Cordelia's Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold [73]
"It's on the clerk's desk, Cor—Captain Naismith," he directed her with a wave of his hand. "Go ahead and look it over." He returned his attention to his waiting officers.
It was a simple steel tablet, standard Barrayaran military issue, and the spelling, numbers, and dates were all in order. She fingered it briefly. It certainly looked like it ought to last. Vorkosigan finished his business and came to her side.
"Is it all right?"
"Fine." She gave him a smile. "Could you find the grave?"
"Yes, your camp's still visible from the air at low altitude, although another rainy season will obliterate it—"
The duty guard's voice floated in over a commotion at the door. "So you say. For all I know they could be bombs. You can't take that in there," followed by another voice replying, "He has to sign it personally. Those are my orders. You guys act like you won the damn war."
The second speaker, a man in the dark red uniform of an Escobaran medical technician, backed through the door followed by a float-pallet on a control lead, looking like some bizarre balloon. It was loaded with large canisters, each about half a meter high, studded with control panels and access apertures. Cordelia recognized them at once, and stiffened, feeling sick. Vorkosigan looked blank.
The technician stared around. "I have a receipt for these that requires Admiral Vorkosigan's personal signature. Is he here?"
Vorkosigan stepped forward. "I'm Vorkosigan. What are these, um . . ."
"Medtech," Cordelia whispered in cue.
"Medtech?" Vorkosigan finished smoothly, although the exasperated glance he gave her suggested that was not the cue he'd wanted.
The medtech smiled sourly. "We're returning these to the senders."
Vorkosigan walked around the pallet. "Yes, but what are they?"
"All your bastards," said the medtech.
Cordelia, catching the genuine puzzlement in Vorkosigan's voice, added, "They're uterine replicators, um, Admiral. Self-contained, independently powered—they need servicing, though—"
"Every week," agreed the medtech, viciously cordial. He held up a data disk. "They sent you instructions with them."
Vorkosigan looked appalled. "What the hell am I supposed to do with them?"
"Thought you were going to make our women answer that question, did you?" replied the medtech, taut and sarcastic. "Personally, I'd suggest you hang them around their fathers' necks. The paternal gene complements are marked on each one, so you should have no trouble telling who they belong to. Sign here."
Vorkosigan took the receipt panel, and read it through twice. He walked around the pallet again, counting, looking deeply troubled. He came up beside Cordelia in his circuit, and murmured, "I didn't realize they could do things like that."
"They use them all the time at home."
"They must be fantastically complex."
"And expensive, too. I'm surprised—maybe they just didn't want to argue about taking them home with any of the mothers. A couple of them were pretty emotionally divided about abortions. This puts the blood guilt on you." Her words seemed to enter him like bullets, and she wished she'd phrased herself differently.
"They're all alive in there?"
"Sure. See all the green lights? Placentas and all. They float right in their amniotic sacs, just like home."
"Moving?"
"I suppose so."
He rubbed his face, staring hauntedly at the canisters. "Seventeen. God, Cordelia, what do I do with them? Surgeon, of course, but . . ." He turned to the fascinated clerk. "Get the chief surgeon down here, on the double." He turned back to Cordelia, keeping his voice down. "How long will those things keep working?"
"The whole nine months, if necessary."
"May I have my receipt, Admiral?" said the medtech loudly. "I have other duties waiting." He stared curiously at Cordelia in her orange