Diplomatic Immunity

Captain Clogston came out through the buzzing blue barriers and looked over his new influx of patients and assistants. “Right,” he announced, glowering at the gap in the deck. “This ship is so damned befouled, I'm declaring the whole thing a Level Three Biocontamination Zone. So we may as well spread out and get comfortable, boys.”

The techs made a human chain to pass the analyzing equipment quickly to the outer chamber. Miles snared the chance for a few brief, urgent words with the two men with medical markings on their suits who stood apart from the rest—the Prince Xav 's military interrogation officers. Not really in disguise, merely discreet—and, Miles had to allow, they were medically trained.

The second ward was declared a temporary holding cell for their prisoner, the ba, who followed in the procession, bound to a float pallet. Miles scowled as the pallet drifted past, towed on its control lead by a watchful, muscular sergeant. The ba was strapped down tightly, but its head and eyes rolled oddly, and its saliva-flecked lips writhed.

Above almost anything else, it was essential to keep the ba in Barrayaran hands. Finding where the ba had hidden its filthy bio-bomb on Graf Station was the first priority. The haut race had some genetically engineered immunity to the most common interrogation drugs and their derivatives; if fast-penta didn't work on this one, it would give the quaddies very little in the way of interrogation procedures to fall back upon that would pass Adjudicator Leutwyn's approval. In this emergency, military rules seemed more appropriate than civilian ones. In other words, if they'll just leave us alone we'll pull out the ba's fingernails for them.

Miles caught Clogston by the elbow. “How is Bel Thorne doing?” he demanded.

The fleet surgeon shook his head. “Not well, my Lord Auditor. We thought at first the herm was improving, as the filters cut in—it seemed to return to consciousness. But then it became restless. Moaning and trying to talk. Out of its head, I think. It keeps crying for Admiral Vorpatril.”

Vorpatril? Why? Wait– “Did Bel say Vorpatril?” Miles asked sharply. “Or just, the Admiral ?”

Clogston shrugged. “Vorpatril's the only admiral around right now, although I suppose the portmaster could be hallucinating altogether. I hate to sedate anyone so physiologically distressed, especially when they've just fought their way out of a drug fog. But if that herm doesn't calm down, we'll have to.”

Miles frowned and hurried into the isolation ward. Clogston followed. Miles pulled off his helmet, fished his wrist com back out of it, and clutched the vital link safely in his hand. A tech was making up the hastily cleared second bunk, readying it for the infected Lord Auditor, presumably.

Bel now lay on the first bunk, dried off and dressed in a pale green Barrayaran military-issue patient tunic, which seemed at first heartening progress. But the herm was gray-faced, lips purple-blue, eyelids fluttering. An IV pump, not dependent upon potentially erratic ship's gravity, infused yellow fluid rapidly into Bel's right arm. The left arm was strapped to a board; plastic tubing filled with blood ran from under a bandage and into a hybrid appliance bound around with quantities of plastic tape. A second tube ran back again, its dark surface moist with condensation.

“ 'S balla,” Bel moaned. “ 'S balla.”

The fleet surgeon's lips pursed in medical displeasure behind his faceplate. He edged forward to glance at a monitor. “Blood pressure's way up, too. I think it's time to knock the poor bugger back out.”

“Wait.” Miles elbowed to the edge of Bel's bunk to put himself in Bel's line of sight, staring down at the herm in wild hope. Bel's head jerked. The eyelids flickered up; the eyes widened. The blue lips tried to move again. Bel licked them, took a long inhalation, and tried once more. “Adm'ral! Portent. 'S basti'd hid it in the balla. Tol' me. Sadist'c basti'd.”

“Still going on about Admiral Vorpatril,” Clogston muttered in dismay.

“Not Admiral Vorpatril. Me,” breathed Miles. Did that witty mind still exist, in the bunker of its brain? Bel's eyes were open, shifting to try to focus on him, as if Miles's image wavered and blurred in the herm's sight.

Bel knew a portent. No. Bel was trying to say something important. Bel wrestled death for the possession of its own mouth to try to get the message out. Balla? Ballistic? Balalaika? No—ballet!

Miles said urgently, “The ba hid its bio-bomb at the ballet—in the Minchenko Auditorium? Is that what you're trying to say, Bel?”

The straining body sagged in relief. “Yeh. Yeh. Get 's word out. In the lights, I thin'.”

“Was there only one bomb? Or were there more? Did the ba say, could you tell?”

“Don' know. 'S homemade, I thin'. Check. Purch'ses . . .”

“Right, got it! Good work, Captain Thorne.” You always were the best, Bel . Miles turned half away and spoke forcefully into his wrist com, demanding to be patched through to Greenlaw, or Venn, or Watts, or somebody in authority on Graf Station.

A ragged female voice finally replied, “Yes?”

“Sealer Greenlaw? Are you there?”

Her voice steadied. “Yes, Lord Vorkosigan? Do you have something?”

“Maybe. Bel Thorne reports the ba said that it hid the bio-bomb somewhere in the Minchenko Auditorium. Possibly behind some lights.”

Her breath drew in. “Good. We'll concentrate our trained searchers in there.”

“Bel also thinks the bomb was something the ba rigged itself, recently. It may have made purchases on Graf Station in the persona of Ker Dubauer that could give you a clue as to how many it could have devised.”

“Ah! Right! I'll get Venn's people on it.”

“Note, Bel's in pretty bad shape. Also, the ba could have been lying. Get back to me when you know something.”

“Yes. Yes. Thank you.” Hastily, she cut her com. It occurred to Miles to wonder if she was locked down in protective bio-isolation right now too, as he was about to be, trying to shape the critical moment at a similar frustrating remove.

“Basti'd,” Bel muttered. “Paralyzed me. Put me in s' damn bod pod. Tol' me. Then zipped it up. Left me to die, 'magining . . . Knew . . . it knew about Nicol 'n me. Saw my vid cube. Where's m' vid cube?”

“Nicol is safe,” Miles assured Bel. Well, as much as any quaddie on Graf Station at the moment—if not safe, at least warned . Vid cube? Oh, the little imager full of Bel's hypothetical children. “Your vid cube is put away safely.” Miles had no idea if this last was true or not—the cube might be still in Bel's pocket, destroyed with the herm's contaminated clothes, or stolen by the ba. But the assertion gave Bel ease. The exhausted herm's eyes closed again, and its breathing steadied.

In a few hours, I'm going to look like that.

Then you'd better not waste any time now, eh?

With a vast distaste, Miles suffered a hovering tech to help him off with his pressure suit and underwear— to be taken away and incinerated, Miles supposed. “If you're tying me down here, I want a comconsole set up by my bunk immediately. No, you can't have that.” Miles fended off the tech, who was now trying to pry loose his com link, then paused to swallow. “And something for nausea. All right, put it around my right arm, then.”

Horizontal was scarcely better than vertical. Miles smoothed down his own pale green tunic and gave up his left arm to the surgeon, who personally attended to piercing his vein with some medical awl that felt the size of a drinking straw. On the other side a tech pressed a hypospray against his right shoulder—a potion that would kill the dizziness and the cramping in his stomach, he hoped. But he didn't yelp until the first spurt of filtered blood returned to his body. “Crap , that's cold. I hate cold.”

“Can't be helped, my Lord Auditor,” Clogston murmured soothingly. “We have to lower your body temperature at least three degrees. It will buy time.”

Miles hunched, uncomfortably reminded that they didn't have a fix for this yet. He stifled a gush of terror, escaping under pressure from the place he'd kept it locked for the past hours. Not for one second would he allow himself to believe that there was no cure to be had, that this bio-shit would drag him under and this time he wouldn't come back up . . . ”Where's Roic?” He raised his right wrist to his lips. “Roic?”