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right.
At least they honored his Imperial Auditor s authority to that extent.
"Good evening, Dr. Soudha," Miles began.
"You re out here?" Soudha s brows rose as he took in the lack of transmission
lag.
"Yes, well, unlike Administrator Vorsoisson, I got out of my chains at the
experiment station alive. I still don t know if you intended me to survive."
"He didn t really die, did he?" Foscol interrupted.
"Oh, yes." Miles made his voice deliberately soft. "I got to watch, just as
you arranged. Every filthy minute of it. It was a remarkably ugly death."
She fell silent; Soudha said, "This is all beside the point now. The only
message we want to receive from you people is that you have the jumpship ready
to transport us to the nearest neutral space - Pol, or Escobar - whereupon you
will get your Vor ladies back. If it s not that, I m cutting this com."
"I have a few pieces of free information for you, first," said Miles. "I don t
think they re ones you anticipate."
Soudha s hand hovered. "Go on."
"I m afraid your wormhole-collapser no longer qualifies as a secret weapon. We
caught up with your specs on file at Bollan
Design. Professor Vorthys invited Dr. Riva, of Solstice University, in to
consult. Are you aware of her reputation?"
Soudha nodded warily; Cappell s eyes widened. Madame Radovas stared wearily.
Foscol looked deeply suspicious.
"Well, putting together your specs, the data from the soletta accident, and
Riva s physics - there was a mathematician by the name of Dr. Yuell in there
too, if the name means anything to you - the Empire s top failure analyst and
the Empire s top five-
space expert have concluded that you did not, in fact, manage to invent a
wormhole-collapser. What you managed to invent was a wormhole-boomerang. Riva
says that when the five-space waves amplified the wormhole s resonance past
its phase boundaries, instead of collapsing, the wormhole returned the energy
to three-space in the form of a gravitational pulse. Tangling with this pulse
was what destroyed the soletta array and the ore ship, and - I m sorry, Madame
Radovas - killed Dr. Radovas and Marie
Trogir. The probable-cause crew finally found her body a few hours ago, I
regret to report, wrapped up in some of the wreckage they d retrieved almost a
week back."
Only a puff of breath from Cappell marked his grief, but water glittered in
his eyes.
Check
, thought Miles.
I thought he d protested too much
. Nobody looked surprised, merely oppressed.
"So if you succeed in getting your thing working, what you will actually do is
destroy this station, the five thousand or so people aboard, and yourselves.
And tomorrow morning, Barrayar will still be there." Miles let his voice fall
to a near whisper.
"All for nothing, and less than nothing."
"He lies," said Foscol fiercely into the shocked silence. "He lies."
Soudha gave a weird snort, ran his hands through his hair, and shook his head.
Then, to Miles s dismay, he laughed out loud.
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Cappell stared at his colleague. "Do you really think that s why? That it
malfunctioned like that?"
"It would explain," began Soudha. "It would explain... oh, God." He trailed
off. "I thought it was the ore ship," he said at last.
"Interfering somehow."
"I should also mention," Miles put in, still uneasily watching Soudha s odd
reaction, "that ImpSec has arrested all the Waste
Heat personnel and their families you left back at the Southport Transport
facility at Solstice. And then there are all your other relatives and friends,
the innocents who knew nothing. The hostage game is a bad game, a sad and ugly
game that s a lot easier to start than end. The worst versions I ve seen ended
up with neither side in control, or getting anything they wanted. And the
people who stand to lose the most in it frequently aren t even playing."
"Barrayaran threats." Foscol lifted her chin. "Do you think, after all this,
we can t stand up to you?"
"I m sure you can, but for what reason? There aren t too many prizes left in
this mess. The biggest one is gone; you can t shut off Barrayar. You can t
keep your secret or shield anyone you left behind on Komarr. About the only
thing you can do now is kill more innocent people. Great goals can call for
great sacrifices, yes, but your possible rewards are steadily shrinking." Yes,
that was it; don t raise the pressure, lower the wall.
"We did not," husked Cappell, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand, "go
through all this just to deliver the weapon of the century straight into
Barrayaran hands."
"It s already there. As a weapon, it appears to have some fundamental defects,
so far. But Riva says there s evidence you got more power out of the wormhole
than you put into it. This suggests possible future peaceful, economic uses,
when the phenomena are better understood."
"Really?" said Soudha, sitting up. "How did she figure? What are her numbers?"
"Soudha!" said Foscol reprovingly. Madame Radovas winced, and Soudha subsided,
albeit reluctantly, staring at Miles through narrowed eyes.
"On the other hand," Miles continued, "until further research assures us that
collapsing a wormhole is indeed quite impossible, none of you are going [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]