“It must have been a pretty evil grownup, to tell such lies to such a child.” Enrique stared around, plainly perturbed. They checked what turned out to be the privy, on the opposite side of the hut from the graveyard, and found it empty. Regularly and recently used, though, Ekaterin’s nose attested even through her air filters.
“What, didn’t your parents ever do that? To try to keep you safe when you were too young to understand?”
“No, not really. They mostly explained things as they were. Well, not subatomic physics, not when I was three. I generally tried to make them read me nonfiction, though, as soon as I was old enough to complain.”
“Mm.” Ekaterin considered the problem of a pupil less literate, and literal, than the young Enrique. One more frustratingly—perhaps frighteningly—slow. Still, the girl had exhibited speech, reasonably appropriate and grammatical if wrong-headed, which already put her well-up on the ladder of cognition. Not too profoundly impaired—or she wouldn’t have survived out here this long? Ekaterin pictured those smaller, more misshapen skulls. “How do you regard fiction, then? Or parable, myth, fable?”
Enrique waved a conceding hand. “Consensual lying, perhaps.”
“That’s actually a, a pretty socially advanced thing.” Though Sasha and Helen seemed to be coming up on it fast. But then, they had Miles for a Da.
“But if one embeds a lesson in a lie, and the children find out it’s a lie, they’re likely to throw out the lesson as well. I mean, logically. They couldn’t trust anything at that point.”
“Mm.” Ekaterin wondered if that explained something about adolescence. “At that point, I suppose one has to invent the scientific method. Or learn it somehow.”
“I really didn’t get my head around that till I was seven or so,” Enrique confessed, as if it were a regrettable lag.
Ekaterin’s lips twitched. “You know, Enrique, I suspect you’re going to be a pretty good Da, when you come to it. In your own weird way.”
“Do you really think so?” Enrique brightened at this measured praise. “You and Miles seem very good at it. I mean, you two never seem to panic.”
“In Miles’s train, one learns to set a rather high bar for that.” She was not, for example, panicking here, now, yet. Chokingly uneasy wasn’t panic, was it?
If there was another human being within half a kilometer, it wasn’t apparent to Enrique’s scanner. Ekaterin gave up on it and eyed the distant deadfall. “Just how hot is this patch, really?”
“It’s on a bit of a spur, coming down from the ridge. We rejected this area for our test plot for just that reason. Rather well drained, I should think.”
“Hence rather well rinsed?”
“We could check the rangers’ rad map back in the lightflyer.” Belatedly he added, “Why do you ask?”
“Let’s see that map.”
They both clambered into the front seat—her new lightflyer was going to have to be decontaminated inside and out after this, drat it—and Ekaterin called up the vid projection. The grid of their current position showed none of the structures they’d just seen, and it should have, but yes, this patch was one of the cooler ones, interlaced with more distant hot spots and streaks according to the accidents of topography. Her Mark One Eyeball had guessed as much.
“When you say We rejected this area, just what do you mean?” asked Ekaterin.
“Well”—Enrique cleared his throat—“actually, Vadim said, ‘That area has too much elevation. Don’t waste time on it.’ Which was true. Do you think he, ah… knew about this place?”
“After ten years patrolling the zone? He has to.” Therefore deliberately concealing it—maybe even enabling it? Given how long this squatter homestead had plainly been here, maybe more people than Vadim had to know? It smells of collusion would be… reasoning ahead of their data, as Enrique would no doubt put it.
“You think he lied to me, then?”
“By omission, anyway.” Which was going to be a problem, later. Or sooner.
Enrique scowled.
Ekaterin blew out her breath, swung out of the flyer, and began to unseal her hood-and-mask from her suit.
“What are you doing?” asked Enrique, alarmed.
“Going to talk to that girl. She’s not come out. It’s cruel to leave her cowering and crying in the bushes.”
“I—your husband will be very upset with me if he finds out I let, um…”
Ekaterin pulled a stray stand of her dark hair free from the seal fasteners and tucked it behind her ear. “Let?” she murmured, dangerously. Then, taking a little pity on him: “You don’t need to mention it.” Which was a rather Milesean approach, come to think, and therefore cosmic justice.
“Vorkosigans,” muttered Enrique, and flung up his hands.
Ekaterin smiled at him, tucked her hood prominently under her arm, and aimed back toward the woods. “Stay here. Keep an eye out,” she added, more to give him a feeling of use and keep him from following than because she thought there was much more to discover.
“These people could be serial killers, you know!” Enrique called at her back, grumpily. “Radioactive serial killers!” She waved without turning around.
Decontamination for her, after this jaunt, might now extend to an overnight at Hassadar General Hospital, she reflected without joy. The basic chelation treatment, while well understood and practiced there, was going to involve needles and peeing into measured pots and, probably somewhere, feces. It seemed overkill, given that all the children she ever planned to have were already gene-cleaned frozen embryos safely sequestered in a reproductive center in Hassadar, waiting for their parents to have—now, there was a black joke—time. Thank heavens for Aurie Pym, anyway.
Ekaterin walked, very slowly and quietly, up to within a few meters of the deadfall—three or four trees collapsed and rotting in a tangle, festooned with mostly-green vines, brillberry and feral grape—then sat cross-legged on the ground. She raised her chin and called, in what she hoped was her most maternal and soothing voice, “Hello. I’m sorry we scared you, back in that shed. My name is Ekaterin. What’s yours?”
Tense silence from the tangle.
“I’m not a ghost. I’m a live lady. This is just a hat, see?” She put the hood on and then off again, setting it aside. Miles, she couldn’t help thinking, would be naturally better at this sort of beguilement, as he had demonstrated on more than one occasion. But he wasn’t the Vorkosigan on the spot.
A faint rustle in the brillberry leaves. Ekaterin held herself still. If the child-woman bolted again, should she give chase? No, probably not. Where, after all, did the girl have to go? Well, the entire zone, all three thousand square kilometers of it, but… no, there. A round, sallow, worried face poked cautiously through the leaves. Stared. Blinked.
“You’re pretty,” said a rough, thin voice.
Ekaterin controlled an utterly automatic flinch. In the drawing rooms of Vorbarr Sultana, a personal compliment was almost invariably the preamble to a pitch, some campaign to enlist her to facilitate access to her husband’s ear. Well, and a few misguided attempts at dalliance most certainly not intended to come to Lord Vorkosigan’s attention, but she didn’t actually have to evaluate those. She was now about as far from those drawing rooms as it was possible to imagine. So she produced a straightforward, “It’s nice of you to say so,” in return.
“Are you a princess?”
“No.” Thankfully. And, Were you expecting one? They couldn’t get many princesses passing through these parts. Or maybe it was some skewed fairy-tale logic—if all princesses were beautiful females, then all beautiful females must be princesses? “So what is your name?”