Komarr

uncle would not have done for you, if I could have spared him to you today.' He gave her one his ghost-bows, seated.

The supervisor's expression changed from suspicious to stunned as his comconsole digested this new data. 'You are Lord Auditor Vorkosigan?'

'At your service.'

'I … er … uh … in what capacity are you here, my Lord?'

'Friend of the family.' Vorkosigan's smile twisted just slightly, 'Red tape cutter and general expediter.' To his credit, the supervisor managed not to gibber. He dismissed the clerk and sped them through processing, and himself escorted them upstairs and into the hands of the medtechs in the genetics department. He then vanished, but things ran blazingly quickly thereafter.

'It almost seems unfair,' Ekaterin murmured, when Nikki was whisked away briefly by a tech to pee into a sampler, 'to think Nikki just jumped the queue, there.'

'Yes, well … I found last winter that an Auditor's seal had the same enlivening effect on ImpMil's veteran's treatment division, whose hallways are much draftier and drab than these, and whose queue times are legendary. Quite ridiculous. I was charmed.' Vorkosigan's face grew more introspective, and sober. 'I'm afraid I've not quite found my balance with this Imperial Auditor thing yet. What is the just use of power, what is its abuse? I could have ordered Madame Radovas to be fast-penta'd, or ordered Tien to land us at the experiment station that first evening, and events would now be … well, I don't quite know what they would now be, except different than this. But I did not wish to …' He trailed off, and for just a flash, Ekaterin caught an impression of a much younger man beneath his habitual mask of irony and authority. He is no older than me, after all.

'Did you anticipate that problem with the permissions? I should have thought of it, I suppose, but they took all the information when I made the appointment, and didn't say anything, so I thought, I assumed—'

'Not specifically. But I hoped I might have a chance to do some little service or another today. I'm pleased it was so easy.'

Yes, she realized enviously, he could just wave all ordinary problems out of his path. Leaving only the extraordinary ones . . . her envy ebbed. It occurred belatedly to Ekaterin that he too might feel some guilt about Tien's death, and that was why he was going to such lengths to assist Tien's widow and orphan. So intense a concern seemed unnecessary, and she wondered how to reassure him that she did not blame him without creating more awkwardness than she erased.

A battery of tests was completed upon Nikki in about half the time Ekaterin had mentally allotted for them. The Komarran physician met with them in her comfortable office very shortly thereafter; Vorkosigan dismissed the bodyguards to lurk in the corridor.

'Nikki's gene scan shows the dystrophy complex to be very much in the classic mode,' the doctor told them, when Ekaterin and Nikki were seated side by side in front of her comconsole desk. Vorkosigan, as usual, took a backseat and just watched. 'He has a few idiosyncratic complications, but nothing our lab can't handle.'

She illustrated her talk with a holovid of the actual offending chromosomes, and a computer-generated vid of exactly how the retrovirus would deliver the splice that would work to supplement their deficiencies. Nikki did not ask as many questions as Ekaterin had hoped he would—was he intimidated, weary, bored?

'I believe our gene techs can have the retrovirus personalized for Nikki in about a week,' the doctor concluded. 'I'm going to have you return for the injection then, Nikki. Plan to stay overnight in Solstice for a recheck the following day, Madame Vorsoisson, and if possible, visit us again just before you leave Komarr. Nikki will need to be reexamined monthly thereafter for three months, which you can have done at a clinic I will recommend to you in Vorbarr Sultana. We'll give out a disk with all the records, and they should be able to pick it up from there. After that, assuming all goes well, a early checkup should suffice.'

'That's all?' said Ekaterin, weak with relief.

'That's all.'

'There was no damage yet? We are in time?'

'No, he's fine. It's hard to project, with Vorzohn's Dystrophy, but I would guess in his case the onset of detectable gross cellular damage would have begun to appear in his late teens or early twenties. You are in good time.'

Ekaterin held Nikki's hand hard as they exited, her steps firm, to keep her feet from dancing. With an, 'Aw, Mama,' Nikki extracted himself, and walked with independent dignity beside her. Vorkosigan, his hands shoved deep in his gray trouser pockets, followed smiling.

Nikki fell asleep in the shuttle, with his head pillowed on Ekaterin's lap. She watched him fondly, and stroked his hair, lightly so as not to wake him.

Vorkosigan, sitting across from them with his reader on his knees again, watched her in turn, and murmured, 'Is it well?'

'It's well,' she said softly. 'But it feels so strange . . . Nikki's illness has been the whole focus of my life for so long. I gradually pared away all the other impossibilities to concentrate wholly on this, the one main thing. It feels as though I had been steeling myself to batter down some unscalable wall. And then, when I finally took a deep breath and put my head down and charged, it just . . . fell, all in a heap, like that. And now I'm stumbling around in the dust and the bricks, blinking. I feel very unbalanced. Where am I now? Who am I now?'

'Oh, you'll find your center. You can't have mislaid it totally, even if you have been revolving around other people. Give yourself time.'

'I thought my center was to be Vor, like the women before me.' She glanced across at him, feeling inarticulate and urgent. And then I chose Tien . . . you have to understand, it was my choice. My marriage was arranged, offered, but it wasn't forced, I wanted it, wanted to have children, form a family, carry on the pattern. Make my place in this, I don't know, generational pageant.'

'I am the eleventh of my name. I know about the Vor pageant.'

'Yes,' she said gratefully. 'It wasn't that I didn't choose what I wanted, or gave away my center, or any of those things. But somehow, I didn't end up with the beautiful Vor pattern-weave I was trying to make. I ended up with this . . . tangle of strings.' Her fingers wriggled in air, miming chaos.

His lips quirked, introspective and ironic. 'I know tangles, too.'

'But do you know—well, of course you would, but . . . The business with the brick wall. Failure, failure was grown familiar to me. Comfortable, almost, when I stopped struggling against it. I did not know achievement was so devastating.'

'Huh.' He was leaning back, now, his reader forgotten on his lap, regarding her with his entire attention. 'Yes . . . vertigo at apogee, eh? And the reward for a job well done is another job, and what have you done for us lately, and is that all, Lieutenant Vorkosigan, and . . . yes. Achievement is devastating, or at least disorienting, and they don't warn you in advance. It's the sudden change of momentum and direction, I think.'

She blinked. 'How very strange. I expected you to tell me I was being foolish.'

'Deny your perfectly correct perception? Why should you expect that?'

'Habit … I suppose.'

'Mm. You can learn to enjoy the sensation of winning, you know, once you get over the initial queasiness. It's an acquired taste.'

'How long did it take you to acquire it?'

He smiled slowly. 'Once.'

'That's not a taste, that's an addiction.'

'It's one that would look well on you.'

His eyes were uncomfortably bright. Challenging? She smiled in confusion, and stared out the port at the darkening Komarran sky as the shuttle began its descent. He rubbed his lips, not quite erasing their odd quirk, and returned his attention to his reports.

Uncle Vorthys met them at the apartment door, data disks in his hand and a vague distracted smile on his face. He gave Ekaterin's hand a warm grasp, and fended off Nikki's immediate attempt to appropriate him and carry him off to hear about the wonders of the ImpSec shuttle.

'Just a moment, Nikki. We shall go to the kitchen for dessert, and you can tell me all about it. Ekaterin. I've