Cordelia's Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold [75]
"We can't possibly make it in under a week! Not even in the courier!"
"You'll make it in five days, boosting six points past emergency max the whole way. If the engineer's been doing his job, the engines won't blow until you hit eight. Quite safe." He glanced over his shoulder. "Couer, scramble the courier crew, please. And get their captain on the line, I want to give him his orders personally."
Commodore Couer's eyebrows rose, but he moved to obey.
The surgeon lowered his voice, glancing at Cordelia. "Is this Betan sentimentality at work, sir? A little odd in the Emperor's service, don't you think?"
Vorkosigan smiled, narrow-eyed, and matched his tone. "Betan insubordination, Doctor? You will oblige me by directing your energies to carrying out your orders instead of evolving excuses why you can't."
"Hell of a lot easier just to open the stopcocks. And what are you going to do with them once they're—completed, born, whatever you call it? Who's going to take responsibility for them then? I can sympathize with your wish to impress your girlfriend, but think ahead, sir!"
Vorkosigan's eyebrows snapped together, and he growled, down in his throat. The surgeon recoiled. Vorkosigan buried the growl in a throat-clearing noise, and took a breath.
"That will be my problem. My word. Your responsibility will end there. Twenty-five minutes, Doctor. If you're on time I may let you ride up on the inside of the shuttle." He grinned a small white grin, eloquently aggressive. "You can have three days home leave after they're in place at ImpMil, if you wish."
The surgeon shrugged wry defeat, and vanished to collect his things.
Cordelia looked after him doubtfully. "Will he be all right?"
"Oh, yes, it just takes him a while to turn his thinking around. By the time they get to Vorbarr Sultana, he'll be acting like he invented the project, and the—uterine replicators." Vorkosigan's gaze returned to the float pallet. "Those are the damnedest things. . . ."
A guard entered. "Pardon me, sir, but the Escobaran shuttle pilot is asking for Captain Naismith. They're ready to lift."
Couer spoke from the communications monitor. "Sir, I have the courier captain on line."
Cordelia gave Vorkosigan a look of helpless frustration, acknowledged by a small shake of his head, and each turned wordlessly to the demands of duty. She left meditating on the doctor's parting shot. And we thought we were being so careful. We really must do something about our eyes.
Chapter Twelve
She traveled home with about 200 others, mostly Escobarans, on a Tau Cetan passenger liner hastily converted for the purpose. There was a lot of time spent exchanging stories and sharing memories among the ex-prisoners, sessions subtly guided, she realized shortly, by the heavy sprinkling of psych officers the Escobarans had sent with the ship. After a while her silence about her own experiences began to stand out, and she learned to spot the casual-looking roundup techniques for the only-apparently-impromptu group therapy, and make herself scarce.
It wasn't enough. She found herself quietly but implacably pursued by a bright-faced young woman named Irene, whom she deduced must be assigned to her case. She popped up at meals, in the corridors, in the lounges, always with a novel excuse for starting a conversation. Cordelia avoided her when she could, and turned the conversation deftly, or sometimes bluntly, to other topics when she couldn't.
After another week the girl disappeared back into the mob, but Cordelia returned to her cabin one day to discover her roommate gone and replaced by another, a steady-eyed, easygoing older woman in civilian dress who was not one of the ex-prisoners. Cordelia lay on her bed glumly and watched her unpacking.
"Hi, I'm Joan Sprague," the woman introduced herself sunnily.
Time to get explicit. "Good afternoon, Dr. Sprague. I am correct, I think, in identifying