marilacan embassy

[middlingalong]

Ivan does not successfully get Miles to stop fussing with the thing (Miles takes an impression of its impressions on a plastic flimsy) or convince him to leave it somewhere other than inside the bedchamber (it is in a drawer) nor get him to actually tell Vorreedi as promised (Vorreedi is dealing with importation infractions out of town; this is, Miles says, nothing to do with him). He does, however, get Miles (who complains about not having had warning about all this downtime such that he could have scheduled leg bone replacement surgery) to their ride to the party, on time and in uniform.

The Marilacan embassy is, Vorob'yev says, to be regarded as neutral yet non-secured territory - they can enjoy themselves, among fellow offworlders and some ghem-lords. Vorob'yev entertains them - so to speak - on the way by remarking on the Marilacan strategic situation; they've apparently been taking lots of help from Ceteganda, are ignoring their womhole maps and don't think Cetaganda would ever backstab them and blah blah. There is also more fascinating gossip about suicides with... "uncooperative principals", but not much of it; the topic soon drifts to the fact that the party may yield gossip that they should report to Vorreedi when he's back. Along with certain other things they should report to Vorreedi.

"Try not to give away more than you gain," Vorob'yev says.

"Well, I'm safe," remarks Ivan. "I don't know anything." A position of safety he'd dearly like to be able to cultivate more, coz, hint hint.

The Marilacan embassy is pretty, and scans their guests; Ivan does at least know enough to have left the nerve disruptor behind. There's an art project - Ivan doesn't rightly know what sort of thing to call it; a sculpture? With a water feature? And flying colorful flakes? The Marilacan ambassador, Berneaux, says it's called Autumn Leaves, anyway, so it's an Autumn Leaves - and then both lieutenants are shooed. The hors d'oeuvres are excellent. There is wine. Ivan can at this point get rid of his cousin and see if there are any ladies who could benefit from his company about.

Oh now there is one.

Ivan sets about charming the probably-at-least-an-eighth-haut ghem-lady as best he knows how. Mutants on purpose may be mutants still but pretty on purpose is pretty still likewise. He knows tact, at least with girls. He gets her (Lady Gelle) to laugh. Miles is wandering back in his direction again, but whatever, Miles probably isn't going to compete with him for elbow room here.

Then they're approached by some ghem-lord, Yenaro apparently, who mercifully doesn't seem to be related to or involved with the girl, and indeed obliquely congratulates her on having located "galactic exotics". Good, Ivan has been trading on the right characteristic with her so far. Gelle introduces Ivan, and prompts Ivan to introduce Miles, to Yenaro. They talk ancient history, grandfathers and who's at fault for events of the war - apparently they call it the Barrayaran War here.

Gelle kindly diverts the subject to the art piece, which is Yenaro's handiwork. He insults her stylistic choices and Ivan takes the opening to compliment her; if she's looking for sophisticated Cetegandan taste over appreciative galactic obliviousness Ivan can't help her, but he can show off the latter to best effect in case it'll sell. Yenaro chooses this occasion to tell the lady that Ivan was born in the usual - well, the normal, anyway - fashion. Her revulsion is disheartening, although she seems to find Yenaro's behavior at least as obnoxious as she finds childbirth grotesque. Either way, the combination of the two sends her skating off into the crowd.

Yenaro fumbles and then coaxes them into touring the interior of his sculpture. Miles breaks off, but Ivan goes ahead and has a look, no use holding a grudge at the man for dissuading exactly one girl, however pretty she was. Miles is apparently more interested in talking to the forty-standard lady Vorob'yev has on his arm.

Comments

[alicornucopia]

"Two years ago, I would have scorned that militaristic view. Since the Cetagandan invasion attempt we've come to appreciate it. Actually, the ghem-lords are so much like the Vor, I'd think you'd find them more comprehensible than we Vervani do. The haut-lords are... something else. And the haut-ladies are even more something else, I've begun to realize."

[thisvorlunatic]

Yes, the attempted Cetagandan invasion of Vervain, which Miles's father repelled with Miles's direly classified but absolutely integral assistance, hence her kind offer of help to Aral Vorkosigan's outwardly useless son. But he's not dwelling on that, no indeed.

"The haut-lords' women are so thoroughly sequestered... do they ever do anything?" he asks, immersing himself in the topic at hand. "I mean, nobody ever sees them, do they? They have no power." As far as he knows, which is admittedly not far at all.

[alicornucopia]

"They have their own sort of power. Their own areas of control. Parallel, not competing with their men. It all makes sense, they just never bother explaining it to outsiders."

[thisvorlunatic]

"To inferiors," says Miles, having perhaps not immersed himself as well as he meant. But the haut are - well, haughty, even more so than the Cetagandan baseline.

[alicornucopia]

"That, too." Dimple!

[thisvorlunatic]

"So..."

Possibly the best chance he'll get tonight, perhaps the best chance available at all, to find out more about the mysterious screaming bird. If she has the appropriate knowledge base, or knows who does.

"Are you well-up on ghem- and haut-lord seals, crests, marks, that sort of thing? I can recognize about fifty clan-marks by sight, and all the military insignia and corps crests, of course, but I know that just scraches the surface."

[alicornucopia]

"I'm fairly well up," she says. "They have layers within layers; I can't claim to know them all by any means."

[thisvorlunatic]

Yes, indeed... Frowning thoughtfully, Miles extracts the flimsy from his pocket and smooths it out against the railing to display the bird.

"Do you know this icon? I ran across it... well, in an odd place. But it smells ghemish, or hautish, if you know what I mean."

[alicornucopia]

Maz scrutinizes it. "I don't recognize it right off. But you're correct, it's definitely in the Cetagandan style. It's old, though."

[thisvorlunatic]

"How can you tell?" he asks, eager for any light she can shed.

[alicornucopia]

"Well, it's clearly a personal seal, not a clan-mark, but it doesn't have an outline around it. For the last three generations people have been putting their personal marks in cartouches, with more and more elaborate borders. You can practically tell the decade by the border design. If you like, I can try to look it up in my resource materials."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Would you? I'd like that very much." He refolds the flimsy and hands it over. "Uh... I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't show it to anyone else, though." Who knows what kind of trouble it could get her into - or him - or both.

[alicornucopia]

"Oh...?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Excuse me. Professional paranoia. I, uh..." need to pass this off as smoothly as possible so she doesn't think I'm up to something—act a little more suspicious, Miles, why don't you— "It's a habit," is the best he can come up with on the spot.

[middlingalong]

Ivan turns up as this weak deflection sails into the air. He smiles at Maz. Yerano is still attached to his person. Maz is introduced; Maz does not repeat her offer of boundless Vervani gratitude.

"You really ought to let Lord Yerano take you on a tour of his sculpture, Miles," Ivan says. "It's quite a thing. An opportunity not to be missed and all that."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yes, it's very fine," says Miles, with perhaps less enthusiasm than he might have. True, he's gotten as much intelligence out of Maz as he's going to for the moment, but he was hoping for another dimple or two.

[middlingalong]

"Would you be interested, Lord Vorkosigan?" Lord Yenaro asks earnestly, hope in his eyes.

Ivan bends over far enough to whisper in Miles's ear: "It was Lord Yenaro's gift to the Marilacan embassy. Don't be a lout, Miles, you know how sensitive the Cetagandans are about their artsy, uh, things."

[thisvorlunatic]

Yes, very unfortunately, yes he does. Miles allows the eager Yenaro to shepherd him off, and does his best to recapture his earlier interest in Autumn Leaves.

"I'm not really qualified to judge aesthetics," he says as they descend the stairs, because he certainly isn't by Cetagandan standards and the last thing he wants is to struggle to explain his wordless emotional impression of the piece's seasonal cycle to this fluttery ghem-lordling.

[alicornucopia]

"So very few are," says the smiling ghem-lord, "but that doesn't stop them."

[thisvorlunatic]

"It does seem to me to be a considerable technical achievement," he says, steering the conversation onto a topic he is comfortable discussing. "Do you drive the motion with anti-grav, then?" A technology with which he is particularly familiar - he's lost count of the time he's spent slithering around on grav-crutches after an unlucky fall broke one or both legs. He hates the things even more than he hates the steel leg braces, currently concealed under his uniform trousers, that he wears to prevent more such incidents.

[alicornucopia]

"No, there's no antigrav in it at all. The generators would be bulky and wasteful of power. The same force drives the leaves' motion as drives their color changes - or so my technicians explained to me."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Technicians? I somehow pictured you putting all this together with your own hands," he says, eyeing the sculpture as they stand at the walk-through entrance - presumably to await the beginning of the cycle. (He isn't sure why he pictured such a thing; the image is more than a little bizarre. The well-dressed Yenaro seems better suited to whisking around in a small organized laboratory working on small organized creations, an image which Miles can conjure without difficulty.)

[alicornucopia]

Yenaro spreads said hands: long pianist's fingers, pale, unmarked. "Of course not. Hands are to be hired. Design is the test of the intellect."

[thisvorlunatic]

And those certainly aren't the hands of a technician.

"I must disagree," says Miles. "In my experience, hands are integral with brains, almost another lobe for intelligence. What one does not know through one's hands, one does not truly know."

[alicornucopia]

"You are a man capable of true conversation, I perceive," says Yenaro. "You must meet my friends, if your schedule here permits. I'm holding a reception at my home in two evenings' time - do you suppose -?"