Shards of Honor (Vorkosigan Saga) Read Free Page B

right," Cordelia assured him. "It's artificial blue cheese salad dressing." She sat back and contemplated the menu. "At least it's high in calories," she encouraged herself. "We'll need calories. I don't suppose you have a spoon in that utility belt of yours?"
    Vorkosigan unhooked an object from his belt and handed it to her without comment. It turned out to be several small useful utensils folded into a handle, including a spoon.
    "Thanks," Cordelia said, absurdly pleased, as if granting her mumbled wish had been a conjuror's trick.
    Vorkosigan shrugged and wandered away to continue his search in the gathering darkness, and she began to feed Dubauer. He seemed voraciously hungry, but unable to manage for himself.
    Vorkosigan returned to the spring. "I found this." He handed her a small geologist's shovel about a meter long, used for digging soil samples. "It's a poor tool for the purpose, but I've found nothing better yet."
    "It was Reg's," Cordelia said, taking it. "It will do."
    She led Dubauer to a spot near her next job and settled him. She wondered if some bracken from the forest might provide some insulation for him, and resolved to get some later. Marking out the dimensions of a grave near the place where Rosemont had fallen, she began hacking away at the heavy turf with the little shovel. The sod was tough, wiry, and resistant, and she ran out of breath quickly.
    Vorkosigan appeared out of the night. "I found some cold lights." He cracked one pencil-sized tube and laid it on the ground beside the grave, where it gave off an eerie but bright blue-green glow. He watched her critically as she worked.
    She stabbed away at the dirt, resentful of his scrutiny. Go away, you, and let me bury my friend in peace. She grew self-conscious as a new thought struck her— maybe he won't let me finish—I'm taking too long. . . . She dug harder.
    "At this rate, we'll be here until next week."
    If she moved fast enough, she wondered irritably, could she succeed in hitting him with the shovel? Just once . . .
    "Go sit down with your botanist." He was holding out his hand; it dawned on her at last that he was volunteering to help dig.
    "Oh . . ." She relinquished the tool. He drew his combat knife and cut through the grasses' roots where she had marked her rectangle, and began to dig, far more efficiently than she had.
    "What kind of scavengers have you found around here?" he asked between tosses. "How deep does this have to be?"
    "I'm not sure," she replied. "We'd only been downside three days. It's a pretty complex ecosystem, though, and most imaginable niches seem to be filled."
    "Hm."
    "Lieutenant Stuben, my chief zoologist, found a couple of those browser hexapeds killed and pretty well consumed. He caught a glimpse of something he called a fuzzy crab at one of the kills."
    "How big were they?" asked Vorkosigan curiously.
    "He didn't say. I've seen pictures of crabs from Earth, and they don't seem very large—as big as your hand, perhaps."
    "A meter may be enough." He continued the excavation with short, powerful bites of the inadequate shovel. The cold light illuminated his face from below, casting shadows upward from heavy jaw, straight broad nose, and thick brows. He had an old faded L-shaped scar, Cordelia noticed, on the left side of his chin. He reminded her of a dwarf king in some northern saga, digging in a fathomless deep.
    "There's a pole over by the tents. I could fix that light up in the air so it shines on your work," she offered.
    "That would help."
    She returned to the tents, beyond the circle of cold light, and found her pole where she had dropped it that morning. Returning to the gravesite, she spliced the light to the pole with a few tough grass stems and jammed it upright in the dirt, flinging the circle of light wider. She remembered her plan to collect bracken for Dubauer, and turned to make for the forest, then stopped.
    "Did you hear that?" she asked Vorkosigan.
    "What?" Even he was beginning to breathe