Cordelia's Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold [177]
When Captain Vaagen burst into her room the next afternoon, however, her heart sank. His face was thunderously dark, his lips tight and harsh.
"What's wrong, Captain?" she asked urgently. "That second calcium run—did it fail?"
"Too early to tell. No, your baby's the same, Milady. Our trouble is with your in-law."
"Beg pardon?"
"General Count Vorkosigan came to see us this morning."
"Oh! He came to see the baby? Oh, good. He's so disturbed by all this new life-technology. Maybe he's finally starting to work past those emotional blocks. He embraces the new death-technologies readily enough, old Vor warrior that he is. . . ."
"I wouldn't get too optimistic about him, if I were you, Milady." He took a deep breath, taking refuge in a formality of stance, just black, not black-humored this time. "Dr. Henri had the same idea you did. We showed the General all around the lab, went over the equipment, explained our treatment theories. We were absolutely honest, as we've been with you. Maybe too honest. He wanted to know what results we were going to get. Hell, we don't know. And so we said.
"After some beating around the bush, hinting . . . well, to cut it short, the General first asked, then ordered, then tried to bribe Dr. Henri to open the stopcock. To destroy the fetus. The mutation, he calls it. We threw him the hell out. He swore he'd be back."
She was shaking, down in her belly, though she kept her face blank. "I see."
"I want that old man kept out of my lab, Milady. And I don't care how you do it. I don't need this kind of crap coming down. Not from that high up."
"I'll see . . . wait here." She wrapped her robe around her own green pajamas more tightly, seated her oxygen tube more firmly, and walked carefully across the corridor. Aral, half-casual in uniform trousers and a shirt, sat at a small table by his window. The only sign of his continued patient-hood was the oxygen tube up his nose, treatment for his own lingering soltoxin pneumonia. He was conferring with a man while Koudelka took notes. The man was not, thank God, Piotr, but merely some ministerial secretary of Vortala's.
"Aral. I need you."
"Can it wait?"
"No."
He rose from his chair with a brief "Excuse me a moment, gentlemen," and trod across the hall in her wake. Cordelia closed the door behind them.
"Captain Vaagen, please tell Aral what you just told me."
Vaagen, looking a degree more nervous, repeated his tale. To his credit, he did not soften the details. A weight seemed to settle on Aral's shoulders as he listened, rounding and hunching them.
"Thank you, Captain. You were correct to report this. I will take care of it immediately."
"That's all?" Vaagen glanced at Cordelia in doubt.
She opened her palm to him. "You heard the man."
Vaagen shrugged, and saluted himself out.
"You don't doubt his story?" asked Cordelia.
"I've been listening to the Count my father's thoughts on this subject for a week, love."
"You argued?"
"He argued. I just listened."
Aral returned to his own room, and asked Koudelka and the secretary to wait in the corridor. Cordelia sat on his bed and watched as he punched up codes on his comconsole.
"Lord Vorkosigan here. I wish to speak simultaneously to the Security chief, Imperial Military Hospital, and Commander Simon Illyan. Get them both on, please."
A brief wait, as each man was located. Judging from the fuzzy background in the vid, the ImpMil man was in his office somewhere in the hospital complex. They tracked Illyan down at a forensic laboratory in ImpSec HQ.
"Gentlemen." Aral's face was quite expressionless. "I wish to revoke a Security clearance." Each man attentively prepared to make