Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (17 page)

* * *

Cordelia walked across the garden to the Vicereine’s Office the first morning of the next week in an exceptionally good mood. She and Oliver had managed an overnight at Shack One that past weekend, and found that its rustic delights not only stood up to repetition, but were enhanced by preparedness. They managed one sail devoted to actual sailing, and took out the crystal canoe that evening for a combination of sunset-watching and examination of the local lake fauna—Oliver had acquired a field guide and, while she steered them gently over the quiet shallows, attempted to match the exotic creatures he was seeing below with the images called up on his holo. The database, he informed her indignantly after this exercise, was entirely inadequate. She’d serenely agreed, while wondering how such a detail-oriented mind had managed to avoid the sciences all his life heretofore. Drawn away by all the pains and needs of Barrayar, as she had once been? Perhaps. He’d had the canoe out again alone early the following morning while she blissfully slept in, which she’d counted as a plus for both of them.

“Good morning, Ivy!” she cheerily greeted her executive secretary as she strolled into the outer office.

Ivy looked up from her comconsole, raised her eyebrows, and smiled back. Ivy Utkin also qualified as an old Sergyar hand, having arrived nearly two decades ago with her engineering-officer spouse and stayed on when he’d mustered out here. She’d held this post for about five years, shy and nervous at first but slowly growing into her tasks, and she’d been a life-saver for Cordelia all through the miserable stresses of Aral’s death and its aftermaths. Her children were mostly grown, but the experience of raising them while following the drum had endowed her with the brisk efficiency of someone who got everything done
now
, because she could be interrupted by the next emergency at any moment. Which made her an ideal fit for the Viceroy’s Office, to be sure. Also, she didn’t take her work home with her, which meant she didn’t bring more for her boss
back
.

“Your revised morning schedule is on your com,” Ivy reported. “First meeting in thirty minutes, the water quality people.” Ivy rose to follow her into the inner office. “Blaise is already here.”

Cordelia tried not to feel less cheery at this, and gave Blaise Gatti, who was perusing a hand-reader but jumped to his feet as she entered, as good a smile as the one she’d given Ivy. They settled into their usual chairs, three-around by the window overlooking the garden side of the building, and Cordelia braced herself for the morning briefing.

Blaise was new, having held the post of Press Officer for less than a year. And young, barely thirty. And excessively energetic. He had an interesting background as half-Komarran, born in the domes to a Komarran father and a francophone Barrayaran mother, and had arrived here after an early career with assorted Komarran news services upon the recommendation of one of Empress Laisa’s Toscane relatives, proving that nepotism was not solely a Barrayaran way of life. Cordelia wasn’t sure if it was because somebody’d thought she’d needed a younger face to represent the young colony, because his half-blood status would be less of an issue here, or because it was assumed that, after a lifetime of dealing with Aral and Miles, she’d know how to handle an adult hyperactive.

Her and Aral’s prior press officer had been an older fellow, much in the stodgy mode of the Barrayaran official news services from which he’d been recruited, who’d done exactly as he was told and nothing else, a quality she’d learned to appreciate more after he’d taken his lack of excitement home with him upon retirement. Blaise, well…she was still trying to get across to him that his job for her was not to
create
publicity, but rather, to make it
go away
. She wasn’t sure if he regarded his post as a culmination or a stepping stone, but she wouldn’t be surprised if Sergyar ended up seducing him as it had so many others.
Including me?

“First thing to come in over the weekend,” Ivy began, “is a petition from something calling itself the Kareenburg Committee of Concerned Parents, asking you to declare deliberate worm scarification a misdemeanor.”

Cordelia had heard of the custom only peripherally—the latest local youth-fashion craze. The so-called worms were a Sergyaran parasite that, upon burrowing into the skin of a human host, became confused in its life-cycle by the rich alien biochemistry it encountered there. Instead of producing crops of new baby worms and dying, they settled in, still in their juvenile form, and hypertrophied. Tiny in their natural habitat, they grew in the adipose tissues to, usually, several centimeters long and a few thick, sluggishly twitching, though some whoppers had been recorded, upon surgical removal, at thirty centimeters and nearly a kilo in weight. Their main effects upon their human hosts were general debilitation, some allergic reactions, swelling, and disgust and horror, plus dangerous secondary infections following amateur attempts to dig them out. Old Sergyar hands could be identified by their arrays of faded worm scars. Overseeing the development and distribution of an effective anthelmintic vaccine had been one of Cordelia’s early triumphs as vicereine, she’d felt.

Some new young Sergyarans, apparently feeling deprived of their chance at this dramatic frontier debility, were now deliberately introducing the worms into their skins in attempts to grow them into artistic patterns. She’d seen a few pictures of the results. They mainly inspired her to want to invest some money in a plastic surgery clinic, but, all right, one or two human palettes had indeed been dramatic.
And
disgusting, of course. She gathered that was part of the point.

“You know, Aral and I went to a great deal of trouble to
eradicate
the worm plague…” And if she and Aral had made their first grim trek across Sergyar at a later season, they might have been the ones to discover the species themselves, but as it was that dubious distinction had been left for the early Barrayaran military occupation. Poor sods.

Ivy shrugged sympathetically.

“Nevertheless, I decline to get suckered into attempting to promulgate sumptuary regulations. And I’m not calling it cruelty to animals, either. Why is this even on my desk? Shouldn’t this have gone to the Kayburg town council?”

“It did, I understand,” said Ivy. “They ducked.”

“I see.” Cordelia frowned. Youth fashions were short-lived by their nature. Surely this would go away on its own by the time, say, Aurelia was Freddie Haines’s age…?

Blaise put in, “This could be an opportunity to please a vocal block of active and responsible subjects.”

“What, a bunch of parents who want me to do their jobs for them? And have you considered how the devil such a regulation could possibly be
enforced
? What an utterly pointless waste of political capital that would be. No.”

Blaise rubbed his chin, and switched tacks obediently. “Alternatively, I suppose refusal could be taken as tacit support of young people’s rights of self-determination. That could be popular, too.”

“I don’t see people, young or otherwise, as having a
right
to be idiots. It’s just impractical to try to stop them, unless they’re hurting somebody, and this sport—extreme art?—does not appear to be lethal. But it’s not my patch, as Oliver would say.”

“So…what do you want to say to them?”

Cordelia answered literally, and with some passion: “Don’t you people have some
real
work to do?”

Blaise looked taken aback. “I…are you sure, Vicereine?” And, after another moment, “Er…which ones?”

Ivy put her hand over her mouth, mercifully.

“All of them. But that was a joke, Blaise. Although nonetheless true.” Cordelia sighed. “Just bounce it back down with the standard
The Viceroy’s Office declines to hear
, Ivy. No comments.
Tempted
as I am to make some.”

“Yes, Your Excellency.” Ivy bent her head and made a note, incidentally hiding her smile. She looked back up. “Second, an invitation for you to speak at the twelfth anniversary of the founding of SWORD.”

“What?” asked Blaise.

“The Sex WOrkers’ Rights and Dignity association,” Cordelia clarified. She smiled in fond reminiscence. “At the time Aral and I first arrived as joint viceroys, a grubby stretch of Kayburg out by the base was having a bit of a crime wave. Some very unpleasant men had taken control of the sex trade, and were making things difficult for everyone. The military wives were complaining, the officers were unhappy with the debasing effects on their subordinates, there were beatings, adulterated drinks and bad drugs, crooked gambling, a couple of murders, the usual. Aral took the base side and I took the civil side. I decided that the quickest and most long-term solution would be to unionize the girls, and the few fellows, of course. It took a little while to get the idea across, but they cottoned on and self-organized very well, once they had some real protection.”

“Was it, er, dangerous?” Blaise inquired, staring at her.

“It took me a bit of doing to get some of the stupider pimps to actually make threats in front of witnesses. At
that
point, they had officially committed treason, and they entered a world of hurt of which they’d never before dreamed. ImpSec does have its uses, sometimes. A couple of the smarter ones tried moving directly to action, which, alas, proved fatal. The
very
smartest one rolled over and cooperated, and in fact is still in the trade—he joined the Union, too. Proved to be one of their better organizers, once he’d figured out the new rules.

“Once the initial issues were settled, I was able to import a team of Licensed Practical Sexuality Therapists from Beta Colony on short-term contracts to do some wholesale sex education for the Union and its members. And, obliquely, their customers. Most of the customers really liked the new regime—safer, among other things. And better and nicer in other ways, too, I gather. Certainly healthier. Unsurprisingly. A few soldiers couldn’t adjust, and tried complaining up their chain of command. Got some support from enough of the old guard to give them a chip on their shoulders. Aral very kindly undertook to knock it off. Held a meeting. Brief, as he was the only speaker. Very few words. Showed a short vid of his public execution of the very first commander of the Sergyar base, the officer who had permitted the abuses of the Escobaran POWs quartered here, back during that war.” Cordelia grimaced in sudden, too-vivid memory. And not of the vid. “He said the room was very quiet when he was done.”

“Oh,” said Blaise. “Er.” After a distracted moment he added, “Shouldn’t it be called SHEATH?”

“Hah.
You
try to think of a name to go with that acronym.”

Ivy glanced at her chrono. “About the speech?”

Cordelia sighed. “I am so burned out on speaking. They deserve better. See if you can persuade Dr. Tatiana to find something good for them.” One of the Betan therapists who had stayed on. The
Tatiana
part was a professional name; the doctorate was real. She was one of Cordelia’s favorite Betan ex-pats, whom she frequently invited to Palace social events when she needed someone to enliven the party. Ivy nodded and made another note.

The secretary glanced at her panel and remarked, “The Red Creek murder-case appeals trial has been delayed another week.”

Some of the light seemed to drain out of the morning. Cordelia said, “Part of me is glad. Part of me wants to get it over with. I hope they finish it off on that level.”

Blaise perked up. “Is it likely to reach the Viceroy’s Office, do you think? That could be big news.”

By Sergyaran standards only, Cordelia reflected. She shrugged. “Most capital cases eventually do, as we’re the last stop for appeals. Petitions for pardon or commutation by that time, usually. Except for Vor charged with treason, which could go to Vorbarr Sultana, but we haven’t had any of those, thankfully. The Sergyaran courts do a pretty good job of sorting out the facts. I am so grateful for fast-penta. I can’t imagine how horrific these decisions must have been back when there was real uncertainty over whether the perpetrator had been correctly identified.” She added after a moment, “Fortunately, our criminal capital cases are few. Aral and I only had to deal with a couple a year. Far more Sergyarans manage to kill each other by accident than by intent. I suppose the numbers will inevitably change as the population grows.”

The Red Creek case was especially ugly. And stupid, as these things tended to be. A woman’s boyfriend had killed her in a domestic brawl, so far so crime-of-passion. The woman, Cordelia gathered from the reports she’d seen so far, had been in her own scattered way a piece of work herself. But then, in a panic, the man had also pursued her two small witnessing children through the house and murdered them as well, then tried to hide all the bodies by burning the place to the ground. His first trial had been local and short. The appeal didn’t look too hopeful for him, either.

Blaise said, cautiously, “Will that also be a
The Viceroy’s Office declines to hear
, then?”

“Oh, Aral and I always went over all the material the courts and any other source we could find could supply. First separately, then together. Watched the recordings of the penta-interrogations. Once, we even repeated an interrogation ourselves, to be certain.” Cordelia’s lips thinned at the unpleasant memory. “‘Declines to hear’ is just a shorthand for ‘We’re not going to reverse the court’s decision.’ We had some pretty intense debates sometimes, coming as we did from, so to speak, two very different legal traditions.

“The Betans would consider something like this a matter for nonvoluntary sociopath therapy. Up to and including neurological rewiring, if there were underlying physical deficits discovered. Of course, Beta has far fewer such cases to start with, as in”—Cordelia almost said
our culture
, but it hadn’t really been hers since the Pretender’s War, had it—“that culture, therapies would be supplied at a much earlier stage. Barrayaran legal theory, according to Aral, holds that humans have a natural right to revenge, but that leads to blood-feuds, so subjects cede their natural right to their overlords, who are beyond revenge, in exchange for justice administered on their behalf. Which derails the blood-feuds, but obliges the overlords in turn to actually supply the justice. He took that very seriously.”