Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [157]
"Barrayaran threats." Foscol lifted her chin. "Do you think, after all this, we can't stand up to you?"
"I'm sure you can, but for what reason? There aren't too many prizes left in this mess. The biggest one is gone; you can't shut off Barrayar. You can't keep your secret or shield anyone you left behind on Komarr. About the only thing you can do now is kill more innocent people. Great goals can call for great sacrifices, yes, but your possible rewards are steadily shrinking." Yes, that was it; don't raise the pressure, lower the wall.
"We did not," husked Cappell, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand, "go through all this just to deliver the weapon of the century straight into Barrayaran hands."
"It's already there. As a weapon, it appears to have some fundamental defects, so far. But Riva says there's evidence you got more power out of the wormhole than you put into it. This suggests possible future peaceful, economic uses, when the phenomena are better understood."
"Really?" said Soudha, sitting up. "How did she figure? What are her numbers?"
"Soudha!" said Foscol reprovingly. Madame Radovas winced, and Soudha subsided, albeit reluctantly, staring at Miles through narrowed eyes.
"On the other hand," Miles continued, "until further research assures us that collapsing a wormhole is indeed quite impossible, none of you are going anywhere, and especially not to any other planetary government. It's one of those ugly military decisions, y'know? And I'm afraid it's mine." The Vor ladies are not expendable, he'd told Vorgier. Was he lying then, or now? Well, if he couldn't figure it out, maybe the Komarrans wouldn't either.
"You are all headed, inexorably, for a Barrayaran prison," he went on. "The devil's bargain part about being Vor, which a lot of people including some Vor overlook, is that our lives are made for sacrifice. There is no threat, no torture, no slow murder you can apply to two Barrayaran women that will change your outcome."
Was this the right tack? Above the vid-plate their listening images were undersized, a little ghostly, hard to read. Miles wished he were having this conversation face-to-face. Half the subliminal clues, of body language, of the subtle nuances of expression and voice, were washed out in transmission and unavailable to his instincts. But handing himself over to them in person to augment their hostage collection could only have served to stiffen their wavering resolve. The memory of a woman's hand, slipping through his fingers into a screaming fog, flickered through his mind; his fists clenched helplessly in his lap. Never again, you said. Not expendable, you said. He watched the Komarrans' faces intently for all flickers of expression he could get, reflections of truth, lies, belief, suspicion, trust.
"There are advantages to prisons," he went on persuasively. "Some of them are comfortably furnished, and unlike graves, sometimes, eventually, you can get out of them again. Now, I am willing, in exchange for your peaceful surrender and cooperation, to personally guarantee your lives. Not, note, your freedom—that will have to wait. But time passes, old crises are succeeded by new ones, people change their minds. Live ones do, anyway. There are always those amnesties, in celebration of this or that public event—the birth of an Imperial heir, for instance. I doubt any of you will be forced to spend as much as a full decade in prison."
"Some offer," said Foscol bitterly.
Miles let his brows rise. "It's an honest