Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [149]
Ekaterin smiled grimly. "I'd love to."
Silence fell for a time, while Ekaterin stared at the opposite wall and her aunt leaned back with her eyes closed. Ekaterin watched her in growing worry. She glanced at the door, and said at last, "Do you suppose you could pretend to be much sicker than you really are?"
"Oh," said Aunt Vorthys, not opening her eyes, "that would not be at all difficult."
By which Ekaterin deduced that she was already pretending to be much less sick than she really was. The jump-nausea seemed to have hit her awfully hard, this time. Was that gray-faced fatigue really all due to travel-sickness? Stunner fire could be unexpectedly lethal for a weak heart—was there a reason besides bewilderment that her aunt had not tried to struggle or cry out under Arozzi's threats?
"So . . . how is your heart, these days?" Ekaterin asked diffidently.
Aunt Vorthys's eyes popped open. After a moment, she shrugged. "So-so, dear. I'm on the waiting list for a new one."
"I thought new organs were easy to grow, now."
"Yes, but surgical transplant teams are rather less so. My case isn't that urgent. After the problems a friend of mine had, I decided I'd rather wait for one of the more proven groups to have a slot available."
"I understand." Ekaterin hesitated. "I've been thinking. We can't do anything locked in here. If I can get anyone to come to the door, I thought we might try to feign you were dangerously sick, and get them to let us out. After that—who knows? It can't be worse than this. All you'd have to do is go limp and moan convincingly."
"I'm willing," said Aunt Vorthys.
"All right."
Ekaterin fell to pounding on the door as loudly as she could, and calling the Komarrans urgently by name. After about ten minutes of this, the lock clicked, the door slid back, and Madame Radovas peeked in from a slight distance. Arozzi stood behind her with his stunner in his hand.
"What?" she demanded.
"My aunt is ill," said Ekaterin. "She can't stop shivering, and her skin is getting clammy. I think she may be going into shock from the jump-sickness and her bad heart and all this stress. She has to have a warm place to lie down, and a hot drink, at least. Maybe a doctor."
"We can't get you a doctor right now." Madame Radovas peered worriedly past Ekaterin at the limp Professora. "We could arrange the other, I guess."
"Some of us wouldn't mind having the lav back," Arozzi muttered. "It's not so good, all of us having to parade up and down the corridor to the nearest public one."
"There's no other safe place to lock them up," said Madame Radovas to him.
"So, put them out in the middle of the room and keep an eye on them. Stick them back in here later. One's sick, the other has to take care of her, what can they do? It's no good if the old lady dies on us."
"I'll see what I can do," said Madame Radovas to Ekaterin, and closed the door again.
In a little while she came back, to escort the two Barrayaran women to a cot and a folding chair set up at the edge of the loading bay, as far as possible from any emergency alarm. Ekaterin and Madame Radovas supported the stumbling Professora to the cot, and helped her lie down, and covered her up. Leaving Arozzi to guard them, Madame Radovas went off and returned with a steaming mug of tea and set it down; Arozzi then turned the stunner over to her and returned to his work. Madame Radovas drew up another folding chair and sat down a few prudent meters away from her captives. Ekaterin supported her aunt's shoulders while she drank the tea, blinked gratefully, and sank back with a moan. Ekaterin made play of feeling the Professora's forehead, and rubbing her chill hands, and looking very concerned. She stroked the tousled gray hair, and stared covertly around the loading bay she'd merely glimpsed before.
The device still sat in its float cradle, but more power lines snaked across the floor to it now; Soudha was overseeing the attachment of one such cable to the awkward array of converters at the base of the horn. A man she did not recognize busied himself