[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

problem to solve itself. It's become an obsession with him, to try to leave
his house in order.
"The problem is the Prince's son. He's only four. Sixteen years is a long time
for a Regency government. With the Prince dead
Grishnov and the whole Ministerial party would just slide right into the power
vacuum, if they were left intact.
"It was not enough to kill the Prince. The Emperor felt he had to destroy the
whole war party, so effectively that it would not rise again for another
generation. So first there was me, bitching about the strategic problems with
Escobar. Then the information about the plasma mirrors came through Negri's
own intelligence network. Military intelligence didn't have it. Then me again,
with the news that surprise had been lost. Do you know, he suppressed part of
that, too? It could only be a disaster. And then there was
Grishnov, and the war party, and the Prince, all crying for glory. He had only
to step aside and let them rush to their doom." Grass was being pulled up in
bunches now.
"It all fit so well, there was a hypnotizing fascination to it. But chancy.
There was even a possibility, leaving events to themselves, that everyone
might be killed but the Prince. I was placed where I was to see the script was
followed. Goading the
Prince, making sure he got to the front lines at the right time. Hence that
little scene you witnessed in my cabin. I never lost my temper. I was just
putting another nail in the coffin."
"I suppose I can see why the other agent was-the chief surgeon?"
"Quite."
"Lovely."
"Isn't it, though." He lay back on the grass, looking through the turquoise
sky. "I couldn't even be an honest assassin. Do you recall me saying I wanted
to go into politics? I believe I'm cured of that ambition."
"What about Vorrutyer? Were you supposed to get him killed, too?"
"No. In the original script he was cast as the scapegoat. It would have been
his part, after the disaster, to apologize to the
Emperor for the mess, in the full old Japanese sense of the phrase, as part of
the general collapse of the war party. For all he was the Prince's spiritual
advisor, I did not envy him his future. All the while he was riding me, I
could see the ground crumbling away beneath his feet. It baffled him. He
always used to be able to make me lose my temper. It was great sport for him,
Page 79
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
when we were younger. He couldn't understand why he'd lost his touch." His
eyes remained focused somewhere in the high blue emptiness, not meeting hers.
"For what it's worth to you, his death just then saved a great many lives. He
would have tried to continue the fight much longer, to save his political
skin. That was the price that bought me, in the end. I thought, if only I were
in the right place at the right time, I could do a better job of running the
pullout than anyone else on the General Staff."
"So we are, all of us, just Ezar Vorbarra's tools," said Cordelia slowly,
belly-sick. "Me and my convoy, you, the Escobarans-
even old Vorrutyer. So much for patriotic hoopla and righteous wrath. All a
charade."
"That's right."
"It makes me feel very cold. Was the Prince really that bad?"
"There was no doubt of it. I shall not sicken you with the details of Negri's
reports... But the Emperor said if it wasn't done now, we would all be trying
to do it ourselves, five or ten years down the road, and probably botching the
job and getting all our friends killed, in a full-scale planet-wide civil war.
He's seen two, in his lifetime. That was the nightmare that haunted him. A
Caligula, or a Yuri Vorbarra, can rule a long time, while the best men
hesitate to do what is necessary to stop him, and the worst ones take
advantage.
"The Emperor spares himself nothing. Reads the reports over and over-he had
them all nearly word-perfect. This wasn't something undertaken lightly, or
casually. Wrongly, perhaps, but not lightly. He didn't want him to die in
shame, you see. It was the last gift he could give him."
She sat numbly hugging her knees, memorizing his profile, as the soft airs of
the afternoon rustled in the woods and stirred the golden grasses.
He turned his face toward her. "Was I wrong, Cordelia, to give myself to this
thing? If I had not gone, he would simply have had another. I've always tried
to walk the path of honor. But what do you do when all choices are evil?
Shameful action, shameful inaction, every path leading to a thicket of death."
"You're asking me to judge you?"
"Someone must."
"I'm sorry. I can love you. I can grieve for you, or with you. I can share
your pain. But I cannot judge you."
"Ah." He turned on his stomach, and stared down at the camp. "I talk too much
to you. If my brain would ever grant me release from reality, I believe I
would be the babbling sort of madman."
"You don't talk to anyone else like that, do you?" she asked, alarmed.
"Good God, no. You are-you are-I don't know what you are. But I need it. Will
you marry me?"
She sighed, and laid her head upon her knees, twisting a grass stem around her
fingers. "I love you. You know that, I hope.
But I can't take Barrayar. Barrayar eats its children."
"It isn't all these damnable politics. Some people get through their whole
lives practically unconscious of them."
"Yes, but you're not one of them."
He sat up. "I don't know if I could get a visa for Beta Colony."
"Not this year, I suspect. Nor next. All Barrayarans are considered war
criminals there at the moment. Politically speaking, we haven't had this much
excitement in years. They're all a little drunk on it just now. And then there
is Komarr."
"I see. I should have trouble getting a job as a judo instructor, then. And I
could hardly write my memoirs, all things considered."
"Right now I should think you'd have trouble avoiding lynch mobs." She looked
up at his bleak face. A mistake; it wrenched her heart. "I've-got to go home
for a while, anyway. See my family, and think things through in peace and
quiet. Maybe we can come up with some alternate solution. We can write,
anyway."
"Yes, I suppose." He stood, and helped her up.
Page 80
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"Where will you be, after this?" she asked. "You have your rank back."
"Well, I'm going to finish up all this dirty work," a wave of his arm
indicated the prison camp, and by implication the whole [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]