“Doesn’t sound as if it’s changed in the smallest detail in twenty-five years.”
“You’ve been there?” Miles squinted. “And yet you let me get sent there?”
“I commanded Lazkowski Base for five months, once, while waiting for my captaincy of the cruiser General Vorkraft. During the period my career was, so to speak, in political eclipse.”
So to speak. “How’d you like it?”
“I can’t remember much. I was drunk most of the time. Everybody finds their own way of dealing with Camp Permafrost. I might say, you did rather better than I.”
“I find your subsequent survival . . . encouraging, sir.”
“I thought you might. That’s why I mentioned it. It’s not otherwise an experience I’d hold up as an example.”
Miles looked up at his father. “Did . . . I do the right thing, sir? Last night?”
“Yes,” said the count simply. “A right thing. Perhaps not the best of all possible right things. Three days from now you may think of a cleverer tactic, but you were the man on the ground at the time. I try not to second-guess my field commanders.”
Miles’s heart rose in his aching chest for the first time since he’d left Kyril Island. He nodded, satisfied.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Photo by Carol Collins
http://www.dendarii.com
http://www.spectrumliteraryagency.com/bujold.htm
Lois McMaster Bujold was born in 1949, the daughter of an engineering professor at Ohio State University, from whom she picked up her early interest in science fiction. She now lives in Minneapolis, and has two grown children. She began writing with the aim of professional publication in 1982. She wrote three novels in three years; in October of 1985, all three sold to Baen Books, launching her career. Bujold went on to write many other books for Baen, mostly featuring her popular character Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, his family, friends, and enemies. Her books have been translated into twenty-one languages. Her fantasy from Eos includes the award-winning Chalion series and the Sharing Knife series.
Falling Free
Shards of Honor
Barrayar
The Warrior's Apprentice
"The Mountains of Mourning"
The Vor Game
Cetaganda
Ethan of Athos
"Labyrinth"
"The Borders of Infinity"
Brothers in Arms
Mirror Dance
Memory
Komarr
A Civil Campaign
“Winterfair Gifts”
Diplomatic Immunity
CryoBurn
The Spirit Ring
The Curse of Chalion
Paladin of Souls
The Hallowed Hunt
The Sharing Knife, Vol. 1: Beguilement
The Sharing Knife, Vol. 2: Legacy
The Sharing Knife, Vol. 3: Passage
The Sharing Knife, Vol. 4: Horizon