Limitations

An entrepreneurial adventure of Mark Pierre Vorkosigan and Kareen Koudelka

I. The Exposition

The annual exposition of MPVK Enterprises on Escobar drew investors from eleven worlds and opened, by tradition, with the butter bugs — because Mark Vorkosigan had learned, in a quarter-century of business, one truth that no management course teaches: an investor who has laughed during the first ten minutes reads the financial statements a third more charitably.

“…and so, ladies and gentlemen, the glorious bugs of Borgos Enterprises today produce nutritional base for nine planets, a cosmetics line that does not pay me enough to advertise it with my own face, and — the novelty of the season — a biodegradable structural insulation material that our marketing department declined to name ‘Bug Home’ despite my personal insistence.” Laughter in the hall: the right kind, warm. Mark, fifty, round, stable as a safe, waited out the precise beat. “But it is not for the bugs that you have crossed half the Nexus. Ladies and gentlemen: after twenty-six years of work, the Durona Group is ready. The Lily Protocol — the first comprehensive cellular rejuvenation therapy with proven ten-year efficacy — enters registration on Escobar next month. Not immortality. Not for the chosen. Medicine: certified, reproducible, and — this is settled with the Escobaran authorities and is not subject to negotiation — with a price ceiling on all markets. We do not sell youth to the rich, ladies and gentlemen. We are bringing down the price of time. Questions — after coffee.”

The question came before coffee, from the third row, from a man in an impeccable gray suit who was not on the accreditation list and who held in his hand not a tablet but an envelope — paper, with a wax seal, theatrical to the point of nausea.

“Not a question, Mr. Vorkosigan. Service of process.” The voice was courteous and trained. “House Saldo, Jackson’s Whole, department of acquired receivables. The House is the lawful acquirer of the archive and outstanding assets of the former House Ryoval, including” — he raised his voice exactly enough to reach the press microphones — “the rights to all research lines developed by the Durona collective during the period of their contractual relations with Jacksonian Houses. The Lily Protocol is derivative of those lines. House Saldo asserts its claim. The suits were filed this morning on Escobar, Komarr, and Beta. Enjoy the exposition.”

He laid the envelope on the edge of the stage, bowed, and walked out through the stunned hall — and Kareen Koudelka, standing in the wings with the exposition’s operations plan in her hands, saw the shoulders of her partner of twenty-five years make that microscopic movement — down and inward — which no one in the hall recognized, and which for her was a siren at full power.

Because the name Ryoval, in that hall, had been heard not only by Mark.

The others had heard it too.

II. The Paper

The legal review took a week and a team from three law firms, and the conclusion fit into one sentence from the senior counsel: “The claim is garbage, Mr. Vorkosigan — first-class, professionally manufactured garbage, which will cost us three to seven years.”

“Explain the garbage to me,” said Kareen. At meetings it was mostly she who spoke; they had divided things that way long ago, by force of a simple arithmetic the two of them did not discuss aloud: every minute in which Mark did not pronounce the word “Ryoval” was a good minute.

“House Saldo is a vulture of the new school: they buy at auction the archives and receivables of bankrupt and liquidated Houses — whole funds of paper for pennies — and then monetize them across the galaxy: lawsuits, licensing claims, extortion toward out-of-court settlements. The model is repulsive and profitable. Nine years ago, at a liquidation sale, they bought the residual archive of House Ryoval — the physical one, the paper, what survived the House’s dissolution. And in that archive, by their assertion, there figure contracts from the period when the Durona Group worked on Jackson’s Whole: research journals, protocols, intellectual-property agreements. The assertion: the scientific line from which the Lily Protocol grows was begun as the property of a Jacksonian House — therefore the successor House holds a share.” The counsel spread his hands. “Legally it is void on every civilized planet. But it is enough to freeze the registration until judgment. And judgment, with the appeals…”

“Three to seven years,” said Kareen. “During which the therapy reaches no one, the investors scatter, and House Saldo waits for us to pay them to go away. How much do they want?”

“They haven’t said yet. They will let the figure ripen.” The counsel hesitated. “There is one more thing, Madame Koudelka. In the exhibits to the claim, among the contracts… Saldo included other documents from the Ryoval archive. Inventory documents. They have no legal bearing on the case; they were inserted, obviously, for… atmosphere.” He nudged the tablet across the table without looking at it. “I judged it better that you see it first.”

Kareen saw it first. An inventory of House Ryoval from twenty-seven years before, authentic in appearance, pedantic in form: biological assets, acquisitions, items in course of delivery. And on line fourteen, between a ghem deserter and a lot of genetic material: “Clone (Barrayar/Bharaputra), male, object of acquisition in progress — see file ‘Mirror.’”

Line fourteen described Mark.

“I see,” said Kareen Koudelka very calmly. Then she stood, went to the window, counted to ten in Betan — with visualization, as she had been trained — came back, and sat down. “Then it is as follows, gentlemen. The lawsuits are yours: every comma, every instance. The press is mine. And this…” she switched off the tablet, “…this does not reach Mark in this form. Not because he cannot bear it. But because that is exactly what they are counting on — and I do not give extortionists what they are counting on. Firm policy.”

She gave it to him that same evening, at home, with the words they had worked out for such occasions many years before: “Something has arrived from the bad shelf. Do you want it now, later, or paraphrased?” Mark chose “now,” read the inventory twice, set down the tablet, and looked at the wall for a long time — and Kareen sat beside him without touching him, because she knew when touch helps and when it is merely noise.

“Do you know what’s funny?” he said at last. His voice was level: the voice with which one keeps balance. “They don’t even know what they’re doing. For them this is psychological pressure by the textbook: ‘locate the counterparty’s trauma, attach it to the claim.’ Standard Jacksonian procedure, tariff two. They don’t know what they are waking.” A pause. “And it woke, Kareen. It’s loud downstairs.”

“I know,” said Kareen. “I’ve been watching you hold it for a week.” She turned to him, took his hands — now was the moment — and spoke briskly, because briskness was the deepest tenderness the Black Gang would accept: “Which is why I am convening a council. Full complement. You, me — and them. Tomorrow morning, after breakfast, with the whiteboard. If Saldo has invited Ryoval to the table, we shall invite all interested parties. Ours included.”

III. The Council

The council with the whiteboard was their household ritual of twenty years — invented by Kareen after one bad winter, refined by the Durona Group’s therapists, and incomprehensible to any outsider: Mark sat facing the board, Kareen wrote, and the floor was given in turn to everyone.

To Gorge, who at the word “Ryoval” wanted to eat, and who was fed beforehand and copiously, because hungry he did not think. To Howl, who received his twenty minutes and a blanket, and whom no one hurried. To Grouch, who set out in eleven points why all was lost, and whose points Kareen recorded conscientiously, because in point seven (“they have bought all the other funds as well — there are other people in that paper, not only us”) lay, as it turned out later, half the strategy. And to Killer.

Killer said one sentence, as always: “I know where they live.”

“Recorded,” said Kareen Koudelka, without flinching, and recorded it: she alone in the galaxy kept minutes for the Black Gang. “Killer’s motion is accepted in substance and rejected as to method. Nobody dies anywhere — that first. But, Killer…” she underlined the sentence on the board, “…that does not mean you are out of work. On the contrary. This time the task is precisely yours; only the weapon is different. Mark?”

Mark Vorkosigan looked at the board for a long time — the inventory, the lawsuits, Grouch’s eleven points, Killer’s sentence — and when he spoke, his voice was another one: the concentrated, predator-calm voice that his investors knew from his best deals, and of whose existence the Black Gang was not separate, but was the fuel.

“House Saldo bought the Ryoval archive for pennies, on leverage, like everything else in their portfolio — they are a vulture in borrowed feathers; their entire model is loaned capital against future extortions. That is a weakness. Second weakness: their paper is old, and old paper gets examined — and if there are alterations in it, alterations can be proven. Third weakness, the greatest: they think they hold our past. But the Durona Group’s past is not theirs. It was the subject of a Deal — a real one, Jacksonian, sacred by local lights — and the other party to that Deal is still alive.” He turned to Kareen. “The plan is in three moves. One: the lawyers chew the lawsuits and buy time. Two: forensics on the paper — we demand the originals by court order, to the last sheet. Three…” he drew a breath, “…three is Jackson’s Whole. House Fell. In person.”

“We,” said Kareen. Not as a question.

“Kareen, that planet—”

“That planet has seen you alone, and has seen what comes of it.” Her voice rose by nothing at all. “This time it will see you with me. Besides, Mark Pierre, look at it soberly: you are going to negotiate a Deal with a Jacksonian baron. Which of the two of us graduated in Betan business psychology with honors? Precisely. Pack the case. I’ll bring a jar of the new cosmetics line too — gifts open doors, and bug-butter collagen opens vaults.”

IV. The Paper, Second Examination

Moves one and two bore fruit while their ship was still in transit.

The originals, wrung out of House Saldo by court order after three weeks of resistance (the resistance itself — already evidence), arrived at the laboratory of the Escobaran forensic examiners: forty-one folders of Ryoval paper. Thirty-nine were authentic — inventories, contracts, the bookkeeping of a dead hell — and precisely their authenticity was the design: onto a spine of truth had been grafted two folders of lie. The contracts “proving” Ryoval’s rights over the Durona research lines turned out to be executed on genuine period paper, in genuine period ink — House Saldo did not economize on craftsmanship — but with one irreparable error: the format of the registration numbers followed a standard introduced into Jacksonian commercial usage three years after the stated dates. Gravediggers of paper, as a certain old archivist on another planet would have said, always leave a receipt.

“The forgery is provable, but slowly,” the senior counsel reported over the link. “Their experts will argue with ours, the court will appoint a third… We win, Mr. Vorkosigan, but again in years. If you want fast, you don’t need a court. You need a witness with weight, who will pronounce the paper dead at its point of origin. By the Jacksonian rule.”

“I know the rule,” said Mark. “The Deal is the Deal. We go to the other party to the Deal.”

House Fell received them on its orbital station — the place where, twenty-seven years before, a desperate group of clones and one disintegrating clone had played out the escape of the century — and they were received not by the Baron but by his right hand: a woman of about fifty, with a face Mark recognized at first glance, because it was the mirror of faces he loved. A Durona. Lilly Durona the Younger — the girl who had remained with Fell a quarter-century ago as a living clause of that Deal, and today: personal physician to the House, head of its medical empire, and, by report, the second most influential person on the station.

“Mark Vorkosigan,” she said, and in her voice were twenty-seven years gathered into three words. “The family writes that the protocol carries Grandmother’s name. A good name. She lived to see phase two — died at a hundred and three, dissatisfied with the statistical sample.” Her gaze moved to Kareen and softened by a degree. “And you are the bookkeeping of his conscience. The family writes about you too. Come. The Baron is expecting you — and, before we go in: House Fell knows why you are here. House Saldo offered us a share of their claim as well, last year. The Baron heard them out for fourteen minutes.”

“And?” asked Kareen.

“And ordered that they be served tea without sugar,” said Lilly Durona the Younger. “On Jackson’s Whole, that is a diplomatic note. Go in.”

V. The Deal

Baron Fell — the third bearer of the name, having inherited the style along with the station: heavy, courteous, with the eyes of a man who counts everything — heard them out, examined the forensic report on the forgeries, and asked a single question, the real one:

“What do you want from House Fell, Madame Koudelka? Formulate it as a Deal.”

“Three things, Baron.” Kareen was ready: she had been drafting the formulation for eighteen days, with Betan precision and a Jacksonian vocabulary. “First: a certified copy of the original Deal of twenty-seven years ago between House Fell and Lily Durona — proving that the House’s rights in the Group’s work were settled and extinguished, in full, for a price performed. Second: an official declaration by House Fell that House Ryoval never held rights in the Durona collective or its research — you are the sole living authority on the question, and the whole planet knows it. Third: those two documents, deposited simultaneously with the Consortium’s arbitration here and with the court on Escobar. With that, Saldo’s paper dies in a week instead of seven years.”

“A precise formulation.” The Baron nodded slowly. “And the price? A Deal, madame, has two sides; otherwise it is charity, and House Fell does not do charity — it is bad for the reputation and for the digestion.”

“The price is as follows.” Kareen produced the second folder. “The Lily Protocol will be licensed on all markets with a price ceiling — that is public and irreversible. We offer House Fell the status of first certified regional operator for Jacksonian space: your clinics, your distribution, our oversight of quality and prices. Your profit will be respectable and — here is the fine point, Baron — it will be first. On this planet, ‘first’ is worth more than ‘big’: every House that wants the therapy afterward will come through you. We are giving you nothing we would not sell on the open market tomorrow. We are giving you only the place in the queue.”

There fell a long Jacksonian silence — the silence of an abacus.

“Madame Koudelka,” said Baron Fell at last, “if the conscience of Escobar ever wearies you, House Fell will make you an offer of employment of the kind that is not refused.” He turned to Mark, and something in the heavy face shifted. “And to you I will say something free of charge, Vorkosigan, which is not part of the Deal. House Saldo has profaned the trade. The paper of the dead Houses is a graveyard, and they sell the bones with forged labels — today Ryoval against you, tomorrow who knows whom against who knows whom; half the old Houses are already checking their archives with sinking hearts. Nobody here will weep for Saldo. If you intend to do something… commercial… with them” — the Baron smiled by half a millimeter — “House Fell will watch with interest and will see nothing.”

They signed the Deal that evening, by the full ritual, with witnesses from three Houses. And at the leave-taking, at the docking tube, Lilly Durona the Younger held Mark’s hand a second longer.

“I stayed here on a calculation, Vorkosigan, and the calculation came out: the House is mine from the inside, and the family is free on the outside. But every year, on Grandmother’s birthday, I say the same thing to myself, and this year I will say it to you aloud: you carried us out of hell on your back, coming apart as you went. Whatever is written in whosever inventories — here, on this station, there is one entry that is not subject to acquisition. Go finish your protocol. And, Mark…” she glanced toward Kareen, waiting at the hatch, “…Grandmother used to say: clones are made in a tank, but people are made by other people. Your person has made you well.”

VI. Saldo

The blow fell upon House Saldo over the space of eleven days and entered the textbooks of two planets — in law and in corporate finance respectively.

Day one: Fell’s deposited documents killed the claim in the Consortium’s arbitration — publicly, with the formulation “void in origin and a disgrace to the trade,” which the Baron had dictated personally and with visible pleasure. Day four: the Escobaran court, having received the same documents plus the forensic findings on the forgeries, dismissed the suits and referred the matter to the prosecutors. Day five: the registration of the Lily Protocol was unfrozen. Thus far — the defense.

Day eleven belonged to Killer.

Because through all those weeks, quietly, through seven companies untraceable to MPVK, Mark Vorkosigan had been buying not House Saldo’s shares — a vulture’s shares are worth nothing — but its debts: the loans with which Saldo had financed the very purchase of the dead archives, assigned over by their uneasy creditors at a discount that grew with every piece of bad news from Escobar. On the morning of the eleventh day the companies revealed themselves as a single creditor; the creditor called the entire debt for immediate repayment under the material-adverse-change clause; and House Saldo, insolvent by noon, was placed under the administration of its creditor by evening. Without a shot. Without a court. By the bookkeeping method.

“Is Killer satisfied?” Kareen asked that evening, before the whiteboard on which the last column had been filled in.

“Killer is puzzled,” Mark admitted. “He says it is the first time his quarry has sent him a letter of thanks: half of Saldo’s creditors are kissing our hands. But he is satisfied, yes. He says the balance sheet made an acceptable coffin.”

There remained the archive — House Saldo’s entire graveyard of paper, now the property of the creditor: the funds of eleven dead Houses, including the Ryoval fond, including forty-one folders, including one inventory with a line fourteen. The lawyers proposed sale in lots; the historians of Escobar begged for a donation; the intelligence services of three polities inquired delicately about the price.

Mark and Kareen decided in their own way, on site, in the rented depository, the two of them alone among the shelves. The archives of the other dead Houses — to the historians, with an index and with an algorithm for the redaction of living victims: other people’s line fourteens are neither sold nor burned; they are given over to the scholarship that knows how to remember without wounding. And the Ryoval fond — the thirty-nine true folders and the two false ones, the entire paper ghost of the man Mark had killed with his bare hands and who kept trying to purchase him from the grave — the Ryoval fond went into an industrial cellulose converter, fed in personally, sheet by sheet, by two middle-aged people who said not one word during the entire procedure and who walked out holding hands only when the last inventory number had become pulp fit solely for packing material.

“Do you know what that was?” said Kareen on the way out.

“The burning of a leash,” said Mark. “The last one. I checked the inventory before I fed it in: it was only me. His other… objects… are long dead or long free; the cross-references are in the historical fond, with double redaction. Nobody will ever again be found through that paper.” He drew a breath, deep, like a man surfacing. “It’s quiet downstairs, Kareen. It hasn’t been this quiet in years.”

VII. The Lily Protocol

The registration went through in the spring; the first public clinic opened on Escobar in the summer, with the price schedule at the entrance carved in stone — Mark’s idea; he knew the value of write-once media — and at the opening ceremony the Durona Group stood assembled in full, thirty-odd faces with common features and different lives, before the portrait of a stern old woman who had lived to a hundred and three and remained dissatisfied with the sample.

The speech, by general insistence, was delivered by Kareen Koudelka.

“I will be brief, because the queue at the registration desk matters more than the podium. This therapy was made by people who once figured in other men’s inventory books — as line items, as assets, as units with numbers. Today they are giving the galaxy time: years of life, at cost, for everyone. Consider the arithmetic, ladies and gentlemen: the inventories claimed these people were merchandise. The merchandise has answered with the most generous act in the history of medicine. No inventory has ever known what it was holding.” She found Mark with her eyes, standing at the back, with the family. “And to one particular former line item from one particular burned inventory I will say publicly, for the record, this: assets are acquired, my dear. People are chosen. I have been choosing for twenty-five years, every morning, anew — and the sample, unlike Grandmother’s, satisfies me completely.”

They walked home through the Escobaran evening, past the display window of Borgos Enterprises, where the new advertising bug — a meter and a half, animated, glossy — waved a feeler at them, and Mark waved back, because a man who has waved at a giant bug finds it harder to think about dead Houses, and he respected that as a therapeutic instrument.

“Saldo left a precedent, by the way,” he said as they walked. “Three other vulture Houses are quietly selling off their archival funds to the historical institutes. It turns out the model ‘extort with graveyards’ does not survive a public question about the provenance of the paper. Who could have guessed.”

“You,” said Kareen. “You guessed, back at the whiteboard. Grouch’s point seven.”

“Grouch requests that this be entered in the minutes.”

“It is entered.” Kareen took his arm. “Everything gets entered, Mark Pierre. That is the difference between us and their inventories: we keep books too — only in ours, people are counted in people, revenue is counted in the cured, and the past…” she considered the exact formulation, Betan-fashion, “…the past is carried in the column ‘time-barred.’ Do you know when a past becomes time-barred?”

“When?”

“When you stop paying interest on it,” said Kareen Koudelka. “And you stopped. I saw the transfer. Now let us go to dinner — Gorge has earned it, and so, between us, have I.”