No, no, no, Mark screamed inside.
“I … would rather not go to Barrayar, sir.”
“The Prime Minister will have questions that only one who was on the spot can answer. You are the most ideal courier I can imagine for a matter of such … complex delicacy. I grant you the task will be painful.”
Bothari-Jesek was looking trapped. “Sir, I’m a senior shipmaster.
I’m not free to leave the Peregrine. And—frankly—I do not care to escort Lord Mark.”
“I’ll give you anything you ask, in return.”
She hesitated. “Anything?”
He nodded.
She glanced at Mark. “I gave my word that all the House Bharaputra clones would be taken somewhere safe, somewhere humane, where the Jacksonians can’t reach. Will you redeem my word for me?”
Illyan chewed his lip. “ImpSec can launder their identities readily enough, of course. No difficulty there. Appropriate placement might be trickier. But yes. We’ll take them on.”
Take them on. What did Illyan mean? For all their other flaws, the Barrayarans at least did not practice slavery.
“They’re children,” Mark blurted. “You have to remember they’re only children.” It’s hard to remember, he wanted to add, but couldn’t, under Bothari-Jesek’s cold eyes.
Illyan averted his glance from Mark. “I shall seek Countess Vorkosigan’s advice, then. Anything else?”
“The Peregrine and the Ariel—”
“Must remain, for the moment, in Komarr orbit and communications quarantine. My apologies to your troops, but they’ll have to tough it out.”
“You’ll cover the costs for this mess?”
Illyan grimaced. “Alas, yes.”
“And … and look hard for Miles!”
“Oh, yes,” he breathed.
“Then I’ll go.” Her voice was faint, her face pale.
“Thank you,” said Illyan quietly. “My fast courier will be at your disposal as quickly as you can make ready to depart.” His eye fell reluctantly on Mark. He had been avoiding looking at Mark for the whole last half of this interview. “How many personal guards do you wish?” he asked Bothari-Jesek. “I’ll make it clear to them that they are under your command till they see you safe to the Count.”
“I don’t want any, but I suppose I have to sleep sometime. Two,” Bothari-Jesek decided.
And so he was officially made a prisoner of the Barrayaran Imperial government, Mark thought. The end of the line.
Bothari-Jesek rose and motioned Mark to his feet. “Come on. I want to get a few personal items from the Peregrine. And tell my exec he’s got the command, and explain to the troops about being confined to quarters. Thirty minutes.”
“Good. Captain Quinn, please remain.”
“Yes, sir.”
Illyan stood, to see Bothari-Jesek out. “Tell Aral and Cordelia,” he began, and paused. Time stretched.
“I will,” said Bothari-Jesek quietly. Mutely, Illyan nodded.
The door seals hissed open for her stride. She didn’t even look back to see if Mark was following. He had to break into a run every five steps to keep up.
His cabin aboard the ImpSec fast courier proved to be even tinier and more cell-like than the one he’d occupied aboard the Peregrine. Bothari-Jesek locked him in and left him alone. There was not even the time marker and limited human contact of three-times-a-day ration delivery; the cabin had its own computer-controlled food dispensing system, pneumatically connected to some central store. He over-ate compulsively, no longer sure why or what it could do for him, besides provide a combination of comfort and self-destruction. But death from the complications of obesity took years, and he only had five days.
On the last day his body switched strategies, and he became violently ill. He managed to keep this fact secret until the trip downside in the personnel shuttle, where it was mistaken for zero-gravity and motion sickness by a surprisingly sympathetic ImpSec guard, who apparently suffered from some such slight weakness himself. The man promptly and cheerfully slapped an anti-nausea patch from the med kit on the wall onto the side of Mark’s neck.
The patch also had some sedative power. Mark’s heart rate slowed, an effect which lasted till they landed and transferred to a sealed ground-car. A guard and a driver took the front compartment, and Mark sat across from Bothari-Jesek in the rear compartment for the last leg of his nightmare journey, from the military shuttleport outside the capital into the heart of Vorbarr Sultana. The center of the Barrayaran Empire.
It wasn’t until he found himself having something resembling an asthma attack that Bothari-Jesek looked up from her own glum self-absorption and noticed.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” She leaned forward and took his pulse, which was racing. He was clammy all over.
“Sick,” he gasped, and then at her irritated I-could-have-figured-that-out-for-myself look, admitted, “Scared.” He thought he’d been as frightened as a human being could be, under Bharaputran fire, but that was as nothing compared to this slow, trapped terror, this drawn-out suffocating helplessness to affect his destiny.
“What do you have to be afraid of?” she asked scornfully. “Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
“Captain, they’re going to kill me.”
“Who? Lord Aral and Lady Cordelia? Hardly. If for any reason we fail to get Miles back, you could be the next Count Vorkosigan. Surely you’ve figured on that.”
At this point he satisfied a long-held curiosity. When he passed out, his breathing did indeed begin again automatically. He blinked away black fog, and fended off Bothari-Jesek’s alarmed attempt to loosen his clothes and check his tongue to be sure he hadn’t swallowed it. She had pocketed a couple of anti-nausea patches from the shuttle medkit, just in case, and she held one uncertainly. He motioned urgently for her to apply it. It helped.
“Who do you think these people are?” she demanded angrily, when his breathing grew less irregular.
“I don’t know. But they’re sure as hell going to be pissed at me.”
The worst was the knowledge that it need not have been this bad. Any time before the Jackson’s Whole debacle he could in theory have walked right in and said hello. But he’d wanted to meet Barrayar on his own terms. Like trying to storm heaven. His attempt to make it better had made it infinitely worse.
She sat back and regarded him with slow bemusement. “You really are scared to death, aren’t you?” she said, in a tone of revelation that made him want to howl. “Mark, Lord Aral and Lady Cordelia are going to give you the benefit of every doubt. I know they will. But you have to do your part.”
“What is my part?”
“I’m … not sure,” she admitted.
“Thanks. You’re such a help.”
And then they were there. The ground-car swung through a set of gates and into the narrow grounds of a huge stone residence. It was the pre-electric Time-of-Isolation design that gave it such an air of fabulous age, Mark decided. The architecture he’d seen like it in London all dated back well over a millenium, though this pile was only a hundred and fifty standard years old. Vorkosigan House.
The canopy swung up, and he struggled out of the ground-car after Bothari-Jesek. This time she waited for him. She grasped him firmly by the upper arm, either worried he would collapse or fearing he would bolt. They stepped through a pleasantly-hued sunlight into the cool dimness of a large entry foyer paved in black and white stone and featuring a remarkable wide curving staircase. How many times had Miles stepped across this threshold?
Bothari-Jesek seemed an agent of some evil fairy, which had snatched away the beloved Miles and replaced him with this pallid, pudgy changeling. He choked down an hysterical giggle as the sardonic mocker in the back of his brain called out, Hi, Mom and Dad, I’m home… . Surely the evil fairy was himself.