Actually, he'd dodged those issues during his covert ops days by almost never sending any messages, or updates.  It wasn't as if his father couldn't have demanded a report on his missions from the head of ImpSec any time he wanted one.  Or nerved himself to it, he imagined his mother's voice remarking tartly.

Ekaterin swung into a crisp recounting of a few Vorkosigan District matters, before the news from his household, always first things first—if ever she put matters the other way around, he'd know to be really alarmed for his family.  He was reminded that he was neglecting duties down in the District, as well, although this week there did not seem to be anything that called for an urgent message to his—his father's, really—voting proxy in the Council of Counts.  But both his parents were off tending to the Emperor's business on Sergyar, viceroy and vicereine respectively, and had been for some years.

A fine tradition of neglect of one's own in service to the Imperium, those Vorkosigans.  At a cost.  Miles recalled with a touch of wry pride what a District village speaker had once said to him of Ekaterin: We feel as though you belong to the Imperium, but Lady Vorkosigan belongs to us.

Indeed.

"On the home front," Ekaterin went on, "here's the latest achievement . . ."

The vid cut to another, less steady.  "Good job, Helen," said Ekaterin's voice as a room spun dizzily—the library at Vorkosigan House, Miles recognized despite its rabbiting speed, "but pan more slowly or you'll give your papa vertigo."

"What's vertigo?" came a young voice from off-side—Sasha? no, Lizzie, good heavens—and Ekaterin responded at once, "Dizzy."

"Oh."  The new word was duly accepted.

The vid steadied on Taurie, ten months old, gray eyes wide under a mop of wispy black curls, clinging grimly to the edge of a low table.  Sasha, five going on six, as he and his twin, Helen, phrased it, and their sister Lizzie, three, sat on a couch in the background, Sasha watching with interest, Lizzie looking bored and kicking her feet, as if to say, I've already done this, what's the fuss?

"Come on, Taurie," Ekaterin's voice cooed.  "Come to mama."  Effective—Miles undertook not to fall through the vid plate, reaching for that seductive voice.

Taurie turned, rocking, on her stout little legs, releasing one hand, which waved for balance.  Then the other.  Then began a bow-legged toddle toward her mama's outstretched arms.  How any child learned to walk while swaddled in a diaper, Miles didn't know, but there she went, thump-thump-thump, to fall chortling into Ekaterin's arms and be swung high in triumph.

"Let me try her," said Sasha, much as if his little sister were a robot car.  He slid to his knees on the rug across from Ekaterin, and called encouragingly, "Come on, Taurie, you can do it!"