Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [38]
"They seem more like toys than jewels, but I have to admit, they're striking."
"Oh, yes, a typical tech toy—high-end this year, everywhere next year, nowhere after that, till the antiquarians' revival. Still . . . it would be fun to make up an Imperial set, Barrayar, Komarr, and Sergyar. I don't know any women with three ears . . . two earrings and a pendant, perhaps, though then you'd have the socio-political problem of how to rank the worlds."
"You could put all three on a necklace."
"True, or . . . I think my mother would definitely like a Sergyar. Or Beta Colony . . . no, might make her homesick. Sergyar, yes, very apropos. And there's Winterfair, and birthdays coming up—let's see, there's Mother, Laisa, Delia, Aunt Alys, Delia's sisters, Drou—maybe I ought to order a dozen sets, and a have a couple to spare."
"Uh," said Ekaterin, contemplating this burst of efficiency, "do all these women know each other?" Were any of them his lovers? Surely he wouldn't mention such in the same breath with his mother and aunt. Or might he be a suitor? But . . . to all of them?
"Oh, sure."
"Do you really think you ought to get them all the same present?"
"No?" he asked doubtfully. "But . . . they all know me . . . ."
In the end, he restrained himself, purchasing only two earring sets, one each of Barrayars and Komarrs, and swapping them out, for the brides of the two mixed marriages. He added a Sergyar on a fine chain for his mother. At the last moment, he bolted back for another Barrayar, for which woman on his lengthy list he did not say. The packets of tiny planets were made up and gift-wrapped.
Feeling a little overwhelmed by the Komarran bazaar, Ekaterin led him off for a look at one of her favorite parks. It bounded the end of the Locks district, and featured one of the largest and most naturally landscaped lakes in Serifosa. Ekaterin mentally planned a stop for coffee and pastry, after they circumnavigated the lake along its walking trails.
They paused at a railing above a modest bluff, where a view across the lake framed some of the higher towers of Serifosa. The crippled soletta array was in full view overhead now, through the park's transparent dome, creating dim sparkles on the lake's wavelets. Cheerful voices echoed distantly across the water, from families playing on an artificially-natural swimming beach.
"It's very pretty," said Ekaterin, "but the maintenance cost is terrific. Urban forestry is a full-time specialty here. Everything's consciously created, the woods, the rocks, the weeds, everything."
"World-in-a-box," murmured Vorkosigan, gazing out over the reflecting sheet. "Some assembly required."
"Some Serifosans think of their park system as a promise for the future, ecology in the bank," she went on, "but others, I suspect, don't know the difference between their little parks and real forests. I sometimes wonder if, by the time the atmosphere is breathable, the Komarrans' great-grandchildren will all be such agoraphobes, they won't even venture out in it."
"A lot of Betans tend to think like that. When I was last there—" His sentence was shattered by a sudden crackling boom; Ekaterin started, till she identified the noise as a load dropped from a mag-crane working on some construction, or reconstruction, back over their shoulders beyond the trees. But Vorkosigan jumped and spun like a cat; the package in his right hand went flying, his left made to push her behind him, and he drew a stunner she hadn't even known he was carrying half out of his trouser pocket before he, too, identified the source of the bang. He inhaled deeply, flushed, and cleared his throat. "Sorry," he said to her wide-eyed look. "I overreacted a trifle there." Though they both surreptitiously examined the dome overhead; it remained placidly intact. "Stunner's a pretty useless weapon anyway, against things that go bump like that." He shoved it back deep into his pocket.
"You dropped your planets," she said, looking around for the white