"Gimme another drink. I want to think. 'If thou wilt swear thyself to me, thy liege lord true to thee I'll be . . .'"
"Huh?" said Mayhew.
Miles realized he'd been singing aloud, albeit softly. "Nothing, sorry." He floated in silence a few minutes longer. "That's the trouble with the Betan system," he said after a time. "Nobody takes personal responsibility for anyone. It's all these faceless fictional corporate entities—government by ghosts. What you need is a liege lord, to take sword in hand and slice through all the red tape. Just like Vorthalia the Bold and the Thicket of Thorns."
"What I need is a drink," said Mayhew glumly.
"Hm? Oh, sorry." Miles handed the bottle back. An idea was forming up in the back of his mind, like a nebula just starting to
contract. A little more mass, and it would start to glow, a proto star. . .
. "I have it!" he cried, straightening out suddenly, and accidently giving himself an unwanted spin.
Mayhew flinched, nearly firing his needler through the floor. He
glanced uncertainly at the squeeze bottle. "No, I have it," he corrected.
Miles overcame the spin. "We'd better do this from here. The first principle of strategy—never give up an advantage. Can I use your
comconsole?"
"What for?"
"I," said Miles grandly, "am going to buy this ship. And then I shall hire you to pilot it."
Mayhew stared in bewilderment, looking from Miles to the bottle
and back. "You got that much money?"
"Mm . . . Well, I have assets . . ."
* * *
A few minutes' work with the comconsole brought the salvage
operator's face on the screen. Miles put his proposition succinctly.
Calhoun's expression went from disbelief to outrage.
"You call that a compromise?" he cried. "At cost! And backed by—
I'm not a damned real estate broker!"
"Mr. Calhoun," said Miles sweetly, "may I point out, the choice is not between my note and this ship. The choice is between my note and a rain of glowing debris."
"If I find out you're in collusion with that—"
"Never met him before today," Miles disclaimed.
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"What's wrong with the land?" asked Calhoun suspiciously.
"Besides being on Barrayar, I mean."
"It's like fertile farm country," Miles answered, not quite directly.
"Wooded—one hundred centimeters of rain a year—" that ought to fetch a Betan, "barely three hundred kilometers from the capital."
Downwind, fortunately for the capital. "And I own it absolutely.
Just inherited it from my grandfather recently. Go ahead and check it through the Barrayaran Embassy. Check the climate plats."
"This rainfall—it's not all on the same day or something, is it?"
"Of course not," replied Miles, straightening indignantly. Not easy, in free fall. "Ancestral land—it's been in my family for ten