A ragged female voice finally replied, “Yes?”
“Sealer Greenlaw? Are you there?”
Her voice steadied. “Yes, Lord Vorkosigan? Do you have something?”
“Maybe. Bel Thorne reports the ba said that it hid the bio-bomb somewhere in the Minchenko Auditorium. Possibly behind some lights.”
Her breath drew in. “Good. We'll concentrate our trained searchers in there.”
“Bel also thinks the bomb was something the ba rigged itself, recently. It may have made purchases on Graf Station in the persona of Ker Dubauer that could give you a clue as to how many it could have devised.”
“Ah! Right! I'll get Venn's people on it.”
“Note, Bel's in pretty bad shape. Also, the ba could have been lying. Get back to me when you know something.”
“Yes. Yes. Thank you.” Hastily, she cut her com. It occurred to Miles to wonder if she was locked down in protective bio-isolation right now too, as he was about to be, trying to shape the critical moment at a similar frustrating remove.
“Basti'd,” Bel muttered. “Paralyzed me. Put me in s' damn bod pod. Tol' me. Then zipped it up. Left me to die, 'magining . . . Knew . . . it knew about Nicol 'n me. Saw my vid cube. Where's m' vid cube?”
“Nicol is safe,” Miles assured Bel. Well, as much as any quaddie on Graf Station at the moment—if not safe, at least warned . Vid cube? Oh, the little imager full of Bel's hypothetical children. “Your vid cube is put away safely.” Miles had no idea if this last was true or not—the cube might be still in Bel's pocket, destroyed with the herm's contaminated clothes, or stolen by the ba. But the assertion gave Bel ease. The exhausted herm's eyes closed again, and its breathing steadied.
In a few hours, I'm going to look like that.
Then you'd better not waste any time now, eh?
With a vast distaste, Miles suffered a hovering tech to help him off with his pressure suit and underwear—to be taken away and incinerated, Miles supposed. “If you're tying me down here, I want a comconsole set up by my bunk immediately. No, you can't have that.” Miles fended off the tech, who was now trying to pry loose his com link, then paused to swallow. “And something for nausea. All right, put it around my right arm, then.”
Horizontal was scarcely better than vertical. Miles smoothed down his own pale green tunic and gave up his left arm to the surgeon, who personally attended to piercing his vein with some medical awl that felt the size of a drinking straw. On the other side a tech pressed a hypospray against his right shoulder—a potion that would kill the dizziness and the cramping in his stomach, he hoped. But he didn't yelp until the first spurt of filtered blood returned to his body. “Crap , that's cold. I hate cold.”
“Can't be helped, my Lord Auditor,” Clogston murmured soothingly. “We have to lower your body temperature at least three degrees. It will buy time.”
Miles hunched, uncomfortably reminded that they didn't have a fix for this yet. He stifled a gush of terror, escaping under pressure from the place he'd kept it locked for the past hours. Not for one second would he allow himself to believe that there was no cure to be had, that this bio-shit would drag him under and this time he wouldn't come back up . . . ”Where's Roic?” He raised his right wrist to his lips. “Roic?”
“I'm in the outer chamber, m'lord. I'm afraid to carry this triggering device through the bio-barrier till we're sure it's disarmed.”
“Right, good thinking. One of those fellows out there should be the bomb disposal tech I requested. Find him and give it to him. Then ride herd on the interrogation for me, will you?”
“Yes, m'lord.”
“Captain Clogston.”
The doctor glanced down from where he fiddled with the jury-rigged blood filter. “My lord?”
“The moment you have a medtech—no, a doctor. The moment you have some qualified men free, send them to the cargo hold where the ba has the replicators. I want them to run samples, try to see if the ba has contaminated or poisoned them in any way. Then make sure the equipment's all running all right. It's very important that the haut infants all be kept alive and well.”
“Yes, Lord Vorkosigan.”
If the haut babies were inoculated with the same vile parasites presently rioting through his own body, might the replicators' temperature be turned down to chill them all, and slow the disease process? Or would such cold stress the infants, damage them . . . he was borrowing trouble, reasoning in advance of his data. A trained agent, conditioned to the correct disconnect between action and imagination, might have performed such an inoculation, cleaning up every bit of incriminating high-haut DNA before abandoning the scene. But this ba was an amateur. This ba had another sort of conditioning altogether. Yes, but that conditioning must have gone very wrong somehow, or this ba wouldn't have got this far . . .
Miles added as Clogston turned away, “And give me word on the condition of the pilot, Corbeau, as soon as you have it.” The retreating suited figure raised a hand in acknowledgment.
In a few minutes, Roic entered the ward; he had doffed the bulky powered work suit, and now wore more comfortable military-issue Level Three biotainer garb.
“How's it going over there?”
Roic ducked his head. “Not well, m'lord. T' ba has gone into some sort of strange mental state. Raving, but nothing to the point, and the intelligence fellows say its physiological state is all out of kilter as well. They're trying to stabilize it.”
“The ba must be kept alive!” Miles struggled half-up, a vision of having himself carried into the next chamber to take charge running through his head. “We have to get it back to Cetaganda. To prove Barrayar is innocent.”
He sank back and eyed the humming device filtering his blood hung by his left side. Pulling out parasites, yes, but also draining the energy the parasites had stolen from him to create themselves. Siphoning off the mental edge he desperately needed right now.
He remarshaled his scattering thoughts, and explained to Roic the news Bel had imparted. “Return to the interrogation room and give them the word on this development. See if they can get any cross-confirmation on the hiding place in the Minchenko Auditorium, and especially see if they can get anything that would suggest if there is more than one device. Or not.”
“Right.” Roic nodded. He glanced over Miles's growing array of medical attachments. “By the way, m'lord. Had you happened to mention your seizure disorder to the surgeon yet?”
“Not yet. There hasn't been time.”
“Right.” Roic's lips screwed up thoughtfully, in an editorial fashion that Miles chose to ignore. “I'll see to it then, shall I, m'lord?”
Miles hunched. “Yeah, yeah.”
Roic trod out of the ward on both his errands.
The remote comconsole arrived; a tech swung a tray across Miles's lap, laid the vid plate frame upon it, and helped him sit mostly up, with extra pillows at his back. He was starting to shiver again. All right, good, the device was Barrayaran military issue, not just scavenged from the Idris . He had a securable visual link again now. He entered codes.
Vorpatril's face was a moment or two coming up; riding herd on all this from the Prince Xav 's tactics room, the admiral no doubt had a few other demands on his attention at the moment. He appeared at last with a, “Yes , my lord!” His eyes searched the image of Miles on his vid display. He apparently was not reassured by the view. His jaw tightened in dismay. “Are you all—” he began, but edited this fatuity on the fly to, “How bad is it?”
“I can still talk. And while I can still talk, I need to record some orders. While we're waiting on the quaddies' search for the bio-bomb—are you following the latest on that?” Miles brought the admiral up to the moment on Bel's intelligence about the Minchenko Auditorium, and went on. “Meanwhile, I want you to select and prepare the fastest ship in your escort that has a sufficient capacity for the load it's going to be carrying. Which will be me, Portmaster Thorne, a medical team, our prisoner the ba and guards, Guppy the Jacksonian smuggler if I can pry him out of quaddie hands, and a thousand working uterine replicators. With qualified medical attendants.”