Vorreedi's brows crimped. "Lord Vorkosigan …" But he appeared to think better of whatever he'd been about to say. He just shook his head and departed.

Ivan wandered in later, flung himself onto Miles's sofa, put up his booted feet on the armrest, and sighed.

"You still here?" Miles shut down his comconsole, which was by now making him cross-eyed. "I thought you'd be out making hay, or rolling in it, or whatever. Our last two days here and all. Or did you run out of invitations?" Miles jerked his thumb ceilingward, We may be bugged.

Ivan's lip curled, Screw it. "Vorreedi has laid on more bodyguards. It kind of takes the spontaneity out of things." He stared into the air. "Besides, I worry about where I put my feet, now. Wasn't it some queen of Egypt who was delivered in a rolled-up carpet? Could happen again."

"Could indeed," Miles had to agree. "Almost certainly will, in fact."

"Great. Remind me not to stand next to you."

Miles grimaced.

After a minute or two Ivan added, "I'm bored."

Miles chased him from his room.

The ceremony of Singing Open The Great Gates did not entail the opening of any gates, though it did involve singing. A massed chorus of several hundred ghem, both male and female, robed in white-on-white, arranged themselves near the eastern entrance inside the Celestial Garden. They planned to pass in procession around the four cardinal directions and eventually, later in the afternoon, finish at the north gate. The chorus stood to sing along an undulating area of ground with surprising acoustic properties, and the galactic envoys and ghem and haut mourners stood to listen. Miles flexed his legs, inside his boots, and prepared to endure. The open venue left lots of space for haut-lady bubbles, and they were out in force—some hundreds, scattered about the glade. How many haut-women did live here?

Miles glanced around his little delegation—himself, Ivan, Vorob'yev, and Vorreedi all in House blacks, Mia Maz dressed as before, striking in black and white. Vorreedi looked more Barrayaran, more officer-like, and, Miles had to admit, a lot more sinister out of his deliberately dull Cetagandan civvies. Maz rested one hand on Vorob'yev's arm and stood on tiptoe as the music started.

Breathtaking, Miles realized, could be a quite literal term—his lips parted and the hairs on the backs of his arms stood on end as the incredible sounds washed over him. Harmonies and dissonances followed one another up and down the scale with such precision, the listener could make out every word, when the voices were not simply wordless vibrations that seemed to crawl right up the spine, and ring in the back-brain in a succession of pure emotions. Even Ivan stood transfixed. Miles wanted to comment, to express his astonishment, but breaking into the absolute concentration the music demanded seemed some sort of sacrilege. After about a thirty-minute performance, the music came to a temporary close, and the chorus prepared to move gracefully off to its next station, followed more clumsily by the delegates.

The two groups took different routes. Ba servitors under the direction of a dignified ghem-lord major-domo shepherded the delegates to a buffet, to both refresh and delay them while the chorus set up for its next performance at the southern gate. Miles stared anxiously after the haut-lady bubbles, which naturally did not accompany the outlander envoys, but floated off in their own mob in yet a third direction. He was getting less distracted by the diversions of the Celestial Garden. Could one finally grow to take it entirely for granted? The haut certainly seemed to.

"I think I'm getting used to this place," he confided to Ivan, as he walked along between him and Vorob'yev in the ragged parade of outlander guests. "Or … I could."

"Mm," said Ambassador Vorob'yev. "But when these pretty folks turned their pet ghem-lords loose to pick up some cheap new real estate out past Komarr, five million of us died. I hope that hasn't slipped your mind, my lord."

"No," said Miles tightly. "Not ever. But . . . even you are not old enough to remember the war personally, sir. I'm really starting to wonder if we'll ever see an effort like that from the Cetagandan Empire again."

"Optimist," murmured Ivan.

"Let me qualify that. My mother always says, behavior that is rewarded is repeated. And the reverse. I think . . . that if the ghem-lords fail to score any new territorial successes in our generation, it's going to be a long time till we see them try again. An expansionist period followed by an isolationist one isn't a new historical phenomenon, after all."

"Didn't know you'd taken up political science," said Ivan.

"Can you prove your point?" asked Vorob'yev. "In less than a generation?"

Miles shrugged. "Don't know. It's one of those subliminal gut-feel things. If you gave me a year and a department, I could probably produce a reasoned analysis, with graphs."

"I admit," said Ivan, "it's hard to imagine, say, Lord Yenaro conquering anybody."

"It's not that he couldn't. It's just that by the time he ever got a chance, he'd be too old to care. I don't know. After the next isolationist period, though, all bets are off. When the haut are done with ten more generations of tinkering with themselves, I don't know what they'll be." And neither do they. That was an odd realization. You mean no one is in charge here? "Universal conquest may seem like a crude dull game from their childhood after that. Or else," he added glumly, "they'll be unstoppable."

"Jolly thought," grumbled Ivan.

A delicate breakfast offering was set up in a nearby pavilion. On the other side of it, the float-cars with the white silk upholstery waited to convey refreshed funeral envoys the couple of kilometers across the Celestial Garden to the South Gate. Miles nabbed a hot drink, refused with concealed loathing the offer of a pastry tray—his stomach was knotting with nervous anticipation—and watched the movements of the ba servitors with hawk-like attention. It has to break today. There's no more time. Come on, Rian! And how the devil was he to take Rian's next report when he had Vorreedi glued to his hip? The man was noting his every eye-flicker, Miles swore.

The day wore on with a repeat of the cycle of music and food and transportation. A number of the delegates were looking glassily over-loaded with it all; even Ivan had stopped eating in self-defense at about stop three. When the contact did come, at the buffet after the fourth and last choral performance, Miles almost missed it. He was making idle chit-chat with Vorreedi, reminiscing about Keroslav District baking styles, and wondering how he was going to distract and ditch the man. Miles had reached the point of desperation of fantasizing slipping Ambassador Vorob'yev an emetic and siccing, so to speak, the protocol officer on his superior while Miles ducked out, when he saw out of the corner of his eye Ivan talking with a grave ba servitor. He did not recognize this ba; it was not Rian's favorite little creature, for it was young and had a brush of blond hair. Ivan's hands turned palm-out, and he shrugged, then he followed the servitor from the pavilion, looking puzzled. Ivan? What the hell does she want Ivan for?

"Excuse me, sir," Miles cut across Vorreedi's words, and around his side. By the time Vorreedi had turned after him, Miles had darted past another delegation and was halfway to the exit after Ivan. Vorreedi would follow, but Miles would just have to deal with that later.

Miles emerged, blinking, into the artificial afternoon light of the dome just in time to see the dark shadow and boot-gleam of Ivan's uniform disappear around some flowering shrubbery, beyond an open space featuring a fountain. He trotted after, his own boots scuffing unevenly on the colored stone walks threading the greenery. "Lord Vorkosigan?" Vorreedi called after him. Miles didn't turn around, but raised his hand in an acknowledging, but still rapidly receding, wave. Vorreedi was too polite to curse out loud, but Miles could fill in the blanks.