Miles-san’s eyes narrowed, and he resumed his pacing. “Mm… no reason why it shouldn’t have been. We’re not on Jackson’s Whole, either, I note. What all would you need to do the trick? Technically.”
“A decently-equipped revival facility. This isn’t something I’d choose to do out of the consulate basement’s laundry tub, if that’s what you’re thinking. Not if there were any complications.”
“We couldn’t afford complications, no. Emphatically not.” He glanced at Jin and Mina.
Raven-sensei nodded. “Some standard medical supplies, synthesized blood and so on.”
“If I secured you a facility, could you scrounge the supplies?”
Raven-sensei got a faraway look. “Legally, or otherwise?”
A pause. “I’ve no intrinsic objection to legally, but it can’t leave a data trail back to us. Otherwise, alternate suppliers would do. If their merchandise was of proper quality, of course.”
“That goes without saying. How would you propose to gain custody of my patient?”
Miles-san’s expression grew equally faraway. “Now, that’s where it becomes quite interesting—”
“Lord Vorkosigan!” Vorlynkin interrupted. “What the hell are you thinking?” Jin wasn’t sure if he really didn’t know, or knew and objected. Strenuously.
Miles-san waved that airy hand again. “Any number of threads in my cat’s cradle of Kibou-daini mysteries seem to run back to Lisa Sato—and stop. I’m thinking I might be able to cut the whole knot right through if I had her to interrogate. Er, talk to. Grant you, it seems a little imaginative at first glance, but the more I think about it…”
“Imaginative! It seems outright mad!”
Miles-san cast the consul a soulful look. “But Vorlynkin, it would solve all your problems with asylum for minors at a blow. Their mother being their closest possible adult next-of-kin.”
“When did those become my… never mind.”
Miles-san grinned in a glinty way that Jin did not entirely understand. “Very good, Vorlynkin.”
“What are you all talking about?” Mina practically wailed.
Miles-san lost his glintiness at once, and dropped to one knee in front of her swivel chair. “Unpack, right. Um. You see, Mina, I was sent here by my government to check out some sneaky, nasty things that a Kibou cryocorp is trying to do back on one of my home worlds. I think your mommy might be able to answer some of my questions, or at least give me some interesting new information. Now, it just so happens that Dr. Durona over there”—Raven-sensei waved his long fingers kindly at Mina—“is a top cryorevival specialist, and he already works for me, which is what gives me this idea. See, there are three things that have to be in place before I could undertake to wake up your mommy. I have to be sure it would be medically safe for her, and I think Raven could see to that. I have to be able to secure her cry—I have to be able to get hold of her, get her away from the place where she’s now held without kicking up a dust, and I think I can do that. And afterward, I have to be able to protect her from being arrested and taken away again, or it will all be for nothing, and that will be Consul Vorlynkin’s job.”
Vorlynkin looked startled at this news. But when Mina’s anxious gaze targeted him, he returned her a flicker of a smile, the first Jin had seen lighten his face. Girls, hah. Nobody handed Jin smiles like that when he was scared… he more usually got some sort of unsympathetic and bracing advice to buck up.
“Which reminds me, Vorlynkin,” Miles-san went on over his shoulder in a more clipped tone, “what are the limits of the political and legal protection this consulate can offer, once it becomes known that Madame Sato has, er, escaped custody, as it were? You’re not a full-scale embassy…”
Vorlynkin said reluctantly, “By our budget, we’re a branch of the embassy on Escobar. But we’re legally more than a consulate, because we’re the only full-time diplomatic facility Barrayar maintains here. It would be… it could be an ambiguous argument.”
“And ambiguous legal arguments burn lots of time, ah. That might just be good enough.” Miles-san rose to pace again.
Mina sank back into her swivel chair, her expression caught between hopeful and confused. Jin realized he’d been gripping the arms of his own chair so hard his fingernails were white, and slowly released his clutch. Mina’s words whirled around and around in his head, You could get my mommy back? Really? Really? Really… ? Who did this half-sized galactic think he was? When he’d said he was a delegate to the cryo-conference, but didn’t seem to be a doctor, and the others had all called him an auditor, Jin had vaguely assumed his job had something to do with insurance. Or maybe, less boringly, insurance fraud. He seemed to know a lot about fraud, anyway.
“First things first. Johannes, what vehicles does the consulate maintain?”
Johannes jerked, as if he’d been a watcher of a play unexpectedly addressed by one of the characters. “Uh, the official groundcar, of course. And we have a lift van. I have a float bike, myself.”
“Lift van, perfect. Tomorrow, then, we’ll take Jin and Raven and go pick up Jin’s creatures, and bring them back here to the consulate, so that’ll be off his mind and my conscience.”
Jin looked up, caught between thrilled and bewildered. Didn’t these Barrayarans mean to let him go… ? On the other hand, as long as he had his animals back, and didn’t have to go back to Aunt Lorna and school, did it matter where he stayed?
“My consulate isn’t exactly set up to host a menagerie,” said Vorlynkin.
“No, they’ll be fine here!” Jin assured him, panicked at the thought of being separated yet again from all his pets. “There’s so much room. And your back garden is all walled in. They won’t bother you a bit.”
“What kind of—no, never mind. Go on, Lord Vorkosigan.”
“At the same time, I will take Raven to meet Suze and company, and inspect the facilities. We might avoid having to retool the consulate laundry room into a cryo revival facility—” though he did not sound as if this proposed renovation gave him much pause “—if, like the installation we saw today, her old place already has one. And it’s still in good shape, not stripped.”
Jin said doubtfully, “If you want any favors from Suze-san, you better catch her early in the day. When she’s still sober.”
“Not a problem,” Miles-san said. “Then, if everything proves workable, we can go on to the next step.”
“What is the next step?” asked Consul Vorlynkin, in fascinated tones. He looked like a man staring at a groundcar wreck. In slow motion. That he was in.
“Securing Madame Sato.”
“How?”
“I’m going to have to do a spot more research first, to devise the optimum ploy. According to the public records, she’s being kept at the NewEgypt facility out in the Cryopolis here in Northbridge, which is actually pretty convenient.” Miles-san’s lips drew back on a peculiar grin. “It could be just like old times.”
Armsman Roic sat up in alarm. He put in, with some urgency, “What about those commodified contracts Ron Wing was going on about? Maybe you could work out a way to just, I dunno, buy her. All peaceable and aboveboard.” He added after a moment, “Or under the table, but peaceable, anyway.”
Miles-san paused again in his pacing, as if arrested by this notion. “Shrewd idea, Roic. But she’s not just any cryo-patron. I suspect that any interest in her is likely to send up a big red flag.” He fell into motion again. “Still, hold that thought. It might be useful later, for the retroactive tidying up.”
Roic sighed.
“The ideal,” Miles-san went on, “would be to arrange things so that she wasn’t missed at all.”
“These commercial cryochambers are all continuously monitored,” said Raven-sensei. “You’d need some way to fudge the readouts.” He hesitated. “Or go low tech, and just swap in another cryo-corpse. That way, all the readings would be naturally right. They wouldn’t know the difference unless they pulled it out and unwrapped it.”