Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold Page A

ungrateful,” he stammered, his voice rising in pitch, “but, uh, I have a stomach ache,” quite true, “thank you anyway,” there was a lift tube to the next level, the one his hostel was on, “good-bye!”
    He bolted for the tube, leaped in. Reaching upward did nothing to speed his ascent. His last shreds of dignity kept him from flapping his arms. He offered her a strained smile through the crystal sides of the tube as her level fell away in dreamy slowness, distorted, foreshortened, blinked out.
    He nipped out of the tube at his exit and darted behind a sort of free-form sculpture with plants nearby in the mallway. He peered through the leaves. She did not chase him. He unwound eventually, slumping on a bench for a long, numb time. Safe at last.
    He heaved a sigh and got to his feet, and dragged off up the mall. His little cubicle seemed newly attractive. Something very bland to eat from the room service console, a shower, and bed. No more exploratory adventures. Tomorrow he would get right to business. Gather his data, choose the supplier, and ship out on the first available transport...
    A man dressed in some planetary fashion of dull neutrality, plain grey tunic and trousers, approached Ethan on the esplanade, smiling. “Dr. Urquhart?” He grasped Ethan's arm.
    Ethan smiled back in uncertain courtesy. Then stiffened, his mouth opening to cry indignant protest as the hypospray prickled his arm. A heartbeat, and his mouth slackened, the cry unspent. The man guided him gently toward a bubble car in the tubeway.
    Ethan's feet felt vague, like balloons. He hoped the man wouldn't let go, lest he bob helplessly up to the ceiling and hang upside down with things falling out of his pockets on the passersby. The mirrored canopy of the bubble car closed over his unfocused gaze like a nictitating membrane.

Chapter Four
    Ethan came to awareness in a hostel room much larger and more luxurious than his own. His reason flowed with slow clarity, like honey. The rest of him floated in a sweet, languid euphoria. Distantly, under his heart, or down in his throat, something whined and cried and scratched frantically like an animal locked in a cellar, but there was no chance of its getting out. His viscous logic noted indifferently that he was bound tightly to a hard plastic chair, and certain muscles in his back and arms and legs burned painfully. So what.
    Far more intriguing was the man emerging from the bathroom, rubbing his damp reddened face vigorously with a towel. Grey eyes like granite chips, hard-bodied, average height, much like the fellow who'd picked Ethan off the mall and who even now sat on a nearby float chair, watching his prisoner closely.
    Ethan's kidnapper was of so ordinary an appearance Ethan could hardly keep him before his mind even when he was looking directly at him. But Ethan had the oddest insight, like x-ray vision, that his bones contained not marrow but ice stone-hard as that outside the Station. Ethan wondered how he manufactured red blood cells with this peculiar medical condition. Maybe his veins ran liquid nitrogen. They were both utterly charming, and Ethan wanted to kiss them.
    “Is he under, Captain?” asked the man with the towel.
    “Yes, Colonel Millisor,” replied the other. “A full dose.”
    The man with the towel grunted and flung it on the bed, next to the contents of Ethan's pockets, and all his clothes, arrayed there. Ethan noticed his own nakedness for the first time. There were a few Kline Station tokens, a comb, an empty raisin wrapper, his map module, his credit chit for his Betan funds for purchasing the new cultures -- the creature under his heart howled, unheard, at that sight. His captor poked among the spoils. “This stuff scan clean?”
    “Ha. Almost,” said the cold captain. “Take a look at this.” He picked up Ethan's map module, cracked open its back, and fixed an electron viewer over its microscopic circuit board. “We shook him down in the loading zone. See