Komarr

demonstrated. Suppressing a passing desire to strangle the boy for inflicting yet more distress on Ekaterin just now, Miles asked, 'Have you had breakfast yet?'

'Yeah.'

Starving him out or bribing him with food would be too slow, then. 'Well . . . deal. I won't tell you you're blowing it all out of proportion if you won't tell me I don't understand.'

Nikki glanced up from his seat, his attention arrested. Yeah. See me, kid. Miles considered, and immediately discarded, any argument that smacked of threat, that attempted to chivvy Nikki in the right direction by upping the pressure. For instance, the one that started out, How do you ever expect to have the courage to jump through wormholes if you haven't the courage to face this? Nikki was up against the wall now, driven into this untenable retreat. Upping the pressure would just squash him. The trick was to lower the wall. 'I went to a private school a bit like yours. I can't remember a time I wasn't dealing with being a mutie Vor, in my classmates' eyes. By the time I was your age, I had a dozen strategies. Some of them were pretty counterproductive, I admit.'

He'd gone through medical hell in his childhood with a stiff lip. But a few still-remembered playfellows, upon discovering that his brittle bones made physical harassment too dangerous—to themselves, when they found they couldn't conceal the evidence—had learned to reduce him to humiliated tears with words alone. Sergeant Bothari, delivering Miles daily to this academic purgatory, quickly made a routine of an expert shakedown, relieving him of weapons ranging from kitchen knives to a military stunner stolen from Captain Koudelka's holster. After that, Miles had gone to war in a subtler fashion. It had taken almost two years to teach certain of his classmates to leave him alone. Learning all round. Upon reflection, offering his own age nine-to-twelve solutions might not be the best idea … in fact, letting Nikki even find out what some of them had been could be a supremely bad idea. 'But that was twenty years ago, on Barrayar. Times have changed. What exactly do you think your friends here will do to you?'

Nikki shrugged. 'Dunno.'

'Well, give me some guesses. You can't plan a strategy without good intelligence.'

Nikki shrugged again. After a time he added, 'It's not what they'll do. It what they'll think.'

Miles blew out his breath. 'That's … a little tenuous for me to work with, y'know. What you fear someone will think, in the future. I usually have to use fast-penta to find out what people really think. And even fast-penta won't tell me what they're going to think.'

Nikki hunched. Miles regretfully gave up the notion of telling him that if he kept making those turtle-backed gestures, his spine would freeze like that, just as Miles's had. There was a faint, awful possibility the boy might believe him.

'What we need,' Miles sighed, 'is an ImpSec agent. Someone to scout unknown territory, not knowing what the strangers they meet are going to do or think. Listen carefully, watch and remember, report back. And they have to do it over and over, in new places all the time. It's bloody daunting, the first time.'

Nikki looked up. 'How do you know? You said you were a courier.'

Damn, the kid was sharp. 'I'm, um, not supposed to talk about it. You're not cleared. But do you think your school is as dangerous as, say, Jackson's Whole, or Eta Ceta? Just to pick a couple of, ah, random examples.'

Nikki stared in silent and, Miles feared, justified scorn of this adult floundering.

'Tell you something I did learn, though.'

Nikki was drawn, or at least, looked up.

Go with it; he won't give you more. 'It's not as daunting the second time. I wished later I could have started with the second time. But the only way to get to the second time is to do the first time. Seems paradoxical, that the fastest way to get to easy is through hard. In any case, I can't spare you an ImpSec agent to check out your school for anti-mutant activity.'

Nikki snorted warily, alive to the least hint of patronization.

Miles's grin twisted in bleak appreciation. 'Besides, it would be overkill, don't you think?'

'Prob'ly.' Grouchy hunching.

'The ideal ImpSec scout would be someone who could blend in, anyway. Someone who knew the territory like that back of his hand, and wouldn't make dangerous mistakes out of ignorance. Someone who could keep his own counsel and not let his assumptions get in the way of his observations. And not get into fights, because it would blow his cover. Very practical people, the successful Imperial agents I've known.' He eyed Nikki meditatively. This was not going well. Try another. 'The youngest subagent I ever employed was about ten. It wasn't on Barrayar, needless to say, but I don't think you're any less bright or competent than she was.'

'Ten?' said Nikki, temporarily startled out of his surly knot. 'She?'

'It was for a spot of simple courier duty. She could pass unnoticed where a uniformed mercen—where a uniformed adult could not. Now, I'm willing to be your tactical consultant on this, ah, school-penetration mission, but I can't work without intelligence. And the best agent to collect it, in this case, is already in place. Do you dare?'

Nikki shrugged. But his lip-biting stony look had faded into one of speculation. 'Ten … a girl …'

A hit, a very palpable hit. 'I put her down on my ImpSec expenditures log as a local informant. She was paid, of course. Same rates as an adult. A small but measurable contribution to speeding that particular mission to a successful conclusion.' Miles stared off into the middle distance for a moment, with an air of reminiscence of the sort which usually preceded long, boring adult stories. When he judged the hook was set, he feigned to come back to himself and smiled faintly at Nikki. 'Well, that's enough of that. Duty drives. I haven't had breakfast. If you decide to come out, I'll be here for another ten minutes or so.'

Miles unlatched the lock and let himself out. He didn't think Nikki had bought more than one word of his in three, though for a change and in contrast to several of his historic negotiations, it had all been true. But at least he'd managed to offer a line of retreat from an impossible position.

Ekaterin was waiting in the hall. He put his finger to his lips and waited a moment. The door stayed closed, but the lock did not click again. Miles motioned Ekaterin to follow, and tiptoed away to the living room.

'Whew,' said Miles. 'I think that's the toughest audience I've ever played to.'

'What happened?' demanded Ekaterin anxiously. 'Is he coming out?'

'Not sure yet. I gave him a couple of new things to think about. He didn't seem as panicked. And it's going to get really boring in there after a bit. Let's give him some time and see.'

Miles was just finishing his groats and coffee when Nikki cautiously poked his head around the kitchen door. He lingered in the doorway, kicking his heel against the frame. Ekaterin, seated across from Miles, put her hand to her lips and waited.

'Where're my shoes?' asked Nikki after a moment.

'Under the table,' said Ekaterin, maintaining, with obvious effort, a perfectly neutral tone. Nikki crawled under to retrieve them, and sat cross-legged on the floor by the door to put them on.

When he stood up again, Ekaterin said carefully, 'Do you want anyone to go with you?'

'Naw.' His gaze crossed Miles's just briefly, then he slouched into the living room to collect his school bag and let himself out the front door.

Ekaterin, turning back from her arrested half-rise from her chair, sank down limply. 'My word. I wonder if I ought to call the school to make sure he arrives.'

Miles thought it over. 'Yes. But don't let Nikki know you checked.'

'Right.' She swirled the coffee around in the bottom of her cup, and added hesitantly, 'How did you do that?'

'Do what?'

'Get him out of there. If it had been Tien . . . they were both stubborn. Tien would get so frustrated with Nikki sometimes, not without cause. He would have threatened to take the door down and drag Nikki to school; I would have run around in circles placating, frantically afraid things would get out of hand. Though they never quite seemed to. I don't know if that was because of me, or … Tien would always be a little ashamed later, not that he would ever apologize, but he would buy . . . well, it doesn't matter now.'

Miles made a crosshatch pattern in the bottom of his dish with his spoon, hoping his desire for her approval was not too embarrassingly obvious. 'Physical solutions have never come easily to me. I just . . . played with his