Komarr

heard from the Professora. She's taken ship on Barrayar, and will be here in three days' time. I didn't like to tell you till she was sure she could get away.'

'Oh!' Ekaterin almost jumped with delight, mitigated immediately by concern. 'Oh, no, sir, do you meant to say you are dragging that poor woman through five wormhole jumps from Barrayar to Komarr for me? She gets so jumpsick!'

'It was Lord Vorkosigan's idea, actually,' said Uncle Vorthys.

Vorkosigan put on a bright, trapped smile at this, and shrugged warily.

'Although I had fully intended to drag her here for my own sake,' Uncle Vorthys continued, 'at the end of the term. This just advanced the timetable. She does like Komarr, once she gets here and has a day to recover from the jump-lag. I thought you would like it.'

'You shouldn't have—but oh, I do like it, very much.'

Vorkosigan straightened at these words, and his smile relaxed into a self-satisfaction that amused her vastly. Ekaterin wasn't sure if she was reading the subtleties of his expression better now, or if he was concealing them less.

'If I get you a ticket, would you go out to meet her at the jump-point station?' Uncle Vorthys added. 'I'm afraid I won't have time, and she hates traveling alone. You could see her a day earlier, and have some time together on the last leg downside.'

'Certainly, sir!' Ekaterin almost shivered with the realization of how much she longed to see her aunt. She'd been living in Tien's orbit so long, she'd become used to her isolation as the norm. Ekaterin counted the Professora as one of the few non-disheartening relatives she possessed. A friend—an ally! The Komarran women Ekaterin had met were nice enough, but there was so much they didn't understand. . . . Aunt Vorthys might make acerbic comments, but she understood deeply.

'Yes, yes, Nikki—' said Uncle Vorthys. 'Miles. When you are ready, I'll meet you in my room, and we can go over today's progress on the comconsole.'

'Have we some? Is it interesting?'

Uncle Vorthys made a balancing gesture with his free hand. 'I'd be interested in what pattern you see emerging, if any.'

'At your convenience. Knock on my door when you're ready.' Vorkosigan smiled at Nikki, gave the Professor a vague salutelike gesture, and withdrew.

Nikki, impatiently waiting his turn, now dragged his great-uncle off to the kitchen as promised; Ekaterin could only be grateful that of his day's events the ImpSec shuttle seemed to loom so much larger than the medical examinations. She followed, satisfied.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Early the next morning Miles, in shirt and trousers but barefoot, stepped into the hallway with his toiletries case in hand. He must remind Tuomonen to return his medical kit. The ImpSec techs couldn't have found any interesting explosive devices in it, or he would have been informed by now. His bleary meditations suffered a check when he discovered Ekaterin, still dressed in a robe and with her hair in unusual but fetching disarray, leaning against the hall bathroom door. 'Nikki,' she hissed. 'Open this door at once! You can't hide all day in there.'

A muffled young voice returned mulishly, 'Yes, I can.'

Lips tight, she tapped again, urgently but quietly, then jumped a little as she saw Miles, and clutched the neck of her robe.

'Oh. Lord Vorkosigan.'

'Good morning, Madame Vorsoisson,' he said civilly. 'Ah . . . trouble?'

She nodded ruefully. 'I thought yesterday went awfully easily. Nikki tried to insist he was too sick to go to school today, because of his Vorzohn's Dystrophy. I explained again it didn't work that way, but he got more and more stubborn. He begged to stay home. No, not just stubborn. Scared, I think. This isn't the usual malingering.' She jerked her head toward the locked door. 'I tried getting firm. It was not the right tactic. Now he's panicked.'

Miles bent to glance at the lock, which was an ordinary mechanical one. Too bad it wasn't a palm lock; he knew some tricks with those. This one didn't even have screws, but some kind of rivets. It was going to take a pry bar. Or subterfuge . . .

'Nikki,' called Ekaterin hopefully. 'Lord Vorkosigan is out here. He needs to get washed and dressed, so he can go to work.'

Silence.

'I'm torn,' murmured Ekaterin in lower tones. 'We're leaving in a few weeks. A few missed lessons wouldn't matter, but . . . that's not the point.'

'I went to a private Vor school rather like his, when I was his age,' Miles murmured back. 'I know what he's afraid of. But I think your instincts are correct.' He frowned thoughtfully, then set his case down and rummaged for his tube of depilatory cream, which he smeared liberally over his night's bristles. 'Nikki?' he called more loudly. 'Can I come in? I'm all over depilatory cream, and if I don't wash it off, it'll start eating through my skin.'

'Won't he realize you can wash in the kitchen?' Ekaterin whispered.

'Maybe. But he's only nine, I'm gambling depilation is still a bit of a mystery.'

After a moment Nikki's voice came, 'You can come in. But I'm not coming out. And I'm locking it again.'

'That's fair,' Miles allowed.

Some rustling near the door. 'Should I grab him when it opens?' Ekaterin asked, very dubiously.

'Nope. It would violate our tacit agreement. I'll go in, then we'll see what happens. At least you'll have a spy inside the gate, at that point.'

'It seems wrong to use you so.'

'Mm, but kids only dare defy those whom they really trust. The fact that I'm still mostly a stranger to him gives me an advantage, which I invite you to use.'

'True enough. Well … all right.'

The door opened a cautious crack. Miles waited. It opened a little wider. He sighed, turned sideways, and slipped through. Nikki shut it again immediately, and snapped the lock.

The boy was dressed for school, in his braided uniform of sober gray and maroon, but minus his shoes. The shoes presumably had been the sticking point, with their implicit commitment to going out. Nikki backed up and seated himself on the edge of the tub; Miles laid out his toiletries kit on the counter and rolled up his sleeves, trying to think fast before coffee. Or think at all. His eloquence had inspired his soldiers to face death, in the past, or so he dimly recalled. Now let's try something really hard. Playing for time and inspiration, he methodically brushed his teeth, by which time the depilatory had finished working. He washed off the resultant goo, rubbed his face dry with the towel, flung it over his shoulder, and leaned with his back against the door, slowly unrolling his sleeves and fastening his cuffs.

'So, Nikki,' he said at last. 'What's the trouble with going to school this morning?'

Moisture smeared around the boy's defiant eyes glistened when it caught the light. 'I'm sick. I've got Vorzohn's thing.'

'It's not catching. You can't give it to anybody.' Except for the way you got it. From the blank look on Nikki's face, the idea of being dangerous to anyone else had never crossed his mind. Ah, the self-centeredness of childhood. Miles hesitated, wondering how to approach the real problem. For almost the first time, he wondered how certain aspects of his childhood had looked from his parents' point of view. The doubled vision was dizzying. How the devil did I wind up on the enemy side?

'You know,' Miles essayed, 'no one will even know you have it unless you tell them. It's not like they can smell it on you, eh?'

The mulish look redoubled. 'That's what Mama said.'

Scratch that trial balloon. There was an inherent problem in suggesting secrecy anyway, as Tien's life