Diplomatic Immunity - Lois McMaster Bujold [45]
A flash of guilt made him grimace. "Graf Station is not exactly what we had in mind for a honeymoon diversion, I'm afraid."
"Oh, I'm having a good time. You're the one who has to deal with all the difficult people." She made a face, and he was reminded again of her tendency to default to extreme reserve when painfully overwhelmed. He did fancy that it happened less often, these days. Her growing confidence and ease with the role of Lady Vorkosigan had been his secret delight to watch develop, this past year and a half. "Maybe, if you're free by lunch, we can rendezvous and you can vent at me," she added, rather in the tone of one offering a trade of hostages. "But not if I have to remind you to chew and swallow."
"Only the carpet." This won a snicker; a good-bye kiss, as he headed off to the shower, eased his heart in advance. He reflected that while he might feel lucky that she'd agreed to come with him to Quaddiespace, everyone on Graf Station from Vorpatril and Greenlaw on down was much luckier.
* * *
The crews of all four Komarran ships now locked into their docking cradles had been herded into one hostel, and held there under close arrest. The quaddie authorities had feigned not to charge the passengers, an odd lot of galactic businesspeople who, with their goods, had joined the convoy for various segments of its route as the most economical transport going their way. But of course, they could not be left aboard unmanned vessels, and so perforce had been removed to two other, more luxurious, hostels.
In theory, the erstwhile passengers were made free of the station with no more onerous requirement than to sign in and out with a couple of quaddie Security guards—armed with stunners only, Miles noted in passing—watching the hostel doors. It wasn't even that the passengers couldn't legally leave Quaddiespace—except that the cargoes most had been shepherding were still impounded aboard their respective ships. And so they were held on the principle of the monkey with its hand trapped in the jar of nuts, unwilling to let go of what they could not withdraw. The "luxury" of the hostel translated into another quaddie punishment, since the mandatory stay was being charged to the Komarran fleet corporation.
The hostel's lobby was faux-grandiose, to Miles's eye, with a high domed ceiling simulating a morning sky with drifting clouds that probably cycled through sunrise, sunset, and night with the day-cycle. Miles wondered which planet's constellations were displayed, or if they could be varied to flatter the transients du jour. The large open space was circled by a second-story balcony given over to a lounge, restaurant, and bar where patrons could meet, greet, and eat. In the center an array of drum-shaped fluted marble pillars, waist-high, supported a long double-curved sheet of thick glass that in turn held a large and complex live floral display. Where did they grow such flowers on Graf Station? Was Ekaterin viewing the source of them even now?
In addition to the usual lift tubes, a wide curving staircase led from the lobby down to the conference level. Bel guided Miles down it to a more utilitarian meeting room in the level below.
They found the chamber crammed with about eighty irate individuals of what seemed every race, dress, planetary origin, and gender in the Nexus. Galactic traders with a keenly honed sense of the value of their time, and no Barrayaran cultural inhibitions about Imperial Auditors, they unleashed several days of accumulated frustrations upon Miles the moment he stepped to the front and turned to face them. Fourteen languages were handled by nineteen different brands of auto-translators, several of which, Miles decided, must have been purchased at close-out prices from makers going deservedly belly-up. Not that his answers to their barrage of questions were any special tax on the translators—what seemed ninety percent of them came up either, "I don't know