as promised, Bujold-fic
Nov. 25th, 2014 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_t_rainYoung!Byerly, gen, contains at least one major spoiler for A Civil Campaign. Pretty hard to write a proper summary without giving away said spoiler, so I will just say that this is dedicated to everyone who has ever had to deal with That Student, everyone who has ever been That Student, and (especially) everyone who has ever been on either side of the desk when That Student suddenly turns out to be something other than what they seem.
Lieutenant McSorley always thought of him as That Arrogant Little Vor Brat, although he was actually only slightly below average height, and, at twenty-five, considerably above the average age for a student in ImpSec’s civilian operative training camp. McSorley himself was only twenty-eight, which was part of the problem.
Vor, he definitely was. High Vor, at that. He came from a very old, very notorious family from the western part of the continent. The entire clan was reputed to be mad, bad, and dangerous to know, but unfortunately, Byerly Vorrutyer didn’t show the slightest sign of madness, and the other two traits were not actually impediments to becoming an ImpSec operative.
And he was definitely arrogant, with a flavor of arrogance that could only come from hereditary privilege. He habitually sauntered into class ten minutes late, and didn’t even try to look as if he’d been hurrying to get there. He claimed to be flat broke, but wore clothes that would have been worth a year’s income in most of the families his classmates had come from. He flirted outrageously with his fellow trainee Anderson, who was straighter than straight. He spoke with a trick of intonation that managed to make every ImpSec motto and maxim sound faintly ridiculous, and McSorley couldn’t even put his finger on how he did it. He came up with obscene nicknames for most of the menu items in the canteen, which stuck.
And the questions, my God, the questions. McSorley had always prided himself on being open to questions, but normal trainees only asked questions when they were confused, and most of the time not even then. Vorrutyer asked questions like “But wouldn’t it be more elegant to do it a different way?” and “About that accuracy-brevity-clarity thing, which one is supposed to give way when the truth isn’t clear or brief?” To do him credit, he didn’t always intend to be insolent. (When he did intend to be insolent, everyone knew it.) It was just that he had been sent to the sort of school where children were expected to answer back and think for themselves, and none of the other students had. McSorley added this to his long list of grudges against the entire Vor-class.
It must have been a good school, because Vorrutyer never appeared to do anything as plebeian as studying. He slipped out of the student barracks and went out drinking on the nights before exams, and still passed them with flair. Worse, he encouraged certain of his classmates to join him, and most of them couldn’t get away with that sort of thing. That was the real problem with Vorrutyer. The others shouldn’t have liked him, but for some reason most of them did. He traded flashes of wit and tidbits of high-society gossip for nips from whatever bottles had been smuggled into the barracks, and his peculiar brand of insouciance seemed to infiltrate the entire group of trainees.
By the end of the second week, McSorley had come to dread teaching: he faced the classroom with a flutter at the stomach and a trembling in his hands that he did his best to conceal, and the end of the day found him in a state of exhaustion that made it almost impossible to prep the next day’s classes. It hadn’t been like this at all with his first two batches of trainees. They’d liked him, he’d liked them, and he had been inclined to imagine himself something of a natural. With this group, he felt very raw and green indeed.
His fellow-instructor, Captain Lenahan, nodded in sympathy, although Vorrutyer wasn’t nearly as much of a terror in Lenahan’s classes. But then, Lenahan’s subjects – Analysis, Disinformation, Social Nuance – played perfectly to the Arrogant Little Vor Brat’s strengths, whereas McSorley was charged with indoctrinating him into the rules, customs, traditions, and procedures of ImpSec. Besides, Lenahan was older.
* * *
Secretly, McSorley hoped that emergency scenario training – a full day of role-playing – would knock some of the wind out of the Arrogant Little Vor Brat’s sails. One of Vorrutyer’s favorite hobbies was critiquing the acting in the training vids. Now the shoe would be on the other foot.
Or not. Dammit, the brat was actually good.
“Have you ever acted?” McSorley finally broke down and asked.
“Yes, sir. Iago, when I was at school. Also, Juliet.”
“That’s ... quite a range.”
“I think the director thought I had the right sort of eyelashes for Juliet.” Vorrutyer fluttered them provocatively at McSorley. Good heavens, was he wearing mascara, or was that effect natural? “What he saw in me when he cast me as Iago the next year, I can’t imagine.”
McSorley thought he could tell him, but didn’t.
He composed a memo to several of his superiors that evening, to the effect that the best way to make use of Vorrutyer’s unusual talents would be to take him off the training course immediately and remake the entire series of training vids with him as the star. All five hundred and sixty-three of them. That would, surely, keep him busy long enough for McSorley to request a transfer to Galactic Affairs.
The reply was swift: Brodsky says no. He passed the Brodsky test, and you’re to make the best damn surveillance operative of him that you can.
* * *
At least that explained how and why they had been saddled with Vorrutyer. Lev Brodsky spent his nights hanging out with the highborn, dissolute, and idle youth of Vorbarr Sultana, and his days writing reports and trying desperately to find someone else to take over the job. As far as McSorley was concerned, there might actually be something to be said for the town-clown crowd – at least, unlike their more respectable relatives, they didn’t pretend to be serving the greater good – but according to Brodsky, what you saw wasn’t necessarily what you got: their haunts were a hotbed of treason as well as petty vice.
“You know what the Brodsky test entails, right?” said Lenahan, after McSorley had expressed his opinion of Brodsky’s judgment in colorful terms.
“I understood that it tests one’s willingness to rat out one’s friends for profit. Which is a necessary condition for the job, but I’m not sure it’s a sufficient one.”
“Not quite. Brodsky recruits by keeping a lookout for bright kids who seem like they have decent instincts deep down. He starts by offering them odd jobs – watch and listen, fetch and carry, report back. He pays well, and the ones who have tapped out their relatives are perpetually hard up. They start to count on that extra bit of income from Brodsky. Then he lays a trail – not the easiest trail to follow, but leading the clever ones to the inevitable conclusion that Brodsky is a traitor. Then he waits to see if they turn up at Cockroach Central to report him, or not. So it’s really a test of whether you’re willing to rat out your friends for no profit, just the sheer principle of the thing.”
“Or the sheer lack of principle. What if Vorrutyer simply decided that getting one over on Brodsky would be amusing?”
“That is a risk. But in Vorrutyer’s case, he apparently had no family members slipping him money, no income other than what he was earning from Brodsky, and an ever-deepening pile of debts. Whatever brought him into ImpSec, it wasn’t self-interest, not by a long shot.”
* * *
In a fit of desperation, McSorley asked Anderson whether he wished to lodge a sexual harassment complaint against Vorrutyer. Anderson laughed for five minutes straight before he managed to choke out a “No, sir.”
Lenahan, disturbingly, laughed too when McSorley told him. “I can sympathize with the impulse to nail the kid on something, but you’re never going to get him through Anderson. Have you never noticed who Vorrutyer invites out drinking with him on the night before exams?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything. He doesn’t invite Anderson.” Anderson was, in fact, a diligent-though-not-brilliant student, and probably would have had more sense than to accept if Vorrutyer had asked him.
“Of course he doesn’t. He also doesn’t pick the two or three people who beat him on the last exam. It’s always the two or three who came in just above Anderson.”
“Oh.” McSorley had to admit he’d never noticed this particular pattern. “I don’t like that at all. It’s – it’s underhanded.”
“Brodsky likes underhanded. And you do have to admit it’s rather clever. Now, what to make of it, I don’t know any more than you do. Could be that he has a crush on Anderson, could be he’s just trading favors. Or, you know, they could actually be friends.”
“I don’t believe Vorrutyer has friends. He has patsies.”
* * *
The Physical Training course began in the same general spirit as everything else that involved Vorrutyer. The trainees were given weekend passes into Vorbarr Sultana and sent to the municipal zoo, an event that everyone usually regarded as the high point of the training camp. It gave the instructors a weekend off, and most of the trainees were young enough to be secretly delighted by a visit to the zoo – followed, no doubt, by heavy drinking, but nobody minded that as long as they did their homework, which involved observing the way the animals moved and learning some of those moves themselves.
Vorrutyer did not join them. Vorrutyer spent the entire weekend lazing around his dormitory, observing (as McSorley later learned) a stray cat that he’d enticed into the barracks and adopted. When he was asked to explain why he’d skipped the zoo, he shrugged and said that he didn’t care for crowds of screaming children. On the next day of classes, he adopted mannerisms of such surpassing felinity that several of his fellow trainees broke into spontaneous applause.
Other than that, though, he was noticeable mainly for how much he didn’t distinguish himself. His goal seemed to be getting through Physical Training while expending as little energy as possible. He and Anderson contrived to end up as partners, and Anderson seemed to be deliberately setting as leisurely a pace as possible. He also fell and twisted his ankle during the practice run, and Vorrutyer offered to escort him to medical. By the next day, Anderson’s ankle appeared to be just fine. Yes, McSorley decided, definitely trading favors.
Vorrutyer didn’t train in the evenings, either, although Anderson did. While most of the others ran laps, he flung himself onto his bunk and wrote long, discursive letters. (McSorley knew this because he conducted dormitory inspections every evening – looking for the cat, which appeared to have vanished.)
Wait. Letters. McSorley checked the grin that had started to spread across his face. Vorrutyer had no business to be writing letters. Brodsky had made it quite clear that this particular trainee’s status as a potential ImpSec operative was to be kept under tight wraps.
McSorley could hardly wait to have a word with the clerk responsible for censoring the trainees’ mail.
* * *
“Oh yes, it’s quite all right, sir. Brodsky knows about it. Young Vorrutyer pointed out that it would ... raise questions if he were to disappear from his usual haunts for three months and then reappear, so his cover story is that he’s locked up on a minor drug charge. Quite plausible, given the crowd he runs with, and he can be on parole any time we need to send them into town.”
“He writes to his old cronies and pretends he’s in prison?”
“Once or twice. Mostly he writes to his sister and a girl cousin.”
“Holy – You don’t mean to tell me he’s writing to the entire mad-bad-and-dangerous-to-know clan. These are long letters. What is he saying to them?”
“Calm down, McSorley. First of all, those are the only members of his family he’s on speaking terms with, and they’ve been vetted. Well, the cousin’s a bit fast, but she’s also completely candid about it, so no blackmail material there. Secondly, he’s following the rules. Describes himself as a temporary guest of the Imperium – which I guess is technically true – and describes everything here in terms that could well apply to a prison. It’s quite cleverly done. We read them out sometimes, and the whole mail room is in stitches.”
“He writes about ... things here, does he?” said McSorley through clenched teeth.
“Nothing classified. Character sketches, amusing conversations, complaints about the food, that sort of thing. He’s witty. You’ve no idea how much it breaks up the monotony of ‘Hi, Ma and Da, everything here is fine, still raining, please send money.’ Besides, unlike most of the others, he can spell.”
McSorley broke off the conversation and stormed upstairs. He did not want to think about how he might come across in a witty character sketch penned by Vorrutyer, especially one that was going to be read aloud to the entire mail room.
* * *
“Well – I did know about that, actually,” admitted Lenahan, while McSorley attempted to soothe his outraged nerves with several shots of ouzo in the local Greekie tavern. “He submitted a couple of his letters as a class project in Disinformation. He was trying to be a bit too clever – I docked him five points for dropping in a few phrases that would read as clues to someone in the know – but otherwise it was extremely well done. I took out the too-clever bits and shared the rest of it with the class as a model.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me any of this in any of our previous conversations about him?”
“I didn’t think you’d want to hear about how well he was doing in my classes. You wanted to vent about him, and I didn’t blame you.”
“He’s gotten around you,” said McSorley bitterly. “He gets around everyone.”
“No, he hasn’t. Look, I’m mostly with you. That kid’s as cocky as hell and he does need to be taken down a peg. OK, several pegs. I think I’m hoping as much as you do that he fails his first shot at the physicals, although the standards for civvies are pretty low, so I’m not expecting it. But I also think Brodsky’s right that we can make something of him.”
* * *
Vorrutyer, characteristically, showed up to the trainees’ round of physical tests wearing nail polish, in a fetching shade of rose-petal pink. He showed it off with a cheery and limp-wristed wave. McSorley was fairly sure the Vor brat was also wearing lipstick to match, although he was suffering from a hideous ouzo hangover and didn’t absolutely trust his own eyes.
Vorrutyer wriggled through the obstacle course, not as quickly as some of the others, but with tolerable (and recognizably feline) grace. He began taking the five-kilometer run at something between a lope and a jog. McSorley expected that, in classic Vorrutyer fashion, he’d speed up halfway through and come in just under the allotted time. That didn’t seem to be happening; after the first couple of kilometers he’d slowed down to a stroll. McSorley watched from across the field as Anderson slowed down too. Vorrutyer switched back into the lope-jog for a few minutes, then gave Anderson another one of those cheerful-looking hand-waves. Anderson took off like a shot; he’d make time.
McSorley frowned. It looked very much as if his least favorite student was about to positively fail at something. Now that it was actually happening, it just seemed wrong, as much as he’d looked forward to failing the brat. Because beneath all the staginess and impertinence and unwillingness to look as if he were expending any effort whatsoever, there had never been any question that Vorrutyer actually wanted to pass.
Vorrutyer. Abruptly, bells started ringing; McSorley remembered another rumor he’d heard about the family; and several things slotted into place.
“VORRUTYER! GET OVER HERE!”
Vorrutyer ambled across the field, behaving for all the world as if he simply didn’t see the slightest reason to hurry on McSorley’s say-so. It took him several agonizing minutes to get there.
McSorley was ready with a damp towel. “Wipe your mouth off.”
Vorrutyer obeyed, with a game’s-up look in his eyes. McSorley watched in horrified fascination as his lips went from a vivid, mocking pink to a livid blue.
McSorley managed to keep his voice steady. “Go to medical. Now.”
Vorrutyer, for once, didn’t argue, question, or answer back. Of course not. He couldn’t. McSorley had not been to the sort of school where they taught you to think in Shakespeare, but nevertheless a line floated, unbidden and out of context, into his mind: If words be made of breath, and breath of life, I have no life to breathe...
* * *
McSorley called the infirmary twice on his wristcom, the first time as soon as his fingers had stopped shaking long enough to push the buttons.
“Yes, he made it here. But you really shouldn’t have let him walk over on his own. Now, let me get back to my patient.” The com abruptly cut off.
Luckily, that sounded like the “that was bad judgment” sort of “shouldn’t” rather than the “you should prepare to be courtmartialed for manslaughter” kind. Now that he thought about it, McSorley wondered why he hadn’t called for one of those new float-stretchers. It would not only have been the professionally correct thing to do, but it would have humiliated the Vor brat like nothing else.
The second conversation, that evening, was longer.
“Looks like the kid’s going to be just fine. He’s responding extraordinarily well to the new line of meds. It might give him more trouble later in life – or then again, it might not – but anyhow, they can do wonderful things with heart transplants nowadays. We took a DNA sample, which should speed things up a bit in case he ever needs one. As long as he’s careful, I’d expect him to have a fairly normal life, and very likely a normal lifespan.”
“Will this disqualify him from the service?” asked McSorley, not even sure what he wanted the answer to be.
“It shouldn’t. Not as long as he can pass the makeup round of physical tests, and from the look of him right now, that shouldn’t be a problem.”
“I see. Anything else?”
“Nothing much. Well, there’s a reason he hadn’t disclosed his heart condition before, but I think he’d better tell you about that himself. Now that it’s all come out, he seems to be in good spirits. Oh, and most of the other trainees have stopped in to see him, and Anderson smuggled in his cat. Did you want me to do anything about that?”
“About the cat?”
“Yeah. I know it’s against regs, but I’m inclined to let it go, myself. It isn’t bothering anyone – they’re both fast asleep, actually – and ... well, the kid’s had a rough day.”
“All right. Whatever. Let him keep the cat.”
* * *
Lenahan had said McSorley ought to be the one to give Vorrutyer the chewing-out he deserved. Since ImpSec spied on its own with as much aplomb as it spied on everyone else, McSorley had a feeling this was as much a test as a reward. Still, it was a relief to have carte blanche to say everything he wanted to say to that Vor brat. That arrogant-insufferable-sly-deceitful-clever-stupid-inventive-insubordinate-proud- manipulative-crazy-brave Vor brat.
Wait, what did he want to say? He didn’t have time to think it through, because Vorrutyer was already in his doorway.
“You wanted to speak with me, sir?”
McSorley decided not to offer Vorrutyer a chair. Convalescent or not, he clearly didn’t require one. He looked as if he had been lit up from the inside with a hundred candles; he was positively glowing, although to do him credit, he didn’t seem to be trying to flaunt it. He hadn’t taken his usual care with his appearance; there were still a few traces of rose-colored polish at the edges of his nails. Otherwise, they were a healthy, natural shell-pink.
“Yes. First of all, I want you to understand that what you did was cheating.”
Wisely, Vorrutyer didn’t attempt his usual insolent smirk, although his mouth quirked a little. “It wasn’t intended to be, sir. I had no idea that cosmetics were considered performance aids.”
“Don’t try to be cute. Captain Lenahan and I would have taken you off the course at once if we had known you were in distress. You knew that perfectly well, or you wouldn’t have gone to such absurd lengths to conceal it.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.” The sirs, for once, were not infused with sly mockery.
“Secondly, you understand that you could very easily have died.”
“Yes. I know. That was ... a miscalculation. It hadn’t ever been that bad before. I thought I had a shot at making it within time, if I conserved my energy enough and if nobody else noticed anything was the matter.”
“You also understand, of course, that if you had died, Alain Anderson would have had to live with the guilt. Forever.”
“Yes.” Vorrutyer seemed to be capable of taking that seriously, McSorley was glad to see. “By the way, sir, I wanted you to know that Alain didn’t know anything about – about my condition. He knew I wasn’t good at the physical stuff, and he didn’t mind helping me cover for it, a bit, but he didn’t have any idea why.”
McSorley nodded. This version of events tallied with Anderson’s story. “Indeed, it seems that none of us knew of your condition, despite the fact that you had a responsibility to disclose it. Vorrutyer, do you have anything at all to say for yourself?”
“... Thank you?”
Not ironic, apparently, although with Vorrutyer it was always hard to be sure.
“I – Look, I know this isn’t an excuse, but there’s something I want you to understand about growing up high-Vor. The doctor was astonished when I told him this, but the thing is, I never knew it was treatable. All I knew – all that anyone had ever told me, growing up – was that it was something to hide at all costs. One of those skeletons in the family closet that were perpetually rattling their bones at you and grinning in your face. There were ... a number of those. So, anyway, I suppose you saved my life.” And because he was still essentially, irrepressibly, Vorrutyer, he promptly ruined the moment by adding, “I fear that must be a great disappointment to you.”
“Don’t be a fool, Vorrutyer. When I realized what was happening, and before we got the word you’d be OK – those were the worst few minutes of my life.”
“... Oh. I’m sorry.”
“But –” (this much had to be said) “leaving aside the ethics of what you did for a moment, it was quite a performance. I’ve never seen a student pull off anything quite so ...”
“Suicidal?”
“I was going to say, ingenious.”
“You know, sir, when you use that word you always make it sound obscene.” The eyes held their characteristic gleam of mockery, but they were looking steadily at McSorley for a change. Offering to share the joke.
“Out of curiosity, had you been planning this from the beginning of the training camp?”
“Kind of. I’d anticipated ... difficulties with the physical tests from the start, and it occurred to me that if worse came to worst, nail polish might be one way to hide the cyanosis. A few of the other details were, um, improvisational.”
“Did you ... have you been spending the last three months crafting a persona that would wear cosmetics to the physical finals? Because that would be ... impressive.”
“I wish I could claim full credit, but I’m sorry to tell you that at least half of it was actually me. It’s like you told us in class that one time. It’s easier to work with the material you’ve already got than to invent something completely new.”
McSorley hadn’t realized Vorrutyer had actually been paying attention in class. “Yes,” he said in some bemusement. “That would be a good practical illustration of that general principle. If you should ever in your entire life decide to internalize another principle, you might want to pick the don’t mess around with ImpSec one.”
Vorrutyer acknowledged this with a nod. “Yes, sir. Um, am I in or out? Because if I’m out, I was wondering, would it be possible for me to tell Lev Brodsky myself? I think he’s sort of, well, invested in me, and I’d rather he didn’t hear it first from someone else.”
“You’re in. You can tell Brodsky we’ve decided to work with the material we’ve already got.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“As long as you can pass the make-up round of physicals, that is. Have you given the course a try, or are you under orders to rest?”
Vorrutyer flashed him a look that embodied insouciance. “Well, both, naturally.”
* * *
McSorley and Lenahan toasted the new crop of graduates in the Greekie tavern.
“Can’t say I’m sorry to see the back of this set. Well, there’s always the next one. Never know what we’re getting, eh?”
“Ah.” Lenahan took a letter with the official ImpSec seal from his pocket and handed it to McSorley. “As to that, I’m afraid they’re rotating you out of the training camp for a while and sending me someone new. They want you back at Cockroach Central.”
“Oh no. Did I screw things up that badly?”
“Quite the reverse, I’d say. I think you should consider this in the light of a promotion. But, um, I’m not sure you’re going to like it.”
McSorley opened the letter with his new orders. Recommended by Lev Brodsky, approved by everyone from Lenahan all the way up to General Haroche.
“Oh dear God. No. No. Are all of you people crazy? Vorrutyer doesn’t need a handler. Dogs and horses have handlers. Vorrutyer needs a snake charmer or something.”
“You appear to have charmed this particular snake quite effectively. I concurred with Brodsky’s assessment that you were the right person for the job.”
“Were you bugging my office that day, Lenahan?”
“Didn’t need to. Your voice carries when you talk with him.”
McSorley unwisely knocked back his retsina at a gulp, choked, got pounded on the back by Lenahan, banged his elbows on the table, and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “ImpSec is paying for his heart meds,” he said in a plaintive tone. “Will they pay for mine?”
Four Years Later
“Vorrutyer-dammit. You can stand up your girlfriend – boyfriend – whichever one you’ve got this week. You can, in cases of absolute necessity, stand up your surveillance subjects. You. Do. Not. Stand. Up. Your. Blind. Drop. Is that clear?”
“Yes. It won’t happen again.”
This would have been more reassuring if Vorrutyer weren’t perpetually thinking up new and different forms of deviltry. “What kept you, anyway?”
“Family business. I thought I explained that I would be attending my cousin’s husband’s funeral.”
McSorley tilted the comconsole toward his erratic subordinate. Fortunately, the cousin’s husband had been a rather famous sportsman, so information about the arrangements had not been difficult to find. “It says here that the funeral was in the morning.”
“At an ungodly hour. Yes.”
“And Lady Alys, by her account, waited three hours for you that evening before she finally gave up some time after midnight. Do I understand that the funeral lasted fifteen hours?”
“Well – yes, it actually did once you factor in the Vorrutyer after-funeral customs. Which involve drinking. Also throwing things at the walls, cursing whatever higher powers may be, sliding into existential despair, forming conspiracy theories, plotting revenge on the universe, having terrifying moments of philosophical clarity, and more drinking. It’s traditional. You can find accounts of our funeral customs in the history books if you don’t believe me. Did you know that Pierre le Sanguinaire’s widow set fire to two people at his funeral?”
“Are you and your cousin planning to set fire to anybody?” McSorley asked, and wished at once that he hadn’t. That was the sort of remark that gave Vorrutyer ideas.
“It would be a relief to the feelings ... But no, I think we can restrain ourselves. Degenerate modern times, and all that.” The hands, closed throughout the conversation, opened abruptly. “If you had been there, you wouldn’t have left Donna alone either.”
McSorley cleared his throat. “Right. I won’t be docking you a pay grade. This time.”
“Thank you.”
“You will, of course, make your apologies to Lady Alys in person. And absorb, in complete silence, whatever principles of etiquette she may see fit to impart to you on the occasion.”
“Damn you, McSorley. Please dock me a pay grade.”
McSorley smirked.
Lieutenant McSorley always thought of him as That Arrogant Little Vor Brat, although he was actually only slightly below average height, and, at twenty-five, considerably above the average age for a student in ImpSec’s civilian operative training camp. McSorley himself was only twenty-eight, which was part of the problem.
Vor, he definitely was. High Vor, at that. He came from a very old, very notorious family from the western part of the continent. The entire clan was reputed to be mad, bad, and dangerous to know, but unfortunately, Byerly Vorrutyer didn’t show the slightest sign of madness, and the other two traits were not actually impediments to becoming an ImpSec operative.
And he was definitely arrogant, with a flavor of arrogance that could only come from hereditary privilege. He habitually sauntered into class ten minutes late, and didn’t even try to look as if he’d been hurrying to get there. He claimed to be flat broke, but wore clothes that would have been worth a year’s income in most of the families his classmates had come from. He flirted outrageously with his fellow trainee Anderson, who was straighter than straight. He spoke with a trick of intonation that managed to make every ImpSec motto and maxim sound faintly ridiculous, and McSorley couldn’t even put his finger on how he did it. He came up with obscene nicknames for most of the menu items in the canteen, which stuck.
And the questions, my God, the questions. McSorley had always prided himself on being open to questions, but normal trainees only asked questions when they were confused, and most of the time not even then. Vorrutyer asked questions like “But wouldn’t it be more elegant to do it a different way?” and “About that accuracy-brevity-clarity thing, which one is supposed to give way when the truth isn’t clear or brief?” To do him credit, he didn’t always intend to be insolent. (When he did intend to be insolent, everyone knew it.) It was just that he had been sent to the sort of school where children were expected to answer back and think for themselves, and none of the other students had. McSorley added this to his long list of grudges against the entire Vor-class.
It must have been a good school, because Vorrutyer never appeared to do anything as plebeian as studying. He slipped out of the student barracks and went out drinking on the nights before exams, and still passed them with flair. Worse, he encouraged certain of his classmates to join him, and most of them couldn’t get away with that sort of thing. That was the real problem with Vorrutyer. The others shouldn’t have liked him, but for some reason most of them did. He traded flashes of wit and tidbits of high-society gossip for nips from whatever bottles had been smuggled into the barracks, and his peculiar brand of insouciance seemed to infiltrate the entire group of trainees.
By the end of the second week, McSorley had come to dread teaching: he faced the classroom with a flutter at the stomach and a trembling in his hands that he did his best to conceal, and the end of the day found him in a state of exhaustion that made it almost impossible to prep the next day’s classes. It hadn’t been like this at all with his first two batches of trainees. They’d liked him, he’d liked them, and he had been inclined to imagine himself something of a natural. With this group, he felt very raw and green indeed.
His fellow-instructor, Captain Lenahan, nodded in sympathy, although Vorrutyer wasn’t nearly as much of a terror in Lenahan’s classes. But then, Lenahan’s subjects – Analysis, Disinformation, Social Nuance – played perfectly to the Arrogant Little Vor Brat’s strengths, whereas McSorley was charged with indoctrinating him into the rules, customs, traditions, and procedures of ImpSec. Besides, Lenahan was older.
* * *
Secretly, McSorley hoped that emergency scenario training – a full day of role-playing – would knock some of the wind out of the Arrogant Little Vor Brat’s sails. One of Vorrutyer’s favorite hobbies was critiquing the acting in the training vids. Now the shoe would be on the other foot.
Or not. Dammit, the brat was actually good.
“Have you ever acted?” McSorley finally broke down and asked.
“Yes, sir. Iago, when I was at school. Also, Juliet.”
“That’s ... quite a range.”
“I think the director thought I had the right sort of eyelashes for Juliet.” Vorrutyer fluttered them provocatively at McSorley. Good heavens, was he wearing mascara, or was that effect natural? “What he saw in me when he cast me as Iago the next year, I can’t imagine.”
McSorley thought he could tell him, but didn’t.
He composed a memo to several of his superiors that evening, to the effect that the best way to make use of Vorrutyer’s unusual talents would be to take him off the training course immediately and remake the entire series of training vids with him as the star. All five hundred and sixty-three of them. That would, surely, keep him busy long enough for McSorley to request a transfer to Galactic Affairs.
The reply was swift: Brodsky says no. He passed the Brodsky test, and you’re to make the best damn surveillance operative of him that you can.
* * *
At least that explained how and why they had been saddled with Vorrutyer. Lev Brodsky spent his nights hanging out with the highborn, dissolute, and idle youth of Vorbarr Sultana, and his days writing reports and trying desperately to find someone else to take over the job. As far as McSorley was concerned, there might actually be something to be said for the town-clown crowd – at least, unlike their more respectable relatives, they didn’t pretend to be serving the greater good – but according to Brodsky, what you saw wasn’t necessarily what you got: their haunts were a hotbed of treason as well as petty vice.
“You know what the Brodsky test entails, right?” said Lenahan, after McSorley had expressed his opinion of Brodsky’s judgment in colorful terms.
“I understood that it tests one’s willingness to rat out one’s friends for profit. Which is a necessary condition for the job, but I’m not sure it’s a sufficient one.”
“Not quite. Brodsky recruits by keeping a lookout for bright kids who seem like they have decent instincts deep down. He starts by offering them odd jobs – watch and listen, fetch and carry, report back. He pays well, and the ones who have tapped out their relatives are perpetually hard up. They start to count on that extra bit of income from Brodsky. Then he lays a trail – not the easiest trail to follow, but leading the clever ones to the inevitable conclusion that Brodsky is a traitor. Then he waits to see if they turn up at Cockroach Central to report him, or not. So it’s really a test of whether you’re willing to rat out your friends for no profit, just the sheer principle of the thing.”
“Or the sheer lack of principle. What if Vorrutyer simply decided that getting one over on Brodsky would be amusing?”
“That is a risk. But in Vorrutyer’s case, he apparently had no family members slipping him money, no income other than what he was earning from Brodsky, and an ever-deepening pile of debts. Whatever brought him into ImpSec, it wasn’t self-interest, not by a long shot.”
* * *
In a fit of desperation, McSorley asked Anderson whether he wished to lodge a sexual harassment complaint against Vorrutyer. Anderson laughed for five minutes straight before he managed to choke out a “No, sir.”
Lenahan, disturbingly, laughed too when McSorley told him. “I can sympathize with the impulse to nail the kid on something, but you’re never going to get him through Anderson. Have you never noticed who Vorrutyer invites out drinking with him on the night before exams?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything. He doesn’t invite Anderson.” Anderson was, in fact, a diligent-though-not-brilliant student, and probably would have had more sense than to accept if Vorrutyer had asked him.
“Of course he doesn’t. He also doesn’t pick the two or three people who beat him on the last exam. It’s always the two or three who came in just above Anderson.”
“Oh.” McSorley had to admit he’d never noticed this particular pattern. “I don’t like that at all. It’s – it’s underhanded.”
“Brodsky likes underhanded. And you do have to admit it’s rather clever. Now, what to make of it, I don’t know any more than you do. Could be that he has a crush on Anderson, could be he’s just trading favors. Or, you know, they could actually be friends.”
“I don’t believe Vorrutyer has friends. He has patsies.”
* * *
The Physical Training course began in the same general spirit as everything else that involved Vorrutyer. The trainees were given weekend passes into Vorbarr Sultana and sent to the municipal zoo, an event that everyone usually regarded as the high point of the training camp. It gave the instructors a weekend off, and most of the trainees were young enough to be secretly delighted by a visit to the zoo – followed, no doubt, by heavy drinking, but nobody minded that as long as they did their homework, which involved observing the way the animals moved and learning some of those moves themselves.
Vorrutyer did not join them. Vorrutyer spent the entire weekend lazing around his dormitory, observing (as McSorley later learned) a stray cat that he’d enticed into the barracks and adopted. When he was asked to explain why he’d skipped the zoo, he shrugged and said that he didn’t care for crowds of screaming children. On the next day of classes, he adopted mannerisms of such surpassing felinity that several of his fellow trainees broke into spontaneous applause.
Other than that, though, he was noticeable mainly for how much he didn’t distinguish himself. His goal seemed to be getting through Physical Training while expending as little energy as possible. He and Anderson contrived to end up as partners, and Anderson seemed to be deliberately setting as leisurely a pace as possible. He also fell and twisted his ankle during the practice run, and Vorrutyer offered to escort him to medical. By the next day, Anderson’s ankle appeared to be just fine. Yes, McSorley decided, definitely trading favors.
Vorrutyer didn’t train in the evenings, either, although Anderson did. While most of the others ran laps, he flung himself onto his bunk and wrote long, discursive letters. (McSorley knew this because he conducted dormitory inspections every evening – looking for the cat, which appeared to have vanished.)
Wait. Letters. McSorley checked the grin that had started to spread across his face. Vorrutyer had no business to be writing letters. Brodsky had made it quite clear that this particular trainee’s status as a potential ImpSec operative was to be kept under tight wraps.
McSorley could hardly wait to have a word with the clerk responsible for censoring the trainees’ mail.
* * *
“Oh yes, it’s quite all right, sir. Brodsky knows about it. Young Vorrutyer pointed out that it would ... raise questions if he were to disappear from his usual haunts for three months and then reappear, so his cover story is that he’s locked up on a minor drug charge. Quite plausible, given the crowd he runs with, and he can be on parole any time we need to send them into town.”
“He writes to his old cronies and pretends he’s in prison?”
“Once or twice. Mostly he writes to his sister and a girl cousin.”
“Holy – You don’t mean to tell me he’s writing to the entire mad-bad-and-dangerous-to-know clan. These are long letters. What is he saying to them?”
“Calm down, McSorley. First of all, those are the only members of his family he’s on speaking terms with, and they’ve been vetted. Well, the cousin’s a bit fast, but she’s also completely candid about it, so no blackmail material there. Secondly, he’s following the rules. Describes himself as a temporary guest of the Imperium – which I guess is technically true – and describes everything here in terms that could well apply to a prison. It’s quite cleverly done. We read them out sometimes, and the whole mail room is in stitches.”
“He writes about ... things here, does he?” said McSorley through clenched teeth.
“Nothing classified. Character sketches, amusing conversations, complaints about the food, that sort of thing. He’s witty. You’ve no idea how much it breaks up the monotony of ‘Hi, Ma and Da, everything here is fine, still raining, please send money.’ Besides, unlike most of the others, he can spell.”
McSorley broke off the conversation and stormed upstairs. He did not want to think about how he might come across in a witty character sketch penned by Vorrutyer, especially one that was going to be read aloud to the entire mail room.
* * *
“Well – I did know about that, actually,” admitted Lenahan, while McSorley attempted to soothe his outraged nerves with several shots of ouzo in the local Greekie tavern. “He submitted a couple of his letters as a class project in Disinformation. He was trying to be a bit too clever – I docked him five points for dropping in a few phrases that would read as clues to someone in the know – but otherwise it was extremely well done. I took out the too-clever bits and shared the rest of it with the class as a model.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me any of this in any of our previous conversations about him?”
“I didn’t think you’d want to hear about how well he was doing in my classes. You wanted to vent about him, and I didn’t blame you.”
“He’s gotten around you,” said McSorley bitterly. “He gets around everyone.”
“No, he hasn’t. Look, I’m mostly with you. That kid’s as cocky as hell and he does need to be taken down a peg. OK, several pegs. I think I’m hoping as much as you do that he fails his first shot at the physicals, although the standards for civvies are pretty low, so I’m not expecting it. But I also think Brodsky’s right that we can make something of him.”
* * *
Vorrutyer, characteristically, showed up to the trainees’ round of physical tests wearing nail polish, in a fetching shade of rose-petal pink. He showed it off with a cheery and limp-wristed wave. McSorley was fairly sure the Vor brat was also wearing lipstick to match, although he was suffering from a hideous ouzo hangover and didn’t absolutely trust his own eyes.
Vorrutyer wriggled through the obstacle course, not as quickly as some of the others, but with tolerable (and recognizably feline) grace. He began taking the five-kilometer run at something between a lope and a jog. McSorley expected that, in classic Vorrutyer fashion, he’d speed up halfway through and come in just under the allotted time. That didn’t seem to be happening; after the first couple of kilometers he’d slowed down to a stroll. McSorley watched from across the field as Anderson slowed down too. Vorrutyer switched back into the lope-jog for a few minutes, then gave Anderson another one of those cheerful-looking hand-waves. Anderson took off like a shot; he’d make time.
McSorley frowned. It looked very much as if his least favorite student was about to positively fail at something. Now that it was actually happening, it just seemed wrong, as much as he’d looked forward to failing the brat. Because beneath all the staginess and impertinence and unwillingness to look as if he were expending any effort whatsoever, there had never been any question that Vorrutyer actually wanted to pass.
Vorrutyer. Abruptly, bells started ringing; McSorley remembered another rumor he’d heard about the family; and several things slotted into place.
“VORRUTYER! GET OVER HERE!”
Vorrutyer ambled across the field, behaving for all the world as if he simply didn’t see the slightest reason to hurry on McSorley’s say-so. It took him several agonizing minutes to get there.
McSorley was ready with a damp towel. “Wipe your mouth off.”
Vorrutyer obeyed, with a game’s-up look in his eyes. McSorley watched in horrified fascination as his lips went from a vivid, mocking pink to a livid blue.
McSorley managed to keep his voice steady. “Go to medical. Now.”
Vorrutyer, for once, didn’t argue, question, or answer back. Of course not. He couldn’t. McSorley had not been to the sort of school where they taught you to think in Shakespeare, but nevertheless a line floated, unbidden and out of context, into his mind: If words be made of breath, and breath of life, I have no life to breathe...
* * *
McSorley called the infirmary twice on his wristcom, the first time as soon as his fingers had stopped shaking long enough to push the buttons.
“Yes, he made it here. But you really shouldn’t have let him walk over on his own. Now, let me get back to my patient.” The com abruptly cut off.
Luckily, that sounded like the “that was bad judgment” sort of “shouldn’t” rather than the “you should prepare to be courtmartialed for manslaughter” kind. Now that he thought about it, McSorley wondered why he hadn’t called for one of those new float-stretchers. It would not only have been the professionally correct thing to do, but it would have humiliated the Vor brat like nothing else.
The second conversation, that evening, was longer.
“Looks like the kid’s going to be just fine. He’s responding extraordinarily well to the new line of meds. It might give him more trouble later in life – or then again, it might not – but anyhow, they can do wonderful things with heart transplants nowadays. We took a DNA sample, which should speed things up a bit in case he ever needs one. As long as he’s careful, I’d expect him to have a fairly normal life, and very likely a normal lifespan.”
“Will this disqualify him from the service?” asked McSorley, not even sure what he wanted the answer to be.
“It shouldn’t. Not as long as he can pass the makeup round of physical tests, and from the look of him right now, that shouldn’t be a problem.”
“I see. Anything else?”
“Nothing much. Well, there’s a reason he hadn’t disclosed his heart condition before, but I think he’d better tell you about that himself. Now that it’s all come out, he seems to be in good spirits. Oh, and most of the other trainees have stopped in to see him, and Anderson smuggled in his cat. Did you want me to do anything about that?”
“About the cat?”
“Yeah. I know it’s against regs, but I’m inclined to let it go, myself. It isn’t bothering anyone – they’re both fast asleep, actually – and ... well, the kid’s had a rough day.”
“All right. Whatever. Let him keep the cat.”
* * *
Lenahan had said McSorley ought to be the one to give Vorrutyer the chewing-out he deserved. Since ImpSec spied on its own with as much aplomb as it spied on everyone else, McSorley had a feeling this was as much a test as a reward. Still, it was a relief to have carte blanche to say everything he wanted to say to that Vor brat. That arrogant-insufferable-sly-deceitful-clever-stupid-inventive-insubordinate-proud- manipulative-crazy-brave Vor brat.
Wait, what did he want to say? He didn’t have time to think it through, because Vorrutyer was already in his doorway.
“You wanted to speak with me, sir?”
McSorley decided not to offer Vorrutyer a chair. Convalescent or not, he clearly didn’t require one. He looked as if he had been lit up from the inside with a hundred candles; he was positively glowing, although to do him credit, he didn’t seem to be trying to flaunt it. He hadn’t taken his usual care with his appearance; there were still a few traces of rose-colored polish at the edges of his nails. Otherwise, they were a healthy, natural shell-pink.
“Yes. First of all, I want you to understand that what you did was cheating.”
Wisely, Vorrutyer didn’t attempt his usual insolent smirk, although his mouth quirked a little. “It wasn’t intended to be, sir. I had no idea that cosmetics were considered performance aids.”
“Don’t try to be cute. Captain Lenahan and I would have taken you off the course at once if we had known you were in distress. You knew that perfectly well, or you wouldn’t have gone to such absurd lengths to conceal it.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.” The sirs, for once, were not infused with sly mockery.
“Secondly, you understand that you could very easily have died.”
“Yes. I know. That was ... a miscalculation. It hadn’t ever been that bad before. I thought I had a shot at making it within time, if I conserved my energy enough and if nobody else noticed anything was the matter.”
“You also understand, of course, that if you had died, Alain Anderson would have had to live with the guilt. Forever.”
“Yes.” Vorrutyer seemed to be capable of taking that seriously, McSorley was glad to see. “By the way, sir, I wanted you to know that Alain didn’t know anything about – about my condition. He knew I wasn’t good at the physical stuff, and he didn’t mind helping me cover for it, a bit, but he didn’t have any idea why.”
McSorley nodded. This version of events tallied with Anderson’s story. “Indeed, it seems that none of us knew of your condition, despite the fact that you had a responsibility to disclose it. Vorrutyer, do you have anything at all to say for yourself?”
“... Thank you?”
Not ironic, apparently, although with Vorrutyer it was always hard to be sure.
“I – Look, I know this isn’t an excuse, but there’s something I want you to understand about growing up high-Vor. The doctor was astonished when I told him this, but the thing is, I never knew it was treatable. All I knew – all that anyone had ever told me, growing up – was that it was something to hide at all costs. One of those skeletons in the family closet that were perpetually rattling their bones at you and grinning in your face. There were ... a number of those. So, anyway, I suppose you saved my life.” And because he was still essentially, irrepressibly, Vorrutyer, he promptly ruined the moment by adding, “I fear that must be a great disappointment to you.”
“Don’t be a fool, Vorrutyer. When I realized what was happening, and before we got the word you’d be OK – those were the worst few minutes of my life.”
“... Oh. I’m sorry.”
“But –” (this much had to be said) “leaving aside the ethics of what you did for a moment, it was quite a performance. I’ve never seen a student pull off anything quite so ...”
“Suicidal?”
“I was going to say, ingenious.”
“You know, sir, when you use that word you always make it sound obscene.” The eyes held their characteristic gleam of mockery, but they were looking steadily at McSorley for a change. Offering to share the joke.
“Out of curiosity, had you been planning this from the beginning of the training camp?”
“Kind of. I’d anticipated ... difficulties with the physical tests from the start, and it occurred to me that if worse came to worst, nail polish might be one way to hide the cyanosis. A few of the other details were, um, improvisational.”
“Did you ... have you been spending the last three months crafting a persona that would wear cosmetics to the physical finals? Because that would be ... impressive.”
“I wish I could claim full credit, but I’m sorry to tell you that at least half of it was actually me. It’s like you told us in class that one time. It’s easier to work with the material you’ve already got than to invent something completely new.”
McSorley hadn’t realized Vorrutyer had actually been paying attention in class. “Yes,” he said in some bemusement. “That would be a good practical illustration of that general principle. If you should ever in your entire life decide to internalize another principle, you might want to pick the don’t mess around with ImpSec one.”
Vorrutyer acknowledged this with a nod. “Yes, sir. Um, am I in or out? Because if I’m out, I was wondering, would it be possible for me to tell Lev Brodsky myself? I think he’s sort of, well, invested in me, and I’d rather he didn’t hear it first from someone else.”
“You’re in. You can tell Brodsky we’ve decided to work with the material we’ve already got.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“As long as you can pass the make-up round of physicals, that is. Have you given the course a try, or are you under orders to rest?”
Vorrutyer flashed him a look that embodied insouciance. “Well, both, naturally.”
* * *
McSorley and Lenahan toasted the new crop of graduates in the Greekie tavern.
“Can’t say I’m sorry to see the back of this set. Well, there’s always the next one. Never know what we’re getting, eh?”
“Ah.” Lenahan took a letter with the official ImpSec seal from his pocket and handed it to McSorley. “As to that, I’m afraid they’re rotating you out of the training camp for a while and sending me someone new. They want you back at Cockroach Central.”
“Oh no. Did I screw things up that badly?”
“Quite the reverse, I’d say. I think you should consider this in the light of a promotion. But, um, I’m not sure you’re going to like it.”
McSorley opened the letter with his new orders. Recommended by Lev Brodsky, approved by everyone from Lenahan all the way up to General Haroche.
“Oh dear God. No. No. Are all of you people crazy? Vorrutyer doesn’t need a handler. Dogs and horses have handlers. Vorrutyer needs a snake charmer or something.”
“You appear to have charmed this particular snake quite effectively. I concurred with Brodsky’s assessment that you were the right person for the job.”
“Were you bugging my office that day, Lenahan?”
“Didn’t need to. Your voice carries when you talk with him.”
McSorley unwisely knocked back his retsina at a gulp, choked, got pounded on the back by Lenahan, banged his elbows on the table, and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “ImpSec is paying for his heart meds,” he said in a plaintive tone. “Will they pay for mine?”
Four Years Later
“Vorrutyer-dammit. You can stand up your girlfriend – boyfriend – whichever one you’ve got this week. You can, in cases of absolute necessity, stand up your surveillance subjects. You. Do. Not. Stand. Up. Your. Blind. Drop. Is that clear?”
“Yes. It won’t happen again.”
This would have been more reassuring if Vorrutyer weren’t perpetually thinking up new and different forms of deviltry. “What kept you, anyway?”
“Family business. I thought I explained that I would be attending my cousin’s husband’s funeral.”
McSorley tilted the comconsole toward his erratic subordinate. Fortunately, the cousin’s husband had been a rather famous sportsman, so information about the arrangements had not been difficult to find. “It says here that the funeral was in the morning.”
“At an ungodly hour. Yes.”
“And Lady Alys, by her account, waited three hours for you that evening before she finally gave up some time after midnight. Do I understand that the funeral lasted fifteen hours?”
“Well – yes, it actually did once you factor in the Vorrutyer after-funeral customs. Which involve drinking. Also throwing things at the walls, cursing whatever higher powers may be, sliding into existential despair, forming conspiracy theories, plotting revenge on the universe, having terrifying moments of philosophical clarity, and more drinking. It’s traditional. You can find accounts of our funeral customs in the history books if you don’t believe me. Did you know that Pierre le Sanguinaire’s widow set fire to two people at his funeral?”
“Are you and your cousin planning to set fire to anybody?” McSorley asked, and wished at once that he hadn’t. That was the sort of remark that gave Vorrutyer ideas.
“It would be a relief to the feelings ... But no, I think we can restrain ourselves. Degenerate modern times, and all that.” The hands, closed throughout the conversation, opened abruptly. “If you had been there, you wouldn’t have left Donna alone either.”
McSorley cleared his throat. “Right. I won’t be docking you a pay grade. This time.”
“Thank you.”
“You will, of course, make your apologies to Lady Alys in person. And absorb, in complete silence, whatever principles of etiquette she may see fit to impart to you on the occasion.”
“Damn you, McSorley. Please dock me a pay grade.”
McSorley smirked.
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Date: 2014-11-26 05:06 am (UTC)Hee! And I love the "Quite a range" line from earlier, too.
Your Byerly is very much what I love about him from the books, and I'm sure he was quite this sort of hell on his training officers/superiors.
Such a fun read! Looking forward to more Vorkosi-fic, if you're so inclined!
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