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]

Linyabel's voice, or one cunningly disguised thereas - well, as cunning as it needs to be with the helpful layer of distortion from the bubble, at any rate - says: "Lord Vorkosigan. You expressed an interest in genetic matters. I thought you would care for a short tour."

[thisvorlunatic]

So, she must at least suspect they're being monitored. Good for her. Miles suspects the same.

"Indeed, milady. All medical procedures interest me," he answers. "I feel the corrections to my own damage were extremely incomplete. I'm always looking for new hopes and chances, whenever I have an opportunity to visit more advanced galactic societies."

[isthisart]

"Follow me," she suggests, and she leads him on a meandering route through the garden, to a long, low, white building with a door that objects to casual entry. It lets him in with her as soon as she's finessed its requirements, though.

The corridors are much less labyrinthine, and she takes him to a spacious office, glass-walled on one side displaying a biolab of sorts.

Linyabel dispenses with her bubble and gets up out of her chair as soon as they're there. Her hair is in a single, five-stranded braid that falls to her knees and is dotted with pins of pearls carved into flowers every few inches; she's still in white mourning, but it's a different exact outfit, drapier, trailing to the floor when she stands.

"Lisbet," she says, to another haut-woman there, "Lord Vorkosigan. Lord Vorkosigan, the Handmaiden haut Lisbet Serise."

[exerce_imperia]

"Welcome, Lord Vorkosigan," says the Handmaiden of the Star Creche.

She is wearing a white bodysuit under a few layers of simple calf-length robes decorated with touches of white-on-white embroidery. Her skin is a warm shade of medium brown, as flawless as Linya's; her eyes are a much darker brown, almost but not quite black; her hair is mainly between the two, but where individual strands in the waterfall of curls catch the light just so, they shine a deep honey-gold.

"We can speak freely here. I agree with your assessment that it is past time we met."

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles discovers that he is developing an immunity to haut beauty; he has only a moderate urge to throw himself to the floor and weep.

"Er... yes, milady," he manages. "Won't your Security be, um, less than pleased, though?"

[exerce_imperia]

The haut Lisbet smiles. "They will just have to contain their displeasure. First, I should tell you that I spoke with Governor haut Slyke Giaja yesterday, and I strongly believe he is not the thief. He wanted to see the regalia, but had no reaction whatsoever to the fake Key - no subtle tells, and no demands that I demonstrate its continued functionality. That narrows our list of suspects down to two."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I see... you're sure about him?" he asks. "It's just, I was just talking to the other two, and haut-lords don't seem to have tells, as far as I can... tell."

[exerce_imperia]

"The haut can be difficult to read," she acknowledges, "even to other haut - but reading people is a particular talent of mine. Slyke is a dead end, I all but guarantee it."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Okay. That leaves Kety or Rond," he says. "I couldn't manage to eliminate either of them with the lines of investigation available to me... by the way," he turns to Linyabel, "the ghem-colonel in charge of investigating Ba Lura's murder spoke with me yesterday. He wanted to know what we talked about, the first - and as far as he knows, the only - time we met. I said you asked me a lot of confusingly vague questions that I thought might have something to do with a genetic interest in my... anomalies. Which are not in fact genetic," he emphasizes. "Teratogenic damage only - prenatal poisoning, from an assassination attempt on my parents. I hope he hasn't managed to corner you in the meantime and gotten a different story out of you...?"

[isthisart]

"I was not in the least informative to him, so the story is consistent," she says. "And I knew that already; I looked you up."

[thisvorlunatic]

...He blinks, caught off-guard. "You did?"

[isthisart]

"I had to know who to send the ba for the first time," she explains. "And I read quickly and I was not pressingly occupied, so there was no reason to stop at the part where I could describe you as being roughly its height."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Oh."

He smiles.

[isthisart]

"Anyway. This leaves two possibilities and I am at a loss as to how to meaningfully discriminate between them in a timely manner."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Much as I hate to say it... if none of us can think of anything better, we might just have to wait," says Miles. "I gave the investigator a hint or two that might help lead him in the direction of the governors, and my own embassy's security is investigating the man who caused my embarrassing accident earlier in the week." He omits all mention of Ivan's embarrassing accident. "I can probably get something out of Benin if he comes back to ask me more questions, and embassy security might turn up some dirt on Yenaro. Those are the only lines I've got."

[isthisart]

"So - this was close to pointless apart from getting our stories straight, then - speaking of which, what is the explanation for why Lord Vorkosigan is here if someone asks?"

[exerce_imperia]

"Lord Vorkosigan inquired after genetic solutions to his troubles, which I of course proved unable to supply—" Her comconsole chimes. She glances at it. "—And then, apparently, I asked the two of you to wait outside my office while I took a call relating to Star Creche business." She makes a slight shooing motion.

[isthisart]

Linyabel shoos. If she does have a balance disorder, it is not apparent when she's just gliding across the floor.

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles follows her, with his characteristic uneven stride, a product of one leg being slightly longer than the other.

He is not at all sure what to say. Talk to her, talk to her! —but about what?

[isthisart]

"If the consequences of pointing out the wrong one weren't so potentially disastrous this would be much easier," sighs Linyabel.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yes," says Miles. "If only. It is worthwhile to have Slyke ruled out, though. Just two to go..." Oh, the hell with it. "Milady, may I ask why you don't want to be married off to a ghem-lord? I'm—sorry if the question is too personal. I find all this haut-business even more bewildering than I'd anticipated."

[isthisart]

"I don't mind the question. Though I am a little skeptical that you are interested to hear me complain."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Fascinated, milady," he promises quite sincerely.

[isthisart]

"Well. There's two things - there's the reason why most of us don't want it, which has principally to do with loss of face and losing touch with friends and the general acknowledgement by the other haut that this one was a failure and is being demoted. And there's the reason why I don't want it, which is that from the perspective of my extremely unusual goals it would, impressively enough, be a step down. I want to do constructive work. I do not want to play status games and write poetry - though I have nothing against poetry, I do have something against status games - and while I live here and have the privilege of my bubble, my only problems are having a low supply of friends and serious obstacles sharing any of my ideas with people who would use them in broader contexts than miniscule art contests. I don't suffer from lack of materials or education or spare time.

"Assuming I don't find some way to evade the fate before I'm perhaps thirty - maybe younger, I am unusually blatantly an unsuccessful haut-project - then I will abruptly find myself short on all of those things and likely accompanied by co-wives with every reason to despise me. A haut-wife's principal tasks are to design children with dramatically fewer resources than she might have hoped to have for the task - because she can only work with her personal genome and her husband's - and to be ornamental. And these tasks are somewhat harder to dodge than any given use of my time on offer in the Celestial Garden, so even if I selected avenues of work that didn't require materials I didn't have, I'd have less time to do it in. To say nothing of the fact that I have not met any ghem-lords who seemed like pleasing company in their own rights."

[thisvorlunatic]

"...I find I understand your position more than I expected to," he says after a moment, thoughtfully.