[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

starlight. She thought he had fallen asleep, but he stirred, and spoke again.
She could barely see his face, but for a little glint from the whites of his
eyes, and his teeth.
"Your customs seem so free, and calm, to me. As innocent as sunlight. No
grief, no pain, no irrevocable mistakes. No boys turned criminal by fear. No
stupid jealousy. No honor ever lost."
"That's an illusion. You can still lose your honor. It just doesn't happen in
a night. It can take years, to drain away in bits and dribbles." She paused,
in the friendly dark. "I knew this woman, once-a very good friend of mine. In
Survey. She was rather-
socially inept. Everyone around her seemed to be finding their soul-mates, and
the older she grew, the more panicky she got about being left out. Quite
pathetically anxious.
"She finally fell in with a man with the most astonishing talent for turning
gold into lead. She couldn't use a word like love, or trust, or honor in his
presence without eliciting clever mockery. Pornography was permitted; poetry,
never.
"They were, as it happened, of equal rank when the captaincy of their ship
fell open. She'd sweated blood for this command, worked her tail off-well, I'm
sure you know what it's like. Commands are few, and everybody wants one. Her
lover persuaded her, partly by promise that turned out to be lies,
later-children, in fact-to stand down in his favor, and he got the command.
Quite the strategist. It ended soon after. Thoroughly dry.
"She had no stomach for another lover, after that. So you see, I think your
old Barrayarans may have been on to something, after all. The inept-need
rules, for their own protection."
The waterfall whispered in the silence. "I-knew a man once," his voice came
out of the darkness. "He was married, at twenty, to a girl of high rank of
eighteen. Arranged, of course, but he was very happy with it."
"He was away most of the time, on duty. She found herself free, rich, alone in
the capital in the society of people-not altogether vicious, but older than
herself. Rich parasites, their parasites, users. She was courted, and it went
Page 25
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
to her head. Not her heart, I think. She took lovers, as those around her did.
Looking back, I don't think she felt any more emotion for them than vanity and
pride of conquest, but at the time... He had built up a false picture of her
in his mind, and having it suddenly shattered... This boy had a very bad
temper. It was his particular curse. He resolved on a duel with her lovers.
"She had two on her string, or her on theirs, I can't say which. He didn't
care who survived, or if he were arrested. He imagined he was dishonored, you
see. He arranged to have each meet him at a deserted place, about half an hour
apart."
He paused for a long time. Cordelia waited, barely breathing, uncertain
whether to encourage him to go on or not. He continued eventually, but his
voice went flatter and he spoke in a rush.
"The first was another pigheaded young aristocrat like himself, and he played
out the game by the rules. He knew the use of the two swords, fought with
flair, and almost killed m-my friend. The last thing he said was that he'd
always wanted to be killed by a jealous husband, only at age eighty."
By this time, the little slip was no surprise to Cordelia, and she wondered if
her story had been as transparent to him. It certainly seemed so.
"The second was a high government minister, an older man. He wouldn't fight,
although he knocked him down and stood him up several times. After-after the
other, who had died with a joke in his mouth, he could hardly bear it. He
finally slew him outright in the middle of his begging, and left them there.
"He stopped at his wife's apartment, to tell her what he'd done, and returned
to his ship, to wait for arrest. This all happened in one afternoon. She was
enraged, full of wounded pride-she would have dueled with him, if she
could-and she killed herself. Shot herself in the head, with his service
plasma arc. I wouldn't have thought it a woman's weapon. Poison, or cutting
the wrists, or something. But she was true Vor. It burned her face entirely
away. She'd had the most beautiful imaginable face ...
"Things worked out very strangely. It was assumed the two lovers had killed
each other-I swear, he never planned it that way-
and that she'd killed herself in despondency. No one ever asked him the first
question about it."
His voice slowed, and intensified. "He went through that whole afternoon like
a sleepwalker, or an actor, saying the expected lines, going through the
expected motions, and at the end his honor was no better for it. Nothing was
served, no point was proved.
It was all as false as her love affairs, except for the deaths. They were
real." He paused. "So you see, you Betans have one advantage. You at least
permit each other to learn from your mistakes."
"I'm-grieved, for your friend. Does it seem very long ago?"
"Sometimes. Over twenty years. They say that senile people remember things
from their youth more clearly than those of last week. Maybe he's getting
senile."
"I see." She took the story in like some strange, spiked gift, too fragile to
drop, too painful to hold. He lay back, silent again, and she took another
turn around the glade, listening at the wood's edge to a silence so profound
the roaring of the blood in her ears seemed to drown it out. When she'd
completed the round, Vorkosigan was asleep, restless and shivering in his
fever. She filched one of the half-burned bedrolls from Dubauer, and covered
him up.
CHAPTER FOUR
Vorkosigan woke about three hours before dawn, and made her lie down to snatch
a couple hours sleep. In the grey before sunup he roused her again. He had
evidently bathed in the stream, and used the single-application packet of
depilitory he had been saving in his belt to wipe away the itchy four-day
growth on his face.
"I need some help with this leg. I want to open and drain it and cover it back
Page 26
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
up. That will hold until this afternoon, and after that it won't matter."
"Right."
Vorkosigan stripped off boot and sock, and Cordelia had him hold his leg under
a rushing spout at the edge of the waterfall.
She rinsed his combat knife, then laid open the grossly swollen wound in a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]