Miles, Mystery & Mayhem - Lois McMaster Bujold [88]
"You did your best, dear," said the haut Nadina kindly. But she added more sternly, "However, you should not have attempted to handle it all alone."
"It was my charge."
"A little less emphasis on the my, and a little more emphasis on the charge, next time."
Miles tried not to squirm at the general applicability of this gentle correction.
A glum silence reigned, for a time.
"We may need to consider altering the genome to make the haut-lords more controllable," said the Rho Cetan consort.
"For renewed expansion, we need the opposite," objected the dark consort. "More aggression."
"The ghem-experiment, filtering favorable genetic combinations upward from the general population, surely suffices for that," said the haut Pel.
"Our Lady, in her wisdom, aimed at less uniformity, not more," conceded Rian.
"I believe we have long made a mistake in leaving the haut-males so entirely to their own devices," said the Rho Cetan consort stubbornly.
Said the dark one, "But how else should we select among them, if there is no free competition to sort them out?"
Rian held up a restraining hand. "The time for this larger debate . . . must be soon. But not now. I myself have been convinced by these events that further refinement must come before further expansion. But that," she sighed, "is a new Empress's task. Now we must decide what state of affairs she will inherit. How many favor the recall of the gene banks?"
The ayes had it. Several were slow in coming, but in some occult way a unanimous vote was achieved through nothing more than an exchange of unreadable glances. Miles breathed relief.
Rian's shoulders slumped wearily. "Then I so order you all. Return them to the Star Crèche."
"As what?" asked the haut Pel in a practical tone.
Rian stared into the air a moment, and replied, "As collections of human genomic materials from your various satrapies, requested by the Lady before her death, and received by us in trust for the Star Crèche's experimental files."
"That will do nicely on this end. The haut Pel nodded. "And on the other end?"
"Tell your governors . . . we discovered a serious error in the copy, which must be corrected before the genome can be released to them."
"Very good."
The meeting broke up, the women activating their float-chairs, though not yet their private bubbles, and leaving in twos and threes in a murmur of intense discussion. Rian and the haut Pel waited until the room emptied, and Miles perforce waited with them.
"Do you still want me to try to retrieve the Key for you?" Miles asked Rian. "Barrayar remains vulnerable until we nail the satrap governor with solid proof, data a clever man can't diddle. And I especially don't like the toehold he seems to have in your own security."
"I don't know," said Rian. "The return of the gene banks cannot take less than a day. I'll . . . send someone for you, as we did tonight."
"We'll be down to two days left, then. Not much margin. I'd rather go sooner than later."
"It cannot be helped." She touched her hair, a nervous gesture despite its grace.
Watching her, he searched his heart. The impact of his first mad crush was surely fading, in this drought of response, to be replaced by . . . what? If she had slaked his thirst with the least little drop of affection, he would be hers body and soul right now. In a way he was glad she wasn't faking anything, depressing as it was to be treated like a ba servitor, his loyalty and obedience assumed. Maybe his proposed disguise as a ba had been suggested by his subconscious for more than practical reasons. Was his back-brain trying to tell him something?
"The haut Pel will return you to your point of origin," Rian said.
He bowed. "In my experience, milady, we can never get back to exactly