I hate this.

Tien hung up his shirt and twitched a smile at her. His eyes remained strained, though, as they had been all evening. “I’d like you to do me a favor tomorrow.”

Anything, to delay the moment. “Certainly. What?”

“Take the brace of Auditors out and show ’em a good time. I’m about saturated with them. This downside holiday of theirs has been incredibly disruptive to my department. We’ve lost a week altogether, I bet, pulling together that show for them yesterday. Maybe they can go poke at something else, till they go back topside.”

“Take them where, show them what?”

“Anything.”

“I already took Uncle Vorthys around.”

“Did you show him the Sector University district? Maybe he’d like that. Your uncle is interested in lots of things, and I don’t think the Vor dwarf cares what he’s offered. As long as it includes enough wine.”

“I haven’t the first clue what Lord Vorkosigan likes to do.”

“Ask him. Suggest something. Take him, I don’t know, take him shopping.”

“Shopping?” she said doubtfully.

“Or whatever.” He trod over to her, still smiling tightly. His hand slipped behind her back, to hold her, and he offered a tentative kiss. She returned it, trying not to let her dutifulness show. She could feel the heat of his body, of his hands, and how thinly stretched his affability was. Ah, yes, the work of the evening, defusing the unexploded Tien. Always a tricky business. She began to pay attention to the practiced rituals, key words, gestures, that led into the practiced intimacies.

Undressed and in bed, she closed her eyes as he caressed her, partly to concentrate on the touch, partly to block out his gaze, which was beginning to be excited and pleased. Wasn’t there some bizarre mythical bird or other, back on Earth, who fancied that if it couldn’t see you, you couldn’t see it? And so buried its head in the sand, odd image. While still attached to its neck, she wondered?

She opened her eyes, as Tien reached across her and lowered the lamplight to a softer glow. His avid look made her feel not beautiful and loved, but ugly and ashamed. How could you be violated by mere eyes? How could you be lovers with someone, and yet feel every moment alone with them intruded upon your privacy, your dignity? Don’t look, Tien. Absurd. There really was something wrong with her. He lowered himself beside her; she parted her lips, yielding quickly to his questing mouth. She hadn’t always been this self-conscious and cautious. Back in the beginning, it had been different. Or had it been she alone who’d changed?

It became her turn to sit up and return caresses. That was easy enough; he buried his face in his pillow, and did not talk for a while, as her hands moved up and down his body, tracing muscle and tendon. Secretly seeking symptoms. The tremula seemed reduced tonight; perhaps last evening’s shakes really had been a false alarm, merely the hunger and nerves he had claimed.

She knew when the shift had occurred in her, of course, back about four, five jobs ago now. When Tien had decided, for reasons she still didn’t understand, that she was betraying him-with whom, she had never understood either, since the two names he’d finally mentioned as his suspects were so patently absurd. She’d had no idea such a sexual mistrust had taken over his mind, until she’d caught him following her, watching her, turning up at odd times and bizarre places when he was supposed to be at work-and had that perhaps had something to do with why that job had ended so badly? She’d finally had the accusation out of him. She’d been horrified, deeply wounded, and subtly frightened. Was it stalking, when it was your own husband? She had not had the courage to ask who to ask. Her one source of security was the knowledge that she’d never so much as been alone in any private place with another man. Her Vor-class training had done her that much good, at least. Then he had accused her of sleeping with her women friends.

That had broken something in her at last, some will to desire his good opinion. How could you argue sense into someone who believed something not because it was true, but because he was an idiot? No amount of panicky protestation or indignant denial or futile attempt to prove a negative was likely to help, because the problem was not in the accused, but in the accuser. She began then to believe he was living in a different universe, one with a different set of physical laws, perhaps, and an alternate history. And very different people from the ones she’d met of the same name. Smarmy dopplegangers all.

Still, the accusation alone had been enough to chill her friendships, stealing their innocent savor and replacing it with an unwelcome new level of awareness. With the next move, time and distance attenuated her contacts. And on the move after that, she’d stopped trying to make new friends.

To this day she didn’t know if he’d taken her disgusted refusal to defend herself for a covert admission of guilt. Weirdly, after the blowup the subject had been dropped cold; he didn’t bring it up again, and she didn’t deign to. Did he think her innocent, or himself insufferably noble for forgiving her for nonexistent crimes?

Why is he so impossible?

She didn’t want the insight, but it came nonetheless. Because he fears losing you. And so in panic blundered about destroying her love, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy? It seemed so. It’s not as though you can pretend his fears have no foundation. Love was long gone, in her. She got by on a starvation diet of loyalty these days.

I am Vor. I swore to hold him in sickness. He is sick. I will not break my oath, just because things have gotten difficult. That’s the whole point of an oath, after all. Some things, once broken, cannot ever be repaired. Oaths. Trust…

She could not tell to what extent his illness was at the root of his erratic behavior. When they returned from the galactic treatment, he might be much better emotionally as well. Or at least she would at last be able to tell how much was Vorzohn’s Dystrophy, and how much was just… Tien.

They switched positions; his skilled hands began working down her back, probing for her relaxation and response. An even more unhappy thought occurred to her then. Had Tien been, consciously or unconsciously, putting off his treatment because he realized on some obscure level that his illness, his vulnerability, was one of the few ties that still bound her to him? Is this delay my fault? Her head ached.

Tien, still valiantly rubbing her back, made a murmur of protest. She was failing to relax; this wouldn’t do. Resolutely, she turned her thoughts to a practiced erotic fantasy, unbeautiful, but one which usually worked. Was it some weird inverted form of frigidity, this thing bordering on self-hypnosis she seemed to have to do in order to achieve sexual release despite Tien’s too-near presence? How could you tell the difference between not liking sex, and not liking the only person you’d ever done sex with?

Yet she was almost desperate for touch, mere affection untainted by the indignities of the erotic. Tien was very good about that, massaging her for quite unconscionable lengths of time, though he sometimes sighed in a boredom for which she could hardly blame him. The touch, the make-it-better, the sheer catlike comfort, eased her body and then her heart, despite it all. She could absorb hours of this-she slitted one eye open to check the clock. Better not get greedy. So mind-wrenching, for Tien to demand a sexual show of her on the one hand, and accuse her of infidelity on the other. Did he want her to melt, or want her to freeze? Anything you pick is wrong. No, this wasn’t helping. She was taking much too long to cultivate her arousal. Back to work. She tried again to start her fantasy. He might have rights upon her body, but her mind was hers alone, the one part of her into which he could not pry.

It went according to plan and practice, after that, mission accomplished all around. Tien kissed her when they’d finished. “There, all better,” he murmured. “We’re doing better these days, aren’t we?”

She murmured back the usual assurances, a light, standard script. She would have preferred an honest silence. She pretended to doze, in postcoital lassitude, till his snores assured her he was asleep. Then she went to the bathroom to cry.

Stupid, irrational weeping. She muffled it in a towel, lest he, or Nikki, or her guests hear and investigate. I hate him. I hate myself. I hate him, for making me hate myself…

Most of all, she despised in herself that crippling desire for physical affection, regenerating like a weed in her heart no matter how many times she tried to root it out. That neediness, that dependence, that love-of-touch must be broken first. It had betrayed her, worse than all the other things. If she could kill her need for love, then all the other coils which bound her, desire for honor, attachment to duty, above all every form of fear, could be brought into line. Austerely mystical, she supposed. If I can kill all these things in me, I can be free of him.

I’ll be a walking dead woman, but I will be free.

She finished the weep, and washed her face, and took three painkillers. She could sleep now, she thought. But when she slipped back into the bedroom, she found Tien lying awake, his eyes a faint gleam in the shadows. He turned up the lamp at the whisper of her bare feet on the carpet. She tried to remember if insomnia was listed among the early symptoms of his disease. He raised the covers for her to slip beneath. “What were you doing in there all that time, going for seconds without me?”

She wasn’t sure if he was waiting for a laugh, if that was supposed to be a joke, or her indignant denial. Evading the problem, instead she said, “Oh, Tien, I almost forgot. Your bank called this afternoon. Very strange. Something about requiring my countersignature and palm-print to release your pension account. I told them I didn’t think that could be right, but that I would check with you and get back to them.”

He froze in the act of reaching for her. “They had no business calling you about that!”

“If this was something you wanted me to do, you might have mentioned it earlier. They said they’d delay releasing it till I got back to them.”

“Delayed, no! You idiot bitch!” His right hand clenched in a gesture of frustration.

The hateful and hated epithet made her sick to her stomach. All that effort to pacify him tonight, and here he was right back on the edge… “Did I make a mistake?” she asked anxiously. “Tien, what’s wrong? What’s going on?” She prayed he wasn’t about to put his fist through the wall again. The noise-would her uncle hear, or that Vorkosigan fellow, and how could she explain-

“No… no. Sorry.” He rubbed his forehead instead, and she let out a covert sigh of relief. “I forgot about it being under Komarran rules. On Barrayar, I never had any trouble signing out my pension accumulation when I left any job, any job that offered a pension, anyway. Here on Komarr I think they want a joint signature from the designated survivor. It’s all right. Call them back first thing in the morning, though, and clear it.”

“You’re not leaving your job, are you?” Her chest tightened in panic. Dear no, not another move so soon…

“No, no. Hell, no. Relax.” He smiled with one side of his mouth.

“Oh. Good.” She hesitated. “Tien… do you have any accumulation from your old jobs back on Barrayar?”

“No, I always signed it out at the end. Why let them have the use of the money, when we could use it ourselves? It served to tide us over more than once, you know.” He smiled bitterly. “Under the circumstances, you have to admit, the idea of saving for my old age is not very compelling. And you wanted that vacation to South Continent, didn’t you?”

“I thought you said that was a termination bonus.”

“So it was, in a sense.”

So… if anything horrible happened to Tien, she and Nikolai would have nothing. If he doesn’t get treatment soon, something horrible is going to happen to him. “Yes, but…” The realization struck her. Could it be…? “Are you getting it out for-we’re going for the galactic treatment, yes? You and me and Nikolai? Oh, Tien, good! Finally. Of course. I should have realized.” So that’s what he needed the money for, yes, at last! She rolled over and hugged him. But would it be enough? If it was less than a year’s worth… “Will it be enough?”

“I… don’t know. I’m checking.”

“I saved a little out of my household allowance, I could put that in,” she offered. “If it will get us underway sooner.”

He licked his lips, and was silent for a moment. “I’m not sure. I don’t like to let you…”

“This is exactly what I saved it for. I mean, I know I didn’t earn it in the first place, but I managed it-it can be my contribution.”

“How much do you have?”

“Almost four thousand Imperial marks!” She smiled, proud of her frugality.

“Oh!” He looked as though he were making an inner calculation. “Yes, that would help significantly.”

He dropped a kiss on her forehead, and she relaxed further. She said, “I never thought about raiding your pension for the medical quest. I didn’t realize we could. How soon can we get away?”

“That’s… the next thing I’ll have to find out. I would have checked it out this week, but I was interrupted by my department suffering a severe outbreak of Imperial Auditors.”

She smiled in brief appreciation of his wit. He’d used to make her laugh more. If he had grown more sour with age, it was understandable, but the blackness of his humor had gradually come to weary her more than amuse her. Cynicism did not seem nearly so impressively daring to her now as it had when she was twenty. Perhaps this decision had lightened his heart, too.

Do you really think he’ll do what he says, this time? Or will you be a fool? Again. No… if suspicion was the deadliest possible insult, then trust was always right, even if it was mistaken. Provisionally relieved by his new promise, she snuggled into the crook of his body, and for once his heavy arm flung across her seemed more comfort than trap. Maybe this time, they would finally be able to put their lives on a rational basis.

“Shopping?” Lord Vorkosigan echoed over the breakfast table the next morning. He had been the last of the household to arise; Uncle Vorthys was already busy on the comconsole in Tien’s study, Tien had left for work, and Nikki was off to school. Vorkosigan’s mouth stayed straight, but the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled. “That’s an offer seldom made to the son of my mother… I’m afraid I don’t need-no, wait, I do need something, at that. A wedding present.”

“Who do you know who’s getting married?” Ekaterin asked, relieved her suggestion had taken root, primarily because she didn’t have a second one to offer. She prepared to be helpful.

“Gregor and Laisa.”

It took her a moment to realize he meant the Emperor and his new Komarran fiancee. The surprising betrothal had been announced at Winterfair; the wedding was to be at Midsummer. “Oh! Uh… I’m not sure you can find anything in the Serifosa Dome that would be appropriate-maybe in Solstice they would have the kind of shops… oh, dear.”

“I have to come up with something, I’m supposed to be Gregor’s Second and Witness on their wedding circle. Maybe I could find something that would remind Laisa of home. Though possibly that’s not a good idea-I’m not sure. I don’t want to chance making her homesick on her honeymoon. What do you think?”

“We could look, I suppose…” There were exclusive shops she’d never dared enter in certain parts of the dome. This could be an excuse to venture inside.

“Duv and Delia, too, come to think of it. Yes, I’ve gotten way behind on my social duties.”

“Who?”

“Delia Koudelka’s a childhood friend of mine. She’s marrying Commodore Duv Galeni, who is the new Chief of Komarran Affairs for Imperial Security. You may not have heard of him yet, but you will. He’s Komarran-born.”

“Of Barrayaran parents?”

“No, of Komarran resistance fighters. We seduced him to the service of the Imperium. We’ve agreed it was the shiny boots that turned the trick.”

He was so utterly deadpan, he had to be joking. Hadn’t he? She smiled uncertainly.

Uncle Vorthys lumbered into her kitchen then, murmuring, “More coffee?”

“Certainly.” She poured for him. “How is it going?”

“Variously, variously.” He sipped, and gave her a thank-you smile.

“I take it the morning courier has been here,” said Vorkosigan. “How was last night’s haul? Anything for me?”

“No, happily, if by that you mean more body parts. They brought back quite a bit of equipment of various sorts.”

“Does it make any difference in your pet scenarios so far?”

“No, but I keep hoping it will. I dislike the way the vector analysis is shaping up.”

Vorkosigan’s eyes became notably more intent. “Oh? Why?”

“Mm. Take Point A as all things a moment before the accident-intact ship on course, soletta passively sitting in its orbital slot. Take Point B to be some time after the accident, parts of all masses scattering off in all directions at all speeds. By good old classical physics, B must equal A plus X, X being whatever forces-or masses-were added during the accident.

We know A, pretty much, and the more of B we collect, the more we narrow down the possibilities for X. We’re still missing some control systems, but the topside boys have by now retrieved most of the initial mass of the system of ship-plus-mirror. By the partial accounting done so far, X is… very large and has a very strange shape.”

“Depending on when and how the engines blew, the explosion could have added a pretty damned big kick,” said Vorkosigan.

“It’s not the magnitudes of the missing forces that are so puzzling, it’s their direction. Fragments of anything given a kick in free fall generally travel in a straight line, taking into account local gravities of course.”

“And the ore ship pieces didn’t?” Vorkosigan’s brows rose. “So what do you have in mind for an outside force?”

Uncle Vorthys pursed his lips. “I’m going to have to contemplate this for a while. Play around with the numbers and the visual projections. My brain is getting too old, I think.”

“What’s the… the shape of the force, then, that makes it so strange?” asked Ekaterin, following all this with deep interest.

Uncle Vorthys set his cup down and placed his hands side by side, half open. “It’s… a typical mass in space creates a gravitational well, a funnel if you will. This looks more like a trough.”

“Running from the ore ship to the mirror?” asked Ekaterin, trying to picture this.

“No,” said Uncle Vorthys. “Running from that nearby worm-hole jump point to the mirror. Or vice versa.”

“And the ore ship, ah, fell in?” said Vorkosigan. He looked momentarily as baffled as Ekaterin felt.

Uncle Vorthys did not look much better. “I should not like to say so in public, that’s certain.”

Vorkosigan asked, “A gravitational force? Or maybe… a gravitic imploder lance?”

“Eh,” said Uncle Vorthys neutrally. “It’s certainly not like the force map of any imploder lance I’ve ever seen. Ah, well.” He picked up his coffee, and prepared to depart for his comconsole again.

“We were just planning an outing,” said Ekaterin. “Would you like to see some more of Serifosa? Pick up a present for the Professora?”

“I would, but I think it’s my turn to stay in and read this morning,” said her uncle. “You two go and have a good time. Though if you do see anything you think would please your aunt, I’d be extremely grateful if you’d purchase it, and I’ll reimburse you.”

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