He slunk off to the library, the long room at the end of one wing of the oldest part of the house. The Countess had encouraged him to browse there. In addition to a reader accessing public data banks and a code-locked and secured government comconsole with its own dedicated comm links, the room was lined with bound books printed and even hand-calligraphed on paper from the Time of Isolation. The library reminded Mark of Vorhartung Castle, with its modern equipment and functions awkwardly stuffed into odd corners of an antique architecture that had never envisioned nor provided place for them.

As he was thinking about the museum, a large folio volume of woodcuts of arms and armor caught his eye, and he carefully pulled it from its slipcase and carried it to one of a pair of alcoves flanking the long glass doors to the back garden. The alcoves were luxuriously furnished, and a little table pulled up to a vast wing-chair provided support for the, in both senses, heavy volume. Bemused, Mark leafed through it. Fifty kinds of swords and knives, with every slight variation possessing its own name, and names for all the parts as well . . . what an absolutely fractal knowledge-base, the kind created by, and in turn creating, a closed in-group such as the Vor. . . .

The library's door swung open, and footsteps sounded across the marble and carpeting. It was Count Vorkosigan. Mark shrank back in the chair in the alcove, drawing his legs up out of sight. Maybe the man would just take something and go out again. Mark did not want to get trapped into some intimate chat, which this comfortable room so invited. He had conquered his initial terror of the Count, yet the man managed still to make him excruciatingly uncomfortable, even without saying a word.

Unfortunately, Count Vorkosigan seated himself at one of the comconsoles. Reflections of the colored lights of its display flickered on the glass of the windows Mark's chair faced. The longer he waited, Mark realized, lurking like an assassin, the more awkward it was going to be to reveal himself. So say hello. Drop the book. Blow your nose, something. He was just working up the courage to try a little throat-clearing and page-rustling, when the door hinges squeaked again, and lighter footsteps sounded. The Countess. Mark huddled into a ball in the wing-chair.

"Ah," said the Count. The lights reflecting in the window died away as he shut down the machine in favor of this new diversion, and swung around in his station chair. Did she lean over for some quick embrace? Fabric whispered as she seated herself.

"Well, Mark is certainly getting a crash-course about Barrayar," she remarked, effectively spiking Mark's last frantic impulse to make his presence known.

"It's what he needs," sighed the Count. "He has twenty years of catching up to do, if he is to function."

"Must he function? I mean, instantly?"

"No. Not instantly."