Cryoburn - Lois McMaster Bujold [98]
Matson-san scratched his head and grimaced. "Ah." He took up his tea again. "Well, if you change you mind, you can tell me, all right?" Jin glowered at him in a dismay that made him hold up a placating hand. "Just trying to help, too."
Jin wanted to cry, If that's your idea of help, don't! but it seemed too rude a thing to say to a grownup. He settled on, "All right. But I won't. Change my mind."
Matson-san shrugged uneasily and went back out to that front office-room. Jin gathered his money and fled upstairs to hide it away.
With three of the four people he wanted to interrogate at Suze's place still out cold, bless Roic, Miles perforce began with Madame Sato.
Inside the glass-walled, softly-lit isolation booth, she was sitting up in her narrow bed, looking pale and exhausted but on the whole very good for a new revive. She was clean in a crisp patient gown and warmly padded robe, each extra layer of cloth providing protection from exposure both to germs and prying eyes. Miles suspected-no, knew very well-from his own too-frequent hospitalizations that the latter could be more important to one's morale than the former. Ako had washed the gel from her hair; it lay undamaged in a silky fall over her shoulder.
He eased into the booth, wondering if he seemed menacing to her or merely weird. Hard to tell from her stern glare. He adjusted his filtering mask and cleared his throat.
"Good afternoon, Madame Sato. My name is Miles Vorkosigan." He smiled reassuringly, then realized she couldn't see his mouth. "Sorry about the mask. But Dr. Durona says your immune system's coming back fast. We should be able to dispense with the sterile precautions and get you out of here fairly soon."
"Are you a doctor?" Her voice was raspy but functional.
"No, your revival was done by Raven Durona, a specialist from Escobar. Who works for me," Miles realized he'd better add. Explaining himself to her was going to be an uphill slog.
"I saw him earlier." She swallowed-partly nerves, partly still getting used to being back in control of her body, he expected. "Where is here? They said I was in Northbridge." Her tone said she doubted this. Doubted everything, right now.
Miles glanced around. The view from booth took in only the shadowed, deserted recovery room, which had no exterior windows, not even looking out on the wall of another building. "Northbridge, that's right. You're in an old, decommissioned cryonics facility on the south side, which has been taken over by some rather clever squatters."
"Someone said you have my children . . ." The tightening of her throat smeared that last word nearly soundless.
Miles now wished he'd brought them along, even though he was still nervy from his prior failure. "Yes, Jin and Mina are safe at the Barrayaran consulate." He added after a moment, when she still didn't seem to know whether to parse this as a comfort or a threat, "Jin has all his creatures there, even Gyre-the-falcon and your old cat, so he's content for now. Mina is pretty much sticking with Jin." This familiar reference to the traveling zoo would convince her of his veracity, he hoped.
"The Barrayaran consulate! Why?" She swallowed again. "Who are you? Why are you here?" She didn't add, Why am I here? but Miles thought it was implied.
"What do you remember?"
Her lips clamped shut.
Miles tried again. "The last thing Jin and Mina remember of you is your arrest by the Northbridge municipal police, eighteen months back. Two days ago, my people and I found you frozen in a portable cryochamber in Dr. Seiichiro Leiber's townhouse basement. I'm now trying to close that eighteen-month memory gap. For both of us, I suppose."
That last plainly shocked her; her stare at him shifted from fear and misplaced anger to sheer bewilderment. "What?"
Miles sighed, hitching himself up on the stool at the end of her bed. An Auditor was supposed to listen, not talk-one of Gregor's wee jokes, was that?-but this