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volunteering to dig with your hands, Karal." Miles s voice was flat and
grating and getting dangerous.
Karal s balding head bobbed in his distress. "The - the father is the legal
next-of-kin, while he lives, and you don t have his -"
"Karal," said Miles.
"M lord?"
"Take care the grave you dig is not your own. You ve got one foot in it
already."
Karal s hand opened in despair. "I ll... get the shovel, m lord."
The mid-afternoon was warm, the air golden and summer-sleepy. The shovel bit
with a steady scrunch-scrunch through the soil at the hands of Karal s deputy.
Downslope, a bright stream burbled away over clean rounded stones. Harra
hunkered watching, silent and grim.
When big Alex levered out the little crate - so little! - Sergeant Pym went
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off for a patrol of the wooded perimeter. Miles didn t blame him. He hoped the
soil at that depth had been cool, these last eight days. Alex pried open the
box, and Dr. Dea waved him away and took over. The deputy too went off to find
something to examine at the far end of the graveyard.
Dea looked the cloth-wrapped bundle over carefully, lifted it out and set it
on his tarp laid out on the ground in the bright sun.
The instruments of his investigation were arrayed upon the plastic in precise
order. He unwrapped the brightly-patterned cloths in their special folds, and
Harra crept up to retrieve them, straighten and fold them ready for re-use,
then crept back.
Miles fingered the handkerchief in his pocket, ready to hold over his mouth
and nose, and went to watch over Dea s shoulder.
Bad, but not too bad. He d seen and smelled worse. Dea, filter-masked, spoke
procedurals into his recorder, hovering in the air by his shoulder, and made
his examination first by eye and gloved touch, then by scanner.
"Here, my lord," said Dea, and motioned Miles closer. "Almost certainly the
cause of death, though I ll run the toxin tests in a moment. Her neck was
broken. See here on the scanner where the spinal cord was severed, then the
bones twisted back into alignment."
"Karal, Alex," Miles motioned them up to witness; they came reluctantly.
"Could this have been accidental?" said Miles.
"Very remotely possible. The re-alignment had to be deliberate, though."
"Would it have taken long?"
"Seconds only. Death was immediate."
"How much physical strength was required? A big man s or..."
"Oh, not much at all. Any adult could have done it, easily."
"Any sufficiently motivated adult." Miles s stomach churned at the mental
picture Dea s words conjured up. The little fuzzy head would easily fit under
a man s hand. The twist, the muffled cartilagenous crack - if there was one
thing Miles knew by heart, it was the exact tactile sensation of breaking
bone, oh yes.
"Motivation," said Dea, "is not my department." He paused. "I might note, a
careful external examination could have found this. Mine did. An experienced
layman -" his eye fell cool on Karal, "paying attention to what he was doing,
should not have missed it."
Miles too stared at Karal, waiting.
"Overlain," hissed Harra. Her voice was ragged with scorn.
"M lord," said Karal carefully, "it s true I suspected the possibility-"
Suspected, hell. You knew.
"But I felt - and still feel, strongly," his eye flashed a wary defiance,
"that only more grief would come from a fuss. There was nothing I could do to
help the baby at that point. My duties are to the living."
"So are mine, Speaker Karal. As, for example, my duty to the next small
Imperial subject in mortal danger from those who should be his or her
protectors, for the grave fault of being," Miles flashed an edged smile,
"physically different. In Count
Vorkosigan s view this is not just a case. This is a test case, fulcrum of a
thousand cases. Fuss..." he hissed the sibilant; Harra rocked to the rhythm of
his voice, "you haven t begun to see fuss yet."
Karal subsided as if folded.
There followed an hour of messiness yielding mainly negative data; no other
bones were broken, the infant s lungs were clear, her gut and bloodstream free
of toxins except those of natural decomposition. Her brain held no secret
tumors. The defect for which she had died did not extend to spina bifida, Dea
reported. Fairly simple plastic surgery would indeed have corrected the cat s
mouth, could she somehow have won access to it. Miles wondered what comfort
this confirmation was to Harra; cold, at best.
Dea put his puzzle back together, and Harra re-wrapped the tiny body in
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intricate, meaningful folds. Dea cleaned his tools and placed them in their
cases and washed his hands and arms and face thoroughly in the stream, for
rather a longer time than needed for just hygiene Miles thought, while the
gorilla re-buried the box.
Harra made a little bowl in the dirt atop the grave and piled in some twigs
and bark scraps and a sawed-off strand of her lank hair.
Miles, caught short, felt in his pockets. "I have no offering on me that will
burn," he said apologetically. Harra glanced up, surprised at even the implied
offer. "No matter, m lord." Her little pile of scraps flared briefly and went
out, like her infant
Raina s life.
But it does matter, thought Miles.
Peace to you, small lady, after our rude invasions. I will give you a better
sacrifice, I swear by my word as Vorkosigan. And the smoke of that burning
will rise and be seen from one end of these mountains to the other.
Miles charged Karal and Alex straightly with producing Lem Csurik, and gave
Harra Csurik a ride home up behind him on Fat
Ninny. Pym accompanied them.
They passed a few scattered cabins on the way. At one a couple of grubby
children playing in the yard loped alongside the horses, giggling and making
hex signs at Miles, egging each other on to bolder displays, until their
mother spotted them and ran out and hustled them indoors with a fearful look
over her shoulder. In a weird way it was almost relaxing to Miles, the welcome
he d expected, not like Karal s and Alex s strained, self-conscious, careful
not-noticing. Raina s life would not have been an easy one.
Harra s cabin was at the head of a long draw, just before it narrowed into a
ravine. It seemed very quiet and isolated, in the dappled shade.
"Are you sure you wouldn t rather go stay with your mother?" asked Miles
dubiously.
Harra shook her head. She slid down off Ninny, and Miles and Pym dismounted
and followed her in. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]