Cordelia's Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold [13]
"Do you want to sit there and rub two sticks together? I suppose I had better do something about the crater, though."
He thought a moment, then trotted away over the edge of the little valley. Cordelia sat down beside Dubauer, putting an arm around his shoulders and hunching in anticipation.
Vorkosigan shot back over the rim at a dead run, and hit the ground rolling. There was a brilliant blue-white flash, and a boom that shook the ground. A large column of smoke, dust, and steam rose into the air, and pebbles, dirt, and bits of melted sand began to patter down like rain all around. Vorkosigan disappeared over the edge again, and returned shortly with a fine flaming torch.
Cordelia went for a peek at the damage. Vorkosigan had placed the short-circuited cartridge upstream about a hundred meters, at the outer edge of a bend where the swift little river curved away to the east. The explosion had left a spectacular glass-lined crater some fifteen meters wide and five deep that was still smoking. As she watched, the stream eroded its edge and poured in, billowing steam. In an hour it would be scoured into a natural-looking backwater.
"Not bad," she murmured approvingly.
By the time the fire burned down to a bed of coals they had cubes of dark red meat on sticks ready to broil.
"How do you like yours?" Vorkosigan asked. "Rare? Medium?"
"I think it had better be well done," suggested Cordelia. "We hadn't completed the parasite survey yet."
Vorkosigan glanced at his cube with a new dubiousness. "Ah. Quite," he said faintly.
They cooked it thoroughly, then sat by the fire and tore into the smoking meat with happy savagery. Even Dubauer managed to feed himself with small chunks. It was gamey and tough, burned on the outside and with a bitter undertaste, but no one suggested a side dish of either oatmeal or blue cheese dressing.
Cordelia's humor was touched. Vorkosigan's fatigues were filthy, damp, and splashed with dried blood from hacking up their dinner, as were her own. He had a three-day growth of beard, his face glistened in the firelight with hexaped grease, and he reeked with dried sweat. Barring the beard, she suspected she looked no better, and she knew she smelled no better. She found herself disquietingly aware of his body, muscular, compact, wholly masculine, stirring senses she thought she had suppressed. Best think of something else . . .
"From spaceman to caveman in three days," she meditated aloud. "How we imagine our civilization is in ourselves, when it's really in our things."
Vorkosigan glanced with a twisted smile at the carefully tended Dubauer. "You seem able to carry your civilization on the inside."
Cordelia flushed uncomfortably, glad for the camouflaging firelight. "One does one's duty."
"Some people find their duty more elastic. Or—were you in love with him?"
"With Dubauer? Heavens, no! I'm no cradle snatcher. He was a good kid, though. I'd like to get him home to his family."
"Do you have a family?"
"Sure. My mom and brother, back home on Beta Colony. My dad used to be in the Survey too."
"Was he one of those who never came back?"
"No, he died in a shuttleport accident, not ten kilometers from home. He'd been home on leave, and was just reporting back."
"My condolences."
"Oh, that was years and years ago." Getting a little personal, isn't he? she thought. But it was better than trying to deflect military interrogation. She hoped fervently that the subject, say, of the latest Betan equipment would not come up. "How about you? Do you have a family?" It suddenly occurred to her that this phrase was also a polite way of asking, Are you married?
"My father lives. He is Count Vorkosigan. My mother was half Betan, you know," he offered hesitantly.
Cordelia decided that if Vorkosigan, full of military curtness, was formidable, Vorkosigan trying to make himself pleasant was truly terrifying. But curiosity overcame the urge to cut the conversation short. "That's unusual. How did that happen?"
"My maternal grandfather