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some of  em. I confess, I never thought of the government Survey as in the
same league with the entrepreneurs. The independents make blind jumps into
possible death hoping for a staggering fortune. The Survey... makes blind
jumps into possible death for a salary, benefits, and a pension. Hm." He sat
back, looking suddenly bemused. "She made ship captain, before the war. Maybe
she had more practice for Barrayar than I d realized. I wonder if she got
tired of playing wall, too.
I ll have to ask her."
"Playing wall?"
"Sorry, a personal metaphor. When you ve taken chances a few too many times,
you can get into an odd frame of mind.
Adrenaline is a hard habit to kick. I d always assumed that my, um, former
taste for that kind of rush came from the
Barrayaran side of my genetics. But near-death experiences tend to cause you
to reevaluate your priorities. Running that much risk, that long... you d end
up either damn sure who you were and what you wanted, or you d be, I don t
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know, anesthetized."
"And your mother?"
"Well, she s certainly not anesthetized."
She grew more daring still. "And you?"
"Hm." He smiled a small, elusive smile. "You know, most people, when they get
a chance to corner me, try to pump me about my father
."
"Oh." She flushed with embarrassment, and sat back. "I m sorry. I was rude."
"Not at all." Indeed, he did not look or sound annoyed, his posture open and
inviting as he leaned back and watched her. "Not at all."
Thus encouraged, she decided to be daring again. When would she ever repeat
such a chance, after all? "Perhaps... what happened to you was a different
kind of wall for her."
"Yes, it makes sense that you would see it from her point of view, I guess."
"What... exactly did happen... ?"
"To me?" he finished. He did not grow stiff as he had in that prickly moment
over dinner the other night, but instead regarded her thoughtfully, with a
kind of attentive seriousness that was almost more alarming. "What do you
know?"
"Not a great deal. I d heard that the Lord Regent s son had been born
crippled, in the Pretender s War. The Lord Regent was noted for keeping his
private life very private." Actually, she d heard his heir was a mutie, and
kept out of sight.
"That s all?
" He looked almost offended - that he wasn t more famous? Or infamous?
"My life didn t much intersect that social set," she hastened to explain. "Or
any other. My father was just a minor provincial bureaucrat. Many of
Barrayar s rural Vor are a lot more rural than they are Vor, I m afraid."
His smile grew. "Quite. You should have met my grandfather. Or... perhaps not.
Well. Hm. There s not a great deal to tell, at this late date. An assassin
aiming for my father managed to graze both my parents with an obsolete
military poison gas called soltoxin."
"During the Pretendership?"
"Just prior, actually. My mother was five months pregnant with me. Hence this
mess." A wave of his hand down his body, and that nervous jerk of his head,
both summed himself and defied the viewer. "The damage was actually
teratogenic, not genetic." He shot her an odd sidelong look. "It used to be
very important to me for people to know that."
"Used to be? And not now?" Ingenuous of him - he d managed to tell her quickly
enough. She was almost disappointed. Was it true that only his body, and not
his chromosomes, had been damaged?
"Now... I think maybe it s all right if they think I m a mutie. If I can make
it really not matter, maybe it will matter less for the next mutie who comes
after me. A form of service that costs me no additional effort."
It cost him something, evidently. She thought of Nikolai, heading into his
teens soon, and what a hard time of life that was even for normal children.
"Were you made to feel it? Growing up?"
"I was of course somewhat protected by Father s rank and position."
She noted that somewhat Somewhat
.
was not the same as completely
. Sometimes, somewhat was the same as not at all
.
"I moved a few mountains, to force myself into the Imperial Military Service.
After, um, a few false starts, I finally found a place for myself in Imperial
Security, among the irregulars. The rest of the irregulars. ImpSec was more
interested in results than appearances, and I found I could deliver results.
Except - a slight miscalculation - all the achievements upon which I d hoped
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to be rejudged disappeared into ImpSec s classified files. So I fell out at
the end of a thirteen-year career, a medically discharged captain whom nobody
knew, almost as anonymous as when I started." He actually sighed.
"Imperial Auditors aren t anonymous!"
"No, just discreet." He brightened. "So there s some hope yet."
Why did he make her want to laugh? She swallowed the impulse. "Do you wish to
be famous?"
His eyes narrowed in a moment of introspection. "I would have said so, once.
Now I think... I just wanted to be someone in my own right. Make no mistake, I
like being my father s son. He is a great man. In every sense, and it s been a
privilege to know him. But there is, nevertheless, a secret fantasy of mine, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]