Miles Errant - Lois McMaster Bujold [230]
What did you think? That if you were as heroic as Miles, they'd have to treat you like Miles? That they would have to love you?
And who were they? The Dendarii? Miles himself? Or behind Miles, those sinister, fascinating shadows, Count and Countess Vorkosigan?
His image of Miles's parents was blurred, uncertain. The unbalanced Galen had presented them, his hated enemies, as black villains, the Butcher of Komarr and his virago wife. Yet with his other hand he'd required Mark to study them, using unedited source materials, their writings, their public speeches, private vids. Miles's parents were clearly complex people, hardly saints, but just as clearly not the foaming sadistic sodomite and murderous bitch of Galen's raving paranoias. In the vids Count Aral Vorkosigan appeared merely a gray-haired, thick-set man with oddly intent eyes in his rather heavy face, with a rich, raspy, level voice. Countess Cordelia Vorkosigan spoke less often, a tall woman with red-roan hair and notable gray eyes, too powerful to be called pretty, yet so centered and balanced as to seem beautiful even though, strictly speaking, she was not.
And now Bothari-Jesek threatened to deliver him to them. . . .
He sat up and turned on the light. A quick tour of the cabin revealed nothing to commit suicide with. No weapons or blades—the Dendarii had disarmed him when he'd come aboard. Nothing to hang a belt or rope from. Boiling himself to death in the shower was not an option; a sealed fail-safe sensor turned it off automatically when it exceeded physiological tolerances. He went back to bed.
The image of a little, urgent, shouting man with his chest exploding outward in a carmine spray replayed in slow motion in his head. He was surprised when he began to cry. Shock, it had to be the shock that Bothari-Jesek had diagnosed. I hated the little bugger when he was alive, why am I crying? It was absurd. Maybe he was going insane.
Two nights without sleep had left him ringingly numb, yet he could not sleep now. He only dozed, drifting in and out of near-dreams and recent, searing memories. He half-hallucinated about being in a rubber raft on a river of blood, bailing frantically in the red torrent, so that when Quinn came to get him after only an hour's rest, it was actually a relief.
CHAPTER NINE
"Whatever you do," said Captain Thorne, "don't mention the Betan rejuvenation treatment.
Mark frowned. "What Betan rejuvenation treatment? Is there one?"
"No."
"Then why the hell would I mention it?"
"Never mind, just don't."
Mark gritted his teeth, swung around in his station chair square to the vid plate, and pressed the keypad to lower his seat till his booted feet were flat to the floor. He was fully kitted in Naismith's officer's grays. Quinn had dressed him as though he were a doll, or an idiot child. Quinn, Bothari-Jesek, and Thorne had then proceded to fill his head with a mass of sometimes-conflicting instructions on how to play Miles in the upcoming interview. As if I didn't know. The three captains now each sat in station chairs out of range of the vid pick-up in the Peregrine's tac room, ready to prompt him through an ear-bug. And he'd thought Galen was a puppet master. His ear itched, and he wriggled the bug in irritation, earning a frown from Bothari-Jesek. Quinn had never stopped scowling.
Quinn had never stopped. She still wore her blood-soaked fatigues. Her sudden inheritance of command of this debacle had allowed her no rest. Thorne had cleaned up and changed to ship grays, but obviously had not slept yet. Both their faces stood out pale in the shadows, too sharply lined. Quinn had made