Cordelia's Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold [157]
"Lieutenant Koudelka and Sergeant Bothari, sir."
"They didn't get into a fight, did they?" asked Cordelia, now thoroughly alarmed.
"Yes. Oh—not with each other, Milady. They were set upon."
Vorkosigan's face was darkening. "You had better begin at the beginning."
"Yes, sir. Um. Lieutenant Koudelka and Sergeant Bothari went out last night. Not in uniform. Down to that area in back of the old caravanserai."
"My God, what for?"
"Um." The guard commander glanced uncertainly at Cordelia. "Entertainment, I believe, sir."
"Entertainment?"
"Yes, sir. Sergeant Bothari goes down there about once a month, on his duty-free day, when my lord Count is in town. It's apparently some place he's been going to for years."
"In the caravanserai?" said Count Piotr in an unbelieving tone.
"Um." The guard commander eyed the footman in appeal.
"Sergeant Bothari isn't very particular about his entertainment, sir," the footman volunteered uneasily.
"Evidently not!" said Piotr.
Cordelia questioned Vorkosigan with her eyebrows.
"It's a very rough area," he explained. "I wouldn't go down there myself without a patrol at my back. Two patrols, at night. And I'd definitely wear my uniform, though not my rank insignia . . . but I believe Bothari grew up there. I imagine it looks different to his eyes."
"Why so rough?"
"It's very poor. It was the town center during the Time of Isolation, and it hasn't been touched by renovation yet. Minimal water, no electricity, choked with refuse . . ."
"Mostly human," added Piotr tartly.
"Poor?" said Cordelia, bewildered. "No electricity? How can it be on the comm network?"
"It's not, of course," answered Vorkosigan.
"Then how can anybody get their schooling?"
"They don't."
Cordelia stared. "I don't understand. How do they get their jobs?"
"A few escape to the Service. The rest prey on each other, mostly." Vorkosigan regarded her face uneasily. "Have you no poverty on Beta Colony?"
"Poverty? Well, some people have more money than others, of course, but . . . no comconsoles?"
Vorkosigan was diverted from his interrogation. "Is not owning a comconsole the lowest standard of living you can imagine?" he said in wonder.
"It's the first article in the constitution. 'Access to information shall not be abridged.' "
"Cordelia . . . these people barely have access to food, clothing, and shelter. They have a few rags and cooking pots, and squat in buildings that aren't economical to repair or tear down yet, with the wind whistling through the cracks in the walls."
"No air-conditioning?"
"No heat in the winter is a bigger problem, here."
"I suppose so. You people don't really have summer. . . . How do they call for help when they're sick or hurt?"
"What help?" Vorkosigan was growing grim. "If they're sick, they either get well or die."
"Die, if we're lucky," muttered Piotr. "Vermin."
"You're not joking." She stared back and forth between the pair of them. "That's horrible . . . why, think of all the geniuses you must be missing!"
"I doubt we're missing very many, from the caravanserai," said Piotr dryly.
"Why not? They have the same genetic complement as you," Cordelia pointed out the, to her, obvious.
The Count went rigid. "My dear girl! They most certainly do not! My family have been Vor for nine generations."
Cordelia raised her eyebrows. "How do you know, if you didn't have gene typing till eighty years ago?"
Both the guard commander and the footman were acquiring peculiar stuffed expressions. The footman bit his lip.
"Besides," she went on reasonably, "if you Vor got around half as much as those histories I've been reading imply, ninety percent of the people on this planet must have Vor blood by now. Who knows who your relatives are on your father's side?"
Vorkosigan bit his linen napkin absently, his eyes gone crinkly with much the same expression as the footman, and murmured, "Cordelia, you can't . . . you really can't sit at the breakfast table and imply my ancestors were bastards. It's a mortal insult here."
Where should I sit? "Oh. I'll never understand that,