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"No, I don't. I do know that in all our conversations the subject was never
once brought up. Ever."
"Hm. Wish I knew how to interpret that. It sounds a little ominous. Do you
think you could ask... ?"
"Good God, Cordelia, of course not! What a question to ask the man.
Particularly if the answer is no. I've got to work with him, remember."
"Well, I've got to work with Drou. She's no use to me if she pines away and
dies of a broken heart. He has reduced her to tears, more than once. She goes
off where she thinks nobody's looking."
"Really? That's hard to imagine."
"You can hardly expect me to tell her he's not worth it, all things
considered. But does he really dislike her? Or is it just self-
defense?"
"Good question... For what it's worth, my driver made a joke about her the
other day-not even a very offensive one-and Kou got rather frosty with him. I
don't think he dislikes her. But I do think he envies her."
Cordelia left the subject on that ambiguous note. She longed to help the pair,
but had no answer to offer for their dilemma. Her own mind had no trouble
generating creative solutions to the practical problems of physical intimacy
posed by the lieutenant's injuries, but shrank from the violation of their shy
reserve that offering them would entail. She suspected wryly that she would
merely shock them. Sex therapy appeared to be unheard of, here.
True Betan, she had always considered a double standard of sexual behavior to
be a logical impossibility. Dabbling now on the fringes of Barrayaran high
society in Vorkosigan's wake, she began to finally see how it could be done.
It all seemed to come down to impeding the free flow of information to certain
persons, preselected by an unspoken code somehow known to and agreed upon by
all present but her. One could not mention sex to or in front of unmarried
women or children. Young men, it appeared, were exempt from all rules when
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talking to each other, but not if a woman of any age or degree were present.
The rules also changed bewilderingly with variations of the social status of
those present. And married women, in groups free of male eavesdroppers,
sometimes underwent the most astonishing transformations in apparent
databases. Some subjects could be joked about but not discussed seriously. And
some variations could not be mentioned at all. She had blighted more than one
conversation beyond hope of recovery by what seemed to her a perfectly obvious
and casual remark, and been taken aside by Aral for a quick debriefing.
She tried writing out a list of the rules she thought she had deduced, but
found them so illogical and conflicting, especially in the area of what
certain people were supposed to pretend not to know in front of certain other
people, she gave up the effort. She did show the list to Aral, who read it in
bed one night and nearly doubled over laughing.
"Is that what we really look like to you? I like your Rule Seven. Must keep it
in mind... I wish I'd known it in my youth. I
could have skipped all those godawful Service training vids."
"If you snicker any harder, you're going to get a nosebleed," she said tartly.
"These are your rules, not mine. You people play by them. I just try to figure
them out."
"My sweet scientist. Hm. You certainly call things by their correct names.
We've never tried... would you like to violate Rule
Eleven with me, dear Captain?"
"Let me, see, which one-oh, yes! Certainly. Now? And while we're about it,
let's knock off Thirteen. My hormones are up. I
remember my brother's co-parent told me about this effect, but I didn't really
believe her at the time. She says you make up for it later, post-partum."
"Thirteen? I'd never have guessed... ."
"That's because, being Barrayaran, you spend so much time following Rule Two."
Anthropology was forgotten, for a time. But she found she could crack him up,
later, with a properly timed mutter of "Rule
Nine, sir."
The season was turning. There had been a hint of winter in the air that
morning, a frost that had wilted some of the plants in
Count Piotr's back garden. Cordelia anticipated her first real winter with
fascination. Vorkosigan promised her snow, frozen water, something she'd
experienced on only two Survey missions. Before spring, I shall bear a son.
Huh.
But the afternoon had basked in the autumn light, warming again. The flat roof
of Vorkosigan House above the front wing now breathed back that heat around
Cordelia's ankles as she picked her way across it, though the air on her
cheeks was cooling to crispness as the sun slanted to the city's horizon.
"Good evening, boys." Cordelia nodded to the two guards posted to this rooftop
duty station.
They nodded back, the senior touching his forehead in a hesitant semi-salute.
"Milady."
Cordelia had taken to regular sunset-watching up here. The view of the
cityscape from this four-floors-up vantage was very fine. She could catch a
gleam of the river that divided the town, beyond trees and buildings. Although
the excavation of a large hole a few blocks away along the line of sight
suggested that the riverine scene would be occluded soon by new architecture.
The tallest turret of Vorhartung Castle, where she'd attended all those
ceremonies in the Council of Counts' chamber, peaked from a bluff overlooking
the water.
Beyond Vorhartung Castle lay the oldest parts of the capital. She'd not yet
seen that area, its kinked one-horse-wide streets impassable to groundcars,
though she'd flown over the strange, low, dark blots in the heart of the city.
The newer parts, glittering out toward the horizon, were more like galactic
standard, patterned around the modern transportation systems.
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None of it was like Beta Colony. Vorbarr Sultana was all spread out on the
surface, or climbed skyward, strangely two-
dimensional and exposed. Beta Colony's cities plunged down into shafts and
tunnels, many-layered and complex, cozy and safe.
Indeed, Beta Colony did not have architecture so much as it had interior
design. It was amazing, the variety of schemes people came up with to vary
dwellings that had outsides.
The guards twitched and sighed, as she leaned on the stonework, gazing out.
They really didn't like it when she strayed nearer than three meters to the
edge, though the space was only six meters wide. But she should be able to
spot Vorkosigan's groundcar turning into the street soon. Sunsets were all
very well, but her eyes turned downward.
She inhaled the complex odors, from vegetation, water vapor, industrial waste
gases. Barrayar permitted an amazing amount of air dumping, as if... well, air
was free, here. Nobody measured it, there were no air processing and
filtration fees... . Did these people even realize how rich they were? All the
air they could breathe, just by stepping outdoors, taken for granted as
casually us they took frozen water falling from the sky. She took an extra
breath, as if she could somehow greedily hoard it, and smiled- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]