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with her old lover, in the bad times before she'd finally shed him. This might
well be no worse. . . .
Vorrutyer, smiling, put his wine down on a bedside table and took from its
drawer a small knife, sharp as an old-fashioned scalpel, with a jeweled handle
that glittered before his hand eclipsed it. Rather desultorily, he began
slicing away at the orange pajamas, peeling them away from her like the skin
of a fruit.
"Isn't that government property?" she inquired, but was sorry she'd spoken,
for a tremble made the word "property" squeaky. It was like throwing a tidbit
to a hungry dog, likely to make him jump higher.
He chuckled, pleased. "Oops." Deliberately, he let the knife slip. It sliced
half an inch into her thigh. He watched her face avidly for her reaction. It
was in the area without sensation; she could not even feel the wet trickle of
blood that welled from the wound. His eyes narrowed in disappointment. She
even kept from glancing down. She wished she'd studied more about trance
states.
"I'm not going to rape you today," he offered conversationally, "if that's
what you've been thinking."
"It had crossed my mind. I can't imagine what suggested it."
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"There's scarcely time," he explained. "Today is but the, as it were, hors
d'ouevre of the banquet, or a simple clear soup, very pristine. All the
complicated things will be saved for dessert, in a few weeks."
"I never eat dessert. Weight, you know."
He chuckled again. "You are a delight." He put the knife down and took another
sip of wine. "You know, officers always delegate their work. Now, I am an
aficionado of Earth history. My favorite century is the eighteenth."
"I'd have guessed the fourteenth. Or the twentieth."
"In a day or two, I shall teach you not to interrupt. Where was I? Ah, yes.
Well, in my reading, I came upon the loveliest scene, where a certain great
lady," he raised the wineglass to her in a toast, "was raped by a diseased
servant, on the orders of his master. Very piquant. Venereal disease is, alas,
a thing of the past. But I am able to command a diseased servant, although his
disease is mental rather than physical. A real, bona fide, paranoid
schizophrenic."
"Like master, like man," she shot at random. I cannot keep this up much
longer; my heart shall fail me soon. . . .
This won a rather sour smile. "He hears voices, you know, like Joan of
Arc, except that he tells me they are demons, not saints. He has visual
hallucinations, too, on occasion. And he's a very large man. I've used him
before, many times. He's not the sort of fellow who finds it easy to, er,
attract women."
There was a timely knock on the door, and Vorrutyer went to it. "Ah, come in,
Sergeant. I was just talking about you."
"Bothari," she breathed. Ducking his head through the door came the tall frame
and familiar borzoi face of Vorkosigan's soldier. How, how could he have hit
on her personal nightmare? A kaleidoscope of images spun through her memory: a
dappled wood, the crackle of disruptors, the faces of the dead and the
half-dead, a looming shape like the shadow of death.
She focused on the present reality. Would he recognize her? His eyes had not
yet touched her; they were fixed on Vorrutyer. Too close together, those eyes,
and not quite on the same level. They gave his face an unusual degree of
asymmetry that added much to his remarkable ugliness.
Her boiling imagination lurched to his body. His body-it was all wrong,
somehow, hunched in his black uniform, not like the straight figure she had
last seen demanding pride of place from Vorkosigan. Wrong, wrong, terribly
wrong. A head taller than Vorrutyer, yet he seemed almost to creep before his
master. His spine was coiled with tension as he glowered down at his-torturer?
What, she wondered, might a mind molester like Vorrutyer do with the material
presented by Bothari? God, Vorrutyer, do you imagine, in your amoral flashy
freakiness, in your monstrous vanity, that you control this elemental? And you
dare play games with that sullen madness in his eyes? Her thoughts kept time
with her racing pulse. There are two victims in this room. There are two
victims in this room. There are two . . .
"There you go, Sergeant." Vorrutyer hooked a thumb over his shoulder at
Cordelia, spread-eagled on the bed. "Rape me this woman." He pulled up a chair
and prepared to watch, closely and gleefully. "Go on, go on."
Bothari, face as unreadable as ever, unfastened his trousers and approached
the foot of the bed. He looked at her for the first time.
"Any last words, 'Captain' Naismith?" Vorrutyer inquired sarcastically.
"Or have you finally run out of words?"
She stared at Bothari, shaken by a pity almost like love. He seemed nearly in
a trance, lust without pleasure, anticipation without hope. Poor sod, she
thought, what a mess they've made of you. No longer fencing for points, she
searched her heart for words not for Vorrutyer but for Bothari. Some healing
words-I would not add to his madness. . . . The air of the room seemed clammy
cold, and she shivered, feeling unutterably weary, resistless, and sad. He
crouched over her, heavy and dark as lead, making the bed creak.
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"I believe," she said slowly at last, "that the tormented are very close to
God. I'm sorry, Sergeant."
He stared at her, his face a foot from hers, for so long she wondered if he'd
heard her. His breath was not good, but she did not flinch. Then, to her
astonishment, he stood up and refastened his pants, trembling slightly.
"No, sir," he said in his bass monotone.
"What?" Vorrutyer sat up, amazed. "Why not?" he demanded.
The Sergeant groped for words. "She's Commodore Vorkosigan's prisoner.
Sir."
Vorrutyer stared, first puzzled, then illuminated. "So you're Vorkosigan's
Betan!" His cool amusement evaporated at the name, with a hiss like a drop of
water on a red-hot coil.
Vorkosigan's Betan? A brief hope flared within her, that Vorkosigan's name
might be a password to safety, but it died. The chance of this creature being
any kind of a friend of his was surely something well under zero. He was
looking now not at her, but through her, like a window on some more wonderful
view. Vorkosigan's Betan?
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