Miles snorts.

"I suppose it probably sounded hostile to emphasize that I won't help..."

"Have I mentioned recently that it's always very comforting when you do not succeed at things on the first try?"

"No, you had managed a streak of several weeks without doing that."

"I wonder when he's going to come back."

"Are you reasonably confident that he is going to come back and not just live permanently in this cave?"

"Oh, he'll come back. If only so he can drag me aside and swear at me for a while since he was thwarted in the initial effort."

"Besides, I doubt there's much to do in this one cave, probably nobody in here but us, he'd go stir-crazy."

"That too."

"What d'you suppose he'll do on Barrayar?"

"I'm thinking of introducing him to the cave systems in the Dendarii foothills. See what he makes of those. Besides that... I'm really not sure."

"Is there anything to do in those caves? With enough repeaters he could have network signal, but somehow that doesn't seem like the sort of thing you would do, live alone in a cave reading things..."

"Well, there's a lot of them and there's probably, I don't know, historical and possibly geological interest. If I was guaranteed not to get lost in caves I'd spend a lot more time in them than I do. But yeah, he'll probably be driven out onto the surface by boredom eventually. Hah, maybe he'll become an ImpSec analyst, that bloody building has no windows and plenty of basement."

"So it has some advantages after all."

Snort.

"Advantages that the architect could not possibly have anticipated, relating only to a species of nonhumans that did not appear on the scene until years after the building was constructed. But still!"

He giggles. "Maybe he could tell the future. In which case you'd think he'd go into a different field."

"It might be very hard to get people to believe you if you start saying things like 'one day, a dwarf will wander out of Vivienne Vorville's house and require a windowless, ideally underground, working environment'."

"It's her parents' house. Usually Vivienne lives in Vorbarr Sultana proper, in an apartment with her cousin Caroline."

"Yes," says Miles. "Clearly that would be the sticking point in this prophecy."

Ivan harrumphs.

"Do you suppose we ought to wait for him here or that he'll be fine finding us in the bar again? I have more questions for her."

"...I think I'm inclined to wait for him," says Miles. "Just - in case he gets nervous about the amount of sky he has to pass under on the way back to the bar."

"We can split up. Linyabel can go quiz the bar, I'll wait here with you so that I don't wind up ordering six more of those pink things and passing out on the floor, I'm glad I have no idea what's in them or I'd be an alcoholic before age thirty."

"Well, I suppose you can wait with me if it's to save you from alcohol poisoning."