Roic had heard m'lord's clone-brother Lord Mark quote the late Baron Ryoval of Jackson's Whole only once—some mutter about, And then we shall explore the interesting focusing effects of threatening your remaining eye—and had not been moved to inquire further.  He'd been moved to edge away, actually, despite overtopping Lord Mark by half a meter of height.  Roic only knew that the entire Durona Group, thirty-five or so cloned siblings possessing extraordinary medical talents, felt they owed their escape from Jacksonian techno-slavery to a new, free life to Lord Mark and Lord Vorkosigan.  The reason for Raven's peculiar mélange of an accent, and that of every other Durona, was that they were all refugees from Jackson's Whole who'd been living for over a decade on Escobar.  The reason that the infamous Baron was the late was Lord Mark.  The reason Roic and Raven found themselves sitting on this roof together . . . was still unclear.

Well, Raven had been invited to the conference to give an illustrated lecture on cryorevival techniques after death from extreme trauma, which m'lord and perforce Roic had sat in on three days ago, after Raven had hinted, during a chance encounter in a hotel lift tube, that m'lord would find special interest in the very complicated case of Patient C, a messy death by needler-grenade to the chest.  It was, Raven had informed his audience, one of his earliest and most memorable cases as a young assistant surgeon.  M'lord had indeed been riveted.  Roic had closed his eyes.  But besides that.

"Yes, but why are these idiots lecturing you?"

"Pitching their cause, I think.  Rather like the past several days at the cryo-conference, really, except in reverse.  And with much worse food."

"Are they suppressed by the government, or censored by the local media?"

"Not at all, apparently.  They even have a site on the planetary net that tells everyone all they would want to know about their views.  No one wants to know much, it appears, so they've turned to more forcible ways of getting attention.  Now, robbing at gunpoint actually works.  Selling at gunpoint—not so good.  We all started today scared to death.  But by the end, it was just dreary."  Raven rubbed his nose.  "They seem to plan to keep it up for days.  Hence my escape attempt, but it's not going too well."

"We both got this far . . ."

"Yes, but here we are in the middle of a hundred kilometers of woods—lots more if you take a wrong turn—and even if this forest isn't stocked with people-eating predators, it would be insane to plunge off into the darkness with no shoes or gear.  And all the vehicles in the parking lot are neatly locked.  I just checked."

"Huh.  Pity."

Raven eyed Roic in speculation.  "Now, by myself I don't think I could jump someone coming out to his lightflyer and grab it after it was opened, but if we worked an ambush together . . ."