Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [17]
"Our Imperial charge doesn't come with a manual, you see. It was once proposed the Auditors create one for themselves, but they—wisely, I think—concluded it would do more harm than good. Instead, we just have our archives of Imperial reports; precedents, without rules. Lately, several of us more recent appointees have been trying to read a few old reports each week, and then meet for dinner to discuss the cases and analyze how they were handled. Fascinating. And delicious. Vorkosigan has the most extraordinary cook."
"But this is his first assignment, isn't it? And . . . he was designated just like that, on the Emperor's whim."
"He had a temporary appointment as a Ninth Auditor first. A very difficult assignment, inside ImpSec itself. Not my kind of thing at all."
She was not totally oblivious to the news. "Oh, dear. Did he have anything to do with why ImpSec changed chiefs twice last winter?"
"I so much prefer engineering investigations," her uncle observed mildly.
Their vat-chicken salad sandwiches arrived, while Ekaterin absorbed this deflection. What kind of reassurance was she seeking, after all? Vorkosigan disturbed her, she had to admit, with his cool smile and warm eyes, and she couldn't say why. He did tend to the sardonic. Surely she was not subconsciously prejudiced against mutants, when Nikolai himself . . . In the Time of Isolation, if such a one as Vorkosigan had been born to me, it would have been my maternal duty to the genome to cut his infant throat.
Nikki, happily, would have escaped my cleansing. For a while.
The Time of Isolation is over forever. Thank God.
"I gather you like Vorkosigan," she began once again to angle for the kind of information she sought.
"So does your aunt. The Professora and I had him to dinner a few times, last winter, which is where Vorkosigan came up with the notion of the discussion meetings, come to think of it. I know he's rather quiet at first—cautious, I think—but he can be very witty, once you get him going."
"Does he amuse you?" Amusing had certainly not been her first impression.
He swallowed another bite of sandwich, and glanced up again at the white irregular blur in the clouds now marking the position of the soletta. "I taught engineering for thirty years. It had its drudgeries. But each year, I had the pleasure of finding in my classes a few of the best and brightest, who made it all worthwhile." He sipped spiced tea and spoke more slowly. "But much less often—every five or ten years at most—a true genius would turn up among my students, and the pleasure became a privilege, to be treasured for life."
"You think he's a genius?" she said, raising her eyebrows. The high Vor twit?
"I don't know him quite well enough, yet. But I suspect so, a part of the time."
"Can you be a genius part of the time?"
"All the geniuses I ever met were so just part of the time. To qualify, you only have to be great once, you know. Once when it matters. Ah, dessert. My, this is splendid!" He applied himself happily to a large chocolate confection with whipped cream and more pecans.
She wanted personal data, but she kept getting career synopses. She would have to take a more embarrassingly direct path. While arranging her first spoonful of her spiced apple tart and ice cream, she finally worked up her nerve to ask, "Is he married?"
"No."
"That surprises me." Or did it? "He's high Vor, heavens, the highest—he'll be a District Count someday, won't he? He's wealthy, or so I would assume, he has an important position . . ." She trailed off. What did she want to say? What's wrong with him that he hasn't acquired his own lady by now? What kind of genetic damage made him like that, and was it from his mother or his father?