Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [14]
Hadn't young Nikolai been gestated in a uterine replicator? Good God, Vorsoisson surely hadn't insisted his wife—and child—go through the dangers of old-fashioned body-gestation, had he? Only a few of the most conservative Old Vor families still held out for the old ways, a custom upon which Miles's own mother had vented the most violently acerbic criticism he'd ever heard from her lips. And she should know.
So what the hell is going on here? He sat back, mouth tight. If, as the files suggested, Nikolai was known or suspected to carry Vorzohn's Dystrophy, one or both of his parents must also. How long had they known?
He suddenly realized what he should have noticed before, in the initial illusion of smug marital bliss which Vorsoisson managed to project. That was always the hardest part, seeing the absent pieces. About three more children were missing, that was what. Some little sisters for Nikolai, please, folks? But no. So they've known at least since shortly after their son was born. What a personal nightmare. But is he the carrier, or is she? He hoped it wasn't Madame Vorsoisson; horrible to think of that serene beauty crumbling under the onslaught of such internal disruption . . . .
I don't want to know all this.
His idle curiosity was justly punished. This idiot snooping was surely not proper behavior for an Imperial Auditor, however much it had been inculcated in an ImpSec covert ops agent. Former agent. Where was all that shiny new Auditor's probity now? He might as well have been sniffing in her underwear drawer. I can't leave you alone for a damn minute, can I, boy?
He'd chafed for years under military regulations, till he'd come to a job with no written regs at all. His sense of having died and gone to heaven had lasted about five minutes. An Imperial Auditor was the Emperor's Voice, his eyes and ears and sometimes hands, a lovely job description till you stopped to wonder just what the hell that poetic metaphor was supposed to mean.
So was it a useful test to ask himself, Can I imagine Gregor doing this or that thing? Gregor's apparent Imperial sternness hid an almost painful personal shyness. The mind boggled. All right, should the question instead be, Could I imagine Gregor in his office as Emperor doing this? Just what acts, wrong for a private individual, were yet lawful for an Imperial Auditor carrying out his duties? Lots, according to the precedents he'd been reading. So was the real rule, "Ad lib till you make a mistake, and then we'll destroy you"? Miles wasn't sure he liked that one at all.
And even in his ImpSec days, slicing through someone's private files had been a treatment reserved for enemies, or at least suspects. Well, and prospective recruits. And neutrals in whose territory you expected to be operating. And . . . and . . . he snorted self-derision. Gregor at least had better manners than ImpSec.
Thoroughly embarrassed, he closed the files, erased all tracks of his entry, and called up the next autopsy report. He studied what telltales he could glean from the bodily fragmentation. Death had a temperature, and it was damned cold. He paused to turn up the workroom's thermostat a few degrees before continuing.
Chapter Three
Ekaterin hadn't realized how much a visit from an Imperial Auditor would fluster the staff of Nikolai's school. But the Professor, a long-time educator himself, quickly made them understand this wasn't an official inspection, and produced all the right phrases to put them at their ease. Still, she and Uncle Vorthys didn't linger as long as Tien had suggested to her.
To burn a bit more time, she took him on a short tour of Serifosa Dome's best spots: the prettiest gardens, the highest observation platforms, looking out across the sere Komarran landscape beyond the sealed urban sprawl. Serifosa was the capital