Hand shaking slightly, he reached out to touch the monitor and bring up the next control level. General power and reservoir readouts, all in the green. The next level allowed individual monitoring of each fetus contained within one of the twenty separate placental chambers. Human blood temperature, baby mass, and if that weren't enough, tiny individual vid spy cameras built in, with lights, to view the replicators' inhabitants in real time, floating peacefully in their amniotic sacs. The one in the monitor twitched tiny fingers at the soft red glow, and seemed to scrunch up its big dark eyes. If not quite grown to term, it—no, she—was damned close to it, Miles guessed. He thought of Helen Natalia, and Aral Alexander.
Roic swung on his booted heel, lips parting in dismay, staring up the aisle of glittering devices. “D'you mean, m'lord, that all these things are full of human babies?”
“Well, now, that's a question. Actually, that's two questions. Are they full, and are they human? If they are haut infants, that latter is a most debatable point. For the first, we can at least look . . .” A dozen more pallet monitors, checked at random intervals around the room, revealed similar results. Miles was breathing rapidly by the time he gave it up for proven.
Roic said in a puzzled tone, “So what's a Betan herm doing with a bunch of Cetagandan replicators? And just because they're Cetagandan make, how d'you know it's Cetagandans inside 'em? Maybe the Betan bought the replicators used?”
Miles, lips drawn back on a grin, swung to Bel. “Betan? What do you think, Bel? How much did you two talk about the old sandbox while you were supervising this visit?”
“We didn't talk much at all.” Bel shook its head. “But that doesn't prove anything. I'm not much for bringing up the subject of home myself, and even if I had, I'm too out of touch with Beta to spot inaccuracies in current events anyway. It wasn't Dubauer's conversation that was the trouble. There was just something . . . off, in its body language.”
“Body language. Just so.” Miles stepped to Bel, reached up, and turned the herm's face to the light. Bel did not flinch at his nearness, but merely smiled. Fine hairs gleamed on cheek and chin. Miles's eyes narrowed as he carefully revisualized the cut on Dubauer's cheek.
“You have facial down, like women. All herms do, right?”
“Sure. Unless they're using a really thorough depilatory, I suppose. Some even cultivate beards.”
“Dubauer doesn't.” Miles made to pace down the aisle, stopped himself, turned back, and held still with an effort. “Nary a sprout in sight, except for the pretty silver eyebrows and hair, which I'd wager Betan dollars to sand are recent implants. Body language, hah. Dubauer's not double-sexed at all—what were your ancestors thinking?”
Bel smirked cheerily.
“But altogether sexless. Truly 'it.' “
“It , in Betan parlance,” Bel began in the weary tone of one who has had to explain this far too often, “does not carry the connotation of an inanimate object that it does in other planetary cultures. I say this despite a certain ex-boss of my very distant past, who did a pretty fair imitation of the sort of large and awkward piece of furniture that one can neither get rid of nor decorate around—”
Miles waved this aside. “Don't tell me —I got that lecture at my mother's knee. But Dubauer's not a herm. Dubauer's a ba.”
“A who what?”
“To the casual outside eye, the ba appear to be the bred servitors of the Celestial Garden, where the Cetagandan emperor dwells in serenity in surroundings of aesthetic perfection, or so the haut lords would have you believe. The ba seem the ultimate loyal servant race, human dogs. Beautiful, of course, because everything inside the Celestial Garden must be. I first ran into the ba about ten years back, when I was sent to Cetaganda—not as Admiral Naismith, but as Lieutenant Lord Vorkosigan—on a diplomatic errand. To attend the funeral of Emperor Fletchir Giaja's mother, as it happened, the old Dowager Empress Lisbet. I got to see a lot of ba up close. Those of a certain age—relicts of Lisbet's youth a century ago, mainly—had all been made hairless. It was a fashion, which has since passed.
“But the ba aren't servants, or anyway, aren't just servants, of the Imperial haut. Remember what I said about the haut ladies of the Star Cr?che only working in human genes? The ba are where the haut ladies test out prospective new gene complexes, improvements to the haut race, before they decide if they're good enough to add to this year's new model haut cohort. In a sense, the ba are the haut's siblings. Elder siblings, almost. Children, even, from a certain angle of view. The haut and the ba are two sides of one coin.
“A ba is every bit as smart and dangerous as a haut lord. But not as autonomous. The ba are as loyal as they are sexless, because they're made so, and for some of the same reasons of control. At least it explains why I kept thinking I'd met Dubauer someplace before. If that ba doesn't share most of its genes with Fletchir Giaja himself, I'll eat my, my, my—”
“Fingernails?” Bel suggested.
Miles hastily removed his hand from his mouth. He continued, “If Dubauer's a ba, and I'll swear it is, these replicators have to be full of Cetagandan . . . somethings. But why here ? Why transport them covertly, and on a ship of a once-and-future enemy empire, at that? Well, I hope not future—the last three rounds of open warfare we had with our Cetagandan neighbors were surely enough. If this was something open and aboveboard, why not travel on a Cetagandan ship, with all the trimmings? I guarantee it's not for economy's sake. Deathly secret, this, but who from, and why? What the hell is the Star Cr?che up to, anyway?” He swung in a circle, unable to keep still. “And what is so hellish secret that this ba would bring these live growing fetuses all this way, but then plan to kill them all to keep the secret rather than ask for help?”
“Oh,” said Bel. “Yeah, that. That's . . . a bit unnerving, when you think about it.”
Roic said indignantly, “That's horrible , m'lord!”
“Maybe Dubauer doesn't really intend to flush them,” said Bel in an uncertain tone. “Maybe it just said that to get us to put more pressure on the quaddies to give it a break, let it take its cargo off the Idris .”
“Ah . . .” said Miles. There was an attractive idea—wash his hands of this whole unholy mess . . . ”Crap. No. Not yet, anyway. In fact, I want you to lock the Idris back down. Don't let Dubauer—don't let anyone back on board. For once in my life, I actually want to check with HQ before I jump. And as quickly as possible.”
What was it that Gregor had said—had talked around, rather? Something has stirred up the Cetagandans around Rho Ceta. Something peculiar. Oh, Sire, do we ever have peculiar here now. Connections?
“Miles ,” said Bel in aggravation, “I just jumped through hoops persuading Watts and Greenlaw to let Dubauer back on the Idris . How am I going to explain the sudden reversal?” Bel hesitated. “If this cargo and its owner are dangerous to Quaddiespace, I should report it. D'you think that quaddie in the hostel might have been shooting at Dubauer, instead of at you or me?”