[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
How do you like Barrayar
? No, that wouldn t do.
Nice fog we re having outside tonight
. Inside, too.
Give me a cue, girl! Say something, anything!
"Are you really a clone
?"
Anything but that
. "Yes."
"Oh. My."
More silence.
"A lot of people are," he observed.
"Not here."
"True."
"Uh... oh!" Her face melted with relief. "Excuse me, Lord Mark. I see my
mother is calling me - " She handed off a spasmodic smile like a ransom, and
turned to hurry toward a Vorish dowager on the other side of the room. Mark
had not seen her beckon.
Mark sighed. So much for the hopeful theory of the overpowering attraction of
rank. Lady Cassia was clearly not anxious to kiss a toad.
If I were Ivan I d do handstands for a girl who looked at me like that
.
"You look thoughtful," observed Countess Vorkosigan at his elbow. He jumped
slightly.
"Ah, hello again. Yes. Ivan just introduced me to that girl. Not a girlfriend,
I gather."
"Yes, I was watching the little playlet past Alys Vorpatril s shoulder. I
stood so as to keep her back to it, for charity s sake."
"I... don t understand Ivan. She seemed like a nice enough girl to me."
Countess Vorkosigan smiled. "They re all nice girls. That s not the point."
"What is the point?"
"You don t see it? Well, maybe when you ve had more time to observe. Alys
Vorpatril is a truly doting mother, but she just can t overcome the temptation
to try to micro-manage Ivan s future. Ivan is too agreeable, or too lazy, to
resist openly. So he does whatever she begs of him - except the one thing she
wants above all others, which is to settle into a marriage and give her
grandchildren. Personally, I think his strategy is wrong. If he really wants
to take the heat off himself, grandchildren would absolutely divert poor
Alys s attention. Meanwhile her heart is in her mouth every time he takes a
drive."
"I can see that," allowed Mark.
"I could slap him sometimes for his little game, except I m not sure he s
conscious of it, and anyway it s three-quarters Alys s fault."
Mark watched Lady Vorpatril catch up with Ivan, down the room. Checking his
evening s progress down the short list already, Mark feared. "You seem able to
maintain a reasonably hands-off maternal attitude yourself," he observed idly.
Page 144
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"That... may have been a mistake," she murmured.
He glanced up and quailed inwardly at the deathly desolation he surprised,
momentarily, in the Countess s eyes.
My mouth.
Shit
. The look twitched away so instantly, he didn t even dare apologize.
"Not altogether hands-off," she said lightly, attaching herself to his elbow
again. "Come on, and I ll show you how they cross-
net, Barrayaran style."
She steered him down the long room. "There are, as you have just seen, two
agendas being pursued here tonight," the
Countess lectured amiably. "The political one of the old men - an annual
renewal of the forms of the Vor - and the genetic agenda of the old women. The
men imagine theirs is the only one, but that s just an ego-serving
self-delusion. The whole Vor system is founded on the women s game,
underneath. The old men in government councils spend their lives arguing
against or scheming to fund this or that bit of off-planet military hardware.
Meanwhile, the uterine replicator is creeping in past their guard, and they
aren t even conscious that the debate that will fundamentally alter Barrayar s
future is being carried on right now among their wives and daughters. To use
it, or not to use it? Too late to keep it out, it s already here. The middle
classes are picking it up in droves. Every mother who loves her daughter is
pressing for it, to spare her the physical dangers of biological childbearing.
They re fighting not the old men, who haven t got a clue, but an old guard of
their sisters who say to their daughters, in effect, We had to suffer, so must
you! Look around tonight, Mark. You re witnessing the last generation of men
and women on Barrayar who will dance this dance in the old way. The Vor system
is about to change on its blindest side, the side that looks to - or fails to
look to - its foundation. Another half generation from now, it s not going to
know what hit it."
Mark almost swore her calm, academic voice concealed a savagely vengeful
satisfaction. But her expression was as detached as ever.
A young man in a captain s uniform approached them, and split a nod of
greeting between the Countess and Mark. "The Major of Protocol requests your
presence, my lord," he murmured. The statement too seemed to hang
indeterminately in the air between them. "This way, please."
They followed him out of the long reception room and up an ornately carved
white marble staircase, down a corridor, and into an antechamber where half a
dozen Counts or their official representatives were marshalled. Beyond a wide
archway in the main chamber, Gregor was surrounded by a small constellation of
men, mostly in red-and-blues, but three in dark Minister s robes.
The Emperor was seated on a plain folding stool, even less than a chair. "I
was expecting a throne, somehow," Mark whispered to the Countess.
"It s a symbol," she whispered back. "And like most symbols, inherited. It s a
standard-issue military officer s camp stool."
"Huh." Then he had to part from her, as the Major of Protocol herded him into
his appointed place in line. The Vorkosigan s place.
This is it
. He had a moment of utter panic, thinking he d somehow mislaid or dropped the
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]