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the death of his older brother, presumably.
The second son s room. That was almost as unnerving.
"It s just a guest room, now." The Count swung open another blank wooden door
on hinges. Beyond it lay a sunny chamber.
Obviously hand-made wooden furniture of uncertain age and enormous value
included a bed and chests; a domestic console to control lighting and the
mechanized windows sat incongruously beside the carved headboard.
Mark glanced back, and collided with the Count s deeply questioning stare. It
was a thousand times worse than even the
Dendarii s I-love-Naismith look. He clenched his hands to his head, and
grated, "Miles isn t in here!"
"I know," said the Count quietly. "I was looking for... myself, I suppose. And
Cordelia. And you."
Uncomfortably compelled, Mark looked for himself in the Count, reciprocally.
He wasn t sure. Hair color, formerly; he and
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Miles shared the same dark hair he had seen on vids of the younger Admiral
Vorkosigan. Intellectually, he d known Aral
Vorkosigan was the old General Count Piotr Vorkosigan s younger son, but that
lost older brother had been dead for sixty years.
He was astonished the present Count remembered with such immediacy, or made of
it a connection with himself. Strange, and frightening.
I was to kill this man. I still could. He s not guarding himself at all
.
"Your ImpSec people didn t even fast-penta me. Aren t you at all worried that
I might still be programmed to assassinate you?" Or did he seem so little
threat?
"I thought you shot your father-figure once already. Catharsis enough." A
bemused grimace curved the Count s mouth.
Mark remembered Galen s surprised look, when the nerve-disruptor beam had
taken him full in the face. Whatever Aral
Vorkosigan would look like, dying, Mark fancied it would not be surprised.
"You saved Miles s life then, according to his description of the affray," the
Count said. "You chose your side two years ago, on Earth. Very effectively. I
have many fears for you, Mark, but my death at your hand is not one of them.
You re not as one-
down with respect to your brother as you imagine. Even-all, by my count."
"Progenitor. Not brother," said Mark, stiff and congealed.
"Cordelia and I are your progenitors," said the Count firmly.
Denial flashed in Mark s face.
The Count shrugged. "Whatever Miles is, we made him. You are perhaps wise to
approach us with caution. We may not be good for you, either."
His belly shivered with a terrible longing, restrained by a terrible fear.
Progenitors.
Parents
. He was not sure he wanted parents, at this late date. They were such
enormous figures. He felt obliterated in their shadow, shattered like glass,
annihilated.
He felt a sudden weird wish to have Miles back. Somebody his own size and age,
somebody he could talk to.
The Count glanced again into the bedchamber. "Pym should have arranged your
things."
"I don t have any things. Just the clothes I m wearing... sir." It was
impossible to keep his tongue from adding that honorific.
"You must have had something more to wear!"
"What I brought from Earth, I left in a storage locker on Escobar. The rent s
up by now, it s probably confiscated."
The Count looked him over. "I ll send someone to take your measurements, and
supply you with a kit. If you were visiting under more normal circumstances,
we would be showing you around. Introducing you to friends and relatives. A
tour of the city.
Getting you aptitude tests, making arrangements for furthering your education.
We ll do some of that, in any case."
A school? What kind? Assignment to a Barrayaran military academy was very
close to Mark s idea of a descent into hell.
Could they make him... ? There were ways to resist. He had successfully
resisted being lent Miles s wardrobe.
"If you want anything, ring for Pym on your console," the Count instructed.
Human servants. So very strange. The physical fear that had turned him inside
out was fading, to be replaced by a more formless general anxiety. "Can I get
something to eat?"
"Ah. Please join Cordelia and me for lunch in one hour. Pym will show you to
the Yellow Parlor."
"I can find it. Down one floor, one corridor south, third door on the right."
The Count raised an eyebrow. "Correct."
"I ve studied you, you see."
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"That s all right. We ve studied you, too. We ve all done our homework."
"So what s the test?"
"Ah, that s the trick of it. It s not a test. It s real life."
And real death
. "I m sorry," Mark blurted. For Miles? For himself? He scarcely knew.
The Count looked like he was wondering too; a brief ironic smile twitched one
corner of his mouth. "Well... in a strange way, it s almost a relief to know
that it s as bad as it can be. Before, when Miles was missing, one didn t know
where he was, what he might be doing to, er, magnify the chaos. At least this
time we know he can t possibly get into any worse trouble."
With a brief wave, the Count walked away, not entering the room after Mark,
not crowding him in any way. Three ways to kill him flashed through Mark s
mind. But that training seemed ages stale. He was too out of shape now anyway.
Climbing the stairs had exhausted him. He pulled the door shut and fell onto
the carved bed, shivering with reaction.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ostensibly to allow Mark to recover from jump-lag, the Count and Countess set
no tasks for him the first two days. Indeed, except for the rather formal
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zanotowane.pldoc.pisz.plpdf.pisz.plkwiatpolny.htw.pl
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| Cytat |
Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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