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Shivering, he recalled dimly, used more oxygen, but he could not make himself stop. The silence was
profound, broken only by the hiss of Miles's regulators and filters, and the beating of the blood in his own
ears. He had seen many deaths, including his own, but this was surely one of the ugliest. The shocky
shudders traveled up and down his body, and his thoughts spun uselessly: they kept circling back to the
spuriously calm observation that a barrel of fast-penta would be no damned use to him now.
If he went into a convulsion and dislodged his breath mask in the process, he could be well on his way to
asphyxiating before he even returned to consciousness. ImpSec would find him hanging there beside
Vorsoisson, choked identically on his own spew. And nothing was more likely to set off one of his
seizures than stress.
Miles watched the slime begin to freeze on the sagging corpse's face, scanned the dark skies in the
wrong direction, and waited.
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ekaterin set down her cases next to Lord Vorkosigan's in the vestibule, and turned for one last
automatic check of the premises, one last patrol of her old life. All lights were out. All windows were
sealed. All appliances were off . . . the comconsole chimed just as she was leaving the kitchen.
She hesitated.Let it go. Let it all go. But then she reflected it might be Tuomonen or someone, trying to
reach Lord Vorkosigan. Or Uncle Vorthys, though she was not sure she even wanted to talk to him,
tonight. She turned back to the machine, but her hand hesitated again with the thought that it might be
Tien.In that case, I will simply cut the com . If it was Tien, about to attempt some other plea or threat
or persuasion, at least it was a guarantee he was someplace else, and not here, and she could still walk
away.
But the face that formed over the vid-plate at her reluctant touch was that of a Komarran woman from
Tien's department, Lena Foscol. Ekaterin had only met her in person a couple of times, but Soudha's
words over this same vid-plate last night leapt to her mind:Lena Foscol in Accounting is the most
meticulous thief I've ever met. Oh, God. She was one ofthem. The background was out of focus, but
the woman was wearing a parka, thrown open over dome-wear, suggesting she was either on her way to
or on her way back from some outside expedition. Ekaterin regarded her with concealed revulsion.
"Madame Vorsoisson?" Foscol said brightly. Without waiting for Ekaterin's answer, she went on,
"Please come pick up your husband at the Waste Heat experiment station. He'll be waiting for you
outside on the northwest side of the Engineering building."
"But " What was Tien doing out there at this time of night? "How did he get out there, doesn't he have
a flyer? Can't he get a ride back with someone else?"
"Everyone else has left." Her smile widened, and she cut the com.
"But " Ekaterin raised a hand in futile protest, too late. "Drat." And then, after a moment, "Damnit!"
Retrieving Tien from the experiment station would be a two-hour chore, at least. She would first have to
take a bubble-car to a public flyer livery, and rent a flyer, since she had no authority to requisition one
from Tien's department. She'd been seriously considering sleeping on a park bench tonight, just to save
her pittance of funds for the uncertain days to come until she found some form of paying work, except
that the dome patrollers didn't permit vagrants to loiter in any of the places where she might feel safe.
Foscol hadn't said if Lord Vorkosigan was with Tien, which suggested he was not, which meant that
she'd have to fly back to Serifosa alone with Tien, who would insist on taking the controls, and what if he
finally got serious about his suicide threats when they were halfway back, and decided to take her down
with him? No. It wasn't worth the risk. Let him rot out there till morning, or let him call someone else.
Her hand upon her case again, she reconsidered. Still hostage to fortune in this mess, or at least to
everyone's good behavior, was Nikki. Tien's relationship to his son was mostly neglectful, interspersed
with occasional bullying, but with enough spasms of actual attention that Nikki, at least, still seemed to
show attachment to him. The two of them were always going to have a relationship separate from her
own. She and Tien would be forced to cooperate for Nikki's sake: an iron-cladding of surface courtesy
that must never crack. Tien's anger or potential brutality were no more of a threat to her future than some
belated attempt on his part at affection or placation. She could face down either, now, she thought, with
equal stoniness.
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I am not here to vent my feelings. I am here to achieve my goals.Yes. She could foresee that was
going to be her new mantra, in the weeks to come. With a grimace, she opened her case and retrieved
her personal breath mask, checked its reservoirs, pulled on her parka, and headed out for the bubble-car
station.
The delays were every bit as aggravating as Ekaterin had foreseen. Komarrans sharing her bubble-car
forced two extra stops. She suffered a thirty-minute clog in the system within sight of her goal; by the time
it spat her out at the westernmost dome lock, she was quite ready to chuck her plan of courtesy and go
back to the apartment, except for the thought of facing another thirty-minute delay en route. The lightflyer
they issued to her was elderly and not very clean. Alone at last, flying through the vast silence of the
Komarran night, her heart eased a little, and she toyed with the fantasy of flying somewhereelse ,
anywhere, just to extend the heavenly solitude. There might be more to pleasure than the absence of pain,
but she couldn't prove it just now. The absence of pain, of other human beings and their needs pressing
down upon her, seemed paradise enough. A paradise just out of reach.
Besides, she had noelsewhere . She could not even return to Barrayar with Nikki without first earning
enough to pay for their passage, or borrowing the money from her father, or her distant brothers, or
Uncle Vorthys. Distasteful thought.What you feel doesn't count, girl , she reminded herself.Goals.
You'll do whatever you have to do.
The bright lights of the experiment station, isolated in this barren wilderness, made a glow on the horizon
that drew the eye from kilometers off. She followed the black silky gleam of the river that wound past the
facility. As she neared, she made out several vehicles grounded in the station's lot and frowned in anger.
Foscol had lied about there being no one left at the station to give Tien a lift. On the other hand, this
raised the possibility that Ekaterin might get a ride back to Serifosa with someone else . . . she checked
her impulse to turn the flyer around in midair, and landed in the lot instead.
She adjusted her breath mask, released the canopy, and walked to the office building, hoping to arrange [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]