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

"Not with respect to cause of death. They found his Vorzohn's Dystrophy, of course."

"Yes. Poor Tien. To spend all those years in a suppressed panic over his disease, only to die of another cause altogether." She shook her head. "So much effort, so misplaced. How far advanced was it, could they tell?"

"The nervous lesions were very distinct, according to the examiner. Though how they can tell one microscopic blob from another . . . The outward symptoms, if I interpret the medical jargon correctly, would have been impossible to conceal very soon."

"Yes. I think I knew that. It was the inward progress I wondered about. When did it start. How much of Tien's, oh, bad judgment and other behavior was his disease." Should she have somehow held on longer? Could she have? Until what other desperate denouement had played itself out?

"The damage builds slowly for a long time. Which parts of the brain are affected varies from person to person. For what it's worth, his seemed concentrated in the motor regions and peripheral nervous system. Though it may be possible to blame some of his actions on the disease, later, if a face-saving gesture is needed."

"How . . . politic. Face-saving for whom? I don't wish it."

He smiled a bit grimly. "I didn't think you did. But I have the unpleasant conviction that this case is going to shift from its nice clean engineering parameters into some very messy politics sooner or later. I never discard a possible reserve." He looked down at his hands, clasped loosely before him on the table. His gray sleeves imperfectly concealed the white bandages ringing his wrists. "How did Nikki take the news, last night?"

"That was hard. He started out—before I told him—trying to argue me into letting him stay and play another night. Getting passionate and sulking, you know how kids are. I so much wished I could simply let him go on, not having to know. I wasn't able to prepare him as much as I would have liked. I finally had to sit him down and tell him straight out,Nikki, you have to come home now. Your Da was killed in a breath mask accident last night. It just . . . wiped him blank. I almost wished for the whining back." Ekaterin looked away. She wondered what oblique forms Nikki's reactions might eventually take, and whether she would recognize them. Or handle them well. Or not … "I don't know how it's going to go in the long run. When I lost my mother … I was older, and we knew it was coming, but it was still a shock, that day, that hour. I always thought there would be more time."

"I've not yet lost a parent," said Vorkosigan. "Grandparents are different, I think. They are old, it's their destiny, somehow. I was shaken when my grandfather died, but my world was not. I think my father's was, though."

"Yes," she looked up gratefully, "that's the difference exactly. It's like an earthquake. Something that isn't supposed to move suddenly dumps you over. I think the world is going to be a scarier place for Nikki this morning."

"Have you hit him with his Vorzohn's Dystrophy news yet?"

"I'm letting him sleep. I'll tell him after breakfast. I know better than to stress a kid who has low blood sugar."

"Odd, I feel the same way about troops. Is there anything . . . can I help? Or would you prefer to be private?"

"I'm not sure. He doesn't have school today anyway. Weren't you taking my uncle out to the experiment station this morning?"

"Directly. It can wait an extra hour for this."

"I think … I would like it if you can stay. It's not good to make of the disease something all secret that's too awful to even talk about. That was Tien's mistake."

"Yes," he said encouragingly. "It's just a thing. You deal with it."

Her brows rose. "As in, one damn thing after another?"

"Yes, very like." He smiled at her, his gray eyes crinkling. Through whatever combination of luck and clever surgery, no scars marred his face, she realized. "It works, as tactics if not strategy."

True to his offer, Lord Vorkosigan drifted back into her kitchen as Nikki was finishing his breakfast. He lingered suggestively, stirring the coffee he took black and leaning against the far counter. Ekaterin took a deep breath and settled beside Nikki at the table, her own half-empty and cold cup a mere prop. Nikki eyed her warily.

"You won't be going to school tomorrow," she began, hoping to strike a positive note.

"Is that when Da's funeral is? Will I have to burn the offering?"

"Not yet. Your Grandmadame has asked that we bring his body back to Barrayar, to bury beside your uncle who died when you were little." Tien's mother's return message had come in by comconsole this morning, beamed and jumped through the wormhole-relays. In writing, as Ekaterin's had been, and perhaps for similar reasons; writing allowed one to leave so much out. "We'll do all the ceremonies and burn the offering then, when everyone can be there."

"Will we have to take him on the jumpship with us?" asked Nikki, looking disturbed.

From the side of the room Lord Vorkosigan said, "In fact, ImpS—the Imperial Civil Service will take care of all those arrangements, with your permission, Madame Vorsoisson. He will probably be back home before you are, Nikki."

"Oh," said Nikki.

"Oh," Ekaterin echoed. "I … I was wondering. I thank you."

He sketched a bow. "Allow me to pass on your mother-in-law's address and instructions. You have enough other things to do."

She nodded, and turned back to her son. "Anyway, Nikki . . . you and I are going to Solstice tomorrow, to visit a clinic there. We never mentioned this to you before, but you have a condition called Vorzohn's Dystrophy."

Nikki made an uncertain face. "What's that?"

"It's a disorder where, with age, your body stops making certain proteins in quite the right shape to do their job. Nowadays the doctors can give you some retrogenes that produce the proteins correctly, to make up for it. You're too young to have any symptoms, and with this fix, you never will." At Nikki's age, and on the first pass, it was probably not yet necessary to go into the complications it would entail for his future reproduction. She noticed dryly how she had managed to get through the long-anticipated spiel without once using the word mutation. "I've collected a lot of articles about Vorzohn's Dystrophy, which you can read when you want to. Some of them are too technical, but there are a couple I think you could get through with a little help." There. If she could avoid setting off his homework alarms, that ought to set up a reasonably neutral way to give him the information to which he had a right, and he could pursue it at his own pace thereafter.

Nikki looked worried. "Will it hurt?"

"Well, they will certainly have to draw blood, and take some tissue samples."

Vorkosigan put in, "I've had both done to me, what seems like a thousand times over the years, for various medical reasons. The blood draw hurts for a moment, but not later. The tissue sampling doesn't hurt because they use a medical micro-stun, but when the stun wears off, it aches for a while. They only need a tiny sample from you, so it won't be much."

Nikki appeared to digest this. "Do you have Vorzohn's thing, Lord Vorkosigan?"

"No. My mother was poisoned with a chemical called soltoxin, before I was born. It damaged my bones, mainly, which is why I'm so short." He wandered over to the table and sat down with them.