"No, but our captors are still awake," Dr. Durona returned in a matching tone. "They're mostly still down in the dining hall, but some wander back up here at random. They sleep below us."
"How'd you get out of your room?"
"Surgery on my bathroom window-lock."
An exit doubtless aided by the fact that the man was lithe as a snake; Roic's shoulders would not have fit. "And the chains?"
"Chains? You had chains? Special, Roic!"
"Never mind. How far are we from Northbridge, did you see? And where t'hell are we?"
"About a hundred, hundred and fifty kilometers, I'd guess. The one glimpse I had was all forest as far as I could see. There don't seem to be any roads-everything must come in by lightflyer or lift van. This place used to be some kind of lake resort for Northbridge weekenders, before the dam blew out in a storm and the lake ran down the river. The rebuild got tied up in lawsuits, so the resort has been defunct for a couple of years. One of our kidnappers owns it, turns out. Which may have been how the Legacy Liberators came up with this crazed scheme in the first place."
"What t'hell are they doing-no, wait. First, have you seen Lord Vorkosigan?"
Raven shook his dark head. "I thought I saw them tackle him, back in the lobby when they grabbed me and you were throwing people into the lift tube and bellowing at them to keep climbing-I swear some of those poor delegates were more scared of you than of our attackers-but I haven't seen him since. There are only six other hostages here, plus me and you. All locked in for the night. It seems the N.H.L.L. was setting up to host three times that many. They're not best pleased with you for that."
"How many bad guys?"
"What a Barrayaran turn of phrase! About a dozen here, at a guess. I've not seen them all together. They take it in shifts to harass us."
"Huh?"
"Lecturing us, mostly. About the stern and glorious goals of the New Hope Legacy Liberators."
"Oh. I had a sample."
"Only a sample? The rest of us have endured hours of it. They marched us down to the dining hall and harangued us till they were hoarse."
"How come I wasn't invited?"
"You have a reputation as a bold Barrayaran barbarian-say that six times really fast-too dangerous to let loose. Chains, huh? You were fortunate to miss class. I think they might be trying to inculcate some sort of identify-with-one's-captors syndrome in us, but are doing it wrong. Old Baron Ryoval could have eaten them all for breakfast."
Roic had heard m'lord's clone-brother Lord Mark quote the late Baron Ryoval of Jackson's Whole only once-some mutter about, And then we shall explore the interesting focusing effects of threatening your remaining eye-and had not been moved to inquire further. He'd been moved to edge away, actually, despite overtopping Lord Mark by half a meter of height. Roic only knew that the entire Durona Group, thirty-five or so cloned siblings possessing extraordinary medical talents, felt they owed their escape from Jacksonian techno-slavery to a new, free life to Lord Mark and Lord Vorkosigan. The reason for Raven's peculiar melange of an accent, and that of every other Durona, was that they were all refugees from Jackson's Whole who'd been living for over a decade on Escobar. The reason that the infamous Baron was the late was Lord Mark. The reason Roic and Raven found themselves sitting on this roof together…?was still unclear.
Well, Raven had been invited to the conference to give an illustrated lecture on cryorevival techniques after death from extreme trauma, which m'lord and perforce Roic had sat in on three days ago, after Raven had hinted, during a chance encounter in a hotel lift-tube, that m'lord would find special interest in the very complicated case of Patient C, a messy death by needler-grenade to the chest. It was, Raven had informed his audience, one of his earliest and most memorable cases as a young assistant surgeon. M'lord had indeed been riveted. Roic had closed his eyes. But besides that.
"Yes, but why are these idiots lecturing you?"
"Pitching their cause, I think. Rather like the past several days at the cryo-conference, really, except in reverse. And with much worse food."
"Are they suppressed by the government, or censored by the local media?"
"Not at all, apparently. They even have a site on the planetary net that tells everyone all they would want to know about their views. No one wants to know much, it appears, so they've turned to more forcible ways of getting attention. Now, robbing at gunpoint actually works. Selling at gunpoint-not so good. We all started today scared to death. But by the end, it was just dreary." Raven rubbed his nose. "They seem to plan to keep it up for days. Hence my escape attempt, but it's not going too well."
"We both got this far…"
"Yes, but here we are in the middle of a hundred kilometers of woods-lots more if you take a wrong turn-and even if this forest isn't stocked with people-eating predators, it would be insane to plunge off into the darkness with no shoes or gear. And all the vehicles in the parking lot are neatly locked. I just checked."
"Huh. Pity."
Raven eyed Roic in speculation. "Now, by myself I don't think I could jump someone coming out to his lightflyer and grab it after it was opened, but if we worked an ambush together…"
Roic took this, resignedly, as, If you jumped him and I cheered you on…?
Raven frowned. "Except this crew doesn't seem to come or go very often. All locked down tight, making no noise. Till you came along, I was starting to wonder if I should let myself back into my room and pretend this never happened, wait for some better chance."
"I don't think I could do that," said Roic, remembering his ruined doorframe. He craned his neck to stare over the roof edge at that third darkened structure. If that was an old shoreline down there… "What's that other building?"
"Don't know. I haven't seen anybody go in or out."
"I'm thinking it could be a boathouse. Or a tool shed-an isolated place like this would need one-but likely a boathouse."
Raven glanced wryly at the dried lake bed, and murmured, "I've never ridden in a boat. This doesn't seem the night to start. Tools, now…?do you think you could pry open a lightflyer? But then you'd still need the code keys to power it up. Crowbar's no use there. Except maybe to hit the owner on the head?"
"M'lord keeps boats. He has a place on a lake down in the Vorkosigan's District, back on Barrayar, couple hours from the capital by lightflyer." A thought niggled in Roic's aching head. "I say, let's go see."
Raven gave him a dubious look, but shrugged agreement.
With painful caution, they lowered themselves from the roof and tiptoed down the far stairs. They made a straight line for the cover of the trees, then circled to come out on the shore side of the low building. The effect of the sticks, rocks, and debris on Roic's bare feet made him reluctantly agree with Raven's negative view of any longer walk in the woods.
The window glass was unbreakable, the entry facing the ex-lake padlocked, but it gave way to the same method Roic had used on his room door. Raven winced at the rending crunch; they both froze, listening hard, but no outcry came. They edged inside.
The outer door opened onto an office; the door beyond was, thanks be, unlocked. Roic swung it open upon a garagelike space. Also very dark, but-could one smell boats? The scent of wood and oil and old bilge and dried waterweed was quite unmistakable, and strangely happy, like preserved summer. As his eyes adjusted, Roic could just make out half a dozen kayak-or-canoe shapes slung from the ceiling, and a couple of wider hulls up on sturdy cradles. Workbench on the far side of the room, mostly cleared away. Raven started for it, hands held out before him in wariness of head-cracking pillars or other shadowy obstacles, but Roic whispered him back.