The Flowers of Vashnoi is the most recent Vorkosigan novella. It is set between Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance and Cryoburn. It’s a short adventure focusing on Ekaterin, with Enrique in a major supporting role. While carrying out a research study on bugs that process radioactive waste, Ekaterin and Enrique find a family of mutants hiding in the contaminated area outside the ruins of Vorkosigan Vashnoi. The Flowers of Vashnoi came out last year in the same week as my birthday, which is irrelevant to any and all readers whose birthday isn’t in the same week as mine, roughly 51/52 of literate humanity, but I mention it anyway because I regard the book as a present. To me. I know Bujold didn’t write it for me, but she wrote it and I’m blogging about it, and here we are.
And because of that, it feels a little weird to be blogging about this book. You’re not supposed to dissect presents. You’re supposed to say thank you and be properly grateful and carry your present off to read and appreciate. I did all of those things. I love it and I appreciate it, and I’m also a little skeptical about it.
I love how much Enrique is in this book. There’s been some discussion in the comments from time to time about the possibility that Enrique is autistic. I have tended not to see him this way, but I don’t want to take an autistic character away from readers who want to see one—Enrique can be autistic if you want him to. My personal inclination has been to see him as a fish out of water. People can be autistic and be in unfamiliar surroundings at the same time. Enrique seems more comfortable and more confident in Flowers than he did back in A Civil Campaign.
The shift in Enrique’s comfort level is at least partly due to his having spent more time on Barrayar and gotten to know Ekaterin better. He also seems to have established a comfort zone with Miles. I think that part of this shift is also attributable to Enrique getting to do more microbiology in this book, and also some hard-core bad-assery on the lab safety front. I was very excited by the microbiology and lab safety here.
To follow up, I interviewed my cousin, Dr. Iain Cheeseman, who has a PhD in molecular and cell biology. I asked him about Enrique’s work on insects that use their gut bacteria to process radioactive waste. He said that’s totally a thing that scientists are working on now. Having gotten the microbiology part of the interview out of the way, I plunged on into lab safety. We were on the phone, so it was a little hard to be certain, but Iain appeared mildly confused by my focus on fire fighting. He informed me that the risk of fire in a twenty-first century microbiology lab is almost zero. Apparently, the bigger risk is that you’re going to let a genetically engineered organism loose in the municipal sewer system. That sounds a little like the concerns some blog readers had about the mycoborer in Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance. And just so you know, the city of Cambridge requires a lot of safety protocols around the use of recombinant DNA! When I asked Iain how much training the average microbiologist gets in fire suppression, he informed me that scientists who work in his building go through a safety briefing that includes pointing out the location of the fire extinguishers and being told what to do when the fire alarm goes off.
From this I infer that, while the field of microbiology hasn’t outwardly changed that much in however many centuries there are between now and Enrique, it has somehow become a lot more flammable. Or possibly, Escobar is making everyone who needs any kind of safety training at all go through the same safety procedures course. Both of these possibilities are exciting. I’m sure there is a wide range of more dangerous lab procedures that someone will invent at some point—maybe they will finally refine the thing where the lab material gets struck by lightning like it does in Gothic novels!—and also Enrique might be just as useful in earthquakes or shipwrecks as he is when someone lights a hut on fire in the radioactive wasteland surrounding Vorkosigan Vashnoi! The Galactic Nexus is full of intriguing possibilities.
I’m also thrilled to see Ekaterin’s perspective again. Marriage to Miles had made some things easier for her. But also, she’s married to Miles. He’s a great guy. He’s a lot, you know? In one notable scene in this book, he encourages the twins to throw food at the cat, and then leaves the nanny to clean up. This may be literature’s most perfect example of managing adult ADHD through staffing. Miles is also a smidge over-protective, in a slightly smothering kind of way. Ekaterin is good at managing people, so she’s good at managing Miles. Showing Ekaterin’s Miles-management skills is a nice set-up for showing her interactions with the mutant children she meets slightly later.
As you may recall, Vorkosigan Vashnoi was the target of a major Cetagandan nuclear strike. The city was completely destroyed. Approximately a quarter of a million people died. The city and the surrounding area are now a nuclear fallout zone. Ekaterin, Miles, and Enrique visit it, along with a ranger, Vadim, in order to carry out a study on a new strain of Enrique’s bugs that collect nuclear waste. In order to differentiate them from other bugs and make them easier to find, the radbugs have a little nuclear waste symbol on them, and it glows. This has attracted the attention of some children living in the fallout zone. No one is supposed to be there, but Ma Roga was convicted of murder (along with a gang of other people) and she returned to the fallout zone to live with her son, Boris. She then discovered that people were abandoning mutated infants in the fallout zone. For years, she has raised the ones she could and buried the ones who died in her makeshift cemetery. One of her foster children, an albino boy named Ingi, has been stealing Enrique’s bugs from the test site to give to his sister, Jadwiga, who thinks the bugs are pretty.
And here, I need to start dissecting things, because Barrayar’s problems never seem to go away. Jadwiga was born with six fingers, and she was born to people who had the ability to transport a baby some distance—they didn’t live in the fallout zone—but rather than seeking testing and treatment for that relatively common congenital malformation, they abandoned their infant. Ingi has albinism. Their parents left them in a fallout zone to die. And now Jadwiga has cancer—she has an obvious growth on her neck. Vadim is Jadwiga’s brother, and he has been helping Ma Roga for years by bringing food and supplies for her and her foster children. That’s nice, for a definition of nice that considers that there are a number of more substantial and constructive paths that he could take in this situation since he is (now) an adult and a government employee. Jadwiga’s need for medical treatment has been obvious for some time. I’m going to guess over a year. Vadim is bringing food. That’s not going to help when his sister can’t swallow. These are the situations that make me want to scream—Barrayar, what the FUCK?
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Ekaterin, being a lady who understands her feudal obligations, is not content to feed the children sandwiches, re-collect the radioactive bugs, and go her merry way. She wants to take the children to a hospital. She knows a good one. She’s very sympathetic to their concerns about the fate of their livestock and arranges for them to be relocated to the Butterbug Ranch. But change comes hard. Ma Roga responds to this situation by trying to kill herself and her children and set her cottage on fire. (This is where Enrique gets to show off his fire rescue skills.) In Ma Roga’s defense, what she knows about the world outside the fallout zone around Vorkosigan Vashnoi is that people leave infants with mutations to die. It’s a harsh, cruel place. I find this a poor excuse for attempted murder. Ekaterin stuns Ma Roga and calls for help. Everyone goes to the hospital, and Ma Roga is arrested again.
In the hospital (Ekaterin is being treated for radiation exposure, but it’s prophylaxis—she’s OK) Miles expresses hope for everyone involved. Miles lives in the bravest, newest world Barrayar has to offer. He is practically made of hope. In his eyes, the kids have bright futures, given some remedial education and appropriate medical treatment. He’s optimistic about Ma Roga as well.
Miles’s inclination is to see the best in everyone. His mother did that too. Maybe I should be more open to Miles’s optimism, because these stories are all about redemption. One reason I love this book is that although he isn’t in the story, Aral is alive while it’s going on—I can read this story and think that at this moment, somewhere in the Nexus, there is a living breathing Aral. Aral voluntarily confessed to three murders, and I love him anyway. Bothari was a war criminal, a rapist, and a murderer, and I thought he was on an interesting trajectory. But I’m not OK with Count Piotr and I’m not OK with Ma Roga. Miles forgives because he sees the best in everyone. Miles deals with a lot of murderers. Like his mother, he trusts beyond reason. I know he thinks it will get him results beyond hope. But he’s only just laid eyes on Ma Roga! And the crimes she committed weren’t committed against him. It’s not Miles whose forgiveness Ma Roga needs. Who is he to be holding out high hopes for her future, when he’s only just read up on her past? Sometimes I can’t be the person the Vorkosigan series asks me to be—I’m not that forgiving. Some things are a bridge too far.
Cryoburn is going to continue the theme of how societies deal with the people they don’t want. We’ll dive into that next week.
Ellen Cheeseman-Meyer teaches history and reads a lot.
I don’t know squat about radiation other than the bad fiction I see on television: in real life, would these folks be okay, or is this just science-fiction-advanced-technology fudging?
@1 – It’s hard to say, because these people have access to far future medical technology. I don’t know what Barrayar can do for long term radiation exposure. I trust Bujold on this though – if Miles said the medical prognosis was good, it is.
Excessive exposure to radiation causes cancer, particularly thyroid cancer, as well as organ failure. I knew someone who died of a cumulative overdose of radiation from cancer therapy. The Wikipedia article at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_radiation_syndrome lists some of the effect, although Ma Riga’s household would experience chronic rather than acute radiation poisoning.
@1 If galactic medicine can get retro-genes to fix VorZohn’s Dystrophy into every cell in the body, as well as remove deleterious genes from an embryo without harming it, it can probably thoroughly purge radiation. It doesn’t sound like a pleasant process, but you survive it.
There are established 21st century treatments for radiation exposure. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/8190961/.
Real life version of such situation maybe available from Chernobyl for biota other than human?
Also Hiroshima, Nagasaki?
LMB mention any?
Ma Roga is clearly not hitting on all cylinders. Remember, she’s living in the radioactive zone because she’s a murderer. She genuinely believes that Ekaterin is taking her children away to a literal fate worse than death. To her warped mind the solution is clear.
It is also clear that Ekaterin is the only adult in her marriage.
I hope they can cure Jadwiga. I hope she gets to see a real princess, as a protegee of Miles Vorkosigan her odds are good.
I forsee a brilliant future for Ingi. If he becomes a successful scientist and public figure he will strive another blow against Barrayar’s mutant phobia.
What happened here? The Zone sounds more like Chernobyl than Hiroshima – if Hiroshima glows in the dark 75 years after the bomb, it’s neon lights. A nuclear attack massive enough to create the Zone should not have left any survivors.
So, we see the effects of Cetagandan atomics. I like to think the ghem used a terraforming tool designad to sterilize a planet in preparation for seeding it with earthlife, but the elements mentioned suggests a conventional fission bomb.
It may be a case of too much detail. No one expects a sf author to know how to build a time macine or a jumpship. That’s why technobabble was invented.
I don’t know how many cylinders Ma Roga started with when she was hanging out with the bad boy, murdering and thieving crew. But, I can see her getting in the face of Count Piotr and demanding her rights, which is kind of cool. The woman she became at the end, not so much. But, maybe that’s the combination radiation and senility getting to her.
On Earth, a woman “pleading her belly” in the olden days was spared execution till her child was born. Interesting that, on Barrayar, that could mean a lifetime reprieve. But, someone’s got to raise the kids.
Enrique may be very focused when he’s working on a project, but I’m betting he did a lot of cross-pollinating in his studies. Some of it obviously involved labs/study areas where fire was a hazard (has he ever studied how to make explosive bugs?).
I love the moment when Ekaterin starts insisting and Enrique shakes his head, muttering Vorkosigans! I kind of assume he picked that up from Martya and his in-laws.
I also loved the Baba Yaga references- here we have some more of Barrayar’s children’s stories. I’m also wondering what story or stories Miles got his ‘wood-elf’ from.
@8 – when Ma Roga pleaded her belly she was sent to live in the exclusion zone – I think Piotr assumed she would die.
@8 – There is a strong tradition, at least in the literature of the 17th and 18th centuries, of women who escaped death sentences by pleading their bellies instead being transported to British colonies, where their chances of survival were no worse than any other pregnant woman’s. Some of them lived to old age.
It’s surprising that Ma Roga has survived so much radiation exposure – at the time of this story, Piotr has been dead for at least 15 years, and Ma Roga’s encounter with him was not in his old age.
@@@@@(: The Cetagandan nuclear strike on Vorkosigan Vashnoi was a terror attack, intended to break the will of the Barrayaran resistance. It was probably intended to create a long-term radioactive area, to take advantage of the Barrayaran fear of mutation.
I remind everybody about the Cetagandan bioweapon that was encountered in Diplomatic Immunity. This is a setting where microbiology could easily wind up with all the hazards of chemistry today, and more besides, perhaps especially if — like Enrique — you’re working with micro and macro biological processes at the same time.
I would buy — in both senses — a genetically engineered genuinely-firebreathing dragon from the Nexus.
@11, I looked up the first case I’d heard of where the women had a stay of execution because of pregnancy, Anne Bonny and Mary Read. I’d thought they’d been executed after. But, fact checking it, I found Mary Read died of a fever after giving birth and Anne Bonny was released. I’m blaming the book I first read about them in.
So, Barrayar wasn’t exceptional on that point.
Somewhere there’s a mention of at least the accusation that the Cetagandan attack was deliberately “dirty,” isotopically-speaking. There is, indeed, a lot more residual radiation than you’d expect from the amount of bombing needed to destroy* a city.
My Enrique-firefighting theory is that he’s the sort to pay attention to equipment manuals and briefings, and that these are not the suits they use in the labs. After all, in the labs you don’t have to worry about brambles or falling down a hill or whatever. So these are the heavy-duty fieldwork suits, not the every-day-in-the-lab suits, which means a) Enrique was recently given a new briefing and manual, which of course he paid attention to, and b) it is reasonably likely that the heavy-duty tear-puncture-and-abrasion-resistant self-contained biotaner/radiation suits MVK Enterprises and/or the Vorkosigan’s District rangers would buy/issue were originally designed for either the Barrayaran military, or else space emergencies. In either case, fire is likely to be a featured scenario in the product information.
*Note, of course, that Hiroshima wasn’t “destroyed” in this sense, whereas Vashnoi seems to have been: we certainly have no mention at all of surviving buildings, suburbs, etc. And Hiroshima was probably an easier city to destroy, in terms of construction materials. So a “turn the whole place into rubble” strike would have left the ruins more radioactive than Hiroshima, but likely not as radioactive as they turned out. Especially since future-nukes, if optimized for explosive/thermal yield (as they would be, since they’re apparently in use for certain space-combat applications) are likely to be cleaner (in terms of fallout) than modern ones.
@@@@@ 8, ellyne
On Earth, a woman “pleading her belly” in the olden days was spared execution till her child was born.
@@@@@ 11, ricevermicelli
@@@@@8 – There is a strong tradition, at least in the literature of the 17th and 18th centuries, of women who escaped death sentences by pleading their bellies instead being transported to British colonies, where their chances of survival were no worse than any other pregnant woman’s. Some of them lived to old age.
In Europe at the time, prisons had child-getters. Baby-getters offered their services to female felons. For a fee, they worked hard to turn women felons into pregnant women felons.
If the child-getter did his job right, she was big bellied before her trial-date. At the least that gave the girl a stay of execution. Even better, her belly plea could get her transported instead of hanged.
The ghem didn’t necessarily tell what they had done.
All we know is that the Barrayarans believed they had been bombarded, that medium-term isotopes are consistent with fission apart from an excess of plutonium, that (only) 200 000 were immediately killed in a city of 250 000, and that an area over 1000 sq kilometers was made uninhabitable for centuries.
Induced fission and beta decay, causing naturally occuring isotopes to transmute over the entire affected area, might explain what happened. It would certainly seem like bombardment: firestorms, gamma rays, neutrons. But no 20 kT explosions, you might survive in a cellar. Until the radioactive dust got you.
Previous books mention that Vashnoi was turned into glass by the bomb, don’t they? People crept back in around the edges over time, partly because they couldn’t sense the radiation, partly because they didn’t care. Bandits don’t expect to live long enough to die from radiation.
The hillfolk on Vorkosigan lands have only had one generation, or less, of modern education and medical care (thank you, Cordelia). Some traditions are hard to eradicate; it was only twenty years prior that Miles had to solve an infanticide. Those parents exposing infants may know that Ma Roga will pick them up; or they may not, but still don’t have the resources to care for them or to get them the care they need (note: I am not excusing the practice, just extrapolating from the data provided). Doesn’t Ma Roga say that the exposures stopped after the mobile clinics started coming through?
Using any sort of atomic weapons when you have easy and cheap space travel is a particularly nasty thing to do. If you want to wipe some place off the map, just drop something heavy on it at a high velocity; it’ll give you the same boom but without the fallout. So the Cetagandans were definitely being dirty on purpose.
One of the things that was mentioned so briefly it almost escaped my notice is that sometime between A Civil Campaign and The Flowers of Vashnoi Enrique seems to have developed dual-biome bugs that can eat both Earth-derived and Barrayaran plant matter. I guess that’s reasonable since that would be one of his first priorities and he has had five years to figure it out.
The other useful bit of information given as an aside is that Aurie Pym is on break from university which, if we assume Barrayaran ages of college-level education are similar to the ages at which early twenty-first century people go to college, would place her in her late teens to early twenties. I’m assuming she’s still an undergraduate since graduate students usually spend their breaks doing research or academic projects. I’m guessing early twenties since Aurie is probably the same “Miss Pym” who was old enough to be Ekaterin’s personal maid during the Vorkosigan honeymoon cruise described in Diplomatic Immunity, which took place three years before Flowers. This would put her in her mid-twenties in Cryoburn when Roic is considering proposing to her, four years after the events described in The Flowers of Vashnoi. I seem to recall Aurie Pym’s age being a point of some controversy earlier.
@18 – When Miles investigated that infanticide 20 years ago, there were already resources available to treat infants with birth defects. Harra made a plan to get to them.
Neither Jadwiga nor Ingi are twenty. And FWIW, a cleft palate is a more serious threat to the life and health of an infant than either bonus fingers or albinism.
Regardless of your intentions, extrapolating about a cultural impulse to infanticide is really, really close to excusing it. Bujold doesn’t do that. I don’t see why anyone else would want to either, except for the very ugliest of reasons. (We’ve been down that road before – it’s ugly. You can go read it in the comments on “Mountains of Mourning” if you need to be reminded of why I don’t want to go there again and why I am feeling fairly unpleasant while I write this now.)
To be very clear, here’s what I can put up with:
Questions and comments about what kind of medical care people in the area surrounding the Vorkosigan Vashnoi exclusion zone might have access to, and when those resources might have become available. These potentially offer insight into how Barrayar has changed in the time we have known it.
And here’s what I can’t tolerate, and will call in the mods to nuke:
– Any suggestion that infanticide is ever justified, anywhere, ever.
Barrayar is a harsh world, and that shows in its treatment of infants with obvious birth defects. We aren’t meant to sympathize with it, and I fear that doing so makes for a very unpleasant reread blog experience for disabled fans. AND I WANT THEM HERE.
Harra was brave enough to admit her child was flawed and seek help for her. Clearly not all parents were that brave. Attitudes have apparently changed enough in the last ten or fifteen years that abandonment in the zone is no longer an option. but I wonder how many children with defects are simply abandoned at hospitals and clinics?
@22 Probably not many once it becomes known that many of the “defects” can be seamlessly repaired. The conspiracy of silence might get updated to suppress the knowledge that a couple disappeared for a few days following a birth and reappeared with a perfectly healthy baby.
@23, I hope so.
@22 – I have not bothered trying to generate sympathy for parents who lack the courage to deal with their infant daughter’s 6th finger, or their son’s pointy ears. I literally do not care how scared they were, or what social and cultural forces they were scared of. I. Just. Don’t.
Ingi and Jadwiga were scared about her tumor. Their situation is genuinely frightening, because Ingi and Jadwiga ARE the people who are isolated and have no access to resources and have to consider the possibility that some force beyond their ability to influence – cancer, radiation, Ma Roga, injury – might end their lives in a horrifying and agonizing way.
I’m saving my sympathy for people who actually deserve it.
@16: From long ago memories about nuclear bombs, you have a choice. If you want to break lots of things (like cities), then you go for an air burst. High enough that none of the ground will get pulled into the fireball. The pressure wave will break anything you want broken, without creating a large amount of fall out.
On the other hand, if you want to spread radiation over large amounts of territory, you want the burst to be much lower, so that dirt (and everything else that can fly loose) will be irradiated by the fireball and then spread over a large territory. Even better if you want for favorable winds to spread the newly radioactive debris.
That’s why strikes against cities (which are relatively easy to break) are usually air bursts to maximize the damaged territory. Those same strikes don’t have as much radioactive fallout as strikes against hardened underground facilities (which are harder to break.)..Those strikes may involve bombs designed to penetrate the ground. The blast will be much more localized, thus doing far less physical damage around the strike zone, but will also toss a lot more newly irradiated stuff into the air, increasing the amount of fallout.
The choice of target determines the amount of radiation.
On the radioactive contamination… a lot depends on where the bomb was exploded.
A bomb exploded in mid-air – like Hiroshima and Nagasaki – creates a concussive shockwave that knocks down buildings, a heat wave that sets things on fire, and a radiation wavefront that can kill unshielded lifeforms… but it creates very little long-term radioactivity. The only mass/matter caught in the nuclear reaction is the material of the bomb itself, so there’s not a lot of material being directly converted into fallout.
A bomb exploded on the ground sweeps all of the matter around it into the nuclear reaction, as everything up to the diameter of the fireball is vaporized and mixed into the reaction. That creates a hell of a lot of radioactive material, and is the main source of long-term radioactive contamination.
Both the long-term radiation and the references to ‘glassed’ (implying a lot of area in direct contact with the fireball) make it sound like a ground blast; that also fits with the suggested motives of the Cetagandans.
Chernobyl was similar to a ground blast in that respect. The RBMK reactor at Chernobyl was graphite-moderated; i.e., instead of putting the uranium fuel into a big tank of water that both cooled and moderated the reaction, it put the fuel rods into a structure of graphite bricks that acted as a moderator, with cooling coming from water tubes running through the bricks. So when the reactor lost coolant and caught on fire, there was lots and lots of graphite bricks – which bear a strong resemblance to coal – to mix with the uranium and burn, spreading fallout across the region. Different mechanism, but a similar result.
@26 and 27 – Miles recalls that Piotr never burned an offering for his family who died at VV because there had been enough burning already. In case that helps with the bast forensics effort. Ma Roga reminded me of the older women who refused to leave the area around Chernobyl, which I don’t think is as relevant to understanding the blast, but is interesting.
@25, Cowardice is not a sympathetic trait. Personally I think Ekaterin was too kind to Jadwiga’s family. But she is kind.
I also noticed how many times the expletive “Drat” (or variations) worked itself into the narrative, often in Ekaterin’s internal monologue. Married to Miles for three years and still oversocialized.
You’d think three years with Miles would have taught her to swear like a mercenary.
She’s also implied to have Down’s Syndrome, per the description when we first see her, not in so many words because Ekaterin has very limited exposure to it, what with Barrayar’s murderous ableism.
Nukemap at nuclearsecrecy.org says a 10MT ground blast should create the results indicated, (I targeted birmingham Al as a city of roughly the correct size) if the weapon was salted for increased fallout you’d see something like this. This isn’t a huge number, the ussr had 20 MT weapons on SS-18s. Many of which were targeted for ground blasts to destroy NORAD.
Nuclear weapons are bad.
Fire prevention is, I assume, taught to all Vorkosigan retainers from about 6 weeks after Miles learned to walk.
I have to agree with Sue, with the technology we’ve seen so far in the series, chronic radiation exposure is nothing to their science. It might be expensive, but it’s certainly not stretching the bounds of plausibility.
@@@@@ 31 – Except Miles doesn’t actually swear much himself (at least, not strongly), does he? IIRC, in the entire series he drops only one F-bomb, which carries a lot of weight precisely because it is so rare. (Though @@@@@30, I agree that Ekaterin’s version is still oversocialized, heh.)
@29 As the wife of two “mutants “ and the mother of a third, Ekaterin has been in the position of those parents. If Tien’s brother had died before Nikki was born, would TIen have insisted Ekaterin have an abortion if her pregnancy tested positive for VorZohn’s Dystrophy? I’m betting he would. He had her get a contraceptive implant once they knew.
It’s also now 80 years since Vorkosigan Vashnoi was destroyed. So the radiation level in the surrounding area has probably dropped some. That would lead to a decrease in the number of “mutant” infants at the same time medical care became more available.
@35, Miles might not swear much himself but he certainly inspires others to grow their vocabularies.
I read this novella in the last six months, after I discovered these recaps. I can count the number of times I’ve read them on one hand, and the novella lives purely on my phone, which gives it this almost quaint feel. Also, last week I realized that my brain had placed it post-Cryoburn, and a lot of my thoughts on it was the idea that this was a glimpse at the post-Aral state of the district.
Even though that’s not the case, it does show the next evolution of what changes Ekaterin and Miles are making, and also how well Ekaterin is growing into her own under the “Lady Vorkosigan” title (“Miles thought she deserved a planet. After all, his mother had one”).
This novella does make me think about Ekaterin’s comments in GJatRQ about how Barrayer exists at the whim of the Haut. While they may have seen the nuclear strike as too much (if I’m remembering the comments in CVA correctly), they could have wiped out all of Barrayer’s population with them.
I mean, if Enrique can create his radbugs, you can’t tell me the haute don’t have their own (more elegant and efficient) version that could have cleaned up the radiation in a generation or two. A Barrayan generation that is.
As far as Enrique’s cool composure in emergencies, I’m reminded of his skepticism of Barrayan standards, and wondering if he didn’t overdose on safety standards out of a sense that *anything* could happen. Also, we see that people in the Vorkosigan circle tend to get various safety and self defense type lessons foisted on them. Just in case.
Although now I really do want a scenario where Miles takes Enrique with him on an Auditor case and they end up in a ridiculous scenario where more of Enrique’s back up training comes into play.
There’s a comment about the embryos being in Hassadar- I assume at the local rep center. Perhaps because it’s the district capital? (As opposed to keeping them on ice near Vorkosigan House )
Also, Ekaterin tells Jadwija that Vorkosigan Surleau is her favorite house.
@@@@@ 36, Sue11:
It’s also now 80 years since Vorkosigan Vashnoi was destroyed. So the radiation level in the surrounding area has probably dropped some. That would lead to a decrease in the number of “mutant” infants at the same time medical care became more available.
Much depends on the radioactive isotopes in question. Depending on the isotope, a half-life can range from a few microseconds to a few billion years. If the series ever mentions such details, I’ve missed them.
@40 The isotopes are probably still around but a fair amount has washed out to sea. The weather has been the chief decontamination agent.
@39 – Hassadar is often mentioned as the central point of Countess Cordelia’s medical initiatives for Vorkosigan District. I’m guessing because it’s both the District’s official capital and its largest city. At any rate, the best in-District medical facilities seem to be in Hassadar according to the general consensus of the characters who have commented on this.
@40 In Memory, Miles says the area will “just begin to be usable again” in fifty years.
@35 Miles does swear, but it’s described rather than shown. I remember the phrase “Miles swore” on more than one occasion. But I think we only see him use profanity at the end of Cryoburn.
After the events of Diplomatic Immunity and several years of marriage to Miles, I figured that Ekaterin’s threshold of something worth swearing about had risen quite high. She does use explicit language when she wants to. In DI she tells Miles “If you die on me out here, I will not be grieved, I will be pissed.” And it’s all the more effective for its shock value.
Thus morning National Public Radio had a story about the recovery of two H-bombs that we’re accidentally dropped in North Carolina in 1961. It mentions what the effects would have been if one of them went off.
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/25/688223286/8-days-2-h-bombs-and-1-team-that-stopped-a-catastrophe
FYI, there is NEW BUJOLD! “Knife Children”, in the Sharing Knife universe, is available as an ebook.
All of us live in a fallout zone, called Earth. And you forgive much worse issues, committed by people with many less excuses, on a daily basis.
Except that they are not narrated to you in that way, nor you narrate them to yourself with the same frankness. Of course, it is not easy
Vadim would have known there was medical help for his little sister, but if that same little sister goes into screaming hysterics every time he suggests leaving the zone? If Ma and Boris are also violently opposed? One can see why he’d put off a final confrontation. I chose to believe Jadwiga’s cancer is cured and she goes on to lead a contented life as an animal handler and bug wrangler at the ranch.
Who knows where Ingi will end up. He’s highly intelligent and the Borgoses will see he get as much education as he can handle. I’m guessing it’s perfectly possible to fix his albinoism genetically or at least cosmetically but he might prefer to stay just the way he is and win acceptance as Miles did. I also suspect his unearthly, elfin beauty will have the girls sighing and lusting after him.
Ooh! I’ve got a better idea for Jadwiga’s future career! She loves beauty right? Maybe she can learn designing from Ekaterin.