The pounding stopped. More muffled voices.
“We’ve got to block the door. Buy time,” said Ivan.
“Time for what?” said By.
“Time for me to think of something.”
“That could take all day.”
Ivan shot him an irate look, teeth clenching hard.
“The couches,” said Tej. “They’ll be through the door codes soon enough—we have to make a physical barrier.” The two women leapt to begin dragging furniture into the hall and propping it up against the door. By looked as if he didn’t think this would work, but, carried along by the fog of cold panic that seemed to be permeating the place, fell into helping them nonetheless. Damn but Rish was strong for her size…
Ivan peered into the security vid. The two detectives had been joined by four more people, three men and a woman. One man was the building manager. The other three were in unfamiliar uniforms. They appeared to be debating with each other, comparing official-looking forms displayed by their wrist holos. Unless it was some really arcane style of video arm wrestling? Dueling jurisdictions?
Ivan shoved By up to look in the vid. “That wouldn’t be Immigration, would it?”
“Uh, yes?”
The building manager fumbled with a code key. By opened his jacket and jerked out his stunner.
“Can you take down all six of them before they get you?” asked Tej uneasily. Picturing her and Rish escaping over a wall of bodies? Possibly including By’s and Ivan’s?
Still peering, By swore, set his stunner on high, and jammed it up against the electronic lock. It buzzed angrily, and after a long moment, sparks shot out of the mechanism. “At least that’ll hold the building manager,” said By, a glint of strained satisfaction in his eye.
“You’ve locked us in!” Ivan protested. “And now I can’t open the door.”
“Good!” said Rish, heaving another heavy armchair atop the pile and wedging it in tight.
They all retreated temporarily to Ivan’s emptied living room.
Tej swung around, stared deeply into Ivan’s eyes, gasped, “I’m so sorry it has to end this way, Ivan Xav. I know you tried,” and flung her arms around him. Ivan found himself holding what would, under other circumstances, be an absolutely delightful bundle of warm, soft woman. He opened his mouth to her frantic kiss nonetheless, and his arms wrapped her in turn, snugly and securely. He wasn’t sure what was happening here, but O God don’t let it stop…
She stopped. Pushed him away. He managed not to whimper. “That’s it,” she said simply, and turned to take her blue companion’s hand, with a nod toward the balcony. “It’s time, Rish.”
Rish nodded back, face very grim. They started for the door. By, uneasy, moved to block the glass.
“Where do you think you’re going?” By asked.
“Over the balcony.”
“But you don’t have grav belts! Or anything!” said Ivan.
Tej wheeled back and raised her chin at him. “That’s right.”
“But we’re twenty stories up!”
“Yes, that ought to be enough.”
“You’ll be killed!”
Rish stared at him in disbelief. “Are you slow, Captain?”
“But the dome cops will think I flung you off, or worse!”
Tej was plainly moved by this, but steeled herself and said sternly, “If you haven’t got a better plan, right now, we’re going. Because later will be too late.”
“No, yes, what—” Ivan’s wristcom chimed, insistently. He opened the link, yelled, “Not now, sir!” into it, and closed it again. After a moment, it chimed once more. Louder. No override for this code.
“By, don’t let them get out!” said Ivan, ran to the kitchenette, ripped off his wristcom, opened the refrigerator door, tossed it in, and slammed the door shut again. The wristcom still whimpered, but very faint and plaintive.
He turned back to the women, and By, who stood with his back tight against the glass. Both he and Rish had their stunners out, pointed at each other. Rish’s was shaking in her death-grip. The new pounding from the hall was growing louder, more disturbingly mechanical. Not just fists anymore. The flat’s doors were designed to keep air from getting out, in a dome-pressurization emergency. Not determined policemen, backed up by building maintenance personnel, from getting in.
What else had he just seen sitting out on that kitchen counter…“Don’t shoot!” Ivan cried. “And don’t jump! I have an idea!”
This held the tableau, if only in morbid curiosity, long enough for him to run back into the kitchenette and grab the instant groats from the countertop, the large economy-size box that he’d purchased yesterday evening. He ran back into his living room and brandished it. “This’ll do the job!”
“You’re going to throw cereal at them?” asked Rish, perplexed.
“Or shall we all sit down and have a hearty Barrayaran breakfast together while the police break in?” asked By, in an all-too-similar tone. But both stunners drooped.
Shrugging off the sarcasms, and dear God hadn’t he had enough practice at that in his life, Ivan drew a long breath. “Tej. Will you marry me?”
“What?” she said. It wasn’t a thrilled sort of what? either, that ought to greet such a proposal, more of a have-you-lost-your-mind? what. Ivan cringed.
“No, this’ll work! A woman who marries a Barrayaran subject automatically becomes a Barrayaran subject. It’s one of those fundamental oaths that underlie all other oaths, biology before politics, so to speak. From the moment we finish speaking, Immigration won’t be able to arrest you. And the dome cops won’t be able to arrest me, either.” What he was going to do about Desplains, Ivan was less sure. His wristcom was still thinly chiming in its exile, cold and lonely and far off. Ivan ripped open the box and began dancing sock-foot through the living room, dribbling out a circle of cereal on the carpet.
“Don’t we have to go somewhere and register it, even for a simple civil match?” asked Tej. “We’d never make it to wherever! They’ll seize us as soon as we go out the door!”
“But not,” said Rish blackly, “the other door.” By braced his back harder against the latch, though he still stared, confounded, at the growing circle. His eyes were as wide as Ivan had ever seen them.
“No, that’s the beauty of it!” Ivan explained. “In Barrayaran law, the couple marry themselves. It’s a Time of Isolation thing, you wouldn’t understand. Your breath is your bond. You each prop up your Second—your witness—on the edge, you step into the circle, you speak your oaths, you step out, it’s done. The core oaths are really simple, though people gussy them up with all kinds of additions to stretch the ceremony out, God knows why, it’s usually racking enough.” He appealed for support. “Tell them I’m right, Byerly!”
“Actually”—By coughed, swallowed, found his voice—“he is. About the legalities, anyway.”
“I can use my military dependent travel chits to get you back to Barrayar,” Ivan went on. “Five jumps further away from your pursuers, and besides, once you’re married to me, you’ll have ImpSec totally on your side because, um, because. This’ll buy time. And as soon as you’ve figured out what you really want to do, we can go get a divorce in the Count’s Court. Not quite as easy as getting married—my Betan aunt thinks it should be t’other way around—but Count Falco’s an old friend of Mamere’s. Ten minutes, in and out, I swear! And you’ll both be on your way.”