A glow ahead brought Miles's gaze front and center. A haut-bubble was approaching them along the evergreen-bounded walk. Vorob'yev and Ivan stood aside to let it pass. Instead it stopped in front of Miles.
"Lord Vorkosigan." The woman's voice was melodious even through the filter, but it was not Rian's. "May I speak privately with you?"
"Of course," said Miles, before Vorob'yev could put in an objection. "Where?" Tension shot through him. Was tonight to be his final assault already, upon the new target of Governor Ilsum Kety's ship? Too premature, still too uncertain . . . "And for how long?"
"Not far. We will be about an hour."
Not nearly long enough for a trip to orbit; this was something else, then. "Very well. Gentlemen, will you excuse me?"
Vorob'yev looked about as unhappy as his habitual control would allow. "Lord Vorkosigan …" His hesitation was actually a good sign; Vorreedi and he must have had a long and extraordinary talk. "Do you wish a guard?"
"No."
"A comm link?"
"No."
"You will be careful?" Which was diplomatic for Are you sure you know what the hell you're doing, boy? "Oh, yes, sir."
"What do we do if you're not back in an hour?" said Ivan.
"Wait." He nodded cordially, and followed the bubble down the garden path.
When they turned into a private nook, lit by low colored lanterns and screened by flowering bushes, the bubble rotated, and abruptly blinked out. Miles found himself facing another haut beauty in white, riding in her float-chair like a throne. This woman's hair was honey-blond, intricately woven and tucked up around her shoulders, vaguely reminiscent of a gilt chain-mail neck guard. He would have guessed her age as forty-standard, which meant she was probably twice that.
"The haut Rian Degtiar instructs me to bring you," she stated. She moved her robes from the left side of the chair, uncovering a thickly padded armrest. "We have not much time." Her gaze seemed to measure his height, or shortness. "You can, um . . . perch here, and ride."
"How . . . fascinating." If only she were Rian . . . But this would test certain theories he had about the mechanical capacities of haut-bubbles, oh yes. "Uh . . . identification, milady?" he added almost apologetically. The last person he suspected of experiencing such a ride had ended up with its throat cut, after all.
She nodded, as if expecting this, and turned her hand outward, displaying the ring of the Star Creche.
That was probably about as good as they could do, under the circumstances. Cautiously, he approached, and eased himself aboard, grasping the back of the chair above her head for balance. Each was careful not to actually touch the other. Her long-fingered hand moved over the control panel embedded in the right armrest, and the force-field snapped on again. The pale white light reflected off the flowered bushes, bringing out their color, and cast a glow before them as they began to move down the path.
Their view was quite clear, scarcely impeded by an eggshell-thin, ghostly sphere of mist that marked the boundary of the force-field as seen from this side. Sound too was transmitted with high clarity, much better than the deliberately muffled reverse effect. He could hear voices, and the clink of glassware, from a balcony above. They passed Ambassador Vorob'yev and Ivan again, who stared curiously, uncertain, of course, if this was the same bubble they'd seen before. Miles squelched an absurd impulse to wave at them, going by.
They came not to the lift-tube foyer, as Miles had expected, but to the edge of the rooftop garden. Their silver-haired hostess was standing waiting. She nodded at the bubble, and coded open the force-screen, letting the bubble pass through onto a small private landing pad. The reflected glow off the pavement darkened, as the haut-woman blacked out her bubble. Miles stared upward at the shimmering night sky, looking for the lightflyer or aircar.
Instead, the bubble moved smoothly to the edge of the building and dropped straight over the side.
Miles clutched the seat-back convulsively, trying not to scream, fling his arms around his hostess-pilot's neck, or throw up all over her white dress. They were free-falling, and he hated heights . . . was this his intended death, his assassin sacrificing herself along with him? Oh, God—!
"I thought these things only went a meter in the air," he choked out, his voice, despite his best efforts, going high and squeaky.
"If you have enough initial altitude, you can maintain a controlled glide," she said calmly. Despite Miles's horrified first impression, they were not actually dropping like a rock. They were arcing outward, across the boulevards far below, and the light-sparked green rings of parks, toward the dome of the Celestial Garden.
Miles thought wildly of the witch Baba Yaga, from the Barrayaran folk tales, who flew in a magic mortar. This witch didn't qualify as old and ugly. But he was not, at this moment, totally convinced she didn't eat bad children.
In a few minutes, the bubble decelerated again to a smooth walking pace a few centimeters above the pavement outside one of the Celestial Garden's minor entrances. A movement of her finger brought back the white glow.
"Ah," she said, in a refreshed tone. "I haven't done that in years." She almost cracked a smile, for a moment nearly . . . human.
Miles was shocked when they passed through the Celestial dome's security procedures almost as if they weren't there, except for a swift exchange of electronic codes. No one stopped or searched the bubble. The sort of uniformed men who'd shaken down the galactic envoys with beady-eyed thoroughness stood back respectfully, with downcast gaze.
"Why don't they stop us?" Miles whispered, unable to overcome the psychological conviction that if he could see and hear them, they could see and hear him.
"Stop me?" repeated the haut-woman in puzzlement. "I am the haut Pel Navarr, Consort of Eta Ceta. I live here."
Their further progress was happily ground-hugging, if faster than the usual walking-pace, through the increasingly familiar precincts of the Celestial Garden to the low white building with the bio-filters on every window. The haut Pel's passage through its automated security procedures was almost as swift and perfunctory as through the dome entrance itself. They passed silently down a set of corridors, but turned in a different direction from the labs and offices at the building's heart, and went up one level.
Double doors parted to admit them to a large circular room done in subdued and subduing tones of silvery gray. Unlike any other place he'd seen in the Celestial Garden, it was devoid of living decorations, neither plant nor animal nor any of those disturbing creations in-between. Hushed, concentrated, undistracting … It was a chamber in the Star Creche; he supposed he could dub it the Star Chamber. Eight women in white awaited them, sitting silently in a circle. His stomach should not still be turning over, dammit, the free fall was done.
The haut Pel brought her float-chair to a halt in a waiting empty gap in the circle, grounded it, and switched off the force-bubble. Eight extraordinary pairs of eyes focused on Miles.
No one, he thought, should be exposed to this many haut-women at once. It was some kind of dangerous overdose. Their beauty was varied; three were as silver-haired as the ghem-admiral's wife, one was copper-tressed, one was dark-skinned and hawk-nosed, with masses of blue-black ringlets tumbling down around her like a cloak. Two were blonde, his guide with her golden weave and another with hair as pale as oat straw in the sun, and as straight to the floor. One dark-eyed woman had chocolate-brown hair like the haut Vio, but in soft curling clouds instead of bound. And then there was Rian. Their massed effect went beyond beauty; where to, he was not sure, but terror came close. He slipped off the arm of the float chair, and stood away from it, grateful for the propping effect of his stiff high boots.