Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [295]
"Most likely." Slowly, Kareen sat up. "Ekaterin . . . you do aesthetics."
Ekaterin made a throwaway gesture. "In a sense, I guess."
"Yes, you do. Your hair is always right. Your clothes always look better than anyone else's, and I don't think it's that you're spending more money on them."
Ekaterin shook her head in rueful agreement.
"You have what Lady Alys calls unerring taste, I think," Kareen continued, with rising energy. "I mean, look at this garden. Mark, Mark does money, and deals. Miles does strategy and tactics, and inveigling people into doing what he wants." Well, maybe not always; Ekaterin's lips tightened at the mention of his name. Kareen hurried on. "I still haven't figured out what I do. You—you do beauty. I really envy that."
Ekaterin looked touched. "Thank you, Kareen. But it really isn't anything that—"
Kareen waved away the self-deprecation. "No, listen, this is important. Do you think you could make a pretty butter bug? Or rather, make butter bugs pretty?"
"I'm no geneticist—"
"I don't mean that part. I mean, could you design alterations to the bugs so's they don't make people want to lose their lunch when they see one. For Enrique to apply."
Ekaterin sat back. Her brows sank down again, and an absorbed look grew in her eyes. "Well . . . it's obviously possible to change the bugs' colors and add surface designs. That has to be fairly trivial, judging from the speed with which Enrique produced the . . . um . . . Vorkosigan bugs. You'd have to stay away from fundamental structural modifications in the gut and mandibles and so on, but the wings and wing carapaces are already nonfunctional. Presumably they could be altered at will."
"Yes? Go on."
"Colors—you'd want to look for colors found in nature, for biological appeal. Birds, beasts, flowers . . . fire . . ."
"Can you think of something?"
"I can think of a dozen ideas, offhand." Her mouth curved up. "It seems too easy. Almost any change would be an improvement."
"Not just any change. Something glorious."
"A glorious butter bug." Her lips parted in faint delight, and her eyes glinted with genuine cheer for the first time this visit. "Now, that's a challenge."
"Oh, would you, could you? Will you? Please? I'm a shareholder, I have as much authority to hire you as Mark or Enrique. Qualitatively, anyway."
"Heavens, Kareen, you don't have to pay me—"
"Never," said Kareen with passion, "ever suggest they don't have to pay you. What they pay for, they'll value. What they get for free, they'll take for granted, and then demand as a right. Hold them up for all the market will bear." She hesitated, then added anxiously, "You will take shares, though, won't you? Ma Kosti did, for the product development consultation she did for us."
"I must say, Ma Kosti made the bug butter ice cream work," Martya admitted. "And that bread spread wasn't bad either. It was all the garlic, I think. As long as you didn't think about where the stuff came from."
"So what, have you ever thought about where regular butter and ice cream come from? And meat, and liver sausage, and—"
"I can about guarantee you the beef filet the other night came from a nice, clean vat. Tante Cordelia wouldn't have it any other way at Vorkosigan House."
Kareen gestured this aside, irritably. "How long do you think it would take you, Ekaterin?" she asked.
"I don't know—a day or two, I suppose, for preliminary designs. But surely we'd have to meet with Enrique and Mark."
"I can't go to Vorkosigan House." Kareen slumped. She straightened again. "Could we meet here?"
Ekaterin glanced at Martya, and back to Kareen. "I can't be