“The thought has crossed my mind, yes.”
“Then it's . . . wrong, to blindside the station on what may be a safety issue.”
Miles took a breath. “You are Graf Station's representative here; you know, therefore the station knows. That's enough. For now.”
Bel frowned. “That argument's too disingenuous even for me .”
“I'm only asking you to wait. Depending on what information I get back from home, I could damn well end up buying Dubauer a fast ship to take its cargo away on. One not of Barrayaran registry, preferably. Just stall. I know you can.”
“Well . . . all right. For a little while.”
“I want the secured comconsole in the Kestrel . We'll seal this hold and continue later. Wait. I want to have a look at Dubauer's cabin, first.”
“Miles, have you ever heard of the concept of a search warrant ?”
“Dear Bel, how fussy you have grown in your old age. This is a Barrayaran ship, and I am Gregor's Voice. I don't ask for search warrants, I issue them.”
Miles took one last turn completely around the cargo hold before having Roic lock it back up. He didn't spot anything different, just, dauntingly, more of the same. Fifty pallets added up to a lot of uterine replicators. There were no decomposing dead bodies tucked in behind any of the replicator racks, anyway, worse luck.
Dubauer's accommodation, back in the personnel module, proved unenlightening. It was a small economy cabin, and whatever personal effects the . . . individual of unknown gender had possessed, it had evidently packed and taken them all along when the quaddies had transferred the passengers to the hostels. No bodies under the bed or in the cabinets here, either. Brun's people had surely searched it at least cursorily once, the day after Solian vanished. Miles made a mental note to try to arrange a more microscopically thorough forensics examination of both the cabin, and the hold with the replicators. Although—by what organization? He didn't want to turn this over to Venn yet, but the Barrayaran fleet's medical people were mainly devoted to trauma. I'll figure something out. Never had he missed ImpSec more keenly.
“Do the Cetagandans have any agents here in Quaddiespace?” he asked Bel as they exited the cabin and locked up again. “Have you ever encountered your opposite numbers?”
Bel shook its head. “People from your region are pretty thinly spread out in this arm of the Nexus. Barrayar doesn't even keep a full-time consul's office on Union Station, and neither does Cetaganda. All they have is some quaddie lawyer on retainer over there who keeps the paperwork for about a dozen minor planetary polities, if anyone should want it. Visas and entry permissions and such. Actually, as I recall, she handles both Barrayar and Cetaganda. If there are any Cetagandan agents on Graf, I haven't spotted them. I can only hope the reverse is also true. Though if the Cetagandans do keep any spies or agents or informers in Quaddiespace, they're most likely to be on Union. I'm only here on Graf for, um, personal reasons.”
Before they exited the Idris , Roic insisted Bel call Venn for an update on the search for the murderous quaddie from the hostel lobby. Venn, clearly discommoded, rattled off reports of vigorous activity on the part of his patrollers—and no results. Roic was jumpy on the short walk from the Idris' s docking bay to the one where the Kestrel was locked on, eyeing their armed quaddie escort with almost as much suspicion as he eyed shadows and cross corridors. But they arrived without further incident.
“How hard would it be to get Greenlaw's permission to fast-penta Dubauer?” Miles asked Bel, as they made their way through the Kestrel 's airlock.
“Well, you'd need a court order. And an explanation that would convince a quaddie judge.”
“Hm. Ambushing Dubauer with a hypospray aboard the Idris suggests itself to my mind as a simpler alternate possibility.”
“It would.” Bel sighed. “And it would cost me my job if Watts found out I'd helped you. If Dubauer's innocent of wrongdoing, it would certainly complain to the quaddie authorities, afterward.”
“Dubauer's not innocent. At the very least, it's lied about its cargo.”
“Not necessarily. Its manifest just reads, Mammals, genetically altered, assorted . You can't say they aren't mammals.”
“Transporting minors for immoral purposes, then. Slave trading. Hell, I'll think of something.” Miles waved Roic and Bel off to wait, and took over the Kestrel 's wardroom again.
He seated himself, adjusted the security cone, and took a long breath, trying to round up his galloping thoughts. There was no faster way to get a tightbeam message, however coded, from Quaddiespace to Barrayar than via the commercial system of links. Message beams were squirted at the speed of light across local space systems between wormhole jump point stations. An hour's, or a day's, messages were collected at the stations and loaded on either scheduled dedicated communications ships, jumping back and forth on a regular schedule to squirt them across the next local space region, or, on less traveled routes, on whatever ship next jumped through. The round trip for a beamed message between Quaddiespace and the Imperium would take several days, at best.
He addressed the message triply, to Emperor Gregor, to ImpSec Chief Allegre, and to ImpSec galactic operations headquarters on Komarr. After a sketchy outline of the situation so far, including assurances of his assailant's bad aim, he described Dubauer, in as much detail as possible, and the startling cargo he'd found aboard the Idris . He requested full details on the new tensions with the Cetagandans that Gregor had alluded to so obliquely, and appended an urgent plea for information, if any, on known Cetagandan operatives and operations in Quaddiespace. He ran the results through the Kestrel 's ImpSec encoder and squirted it on its way.
Now what? Wait for an answer that might be entirely inconclusive? Hardly . . .
He jumped in his chair when his wrist com buzzed. He gulped and slapped it. “Vorkosigan.”
“Hello, Miles.” It was Ekaterin's voice; his heart rate slowed. “Do you have a moment?”
“Not only that, I have the Kestrel 's comconsole. A moment of privacy, if you can believe it.”
“Oh! Just a second, then . . .” The wrist com channel closed. Shortly, Ekaterin's face and torso appeared over the vid plate. She was wearing that flattering slate-blue thing again. “Ah,” she said happily. “There you are. That's better.”
“Well, not quite.” He touched his fingers to his lips and transferred the kiss in pantomime to the image of hers. Cool ghost, alas, not warm flesh. Belatedly, he asked, “Where are you?” Alone, he trusted.
“In my cabin on the Prince Xav . Admiral Vorpatril gave me a nice one. I think he evicted some poor senior officer. Are you all right? Have you had your dinner?”
“Dinner?”
“Oh, dear, I know that look. Make Lieutenant Smolyani at least open you a meal tray before you go off again.”
“Yes, love.” He grinned at her. “Practicing that maternal drill?”
“I was thinking of it more as a public service. Have you found something interesting and useful?”
“Interesting is an understatement. Useful—well—I'm not sure.” He described his find on the Idris , in only slightly more colorful terms than the ones he'd just sent off to Gregor.
Ekaterin's eyes grew wide. “Goodness! And here I was all excited because I thought I'd found a fat clue for you! I'm afraid mine's just gossip, by comparison.”
“Gossip away, do.”