Miles in Love by Lois McMaster Bujold Read Free Book Online Page B

often—every five or ten years at most—a true genius would turn up among my students, and the pleasure became a privilege, to be treasured for life."
    "You think he's a genius?" she said, raising her eyebrows. The high Vor twit?
    "I don't know him quite well enough, yet. But I suspect so, a part of the time."
    "Can you be a genius part of the time?"
    "All the geniuses I ever met were so just part of the time. To qualify, you only have to be great once, you know. Once when it matters. Ah, dessert. My, this is splendid!" He applied himself happily to a large chocolate confection with whipped cream and more pecans.
    She wanted personal data, but she kept getting career synopses. She would have to take a more embarrassingly direct path. While arranging her first spoonful of her spiced apple tart and ice cream, she finally worked up her nerve to ask, "Is he married?"
    "No."
    "That surprises me." Or did it? "He's high Vor, heavens, the highest—he'll be a District Count someday, won't he? He's wealthy, or so I would assume, he has an important position . . ." She trailed off. What did she want to say? What's wrong with him that he hasn't acquired his own lady by now? What kind of genetic damage made him like that, and was it from his mother or his father? Is he impotent, is he sterile, what does he really look like under those expensive clothes? Is he hiding more serious deformities? Is he homosexual? Would it be safe to leave Nikolai alone with him? She couldn't say any of that, and her oblique hints weren't eliciting anything even close to the answers she sought. Drat it, she wouldn't have had this kind of trouble getting the pertinent information if she'd been talking to the Professora.
    "He's been out of the Empire most of the past decade," he said, as if that explained something.
    "Does he have siblings?" Normal brothers or sisters?
    "No."
    That's a bad sign.
    "Oh, I take that back," Uncle Vorthys added. "Not in the usual sense, I should say. He has a clone. Doesn't look like him, though."
    "That—if he's a—I don't understand."
    "You'll have to get Vorkosigan to explain it to you, if you're curious. It's complicated even by his standards. I haven't met the fellow myself yet." Around a mouthful of chocolate and cream, he added, "Speaking of siblings, were you planning any more for Nikolai? Your family is going to be very stretched out, if you wait much longer."
    She smiled in panic. Dare she tell him? Tien's accusation of betrayal seared her memory, but she was so tired, exhausted, sick to death of the stupid secrecy. If only her aunt were here . . . 
    She was dully conscious of her contraceptive implant, the one bit of galactic techno-culture Tien had embraced without question. It gave her a galactic's sterility without a galactic's freedom. Modern women gladly traded the deadly lottery of fertility for the certainties of health and result that came with the use of the uterine replicator, but Tien's obsession with concealment had barred her from that reward too. Even if he was somatically cured, his germ-cells would not be, and any progeny would still have to be genetically screened. Did he mean to cut off all future children? When she'd tried to discuss the issue, he'd put her off with an airy, First things first ; when she'd persisted, he'd become angry, accusing her of nagging and selfishness. That was always effective at shutting her up.
    She skittered sideways to her uncle's question. "We've moved around so much. I kept waiting for things to get settled with Tien's career."
    "He does seem to have been rather, ah, restless." He raised his eyebrows at her, inviting . . . what?
    "I . . . won't pretend that hasn't been difficult." That was true enough. Thirteen different jobs in a decade. Was this normal for a rising bureaucrat? Tien said it was a necessity, no bosses ever promoted from within or raised a former subordinate above them; you had to go around to move up. "We've moved eight times. I've