Cryoburn - Lois McMaster Bujold [141]
Roic, listening, raised his coffee bulb in salute and drank. Oki hadn't been the worst of the bunch, to be sure.
"I trust my name hasn't turned up in the proceedings," said Miles.
"They don't know you from a hole in the ground," Mark assured him, and grinned like a fat shark at his pained expression. "Did Kareen really have to sit on you to keep you from giving interviews?"
"That was a joke, and she knew it," Miles said austerely.
"Yeah, right."
"What's next for you?"
"I descend on the Durona Group with a long list of chores not in their prior schedule, much as you will when you hit home, no doubt. I hope to have the set-up team for our first off-Escobar satellite clinic assembled and on their way in a week. Fuwa's repairs are in hand, which is a relief; most contractors in my experience are only just barely faster than lawyers. Kareen says his work looks good so far, so we'll be able to employ his company some more. Seems the least I can do for the man."
"How little did you get him down to, that night?"
Mark gave a smug duck of his chin. "That's proprietary information. But to thwart seller's remorse, I plan to swing him a lot of construction business."
"Bet he'll try to pad his estimates."
"Oh, of course." Mark waved this away as a given.
Miles wondered if sending Mark to batten on Kibou-daini would prove adequate revenge for WhiteChrys's ploy on Komarr. On the whole, he thought it might.
"And you?" asked Mark. "Are you going straight back to Barrayar, or will you stop at Sergyar to see our parents?"
Miles rubbed his knuckles across his mouth, and frowned. "There was no chance to go downside on my outbound trip, of course. Though I did snatch twenty minutes to talk in real time with Mother, from the orbital transfer station."
"How was she?"
"No more harried than usual. I'd promised to stop on the way back, but my case ran a couple of weeks over what I'd initially planned-did that one to myself, true-and I might need to spend a few days on Komarr, setting up the trap for WhiteChrys with some folks, which also wasn't in my initial plan. So I may have to wait till they come home for Winterfair, if they do, this year. Will you and Kareen be coming home then?"
"Not sure yet."
"I was thinking you could pitch your new procedure to the Count-our-father in person."
"We'll see how good it's looking at that point. We might actually have some preliminary results. Or not."
A few passers-by turned their heads to stare at the two not-quite-twins, slouching, for the moment, in identical poses in their bolted-down chairs opposite each other. Miles studied his clone, in a little frisson of wonder he'd never quite lost.
"What?" said Mark, tilting his head in an invitation to be amused by his progenitor-brother's infamous babble.
"Thinking about the uncle we neither of us ever knew. Our father's older brother, who was killed in that same attack that took out our Barrayaran grandmother, in the opening salvo of Mad Yuri's war. He was in his mid-teens, I believe. I was thinking how strange it was that I had a brother I never knew till I was an adult, and our father had a brother everyone had forgotten by the time he was an adult. Were you ever told anything about him at all, when you were being trained about Barrayar?"
Mark shrugged. "Just a name. No time was spent on him, when there was so much else to learn."
"That's about all I've ever gotten from Da, either. A painful period of his life, I gather. Maybe if you and Kareen do Winterfair, we can tag-team him and get him to