Mirror Dance

He was actually sorry when the music came to an end. This time he took the lead, and urged her back into the next room for something to drink, and then out onto the promenade. After the concentration of the dance was over he’d become uncomfortably conscious of just how many people were looking at him, and it wasn’t paranoid dementia this time. They’d made a conspicuous couple, the beautiful Kareen and her Vorkosigan toad.

It was not as dark outside as he’d hoped. In addition to the lights spilling from the Residence windows, colored spotlights in the landscaping were diffused by the fog to a gentle general illumination. Below the stone balustrade the slope was almost woods-like with old-growth bushes and trees. Stone-paved walkways zig-zagged down, with granite benches inviting lingerers. Still, the night was chilly enough to keep most people inside, which helped.

It was a highly romantic setting, to be wasted on him. Why am I doing this? What good was it to bait a hunger that could not feed? Just looking at her hurt. He moved closer anyway, more dizzy with her scent than with the wine and the dancing. Her skin was radiantly warm with the exercise; she’d light up a sniper-scope like a torch. Morbid thought. Sex and death seemed too close-connected, somewhere in the bottom of his brain. He was afraid. Everything I touch, I destroy. I will not touch her. He set his glass on the stone railing and shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets. His left fingertips compulsively rotated the little flowers he’d secreted there.

“Lord Mark,” she said, after a sip of wine, “you’re almost a galactic. If you were married, and going to have children, would you want your wife to use a uterine replicator, or not?”

“Why would any couple not choose to use a replicator?” he asked, his head spinning with this sudden new tack in conversation.

“To, like, prove her love for him.”

“Good God, how barbaric! Of course not. I’d think it would prove just the opposite, that he didn’t love her.” He paused. “That was a strictly theoretical question, wasn’t it?”

“Sort of.”

“I mean, you don’t know anyone who’s seriously having this debate—not your sisters or anything?” he asked in worry. Not you, surely? Some barbarian needed his head stuck in a bucket of ice water, if so. And held under for a good long time, like till he stopped wriggling.

“Oh, none of my sisters are married yet. Though it’s not for lack of offers. But Mama and Da are holding out. It’s a strategy,” she confided.

“Oh?”

“Lady Cordelia encouraged them, after the second of us girls came along. There was a period soon after she immigrated here, when galactic medicine was really spreading out, and there was this pill you could take to choose the sex of your child. Everyone went crazy for boys, for a while. The ratio’s evened up again lately. But my sisters and I are right in the middle of the girl-drought. Any man who won’t agree in the marriage contract to let his wife use a uterine replicator is having a real hard time getting married, right now. The go-betweens won’t even bother dealing for him.” She giggled. “Lady Cordelia’s told Mama if she plays the game well, every one of her grandchildren could be born with a Vor in front of their names.”

“I see,” Mark blinked. “Is that an ambition of your parents?”

“Not necessarily,” Kareen shrugged. “But all else being equal, that prefix does give a fellow an edge.”

“That’s … good to know. I guess.” He considered his wine, and did not drink.

Ivan came out of one of the ballroom doors, saw them both, and gave them a friendly wave, but kept on going. He had not a glass but an entire bottle swinging from his hand, and he cast a slightly hunted look back over his shoulder before disappearing down the walkway. Glancing over the balustrade a few minutes later, Mark saw the top of his head pass by on a descending path.

Mark took a gulp of his drink then. “Kareen … am I possible?”

“Possible for what?” She tilted her head and smiled.

“For—for women. I mean, look at me. Square on. I really do look like a toad. All twisted up, and if I don’t do something about it soon, I’m going to end up as wide as I am … short. And on top of it all, I’m a clone.” Not to mention the little breathing problem. Summed up that way, hurling himself head-first over the balustrade seemed a completely logical act. It would save so much pain in the long run.

“Well, that’s all true,” she allowed judiciously.

Dammit, woman, you’re supposed to deny it all, to be polite.

“But you’re Miles’s clone. You have to have his intelligence, too.”

“Do brains make up for all the rest? In the female view?”

“Not to every woman, I suppose. Just to the smart ones.”

“You’re smart.”

“Yes, but it would be rude of me to say so.” She raked her curls and grinned.

How the hell was he to construe that? “Maybe I don’t have Miles’s brains,” he said gloomily. “Maybe the Jacksonian body-sculptors stupified me, when they were doing all the rest, to keep me under control. That would explain a lot about my life.” Now there was a morbid new thought to wallow in.

Kareen giggled. “I don’t think so, Mark.”

He smiled wryly back at her. “No excuses. No quarter.”

“Now you sound like Miles.”

A young woman emerged from the ballroom. Dressed in some pale blue silky stuff, she was athletically trim, glowingly blonde, and nearly as tall as Ivan. “Kareen!” she waved. “Mama wants us all.”

“Now, Delia?” said Kareen, sounding quite put-out.

“Yes.” She eyed Mark with alarmingly keen interest, but drawn by whatever daughterly duty, swung back inside.

Kareen sighed, pushed away from the stonework upon which she had been leaning, dusted futilely at a snag in her raspberry gauze, and smiled farewell. “It was nice meeting you, Lord Mark.”

“It was nice talking with you too. And dancing with you.” It was true. He waved, more casually than he felt, as she vanished into the warm light of the Residence. When he was sure she was out of sight, he knelt and surreptitiously collected the last of the tiny flowers she had shed, and stuffed them into his pocket with the rest.

She smiled at me. Not at Miles. Not at Admiral Naismith. Me, myself, Mark. This was how it could have been, if he hadn’t bankrupted himself at Bharaputra’s.

Now that he was alone in the dark as he had wished, he discovered he didn’t much care for it. He decided to go find Ivan, and struck off down the garden walkways. Unfortunately, the paths divided and re-divided, presumably to more than one destination. He passed couples who had taken to the sheltered benches despite the chill, and a few other men and women who’d just wandered down here for private talks, or to cool off. Which way had Ivan gone? Not this way, obviously; a little round balcony made a dead-end. He turned back.

Someone was following him, a tall man in red-and-blues. His face was in shadow. “Ivan?” said Mark uncertainly. He didn’t think it was Ivan.

“So you’re Vorkosigan’s clowne.” Not Ivan’s voice. But his skewed pronunciation made the intended insult very clear.

Mark stood square. “You’ve got that straight, all right,” he growled. “So who in this circus are you, the dancing bear?”

“A Vor.”

“I can tell that by the low, sloping forehead. Which Vor?” The hairs were rising on the back of his neck. The last time he’d felt such exhilaration combined with intense sickness to his stomach had been in the alley in the caravanserai. His heart began to pound. But he’s made no threat yet, and he’s alone. Wait.

“Offworlder. You have no concept of the honor of the Vor,” the man grated.

“None whatsoever,” Mark agreed cheerfully. “I think you’re all insane.”

“You are no soldier.”

“Right again. My, we are quick tonight. I was trained strictly as a lone assassin. Death in the shadows is a