoner looked apprehensively at each other.

“And secondly,” Miles went on, “if the disease or poison is something bioengineered by the Star Cr?che, it's likely to be highly controlled, possibly deliberately self-limiting and self-destructing. The haut ladies don't like to leave their trash lying around for anyone to pick up.”

“But I got better!” cried the amphibian.

“Yes,” said Miles. “Why? Obviously, something in your unique genetics or situation either defeated the thing, or held it at bay long enough to keep you alive past its period of activity. Putting you in quarantine is about useless by now, but the next highest priority after nailing the ba has got to be running you through the medical wringer, to see if what you have or did can save anyone else.” Miles drew breath. “May I offer the facilities of the Prince Xav ? Our medical people do have some specific training in Cetagandan bio- threats.”

Guppy blurted to Venn in panic, “Don't give me to them! They'll dissect me!”

Venn, who had brightened at this offer, shot the prisoner an exasperated look, but Greenlaw said slowly, “I know something of the ghem and the haut, but I've never heard of these ba, or the Star Cr?che.”

Adjudicator Leutwyn added warily, “Cetagandans of any stripe haven't much come in my way.”

Greenlaw continued, “What makes you think their work is so safe, so restricted?”

“Safe, no. Controlled, maybe.” How far did he need to back up his explanation to make the dangers clear to them? It was vital that the quaddies be made to understand, and believe. “The Cetagandans . . . have this two- tiered aristocracy that is the bafflement of non-Cetagandan military observers. At the core are the haut lords, who are, in effect, one giant genetics experiment in producing the post-human race. This work is conducted and controlled by the haut women geneticists of the Star Cr?che, the center where all haut embryos are created and modified before being sent back to their haut constellations—clans, parents—on the outlying planets of the empire. Unlike most prior historical versions of this sort of thing, the haut ladies didn't start by assuming they'd reached the perfected end already. They do not, at present, believe themselves to be done tinkering. When they are—well, who knows what will happen? What are the goals and desires going to be of the true post-human? Even the haut ladies don't try to second-guess their great-great-great-whatever grandchildren. I will say, it makes it uncomfortable to have them as neighbors.”

“Didn't the haut try to conquer you Barrayarans, once?” asked Leutwyn.

“Not the haut. The ghem-lords. The buffer race, if you will, between the haut and the rest of humanity. I suppose you could think of the ghem as the haut's bastard children, except that they aren't bastards. In that sense, anyway. The haut leak selected genetic lines into the ghem via trophy haut wives—it's a complicated system. But the ghem-lords are the military arm of the empire, always anxious to prove their worth to their haut masters.”

“The ghem, I've seen,” said Venn. “We get them through here now and then. I though the haut were, well, sort of degenerate. Aristocratic parasites. Afraid to get their hands dirty. They don't work .” He gave a very quaddie sniff of disdain. “Or fight. You have to wonder how long the ghem-soldiers will put up with them.”

“On the surface, the haut appear to dominate the ghem through pure moral suasion. Overawe by their beauty and intelligence and refinement, and by making themselves the source of all kinds of status rewards, culminating in the haut wives. All this is true. But beneath that . . . it is strongly suspected that the haut hold a biological and biochemical arsenal that even the ghem find terrifying.”

“I haven't heard of anything like that being used ,” said Venn in a tone of skepticism.

“Oh, you bet you haven't.”

“Why didn't they use it on you Barrayarans, back then, if they had it?” said Greenlaw slowly.

“That is a problem much studied, at certain levels of my government. First, it would have alarmed the neighborhood. Bioweapons aren't the only kind. The Cetagandan Empire apparently wasn't ready to face a posse of people scared enough to combine to burn off their planets and sterilize every living microbe. More importantly, we think it was a question of goals. The ghem-lords wanted the territory and the wealth, the personal aggrandizement that would have followed successful conquest. The haut ladies just weren't that interested. Not enough to waste their resources—not resources of weapons per se, but of reputation, secrecy, of a silent threat of unknown potency.