Komarr

I want to run on both legs.

Aunt Vorthys had run on both legs, reasonably serenely– Ekaterin had lived in her household, and didn't think she overidealized her aunt—but then, she'd been married to Uncle Vorthys. One's career might depend solely on one's own efforts, but marriage was a lottery, and you drew your lot in late adolescence or early adulthood at a point of maximum idiocy and confusion. Perhaps it was just as well. If people were too sensible, the human race might well come to an end. Evolution favored the maximum production of children, not of happiness.

So how did you end up with neither?

She snorted self-derision, then sat up as the doors slid open and people began trickling through. Most of the tide had passed when Ekaterin spotted the short woman with the wobbly step, assisted by a shipping line porter who saw her through the doors and handed her the leash of the float pallet holding her luggage. Ekaterin rose, smiling, and started forward. Her aunt looked thoroughly frazzled, her long gray hair escaping its windings atop her head to drift about her face, which had lost its usual attractive pink glow in favor of a greenish-gray tinge. Her blue bolero and calf-length skirt looked rumpled, and the matching embroidered travel boots were perched precariously atop the pile of luggage, replaced on her feet with what were obviously bedroom slippers.

Aunt Vorthys fell into Ekaterin's hug. 'Oh! So good to see you.'

Ekaterin held her out, to search her face. 'Was the trip very bad?'

'Five jumps,' said Aunt Vorthys hollowly. 'And it was such a fast ship, there wasn't as much time to recover between. Be glad you're one of the lucky ones.'

'I get a touch of nausea,' Ekaterin consoled her, on the theory that misery might appreciate company. 'It passes off in about half an hour. Nikki is the lucky one—it doesn't seem to affect him at all.' Tien had concealed his symptoms in grouchiness. Afraid of showing something he construed as weakness? Should she have tried to … It doesn't matter now. Let it go. 'I have a nice quiet hostel room waiting for you to lie down in. We can get tea there.'

'Oh, lovely, dear.'

'Here, why is your luggage riding and you walking?' Ekaterin rearranged the two bags on the float pallet and flipped up the little seat. 'Sit down, and I'll tow you.'

'If it's not too dizzy a ride. The jumps made my feet swell, of all things.'

Ekaterin helped her aboard, made sure she felt secure, and started off at a slow walk. 'I apologize for Uncle Vorthys dragging you all the way out here for me. I'm only planning to stay a few more weeks, you see.'

'I'd meant to come anyway, if his case went on much longer. It doesn't seem to be going as quickly as he expected.'

'No, well . . . no. I'll tell you all the horrible details when we get in.' A public concourse was not the venue for discussing it all.

'Quite, dear. You look well, if rather Komarran.'

Ekaterin glanced down at her dun vest and beige trousers. 'I've found Komarran dress to be comfortable, not the least because it lets me blend in.'

'Someday, I'd love to see you dress to stand out.'

'Not today, though.'

'No, probably not. Do you plan on traditional mourning garb, when you get home?

'Yes, I think it would be a very good idea. It might save . . . save dealing with a lot of things I don't want to deal with just now.'

'I understand.' Despite her jump sickness, Aunt Vorthys stared around with interest at the passing station, and began updating Ekaterin on the lives of her Vorthys cousins.

Her aunt had grandchildren, Ekaterin thought, yet still seemed late-middle-aged rather than old. In the Time of Isolation, a Barrayaran woman would have been old at forty-five, waiting for death—if she made it even that far. In the last century, women's life expectancies had doubled, and might even be headed toward the triple- portion taken for granted by such galactics as the Betans. Had Ekaterin's own mother's early death given her a false sense of time, and of timing? I have two lives for my foremothers' one. Two lives in which to accomplish her dual goals. If one could stretch them out, instead of piling them atop one another . . . And the arrival of the uterine replicator had changed everything, too, profoundly. Why had she wasted a decade trying to play the game by the old rules? Yet a decade at twenty did not seem quite a straight trade for a decade at ninety. She needed to think this through. . . .

Away from the docks and locks area, the crowds thinned to an occasional passer-by. The station did not run so much on a day-and-night rhythm, as on a ships in dock, everybody switch, load and unload like mad because time was money, ships out, quiet falls again pattern which did not necessarily match the Solstice-standard time kept throughout Komarr local-space.

Ekaterin turned up a narrow utility corridor she'd discovered earlier which provided a shortcut to the food concourse and her hostel beyond. One of the kiosks baked traditional Barrayaran breads and cannily vented their ovens into the concourse, for advertising; Ekaterin could smell yeast and cardamom and hot brillberry syrup. The combination was redolent of Barrayaran Winterfair, and a wave of homesickness shook her.

Coming down the otherwise-unpeopled corridor toward them along with the aromas was a man, wearing stationer-style dock-worker coveralls. The commercial logo on his left breast read southport transport ltd., done in tilted, speedy-looking letters with little lines shooting off. He carried two large bags crammed with meal-boxes. He stopped short and stared in shock, as did she. It was one of the engineers from Waste Heat Management—Arozzi was his name.

He recognized her at once, too, unfortunately. 'Madame Vorsoisson!' And, more weakly, 'Imagine meeting you here.' He stared around with a frantic, trapped look. 'Is the Administrator with you . . . ?'

Ekaterin was just mustering a plan for, I'm sorry, I don't believe I know you? followed by dancing around him blankly, walking away without looking back, turning the corner, and dashing madly for the nearest emergency call box. But Arozzi dropped his bags, dug a stunner out of his pocket, and fumbled it right way round before she'd made it any further than, 'I'm sorry—'

'So am I,' he said with evident sincerity, and fired.

Ekaterin's eyes opened on a cockeyed view of the corridor ceiling. Her whole body felt like pins and needles, and refused to obey her urgent summons to move. Her tongue felt like a wadded-up sock, stuffed in her mouth.

'Don't make me stun you,' Arozzi was pleading with someone. 'I will.'

'I believe you,' came Aunt Vorthys's breathless voice, from just behind Ekaterin's ear. Ekaterin realized she was now aboard the float pallet, half-sitting up against her aunt's chest, her legs hung limply over the rearranged luggage in front of her. The Professora's hand gripped her shoulder. Arozzi, after a desperate look around, set his meal-boxes in her lap, picked up the float pallet's lead, and started off down the corridor as fast as the whining, overburdened pallet would follow.

Help, thought Ekaterin. I'm being kidnapped by a Komarran terrorist. Her cry, as they turned down another corridor and passed a woman in a food service uniform, came out a low moan. The woman barely glanced at them. Not an unusual sight, this, two very jumpsick transients being towed to their connecting ship, or to a hostel, or maybe to the infirmary. Or the morgue . . . Heavy stun, Ekaterin had been given to understand, knocked people out for hours. This must be light stun. Was this a favor? She could not feel her limbs, but she could feel her heart beating, thudding heavily in her chest as adrenaline struggled uselessly with her unresponsive peripheral nervous system.

More turns, more drops, more levels. Was her map cube still in her pocket? They passed out of passenger- country, into more utilitarian levels devoted to freight and ship repair. At last they turned in at a door labeled southport transport, ltd. in the same logo style as on the coveralls, and authorized personnel only in larger red print. Arozzi led them around a turn, through some more airseal doors, and down a ramp into a large loading bay. It smelled cold, all oil and ozone and a sharp sick scent of plastics. They were at the outermost skin of the station, anyway, whatever direction they'd come. She'd seen the Southport logo before, Ekaterin realized; it was one of those minor, shoestring-budgeted local-space shipping companies that eked out a living in the few interstices left by the big Komarran family firms.

A tall, squarely-built man, also in worker's coveralls, trod across the bay toward them, his footsteps