bioestheties exhibition

[middlingalong]

The following day they visit the 149th Annual Bioestheties Exhibition, Class A, Dedicated to the Memory of the Celestial Lady. This dedication, though rather last-minute, makes it a key stop for offworlders on Eta Ceta for funerary proceedings. Lord Vorreedi is, unexpectedly, present too; he may be hard to slip.

The exhibits are gorgeous. Unnatural colors of various flowers are sufficiently routine to be used as borders for the real show - fish with clan marks on their scales (this exhibitor is about twelve), a pet unicorn (this one is possibly not even an exhibit), a tendril of vine that attempts to entrap Ivan's foot (its keeper dislodges it), and a kitten tree.

Ivan is displeased by the kitten tree, believing there to be glue involved in the attachment of kittens to their pods. He picks one in a determined rescue attempt. It is not ripe; the kitten expires when detached. Vorreedi offers to discreetly dispose of the poor beast, for which Ivan is intensely grateful.

Their erstwhile friend Yenaro is present. When Ivan notices, he points the man out to Miles.

Comments

[isthisart]

"Bye," she calls, the bubble-distortion affecting the word halfway through.

[thisvorlunatic]

He continues to grin foolishly all the way back to the exhibition.

[middlingalong]

Where Ivan catches him almost immediately. "There you are, where the hell did you go?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"To report our new information to my haut-contact," he says in an undertone, trying for 'serious' and not really making it more than a third of the way there.

[middlingalong]

"And get drunk with your the-haut-whoever, what's gotten into y- oh my god, tell me I'm wrong."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I was not getting drunk, shut up."

[middlingalong]

"No, that is no longer my guess, tell me you don't fancy yourself in love with a haut-lady, the haut-ladies are off-limits, Miles."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Haut-ladies as a category, yes. This particular one as much as said outright that if I bring this operation off, she's going to petition to be awarded to me. Which isn't quite how they usually do it, but obviously she has connections, that's how we met in the first place."

[middlingalong]

"Tell me you don't fancy a haut-lady in love with you."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Thank you, Ivan," he grits, "I'm perfectly aware of how unlovable I am. She at least definitely seems to like my style better than what she gets at home."

[middlingalong]

"Oh, God, Miles, I didn't mean about - I'm talking about haut-ladies, not about you, how do you know you're not being - conned, suborned, set up?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Because everything I'm doing is exactly the same thing I'd be doing anyway. Except I'd be grinning less."

[middlingalong]

"You're impossible," says Ivan. "Anyway - Vorreedi got back barely a minute after you scarpered - he talked to Yenaro. The pro who the perimeter fellow saw coming - they caught him and fast-penta'd him but didn't keep him in custody - was there to make sure Yenaro didn't leave alive. Yenaro had a ten-minute head start till the fast-penta wore off and got out. Vorreedi's certainly going to want to talk to you - I told him you had enough sense of proportion not to have tried to put a hit on Yenaro about your legs, anyway."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Well, thanks."

[middlingalong]

"You're welcome. I hope you know what you're doing - rather, I wish you knew what you were doing."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Don't we all," he mutters, in a rare moment of honesty on that subject.

[middlingalong]

"Anyway. I'm supposed to be looking for you. Let's say I found you. We're going back to the embassy."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Sounds like a fine plan to me."

[middlingalong]

And so they go.

Ivan refrains from mentioning Miles's fancies about haut-ladies in front of Vorreedi.

[thisvorlunatic]

For which Miles is deeply grateful.

[middlingalong]

It makes for a quiet ride - but as promised, once they're there, Ivan scurries up to his room, and Vorreedi wants to see Miles in his office - "after you are recovered from your misadventure, perhaps tomorrow morning".

[thisvorlunatic]

"Of course, sir," he promises, and flees to his room.



The next morning, however, he is unable to avoid reporting to Colonel Vorreedi's office, located among the embassy's ImpSec offices in the second-lowest basement level of the building. He goes in expecting a tough conversation, and Vorreedi does not disappoint.

Through the select application of carefully curated truths, however, he manages to emerge with Vorreedi now under the impression that Miles is a high-level ImpSec operative under cover as a nepotistic deadweight, executing a secret mission with full autonomy, under no constraint but 'deliver success or pay with your ass'. Vorreedi observes that he has been doing this for three years and his ass is still intact. Miles privately suspects that this may be about to change, but aloud only agrees that it is so.

He is a high-level operative under cover as a nepotistic deadweight, that much is true. The fact that his secret mission is spontaneously self-assigned, and he honestly doesn't know what Illyan is going to think of it when he finally makes his report, is something he chooses to keep to himself in the interests of getting to complete that mission.

Speaking of which, the last thing Vorreedi says is that ghem-Colonel Dag Benin is here for another interview - this time specifically asking to talk to both Miles and Ivan. Miles volunteers brightly to go fetch. It's very bad practice to let the suspects confer before the interrogation, but it's not Vorreedi's interrogation; he lets Miles go.

Miles hustles back up to the comfortable diplomatic quarters as fast as humanly possible.

[middlingalong]

"What's climbed up your trouser leg, then?" asks Ivan, when he's let Miles into the room.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Dag Benin. Here. Asking to talk to both of us, with Vorreedi sitting in. Get up, get dressed, come downstairs, let me do the talking, back up whatever I say."

[middlingalong]

"Oh, God. What now?" asks Ivan in tones of despair.