Cryoburn-ARC (17 page)

Jim popped open the clear plastic box she kept her coins in and dumped the contents back into the pack. "No! I just need the box."

"What for?" asked Mina, enduring this rummage, but at least not theft, of her possessions with no more than a frown.

"Spider house."

"Eew! I don't like spiders. Their webs stick in your mouth."

"She's a wolf spider. They don't spin webs."

"Oh." Mina blinked, considering this. She didn't look altogether convinced, but at least she didn't set up any stupid shrieking. She did keep her distance till Jin had snuck up on and captured his prey. But once the lady spider was safe behind the transparent barrier, Mina was at least willing to take a closer look, as Jin pointed out the manifold, if miniature, splendors of fur and eyes and mandibles, and the promising egg case.

"She really does have eight eyes!" said Mina, crossing her own as if trying to imagine the spider's view of her. Emboldened by her brother's example, she tapped on the plastic lid.

"Hey, don't. You'll scare her."

"Will she be able to breathe in there?" asked Mina.

Jin regarded the box in new doubt. It was certainly secure, but it did seem rather airtight. The wolf spider scratched futilely at the walls of her prison with fine claws. "For a while, anyway."

"What's her name?"

"I haven't named her yet."

"She needs a name."

Jin nodded full agreement. All right,
sometimes
Mina could be sensible. It was said there were thousands of wolf spider species back on old Earth, but the Kibou terraformers, stingily, had only imported half a dozen or so for their new ecosystem. But with no comlink here, he couldn't look up his new pet's real scientific name. He hoped it would turn out to be something as sophisticated as the spider herself.

"You could call her Spinner. Except you said she doesn't spin. Wolfie?"

"Sounds like a boy's name," Jin objected. "It ought to be a lady's name, to fit her. Something from old Earth."

Mina scowled in thought a moment, then brightened. "Lady Murasaki! That's the oldest lady's name I know of."

Jin, about to pooh-pooh her idea in brotherly reflex, paused. He eyed his spider. The name
did
fit. "All right."

Mina grinned in triumph. "What does she eat?"

"Littler bugs. I should catch her some in the garden before we leave. I'm not sure how much longer it will take us to get, um. Home."

Growing more interested after all this, Mina said, "Can I help feed her?"

"Sure."

Mina stretched, and, perhaps reminded of food, dug in her pillaged backpack for another lunch bar. "Maybe we better split this. To make them last."

"Good idea," Jin admitted. He set the spider box aside and went out to rinse and fill their milk bottles with water from the garden spigot.

When he slipped back inside the shed, closing the door with a creak, Mina asked, "What time is it out there?"

"I'm not sure. Afternoon, anyway."

"Do you think school's out yet? Can we go on the streets again?"

"Pretty soon."

They divided the lunch bar and the water.

"Maybe you should put Lady Murasaki in one of our water bottles, instead," said Mina, draining hers and holding it up to the light falling through the shed's one grimy window. "We could poke breath-holes through it."

"I was going to rinse those out and fill them up with water to take with us. You know how you were yammering you were so hot and thirsty yesterday afternoon."

"My feet were so sweaty inside my shoes," Mina said. "They felt nasty." She looked up at him, still a bit puffy-eyed from their uncomfortable day's sleep. "How much longer is it going to take to get to your place?"

"Hard to say." Jin shrugged uneasily. "I've been gone way longer than I'd planned. I sure hope Miles-san is taking care of all my creatures."

"That's your galactic friend, right?"

During their winding journey, the past day and a half, Jin had slowly unburdened himself of what he suspected were far too many of his secrets to Mina, partly to shut up her incessant questions, mostly because, well, he hadn't
had
any other kids to talk to for so long.

"Yah."

Jin's own abysmal failure as a courier troubled his mind. Would Miles-san believe Jin hadn't stolen his money? How was he getting along with Gyre? You had to be gentle but firm with the bird. The chickens were easier, except for the part about climbing down and carrying them back up the ladder or the stairs when they fluttered over the parapet. With that cane, could Miles-san manage both an indignant chicken and the stairs?

"Does Miles-san have any children?" Mina asked.

Jin frowned. "He didn't say. He's pretty old—thirty-something, he said. But he's kind of funny-looking. I don't know if he could get a girl." Once the drug effects had worn off Miles-san had been a nice enough fellow, with that face where smiles seemed at home. Plus, he had seemed to understand Jin's creatures, which made him quite smart, for a grownup. Jin wasn't sure whether to wish him a short, understanding bride, or not.

After a long, thoughtful pause, Mina said, "Do you think he'd like some?"

"What?"

"Children. Like, if he's lonely."

At Jin's baffled stare, Mina forged on: "We read this book for school this year, about two orphans adopted by a man from Earth. He took them there and they saw everything about where our ancestors came from." She added enticingly, "They got new pets
.
.
."

Jin vaguely remembered that one from his own second school year, otherwise made burdensome by the infliction of beginning kanji. There had been a lot of sickly stuff about the girl getting a fancy kimono, but there had also been a chapter about going to the seaside which had featured some Earth sea creatures—much too short an episode, but at least there'd been pictures—and a cat who'd capped her excellence by having kittens at the end. "Miles-san isn't from Earth. He's from Barrayar, he said."

"Where's that?"

"Somewhere beyond Escobar, I guess." Escobar, Jin knew, was Kibou's closest nexus trading partner, by a shortish multi-jump route. Farther worlds didn't much come up till galactic history in high school, except for Earth. Jin had studied a lot about Earth on his own, because of the zoology. Now, if only some benefactor would come along and offer to take Jin to
Earth
.
.
.
Although come to think, Barrayar as Miles-san had described it might be almost as good, with its double biota.

A sudden picture bloomed in Jin's mind of the odd little fellow living all alone in a cottage in the country—no, better, a big rambling old house with a vast overgrown garden. Like the book with that old professor who had taken in two children from the city during wartime—Jin didn't know what war, except it was from a period before anybody got frozen. There'd been a horse that drew a cart, and wonderful adventures involving a cave with blind white fish. Jin had seen a horse in the Northbridge Zoo, once, on a class field trip. The braver children had all been allowed to pat its glossy neck, while one of the keepers held its lead; Jin remembered the huge beast blowing air out its soft, bellowslike nostrils in a warm whoosh across his cheek. Jin understood there were littler versions bred just for children, called
ponies
. Mina wouldn't be scared of one that size. The looming beast at the zoo had alarmed even Jin, but he'd been younger then, too. A great rambling house, and animals, and
.
.
.

It was all rubbish. Miles-san wasn't a professor, or their uncle of any kind, great or regular, and for all Jin knew he lived in a cramped city apartment and wasn't lonely at all. Jin decided he didn't like that country daydream. It hurt too much when it stopped. He frowned at Mina. "Nobody's going to adopt us and take us away from here. That's a stupid idea."

Mina looked offended. She turned one shoulder to him and began pulling on her socks. They were blotched with pinkish-brown stains where her blisters had popped and bled, and Jin gulped faint guilt. They both donned their shoes, Lady Murasaki was safely lodged in Mina's backpack, where, Jin argued, she would endure less bouncing than in his pocket, and they sneaked out onto the street once more.

A winding kilometer farther on, during which Jin kept looking for, and not getting, a glimpse of the downtown towers for orientation, they came upon a busier street with a tube-tram station entry.

Mina's footsteps had grown short and gimpy already. She looked at the entrance in some longing. "If you want to go on the tram"—she swallowed a bit—"I'll pay our fares."

"No, the police have vidcams in the stations. That's how I got trapped day before yesterday. We can't go in there." But Jin's eye was caught by a big colorful display on the outside of the entry kiosk. A map! He peered up carefully for scanning vidcams on this side, didn't spot any, and ventured nearer, Mina trailing.

The lighted
You Are Here
arrow horrified Jin. They were nowhere near the south side of town, as he'd hoped from how far they'd trudged. They'd somehow ended up on the residential east side, instead, and still had maybe thirty kilometers left to hike before they reached the light industrial zone of the south, quite as far as they'd already come. Well, that explained why the houses were so nice around here. Jin stepped closer, squinting.

Just two stops farther on this line was the very station he'd exited to reach the Barrayaran consulate. It was about a three-kilometer walk above ground. Jin stared, thinking. He had dimly planned to offer Mina's money to Miles-san, when they arrived at their destination, but his sister was proving pretty tight-fisted, in Jin's view. She was sure to set up a screech, even though Jin was nearly certain Miles-san would replace it as soon as he could. But if he stopped at the consulate first and explained his loss, editing his situation a bit maybe, would they give him more money for the Barrayaran? Miles-san seemed fairly important to them. And they wouldn't turn Jin in, because they were protecting their own secrets, right?

Contemplating this confession made him feel a little sick, but not as sick as going all the way back to Miles-san empty-handed as well as three days late. He stared harder at the map, trying to memorize the streets and turns.

"I know where we're going now," he said to Mina, trying to sound confident and big-brotherly. "Come on."

After the WhiteChrys groundcar dropped them all off again at the consulate, Roic followed m'lord upstairs and watched him down two headache tabs and several glasses of water. Returning to the entry hall, m'lord stuck his head into the room Roic thought of as the parlor, where Raven Durona had been left to cool his heels, and said, "Debriefing downstairs again, I think."

Raven nodded and unfolded himself to tag along. There had been little conversation on the way home; Aida had still been escorting, m'lord had settled into himself heavy-eyed, Vorlynkin had stared out the canopy with a set jaw, Roic considered himself an observer, and Raven had been disinclined to buck the obvious trend. They arrived downstairs at the door to the tight-room to discover it closed and locked.

M'lord hit the intercom. "Vorlynkin? Are you in there? Open up."

"Just a moment, m'lord," Vorlynkin's voice came from the speaker. The moment turned into several minutes, while m'lord tapped his foot and Raven sat on the nearby step and yawned.

"Reminds me of a house with only one bathroom when the relatives have come to visit," remarked Roic, as the wait stretched.

M'lord cast him a dry look. "I wouldn't know. I've never lived in a house with only one bathroom." Roic returned him an ironic head-tilt.

At length, the doorseal popped, the vaultlike door swung open, and the consul admitted them. His eyes seemed electric blue, and he was breathing fast, as though he had been running. "You're too late," he announced.

M'lord's brows rose. "Not a first. What for this time?"

A muscle jumped by Vorlynkin's scowling mouth. "I just sent a full report of what I witnessed by tight-beam to General Allegre at ImpSec HQ, Barrayar. I never thought I'd live to see a
Vorkosigan
sell himself for
money
. My career may be slagged, but so will yours, my
Lord Auditor
."

"Ah, excellent.
That's
done." M'lord kicked the door shut; it sealed with a sigh that seemed insufficiently dramatic for Vorlynkin's mood.

"
What?
" Vorlynkin's fists clenched.

"Not that every man doesn't have his price," m'lord went on amiably. "As I'm sure Wing-san would agree. I was more afraid that if he didn't come up to scratch today, I'd have that whole parade at the conference to do over again."

If the consul didn't stop inhaling, he was going to pop a lung, Roic thought. He put in peaceably, "Stop baiting the poor fellow, m'lord."
Now that you have what you want, anyway
. Roic didn't want to have to wrestle the man to the floor if he went for m'lord's throat, which he seemed on the verge of doing. Was that old phrase about being
mad enough to spit nails
supposed to apply to, like, roofing nails, or fingernails? Around m'lord, Roic had never been sure.