Miles, Mutants and Microbes - Lois McMaster Bujold [245]
Miles said thoughtfully, "You weren't shooting at me at all yesterday, then, were you. Nor at Portmaster Thorne." Which left . . .
Gupta blinked at him. "Oh! That's where I saw you before. Sorry, no." His brow corrugated. "So what were you doing there, then? You're not one of the passengers. Are you another Stationer squatter like that officious bloody Betan?"
"No. My name is"—he made an instant, almost subliminal decision to drop all the honorifics—"Miles. I was sent out to look after Barrayaran concerns when the quaddies impounded the Komarran fleet."
"Oh." Gupta grew uninterested.
What the devil was keeping that fast-penta? Miles softened his voice. "So what happened to your friends, Guppy?"
That fetched the amphibian's attention again. "Double-crossed. Subjected, injected, infected . . . rejected. We were all taken in. Damned Cetagandan bastard. That wasn't the Deal."
Something inside Miles went on overdrive. Here's the connection, finally. His smile grew charming, sympathetic, and his voice softened further. "Tell me about the Cetagandan bastard, Guppy."
The hovering mob of quaddie listeners had stopped rustling, even breathing more quietly. Roic had drawn back to a shadowed spot opposite Miles. Gupta glanced around at the Graf Stationers, and at Miles and himself, the only legged persons now in view in the center of the circle. "What's the use?" The tone was not a wail of despair, but a bitter query.
"I am Barrayaran. I have a special stake in Cetagandan bastards. The Cetagandan ghem-lords left five million of my grandfather's generation dead behind them, when they finally gave up and pulled out of Barrayar. I still have his bag of ghem-scalps. For certain kinds of Cetagandans, I might know a use or two you'd find interesting."
The prisoner's wandering gaze snapped to his face and locked there. For the first time, he'd won Gupta's total attention. For the first time, he'd hinted he might have something that Guppy really wanted. Wanted? Burned for, lusted for, desired with mad obsessive hunger. His glassy eyes were ravenous for . . . maybe revenge, maybe justice—in any case, blood. But the frog prince clearly lacked personal expertise in retribution. The quaddies didn't deal in blood. Barrayarans . . . had a more sanguinary reputation. Which, for the first time this mission, might actually prove some use.
Gupta took a long breath. "I don't know what kind this one was. Is. He was like nothing I'd ever met before. Cetagandan bastard. He melted us."
"Tell me," Miles breathed, "everything. Why you?"
"He came to us . . . through our usual cargo agents. We thought it would be all right. We had a ship. Gras-Grace and Firka and Hewlet and me had this ship. Hewlet was our pilot, but Gras-Grace was the brains. Me, I had a knack for fixing things. Firka kept the books, and fixed regs, and passports, and nosy officials. Gras-Grace and her three husbands, we called us. We were a collection of rejects, but maybe we added up to one real spouse for her, I don't know. One for all and all for one, because it was damn sure that a crew of refugee Jacksonians, without a House or a Baron, wasn't going to get a break from anyone else in the Nexus."
Gupta was getting wound up in his story. Miles, listening with utmost care, prayed Venn would have the sense not to interrupt. Ten people hovered around them in this chamber, yet he and Gupta, mutually hypnotized by the increasing intensity of his confession, might almost be floating in a bubble of time and space altogether removed from this universe. "So where did you pick up this Cetagandan and his cargo, anyway?"
Gupta glanced up, startled. "You know