accept challenge in single combat for certain categories of slander which are a bit complicated to go into now—' Obsolete, too, since dueling was outlawed by Imperial edict, but these Betans won't know the difference—'So unless you happen to be carrying two pairs of swords and are prepared to, say, offer an insult to Pilot Officer Mayhew's mother, you will simply have to—ah—contain yourself.'
Timely advice; the security woman looked as if she were about to explode, Mayhew gave a hopeful nod, smiling weakly. Bothari stirred uneasily, eyes flicking on an inventory of men and weapons in the mob. Gently, thought Miles; let's take it gently. 'Get up, Arde . . .'
It took some persuading, but the security officer finally checked with her superiors about Miles's bizarre defense of Pilot Officer Mayhew. At that point, as Miles had hoped and foreseen, proceedings broke down in a morass of untested interplanetary legal hypotheses that threatened to engulf the Barrayaran Embassy and the Betan State Department on ever-ascending levels of personnel.
Elena's case was easier. The outraged Betan was directed to take his case to the Barrayaran Embassy in person. There, Miles knew, it would be swallowed up in an endless moebius loop of files, forms, and reports, kept especially for such occasions by the extremely competent staff. The forms included some particularly creative ones that had to be round-tripped on the six-week journey back to Barrayar itself, and were guaranteed to be sent back several times for minor errors in execution.
'Relax,' Miles whispered in an aside to Elena. 'They'll bury that guy in files so deep you'll never see him again. It works great with Betans—they're perfectly happy, because all the time they think they're doing something to you. Just don't kill anybody. My diplomatic immunity doesn't go that far.'
The exhausted Mayhew was swaying on his feet by the time the Betans gave way. Miles, feeling like an old sea raider after a successful looting spree, bore him off.
'Two hours,' muttered Bothari. 'We've only been in this bloody place two bloody hours …'
CHAPTER SIX
'Miles, dear,' his grandmother greeted him with a peck on the cheek as regulation as a salute. 'You're rather late—trouble in Customs again? Are you very tired from your trip?'
'Not a bit.' He bounced on his heels, missing free fall and its unconstrained motion. He felt like taking a fifty kilometer run, or going dancing, or something. The Botharis looked weary, though, and Pilot Officer Mayhew was nearly green. The pilot officer, after the briefest introduction, was shipped off to the spare bedroom in Mrs. Naismith's apartment to wash, take his choice of too-small or too-large borrowed pajamas, and fall unconscious across the bed as though slugged with a mallet.
Miles's grandmother fed the survivors dinner, and as Miles had hoped seemed quite taken with Elena. Elena was having an attack of shyness in the presence of the admired Countess Vorkosigan's mother, but Miles was fairly sure the old woman would soon bring her out of it. Elena might even pick up a little of her Betan indifference to Barrayaran class distinctions. Might it ease the oppressive constraint that seemed to have been growing between himself and Elena ever since they had ceased to be children? It was the damn Vor-suit he wore, Miles thought. There were days it felt like armor; archaic, clanking, encrusted and spiked. Uncomfortable to wear, impossible to embrace. Give her a can opener, and let her see what a pale soft miserable slug this gaudy shell encloses—not that that would be any less repellent—his thoughts buried themselves in the dark fall of Elena's hair, and he sighed. He realized his grandmother was speaking to him. 'I beg your pardon, ma'am?'
'I said,' she repeated patiently between bites, 'one of my neighbors—you remember him, Mr. Hathaway, who works at the recycling center—I know you met him when you were here to school—'
'Oh, yeah, sure. Him.'
'He has a little problem that we thought you might be able to help with, being Barrayaran. He's sort of been saving it for you, since we knew you were coming. He thought, if you weren't too tired, you might even go with him tonight, since it is starting to be rather disturbing .. .'
'I really can't tell you all that much about him myself,' said Hathaway, staring out over the vast domed arena that was his special charge. Miles wondered how long it would take to get used to the smell. 'Except that he says he's a Barrayaran. He disappears from time to time, but he always comes back. I've tried to persuade him to go to a Shelter, at least, but he didn't seem to like the idea. Lately, I haven't been able to get near him. You understand, he's never tried to hurt anybody or anything, but you never know, what with his being a Barrayaran and all—oh, sorry …'
Hathaway, Miles, and Bothari picked their way across the treacherous and uneven footing. Odd-shaped objects in the piles tended to turn unexpectedly, tripping the unwary. All the detritus of high tech, awaiting apotheosis as the next generation of Betan ingenuity, gleamed out amid more banal and universal human rubbish.
'Oh, damn it,' cried Hathaway suddenly, 'he's gone and lit a fire again.' A small curl of grey smoke was rising a hundred meters away. 'I hope he's not burning wood this time. I just cannot convince him how valuable— well, at least it makes him easy to find . . .'
A low place in the piles gave an illusion of a sheltered space. A thin, dark-haired man in his late twenties was hunched glumly over a tiny fire, carefully arranged in the bottom of a shallow parabolic antenna dish. A makeshift table that had started life as a computer desk console was evidently now the man's kitchen, for it held some flat pieces of metal and plastic now doing duty as plates and platters. A large carp, its scales gleaming red- gold, lay gutted and ready for cooking upon it.
Dark eyes, black smudges of weariness beneath them, flashed up at the clank of their approach. The man scrambled to his feet, grabbing what appeared to be a home-made knife; Miles couldn't tell what it was made of, but it was clearly a good one, if it had done the job on the fish. Bothari's hand automatically checked his stunner.
'I think he is a Barrayaran,' muttered Miles to Bothari. 'Look at the way he moves.'
Bothari nodded agreement. The man held his knife properly, like a soldier, left hand guarding the right, ready to block a snatch or punch an opening for the weapon. He seemed unconscious of his stance.
Hathaway raised his voice. 'Hey, Baz! I brought you some visitors, all right?'
'No.'
'Uh, look,' Hathaway slid down a pile of rubble, closer but not too close. 'I haven't bothered you, have I? I let you hang around in my center for days on end, it's all right as long as you don't carry anything out—that's not wood, is it? oh, all right … I'll overlook it this time, but I want you to talk to these guys. I figure you owe me. All right? Anyway, they're Barrayarans.'
Baz glanced up at them sharply, his expression a strange mixture of hunger and dismay. His lips formed a silent word. Miles read it, Home. I'm silhouetted, thought Miles; let's get down where he can see the light on my face. He picked his way down beside Hathaway.
Baz stared at him. 'You're no Barrayaran,' he said flatly.
'I'm half Betan,' Miles replied, feeling no desire to go into his medical history just then. 'But I was raised on Barrayar. It's home.'
'Home,' whispered the man, barely audibly.
'You're a long way from home.' Miles upended a plastic casing from something-or-other—it had some wires hanging out of it, giving it a sad disembowelled air—and seated himself. Bothari took up position above on the rubble within comfortable pouncing distance. 'Did you get stuck here or something? Do you, ah—need some help getting home?'
'No.' The man glanced away, frowning. His fire had burned down. He placed a metal grill from an air conditioner over it and laid his fish on top.
Hathaway eyed these preparations with fascination. 'What are you going to do with that dead goldfish?'
'Eat it.'
Hathaway looked revolted. 'Look, mister—all you have to do is report to a Shelter and get Carded, and you can have all the protein slices you want—any flavor, clean and fresh from the vats. Nobody has to eat a dead animal on this planet, really. Where'd you get it, anyway?'
