Kareen Koudelka slid eagerly into the window seat of the orbital shuttle, and pressed her nose to the port. All she could see so far was the transfer station and its starry background. After endless minutes, the usual clanks and yanks signaled undocking, and the shuttle spun away from the station. The thrilling colored arc of Barrayar’s terminator slid past her view as the shuttle began its descent. The western three-quarters of North Continent still glowed in its afternoon. She could see the seas. Home again, after nearly a year. Kareen settled back in her seat, considering her mixed feelings.

She wished Mark were with her, to compare notes. And how did people like Miles, who had been off-world maybe fifty times, handle the cognitive dissonance? He’d had a student year on Beta Colony, too, when even younger than her. She realized she had a lot more questions to ask him about it now, if she could work up the nerve.

So Miles Vorkosigan really was an Imperial Auditor now. It was hard to imagine him as one of those stiff old sticks. Mark had expended considerable nervous wit at the news, before sending off a congratulatory message by tight-beam, but then, Mark had a Thing about Miles. Thing was not accepted psycho-scientific terminology, she’d been informed by his twinkling therapist, but there was scarcely another term with the scope and flexibility to take in the whole complexity of the... Thing.

Her hand drifted down in an inventory, tugging her shirt and smoothing her trousers. The eclectic mix of garb - Komarran-style pants, Barrayaran bolero, a syntha-silk shirt from Escobar - wasn’t going to shock her family. She pulled an ash-blond curl out straight and looked up at it cross-eyed. Her hair was almost grown out again to the length and style she’d had when she’d left. Yes, all the important changes were on the inside, privately; she might reveal them or not, in her own time, as seemed right or safe. Safe? she queried herself in bemusement. She was letting Mark’s paranoias rub off on her. Still . . .

With a reluctant frown, she drew her Betan earrings from her ears and tucked them into her bolero pocket. Mama had hung around with Countess Cordelia enough; she might well be able to decode their Betan meaning. This was the style that said: Yes, I’m a consenting and contraceptive-protected adult, but I am presently in an exclusive relationship, so please do not embarrass us both by asking. Which was rather a lot to encrypt in a few twists of metal, and the Betans had a dozen more styles for other nuances; she’d graduated through a couple of them. The contraceptive implant the earrings advertised could now just ride along in secret, no one’s business but her own.