She swallowed water. “Don’t want to go to school,” she said, muffled into the cup.

“Didn’t the Bharaputrans ever let you into the virtual learning programs? When I was there, it was the best part. Better even than the games. Though I liked the games, of course. Did you play Zylec?”

She nodded.

“That was fun. But the history, the astrography shows—the virtual instructor was the funniest program. A white-haired old geezer in Twentieth-century clothes, this jacket with patches on the elbows—I always wondered if he was based on a real person, or was a composite.”

“I never saw them.”

“What did you do all day?”

“We talked among ourselves. We did our hair. Swam. The proctors made us do calesthenics every day—”

“Us, too.”

“—till they did this to me.” She touched a breast. “Then they only made me swim.”

He could see the logic of that. “Your last body-sculpture was pretty recent, I take it.”

“About a month ago.” She paused. “You really don’t … think my mother was coming for me?”

“I’m sorry. You don’t have a mother. Neither do I. What was coming for you … was a horror. Almost beyond imagining.” Except he could imagine it all too vividly.

She frowned at him, obviously reluctant to part with her beloved dream-future. “We’re all beautiful. If you’re really a clone, why aren’t you?”

“I’m glad to see you’re beginning to think,” he said carefully. “My body was sculpted to match my progenitor’s. He was crippled.”

“But if it’s true—about the brain transplants—why not you?”

“I was … part of another plot. My purchasers took me away whole. It was only later that I learned all the truth, for sure, about Bharaputra’s.” He sat beside her on the bed. The smell of her—had they genetically engineered some subtle perfume into her skin? It was intoxicating. The memory of her soft body, squirming under his on the hatch corridor deck, perturbed him. He could have dissolved into it. … “I had friends—don’t you?”

She nodded mutely.

“By the time I could do anything for them—long before I could do anything for them—they were gone. All killed. So I rescued you instead.”

She stared doubtfully at him. He could not tell what she was thinking.

The cabin wavered, and a flash of nausea that had nothing to do with suppressed eroticism twisted his stomach.

“What was that?” Maree gasped, her eyes widening. Unconsciously, she grasped his hand. His hand burned at her touch.

“It’s all right. It’s more than all right. That was your first wormhole jump.” From his vantage of, well, several wormhole jumps, he made his tone heartily reassuring. “We’re away. The Jacksonians can’t get us now.” Much better than die double-cross he’d been half-anticipating, in some reserved part of his mind, from Baron Fell’s forces the moment he had Vasa Luigi hostage in his own fat hands. Not the roar and rock of enemy fire. Just a nice little tame jump. “You’re safe. We’re all safe now.” He thought of the mad Eurasian girl. Almost all.

He so wanted Maree to believe. The Dendarii, the Barrayarans— he’d scarcely expected them to understand. But this girl—if only he could shine in her eyes. He wanted no reward but a kiss. He swallowed. You sure it’s only a kiss you want? There was an uncomfortable hot knot growing in his belly, beneath that ghastly constricted waistband. An embarrassing stiffening in his loins. Maybe she wouldn’t notice. Understand. Judge.

“Will you … lass me?” he asked humbly, very dry-mouthed. He took the cup from her, and tossed back the last trickle of water. It was not enough to unlock the tension in his throat.

“Why?” she asked, brow wrinkling.

“For … pretend.”

That was an appeal she understood. She blinked, but, willingly enough, leaned forward and touched her lips to his. Her tunic shifted… .

“Oh,” he breathed. His hand went round her neck, and stopped its retreat. “Please, again …” He drew her face to his. She neither resisted nor responded, but her mouth was amazing nonetheless. I want, I want … It couldn’t hurt to touch her, just to touch her. Her hands went around his neck, automatically. He could feel each cool finger, tipped by a tiny bite of nail. Her lips parted. He melted. His head was pounding. Hot, he shrugged off his jacket.

Stop. Stop now, dammit. But she should have been his heroine. Miles had a damned harem full of them, he was certain. Might she let him … do more than kiss her? Not penetration, definitely not. Nothing to hurt her, nothing invasive. A rub between those vast breasts could not hurt her, though it would doubtless bewilder her. He might bury himself in that soft flesh and find release as effectively, more effectively, than between her thighs. She might think he was crazy, but it wouldn’t hurt her. His mouth sought hers again, hungrily. He touched her skin. More. He slipped her tunic down off her shoulders, freeing her body to his starving hand. Her skin was velvet soft. His other hand, shaking, dove to release the strangling-tight waistband of his trousers. That was a relief. He was dreadfully, excruciatingly aroused. But he would not touch her below the waist, no… .

He rolled her backwards on the bed, pinning her, kissing frantically down her body. She emitted a startled gasp. His breath deepened, then, suddenly, stopped. A spasm reached deep into his lungs, as if all his bronchia had constricted at once with a snap like a trap closing.

No! Not again! It was happening again, just like the time he’d tried last year—

He rolled off her, icy sweat breaking out all over his body. He fought his locked throat. He managed one asthmatic, shuddering indrawn breath. The flashbacks of memory were almost hallucinatory in their clarity.

Galen’s angry shouting. Lars and Mok, pinning him at Galen’s command, pulling off his clothes, as if the beating he’d just taken at their hands was not punishment enough. They’d sent the girl away before they’d started; she’d run like a rabbit. He spat salt-and-iron blood. The shock-stick pointing, touching, there, there, pop and crackle. Galen going even more red-faced, accusing him of treason, worse, raving on about Aral Vorkosigan’s alleged sexual proclivities, turning up the power far too high. “Flip him.” Knotting terror deep in his gut, the visceral memory of pain, humiliation, burning and cramps, a weird short-circuited arousal and horribly shameful release despite it all, the stink of searing flesh… .

He pushed back the visions, and almost passed out before he managed to inhale and exhale one more time. Somehow he was sitting not on the bed but on the floor beside it, arms and legs spasmodically drawn up. The astonished blonde girl crouched half-naked on the rumpled mattress, staring down at him. “What’s the matter with you? Why did you stop? Are you dying?”

No, just wishing I were. It wasn’t fair. He knew exactly where this conditioned reflex came from. It wasn’t a memory buried in his subconscious, more’s the pity, nor from some distant, blurred childhood. It was barely four years ago. Wasn’t that sort of clear insight supposed to free one from such demons of the past? Was he going to go into self-induced spasms every time he tried to have sex with a real girl? Or was it just the extreme tension of the occasion? If ever the situation was less tense, less conscience-thwarted, if ever he really had time to make love instead of a hasty, sweaty scramble, then maybe he might overcome memory and madness— or maybe I won’t … he fought for another shuddering inhalation. Another. His lungs began to work again. Was he really in danger of choking to death? Presumably once he actually passed out his autonomic nervous system would take over again.

His cabin door slid open. Taura and Bothari-Jesek stood silhouetted in the aperture, peering into the dimness. What they saw made Bothari-Jesek swear, and Sergeant Taura shoulder forward.