"Maybe at some point in the grooming process I could be made non-awful at it. What do I know of ambassadorial grooming habits. 'S weird, though."
"Yeah. I don't know what you are best suited for, but I don't think ambassador is it."
"I don't think I have, like, a calling to anything. Emily wants to be a holographer and has known this since she was six, I have no idea what that's like."
"I'm not sure I can articulate any of them, but they exist. And are not especially ambassadorial. Well, maybe for a very special definition of 'ambassador'..."
"I make friends with the locals mostly by the expedient of dating them. I think ambassadors are supposed to be married."
"Admittedly not all of them. Vorob'yev wasn't. Suppose he probably is by now."
"Who? No, ah, let me see—ambassador to Eta Ceta, you met him on that funeral trip whose details are so thoroughly obscured."
"That's the one. Suppose the part where Miles got engaged rather upstaged the part where the ambassador did."
"Very. Unless you count their weird behind the scenes prior arrangement."
"I don't know all that much about it," he admits. "I can guess a few things."
"He fell in love with her and then did something sufficiently spectacular to get the attention of the relevant authorities, is just about as much as I know. Probably as much as I'm meant to."
"More or less, yeah. They work a lot better than I would've guessed early on."
"Because there appeared to me to be something just a little bit totally insane about Lord Vorkosigan carrying off a haut-lady he barely knew? I didn't know her either, at the time, or probably I'd have, you know... noticed. The themness of them."
"Well, yes, part of my mistake was thinking 'Lord Vorkosigan is carrying off a haut-lady' instead of 'Miles has made himself useful to a haut-lady'."
"I guess you would've been - hell, sixteen, it's hard to remember you're so much younger than him."
"Should've been twins." Pause. "Would've made for an interesting childhood."