Rish did find a compact launderizer concealed in the kitchenette, and applied herself to laundering all the dirty clothes they’d hastily packed, perhaps in the hope that their next escape, whatever it turned out to be, could be more orderly. Tej discovered the captain’s sybaritic bathroom, and decided to treat her chill weariness with a long soak.
The scent of him still lingered in the moist air, strangely pleasant and complex, as if his immune system was calling out to hers: let’s get together and make wonderful new antibodies. She smiled at the silly image, lay back in the spacious tub of hot water, and frankly enjoyed his dash of inadvertently displaced flirtation in the old evolutionary dance, all the better because he couldn’t know how he was observed. It was, she realized after a bit, the first spontaneously sensual moment she’d had since the disastrous fall of her House, all those harried months back. The realization, and the memories it trailed, were enough to destroy the moment again, but it had been nice while it lasted.
She stirred the water with her toes. Since they’d gone to ground on Komarr, fear and grief had slowly been replaced with the less stomach-churning memory of them, till last night had kicked it all up again. It was not in the least logical that she should feel-relatively-safe in this new refuge. Who was this Ivan Vorpatril, and how had he discovered her, and why? She floated, her hair waving around her head like a sea-net, and breathed his fading scent again, as if it could supply some hint.
The water didn’t cool-the tub had a heater-but at length her hands and feet grew rather wrinkly, and she surged up out of the cradling bath and dried off. Dressed again, she found that Rish had discovered that the flat’s comconsole was not code-locked, and was searching for any Solstice Dome Security reports on their intruders.
“Find anything?’
Rish shrugged her slim shoulders. “Not much. Just a time stamp, and our address. ‘In response to a witness report of a possible break-in, officers arrived and apprehended two men in possession of burglary equipment. Suspects are being held pending investigation.’ It doesn’t sound like anyone’s stepped up to outbid the arrest order yet.”
“I don’t think they do it that way here,” said Tej, doubtfully.
Rish scanned down the file. “‘Officers called to domestic altercation…vandalism reported at bubble-car platform…attempted credit chit fraud by a group of minors…’ Oh, here’s one. ‘Beating interrupted of man spotted by bar patrons stealing public emergency breath masks. Suspect arrested, patrons thanked.’ I suppose I can see why no one would have to pay for that arrest order…The Solstice patrollers were busy enough last night, but really, the crime here seems very dull.”
“I think it’s restful. Anyway, bath’s yours, if you want it. It’s really nice, compared to that dreadful sonic shower we’ve been living with lately. I can recommend it.”
“I believe I will,” Rish allowed. She stood and stretched, looking around. “Posh place. You have to wonder how he can afford it on a Barrayaran military officer’s salary. I never had the impression those fellows were overpaid. And their command doesn’t let them hustle on the side.” She sniffed at this waste of human resources.
“I don’t think it’s his real home, that’s back on Barrayar. He’s just here for some work thing.” Recently arrived, judging from the contents of his kitchenette, or maybe he didn’t cook? Tej nodded at the comconsole. “I wonder how much we could find out just by looking him up?”
Rish’s golden eyebrows rose. “Surely this benighted Imperium doesn’t allow its military secrets out on the commercial planetary net of its conquest.”
Throughout the Jackson’s Whole system, information was tightly controlled, for the money, power, and security it could bestow, and for that narrow edge that could mean the difference between a deal succeeding or failing. At the other extreme, Tej’s favorite tutors from her youth, a trio of Betans her parents had imported at great trouble and expense, had described a planetary information network on their homeworld that seemed open to the point of madness-suicide, perhaps. Yet somehow Beta Colony remained, famously, one of the most scientifically advanced and innovative planets in the Nexus, which was why the tutors had been imported. Of all the instructors she’d been plagued with, the Betans were the only ones whose departure she’d mourned when, homesick, they had declined to renew their contracts for another year. Most other planetary or system polities fell somewhere between the two extremes of attempted information control.
“I think we may be thinking too hard,” said Tej. “We don’t need to start with his secrets, just with what everybody else knows.” Everybody but us.
Rish pursed her lips, nodded, and stepped aside. “Have at it. Shout out if you find anything useful.”
Tej took her seat. Stuck hiding in their flat, Rish had been allowed far more time to learn the arcana of making this net disgorge data than Tej, but how common could that odd name be? She leaned over and entered it.
A Komarran database was the first to pop up above the vid plate, bearing the promising title of The Vor of Barrayar. All in alphabetical order, starting with V and ending with V. Oh. There were, it seemed, hundreds and hundreds of Vorpatrils scattered across the three planets of the Barrayaran Empire. She tried reordering the names by significance.
At the top of that list was one Count Falco Vorpatril. The Counts of Barrayar were the chiefs of their clans, each commanding a major territorial District on the north continent of their planet. In their way, Tej supposed they were the equivalents of a Jacksonian Great House barons, except that they came by their positions by mere inheritance, instead of having to work and scheme for them. It seemed a poor system to her, one that did nothing to assure that only the strongest and smartest rose to the top. Or the most treacherous, she was uncomfortably reminded. Count Falco, a bluff, hearty looking, white-haired man, had no son named Ivan. Pass on.
Several high-ranking military officers followed, and some Imperial and provincial government men with assorted opaque and archaic-sounding titles. There was an Admiral Eugin Vorpatril, but he had no son named Ivan either.
Belatedly, she remembered the little paper cards from Vorpatril’s pocket. There were several Ivan Vorpatrils, including a school administrator on Sergyar and a wine merchant on the South Continent, but only one Ivan Xav.
His entry was short, half a screen, but it did have a confirming vid scan. It seemed to be of him as much a younger officer, though, suggesting that he had improved with age. Tej wasn’t sure how such a stiff, formal portrait could still look feckless. His birth date put him at 34 standard-years old, now. The entry listed his father, Lord Padma Xav Vorpatril, as deceased, and his mother, Lady Alys Vorpatril, as still living.
Her eye paused, arrested. His father’s death date was the same as his birth date. That’s odd. So, her Ivan Xav was half an orphan, and had been so for a long time. That seemed…painless. You could not miss, fiercely and daily, a man you’d never met.
She was reminded of his horrible vase. Who had he sent it to, again? She bit her lip, bent, and spelled the awkward name out very carefully. All those Vor names tended to come out as a blurred Voralphabet in her mind, unless she paid strict attention.
Double oh.
A very uncommon name, Vorkosigan; barely a dozen or so living adult males. But she should have recognized it nonetheless. The clan Count of that surname appeared, when she reordered the entire database by significance, second on the whole list, right after Emperor Gregor Vorbarra. Count, Admiral, Regent, Prime Minister, Viceroy…Aral Vorkosigan’s entry scrolled on for what seemed several meters of closely written text. Unofficial titles included such nicknames as Butcher of Komarr, or Gregor’s Wolf. He did have a son named Miles, of just about her Ivan Xav’s age. VorMiles also had an entry much longer than Captain Vorpatril’s, if much shorter than his sire’s.