Komarr - Bujold Lois Mcmaster (читать книги бесплатно полностью без регистрации сокращений txt) 📗

"All I could really think about was when my next seizure was due," said Vorkosigan ruefully. "It became kind of an obsession, after a while. But I don't think Foscol knew about that hidden defect, either."

"I still want to call it murder and attempted murder, for the all-Sectors alert order," said Tuomonen, evidently continuing a debate. "And the attempted murder of an Imperial Auditor makes it treason, which disposes of any arguments about requisitions."

"Yes, very good," sighed Vorkosigan in acquiescence. "Make sure your reports have the facts clear, though, please."

"As I see them, my lord." Tuomonen grimaced, then burst out, "Damn, to think how long this thing must have been going on, right under my nose . . . !"

"Not your jurisdiction, Captain," observed Vorkosigan. "It was the Imperial Accounting Office's job to spot this kind of fraud in the civil service. Still . . . there's something very wrong here."

"I should say so!"

"No, I mean beyond the obvious." Vorkosigan hesitated. "They abandoned all their personal effects, yet took at least two air-vans of equipment."

"To . . . sell?" Ekaterin posited. "No, that makes no sense. …"

"Mm, and they left in a group, didn't split up. These people seemed to me to be Komarran patriots, of a sort. I can see where they might classify theft from the Barrayaran Imperium as something between a hobby and a patriotic duty, but … to steal from the Komarran Terraforming Project, the hope of their future generations? And if it wasn't just to line their pockets, what the devil were they using all the money for?" He scowled. "That will be for ImpSec's forensic accounting team to sort out, I suppose. And I want engineering experts in here, to see if they can make anything at all from the mess that's been left. And not left. It's clear Soudha's crew put something together in the Engineering building, and I don't think it had anything to do with waste heat." He rubbed his forehead, and muttered, "I'll bet Marie Trogir could tell us. Damn but I wish I'd fast-penta'd Madame Radovas when I had the chance."

Ekaterin swallowed a lump of dread and humiliation. "I'm going to have to tell my uncle."

Vorkosigan glanced up at her. "I'll take over that task, Madame Vorsoisson."

She frowned, torn between what seemed to her weak gratitude, and a dreary sense of duty, but could not muster the energy to argue with him. The medic finished winding the last medical tape around Vorkosigan's wrists.

"I must leave you in charge here, Captain, and return to Serifosa. I don't dare fly myself. Madame Vorsoisson, would you be so kind . . . ?"

"You will take a guard," said Tuomonen, a little dangerously.

"I have to get the flyer back," said Ekaterin. "It's rented." She squinted, realizing how stupid that sounded. But it was the only fragment of order in this mortal chaos it was presently in her power to restore. And then, belatedly, the realization came: I can go home. It's safe to go home. Her voice strengthened. "Certainly, Lord Vorkosigan."

The presence of the hulking young guard crowded into the flyer behind them, Vorkosigan's exhaustion, and Ekaterin's emotional disorientation combined to blunt conversation on the flight back to Serifosa. She drew stares, turning the flyer back in at the rental desk while trailed politely by a large, fully-armed, half-armored soldier and a dwarfish man with bloody clothes and bandages on his wrists, but on the other hand, they had a bubble-car all to themselves for the ride back to the apartment. There were no delays in the system on this return leg, Ekaterin noted with weary irony. She wondered if there would be any point, later when this all got sorted out, to check if Vorkosigan's insistence that it had already been too late for Tien when Foscol had called her was precisely true.

Her steps quickened in the hallway of her apartment; she felt like an injured animal, wanting nothing more than to go hide in her burrow. She came to an abrupt halt at her door, and her breath drew in. The palm-lock panel was hanging partway out of the wall, and the sliding door was not entirely closed. A thin line of light leaked along its edge. She backed up a step, and pointed.

Vorkosigan took it all in at once and motioned to the guard who, equally silently, stepped up to the door and drew his stunner. Vorkosigan put his finger to his lips, took her by the arm, and drew her back halfway to the lift-tubes. The automatic door wasn't working; the guard had to grasp it awkwardly and lean, to push it back into its slot. Stunner raised and visor lowered, he slipped inside. Ekaterin's heart hammered.

After a few minutes, the ImpSec guard, his visor up again, poked his head back out the door. "Someone's been through here right enough, m'lord. But they're gone now." Vorkosigan and Ekaterin followed him inside.

Both Vorkosigan's cases and her own, which she had left sitting by the door in the vestibule, had been broken open. Their clothing was scattered in mixed heaps all around on the floor. Little else in the apartment appeared to have been touched; some drawers were opened, their contents stirred, but aside from the disorder nothing had been vandalized. Was it a violation, when she herself had all but vacated this space, abandoned those possessions? She scarcely knew.

"This is not how I left my things," Vorkosigan observed mildly to her when they fetched up in the vestibule again after their first short survey.

"It's not how I left them either," she said a bit desperately. "I thought you would be coming back with Tien, and then leaving, so I'd packed them all for you, ready to take away."

"Touch nothing, especially the comconsoles, till the forensics folks get here," Vorkosigan told her. She nodded understanding. They both shucked their heavy jackets; automatically, Ekaterin hung them up.

Vorkosigan then proceeded to ignore his own dictate, and kneel in the vestibule to sort through the heaps. "Did you pack my code-locked data case?"

"Yes."

"It's gone now." He sighed, rose, and raised his wrist-comm to report these new developments to Captain Tuomonen, still at the experiment station. The overburdened Tuomonen, apprised, swore briefly and ordered his soldier to stick with the Lord Auditor like glue until relieved. For once, Vorkosigan didn't object.

Vorkosigan returned to the mess, turning over an untidy pile of Ekaterin's clothing. "Ha!" he cried, and pounced on the gel-pack case which contained that odd device. He opened it hurriedly, his hands shaking a little. "Thank God they didn't take this." He looked up at her, measuringly. "Madame Vorsoisson …" his normally forceful tone grew uncertain. "I wonder if I could trouble you to … assist me in this."

She almost said Yes, without thinking, but managed to alter the word to "What?" before it left her mouth.

He smiled tightly. "I mentioned my seizure disorder to you. It doesn't have a cure, unfortunately. But my Barrayaran doctors came up with a palliative, of sorts. I use this little machine to stimulate seizures, bleed them off in a controlled time and place, so they don't happen in an uncontrolled time and place. They tend to be exacerbated by stress." By his grimace, she could see him picturing the cold walkway on the backside of the Engineering building. "I suspect I'm now overdue. I would like to get it over with at once."

"I understand. But what do I do?"