Young Miles - Lois McMaster Bujold [7]
"In the old days the cost of my incompetence would have been paid in other men's lives. This is more efficient, I believe." Miles's voice was flat.
"Well . . ." The old man stared unseeingly out the window. "Well—times change. Barrayar has changed. It underwent a world of change between the time I was ten and the time I was twenty. And another between the time I was twenty and forty. Nothing was the same . . . And another between the time I was forty and eighty. This weak, degenerate generation—even their sins are watered down. The old pirates of my father's day could have eaten them all for breakfast and digested their bones before lunch . . . Do you know, I shall be the first Count Vorkosigan to die in bed in nine generations?" He paused, gaze still fixed, and whispered half to himself, "God, I've grown weary of change. The very thought of enduring another new world dismays me. Dismays me."
"Sir," said Miles gently.
The old man looked up quickly. "Not your fault, boy, not your fault. You were caught in the wheels of change and chance just like the rest of us. It was pure chance, that the assassin chose that particular poison to try and kill your father. He wasn't even aiming for your mother. You've done well despite it. We—we just expected too much of you, that's all. Let no one say you have not done well."
"Thank you, sir."
The silence lengthened unbearably. The room was growing warm. Miles's head ached from lack of sleep, and he felt nauseated from the combination of hunger and medications. He clambered awkwardly to his feet. "If you'll excuse me, sir . . ."
The old man waved a hand in dismissal. "Yes, you must have things to do . . ." He paused again, and looked at Miles quizzically. "What are you going to do now? It seems very strange to me. We have always been Vor, the warriors, even when war changed with the rest of it . . ."
He looked so shrunken, down in his chair. Miles pulled himself together into a semblance of cheerfulness. "Well, you know, there's always the other aristocratic line to fall back on. If I can't be a Service grunt, I'll be a town clown. I plan to be a famous epicure and lover of women. More fun than soldiering any day."
His grandfather fell in with his humor. "Yes, I always envied the breed—go to, boy . . ." He smiled, but Miles felt it was as forced as his own. It was a lie anyway—"drone" was a swear word in the old man's vocabulary. Miles collected Bothari and made his own escape.
* * *
Miles sat hunched in a battered armchair in a small private parlor overlooking the street side of the great old mansion, feet up, eyes closed. It was a seldom used room; there was a good chance of being left alone to brood in peace. He had never come to a more complete halt, a drained blankness numb even to pain. So much passion expended for nothing—a lifetime of nothing stretching endlessly into the future—because of a split second's stupid, angry self-consciousness. . . .
There was a throat-clearing noise behind him, and a diffident voice; "Hi, Miles."
His eyes flicked open, and he felt suddenly a little less like a wounded animal hiding in its hole. "Elena! I gather you came up from Vorkosigan Surleau with Mother last night. Come on in."
She perched near him on the arm of another chair. "Yes, she knows what a treat it is for me to come to the capital. I almost feel like she's my mother, sometimes."
"Tell her that. It would please her."
"Do you really think so?" she asked shyly.
"Absolutely." He shook himself into alertness. Perhaps not a totally empty future . . .
She chewed gently on her lower lip, large eyes drinking in his face. "You look absolutely smashed."
He would not bleed on Elena. He banished his blackness in self-mockery, leaning back expansively and grinning. "Literally. Too true. I'll get over it. You, ah—heard all about it, I suppose."
"Yes. Did, um, it go all right with my lord Count?"
"Oh, sure. I'm the only grandson he's got, after all. Puts me in an excellent position—I can get away with anything."
"Did he ask