Borders of Infinity

by Lois McMaster Bujold

“Do you serve Count Vorkosigan, little man?” she asked cautiously. Miles thought about that one a moment. “Yes,” he answered finally. The answer was, after all, true on every level of meaning but the one she’d asked it.

If he turned around now, he knew, he might surprise an essential loneliness in the hermaphrodite’s eyes, never permitted on the lips. He did not turn around.

“My life expectancy is not considered good.” For example, if certain parties here ever figure out who ‘Admiral Naismith’ really is, it could go down to as little as fifteen minutes.

“Is this the dungeon?” Miles spat blood and peered around. “No, no, just a basement,” the guard sergeant assured him cheerily. “The dungeon is for the paying customers. Heh, heh, heh.”

“I declare your interest in her forfeit, doctor. Meanwhile, let her grab what life she can.” “But she was my project—I must answer for her—” “No. She’s a free woman now. She must answer for herself.” “How free can she ever be, in that body, driven by that metabolism, that face—a freak’s life—better to die painlessly, than to have all that suffering inflicted on her . . .” Miles spoke through his teeth. With emphasis. “No. It’s. Not.”

“What else do you wish for, Taura?” Miles asked earnestly. Slowly she replied. “I wish I were normal.” Miles was silent, too. “I can’t give you what I don’t possess myself,”

“Then don’t wish to be normal,” said Miles passionately, rising to pace. “You’ll only waste your precious time in futile frustration. Wish to be great! That at least you have a fighting chance for. Great at whatever you are. A great trooper, a great sergeant. A great quartermaster, for God’s sake, if that’s what comes with ease. A great musician like Nicol—only think how horrible if she were wasting her talents trying to be merely normal.” Miles paused self-consciously in his pep talk, thinking, Easier to preach than practice . . . Taura studied her polished claws, and sighed. “I suppose it’s useless for me to wish to be beautiful, like Sergeant Anderson.” “It is useless for you to try to be beautiful like anyone but yourself,” said Miles. “Be beautiful like Taura, ah, that you can do. Superbly well.”

“Now, there’s this about cynicism, Sergeant. It’s the universe’s most supine moral position. Real comfortable. If nothing can be done, then you’re not some kind of shit for not doing it, and you can lie there and stink to yourself in perfect peace.”

“Suegar tell you I was a sergeant?” he hissed. “No, it’s written on your forehead in letters of fire.

“Power is better than revenge,” suggested Miles, not flinching before her snake-cold, set face, her hot coal eyes. “Power is a live thing, by which you reach out to grasp the future. Revenge is a dead thing, reaching out from the past to grasp you.”

She flexed her arm under his nose, muscles coiling and loosing. “This is the only power that exists in here. You haven’t got it, and you’re looking for some to cover your ass. But you’ve come to the wrong store.” “No,” Miles denied, and tapped his forehead. “This is power. And I own the store. This controls that”—he slapped his bunched fist. “Men may move mountains, but ideas move men. Minds can be reached through bodies—what else is the point of all this”— he waved at the camp— “but to reach your minds through your bodies. But that power flows both ways, and the outflow is the stronger tide. “When you have allowed the Cetagandans to reduce your power to that alone”— he squeezed her bicep for emphasis—it was like squeezing a rock covered in velvet, and she tensed, enraged at the liberty—“then you have allowed them to reduce you to your weakest part. And they win.”

“You’re supposed to be yelling Get in line!, NOT Get fucked! . . . The signal always gets degraded in combat,” he muttered to himself.

The soldier saluted and marched off. Ah, the pleasure again of being able to give a command without having to follow it up with a supporting theological argument.