Miles Errant - Lois McMaster Bujold [341]
He tried to imagine Admiral Naismith's childhood as a Cetagandan secret covert ops project. His childhood? It must have been extraordinary, if he'd not only escaped at the age of eighteen or less, but evaded Cetagandan Intelligence and established his fortune within a year. But he could think of nothing from such a youth. A complete blank.
"What are you going to do with me if I'm not Naismith? Keep me as a pet? For how long?"
Rowan pursed her lips in worry. "If you are the Bharaputran-made clone—you're going to need to get off Jackson's Whole yourself. The Dendarii raid made an awful mess out of Vasa Luigi's headquarters. He has blood to avenge, as well as property. And pride. If it's the case—I'll try to get you out."
"You? Or you all?"
"I've never gone against the group." She rose and paced across her sitting room. "Yet I lived a year, on Escobar, alone, when I was taking my cryo-revival training. I've often wondered . . . what it would be like to be half of a couple. Instead of one-fortieth of a group. Would I feel bigger?"
"Were you bigger when you were all of one, on Escobar?"
"I don't know. It's a silly conceit. Still—one can't help thinking of Lotus."
"Lotus. Baronne Bharaputra? The one who left your group?"
"Yes. Lilly's oldest daughter after Rose. Lilly says . . . if we don't hang together, we'll all hang separately. It's a reference to an ancient method of execution that—"
"I know what hanging is," he said hastily, before she could go into the medical details.
Rowan stared out her window. "Jackson's Whole is no place to be alone. You can't trust anybody."
"An interesting paradox. Makes for quite a dilemma."
She searched his face for irony, found it, and frowned. "It's no joke."
Indeed. Even Lilly Durona's self-referential maternal strategy hadn't quite solved the problem, as Lotus had proved.
He eyed her. "Were you ordered to sleep with me?" he asked suddenly.
She flinched. "No." She paced again. "But I did ask permission. Lilly said to go ahead, it might help attach you to our interests." She paused. "Does that seem terribly cold, to you?"
"On Jackson's Whole—merely prudent." And attachments surely ran two ways. Jackson's Whole was no place to be alone. But you can't trust anyone.
If anyone was sane here, he swore it was by accident.
Reading, an exercise that had at first given him a stabbing sensation in the eyes and instant excruciating headaches, was getting easier. He could go for up to ten minutes at a time now before it became too blinding to bear. Holed up in Rowan's study, he pushed himself to the limits of pain, an information-bite, a few minutes' rest, and try again. Beginning at the center outward, he read up first on Jackson's Whole, its unique history, non-governmental structure, and the one hundred and sixteen Great Houses and countless Houses Minor, with their interlocking alliances and vendettas, roiling deals and betrayals. The Durona Group was well on its way to growing into a House Minor in its own right, he judged, budding from House Fell like a hydra, also like a hydra reproducing asexually. Mentions of Houses Bharaputra, Hargraves, Dyne, Ryoval and Fell triggered images in his head that did not come from the vid display. A few of them were even starting to cross-connect. Too few. He wondered if it was significant that the Houses that seemed most familiar were also the ones most famous for dealing in off-planet illegalities.
Whoever I am, I know this place. And yet . . . his visions tasted small in scope, too shallow to represent a formative lifetime. Maybe he'd been a small person. Still, it was more than he could dredge up from his subconscious regarding the youth of the putative Admiral Naismith, the Cetagandan-produced clone.
Gran'da. Those had been memories with mass, an almost stunning sensory weight.