Swamps make breathable air. Eventually. She smiled. In her uncles mind the pure engineering aesthetic clearly overshadowed the messy biological end view.
Next youll be defending the rats. There really are rats here, I understand?
Oh, yes, the dome tunnels have rats. And hamsters, and gerbils. All the children capture them for pets, which is likely where they came from in the first place, come to think of it. I do think the black-and-white rats are cute. The animal-control exterminators have to work in dead secret from their younger relatives. And we have roaches, of course, who doesnt? And-over in Equinox-wild cockatoos. A couple of pairs of them escaped, or were let loose, several decades ago. They now have these big rainbow-colored birds all over the place, and people will feed them. The sanitation crews wanted to get rid of them, but the Dome shareholders voted them down.
The waitress delivered their salads and iced tea, and there was a short break in the conversation while her uncle appreciated the fresh spinach, mangoes and onions, and candied pecans. Shed guessed the candied pecans would please him. The market-garden hydroponics production in Serifosa was among Komarrs best.
She used the break to redirect the conversation toward her greatest current curiosity. Your colleague Lord Vorkosigan did he really have a thirteen-year career in Imperial Security? Or were you just irritated by Tien?
Three years in the Imperial Military Academy, a decade in ImpSec, to be precise.
How did he ever get in, past the physicals?
Nepotism, I believe. Of a sort. To give him credit, it seems to have been an advantage he used sparingly thereafter. I had the fascinating experience of reading his entire classified military record, when Gregor asked me and my fellow Auditors to review Vorkosigans candidacy, before he made the appointment.
She subsided in slight disappointment. Classified. In that case, I suppose you cant tell me anything about it.
Well, he grinned around a mouthful of salad, there was the Dagoola IV episode. You must have heard of it, that giant breakout from the Cetagandan prisoner-of-war camp that the Marilacans made a few years ago?
She recalled it only dimly. Shed been heads-down in motherhood, about that time, and scarcely paid attention to news, especially any so remote as galactic news. But she nodded encouragement for him to go on.
Its all old history now. I understand from Vorkosigan that the Marilacans are engaged in producing a holovid drama on the subject. The Greatest Escape, or something like that, theyre calling it. They tried to hire him-or actually, his cover identity-to be a technical consultant on the script, an opportunity he has regretfully declined. But for ImpSec to retain security classification upon a series of events that the Marilacans are simultaneously dramatizing planetwide strikes me as a bit rigid, even for ImpSec. In any case, Vorkosigan was the Barrayaran agent behind that breakout.
I didnt even know we had an agent behind that.
He was our man on-site.
So that odd joke about snoring Marilacans hadnt been. Quite. If he was so good, why did he quit?
Hm. Her uncle applied himself to mopping up the last of his salad dressing with his multigrain roll, before replying. I can only give you an edited version of that. He didnt quit voluntarily. He was very badly injured-to the point of requiring cryo-freezing-a couple of years ago. Both the original injury and the cryo-freeze did him a lot of damage, some of it permanent. He was forced to take a medical discharge, which he-hm!-did not handle well. Its not my place to discuss those details.
If he was injured badly enough to need cryo-freeze, he was dead! she said, startled.
Technically, I suppose so. Alive and dead are not such neat categories as they used to be in the Time of Isolation.
So, her uncle was in possession of just the sort of medical information about Vorkosigans mutations she most wanted to know, if he had paid any attention to it. Military physicals were thorough.
So rather than let all that training and experience go to waste, Uncle Vorthys went on, Gregor found a job for Vorkosigan on the civilian side. Most Auditorial duties are not too physically onerous though I confess, its been useful to have someone younger and thinner than myself to send out-station for those long inspections in a pressure suit. Im afraid Ive abused his endurance a bit, but hes proved very observant.
So he really is your assistant?
By no means. What fool said that? All Auditors are coequal. Seniority is only good for getting one stuck with certain administrative chores, on the rare occasions when we act as a group. Vorkosigan, being a well-brought-up young man, is polite to my white hairs, but hes an independent Auditor in his own right, and goes just where he pleases. At present it pleases him to study my methods. I shall certainly take the opportunity to study his.
Our Imperial charge doesnt come with a manual, you see. It was once proposed the Auditors create one for themselves, but they-wisely, I think-concluded it would do more harm than good. Instead, we just have our archives of Imperial reports; precedents, without rules. Lately, several of us more recent appointees have been trying to read a few old reports each week, and then meet for dinner to discuss the cases and analyze how they were handled. Fascinating. And delicious. Vorkosigan has the most extraordinary cook.
But this is his first assignment, isnt it? And he was designated just like that, on the Emperors whim.
He had a temporary appointment as a Ninth Auditor first. A very difficult assignment, inside ImpSec itself. Not my kind of thing at all.
She was not totally oblivious to the news. Oh, dear. Did he have anything to do with why ImpSec changed chiefs twice last winter?
I so much prefer engineering investigations, her uncle observed mildly.
Their vat-chicken salad sandwiches arrived, while Ekaterin absorbed this deflection. What kind of reassurance was she seeking, after all? Vorkosigan disturbed her, she had to admit, with his cool smile and warm eyes, and she couldnt say why. He did tend to the sardonic. Surely she was not subconsciously prejudiced against mutants, when Nikolai himself In the Time of Isolation, if such a one as Vorkosigan had been born to me, it would have been my maternal duty to the genome to cut his infant throat.
Nikki, happily, would have escaped my cleansing. For a while.
The Time of Isolation is over forever. Thank God.
I gather you like Vorkosigan, she began once again to angle for the kind of information she sought.
So does your aunt. The Professora and I had him to dinner a few times, last winter, which is where Vorkosigan came up with the notion of the discussion meetings, come to think of it. I know hes rather quiet at first-cautious, I think-but he can be very witty, once you get him going.
Does he amuse you? Amusing had certainly not been her first impression.
He swallowed another bite of sandwich, and glanced up again at the white irregular blur in the clouds now marking the position of the soletta. I taught engineering for thirty years. It had its drudgeries. But each year, I had the pleasure of finding in my classes a few of the best and brightest, who made it all worthwhile. He sipped spiced tea and spoke more slowly. But much less often-every five or ten years at most-a true genius would turn up among my students, and the pleasure became a privilege, to be treasured for life.