boxes.
'Take care of him, Paymaster,' the captain ordered, and wheeled out. 'All right, Gamad, show me this grand strategy of yours …'
Baz's eyes smoked. 'Excuse me, my lord, but I think I'd better join them.'
'I'll go with you,' offered Mayhew. He clicked his teeth together gently, as if nibbling for a jugular.
'Go ahead.' Miles turned to the paymaster, who sighed and shoved a data cartridge into the table-top viewer.
'Now—Mr. Naismith? is that correct? May I see your copy of the contract, please.'
Miles frowned uneasily. 'Major Daum and I had a verbal agreement. Forty thousand Betan dollars upon safe delivery of his cargo to Felice. This refinery is Felician territory, now.'
The paymaster stared, astonished. 'A verbal agreement? A verbal agreement is no contract!'
Miles sat up. 'A verbal agreement is the most binding of contracts! Your soul is in your breath, and therefore in your voice. Once pledged it must be redeemed.'
'Mysticism has no place—'
'It is not mysticism! It's a recognized legal theory!' On Barrayar, Miles realized.
'That's the first I've heard of it.'
'Major Daum understood it perfectly well.'
'Major Daum was in Intelligence. He specialized in galactics. I'm just Accounting Office—'
'You refuse to redeem your dead comrade's word? But you are real Service, no mercenary—'
The paymaster shook his head. 'I have no idea what you're babbling about. But if the cargo is right, you'll be paid. This isn't Jackson's Whole.'
Miles relaxed slightly. 'Very well.' The paymaster was no Vor, nor anything like one. Counting his payment in front of him was not likely to be taken as a mortal insult. 'Let's see it.'
The paymaster nodded to his assistant, who uncoded the locks. Miles held his breath in happy anticipation of more money than he'd seen in one pile in his life. The lids swung up to reveal stacks and stacks of tightly bundled, particolored pieces of paper. There was a long, long pause.
Miles slid off his leg-swinging perch on the conference table and picked out a bundle. Each contained perhaps a hundred identical, brightly engraved compositions of pictures, numbers, and letters in a strange cursive alphabet. The paper was slick, almost sleazy. He held one piece up to the light.
'What is it?' he asked at last.
The paymaster raised his eyebrows. 'Paper currency. It's used commonly for money on most planets —'
'I know that! What currency is it?'
'Felician millifenigs.'
'Millifenigs.' It sounded faintly like a swear word. 'What's it worth in real money? Betan dollars, or, say, Barrayaran Imperial marks.'
'Who uses Barrayaran marks?' the paymaster's assistant muttered in puzzlement.
The paymaster cleared his throat. 'As of the annual listing, millifenigs were pegged at 150 per Betan dollar on the Betan Exchange,' he recited quickly.
'Wasn't that almost a year ago? What are they now?'
The paymaster found something to look at out the plexiports. 'The Oseran blockade has prevented us from learning the current rate of exchange.'
'Yeah? Well, what was the last figure you had, then?'
The paymaster cleared his throat again; his voice became strangely small. 'Because of the blockade, you understand, almost all the information about the war has been sent by the Pelians.'
'The rate, please.'
'We don't know.'
'The last rate,' Miles hissed.
The paymaster jumped. 'We really don't, sir. Last we heard, Felician currency had been, uh …' he was almost inaudible, 'dropped from the Exchange.'
Miles fingered his dagger. 'And just what are these—millifenigs,' he would have to experiment, he decided, to find just the right degree of venom to pronounce that word,' backed by?'
The paymaster raised his head proudly. 'The government of Felice!'
'The one that's losing this war, right?'
The paymaster muttered something.
'You are losing this war, are you not?'
'Losing the high orbitals was just a set-back,' the paymaster explained desperately. 'We still control our own airspace—'
'Millifenigs,' snorted Miles. 'Millifenigs … Well, I want Betan dollars!' He glared at the paymaster.
The paymaster replied as one goaded in pride and turning at bay. 'There are no Betan dollars! Every cent of it, yes, and every flake of other galactic currencies we could round up was sent with Major Daum, to buy that cargo—'
'Which I have risked my life delivering to you—'
'Which he died delivering to us!'
Miles sighed, recognizing an argument he could not win. His most frenetic posturing would not wring Betan dollars from a government that owned none. 'Millifenigs,' he muttered.
'I have to go,' said the paymaster. 'I have to initial the inventory—'
Miles flicked a hand at him, tiredly. 'Yes, go.'
The paymaster and his assistant fled, leaving him alone in the beautiful conference chamber with two crates of money. That the paymaster didn't even bother to set guard, demand receipt, or see it counted merely confirmed its worthlessness.
Miles piled a pyramid of the stuff before him on the conference table, and laid his head on his arms beside it. Millifenigs. He wandered momentarily in a mental calculation of its square area, if laid out in singles. He could certainly paper not only the walls, but the ceiling of his room at home, and most of the rest of Vorkosigan House as well. Mother would probably object.
He idly tested its inflammability, lighting one piece, planning to hold it until it burned down to his fingertips, to see if anything could hurt more than his stomach. But the doorseals clapped shut at the scent of smoke, a raucous alarm went off, and a chemical fire extinguisher protruded from the wall like a red, sardonic tongue. Fire was a real terror in space installations; the next step, he recalled, would be the evacuation of the air from the chamber to smother the flames. He batted the paper out hastily. Millifenigs. He dragged himself across the room to silence the alarm.
He varied his financial structure by building a square fort, with corner towers and an interior keep. The gate lintel had a tendency to collapse with a slight rustle. Perhaps he could pass on Pelian commercial shipping as a mentally retarded mutant, with Elena as his nurse and Bothari as his keeper, being sent to some off-planet hospital—or zoo—by rich relatives. He could take off his boots and socks and bite his toenails during customs inspections … But what roles could he find for Mayhew and Jesek? And Elli Quinn—liege-sworn or not, he owed her a face. Worse, he had no credit here—and somehow he doubted the exchange rate between Felician and Pelian currency would be in his favor.
The door sighed open. Miles quickly knocked his fort into a more random-appearing pile, and sat up straight, for the benefit of the mercenary who saluted and entered.
A self-conscious smile was pasted under the man's avid eyes. 'Excuse me, sir. I'd heard a rumor that our pay had arrived.'
Miles's lips peeled back in an uncontrollable grin. He forced them straight. 'As you see.'
Who, after all, could say what the exchange rate for millifenigs was—who could contradict any figure he chose to peg them at? As long as his mercenaries were in space, isolated from test markets, no one. Of course, when they did find out, there might not be enough pieces of him to go around, like the Dismemberment of Mad Emperor Yuri.
The mercenary's mouth formed an 'o' at the size of the pile. 'Shouldn't you set a guard, sir?'
'Just so, Trainee Nout. Good thinking. Ah—why don't you go fetch a float pallet, and secure this payroll in
