“Ekaterin…?” Miles belatedly sought endorsement.
Ekaterin looked to her mother-in-law. “Do you think it would be all right? Safe?”
“Sure,” said the Vicereine. “I’d love to go, too. I haven’t seen that old ship since I exploded a bottle of champagne on its hull when it was formally commissioned. Several months after its return from the Hegen Hub war, mind you, when they’d finished the repairs. Hugely fun, that. They produce a special break-away safety glass for the bottle, and you have to work in a force bubble to capture the debris. Entirely pointless and insane. Very Barrayaran.”
“That one’s not just a Barrayaran tradition,” Jole objected. “Other people’s orbital shipyards do things like it, too.” He added after a curious moment, “So what’s the Betan custom?”
“Splash the hull with water. Which, in a vacuum, is actually more exciting than it sounds.” She glanced down at the interested children. “It all goes back to superstitious Old Earth customs of making sacrifices to dangerous gods of fortune and the sea. Like a bribe. Take this wine, not my ship, as it were. Or our lives.”
Alex frowned. “But…Old Earthers didn’t have space gods back then, did they? So why do it now?”
“Because we still have fortune and misfortune, I suppose.” Cordelia shrugged. “Remind me to explain symbolism, projection, and displacement to you sometime.”
“Much easier than explaining fear, loss, death, and grief,” Jole murmured to her ear alone.
“Isn’t it, though?” she whispered back. “Why d’you suppose people made this psyche stuff up? Distancing, that’s another one for you.”
Jole thought that asking an ex-Betan-Survey commander for safety judgments might be going to the wrong store, but after making a few more cautious-mother noises Ekaterin allowed Cordelia to soothe her. Miles was all for the proffered treat, and regarded Jole almost favorably.
His invitation and the teen slave labor delivered, Jole bade everyone farewell and made to decamp, despairing of getting a private word with Cordelia, but she nipped out after him to the corridor. A brief handclasp was all they dared offer each other here.
“Six more children, Cordelia?” he teased her, with a glance back at the doors. “Are you so sure?”
“Not all at once,” she protested. “And I could stop any time. In theory.”
He snorted, then said more seriously, “Did you get any further with Miles this morning?”
“Not yet, no. It was noisy at breakfast. And you have to let me know what you want. I can’t…” She didn’t seem to know how that sentence should end, either. “I thought taking Miles to the rep center would help him process it all, but so far he seems to be less processing than, than storing it all up in his cheeks. Like a hamster.”
Jole tried not to be too distracted by this word-picture. “I had a couple more thoughts last night,” he told her. While lying awake for hours. “Until and unless my share of this project goes live, I don’t really suppose we have to tell Miles anything. Could be years. Decades. And even then, purchased donated eggs would cover it.” That had been her very own initial argument, come to think. Miles and his family had seemed a lot more remote, then.
“Mm,” she said.
“Or, a perfectly valid half-truth. We could say you donated those eggs to me entire. The boys would still be his half-brothers, same as before.” Well…not quite the same.
“Let me think about that.” Her expression was unpromising, but he wasn’t sure which aspect of these suggestions she was disliking most.
“No rush,” he backpedalled slightly.
“No, I suppose not.”
A couple of techs came through then, and the Vicereine’s bodyguard poked his head around the corner, and they both gave up and wryly parted.
Walking back toward the palace where he’d left his groundcar, Jole wondered how his personal life had grown so tangled in so short a time. Vorkosigans did that to you, though. Flung you off cliffs, expected you to absorb the flying lessons on the way down. And yet, if some—not good, not evil—if some ambiguity fairy suddenly appeared amidst the screams and offered to undo it all, roll back your life to Go, you would refuse her. Unsettling insight, that.
If you want a simple life, Adm’ral Oliver, you are making sacrifice to the wrong gods.
Jole detoured to grab lunch in downtown Kayburg before going back to the base. Returning along the main street, he was surprised to see Kaya Vorinnis coming down the steps of the city council building. She also had been due some leave after the long upside tour, and was dressed in civvies: Komarran trousers, sandals, and a halter top. She was waving a hand and talking to a tall, male companion whom Jole belatedly recognized as the Cetagandan cultural attaché, Mikos ghem Soren. Ghem Soren, too, was casually dressed in trousers, shirtsleeves, and sandals, and not only lacked face paint, but had foregone his ghem clan face decal. For a Cetagandan, that was downright going native. His symmetrical features looked younger without the window-dressing.
The pair turned onto the sidewalk, and Kaya glanced up and saw Jole. Her face lit not with the natural distanced courtesy of a subordinate encountering a boss outside of work, but with an alarming Aha! expression. She punched ghem Soren on the arm and gestured more vigorously at Jole, talking faster; as they came alongside, Jole caught the tail end of some pitch: “Well, ask him! One rebuff doesn’t make a defeat!”
“No, but that was the fourth—” Ghem Soren broke off, and switched to, “Good afternoon, Admiral Jole. I trust this day finds you well.”
“Yes, thank you,” responded Jole. He nodded. “Kaya.”
“Sir.”
Ghem Soren fell awkwardly silent. Another arm-poke failing to goose him into gear, Kaya went on, “Mikos has an interesting idea for a project. A cultural outreach sort of thing. He calls it a Cetagandan discernment garden.”
“Although it doesn’t actually have to be in a garden.” Ghem Soren quickly modified this. “Any publicly accessible venue would do to house the display.”
“And that’s the problem,” Kaya went on. “He hasn’t been able to find one. We’ve tried the library, two business headquarters, and city hall, and no one will give him the time of day. Or, more practically, a room.”
“I was told this would be a challenging posting,” said ghem Soren. “But surely a simple discernment garden should not inflame Barrayaran historical sensitivities. How can I work to overcome cultural ignorance if cultural prejudice refuses me any platform?”
“It might not be, ah, prejudice,” said Jole. “Space in Kayburg is at a premium, with new immigrants coming in every day seeking not only housing, but business sites. Why not just set up this…display, whatever it is, at the Cetagandan consulate?”
“But that fails the educational outreach purpose,” said ghem Soren earnestly. “No one goes there except on consulate business. Such persons are already willing to talk to us.” He added after a moment, “And also, my consul said it would be too childish. But to make a start with people, one must begin where they are.”
“But what the devil is—oh, here.” Jole jerked his thumb over his shoulder back to the cafe. “Let’s go sit down.”
Perhaps taking this as a chink in some imagined armor, rather than as Jole’s feet being tired, both Kaya and ghem Soren brightened up. They followed him to the cafe, and a few more minutes were spent securing coffee and finding a table for three. The lunch crowd was tailing off, but that was just the difference between jammed and busy. When they were settled at last, Jole continued, “So what exactly is a discernment garden, Lord ghem Soren?”