Then the dome closed again, the artificial clouds scurrying away on an artificial breeze, the light growing brighter and cheerier. The force-bubble faded into nothingness, leaving only an empty circle of undamaged grass. Not even ash.
A waiting ba servitor brought the Emperor a colorful robe. Giaja traded off his outer layer of whites, and donned the new garment. The Emperor raised a finger, and his honor guards again surrounded him, and the Imperial parade reversed itself out of the bowl. When the last major figure cleared the rim, the mourners gave a collective sigh, and the silence and rigid pattern broke in a murmur of voices and rustle of departing motion.
A large open float-car was waiting at the top of the dell to take the emperor . . . away, to wherever Cetagandan emperors went when the party was over. Would Giaja have a good stiff drink and kick off his shoes? Probably not. The attendant ba arranged the Imperial robes, and sat to the controls.
Miles found himself left standing beside the car as it rose. Giaja glanced over at him, and favored him with a microscopic nod. "Good-bye, Lord Vorkosigan."
Miles bowed low. "Until we meet again."
"Not soon, I trust," Giaja murmured dryly, and floated off, trailed by a gaggle of force-bubbles now turned all the colors of the rainbow. None paused as if to look back.
Ghem-General Benin, at Miles's elbow, almost cracked an expression. Laughing? "Come, Lord Vorkosigan. I will escort you back to your delegation. Having given your ambassador my personal word to return you, I must personally—redeem it, as you Barrayarans say. A curious turn of phrase. Do you use it in the sense of a soul in a religion, or an object in a lottery?"
"Mm . . . more in a medical sense. As in the temporary donation of a vital organ." Hearts and promises, all redeemed here today.
"Ah."
They came upon Ambassador Vorob'yev and his party, looking around as galactic delegates boarded float-cars for a ride to one last fantastical meal. The cars' white silk seats had all been replaced, in the last hour, by assorted colored silks, signifying the end of official mourning. At no discernible signal, one came promptly to Benin. No waiting in line for them.
"If we left now," Miles noted to Ivan, "we could be in orbit in an hour."
"But—the ghem-ladies might be at the buffet," Ivan protested. "Women like food, y'know."
Miles was starving. "In that case, definitely leave straightaway," he said firmly.
Benin, perhaps mindful of his Celestial Master’s last broad hint, supported this with a bland, "That sounds like a good choice, Lord Vorkosigan."
Vorob'yev pursed his lips; Ivan's shoulders slumped slightly.
Vorreedi nodded at Miles’s throat, a glint of puzzled suspicion in his eyes. "What was that all about . . . Lieutenant?"
Miles fingered his silken collar with the Cetagandan Imperial Order of Merit attached. "My reward. And my punishment. It seems the haut Fletchir Giaja has a low taste for high irony."
Maz, who had obviously not yet been brought up to speed on the subtext of the situation, protested his lack of enthusiasm. "But it's an extraordinary honor, Lord Vorkosigan! There are Cetagandan ghem-officers who would gladly die for it!"
Vorob'yev explained coolly, "But rumors of it will hardly make him popular at home, love. Particularly circulating, as they must, without any real explanation attached. Even more particularly in light of the fact that Lord Vorkosigan's military assignment is in Barrayaran Imperial Security. From the Barrayaran point of view, it looks . . . well, it looks very strange."
Miles sighed. His headache was coming on again. "I know. Maybe I can get Illyan to classify it secret."
"About three thousand people just saw it!" Ivan said.
Miles stirred. "Well, that's your fault."
"Mine!"
"Yeah. If you'd brought me two or three coffee bulbs this morning, instead of only one, my brain might have been on-line, and I could've ducked faster and avoided this. Bloody slow reflexes. The implications are still dawning on me." For example: if he had not bowed his head to Giaja's silk collar in polite compliance, how dramatically would the chances have risen of his and Ivan's jumpship meeting some unfortunate accident while exiting the Cetagandan Empire?
Vorreedi's brows twitched. "Yes . . ." he said. "What did you and the Cetagandans talk about last night, after Lord Vorpatril and I were excluded?"
"Nothing. They never asked me anything more." Miles grinned blackly. "That's the beauty of it, of course. Let's see you prove a negative, Colonel. Just try. I want to watch."
After a long pause, Vorreedi slowly nodded. "I see."
"Thank you for that, sir," breathed Miles.
Benin escorted them all to the South Gate, and saw them out for the last time.
The planet of Eta Ceta was fading in the distance, though not fast enough to suit Miles. He switched off the monitor in his bunk aboard the ImpSec courier vessel, and lay back to nibble a bit more from his plain dry ration bar, and hope for sleep. He wore loose and wrinkled black fatigues, and no boots at all. He wriggled his toes in their unaccustomed freedom. If he played it right, he might be able to finesse his way through the entire two-week trip home barefoot. The Cetagandan Order of Merit, hung above his head, swayed slightly on its colored ribbon, gleaming in the soft light. He scowled meditatively at it.
A familiar double-knock sounded on his cabin door; for a moment he longed to feign sleep. Instead he sighed, and pushed himself up on his elbow. "Enter, Ivan."
Ivan had skinned out of his dress uniform and into fatigues as fast as possible also. And friction-slippers, hah. He had a sheaf of colored papers in his hand.
"Just thought I'd share these with you," Ivan said. "Vorreedi's clerk handed 'em to me just as we were leaving the embassy. Everything we're going to be missing tonight, and for the next week." He switched on Miles's disposal chute, in the wall. A yellow paper. "Lady Benello." He popped it in; it whooshed into oblivion. A green one. "Lady Arvin." Whoosh. An enticing turquoise one; Miles could smell the perfume from his bunk. "The inestimable Veda." Whoosh—
"I get the point, Ivan," Miles growled.
"And the food," Ivan sighed. "—why are you eating that disgusting rat bar? Even courier ship stores can do better than that!"
"I wanted something plain."
"Indigestion, eh? Your stomach acting up again? No blood leakage, I hope."
"Only in my brain. Look, why are you here?"
"I just wanted to share my virtuous divesting of my life of decadent Cetagandan luxury," Ivan said primly. "Sort of like shaving my head and becoming a monk. For the next two weeks, anyway." His eye fell on the Order of Merit, turning slowly on its ribbon. "Want me to put that down the disposer too? Here, I'll get rid of it for you—" He made to grab it.
Miles came up out of his bunk in a posture of defense like a wolverine out of its burrow. "Will you get out of here!"
"Ha! I thought that little bauble meant more to you than you were letting on to Vorreedi and Vorob'yev," Ivan crowed.
Miles stuffed the medal down out of sight, and out of reach, under his bedding. "I frigging earned it. Speaking of blood." Ivan grinned, and stopped circling for a swoop on Miles's possessions, and settled down into the tiny cabin's station chair.
"I've thought about it, you know," Miles went on. "What it's going to be like, ten or fifteen years from now, if I ever get out of covert ops and into a real line command. I'll have had more practical experience than any other Barrayaran soldier of my generation, and it's all going to be totally invisible to my brother officers. Classified. They'll all think I spent the last decade riding in jumpships and eating candy. How am I going to maintain authority over a bunch of overgrown backcountry goons—like you? They'll eat me alive."