Ivan tried to imagine how a Jacksonian who had already once fought his way to the top of a major House defined that last term. Plus wife, don’t forget—they did seem to be a team. The only comparison he had was Miles’s Jacksonian-raised and relentlessly entrepreneurial clone-brother Mark, which was . . . not especially reassuring.
Ivan wondered if it was better to lay his cards right on the table—Just what are you people after under that park in front of ImpSec? Or let them assume him oblivious? Presumed obliviousness had served Ivan well many times in the past, after all. Perhaps he should split the difference. Just how close to tapped out were the Arquas, anyway? Could he ask Raudsepp? Morozov?
Hell, why not ask Shiv?
He leaned back and tented his hands, remembered where that gesture came from, almost put them down, but then left them up. “So . . . just how close are you folks to being tapped out, anyway? It’s been a pretty long run for you to get this far.” He just barely stopped his mouth from going on and apologizing for such a rude question, as Udine, at least, was nodding in rare approval.
Shiv’s eye-flick caught it, too. His thick shoulders gave a little shrug. “How much is enough depends on what you want to do with it. Venture capital—I believe you planetary agriculturalists would call it seed corn, ah, yes, that’s the term—if a man is reduced to consuming his startup stake, he has nothing to hazard for the next round. What do you people call your currency, marks—well, Barrayaran marks, Betan dollars, Cetagandan reyuls, doesn’t matter, the principle’s the same. There’s a saying in the Whole: it’s easier to turn one million into two million than it is to turn one into two.”
“The effective break-point for us,” put in Udine, “is enough to fund a credible attempt to retake House Cordonah. We are, shall we say, not without hidden resources and potential allies back in the Whole, but not if we arrive appearing to be disarmed, destitute, and desperate.”
“Whether you can climb up to success or are forced down to grubberdom depends on making your break-point,” said Shiv. “Both success and failure are feedback loops, that way. Me, I started as a gutter grubber. I don’t plan on going back down to that gutter again alive.”
Jacksonian determination glinted in Shiv’s eye, reminding Ivan, for a weird moment, of his cousin Miles. People for whom failure was psychologically tantamount to death, yeah.
Ivan had a few clues as to what forces had shaped Miles that way, putative child of privilege though he was. The chief of whom had been named General Count Piotr Vorkosigan, though Barrayar’s endemic hostility toward perceived mutations had certainly provided an ongoing chorus to that appalling old man, whose every grudging grain of approval had been won by his mutie grandson by an equally appalling achievement, or at least some bone-cracking attempt at it. On Ivan’s personal youthful list of people to avoid, Great-uncle Piotr had been at the top. Not a ploy available to Miles, poor sawed-off sod.
So what had shaped and wound that same tight spring in Shiv? And Udine as well? Ivan wasn’t sure he wanted the tour.
“Isn’t enough to fund a small war also enough to, say, buy a nice tropical island and retire?” Ivan couldn’t help asking.
“Not while those Prestene bastards hold two of my children hostage,” said Shiv grimly.
“Not to mention my hair,” said Udine, plucking at her fringe. Shiv caught the nervous hand and kissed it, looking sideways at his wife, and for the first time Ivan wondered, What else besides the hair? Yet whatever had been done to her, in the unsavory hands of her enemies, Ivan was pretty sure the hair was going to be the only part ever mentioned aloud.
“Ah. Yeah,” said Ivan. No, it wasn’t just about money; there was blood on the line as well. Ivan understood blood, well enough.
But it did give Ivan a notion as to what the Arquas thought was under that park: enough to fund a small war. Or buy a tropical island, depending on one’s tastes in such things. And these two didn’t look to be going for the drinks with fruit on little sticks.
“But, ah—Tej wouldn’t really need to go back with you for that, would she? Surely it would be safer to leave her here on Barrayar.” With me.
“With you?” said Udine, raising an eyebrow and making Ivan twitch.
“I do, um . . . like her a lot,” Ivan managed. He wondered if So does my mother and sort-of-stepfather would be good to add, or if that would just up the bidding on the deal.
Udine sat back. “So you . . . like her enough to want her to forsake her family and stay with you—but do you like her enough to leave your family and go with her?”
Shiv, too, stared narrowly at him at this. “It’s true, he does have that Barrayaran military training. It is unclear how much he also has Barrayaran military experience, however.”
Ivan gulped, unnerved. “I’d be delighted to leave my family and go somewhere with Tej, just not . . . not Jackson’s Whole. Not my kind of place, y’know.”
“Hm,” said Shiv, opaquely. He eased back in his seat, though Ivan hadn’t noticed him tense.
Ivan said, “Look, I can support a wife here on Barrayar. And I know my home ground. On Jackson’s Whole, I’d be, what . . . destitute and disarmed. Not to mention out of my depth.”
“As Tej has been, here?” Udine inquired sweetly.
Shiv gave him the eyebrow thing. “A man should know himself, I suppose,” he said. “Me, I’ve been face flat, sucking gutter slime, three times in my life, and had to start again each time from scratch. I’m getting too old to enjoy shoveling that shit anymore, but I can’t say I don’t know how.”
This was not, Ivan sensed, a remark in Ivan’s favor, oblique though it sounded.
“I, as well,” murmured Udine, “though only once. I do not mean to let this present contretemps stand as twice.”
“But you left your original family,” Ivan tried. “To go with Shiv. Your new husband. Didn’t you? Anyway, left your planet.”
Udine’s voice went dry. “More evicted than left, in the event. We were fleeing the Barrayaran military conquest of Komarr, at the time.”
“Although that worked out surprisingly well,” Shiv murmured. “In the long run.” That passing hand grip again, on the sofa between them.
Her eyes grew amused, and turned back on Ivan. “Yes, I suppose I should thank you Barrayarans for that. Ejecting me out of my rut.”
“I wasn’t born yet,” Ivan put in, just in case.
Dare he ask them, straight out, Are you planning to take Tej away? What if the answer was Yes, certainly? Did Tej think she had a vote? Did they think Tej had a vote? Or Ivan?
No, Jacksonians didn’t have votes; they had deals. For the first time, Ivan wondered uneasily what he had to offer at the Great House scale of play. His personal wealth, though doubtless impressive to some prole or grubber, would barely tweak their scanners. His blood was more hazard than hope, the main question being how far it would splash in a crunch. And he wasn’t a candidate for conscription into their system, as they had hinted, not under any circumstances. Which left—what?
Udine’s gaze strayed to her abandoned comconsole. The suite was awfully quiet, Ivan realized. Where were all the rest of the clan this morning, and what were they doing? “Well, don’t let us keep you, Captain Vorpatril.”
From what? But Ivan took the hint, and stood. “Right-oh. Thanks for the coffee. If you hear from Tej before I do, ask her to call me, huh?” He tapped his wristcom meaningfully.
“Certainly,” said Udine.
Shiv saw him back to the door. “As it so happens,” he said, eyeing Ivan shrewdly, “we do have a little side deal in progress here on Barrayar. If it is successful, it will certainly aid our departure.” And if you want to see the back of Clan Arqua, maybe you’d better do your bit to see it is successful, huh? seemed to hang in the air, implied.
“I sure hope everything works out,” Ivan responded. Shiv merely looked amused at that manifest vagueness.
Ivan retreated down the hotel corridor.
He rather thought he might als
o see the back of Clan Arqua by just waiting and letting nature, or at least Customs & Immigration, take its course. Deportation, that was the ticket. And he, personally, wouldn’t have to lift a finger. And Tej would not be included in the roundup, because she had, what had Lady ghem Estif called it, umbrella residency as a spouse, all right and tight and no argument there.
If she chose.
Yeah.
It seemed to Ivan that he needed to court his wife. Promptly. In the next, what was it, ten days. If he could catch her in passing, in this spate of Arqua chores. But how can I court her when no one even gives me a chance to see her?
* * *
Tej parked the rented groundcar and stared dubiously around the dim underground garage. After yesterday’s dance in the park, and some sharp debate over city maps, Pearl had found this place—by the simple method of walking around and looking—under one of the few commercial buildings near ImpSec HQ, which was otherwise mainly ringed by assorted stodgy government offices. This building housed mostly offices as well: attorneys, a satellite communications company, an architectural firm, a terraforming consultant, financial managers of various sorts. The two layers of garage were packed during the day, but relatively clear after hours and on the Barrayaran weekend, which this was.
This commercial building lay on a corner across the street from the backside, as it were, of the security headquarters. The far side, unfortunately, from the little park that had indeed been found to top Grandmama’s old lab site, or most of it; some of the lab had been mapped to run under the street fronting the headquarters. If ImpSec’s subbasements had been dug two dozen meters farther southeast, back in Mad Yuri’s day, they’d have cut right into the lab’s top corner. Tej didn’t see how they could have missed detecting it, but the Baronne claimed they must have. Dada . . . was perhaps persuading himself to believe.
As Tej, Amiri, and Grandmama exited the groundcar, Pearl detached herself from the shadow of a pillar and waved them over. Amiri removed a hefty valise from the trunk and followed.
“It’s looking good,” said Pearl. “Seems to be a storeroom for garage maintenance, in use, but no one has been in or out since I’ve been monitoring. I’ve adjusted the lock for us.”
She glanced around and led the way into a small, utilitarian chamber lit only, at the moment, by a cold light set on a metal shelf. The chamber and shelves seemed to contain stacks of various traffic barricades, buckets of paint, a ladder, and encouragingly dusty miscellanea. Pearl cracked a second cold light, doubling the eerie illumination.
“We need to leave it looking like no one has been in or out, too,” said Amiri. “At least for now. Where should we start?”
“Let’s shift these two shelves,” said Pearl. “We can shift them back, after. Here, Tej, take one end.”
Tej dutifully lifted her half of the grubby thing. When they were done, a large patch of concrete flooring lay exposed in the chamber’s corner.
From the valise, Amiri handed out breath masks, all marked with logos from the jumpship line the Arquas had traveled in on. Tej was under the impression that such safety devices were supposed to be handed back at the end of the voyage, but oh well. Waste not. He then donned biotainer gloves and removed a bottle from the valise; everyone else stood well back as he squatted and trailed a line of liquid in a smooth circle about a meter in diameter over the concrete, which began to bubble.
While the cutting fluid worked, he laid out other objects, including a long, mysterious padded case. Then they all stood back and stared for a while.
“All right,” he said at last, and he, Tej, and Pearl combined to lever the concrete slab out of its matrix and shove it aside. Revealed was a layer of pressed stones.
Pearl trundled up a waste bin, and she and Amiri and Tej then knelt and began prying up rocks—by hand. “You might have brought a shovel,” Tej grumbled.
“There should only be about a half a meter of this before we hit subsoil,” Amiri said. “Maybe less, if the contractor stinted.”
“Many hands make light the work,” Grandmama intoned, watching. At Tej’s irritated glance over her shoulder, she added, “It’s an old Earth saying I picked up.”
“No wonder everybody left the planet,” muttered Tej. Hired grubbers with power tools seemed a better deal for lightening a load to her.
“I would feel more secure if we could have found a place to rent or buy,” said Amiri. “Really proof against interruptions.”
“But this leaves no data trail,” said Pearl, perhaps defending her find.
This squabble continued intermittently until Tej found herself at the bottom of a half-meter-deep hole levering rocks out of identifiable dirt. Grandmama leaned over, shone the light down, and said, “That’s probably enough.” At least Amiri gave Tej a hand out. She pulled down her mask and sucked on a bleeding fingertip where her nail had broken.
Amiri brought the long box to the lip of the hole, took a deep breath, and knelt to open it.
“You don’t have to handle it like a live bomb,” Grandmama chided. “It’s quite inert until it’s activated.”
“If the stuff eats dirt, won’t it eat us?” said Amiri.
“Only if you are foolish enough to get it on yourself while it’s working,” said Grandmama. “Which I trust no grandchild of mine would be, especially after how many years of expensive Escobaran biomedical education?”
Amiri sighed and redonned his gloves. Tej ventured nearer to look more closely into the box.
It bore a label reading Mycoborer, experimental, GSA Patent Applied For. Do not remove from GalacTech Company premises without authorization, under penalty of immediate termination and criminal prosecution. Inside the box were layers of trays holding an array of thin, dark sticks, each about fifty centimeters long.
“How deep should we go for the first vertical shaft?” asked Amiri.
“Since Pearl’s location has given us the first two stories down for free, I think eight meters should be enough to start,” said Grandmama judiciously. “We may have to dogleg down more later, depending on what we find between, but that should put us approximately level with the top floor of my old laboratory bunker.”
“What diameter? A meter may not be very roomy, if we have to bring much stuff back up and out.”
“Mm, we may be able to drive a parallel or diagonal shaft later. For the moment, the chief urgency is to get someone inside to inventory what’s still there as swiftly as possible.”
If anything, Tej couldn’t help thinking.
“Right,” said Amiri, and gingerly took up a pair of cutters, measured eight centimeters along one of the sticks, and snipped it through. He then took a half-meter-long drilling rod, descended to the hole, and began twisting it down through the hard-packed soil. Everything still all by gloved hand.
“If we’re doing this,” said Tej, “then why do I have to spend all day tomorrow driving Star around to engineering and plumbing supply places?”
“To give your nice ImpSec people something to look at, dear,” said Grandmama. “They will be happier that way, I’m sure.”
“By the time they think we’re ready to start, we should be done,” said Pearl. “How did you find out about this”—she bent to peer at the label—“Mycoborer product, anyway?”
“I did some consulting a few years back for GalacTech Bioengineering, and struck up an acquaintance with one of the developers.”
“Did you steal it out of their labs?” asked Pearl, with an air of incipient admiration.
“By no means,” said Grandmama, with a bit of a sniff, possibly at so crude a concept. “But when I and your mother and Shiv thought of this possible resource, I remembered Carlo, and went to see him. He was happy to give me a large supply. I thought it might be needed.” Her tone was a touch smug.
Amiri slipped the stick down his new hole, eyed it for straightness, climbed out, and drew from his valise a liter bottle of perfectly ordinary household ammonia, apparently purchased from some local grocery. He descende
d again and gingerly poured about half of it in around the stick. It disappeared into the dark with a bare gurgle, only its pungent aroma rising, along with Amiri, from their little excavation. Tej hastily readjusted her mask.
Four people stood around the pit, staring.
“Nothing’s happening,” said Tej after a minute.
“I thought you said this would work fast,” said Pearl.
“It’s not instantaneous,” chided Grandmama. “Macrobiological processes seldom are.” She added after a while, as anything visible continued to not happen, “The Mycoborer was developed as a method of laying pipe without having to dig trenches; the genetic developer hopes it can be trained to build its own custom pipe as it goes, but that seems to lie in the future. For the moment, they’re happy to have it proceed in a straight route with uniform diameter.”
“Pipes,” said Tej, trying to picture this. “Will they be big enough for people to get through?”
“Some pipes are quite large,” said Grandmama. “For civic water tunnels and underground monorails, for example.”
“Oh,” said Tej. “Um . . . if it’s really alive, what stops it from just growing forever?”
“The tubular walls, which are composed of its own waste products, eventually choke it off,” said Grandmama. “Failing that, there is a suicide gene built-in after it loses enough telomeres, and failing that, there is ordinary senescence. And failing that, it can be sterilized by heat. Really, I was entirely in sympathy with poor Carlo over his frustration with the delays about the scaled-up outdoor testing. Those Earth regulatory agencies are so obstructive.”
Amiri blinked. “Wait. This stuff has never been tested?”
“Outdoors, no. It has been tested most extensively in Carlo’s laboratory.” She added pensively, “It is supposed to penetrate fairly swiftly through soil, subsoil, and clay. So-so through sand. Poor in limestone, stopped by granite and other igneous rocks and by most synthetic materials. It is possible we may be compelled to reroute a few times, if the Mycoborer comes up against unexpected subsoil inclusions.”