s [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Graf Station authorities, any more than Brun's strike patrol here is. For a little while yet, you're in a legal
limbo. Your jump pilot's training and surgery would make you a costly loss, from command's viewpoint.
If you make the right moves, you could still get out of this pretty cleanly."
Corbeau's face screwed up. "I don't . . ." He trailed off.
Miles made an encouraging noise.
Corbeau burst out, "I don't want my damned career any more. I don't want to be part of" he waved
around inarticulately "this. This . . . idiocy."
Suppressing a certain sympathy, Miles asked, "What's your present status how far along are you in
your enlistment?"
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
"I signed up for one of the new five-year hitches, with the option to reenlist or go to reserve status for the
next five. I've been in three years, two still to go."
At age twenty-three, Miles reminded himself, two years still seemed a long time. Corbeau could be
barely more than an apprentice junior pilot at this stage of his career, although his assignment to the
Prince Xav implied a superior rating.
Corbeau shook his head. "I see things differently these days, somehow. Attitudes I used to take for
granted, jokes, remarks, just the way things are done they bother me now. They grate. People like
Sergeant Touchev, Captain Brun God. Were we always this awful?"
"No," said Miles. "We used to be much worse. I can personally testify to that one."
Corbeau stared searchingly at him.
"But if all the progressive-minded men had opted out then, as you are proposing to do now, none of the
changes I've seen in my lifetime could have happened. We've changed. We can change some more. Not
instantly, no. But if all the decent folks quit and only the idiots are left to run the show, it won't be good
for the future of Barrayar. About which I do care." It startled him to realize how passionately true that
statement had become, of late. He thought of the two replicators in that guarded room in Vorkosigan
House.I always thought my parents could fix anything. Now it's my turn. Dear God, how did this
happen?
"I never imagined a place like this." Corbeau's jerky wave around, Miles construed, now meant
Quaddiespace. "I never imagined a woman like Garnet Five. I want to stay here."
Miles had a bad sense of a desperate young man making permanent decisions for the sake of temporary
stimuli. Graf Station was attractive at first glance, certainly, but Corbeau had grown up in open country
with real gravity, real air would he adapt, or would the techno-claustrophobia creep up on him? And
the young woman for whom he proposed to throw his life over, was she worthy, or would Corbeau
prove a passing amusement to her? Or, over time, a bad mistake? Hell, they'd known each other bare
weeks no one could know, least of all Corbeau and Garnet Five.
"I want out," said Corbeau. "I can't stand it any more."
Miles tried again. "If you withdraw your request for political asylum in the Union before the quaddies
reject it, it might still be folded into your present legal ambiguity and made to disappear, without further
prejudice to your career. If you don't withdraw it first, the desertion charge will certainly stick, and do
you vast damage."
Corbeau looked up and said anxiously, "Doesn't this firefight that Brun's patrol had with the quaddie
security here make it in the heat? ThePrince Xav 's surgeon said it probably did."
In the heat, desertion in the face of the enemy, was punishable by death in the Barrayaran military code.
Desertion in peacetime was punishable by long stretches of time in some extremely unpleasant stockades.
Either seemed excessively wasteful, all things considered. "I think it would require some pretty
convoluted legal twisting to call this episode a battle. For one thing, defining it so runs directly counter to
the Emperor's stated desire to maintain peaceful relations with this important trade depot. Still . . . given a
sufficiently hostile court and ham-handed defense counsel . . . I shouldn't call court-martial a wise risk, if
it can possibly be avoided." Miles rubbed his lips. "Were you drunk, by chance, when Sergeant Touchev
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
came to pick you up?"
"No!"
"Hm. Pity. Drunk is a wonderfully safe defense. Not politically or socially radical, y'see. I don't
suppose . . . ?"
Corbeau's mouth tightened in indignation. Suggesting Corbeau lie about his chemical state would not go
over well, Miles sensed. Which gave him a higher opinion of the young officer, true. But it didn't make
Miles's life any easier.
"I still want out," Corbeau repeated stubbornly.
"The quaddies don't much like Barrayarans this week, I'm afraid. Relying on them granting your asylum
to pluck you out of your dilemma seems to me to be a grave mistake. There must be half a dozen better
ways to solve your problems, if you'd open your mind to wider tactical possibilities. In fact, almost any
other way would be better than this."
Corbeau shook his head, mute.
"Well, think about it, Ensign. I suspect the situation will remain murky until I find out what happened to
Lieutenant Solian. At that point, I hope to unravel this tangle quickly, and the chance to change your mind
about really bad ideas could run out abruptly." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]