Cryoburn - Lois McMaster Bujold [61]
"The timing is interesting in the extreme. And the cast. I smell a lethal secret, oh, yes." Miles-san rose and began to pace back and forth across the little room. He forgot his cane, left by his chair, a snazzier one than he'd scavenged from Suze-san's. "Suwabi and Tennoji came up in my researches. Dr. Leiber did not, I admit. Curious absence, not to be confused with an absence of curious. I wonder who the hell he was?"
Sounding as if he was being drawn into all this despite himself, Consul Vorlynkin said, "Could you trace these people and find out more?"
"Not Suwabi or Tennoji-they're dead. And rotted, buried for real. The other one, I don't know. Could be a long, cold trail, if he's run off-world or gone to ground well enough to escape the corps. It might be faster just to wake up Lisa Sato and ask her."
Mina drew a huge breath and shot to her feet, staring wildly at Miles-san. "You could do that? You could get my mommy back? Really?"
Miles-san stopped short. "Er."
Jin's heart jumped in his chest; Mina's imploring look made him feel sick. "No, of course he can't," he said angrily. "It was just a stupid joke."
Miles-san's hand went to his throat, clutching something through his shirt; some kind of pendant, Jin thought. "Damn. If I were on Barrayar, I could just order it done."
"But we're not on Barrayar," Armsman Roic muttered under his breath, almost the first Jin had heard the big man speak. Miles-san waved a hand as if to say, Yah, yah, though whether in agreement or protest Jin was not sure.
Mina looked crushed; her lower lip quivered. "It wasn't . . . wasn't a very nice thing to make a joke about it, if you didn't really mean it!"
"No," said Miles-san, staring, for some reason, at Raven-sensei. "It wasn't. Could I, ah . . . really mean it? Technically?"
Raven-sensei scratched his chin. "Technically, yes. You will forgive me if I point out that the medical aspects would seem to be the least of it?"
Miles-san waved a hand in easy pardon.
"Assuming," Raven-sensei went on, "the cryoprep was done correctly in the first place, of course. Or at all."
Miles-san's eyes narrowed, and he resumed his pacing. "Mm . . . no reason why it shouldn't have been. We're not on Jackson's Whole, either, I note. What all would you need to do the trick? Technically."
"A decently-equipped revival facility. This isn't something I'd choose to do out of the consulate basement's laundry tub, if that's what you're thinking. Not if there were any complications."
"We couldn't afford complications, no. Emphatically not." He glanced at Jin and Mina.
Raven-sensei nodded. "Some standard medical supplies, synthesized blood and so on."
"If I secured you a facility, could you scrounge the supplies?"
Raven-sensei got a faraway look. "Legally, or otherwise?"
A pause. "I've no intrinsic objection to legally, but it can't leave a data trail back to us. Otherwise, alternate suppliers would do. If their merchandise was of proper quality, of course."
"That goes without saying. How would you propose to gain custody of my patient?"
Miles-san's expression grew equally faraway. "Now, that's where it becomes quite interesting-"
"Lord Vorkosigan!" Vorlynkin interrupted. "What the hell are you thinking?" Jin wasn't sure if he really didn't know, or knew and objected. Strenuously.
Miles-san waved that airy hand again. "Any number of threads in my cat's cradle of Kibou-daini mysteries seem to run back to Lisa Sato-and stop. I'm thinking I might be able to cut the whole knot right through if I had her to interrogate. Er, talk to. Grant you, it seems a little imaginative at first glance, but the more I think about it . . ."
"Imaginative! It seems outright mad!"
Miles-san cast the consul a soulful look. "But Vorlynkin, it would solve all your problems with asylum for minors at a blow. Their mother being their closest possible adult next-of-kin."
"When did those become my . . . never mind."
Miles-san grinned in a glinty way that Jin did not entirely understand. "Very good, Vorlynkin."
"What are you all talking about?" Mina practically