Betan Holiday

An adventure of two families and one old suitcase

I. Customs

The Barrayaran Imperium had survived wars, pretenderships, and Cetagandan occupation, but nothing in its history had prepared it for Betan customs.

“Weapons?” asked the courteous official with the turquoise hair.

“Ceremonial,” said Armsman Roic, with the dignity of a man who knows he is losing. “By the code of House Vorkosigan I accompany—”

“Of course. Here is your receipt for the two needlers, the stunner, the ceremonial knife, and” — the official peered into the tray — “the nail scissors with a blade over regulation. You’ll have them back at departure. Welcome to Beta, citizen! Your psych-hygiene declaration has been approved, by the way — we rarely see such low suppressed-aggression indices in a Barrayaran security detail. Your therapist has been good.”

“I don’t have a therapist,” said Roic grimly.

“A natural gift, then!” beamed the official. “Next!”

Next was Lord Ivan Xav Vorpatril, consul on leave, who passed impeccably — until, at the neighboring booth, his wife declared in her most innocent voice “previous employment history on planet,” and the clerk lit up: “Oh, you worked at the Orb of Unearthly Delights! Which troupe?” The rest of the family column — four Vorkosigan children aged ten to seventeen, one twenty-two-year-old Helen Natalia with the expression of an anthropologist at the height of fieldwork, Alys and Padma Vorpatril, Lady Ekaterin, and one Imperial Auditor in civilian clothes — covered the last meters of the customs hall to the sound of Ivan explaining to the children, in a level voice, that the Orb was “a cultural institution which we will discuss when you turn thirty.”

The official reason for the trip was simple and was named Cordelia. The Vicereine, finally (for the fourth time) retired and up to her ears in grandchildren on Sergyar, had handed her son at their last meeting an old mechanical key and an even older request: “Storage unit seventeen twenty-three, Arcadia Deep Storage, Silica dome. The rent is prepaid by my mother a hundred years ahead — she was Betan, she planned. Inside is her whole life, Miles, and I am not going to get there anymore. Go, clear it out, keep what’s worth keeping. And take the children — it’s high time they saw their other half-planet.”

The unofficial reasons, everyone knew their own. Ekaterin wanted to see the famous terraced gardens of Quartz dome. Helen was writing a thesis on the Betan electoral system and intended to interrogate strangers in the street. Lizzie, seventeen, had submitted — secretly, as she believed, and with the knowledge of the entire family, as was the fact — an application to the summer program of the Betan Astronomical Survey. Taurie, fifteen, wanted the beaches. Selig and Simone, twelve and ten, wanted the toy shops of which cousin Padma had told legends. Ivan wanted two weeks in which nobody thanked him officially for anything. And Tej…

“Tej,” Ivan asked on the escalator to the hotel, looking at his wife with sudden suspicion, “why did the customs woman take your autograph?”

“Old glory, love of my life,” said Tej brightly. “I told you this planet owes me three months’ wages. I intend to collect it in memories.”

II. Silica Dome

The first four days passed the way family holidays pass: on a schedule that disintegrated by noon.

Ekaterin vanished into the gardens of Quartz for whole mornings and came back with sketches and shining eyes. Helen interviewed two neighborhood coordinators, one professional voting consultant, and — through a misunderstanding she refused to explain — a street troupe of mimes. Taurie discovered the beaches under the dome’s artificial sun and declared Beta the greatest planet in the history of terraforming. Selig and Simone, escorted by Padma and by Roic’s inexhaustible patience, purchased: a set of “quantum” walkie-talkies with encryption (“real encryption, Uncle Roic, it says so on the box!”), a camera drone that Padma immediately began re-rigging, and — after forty minutes of negotiation conducted by Simone with a talent inherited in a direct line from her grandfather — a stuffed sand scorpion in a glass cube.

Ivan lay by the hotel pool with a hat over his face and the feeling that the universe had finally grasped his purpose, and even the earring incident did not shake his bliss for long. (He had bought a souvenir Betan earring from a street stall and worn it all day before Tej, choking with laughter, translated the code for him: “available, preference for experienced partners, group inquiries welcome.” Three Betan women and one herm had left Ivan their cards. Ivan kept them like combat decorations and refused to surrender them to his wife.)

And Miles walked the streets of his mother’s homeworld — a citizen by birth, with a Betan identification number issued half a century ago — and felt the strange double vision of a man to whom everything here is at once foreign and written into the blood. He had come here at seventeen, with his grandfather’s bodyguard and a mad idea out of which an entire mercenary fleet had been born. Here, somewhere in these levels, had lived Grandmother Naismith — a dry, iron, deeply loving old woman who used to serve her frail Barrayaran grandson double portions and opinions.

On the fifth day they went to the storage.

III. Vault 1723

Arcadia Deep Storage turned out to be exactly what the name promised: eight underground levels of climate-controlled corridors beneath Silica’s industrial sector, thousands of identical doors, and the silence of an archive. Unit 1723 was at the end of level six — a double cell packed tight with boxes labeled in the hand of a woman who had believed in order more than in declarations about it.

The clearing-out turned into archaeology. “Kitchen — serious.” “Kitchen — non-serious.” “Clothes Cordelia refused to take (she was right).” “Neighbor disputes 2978–2989, documentation.” A box marked “Survey — Mark I” revealed the young service uniforms of Grandmother Naismith — yes, she too had flown for the Astronomical Survey, before her daughter; the dynasty was older than the children suspected. Ekaterin sorted with the tenderness of someone arranging another person’s life; Helen catalogued aloud; Taurie tried on hats.

The box was found by Selig — a perfectly ordinary, medium-sized box, unlabeled, sealed with industrial tape and tucked behind everything else, against the very wall. Inside, under a layer of protective film, lay: a gray beret; a folded uniform in gray and white, with an admiral’s insignia and an emblem — a stylized bird of prey; a folder of news printouts in three languages; and a holocube, which Selig, naturally, switched on before anyone could say anything at all.

Above the box blossomed a news broadcast from thirty years ago. An anchor with a concerned face spoke of a crisis at the Hegen Hub, of a halted Cetagandan invasion, of a mercenary fleet that had turned the course of the war — and in the frame behind him, on the bridge of a warship, stood a small man in a gray uniform, with a face that six children in the storage cell knew better than their own: only younger, thinner, and crowned with a smile none of them had ever seen on it — the smile of a man who has just been told that something is impossible.

“…the commander of the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet, known only as Admiral Miles Naismith, origins unknown, citizenship — presumed Betan…”

It became very, very quiet in the storage cell. Six pairs of children’s eyes — and two adult ones; Ivan was studying the ceiling with the expression of a man who has waited thirty years for this moment and has, metaphorically, brought popcorn — turned toward the small man in civilian clothes by the box trolley.

“Dad,” said Lizzie, in the voice of an investigating magistrate presenting material evidence, “this is you.”

“Formally,” said Lord Auditor Miles Vorkosigan, after a pause in which he visibly weighed and discarded four escape routes, “this is classified information under a forty-year seal. Informally…” He looked at his wife. Ekaterin, who had known everything for a quarter of a century, was smiling the smile of a woman about to enjoy the best performance of the holiday. “Informally: yes. Your Grandmother Cordelia is Betan, I hold Betan citizenship by birth, and Admiral Naismith was… my second job. An ImpSec cover. Long story.”

“How long?” asked Taurie.

“Ten years and three wars,” said Ivan helpfully. “Tell them about Dagoola, coz. No? About Jahros, then? Or about that time you died?”

“You DIED?!” said four children in chorus.

“Temporarily,” said Miles with dignity. “And that is precisely what I was about to—”

At exactly that moment, down every corridor of Arcadia Deep Storage, a siren sounded; a soft Betan contralto announced: “Attention. Surface sandstorm, class four. Per protocol, the complex is sealing. Estimated isolation time: eleven hours. Remain calm and enjoy your stay” — and every door to the surface locked.

IV. The Sealing

The first twenty minutes of the lockdown passed merrily: the Betan protocols were well-oiled, guidance lights came on in the corridors pointing to a waiting lounge with food dispensers, and Selig declared this the best holiday of his life. Then Padma — who had sent his drone off to fly the corridors “for mapping” (Roic officially saw nothing) — came back at a run with the control tablet in his hand and a face grown very much older.

“Uncle Miles. On level four there are people cutting doors.”

The recording was short and unambiguous: six people in the storage facility’s work coveralls, but with movements no storage staff ever trains, were methodically opening cell after cell in the collectors’ vault gallery with a plasma cutter, carrying flat containers toward the cargo lift. A seventh, at the lift, with a stunner on his hip, was ticking off a list. The level’s uniformed guard lay beside his booth, bound and unconscious.

“The storm,” said Miles quietly. His mind had already shifted with that noiseless, total gear-change Ekaterin called “changing gears,” and the old Dendarii had once called other things. “Eleven hours of guaranteed isolation: nobody in, nobody out, surface comms degraded to emergency channels, staff at skeleton levels and neutralized. They are not robbing the storage despite the storm. They are robbing it on the storm’s schedule. They waited for it.” He surveyed his own: a wife, seven children from ten to twenty-two, one cousin in swim trunks under a robe, one Jacksonian sister-in-law, and one armsman disarmed down to nail scissors. “Ladies and gentlemen, the bad news: we are locked in one complex with an organized group that is not expecting witnesses. The good news—”

“There’s good news?” asked Ivan with longing.

“The good news is that they are also locked in one complex. With us.”

V. The Campaign

Headquarters was established in cell 1723, between the boxes “kitchen — serious” and the life of Grandmother Naismith, and Miles distributed assignments with the economy of a man who has done this under fire.

Reconnaissance: Padma’s drone, its camera hooded with a sock “so it won’t glint” (Simone’s contribution), took the galleries. Communications: Selig’s “quantum” walkie-talkies — which, to universal astonishment, really did carry decent encryption; “it says so on the box” entered family folklore on the spot. Cartography: Ekaterin, armed with the evacuation plans off the walls and a designer’s eye, mapped the complex in forty minutes and found what engineers call service galleries and mothers call “we do not go that way unless we must.” Analysis: Tej, having watched the recording three times, said briefly:

“The list at the lift belongs to a fence. They’re ticking items off to order — this is theft by catalog, so there’s an end buyer and a broker, and the jargon of the one with the stunner…” — she mimed two soundless syllables off his lips from the recording — “…is Jacksonian. House Sarlo or one of its satellites. They’re lifting Betan founding-era antiques — on the black market those go for the price of a small yacht apiece.”

“Which means they shoot stunners and run from noise,” Miles finished. “Thieves, not soldiers. The plan is simple: we don’t defeat them. We delay them. The storm is their ally for eleven hours; if we make them late with the loading, Beta herself will collect them at the exit. We need three things: time, noise at the right moment, and a link to the surface. The time we’ll steal from them — Ekaterin, do your service galleries reach the cargo lift? Excellent: the lift is about to develop a technical fault. The noise comes at the end. And the link…” He looked at the plan. “The complex’s emergency storm beacon is on the technical level, above the ventilation node. Manual activation. The crawlway there is seventy meters, and it is… narrow.”

Silence fell. Every gaze, by the force of some cruel family telepathy, converged on Ivan — the only one with shoulders narrow enough for a service crawl, and with a biography containing one cement mixer that was not spoken of aloud in the family.

“I hate every one of you,” said Lord Ivan Xav Vorpatril. “Give me the beacon.”

He crawled the seventy meters in twenty-one minutes, teeth clenched, an earbud in his ear through which Tej talked to him the entire way — quietly, evenly, without one wasted word, the way you talk to a man who is counting centimeters in the dark and remembers what a lid over his head feels like. When the beacon went green, and on the surface, through the howl of the storm, the automatic signal “forcible intrusion, Arcadia Deep Storage” reached Betan Public Safety, Ivan stayed motionless in the narrow crawlway one more minute, breathing, and then said into the earbud only:

“Tell Miles the popcorn’s on me this time.”

The lift failed at the same moment — Roic and Helen, via the service gallery, extracted the main breaker with domestic elegance — and through the corridors of level four, for the first time, an alarm sounded that belonged not to the guards but to the thieves.

VI. Naismith

The plan worked flawlessly for exactly eleven minutes — until the fence’s crew, hunting the cause of the fault, stumbled in the service gallery upon Roic and Helen and drove them ahead of itself toward the level’s central hall: two hostages, one very angry Jacksonian broker, and a schedule suddenly in ruins.

“Whoever touched the lift, come out!” The fence’s voice boomed down the corridors through the guard booth’s amplifier. “The storm ends in seven hours; the goods leave with us either way! Come out and nobody gets hurt — I’m counting to—”

He got no further, because from the depths of the gallery, out of the shadow between the columns, there stepped — alone, unhurried, hands well away from his body — a small man of fifty-three, dressed in a gray uniform with white trim, with an admiral’s insignia, a beret tilted precisely per regulation, and a smile his children had seen only on one holocube from thirty years ago. The uniform fit him. It always fit him — that was one of the things no tailor had ever been able to explain.

“I’ll come out,” said Admiral Miles Naismith. The voice was different: lighter, quicker, with Betan vowels. “Good evening. A fine operation so far — scheduled to the storm, catalog order, clean work. One mistake only: you didn’t check who else was in the building.” He took another step into the light. “Look at me carefully. You’re in the trade; you’ve heard. Small. Gray. Betan citizenship. A fleet that appears out of nowhere.”

The fence stared at him — and stared — and his face slowly performed the journey that faces from certain circles had been performing before that uniform for thirty years: from irritation through disbelief to that particular blanching with which a superstitious man establishes that the legend they use to frighten recruits in the dens of Jackson’s Whole is standing in front of him in a Betan basement, smiling.

“Naismith is dead,” he said, without conviction.

“People keep saying that,” the admiral agreed cordially. “Now think, professionally: the storage you picked — was it by chance that it turned out to be my family’s storage? The storm you waited for — did it come on schedule, or on my schedule? Did your lift break itself? Why is your comm silent?” Each sentence dropped like a stone into a pool, and with each one the circles in the fence’s eyes spread wider. “My people have been in the building since morning. My fleet has been in orbit since Tuesday. You are not robbing a warehouse, boy. You are standing in the middle of an exercise of the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet, and the only exit where nobody gets hurt today is yours: stunners on the floor, faces to the wall, and when Betan Public Safety breaches the doors — and it is breaching them right now, listen up top — you will surrender to them, with enormous relief, because the alternative was me.”

Above, through eleven levels of concrete, a growing mechanical howl could indeed be heard — Beta’s rescue crews, raised by Ivan’s beacon, were cutting the storm lock at a speed even the thieves’ plasma cutter could only envy. The fence listened to the howl for four seconds. Then, very slowly, he laid his stunner on the floor.

Later, in the family retellings, only one point would ever be disputed: whether his six people followed his example because of the howl above, because of the legend in front — or because of the moment when, at the admiral’s signal, the rest of the “exercise participants” stepped out from behind the columns in a row: one tall lady with the expression of a commander of gardens, one Jacksonian with the smile of a fence from a higher league, one armsman with his — entirely regulation — nail scissors drawn, and five children with walkie-talkies, lined up by height.

VII. Souvenirs

Betan Public Safety handled the arrest in eleven minutes and the paperwork in five hours, four of which went to the duty inspector’s attempts to reconcile the statements with the database.

“Sir,” he said at last, with the patience of a man whose planet invented psychotherapy out of necessity, “the recordings show an individual identifying himself as Admiral Naismith. Citizen Naismith appears in the registry: Betan citizenship, issued fifty-three years ago… with not a single official use in the last thirty. If we assume you are he, you owe three decades of unfiled psych-hygiene declarations.”

“Send the forms to my office address,” said Miles. “Vorbarr Sultana, Vorkosigan House. I shall fill them out with pleasure. Under ‘suppressed aggression,’ write ‘sublimated into administration.’”

The remaining days of the holiday passed as befits a holiday after an adventure: in retellings with growing detail. Lizzie received — the day before departure, with Betan punctuality — an acceptance letter from the Astronomical Survey’s summer program, and informed the family with a shriek audible, according to Taurie, “all the way to the Orb.” Selig and Simone were interviewed by a local children’s news feed as “witnesses to the robbery” and comported themselves with a dignity marred only by Selig’s attempt to sell the reporter exclusive drone footage. Tej discovered on the list of the stolen — recovered to the last item — three antiques that had once passed through her grandmother’s hands, and declined to specify in what capacity. And Ivan, two mornings running, received at breakfast from the assembled clan one serving of popcorn apiece, and accepted the honors with wounded dignity, leaving no kernel behind.

The unlabeled box traveled to Barrayar in the luggage, lighter by one item: the gray beret stayed with Simone, by an agreement reached through negotiations of which Miles said only that at her age he had sold worse. The uniform Ekaterin folded personally, film and all, and to her husband’s “why are we even keeping it,” she answered with a look over her glasses:

“Because it fits you. And because the children know now. Legends keep best declassified, my lord — that way they stop being landmines and become inheritance.”

On the last evening, the two of them stood on the hotel terrace under Silica’s artificial sky, which was just then rehearsing a sunset in impossible colors, and watched, down by the pool, four Vorkosigan children and two Vorpatrils re-enact “the exercise” for the seventh time, the role of the fence rotating on a fixed schedule, and the line “Naismith is dead” being delivered in an ever less successful attempt at gravity.

“You know what’s funny?” said Miles. “Thirty years I kept Naismith under lock and key. Classification, protocols, a whole life in a safe. And it turns out his best use all along was to wait in Grandmother’s box, so he could frighten thieves in front of my children.”

“That’s not the funny part,” said Ekaterin, and took his arm. “The funny part is that tomorrow, at customs, under ‘valuables acquired on Beta,’ we are going to have to declare one admiral.”

They declared him. The official with the turquoise hair read the form twice, looked at the small traveler, at his family, at the beret on the head of the ten-year-old girl — and stamped it without a single question, because he was Betan, and Beta had learned long ago that some things pass through customs only unsupervised.