Diplomatic Immunity (25 page)

God almighty
.
He really does have gills under there.
Presumably, the bellows-like movement of the chest helped pump water through, when the amphibian was immersed. Dual systems. So did he hold his breath, or did his lungs shut down involuntarily? By what mechanism was his blood circulation switched from one oxygenating interface to the other? Gupta pumped the bottle and sprayed mist into the red slits, handing it back and forth from right side to left, and seemed to draw some comfort thereby. He sighed, and the slits closed back down, his chest appearing merely ridged and scarred. He smoothed the drifting poncho back into place.

"Where
are
you from?" Miles couldn't help asking.

Gupta grew surly again. "Guess."

"Well, Jackson's Whole, by the weight of the evidence, but which House made you? Ryoval, Bharaputra, another? And were you a one-off, or part of a set? First-generation gengineered, or from a self-reproducing line of, of water people?"

Gupta's eyes widened in surprise. "You know Jackson's Whole?"

"Let's say, I've had several painfully educational visits there."

The surprise became edged with faint respect, and a certain lonely eagerness. "House Dyan made me. I
was
part of a set, once—we were an underwater ballet troupe."

Garnet Five blurted in unflattering astonishment, "
You
were a dancer?"

The prisoner hunched his shoulders. "No. They made me to be submersible stage crew. But House Dyan suffered a hostile takeover by House Ryoval—just a few years before Baron Ryoval was assassinated, pity
that
didn't happen sooner. Ryoval broke up the troupe for other, um, tasks, and decided he had no alternate use for me, so I was out of a job and out of protection. Could have been worse. He mighta kept me. I drifted around and took what tech jobs I could get. One thing led to another."

In other words, Gupta had been born into Jacksonian techno-serfdom, and dumped out on the street when his original owner-creators had been engulfed by their vicious commercial rival. Given what Miles knew of the late, unsavory Baron Ryoval, Gupta's fate was perhaps happier than that of his mer-cohort. By the known date of Ryoval's death, that last vague remark about things leading to things covered at least five years, maybe as many as ten.

Miles said thoughtfully, "You weren't shooting at
me
at all yesterday, then, were you. Nor at Portmaster Thorne." Which left . . . 

Gupta blinked at him. "Oh!
That's
where I saw you before. Sorry, no." His brow corrugated. "So what were you doing there, then? You're not one of the passengers. Are you another Stationer squatter like that officious bloody Betan?"

"No. My name is"—he made an instant, almost subliminal decision to drop all the honorifics—"Miles. I was sent out to look after Barrayaran concerns when the quaddies impounded the Komarran fleet."

"Oh." Gupta grew uninterested.

What the devil was keeping that fast-penta? Miles softened his voice. "So what happened to your friends, Guppy?"

That fetched the amphibian's attention again. "Double-crossed. Subjected, injected, infected . . . rejected. We were all taken in. Damned Cetagandan bastard. That wasn't the Deal."

Something inside Miles went on overdrive.
Here's the connection, finally.
His smile grew charming, sympathetic, and his voice softened further. "Tell me about the Cetagandan bastard, Guppy."

The hovering mob of quaddie listeners had stopped rustling, even breathing more quietly. Roic had drawn back to a shadowed spot opposite Miles. Gupta glanced around at the Graf Stationers, and at Miles and himself, the only legged persons now in view in the center of the circle. "What's the use?" The tone was not a wail of despair, but a bitter query.

"I
am
Barrayaran. I have a special stake in Cetagandan bastards. The Cetagandan ghem-lords left five million of my grandfather's generation dead behind them, when they finally gave up and pulled out of Barrayar. I still have his bag of ghem-scalps. For certain kinds of Cetagandans, I might know a use or two you'd find interesting."

The prisoner's wandering gaze snapped to his face and locked there. For the first time, he'd won Gupta's total attention. For the first time, he'd hinted he might have something that Guppy really wanted. Wanted? Burned for, lusted for, desired with mad obsessive hunger. His glassy eyes were ravenous for . . . maybe revenge, maybe justice—in any case, blood. But the frog prince clearly lacked personal expertise in retribution. The quaddies didn't deal in blood. Barrayarans . . . had a more sanguinary reputation. Which, for the first time this mission, might actually prove some
use
.

Gupta took a long breath. "I don't know
what
kind this one was. Is. He was like nothing I'd ever met before. Cetagandan bastard. He
melted
us."

"Tell me," Miles breathed, "everything. Why you?"

"He came to us . . . through our usual cargo agents. We thought it would be all right. We had a ship. Gras-Grace and Firka and Hewlet and me had this ship. Hewlet was our pilot, but Gras-Grace was the brains. Me, I had a knack for fixing things. Firka kept the books, and fixed regs, and passports, and nosy officials. Gras-Grace and her three husbands, we called us. We were a collection of rejects, but maybe we added up to one real spouse for her, I don't know. One for all and all for one, because it was damn sure that a crew of refugee Jacksonians, without a House or a Baron, wasn't going to get a break from anyone
else
in the Nexus."

Gupta was getting wound up in his story. Miles, listening with utmost care, prayed Venn would have the sense not to interrupt. Ten people hovered around them in this chamber, yet he and Gupta, mutually hypnotized by the increasing intensity of his confession, might almost be floating in a bubble of time and space altogether removed from this universe. "So where did you pick up this Cetagandan and his cargo, anyway?"

Gupta glanced up, startled. "You know about the cargo?"

"If it's the same one now aboard the
Idris
, yes, I've had a look. I found it rather disturbing."

"What's he got in there, really? I only saw the outsides."

"I'd rather not say, at this time. What did he," Miles elected not to go into the confusions of ba gender just now, "tell you it was?"

"Gengineered mammals. Not that we asked questions. We got paid extra for not asking questions. That was the Deal, we thought."

And if there was anything that the ethically elastic inhabitants of Jackson's Whole held nearly sacred, it was the Deal. "A good bargain, was it?"

"Looked like. Two or three more runs like that, we could have paid off the ship and owned it free and clear."

Miles took leave to doubt that, if the crew was in debt for their jumpship to a typical Jacksonian financial House. But perhaps Guppy and his friends had been terminal optimists.
Or terminally desperate
.

"The gig looked easy enough. Just take a little mixed-freight run through the fringes of the Cetagandan Empire. We jumped in through the Hegen Hub, via Vervain, and skirted round to Rho Ceta. All those arrogant, suspicious bastard inspectors who boarded us at the jump points turned up nothing to hold against us, though they'd have liked to, because there wasn't anything aboard but what our filed manifest said. Gave old Firka a good chuckle. Till we were heading out for the last jumps, for Rho Ceta through those empty buffer systems just before the route splits to Komarr. We made one little mid-space rendezvous there that didn't appear on our flight plan."

"What kind of ship did you rendezvous with? Jumpship, or just a local space crawler? Could you tell for sure, or was it disguised or camouflaged?"

"Jumpship. I don't know what else it might have really been. It looked like a Cetagandan government ship. It had lots of fancy markings, anyway. Not big, but fast—fresh and classy. The Cetagandan bastard moved his cargo all by himself, with float pallets and hand tractors, but he sure didn't waste any time. The moment the locks were closed, they went off."

"Where? Could you tell?"

"Well, Hewlet said they had an odd trajectory. It was that uninhabited binary system a few jumps out from Rho Ceta, I don't know if you know it—"

Miles nodded in encouragement.

"They went inbound, deeper into the grav well. Maybe they were planning to swing around the suns and approach one of the jump points from a disguised trajectory, I don't know. That would make sense, given all the rest of it."

"Just the one passenger?"

"Yeah."

"Tell me more about him."

"Not much to tell—then. He kept to himself, ate his own rations in his own cabin. He didn't talk to me at all. He had to talk to Firka, on account of Firka was fixing his manifest. By the time we reached the first Barrayaran jump point inspection, it had a whole new provenance. He was somebody else by then, too."

"Ker Dubauer?"

Venn twitched at this first mention of the familiar name in his hearing, and opened his mouth and inhaled, but closed it again without diverting Guppy's flow. The unhappy amphibian was in full spate now, pouring out his troubles.

"Not yet, he wasn't. He musta become Dubauer during his layover on the Komarran transfer station, I figure. I didn't track him by his identity, anyway. He was too good for that. Fooled you Barrayarans, didn't he?"

Indeed
. An apparent Cetagandan agent of the highest caliber had passed through Barrayar's key Nexus trade crossroad like so much smoke.
ImpSec
would have a seizure when
this
report arrived. "How did you follow him here, then?"

The first smile-like expression Miles had seen on the rubbery face ghosted across Gupta's lips. "I was ship's engineer. I tracked him by his cargo's mass. It was kind of distinctive, when I went to look, later."

The ghastly smile faded into a black frown. "When we dumped him and his pallets off on the Komarran transfer station's loading bay, he seemed happy. Downright cordial. He went around to each of us for the first time, and gave us our no-problems bonuses personally. He shook Hewlet's and Firka's hands. He asked to see my webbing, so I spread my fingers for him, and he leaned over and gripped my arm and seemed real interested, and thanked me. He gave Gras-Grace a pat on her cheek, and smiled at her in this sappy way. He
smirked
as he touched her.
Knowing
. Since she was holding the bonus chit in her hand, she sort of smiled back and didn't deck him, though I could see it was a near thing. And then we bailed out. Hewlet and I wanted to take station leave and spend some of our bonus, but Gras-Grace said we could party later. And Firka said the Barrayaran Empire wasn't a healthy place for the likes of us to linger in." A distracted laugh that had nothing to do with humor puffed from his lips. So. That startling scream when Miles had touched the test patch to Guppy's skin hadn't been overreaction, exactly. It had been a flashback. Miles suppressed a shudder.
Sorry, sorry.
 

"It was six days out from Komarr, past the jump to Pol, before the fevers began. Gras-Grace guessed it first, from the way it started. She always was the quickest of us. Four little pink wheals, like some kind of bug bites, on the backs of Hewlet and Firka's hands, on her cheek, on my arm where the Cetagandan bastard had touched me. They swelled up to the size of eggs, and throbbed, though not as much as our heads. It only took an hour. My head hurt so bad I could hardly see, and Gras-Grace, who wasn't doing any better, helped me to my cabin so's I could get into my tank."

"Tank?"

"I'd rigged up a big tank in my cabin, with a lid I could lock down from the inside, because the gravity on that old ship wasn't any too reliable. It was really comfortable to rest in, my own kind of water bed. I could stretch all the way out, and turn around. Good filtration system on the water, nice and clean, and extra oxygen sparkling up through it from a bubbler I'd rigged, all pretty with colored lights. And music. I miss my tank." He heaved a sigh.

"You . . . appear to have lungs, as well. Do you hold your breath underwater, or what?"

Gupta shrugged. "I have these extra sphincter muscles in my nose and ears and throat that shut down automatically, when my breathing switches over. That's always kind of an awkward moment, the switch; my lungs don't always seem to want to stop. Or start again, sometimes. But I can't stay in my tank forever, or I'd end up pissing in the water I breathe. That's what happened then. I floated in my tank for . . . hours, I'm not sure how many. I don't think I was quite in my right mind, I hurt so bad. But then I had to piss. Really bad. So I had to get out.

"I damn near passed out when I stood. I threw up on the floor. But I could walk. I made it to my cabin's head, finally. The ship was still running, I could feel the right vibrations through my feet, but it had gone all quiet. Nobody talking or arguing or snoring, no music. No laughing. I was cold and wet. I put on a robe—it was one of hers that Gras-Grace had given me, because she claimed being fat made her hot, and I was always too cold. She said it was because my designers gave me frog genes. For all I know, that might be true.

"I found her body . . ." He stopped. The light-years-gone look in his eyes intensified. "About five steps down the corridor. At least, I thought it was her. It was her braid, floating on the . . . At least, I thought it was a body. The size of the puddle seemed about right. It stank like . . . What kind of hell-disease liquefies
bones
?"

He inhaled, and continued unsteadily, "Firka had made it to the infirmary, for all the good it had done him. He was all flaccid, like he was deflating. And dripping. Over the side of the bunk. He stank worse than Gras-Grace. And he was
steaming
.

"Hewlet—what was left of him—was in his pilot's chair in Nav and Com. I don't know why he crawled up there, maybe it was a comfort to him. Pilots are strange that way. His pilot's headset kind of held his skull braced, but his face . . . his features . . . they were just sliding off. I thought he might have been trying to send an emergency message, maybe.
Help us. Biocontamination aboard
. But maybe not, because nobody ever came. Later I thought maybe he'd sent too much, and the rescuers stayed away on purpose. Why should the good citizens risk anything for
us
? Just Jacksonian smuggler scum. Better off dead. Saves the trouble and expense of prosecution, eh?" He looked at no one, now.