Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [102]
Voices from the vestibule interrupted whatever he'd been about to say. Ekaterin's head turned. "Tuomonen, so soon?"
"Do you want to put this off?" Vorkosigan asked her.
She shook her head. "No. I want to get it over with. I want to go get Nikki."
"Ah." He drained his tea mug and rose, and they both went out to her living room. It was indeed Captain Tuomonen. He nodded to Vorkosigan, and greeted her politely. He had brought a female medtech with him, in the uniform of the Barrayaran military medical auxiliary, whom he also introduced. She carried a medkit, which she placed on the round table and opened. Ampoules and hyposprays glittered in their gel slots. Other first-aid supplies hinted at more sinister possibilities.
Tuomonen indicated Ekaterin should sit on the circular couch. "Are you ready, Madame Vorsoisson?"
"I suppose so." Ekaterin watched with concealed fear and some loathing as the medtech loaded her hypospray and showed it to Tuomonen to cross-check.
The medtech laid a second hypospray out at the ready, and pulled a small, burr-like patch off a plastic strip. "Would you hold out your wrist, Madame?"
Ekaterin did so; the woman pressed the allergy test patch firmly against her skin, then peeled it up again. She continued to hold Ekaterin's wrist while she marked time on her chrono. Her fingers were dry and cold.
Tuomonen dispatched the two guards to the perimeter, namely the hallway and the balcony, and set up a vid recorder on a tripod. He then turned to Vorkosigan, and with a rather odd emphasis, said, "May I remind you, Lord Vorkosigan, that more than one questioner can create unnecessary confusion in a fast-penta interrogation."
Vorkosigan gave him an acknowledging hand wave. "Quite. I know the drill. Go ahead, Captain."
Tuomonen glanced at the medtech, who stared closely at Ekaterin's wrist, then released it. "She's clear," the woman reported.
"Proceed, please."
At the medtech's direction, Ekaterin rolled up her sleeve. The hypospray hissed against her skin with a cold bite.
"Count backwards slowly from ten," Tuomonen told her.
"Ten," Ekaterin said obediently. "Nine . . . eight . . . seven . . ."
Chapter Fourteen
Two . . . one . . ." Ekaterin's voice, almost inaudible at first, grew more firm as she counted down.
Miles thought he could almost mark Ekaterin's heartbeats, as the drug flooded her system. Her tightly clenched hands loosened in her lap. Tension in her face, neck, shoulders, and body melted away like snow in the sun. Her eyes widened and brightened, her pale cheeks flushed with soft color; her lips parted and curved, and she looked up at Miles, beyond Tuomonen, with an astonished sunny smile.
"Oh," she said, in a surprised voice. "It doesn't hurt."
"No, fast-penta doesn't hurt," said Tuomonen, in a level, reassuring tone.
That isn't what she means, Tuomonen. If a person lived in hurt like a mermaid in water, till hurt became as invisible as breath, its sudden removal—however artificial—must come as a stunning event. Miles breathed covert relief that Ekaterin apparently wasn't going to be a giggler or a drooler, nor was she one of the occasional unfortunates in whom the drug released a torrent of verbal obscenities, or an almost equally embarrassing torrent of tears.
No. The kicker here is going to be when we take it away again. The realization chilled him. But my God, isn't she beautiful when she is not in pain? Her open, smiling warmth looked strangely familiar to him, and he tried to remember just when he'd seen that sweet air about her before. Not today, not yesterday . . .
It was in your dream.
Oh.
He sat back and rested his chin in his hand, fingers across his mouth, as Tuomonen started down the list of standard