This week, we’re rereading “The Borders of Infinity,” the third novella in Borders of Infinity. Together, “Borders” and “Labyrinth” provide the explanation for those cost overruns that Illyan is looking into. The story was first published in 1987, in a Baen anthology titled Free Lancers. As an introduction to Miles, “Borders” works well on its own; This is the story where Miles arrives at the Dagoola IV prison camp empty-handed, quickly loses his clothes, and then saves everyone. He’s like a leprechaun who can pull combat drop shuttles out of his butt.
This reread has an index, which you can consult if you feel like exploring previous books and chapters. Spoilers are welcome in the comments if they are relevant to the discussion at hand. Comments that question the value and dignity of individuals, or that deny anyone’s right to exist, are emphatically NOT welcome. Please take note.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
It’s entirely possible to enjoy the story without having read Cetaganda first, which is a good thing because Cetaganda didn’t hit the shelves until 1996. But the novel offers some fun background for “Borders.” The Marilacan Embassy hosted the reception Miles and Ivan attended on the first evening of their visit to Cetaganda. That was the site of Ilsum Kety’s initial attack on Miles through the mechanism of Ghem-lord Yenaro’s art installation. On that occasion, Ambassador Vorob’yev explained to Miles and Ivan that Marilac had been accepting Cetagandan economic aid, believing that they were located on a natural border, and that the Cetagandans wouldn’t attack an ally.
Oops.
The wormhole jumps in Marilacan space are not so much a natural border as a direct route through to wormhole-rich Zoave Twilight. In hindsight, that thing with the sculpture looks like an early move in an Otto von Bismarck-style effort to isolate Marilac diplomatically prior to waging a short victorious war.
I can’t tell how long the war was for the Cetagandans, but it seems to have been a refreshing change from their humiliating defeat at Vervain. I would think that, at this point, the Cetagandans should be able to identify an individual to whom their Emperor awarded an Order of Merit, but whether or not they should, they quite evidently don’t. I like headcanon, so I’m entertaining the possibility that the Council of Counts may have had Miles’s adventures on Cetaganda in mind when they sent Illyan to look into the Dendarii’s finances. There is no evidence of any of this in “Borders” itself, because most of the story takes place in a bubble.
THE PLAN
The Dagoola IV prison camp is holding Marilacan prisoners of war. Miles is going in to rescue Colonel Guy Tremont, the Hero of Fallow Core, who Barrayar hopes will lead the Marilacan resistance. Elli Quinn and Elena Bothari are undercover with the Cetagandan authorities so they can monitor Miles and coordinate extraction. Miles is claiming to be a Marilacan soldier. In the camp, he claims to have been a clerk. All the other prisoners at Dagoola IV were elite combat troops, so this reads as a cover, and draws a lot of attention to Miles as a mystery. When Miles arrives, Tremont is dying. Miles has to improvise.
The prison camp itself is like Plato’s Cave. Inside, prisoners are isolated. They can’t see what’s happening in the outside world. But in Plato’s Cave, the guards carry objects across a walkway, and the prisoners use shadows to try to guess what the objects are. At Dagoola IV, there are no visible guards. The only shadow of the outside world is confinement itself. A few characters suggest to Miles that the Cetagandans are constantly watching and monitoring. A stack of ration bars arrives at a random location around the perimeter of the bubble twice a day. The Cetagandans can shrink the bubble, or remove the air to punish prisoners. But for the duration of “Borders of Infinity” they don’t. The camp is the whole world, and the prisoners turn on each other.
Miles seems like a shadow of the outside world, a situation that is fraught with both danger and opportunity. The most obvious explanation of Miles’s mystery is that he is a Cetagandan spy. The idea that he is on a rescue mission may offer hope, but is too dangerous to acknowledge. Miles finds an ally to help him with this; He encounters Suegar shortly after losing his clothes. Suegar possesses the only piece of writing inside the camp—a tiny fragment from A Pilgrim’s Progress. I’m a cultural Protestant, but mostly lapsed, and my only prior exposure to A Pilgrim’s Progress comes from reading Little Women as a child. Suegar and I are not well-equipped to comment on this as allegory. I prefer to see it as a faint shadow of the outside world, and just as Plato warned, the prisoner who sees what others cannot or have not seems mad to his comrades. Nonetheless, Miles fits himself into Suegar’s one-man cult of hope and builds more alliances from there.
This is a story that emphasizes Miles’s resourcefulness. Miles has a crucial resource the other prisoners don’t—he has reason to believe that he is in contact with an outside world that is concerned with his welfare. He needs to convince the other prisoners that they are too. Rescue is not just about having shuttles, but about preparing for them. Miles can do that too. Having failed to rescue Tremont in time, Miles finds more leaders for Marilac’s resistance. As one does.
The story’s final blow is about what Miles can’t do. On the last shuttle out of camp, Miles’s shuttle faces heavy Cetagandan fire, and has to take off with the hatch jammed open. Miles’s Dendarii bodyguard, Lt. Murka, has been killed by the Cetagandans. His Marilacan bodyguard, Beatrice, sacrifices her life to unjam the door and save Miles and the rest of the prisoners. I just read Ethan of Athos, so I’m halfway into the Miles/Elli romance, but Miles hasn’t read that book, and he is half in love with Beatrice when she falls to her death. The moment when he tries and fails to grab her as she falls will haunt him for years.
Miles has spent most of Borders of Infinity with the Dendarii. Next week, the Dendarii will come into uncomfortably close contact with Miles’s Barrayaran life, in Brothers in Arms, the only adventure that required Miles to take on both roles at once.
Ellen Cheeseman-Meyer teaches history and reads a lot.
Considering how classified Mile’s involvement with the Dendarii had to be, did the CofC know? Count Vorvolk and his shadow-advisors must have very high security clearance.
Possibly the Cetas did not have a reliable description of Admiral Naismith until he appeared on the news on Earth.
Something that occurred to me quite recently: we know that galactic medical science is advanced enough to control the metabolic “set point” for body weight. It seems likely that they know the cause and cure of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Why didn’t the Cetagandans give all of their prisoners a case of that? (Because then there would be no story, of course.)
@2 The Cetas were trying to follow the letter of the law regarding treatment of POWs. That kind of modification is probably really illegal. It would also be crude and inelegant. Much more artistic to get the prisoners to destroy each other.
And because the Cetagandan object is not to make it hard for the prisoners to escape: it’s to break them mentally, to make them know that resistance is useless.
Though we do get into the interesting question of just how ethical Miles is, or can be, in his situation (particularly his solution to the problem of Pierce.)
This one was OK, but Miles seemed almost too competent to be believable. But too many Dendarii adventures take place off camera, so I am grateful that we got to see this one.
I’m thinking, for some reason, of Andersonville.
It’s not of course; the Cetagandans are providing sufficient food for the prisoners and relying on them going into an every-man-for-himself (objectivist?) anarchy, which would also prove, quite nicely, to the Cetagandans that their enemy is inferior and needs the firm discipline that the Cetagandan lords can provide.
@6 swampyankee
Anyone can create a hellish environment by breaking the rules. There’s something horrifically artistic about the Cetagandan insistence on creating the same hell without a single technical violation.
A technical note: this article is not a part of the reread series – it does not appear in the RSS not the reread index.
One thing this story shows is just how easily a truly horrible environment can be created without once breaking the letter of the laws. Trampling all over the spirit of them, sure, but everything the Cetagandans do here is strictly legal in the setting.
Remember this is not a standard prison camp, this is a specialised facility for the hardened rebellious elite of the other side, akin to Colditz or Stalag Luft III. Presumably the other camps (if they even have them) are much more structured.
And it’s something that repeats in history here as well, from siting camps in countries with different rules, designating people as different classes of combatants so they are eligible for different treatment, stretching the definitions of torture to the breaking point … we have few grounds to feel morally superior.
Also, it demonstrates once again that concentrating these prisoners in a single facility is often counterproductive in that it acts to concentrate and discipline a hardened cadre of resistance fighters that will eventually drive the Cetas off Marilac.
@9 Mayhem – Dagoola IV Top Security Prison Camp #3. So there are at least 2 more.
I think what makes this particularly scary is the feeling that we have scientists beyond the wall, studying, holding seminars and writing research papers. At least Mengele was a bungler.
Granted, Miles is something of a superman character, an ultimate con-artist can always pull of the impossible. But, once you accept his super-power, the rest follows. Miles arrives in prison to break out one prisoner. He is there long enough to realize exactly how horrific conditions are and to feel that Miles-ish need to FIX things when he discovers he’s too late to save the person he’s supposed to save.
However, he was supposed to rescue the general so the general could put together an army to fight the Cetagandans. Miles, in typical, Milesian logic, decides to cut out the middle-man. There’s a perfectly good army right here no one seems to be using. He can achieve his mission objective by just taking that instead.
I think the story does a nice job of balancing Miles’ crazy Music Man powers as he convinces people they can do a lot more than play instruments, the reasons (beyond Miles’ magical charisma) that these people latch onto something that allows them to have hope and (just as important) believe in themselves again after what the prison has done to them, and the pragmatic elements of Miles’ plan along with the heavy costs of carrying it out. One of the Dendarii who dies saving Miles’ is the same one who did a Miles-level job of talking himself and his team out of trouble in the last story.
I just love to imagine the looks on the phases of the people he had planted in the Cetagandans who were watching this unfold as they realize what the change of plans is. It pays to be an adrenaline junkie if you want to work for Miles.
I think by now Miles’ people know that NO plan is going to survive contact with Mad Miles. Just roll with it.
@11 Ellynne
I have very mixed feelings about Miles’s superpower. I don’t think his brand of leadership is good for the people around him, and I don’t think it’s particularly good for Miles, either. Memory is the natural result of his choices, and Miles is frankly lucky that he got as far as he did before he burned out.
Borders of Infinity shows Miles at his best, employing morally dubious means for an unquestionably good end. I enjoy his cunning and improvisation, his ability to find victory at a high cost. I don’t usually consider Miles the “good guy”, even if he is the protagonist, but Dagoola is one of the rare situations that calls for his unique brand of brilliance, daring, and insanity.
In a later book he thinks more carefully about the last scene and recalls Beatrice was much more massive than he was. So if he’d grabbed her he’d just have been dragged off and killed with her. The fact he brings it up so much later makes the reader realise how hard it’s been for him to let it go.
@8 – Fixed, thank you!
@1 Count Henri Vorvolk gets to witness Miles’ original deposition re: the formation of the Dendarii Free Mercenaries at the end of tWA. IIRC, by the time the tale telling was done, Vorvolk had reached an advanced state of hero worship. ?
(I like how Vorvolk turns up consistently in bit parts- he’s present at a garden party in Memory- such fanfic bait.)
@16 SoupDumpling – Possibly Gregor told Count Vorvolk more than he should have about the further adventures of Miles. He’d want to brag about his little brother, and Vorvolk seems safe – a lightweight. But he must have been leaking.
I’m surprised by the low activity on Borders of Infinity. Is the story just too good – nothing to add? The only question mark I have is how Elli and Elena could get themselves hired as guards. But that may be a story in itself.
@16 Since Volk is simply the German word for “people,” perhaps VorVolk has served as a generic or multipurpose Vor, who can be plugged into the narrative whenever a Vor presence is needed. Unless I am mistaken, while he has made a few appearances in the books, I can’t think of him doing anything of note.
Henry Vorvolk is Gregor’s best friend, they bonded at the academy or maybe at school being of an age and having the common experience of being orphaned and having the whole load of their inheritance land on them as children. Vorvolk witnesses the Vordrozha disaster up close and personal and IMO is determined to see Gregor’s trust and affection is NEVER so abused again. This makes him, unfortunately, an easy mark for Aral’s political enemies’ machinations – though in justice to Vorvolk there is financial grounds for suspicion, even Illyan says so.
One of my favorite stories. Really showcases Miles’ talents, his ability to improvise, to inspire people and his approach to orders.
In Komarr, Miles says “Demagoguery, I suppose, is eloquence sliding to some least moral energy level.” – which I suspect is a statement informed by Miles’ experience in Dagoola – in particular, how easy it was to use Pitt as a scapegoat for all the guilt and shame the prisoners felt at their own behavior.
I have a few things that the last few stories are making me think about.
In Miles’ last conversation with Suegar, Suegar says that he doesnt believe in the scripture (after it leads to saving him). I am trying to decide exactly what Suegar tells about religion. I lean toward use it when you can, but dont take it too seriously.
All 3 stories have Miles and really strong female characters. Is a physically weak man the best co-character for strong female characters? Does Miles choose the strong females to enhance his romantic possibilities? Being seen treating females well could make him more attractive to others.
When we see a story where Miles persuades a whole camp to do his bidding…. makes me feel a lot more sympathy for why Ivan cant get out from under Miles’ plans. :)
This is a fantastic story. Not least in that it leads us to think that we’ve already seen the defeat hidden with the victory – the arc of Murka’s introduction, career, and death. It would be unrealistic for triumph to come without cost, or for everything to go the way Miles hopes, and so everything doesn’t. Miles loses one of his best men in a senseless stroke of ill luck. Balance is restored.
Then Bujold kicks us right in the stomach as hard as she can.