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Time goes by. Linya, who already quietly turned nineteen, turns twenty. She collects an accelerated master's degree in neuroscience and starts corresponding with various people on the subject.
Pens spread out; the next time Miles sees Elli he gets a white standard-model pen she bought him on Escobar. She has one too; it's silver. She loves it and thanks him for recommending it to her. (She has bought a whole boxful to unload at a markup on the next planet or station she comes to that doesn't have them yet, but doesn't explicitly mention this in case he objects to her cutting into Lady Vorkosigan's margins.)
Miles also has one actual courier mission in there, just escorting a diplomatic pouch from Pol back home, to pad his service record for the less-cleared eye.
There is a visit to a clinic to collect and mystically join gametes, and Linya collects the resulting assembly in data format for editing. She does the grey eyes first and estimates that if she doesn't particularly hurry she'll have a Little Aral What-the-Heck-Should-His-Middle-Name-Be all ready to put in a replicator in two or three years, though she can accelerate that considerably if something comes up urgently requiring the presence of Little Aral sooner rather than later.
And then Miles gets sent off again and is gone for a very long time.
isthisart
thisvorlunatic
Miles hauls himself out of bed to answer the door.
"Hello, Linya. I'm in a Mood. Capital Moo."
"Hello, Linya. I'm in a Mood. Capital Moo."
isthisart
She sits. "I can see that. If I could wait, I'd wait. Unfortunately, a reporter has got my contact information and wants to talk to me about Admiral Naismith, who I met yesterday, and I know neither what's going on nor what I am supposed to act as though I believe is going on."
thisvorlunatic
"Ah, fuck," sighs Miles. "For my sanity, please tell her in the strongest possible terms to go away. Admiral Naismith is... such a deep embarrassment to me that I do my best to forget he exists. Which has historically worked very well for me. I had not initially anticipated this particular failure mode of the practice."
isthisart
"He's embarrassing? And for this reason I didn't know that you had a clone who goes by your first name and mother's maiden, named his fleet after a mountain range in your District, and, incidentally, has been sufficiently brutalized as to actually identically resemble you, to the point where I thought he was you and actually picked him up?"
thisvorlunatic
"I was seventeen when I heard about Naismith and immediately decided to stop thinking about him," Miles protests. "That's a lot of time in which to develop a habit. It was - it was just like having a broken bone. If the source of the pain is sufficiently peripheral, you can learn to work around it. The process becomes totally subconscious. Eventually you can move around without noticing it's there at all - over a long enough interval, even absorb small bumps and jars without disturbing your equilibrium more than fleetingly. Pain only hurts if you let it get your attention. I was considerably pained by Admiral Naismith, when I was a seventeen-year-old who'd just washed out of the entrance exams to the Imperial Military Academy on the first day and he was the output of an apparent substitution plot who turned out sufficiently more advanced than the original that he was already a bloody mercenary admiral by the time anyone on Barrayar heard of him."
isthisart
"I am in a sufficient state of doubt about whether this is cover or genuine oversight that I don't know whether musing about asking your mother would be a threat or a reasonable way to spare you the explanation."
thisvorlunatic
"Asking my mother would be a perfectly reasonable thing to do," he says. "Also, advance warning in case you wonder why I'm distracted as hell in the near future, my commanding officer went missing yesterday while I was indisposed and I woke up this morning and had to bestir Ivan to search for him. It looks tricky as hell, from what we've gathered so far - a strong odour of politics emanating from some nasty classified business. Hence, in large part, the Moo."
isthisart
"Well, that sounds like a mess, and sufficiently classified that I can't even do anything useful about it... One other thing before I ask if you'd rather I went away or stayed here - a Dendarii ship bid on my job ad for maybe babysitting Dr. Cheung to Komarr if I can talk him into it. Theirs is the low bid, so I'm retaining the ship, but if there's any reason I should prefer an independent vessel or one from a different outfit...?"
thisvorlunatic
"Of all my complaints about Naismith, his competence has certainly never been one of them. Quite the opposite - I wouldn't be so bloody jealous if he wasn't good at his job. As far as I know, you run no more risk in going with a Dendarii ship than you do with any other bidder, and less than with the average unknown mercenary."
thisvorlunatic
Miles sighs, too. "Much as I love you - I'd rather you went off to do Linya things while I stomp and yell and tear my hair out. There's no need for you to share my misery."
isthisart
"Okay. I love you."
She bends to kiss him on the forehead and give his hair a brief pet, and then leaves him be.
She bends to kiss him on the forehead and give his hair a brief pet, and then leaves him be.
thisvorlunatic
He does some stomping and some yelling. He paces. He finds a comconsole, fires off a sealed high-priority message to his mother on the subject of the new Naismith cover - although he expects Illyan to apprise her as soon as the information reaches Barrayar in any form, and he suspects any query Linya sends to her mother-in-law will pass under the all-seeing eye of ImpSec on the way - and starts poring through those records of local Komarrans again.
Nothing, nothing, nothing. Not a damn thing.
Nothing, nothing, nothing. Not a damn thing.
isthisart
Linya stays gone, except for a brief note to the effect that she thinks she has managed to deter the reporter.
spacetobreathe
And on day three, Elli calls in. "Captain Thorne," she reports, "has been offered a fascinating contract for the Dendarii, to the tune of a hundred thousand Betan dollars, cash, untraceable."
thisvorlunatic
"...Did I not tell you to stay away from illegal jobs? I distinctly recall telling you to stay away from illegal jobs. Did Thorne not get this memo?"
spacetobreathe
Elli giggles. "I think you'll like this one enough to make an exception, though. It's a kidnapping."
spacetobreathe
"But Miles," purrs Elli. "Our mysterious and wealthy strangers want to hire Admiral Naismith to kidnap Lord Miles Vorkosigan from the Barrayaran embassy."
thisvorlunatic
"All right," he says, "I think odds are high that someone is trying to set a trap for someone, somehow, and I would dearly love to know who, who, and why. So let's find out. Take the job. I'll work out the details."
thisvorlunatic
Miles gets Ivan. He explains the situation. He makes arrangements. A Dendarii uniform for Ivan, so he can come along without blowing Naismith's cover - scanners, transportation, miscellaneous widgetry.
And then he joins the expedition to deliver himself to the unknown buyer. If only he had a spare Miles around, so Naismith could be present for the operation - alas, he has to dress the part of Vorkosigan and then get his underlings to haul him to the rendezvous.
And then he joins the expedition to deliver himself to the unknown buyer. If only he had a spare Miles around, so Naismith could be present for the operation - alas, he has to dress the part of Vorkosigan and then get his underlings to haul him to the rendezvous.