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By Root 718 0

surface was a round, transparent window-wall, the universe itself turned into backdrop, thick with bright stars on this shaded side of the station. Ekaterin grabbed his hand rather abruptly, and Roic made a small choked noise. Miles had the sense of having swum inside a giant beehive, for the rest of the wall was lined with hexagonal cells like a silver-edged honeycomb filled with rainbow jewels. As they floated out toward the middle the cells resolved into velvet-lined boxes for the audience, varying in size from cozy niches for one patron to units spacious enough for parties of ten, if the ten were quaddies, not trailing long useless legs. Other sectors, interspersed, seemed to be dark, flat panels of various shapes, or to contain other exits. He tried at first to impose a sense of up and down upon the space, but then he blinked, and the chamber seemed to rotate around the window, and then he wasn't sure if he was looking up, down, or sideways through it. Down was a particularly disturbing mental construction, as it gave the dizzy impression of falling into a vast well of stars.

A quaddie usher wearing an air-jet belt took them in tow, after they had gawked their fill, and steered them gently wall-ward to their assigned hexagon. It was lined with some dark, soft, sound-baffling padding and convenient handgrips, and included its own lighting, the colored jewels seen from afar.

A dark shape and a gleam of motion in their generously sized box resolved itself, as they approached, as a quaddie woman. She was slim and long-limbed, with fine white-blond hair cut finger length and waving in an aureole around her head. It made Miles think of mermaids of legend. Cheekbones to inspire men to duel with each other, or perhaps scribble bad poetry, or drown in drink. Or worse, desert their brigade. She was clothed in close-fitting black velvet with a little white lace ruff at her throat. The cuff on the lower right elbow of her softly pleated black velvet pants . . . sleeve, Miles decided, not leg, had been left unfastened to make room for a medical air-filled arm immobilizer of a sort painfully familiar to Miles from his fragile-boned youth. It was the only stiff, ungraceful thing about her, a crude insult to the rest of the ensemble.

No mistaking her for anyone other than Garnet Five, but he waited for Bel to introduce them all properly, which Bel promptly did. They shook hands all around; Miles found her grip athlete-firm.

"Thank you for obtaining these—" seats did not apply, "this space for us on such short notice," Miles said, releasing her slim upper hand. "I understand we are to be privileged to view some very fine work." Work was a word with extra resonance in Quaddiespace, he had already gathered, like honor on Barrayar.

"My pleasure, Lord Vorkosigan." Her voice was melodious; her expression seemed cool, almost ironic, but an underlying anxiety glowed in her leaf-green eyes.

Miles opened his hand to indicate her broken lower right arm. "May I convey my personal apologies for the poor behavior of some of our men. They will be disciplined for it, when we get them back. Please do not judge all Barrayarans by our worst examples." Well, she can't; we actually don't ship out our worst, Gregor be praised.

She smiled briefly. "I do not, for I've also met your best." The urgency in her eyes tinged her voice. "Dmitri—what will happen to him?"

"Well, that depends to a great extent on Dmitri." Pitches, Miles suddenly realized, could run two ways, here. "It could range, when he is released and returns to duty, from a minor black mark on his record—he wasn't supposed to remove his wrist com while on station leave, you know, for just the sort of reason you unfortunately discovered—to a very serious charge of attempted desertion, if he fails to withdraw his request for political asylum before it is denied."

Her jaw set a trifle. "Perhaps it won't be denied."

"Even if granted, the long-term consequences could be more complex than you perhaps anticipate. He would at that point be plainly guilty of desertion. He would be permanently