Haines pursed his lips judiciously. “Not what I would call a date, but that would set a tone, for sure.”
It might at that, although possibly not the sedate one Haines was clearly hankering for. But then, Haines didn’t know Cordelia very well.
“It wouldn’t settle any bets, though,” Haines added a bit morosely.
Jole didn’t bother to pretend not to understand. “What, betting whether I’d show up with a woman or a man?” His tone grew a trifle biting. “I see a way we could collude to clean up on that one. I could ask Consul Vermillion, and we could wax them all.”
Haines held up a contrite hand. “No business of mine, except that people ask me. As if I’d know!”
“I…did not realize that,” Jole conceded. Although he didn’t see how he had anything to apologize for. Because I don’t have anything in the first place?
Pared to its essentials, the Barrayaran officer corps favored heterosexual marital stability in its senior members mainly to cut down on the potential for ambient personal dramas slopping over into work, as they tended to do. But any nonstandard-issue personal life that supplied one’s superior officers with zero drama would do just as well, in Jole’s view. And it was a view he’d let be known, certainly. With an emphasis on the zero-drama part, because he’d thought that could stand to be underscored.
“I may be sorry I asked, but what are the current rumors about my personal life?” Or lack of one.
Haines shrugged. “They call you the dog who does nothing in the nighttime.”
“Come again?”
“Don’t look at me! I was told it’s a literary reference. Which probably accounts for it making no damn sense.” Haines scowled in retrospective suspicion. “A touch Cetagandan, if you ask me.”
“I see.” Well, that could have been worse. The trouble with giving rumor nothing to chew on was that it freed it to make up anything. “Welcome to the fishbowl, Admiral Jole. Though it’s not as bad here as at Komarr Command. Or Home Fleet, God help ’em.” He’d aspired to Komarr Command once, the hot seat of the empire. And just where, in his last few years, had what had once been a driving youthful ambition drained away? Could it be that he was…content, here on Sergyar?
“That is happily true,” Haines agreed.
Jole considered the general. Fyodor was pretty level-headed, an experienced father, and a good sample of an average officer. And he knew how to be closed-mouthed. As a test subject, as Cordelia would no doubt put it, he could be nearly ideal. Jole tried the sentence once, secretly inside his mouth, for practice. And then quelled his doubts—his panic?—and let it fly: “Actually, for my fiftieth birthday, I was thinking of having a son.”
Haines’s eyebrows went up, but he did not, for example, fall off his not-very-comfortable cafeteria chair or have any other such overreaction. “Don’t you have a few preliminaries to get through first? Or have you managed to smuggle them past all your interested observers?”
“Not as many as one would think. The Vicereine”—yes, hide behind Cordelia’s skirts—“has been pitching the virtues of that new rep center downtown. It seems all you have to do is walk in, present yourself, and buy a donated egg. All right, you do have to jump through a few hoops to prove yourself a, er, qualified purchaser. But it skips a lot of the other difficult middle steps.”
“Dating, courtship, weddings? In-laws?” Haines’s mouth twisted up. “Seems like cheating, really.”
“Galactics—I’m told—do it.” All the time was probably not technically correct.
“Well, galactics,” said Haines vaguely.
“I admit, when I picture the scenario, I keep seeing a boy of about, oh, seven. Age of reason and all that. One I could talk to, and do things with. I’m not sure how you get from the single-cell stage to that one, though.”
Haines shrugged. “Having an infant aboard is no holiday, but any man who can learn to field-strip a weapon can learn to change a damn nappie. Just handle the kid gently but firmly, like an unexploded bomb. You wonder how some of those whiners would have dealt with the old horse cavalry days—manure by the metric ton, back then. I’ve no patience with a man who’s afraid to get his hands dirty. And at least babies more-or-less stay where you put them, at that age. Now, toddlers…suicidal maniacs, the lot of ’em, boy or girl. I’m so glad that stage is over.” He took a firm swallow of his iced tea. “I don’t know why you don’t have a mate—of whatever flavor—Oliver, and it’s no business of mine, but I will tell you, parenting is a team sport. You need backup, reserves. I admit, back when, it was more my wife’s family and the other base women trading favors than me, depending on where we were. But that does seem to me the one big flaw in your battle plan.”
“The Vicereine claims one can hire help.”
Haines snorted. “On Sergyar? Have you tried to hire anyone on Sergyar lately?”
“About a hundred contractors?”
Haines waved a conceding hand. “Point. But it doesn’t get any easier scaled down.” His eyes narrowed. “I’ve suggested to Freddie that she get a part-time job of some kind. She thinks it’s because I’m too cheap to give her an allowance, but I think it might help keep her too busy to get into trouble. Except what would she do with the money? Like giving ammunition to a drunk. Babies are just a challenge. Teenagers are a nightmare. Look ahead, Oliver.”
“I…think I might do better taking it one step at a time.”
“Mm, that’s the way you do have to take it. Maybe fortunately.” Haines added after a moment, “I don’t deny I have mixed feelings about those replicator centers, but I have to admit, I’d prefer it for my daughter. Just think. She’d never have to date a boy at all.” He paused in apparent contemplation of this attractive state of theoretical affairs, or non-affairs.
“I’d think you were in an excellent position to intimidate suitors.”
“But everyone knows I’m not allowed to use the plasma cannons for personal purposes.”
Jole choked a laugh around his last mouthful of sandwich. “Besides, she’s only, what—fifteen?”
“A fact I have let be known, but I’m not sure it helps.” Haines sighed. “Horrible age, fifteen. Part of the time she’s still my little princess, Da’s Cadette, and then, with no warning—it’s like some hostile alien life-form takes over her brain. One minute it’s all puppies and ribbons, the next—the female werewolf!” Haines made claws of his hands and mimed a snarl, possibly the most expression Jole had ever seen the man display. “The bathroom is a war zone right now. Last week she had half her friends and the Cetagandan consul’s son in there, learning how to apply ghem face-paint patterns.”
“That seems…cultural,” Jole offered, in some attempted consolation.
“Eh, I suppose you’d think so. But when I made her clean it up after, perfectly reasonably, you’d think I was Mad Yuri come to life again.”
“Er…can’t you requisition a place with two bathrooms?”
“Base housing is crammed right now. I’d have to make some other officer’s family trade down.”
“Pull rank?”
“Mm, but that would also entail pulling rank on his wife, which would have, shall we say, proliferating consequences. Base wives have their own, what d’you call it—the Vicereine would probably say, culture. I’d call it an insurgency network. Cross them at your peril.” He added after a moment, “I did put myself on the waiting list, though.”