Miles Errant - Lois McMaster Bujold [229]
"Baron Fell may not give us time to coddle him."
"We'll tell Baron Fell he's in the shower. That'll be true enough."
A shower. Food. He was so ravenous as to be almost beyond hunger, numb in the belly, listless in the flesh. And cold.
"All I can say," said Quinn, "is that he's a damned poor imitation of the real Miles Vorkosigan."
Yes, that's what I've been trying to tell you.
Bothari-Jesek shook her head in, presumably, exasperated agreement. "Come on," she said to him.
She escorted him to an officer's cabin, small but thank-God private. It was disused, blank and clean, military-austere, the air a little stale. He supposed Thorne must now be similarly housed nearby.
"I'll get some clean clothes sent over for you from the Ariel. And send some food."
"Food first—please?"
"Sure."
"Why are you being nice to me?" His voice came out plaintive and suspicious, making him sound weak and paranoid, he feared.
Her aquiline face went introspective. "I want to know . . . who you are. What you are."
"You know. I'm a manufactured clone. Manufactured right here on Jackson's Whole."
"I don't mean your body."
He hunched in an automatic defensive posture, though he knew it emphasized his deformities.
"You are very closed," she observed. "Very alone. That's not at all like Miles. Usually."
"He's not a man, he's a mob. He's got a whole damned army trailing around after him." Not to mention the harrowing harem. "I suppose he likes it like that."
Her lips curved in an unexpected smile. It was the first time he'd seen her smile. It changed her face. "He does, I think." Her smile faded. "Did."
"You're doing this for him, aren't you. Treating me like this because you think he'd want it." Not in his own right, no, never, but all for Miles and his damned brother-obsession.
"Partly."
Right.
"But mostly," she said, "because someday Countess Vorkosigan will ask me what I did for her son."
"You're planning to trade Baron Bharaputra for him, aren't you?"
"Mark . . ." her eyes were dark with a strange . . . pity? irony? He could not read her eyes. "She'll mean you."
She turned on her heel and left him by himself, sealed in the cabin.
He showered in the hottest water the tiny unit would yield, and stood for long minutes in the heat of the dryer-blast, till his skin flushed red, before he stopped shivering. He was dizzy with exhaustion. When he finally emerged, he found someone had been and gone and left clothes and food. He hastily pulled on underwear, a black Dendarii tee-shirt, and a pair of his progenitor's ship-knit gray trousers, and fell upon the dinner. It wasn't a dainty Naismith-special-diet this time, but rather a tray of standard ready-to-eat rations designed to keep a large and physically active trooper going strong. It was far from gourmet fare, but it was the first time he'd had enough food on his plate for weeks. He devoured it all, as if whatever fairy had delivered it might reappear and snatch it away again. Stomach aching, he rolled into bed and lay on his side. He no longer shivered as if from cold, nor felt drained and sweating and shaky from low blood sugar. Yet a kind of psychic reverberation still rolled like a black tide through his body.
At least you got the clones out.
No. Miles got the clones out.
Dammit, dammit, dammit . . .
This half-baked disaster was not the glorious redemption of which he'd dreamed. Yet what had he expected the aftermath to be? In all his desperate plotting, he'd planned almost nothing past his projected return to Escobar with the Ariel. To Escobar, grinning, with the clones under his wing. He'd imagined himself dealing with an enraged Miles then, but then it would have been too late for Miles to stop him, too late to take his victory from him. He'd half-expected to be arrested, but to go willingly, whistling. What had he wanted?
To be free of survivor guilt? To break that old curse? Nobody you knew back then is still alive. . . . That was the motive he'd thought was driving him, when he thought