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the University, with many promises that she would stop in at Vorkosigan House
on the morrow and help Enrique look up the scientific names of all his new
botanical samples.
Kareen hopped out at the corner in front of her family's townhouse, and gave
Mark a little farewell kiss on the cheek.
Down, Grunt. That wasn't to your address
.
Mark slipped the lightflyer back into its corner in the subbasement garage of
Vorkosigan House, and followed Enrique into the lab to help him give the
butter bugs their evening feed and checkup. Enrique did stop short of singing
lullabies to the little creepy-
crawlies, though he was in the habit of talking, half to them and half to
himself, under his breath as he puttered around the lab.
The man had worked all alone for too damned long, in Mark's view. Tonight,
though, Enrique hummed as he separated his new supply of plants according to a
hierarchy known only to himself and Madame Vorsoisson, some into beakers of
water and some spread to dry on paper on the lab bench.
Mark turned from weighing, recording, and scattering a few generous scoops of
tree bits into the butter bug hutches to find
Enrique settling at his comconsole and firing it up. Ah, good. Perhaps the
Escobaran was about to commit some more futurely-
profitable science. Mark wandered over, preparing to kibitz approvingly.
Enrique was busying himself not with a vertigo-inducing molecular display, but
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with an array of closely-written text.
"What's that?" Mark asked.
"I promised to send Ekaterin a copy of my doctoral thesis. She asked
," Enrique explained proudly, and in a tone of some wonder. "
Toward Bacterial and Fungal Suite-Synthesis of Extra-cellular Energy Storage
Compounds
. It was the basis of all my later work with the butter bugs, when I finally
hit upon them as the perfect vehicle for the microbial suite."
"Ah." Mark hesitated.
It's Ekaterin for you too, now?
Well, if Kareen had got on a first-name basis with the widow, Enrique, also
present, couldn't very well have been excluded, could he? "Will she be able to
read it?" Enrique wrote just the same way he talked, as far as Mark had seen.
"Oh, I don't expect her to follow the molecular energy-flow mathematics - my
faculty advisors had a struggle with those - but she'll get the gist of it,
I'm sure, from the animations. Still... perhaps I could do something about
this abstract, to make it more attractive at first glance. I have to admit,
it's a trifle dry." He bit his lip, and bent over his comconsole. After a
minute he asked, "Can you think of a word to rhyme with glyoxylate
?"
"Not... off-hand. Try orange
. Or silver
."
"Those don't rhyme with anything. If you can't be helpful, Mark, go away."
"What are you doing
?"
"
Isocitrate
, of course, but that doesn't quite scan... I'm trying to see if I can produce
a more striking effect by casting the abstract in sonnet form."
"That sounds downright... stunning."
"Do you think?" Enrique brightened, and started humming again. "Threonine,
serine, polar, molar..."
"Dolor," Mark supplied at random. "Bowler." Enrique waved him off irritably.
Dammit, Enrique wasn't supposed to be wasting his valuable brain-time writing
poetry; he was supposed to be designing long-chain molecule interactions with
favorable
energy-flows or something. Mark stared at the Escobaran, bent like a pretzel
in his comconsole station chair in his concentration, and his brows drew down
in sudden worry.
Even Enrique couldn't imagine he might attract a woman with his dissertation,
could he? Or was that, only
Enrique could imagine... ? It was, after all, his sole signal success in his
short life. Mark had to grant, any woman he could attract that way was the
right sort for him, but... but not this one. Not the one Miles had fallen in
love with. Madame Vorsoisson was excessively polite, though. She would
doubtless say something kind no matter how appalled she was by the offering.
And Enrique, who was as starved for kindness as... as someone else Mark knew
all too well, would build upon it...
Expediting the removal of the Bugworks to its new permanent site in the
District seemed suddenly a much more urgent task.
Lips pursed, Mark tiptoed quietly out of the lab.
Padding up the hall, he could still hear Enrique's happy murmur,
"Mucopolysaccharide, hm, there's a good one, like the rhythm, mu
-co-
pol
-ee-
sacc
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-a-
ride
..."
* * *
The Vorbarr Sultana shuttleport was enjoying a mid-evening lull in traffic.
Ivan stared impatiently around the concourse, and shifted his welcome-home
bouquet of musky-scented orchids from his right hand to his left. He trusted
Lady Donna would not arrive too jump-lagged and exhausted for a little
socialization later. The flowers should strike just the right opening note in
this renewal of their acquaintance; not so grand and gaudy as to suggest
desperation on his part, but sufficiently elegant and expensive to indicate
serious interest to anyone as cognizant of the nuances as Donna was.
Beside Ivan, Byerly Vorrutyer leaned comfortably against a pillar and crossed
his arms. He glanced at the bouquet and smiled a little By smile, which Ivan
noted but ignored. Byerly might be a source of witty, or half-witty, editorial
comment, but he certainly wasn't competition for his cousin's amorous
attentions.
A few elusive wisps of the erotic dream he'd had about Donna last night
tantalized Ivan's memory. He would offer to carry her luggage, he decided, or
rather, some of it, whatever she had in her hand for which he might trade the
flowers. Lady Donna did not travel light, as he recalled.
Unless she came back lugging a uterine replicator with Pierre's clone in it.
That, By could handle all by himself; Ivan wasn't touching it with a stick. By
had remained maddeningly closed-mouthed about what Lady Donna had gone to
obtain on Beta
Colony that she thought would thwart her cousin Richars's inheritance, but
really, somebody had to try the clone-ploy sooner or later. The political
complications might land in his Vorkosigan cousins' laps, but as a Vorpatril
of a mere junior line, he could steer clear.
He didn't have a vote in the Council of Counts, thank God.
"Ah." By pushed off from the pillar and gazed up the concourse, and raised a
hand in brief greeting. "Here we go."
Ivan followed his glance. Three men were approaching them. The white-haired,
grim-looking fellow on the right, returning [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]