Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [143]
He applied the hypospray over the blue vein inside her proffered elbow; it hissed briefly. He gave her an odd little half-bow, and stepped back, and waited. Her loose limbs tightened; she buried her face in her hands.
After about a minute, she looked up again, blinking. "What did I just say?" she asked Vorthys.
"Elastic recoil," he repeated, watching her intently. "What does it mean?"
She was silent a moment, staring at her feet. "It means . . . I compromised myself for nothing." Her lips thinned bitterly. "Soudha's device doesn't work. Or at any rate, it doesn't work to collapse a wormhole." She sat up, and shook herself out, stretching, the sense of her body doubtless coming back to her as the last of the antagonist chased through her system. "I thought that stuff would make me sick."
"Reactions vary wildly from subject to subject," said Miles. Indeed, he'd never seen one quite like that before. "A woman we interrogated the other day said she found it very restful."
"It had the strangest effect on my internal visualizations." She stared at the hypospray with speculative respect. "I may try it on purpose someday."
I want to be there if you do. Miles had a sudden exciting vision of using the drug to augment his own insights—instant brains!—then remembered to his extreme disappointment that fast-penta didn't work like that on him.
Riva glanced at Miles. "If I ever get out of a Barrayaran prison. Am I under arrest now?"
Miles chewed his lip. "What for?"
"Isn't violating loyalty and security oaths treason?"
"You haven't violated any security oath. Yet. As for the other . . . when two Imperial Auditors say they didn't see something, it can become remarkably invisible."
Vorthys smiled suddenly.
"I thought you were sworn to tell the truth, Lord Auditor."
"Only to Gregor. What we tell the rest of the universe is negotiable. We just don't advertise the fact."
"That, alas, is true." Vorthys sighed.
"How will you explain the missing drug doses to ImpSec?"
"One, I am an Imperial Auditor, I don't have to explain anything to anyone. Least of all ImpSec. Two, we used it experimentally to enhance scientific insight. Which I gather is the truth, so I return to Go and collect my tokens."
Her lips twisted up in a genuine, if wryly baffled, smile. "I see. I think."
"In short, this never happened, you are not under arrest, and we have work to do. For my curiosity, though, before I call our junior colleagues back in—can you give me a quick synopsis of your chain of reasoning? In nonmathematical terms, please."
"It's only in nonmathematical terms so far. If I can't run some real numbers in under this—well, I'll just have to dismiss it as an interesting hallucination."
"You were convinced enough to dry up on us."
"I was stunned. Not so much convinced as breathless."
"With hope?"
"With . . . I don't quite know." She shook her head. "I may yet be proved wrong, and it wouldn't be the first time. But you are familiar, I assume, with examples of positive feedback loops in resonant phenomena—sound, for example?"
"Feedback squeals, yes."
"Or a pure note that breaks a wineglass. And in structures—you know why soldiers must break step when marching across a bridge? So that the resonance of their steps doesn't collapse the structure?"
Miles grinned. "I actually saw that happen once. It involved a squad of Imperial Junior Scouts, a flag ceremony, a wooden footbridge, and my cousin Ivan. Dumped twenty really obnoxious teenage boys into a creek." He added aside to the Professor, "They wouldn't let me march with my squad that evening because, they said, my height would mess up their symmetry. So I was watching from the back benches. It was glorious. I think I was about thirteen, but I'll treasure the memory forever."
"Did you see it coming, or did it take you by surprise?" asked