Kareen arrived back with an armload of ambrosia cups in time to hear this; she bounced and squealed delight. Mark glanced aside at Ivan, who merely shook his head and reached for another ambrosia. Of all the party, his was the one voice that didn't break into some murmur of surprise. He looked glum, yes. Surprised, no.
Miles, after a brief digestive pause, said, "I always did think one of your girls would catch a Count."
"Yes," said the Commodore, "but . . ."
"I'm quite certain Dono will know how to make her happy," Ekaterin offered.
"Um."
"She wants a big wedding," said Madame Koudelka.
"So does Delia," said the Commodore. "I left them arm wrestling over who gets the earlier date. And the first shot at my poor budget." He stared around at the Residence grounds, and all the increasingly happy revelers. As it was still early in the evening, they were almost all still vertical. "This is giving them both grandiose ideas."
In a rapt voice, Miles said, "Ooh. I must talk to Duv."
Commodore Koudelka edged closer to Mark, and lowered his voice. "Mark, I, ah . . . feel I owe you an apology. Didn't mean to be so stiff-necked about it all."
"That's all right, sir," said Mark, surprised and touched.
The Commodore added, "So, you're going back to Beta in the fall—good. No need to be in a rush to settle things at your age, after all."
"That's what we thought, sir." Mark hesitated. "I know I'm not very good at family yet. But I mean to learn how."
The Commodore gave him a little nod, and a crooked smile. "You're doing fine, son. Just keep on."
Kareen's hand squeezed his. Mark cleared his suddenly inexplicably tight throat, and considered the novel thought that not only could you have a family, you might even have more than one. A wealth of relations . . . "Thank you, sir. I'll try."
Olivia and Dono themselves rounded the corner of the Residence then, arm in arm, Olivia in her favorite primrose yellow, Dono soberly splendid in his Vorrutyer House blue and gray. The dark-haired Dono was actually a little shorter than his intended bride, Mark noticed for the first time. All the Koudelka girls ran to tall. But the force of Dono's personality was such that one hardly noticed the height differential.
They arrived at the group, explaining that they'd been told by five separate people to go try the maple ambrosia before it was gone. They lingered, while Kareen collected another armload of samples, to accept congratulations from all assembled. Even Ivan rose to this social duty.
When Kareen returned, Olivia told her, "I was just talking to Tatya Vorbretten. She was so happy—she and Ren? have started their little boy! The blastocyst just got transferred to the uterine replicator this morning. All healthy so far."
Kareen, her mother, Olivia, and Dono all put their heads together, and that end of the conversation became appallingly obstetrical for a short time. Ivan backed away.
"It's getting worse and worse," he confided to Mark in a hollow voice. "I used to only lose old girlfriends to matrimony one at a time. Now they're going in pairs ."
Mark shrugged. "Can't help you, old fellow. But if you want my advice—"
"You're giving me advice on how to run my love life?" Ivan interjected indignantly.
"You get what you give. Even I figured that one out, eventually." Mark grinned up at him.
Ivan growled, and made to slope off, but then paused to stare, startled, as Count Dono hailed his cousin Byerly Vorrutyer, just passing by on the walk leading to the Residence. "What's he doing here?" Ivan muttered.
Dono and Olivia excused themselves and left, presumably to share their announcement with this new quarry. Ivan, after a short silence, handed his empty cup to Kareen and trailed after them.
The Commodore, scraping the last of his ambrosia out of his cup with the little spoon provided, stared glumly after Olivia clinging joyfully to her new fianc?. "Countess Olivia Vorrutyer," he muttered under his breath, obviously trying to get both his mouth and his mind around the novel concept. "My son-in-law, the Count . . . dammit, the fellow's almost old enough to be Olivia's father himself."
"Mother, surely," murmured Mark.
The Commodore gave him an acerbic look. "You understand," he added after a moment, "just on principles of propinquity, I always figured my girls would go for the bright young officers. I expected I'd end up owning the general staff, in my old age. Though there is Duv, I suppose, for consolation. Not young either, but bright enough to be downright scary. Well, maybe Martya will find us a future general."
At the bug butter table, Martya in a mint-green gown had stopped by to check on the success of the operation, but stayed to help dish out ambrosia. She and Enrique bent together to lift another tub, and the Escobaran laughed heartily at something she said. When Mark and Kareen returned to Beta Colony, they had agreed Martya would take over as business manager, going down to the District to oversee the startup of the operations. Mark suspected she would end up with a controlling share of the company, eventually. No matter. This was only his first essay in entrepreneurship. I can make more . Enrique would bury himself in his development laboratory. He and Martya would both, no doubt, learn a lot, working together. Propinquity . . .
Mark tested the idea on the tip of his tongue, And this is my brother-in-law, Dr. Enrique Borgos . . . Mark moved so as to place the Commodore's back to the table, where Enrique was regarding Martya with open admiration and spilling a lot of ambrosia on his fingers. Gawky young intellectual types were noted for aging well, Kareen had told him. So if one Koudelka had chosen the military, and another the political, and another the economic, it would complete the set for one to select the scientific . . . It wasn't just the general staff Kou looked to own in his old age, it was the world. Charitably, Mark decided to keep this observation to himself.
If he was doing well enough by Winterfair, maybe he'd give Kou and Drou a week's all-expenses-paid trip to the Orb, just to encourage the Commodore's heartening trend toward social liberality. That it would also allow them to travel out to Beta Colony and see Kareen would be an irresistible bribe, he rather thought. . . .
* * *
Ivan stood and watched as Dono finished his cordial conversation with his cousin By. Dono and Olivia then entered the Residence through the wide-flung glass doors from which light spilled onto the stone-paved promenade. Byerly collected a glass of wine from a passing servitor's tray, sipped, and went to lean pensively on the balustrade overlooking the descending garden paths.
Ivan joined him. "Hello, Byerly," he said affably. "Why aren't you in jail?"
By looked around, and smiled. "Why, Ivan. I'm turned Imperial Witness, don't you know. My secret testimony has put dear Richars into cold storage. All is forgiven."
"Dono forgave what you tried?"
"It was Richars's idea, not mine. He's always fancied himself a man of action. It didn't take much encouragement at all to lure him past the point of no return."
Ivan smiled tightly, and took Byerly by the arm. "Let's take a little walk."
"Where to?" asked By uneasily.
"Someplace more private."
The first private place they came to down the path, a stone bench in a bush-shrouded nook, was occupied by a couple. As it happened, the young fellow was a Vorish ensign Ivan knew from Ops HQ. It took him about fifteen captainly seconds to evict the pair. Byerly watched with feigned admiration. "Such a man of authority you're turning into these days, Ivan."
"Sit down, By. And cut the horseshit. If you can."