Roic tried not to flinch as Raven punched the assorted tubings through thawed skin and carefully seated them in his vessels-of-choice.  Roic did start at a brief rap on the door, and turned on his heel, alert.

Consul Vorlynkin stuck his head in.  "Lord Vorkosigan, a message came—oh."

"You didn't bring the kids this time, did you?" demanded m'lord, alarmed.

"No, no.  Johannes is baby-sitting.  They still don't know."

"Whew.  Though perhaps you could bring them over soon, if all goes well."

"And if it doesn't?" asked Vorlynkin grimly.

M'lord sighed.  "Then maybe I can bring them."

"You can come in," said Raven over his shoulder, "but you have to put on a filtering mask.  You can't hang in the doorway like a cat."

Ako hastened to hand Vorlynkin a mask, and helped him adjust it; he grimaced as the memoryseal bonded to his skin.  He came cautiously up to the procedure table.  "I did wonder what this was like."

"Any problems so far?" m'lord asked.  He was perched on a tall stool, partly to oversee the procedure, but mostly, Roic suspected, to block him from pacing.

"Not yet," said Raven.  He reached over and started the first flush of warmed, hyper-oxygenated IV fluid.  His patient's skin began to turn from clay gray to an ethereal ice-pale.  Someone had made an unexpected effort to preserve her long hair, treated with gel and rolled in a wrapping; it lay curled like a snail shell above her shoulder.  Ms. Chen's hair had been cropped in a medically utilitarian bob.

Madame Sato was taller than Roic had expected, fully five-foot-eight.  That and her dark hair gave her a slight, unsettling resemblance to m'lord's wife Lady Ekaterin, actually, which Roic elected not to point out.  Sato's face was a rounder shape, if also stretched over a fine symmetrical scaffolding of jaw and cheekbone, and her body was thinner in a way that suggested stress rather than athleticism.  An elf-lady strung out on bad drugs and bad company.

"She's not what . . ."  Vorlynkin stared, mesmerized.  "I thought you said she'd look terrible.  Skin flaking and bleeding, hair falling out and so on."

"There wasn't a thing wrong with her when they put her in cryo-stasis," said Raven, "and this appears to have been first-class prep, and recent at that.  When he arrived on our operating table, Lord Vorkosigan was in much worse shape than average.  To put it mildly.  I suppose someone has to be better, to keep the average balanced."

"She looks like something out of a fairy tale."

"What," said m'lord, swinging one heel to tap upon a stool leg, "Snow White with just one dwarf?"

Vorlynkin reddened, an I-didn't-say-that look in his eyes.

M'lord snickered at him.  "Now all we need is a prince."

"So who's t' frog?" asked Roic, secretly glad not to be alone in his fanciful impressions.

"Different fairy tale," m'lord told him kindly.  "I hope."