Komarr by Bujold Lois McMaster

Author:Bujold, Lois McMaster [Bujold, Lois McMaster]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Yes . . . and no. It’s Tien’s older brother’s fault, in part. I’ve cursed the man for years. When his symptoms began, he took the Old Vor way out and crashed his lightflyer. It made an impression on Tien he never shook off. Set an impossible example. We’d had no idea his family carried the mutation, till Tien, who was his brother’s executor, was going through the records and effects, and we realized both that the accident was deliberate, and why. It was just after Nikki was born . . .”

“But wouldn’t it have . . . I’d wondered when I read your file—the defect should have turned up in the gene scan, before the embryo was started in the uterine replicator. Is Nikki affected, or . . . ?”

“Nikki was a body-birth. No gene scan. The Old Vor way. Old Vor have good blood, you know, no need to check anything.”

He looked as if he’d bitten into a lemon. “Whose bright idea was that?”

“I don’t . . . quite remember how it was decided. Tien and I decided together. I was young, we were just married, I had a lot of stupid romantic ideas . . . I suppose it seemed heroic to me at the time.”

“How old were you?”

“Twenty.”

“Ah.” His mouth quirked in a expression she could not quite interpret, a sad mixture of irony and sympathy. “Yes.”

Obscurely encouraged, she went on. “Tien’s scheme for dealing with the dystrophy without anyone ever finding out he had it was to go get galactic treatment, somewhere far from the Imperium. It made it much more expensive than it needed to be. We’d been trying to save for years, but somehow, something always went wrong. We never made much progress. But for the past six or eight months, Tien’s been telling me to stop worrying, he had it under control. Except . . . Tien always talks like that, so I scarcely paid attention. Then last night, after you went to sleep . . . I heard you tell him straight out you wanted to make a surprise inspection of his department today, I heard you—he got up in the night and called Administrator Soudha, to warn him. I listened . . . I heard enough to gather they had some sort of payroll falsification scheme going, and I’m very much afraid . . . no. I’m certain Tien was taking bribes. Because—” she stopped and took a breath “—I broke into Tien’s comconsole this morning and looked at his financial records.” She glanced up, to see how Vorkosigan would take this. His mouth renewed the crooked quirk. “I’m sorry I ripped at you the other day, for looking through mine,” she said humbly.

His mouth opened, and closed; he merely gave her a little encouraging wave of his fingers and slumped down a bit more in his chair, listening with an air of uttermost attention. Listening.

She went on hurriedly, not before her nerve broke, for she scarcely felt anything now, but before she dragged to a halt from sheer exhaustion.

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