the permit to get it removed. It's the custom, at puberty—a girl gets her implant, and her ears pierced, and her, er, um—' Miles discovered he was not immune to pinkness himself—he went on in a rush, 'her hymen cut, all on the same visit to the doctor. There's usually a family party—sort of a rite of passage. That's how you can tell if a girl's available, the ears …'
He had her entire attention, now. Her hands stole to her earrings, and she went not merely pink, but red. 'Miles! Are they going to think I'm—'
'Well, it's just that—if anyone bothers you, I mean if your father or I aren't around, don't be afraid to tell them to take themselves off. They will. They don't mean it as an insult, here. But I figured I'd better warn you.' He gnawed a knuckle, eyes crinkling. 'You know, if you intend to walk around for the next six weeks with your hands over your ears . ..'
She replaced her hands hastily in her lap, and glowered at him.
'It can get awfully peculiar, I know,' he offered apologetically. A scorching memory of just how peculiar disturbed him for a moment.
He had been fifteen on his year-long school visit to Beta Colony, and he'd found himself for the first time in his life with what looked like unlimited possibilities for sexual intimacy. This illusion had crashed and burned very quickly, as he found the most fascinating girls already taken. The rest seemed about equally divided among good Samaritans, the kinky/curious, hermaphrodites, and boys.
He did not care to be an object of charity, and he found himself too Barrayaran for the last two categories, although Betan enough not to mind them for others. A short affair with a girl from the kinky/curious category was enough. Her fascination with the peculiarities of his body made him, in the end, more selfconscious than the most open revulsion he had experienced on Barrayar, with its fierce prejudice against deformity. Anyway, after finding his sexual parts disappointingly normal, the girl had drifted off.
The affair had ended, for Miles, in a terrifying black depression that had deepened for weeks, culminating at last late one night in the third, and most secret, time the Sergeant had saved his life. He had cut Bothari twice, in their silent struggle for the knife, exerting hysterical strength against the Sergeant's frightened caution of breaking his bones. The tall man had finally achieved a grip that held him, and held him, until he broke down at last, weeping his self-hatred into the Sergeant's bloodied breast until exhaustion finally stilled him. The man who'd carried him as a child, before he first walked at age four, then carried him like a child to bed. Bothari treated his own wounds, and never referred to the incident again.
Age fifteen had not been a very good year. Miles was determined not to repeat it. His hand tightened on the balcony railing, in a mood of objectless resolve. Objectless, like himself; therefore useless. He frowned into the black well of this thought, and for a moment even Beta Colony's glitter seemed dull and grey.
Four Betans stood nearby, arguing in a vociferous undertone. Miles turned half around, to get a better view of the speakers past Elena's elbow. Elena began to speak, something about his abstraction. He shook his head, and held up a hand, begging silence. She subsided, watching him curiously.
'Damn it,' a heavy man in a green sarong was saying, 'I don't care how you do it, but I want that lunatic pried out of my ship. Can't you rush him?'
The woman in the uniform of Betan Security shook her head. 'Look, Calhoun, why should I risk my people's lives for a ship that's practically scrap anyway? It's not as if he was holding hostages or something.'
'I have a salvage team tied up waiting that's collecting time-and-a-half for overtime. He's been up there three days—he's got to sleep sometime, or take a leak or some goddamn thing,' argued the civilian.
'If he's as hopped-up crazy as you claim, nothing would be more likely to trigger his blowing it than a rush. Wait him out.' The security woman turned to a man in the dove-grey and black uniform of one of the larger commercial spacelines. Silver hair in his sideburns echoed the triple silver circles of his pilot's neurological implant on mid-forehead and temples. 'Or talk him out. You know him, he's a member of your union, can't you do anything with him?'
'Oh, no you don't,' objected the pilot officer. 'You're not shoving this one off on me. He doesn't want to talk to me anyway, he's made that clear.'
'You're on the Board this year, you ought to have some authority with him—threaten to revoke his pilot's certification or something.'
'Arde Mayhew may still be in the Brotherhood, but he's two years in arrears on his dues, his license is on shaky ground already, and frankly, I think this episode is going to cook it. The whole point of this bananarama in the first place is that once the last of the RG ships goes for scrap,' the pilot officer nodded toward the bulky civilian, 'he isn't going to be a pilot anymore. He's been medically rejected for a new implant—it wouldn't do him any good even if he had the money. And I know damn well he doesn't. He tried to borrow rent money from me last week. At least, he said it was for rent. More likely for that swill he drinks.'
'Did you give it to him?' asked the woman in the blue uniform of shuttleport administration.
'Well—yes,' replied the pilot officer moodily. 'But I told him it was absolutely the last. Anyway …' he frowned at his boots, then burst out, 'I'd rather see him go out in a blaze of glory than die of being beached! I know how I'd feel if I knew I'd never make a jump again …' He compressed his lips, defensive-aggressive, at the shuttleport administration.
'All pilots are crazy,' muttered the security woman. 'Comes from getting their brains pierced.'
So Miles eavesdropped, shamelessly fascinated. The man they were discussing was a fellow-freak, it seemed, a loser in trouble. A wormhole jump pilot with an obsolete coupler system running through his brain, soon to be technologically unemployed, holed up in his old ship, fending off the wrecking crews—how? Miles wondered.
'A blaze of traffic hazards, you mean,' complained the shuttleport administrator. 'If he makes good on his threats, there'll be junk pelting all through the inner orbits for days. We'd have to shut down—clean it up—' she turned to the civilian, completing the circle, 'and you'd better believe it won't be charged to my department! I'll see your company gets the bill if I have to take it all the way to JusDep.'
The salvage operator paled, then went red. 'Your department permitted that hot-wired freak-head access to my ship in the first place,' he snarled.
'He said he'd left some personal effects,' she defended. 'We didn't know he had anything like this in mind.'
Miles pictured the man, huddled in his dim recess, stripped of allies, like the last survivor of a hopeless seige. His hand clenched unconsciously. His ancestor, General Count Selig Vorkosigan, had raised the famous seige of Vorkosigan Surleau with no more than a handful of picked retainers, and subterfuge, it was said.
'Elena,' he whispered fiercely, stilling her restlessness, 'follow my lead, and say nothing.'
'Hm?' she murmured, startled.
'Ah, good, Miss Bothari, you're here,' he said loudly, as if he had just arrived. He gathered her up and marched up to the group.
He knew he confused strangers as to his age. At first glance, his height led them to underestimate it. At second, his face, slightly dark from a tendency to heavy beard growth in spite of close shaving, and prematurely set from long intimacy with pain, led them to overestimate. He'd found he could tip the balance either way, at will, by a simple change of mannerisms. He summoned ten generations of warriors to his back, and produced his most austere smile.
'Good afternoon, ladies, gentlemen,' he hailed them. Four stares greeted him, variously nonplussed. His urbanity almost crumpled under the onslaught, but he held the line. 'I was told one of you could tell me where to find Pilot Officer Arde Mayhew.'
'Who the devil are you?' growled the salvage operator, apparently voicing the thought of them all.
Miles bowed smoothly, barely restraining himself from swirling an imaginary cape. 'Lord Miles Vorkosigan, of Barrayar, at your service. This is my associate, Miss Bothari. I couldn't help overhearing—I believe I might be of assistance to you all, if you will permit me …' Beside him, Elena raised puzzled eyebrows at her new, if vague, official status.
'Look, kid,' began the shuttleport administrator. Miles glanced up from lowered brows, shooting her his best imitation General Count Piotr Vorkosigan military glare.
'—sir' she corrected herself. 'Jush, uh—just what do you want with Pilot Officer Mayhew?'
Miles gave an upward jerk of his chin. 'I have been commissioned to discharge a debt to him.' Self- commissioned, about ten seconds ago . ..
