Komarr

the wall. 'I am so sorry I dragged you into this. If you hadn't been with me . . . One of us must get away.'

'If you see a chance, Ekaterin, take it. Don't wait for me.'

'That would still leave Soudha with a hostage.'

'I don't think that's the most important issue, just now. Not if the Komarrans were telling the truth about what that great ugly thing out there does.'

Ekaterin rubbed her toe over the smooth gray deck of the lav. In a quieter voice, she asked, 'Do you suppose our own side would sacrifice us, if it came to a standoff?'

'For this? Yes,' said the Professora. 'Or at any rate . . . they certainly ought to. Do the Professor and Lord Auditor Vorkosigan and ImpSec know what the Komarrans have built?'

'No, not as of yesterday. That is, they knew Soudha had built something—I gather they had almost managed to reconstruct the plans.'

'Then they will know,' said the Professora firmly. And a little less firmly, 'Eventually …'

'I hope they won't think we ought to sacrifice ourselves, like in the Tragedy of the Maiden of the Lake.'

'She was actually sacrificed by her brother, as the tradition would have it,' said the Professora. 'I do wonder if it was quite so voluntary as he later claimed.'

Ekaterin reflected dryly on the old Barrayaran legend. As the tale went, the town of Vorkosigan Surleau, on the Long Lake, had been besieged by the forces of Hazelbright. Loyal vassals of the absent Count, a Vor officer and his sister, had held out till the last. On the verge of the final assault, the Maiden of the Lake had offered up her pale throat to her brother's sword rather than fall to the ravages of the enemy troops. The very next morning, the siege was unexpectedly lifted by the subterfuge of her betrothed—one of their Auditor Vorkosigan's distant ancestors, come to think of it, the latterly famous General Count Selig of that name—who sent the enemy hurriedly marching away to meet the false rumor of another attack. But it was, of course, too late for the Maiden of the Lake. Much Barrayaran historical sympathy, in the form of plays and poems and songs, had been expended upon the subsequent grief of the two men; Ekaterin had memorized one of the shorter poems for a school recitation, in her childhood. 'I've always wondered,' said Ekaterin, 'if the attack really had taken place the next day, and all the pillage and rape had proceeded on schedule, would they have said, 'Oh, that's all right, then'?'

'Probably,' said Aunt Vorthys, her lips twitching.

After a time, Ekaterin remarked, 'I want to go home. But I don't want to go back to Old Barrayar.'

'No more do I, dear. It's wonderful and dramatic to read about. So nice to be able to read, don't you know.'

'I know girls who pine for it. They like to play dress-up and pretend being Vor ladies of old, rescued from menace by romantic Vor youths. For some reason they never play dying in childbirth, or vomiting your guts out from the red dysentery, or weaving till you go blind and crippled from arthritis and dye poisoning, or infanticide. Well, they do die romantically of disease sometimes, but somehow it's always an illness that makes you interestingly pale and everyone sorry and doesn't involve losing bowel control.'

'I've taught history for thirty years. One can't reach them all, though we try. Send them to my class, next time.'

Ekaterin smiled grimly. 'I'd love to.'

Silence fell for a time, while Ekaterin stared at the opposite wall and her aunt leaned back with her eyes closed. Ekaterin watched her in growing worry. She glanced at the door, and said at last, 'Do you suppose you could pretend to be much sicker than you really are?'

'Oh,' said Aunt Vorthys, not opening her eyes, 'that would not be at all difficult.'

By which Ekaterin deduced that she was already pretending to be much less sick than she really was. The jump-nausea seemed to have hit her awfully hard, this time. Was that gray-faced fatigue really all due to travel- sickness? Stunner fire could be unexpectedly lethal for a weak heart—was there a reason besides bewilderment that her aunt had not tried to struggle or cry out under Arozzi's threats?

'So . . . how is your heart, these days?' Ekaterin asked diffidently.

Aunt Vorthys's eyes popped open. After a moment, she shrugged. 'So-so, dear. I'm on the waiting list for a new one.'

'I thought new organs were easy to grow, now.'

'Yes, but surgical transplant teams are rather less so. My case isn't that urgent. After the problems a friend of mine had, I decided I'd rather wait for one of the more proven groups to have a slot available.'

'I understand.' Ekaterin hesitated. 'I've been thinking. We can't do anything locked in here. If I can get anyone to come to the door, I thought we might try to feign you were dangerously sick, and get them to let us out. After that—who knows? It can't be worse than this. All you'd have to do is go limp and moan convincingly.'

'I'm willing,' said Aunt Vorthys.

'All right.'

Ekaterin fell to pounding on the door as loudly as she could, and calling the Komarrans urgently by name. After about ten minutes of this, the lock clicked, the door slid back, and Madame Radovas peeked in from a slight distance. Arozzi stood behind her with his stunner in his hand.

'What?' she demanded.

'My aunt is ill,' said Ekaterin. 'She can't stop shivering, and her skin is getting clammy. I think she may be going into shock from the jump-sickness and her bad heart and all this stress. She has to have a warm place to lie down, and a hot drink, at least. Maybe a doctor.'

'We can't get you a doctor right now.' Madame Radovas peered worriedly past Ekaterin at the limp Professora. 'We could arrange the other, I guess.'

'Some of us wouldn't mind having the lav back,' Arozzi muttered. 'It's not so good, all of us having to parade up and down the corridor to the nearest public one.'

'There's no other safe place to lock them up,' said Madame Radovas to him.

'So, put them out in the middle of the room and keep an eye on them. Stick them back in here later. One's sick, the other has to take care of her, what can they do? It's no good if the old lady dies on us.'

'I'll see what I can do,' said Madame Radovas to Ekaterin, and closed the door again.

In a little while she came back, to escort the two Barrayaran women to a cot and a folding chair set up at the edge of the loading bay, as far as possible from any emergency alarm. Ekaterin and Madame Radovas supported the stumbling Professora to the cot, and helped her lie down, and covered her up. Leaving Arozzi to guard them, Madame Radovas went off and returned with a steaming mug of tea and set it down; Arozzi then turned the stunner over to her and returned to his work. Madame Radovas drew up another folding chair and sat down a few prudent meters away from her captives. Ekaterin supported her aunt's shoulders while she drank the tea, blinked gratefully, and sank back with a moan. Ekaterin made play of feeling the Professora's forehead, and rubbing her chill hands, and looking very concerned. She stroked the tousled gray hair, and stared covertly around the loading bay she'd merely glimpsed before.

The device still sat in its float cradle, but more power lines snaked across the floor to it now; Soudha was overseeing the attachment of one such cable to the awkward array of converters at the base of the horn. A man she did not recognize busied himself in the glass-walled control booth. At his gestures, Cappell drew careful chalk lines on the deck near the device. When he finished, he consulted with Soudha, and Soudha himself took the float cradle's remote control, stepped back, and with exquisite care set the cradle to lift, move forward till it almost touched the outer wall, and gently land again in precise alignment with the chalk marks. The horn was now aimed not quite square-on with the inner door of the large freight lock. Were they getting ready to load it aboard a ship, and take it out to point at the wormhole? Or could they use it right from here?

Ekaterin drew her map cube from her pocket. Madame Radovas sat up in alarm, aiming the stunner, saw what it was, and settled back uneasily, but did not move to take the map from her. Ekaterin checked the location of the Southport Transport docks and locks; the company had leased three loading bays in a line, and Ekaterin was not sure just which she was now in. The three-dimensional vid projection did not supply any exterior orientation, but she rather thought they were on the same side of the station as the wormhole, which might well put this lock in line-of-sight to it.I don't think there's very much time left at all.