“Your revised morning schedule is on your com,” Ivy reported. “First meeting in thirty minutes, the water quality people.” Ivy rose to follow her into the inner office. “Blaise is already here.”
Cordelia tried not to feel less cheery at this, and gave Blaise Gatti, who was perusing a hand-reader but jumped to his feet as she entered, as good a smile as the one she’d given Ivy. They settled into their usual chairs, three-around by the window overlooking the garden side of the building, and Cordelia braced herself for the morning briefing.
Blaise was new, having held the post of Press Officer for less than a year. And young, barely thirty. And excessively energetic. He had an interesting background as half-Komarran, born in the domes to a Komarran father and a francophone Barrayaran mother, and had arrived here after an early career with assorted Komarran news services upon the recommendation of one of Empress Laisa’s Toscane relatives, proving that nepotism was not solely a Barrayaran way of life. Cordelia wasn’t sure if it was because somebody’d thought she’d needed a younger face to represent the young colony, because his half-blood status would be less of an issue here, or because it was assumed that, after a lifetime of dealing with Aral and Miles, she’d know how to handle an adult hyperactive.
Her and Aral’s prior press officer had been an older fellow, much in the stodgy mode of the Barrayaran official news services from which he’d been recruited, who’d done exactly as he was told and nothing else, a quality she’d learned to appreciate more after he’d taken his lack of excitement home with him upon retirement. Blaise, well…she was still trying to get across to him that his job for her was not to create publicity, but rather, to make it go away. She wasn’t sure if he regarded his post as a culmination or a stepping stone, but she wouldn’t be surprised if Sergyar ended up seducing him as it had so many others. Including me?
“First thing to come in over the weekend,” Ivy began, “is a petition from something calling itself the Kareenburg Committee of Concerned Parents, asking you to declare deliberate worm scarification a misdemeanor.”
Cordelia had heard of the custom only peripherally—the latest local youth-fashion craze. The so-called worms were a Sergyaran parasite that, upon burrowing into the skin of a human host, became confused in its life-cycle by the rich alien biochemistry it encountered there. Instead of producing crops of new baby worms and dying, they settled in, still in their juvenile form, and hypertrophied. Tiny in their natural habitat, they grew in the adipose tissues to, usually, several centimeters long and a few thick, sluggishly twitching, though some whoppers had been recorded, upon surgical removal, at thirty centimeters and nearly a kilo in weight. Their main effects upon their human hosts were general debilitation, some allergic reactions, swelling, and disgust and horror, plus dangerous secondary infections following amateur attempts to dig them out. Old Sergyar hands could be identified by their arrays of faded worm scars. Overseeing the development and distribution of an effective anthelmintic vaccine had been one of Cordelia’s early triumphs as vicereine, she’d felt.
Some new young Sergyarans, apparently feeling deprived of their chance at this dramatic frontier debility, were now deliberately introducing the worms into their skins in attempts to grow them into artistic patterns. She’d seen a few pictures of the results. They mainly inspired her to want to invest some money in a plastic surgery clinic, but, all right, one or two human palettes had indeed been dramatic. And disgusting, of course. She gathered that was part of the point.
“You know, Aral and I went to a great deal of trouble to eradicate the worm plague…” And if she and Aral had made their first grim trek across Sergyar at a later season, they might have been the ones to discover the species themselves, but as it was that dubious distinction had been left for the early Barrayaran military occupation. Poor sods.
Ivy shrugged sympathetically.
“Nevertheless, I decline to get suckered into attempting to promulgate sumptuary regulations. And I’m not calling it cruelty to animals, either. Why is this even on my desk? Shouldn’t this have gone to the Kayburg town council?”
“It did, I understand,” said Ivy. “They ducked.”
“I see.” Cordelia frowned. Youth fashions were short-lived by their nature. Surely this would go away on its own by the time, say, Aurelia was Freddie Haines’s age…?
Blaise put in, “This could be an opportunity to please a vocal block of active and responsible subjects.”
“What, a bunch of parents who want me to do their jobs for them? And have you considered how the devil such a regulation could possibly be enforced? What an utterly pointless waste of political capital that would be. No.”
Blaise rubbed his chin, and switched tacks obediently. “Alternatively, I suppose refusal could be taken as tacit support of young people’s rights of self-determination. That could be popular, too.”
“I don’t see people, young or otherwise, as having a right to be idiots. It’s just impractical to try to stop them, unless they’re hurting somebody, and this sport—extreme art?—does not appear to be lethal. But it’s not my patch, as Oliver would say.”
“So…what do you want to say to them?”
Cordelia answered literally, and with some passion: “Don’t you people have some real work to do?”
Blaise looked taken aback. “I…are you sure, Vicereine?” And, after another moment, “Er…which ones?”
Ivy put her hand over her mouth, mercifully.
“All of them. But that was a joke, Blaise. Although nonetheless true.” Cordelia sighed. “Just bounce it back down with the standard The Viceroy’s Office declines to hear, Ivy. No comments. Tempted as I am to make some.”
“Yes, Your Excellency.” Ivy bent her head and made a note, incidentally hiding her smile. She looked back up. “Second, an invitation for you to speak at the twelfth anniversary of the founding of SWORD.”
“What?” asked Blaise.
“The Sex WOrkers’ Rights and Dignity association,” Cordelia clarified. She smiled in fond reminiscence. “At the time Aral and I first arrived as joint viceroys, a grubby stretch of Kayburg out by the base was having a bit of a crime wave. Some very unpleasant men had taken control of the sex trade, and were making things difficult for everyone. The military wives were complaining, the officers were unhappy with the debasing effects on their subordinates, there were beatings, adulterated drinks and bad drugs, crooked gambling, a couple of murders, the usual. Aral took the base side and I took the civil side. I decided that the quickest and most long-term solution would be to unionize the girls, and the few fellows, of course. It took a little while to get the idea across, but they cottoned on and self-organized very well, once they had some real protection.”
“Was it, er, dangerous?” Blaise inquired, staring at her.