"Suppose no one brighter than yourself comes along. Will I have these damned things for the rest of my life?"

Chenko shrugged. "Honestly, I have no idea. Your condition is unique in my neurological experience."

Miles sat silent for a time. "All right," he said at last. "Let's try it. And see what happens." He smiled briefly at Gregor's habitual turn of phrase, a private joke.

"Very good, my lord." Chenko made a flurry of notes. "We'll need to see you again, mm, in about a week." He paused, and looked up. "Forgive my curiosity, my lord . . . but why in the world would an Imperial Auditor wish to be reinstated into the Service as a mere ImpSec lieutenant?"

ImpSec captain. I wanted to be reinstated as an ImpSec captain. "I'm only an acting Auditor, I'm afraid. My tenure ends when my case is closed."

"Um, and . . . what is your case?"

"Highly sensitive."

"Oh, quite. Sorry."

Shutting down his comconsole, Miles reflected on Chenko's very good question. He didn't seem to have a very good answer for it.

CHAPTER TWENTY

As the days slipped by without incident, Miles was with reluctance drawn more to Haroche's growing opinion, that the chip failure had been from natural causes. The new ImpSec acting chief was certainly acting less tense about it all. Yet why should Haroche remain twitchy, when there had been no follow-up, no other attack during the time-window of confusion? The transition of power had gone smoothly. If the putative plot had been intended to derail ImpSec's organization, instead of Illyan personally, it had been a notable flop.

Three days before Countess Vorkosigan was due to arrive at the capital, Miles's nerve broke, and he decided to flee to Vorkosigan Surleau. He had neither hope, nor, truly, desire to avoid her altogether on her visit home, he just wasn't quite ready to face her yet. Maybe a couple of days in the quiet of the country would help him marshal his courage. Besides ... it would be good security for Illyan. Out in that thinly populated area, where strangers were immediately noticed, it was easier to spot trouble coming.

Miles's one doubt about the retreat to the country house was whether he could persuade his cook to accompany them. However, Martin proved a potent bribe to draw Ma Kosti out of her familiar city into the doubtful hinterlands. Miles began to consider raising not his cook's pay, but her son's, to entice him and therefore her to stay longer. But maybe soon he wouldn't need a driver.

Illyan was amenable to the proposed excursion, if not wildly enthusiastic.

"This week's probably the very last of the good fall weather down there," Miles pointed out; indeed, the capital was undergoing a succession of colder and rainier days, with a nasty hint of early snow.

"It will be ... interesting, to see the place again," allowed Illyan. "See if it's as I remember."

More of Illyan's quiet self-testing; Illyan didn't talk much about it, perhaps because the results of so many of his little tests were so discouraging. Or perhaps because he lost track of the results too quickly.

A morning's very mild flurry of activity—both Miles and Illyan traveled light by training and habit—resulted in a restful afternoon tea taken on the long front porch of the lake house. It was impossible to stay tense in the warm afternoon, sitting in the shade and gazing down over the green lawn to the sparkling stretch of water cradled in the hills. The autumn trees were almost denuded of their colorful leaves, which opened up the view. And the demands of digestion cured the viewer of any remaining residue of ambition. If this went on, Miles thought, he was going to have to take up an exercise program, or end up looking like his clone-brother Mark, which would rather defeat Mark's purposes. He made a mental note to keep Mark and Ma Kosti separated for as long as possible.

During a lull in the arrival of delectables, Illyan glanced down over the lawn. "Huh. That's about the spot where Captain Negri died, isn't it. The opening shot in the War of Vordarian's Pretendership."

"So I'm told," said Miles. "Were you here then? Did you see it?"

"No, no. I was up in the capital, being taken by surprise by Vordarian's forces, along with almost everyone else." Illyan sighed meditatively. "Or so I construe. The only image I can call up is of one of my subordinates running in with the first word—I can't remember his name—and of going somewhere in a groundcar. And of being sick-scared. I remember that, vividly, how my guts felt. Odd. Why should I remember that, and not . . . all the more important facts?"

"I suppose," said Miles, "because you always did have to remember it. Did your chip record your emotions?"

"Not really. Though it was possible to reconstruct them, when I was recalling."

"Deduced. Not felt."

"More or less."

"That would be strange."

"I got used to it." Illyan smiled ironically, staring down across the sunlit grass. "Almost my first job, when your father promoted me to Chief of ImpSec, was to investigate the murder of my predecessor. Come to think of it, that could be said to have been Negri's first job too. Doubtless made easier by the fact that he helped engineer the murder of his predecessor, but still. Anything done twice on Barrayar is a tradition. I believe I got off lightly. I never thought I'd get out of this job alive, though your father's retirement, last year, was rather inspiring."

"Is that . . . when you started to think about targeting me for your successor?"

"Oh, I had you targeted long before that. Or Gregor and I did."

Miles wasn't sure he wanted to think about that. "So . . . after a week to reflect on it, do you now think your chip failure was natural?"

Illyan shrugged. "Nothing lasts forever. People, devices . . . Well, Admiral Avakli will advise in due course. I wonder what Lady Alys is doing today?"

"Triaging guest lists and choosing stationery, and prodding her new secretaries through calligraphy practice, or so she said." Lady Alys had told them both that, yesterday.

"Ah," said Illyan.

Pastries arrived, and silence fell for a time, broken only by the sound of munching, and little appreciative mumbles. "So," Illyan said at last. "What do a couple of retired officers and gentlemen do on a country weekend?"

"What they please. Sleep in?"

"We've been doing that all week."

"Do you have any interest in horseback riding?"

"Not really. Your grandfather the General insisted on giving me lessons, from time to time when I was down here. I can stay alive on a horse, but I don't recall its being what you would call a sybaritic pleasure. More in the masochistic line."

"Ah. Well, there's hiking. And swimming, though that might be imprudent for me ... I could wear a float-jacket, I suppose."

"The water's a little cold by now, isn't it?"

"Not as bad as in the spring."

"I'll pass, I think. It all sounds a bit youthfully athletic."

"Oh, this was a great place to be a kid." Miles thought it over. "There's fishing, I suppose. I never did much of that. Sergeant Bothari wasn't fond of cleaning fish."

"That sounds sedate enough."

"Tradition is, you take the local beer from the village—there's a woman there who home-brews it, extraordinary stuff—and hang the bottles over the side of the boat to stay cold. When the beer gets too warm to drink, it's too hot to fish."

"What season is that?"

"Never, as far as I could tell."

"Let us by all means observe tradition," said Illyan gravely.

It took half a day to get the power boat out of storage, which put them out on the lake in the hazy warmth of the next afternoon, instead of the foggy chill of the early morning. This suited Miles fine. The basic mechanics of fishing were not something Miles had forgotten, and he never had gone in for the refinements. The need for sticking hooks into wriggling unhappy live things had been technologically relieved by the invention of little protein cubes which, the package assured him, were guaranteed to attract fish in droves, or shoals, or whatever.

He and Illyan arranged their beer in a net bag over the side of the boat, and their awning overhead, and settled down to enjoy the peace and the view. The ImpSec guard on-shift, one of three assigned by HQ to trail Illyan around down here, got to sit on shore with a little pontoon-fitted lightflyer and watch from a distance, out of mind if not out of sight.

The two lines ploinked over the side nearly simultaneously, and the bait and sinkers disappeared into the water, gliding smoothly down. At this distance from the shore, the green view of the rocky bottom was replaced by a depth of black shadow. Miles and Illyan settled back in their padded chairs, and opened their first beers. The brew was smooth and nearly as dark as the lake waters, and doubtless swimming with vitamins. It slid down Miles's throat with a pleasantly bitter fizz, and its earthy aroma filled his nose.

"This would be more like a stakeout," Illyan remarked after a while, "if the fish were armed and could fire back. If fish fished for men, what kind of bait would they use?"

Miles pictured a line tossed onto the shore, tipped with a spiced peach tart. " 'Let's go manning?' I dunno. What kind of bait did you used to use?"

"Ah, the motivations of men. Money, power, revenge, sex . . . they were almost never actually that simple. The screwiest case that I can recall . . . dear God, why can I remember this, when I can't . . . oh, well. In the event, then-Prime Minister Vortala was engaged in heavy negotiations with the Polians over the wormhole access treaty, and was trying anything he could think of to sweeten the deal. The Polian ambassador indicated to Vortala that what he'd really always secretly wanted most in his life was an elephant. To this day I don't know if he really wanted an elephant, or if it was just the most absurd and impossible thing to ask for he could think of on the spur of the moment. So anyway, the word came down. ... It was really the Head of Galactic Affair's department, but I gave the assignment to my ImpSec agent personally, just so I could watch. I still can see this glazed look that came over his face, as he choked, 'And . . . and how big does this elephant have to be, Sir?' There aren't many moments like that in my job. I cherish 'em. It was before your time, or you know who would have been the first man I'd have thought of."

"Oh, thanks. So ... did your agent locate an elephant?"

"He was ImpSec to the core; of course he did. A small one. I assigned myself to the detail the day Vortala delivered it to the Polian embassy, too. In that fruity, deadpan voice of his, 'A gift from my Imperial master, Gregor Vorbarra . . .' Gregor must have been about ten, then, and likely would have preferred to keep the beast himself. Your father prudently didn't let him know he'd ever given away an elephant."

"And did Vortala get his treaty?"

"Of course. I think the ambassador really did want an elephant, because after he got over being stunned and flummoxed, he was clearly delighted. They kept it in back of the embassy compound for about a year, and he used to bathe and groom it himself, till he took it home with him. It expanded my world view, ever after. Money, power, sex . . . and elephants."

Miles snorted. He wondered about his own motivations, which had driven him so hard, so long, so far. To death, and beyond. He was unexcited by money, he supposed, because he had never felt its lack, except in the astronomical quantities necessary to repair battle cruisers; Mark, by contrast, was in his own quiet way downright greedy. Power? Miles had no hankering for the Imperium, or anything like it. But it itched like fire when others had power over him. That wasn't lust for power; that was fear. Fear of what? Fear of being made victim of their incompetence? Fear of being destroyed for a mutant, if he could not constantly prove his superiority? There was a bit of that, underneath. Well . . . quite a lot, really. His own grandfather had tried to kill him for his deformities, he'd been told; and there had been a few other ugly little incidents during his childhood, usually, though not always, cut short by the timely intervention of Sergeant Bothari. But that was hardly a hidden motivation, not the un-self-aware kind that got you into deep trouble and you didn't know why.

He swallowed another chill and smoky slug of beer. Identity. That's my elephant. The thought came with certainty, without the question mark on the end this time. Not fame, exactly, though recognition was some kind of important cement for it. But what you were was what you did. And I did more, oh yes. If a hunger for identity were translated into, say, a hunger for food, he'd be a more fantastic glutton than Mark had ever dreamed of being. Is it irrational, to want to be so much, to want so hard it hurts? And how much, then, was enough?

Illyan too took another swig of home-brew, and wriggled the carbon-fiber high-strength fishing rod, which like Miles s had come from the boathouses stores. "You sure there are fish down there?"

"Oh, yes. Have been for centuries. You can lie on the dock and watch the little ones, nosing around the rocks, or swim with them. This lake was actually first terra-formed long before the end of the Time of Isolation, in the old crude way, which was by dumping every kind of organic waste they could lay hands on into it, followed by stolen weeds and minnows, and hoping an earth-life-form-supporting ecosystem would result. There was a lot of argument over it, back about the time of the first Counts, since the local farmers also wanted the assorted shit for their fields. Since the Count-my-Grandfather's day there's been a string of fellows who work out of the Count's Office in Hassadar, in charge of scientifically terraforming and stocking the District's waters, so it's back to being safe to drink and the fish are genetically improved. Lake trout, bass, freshwater salmon . . . there's some good stuff down there."

Illyan leaned over and stared a little doubtfully down into the clear water. "Really." He wound up his line, and examined his hook. His bait-cube was gone.

"Did I put bait on this thing?"

"Yes. I saw you. Fell off, likely."

"Light-fingered fish." But Illyan resisted any impulse to make a more extended mutant-fish joke. He rebaited the hook more firmly and ploinked it into the water again. They opened another beer each. Miles perched on the edge of the boat, and cooled his bare feet in the water for a time.

"This is very inefficient," Illyan noted, after adjusting the awning to reposition the creeping shade.

"I've wondered about that myself. I don't think it was designed to be efficient. I think it was created to give the appearance of doing something, while actually doing nothing. To repel chore-bearing wives, perhaps."

"I've been doing nothing for a week." Illyan hesitated. "It hasn't seemed to help."

"Not true. You're doing better at One-Up. I've been tracking you."

"I thought you and Lady Alys had colluded to let me win, last time."

"Nope."

"Ah." Illyan looked slightly cheered, but only for a moment. "The ability to play One-Up without losing all the time is not enough to make me fit to return to ImpSec, I'm afraid."

"Give yourself time. You've scarcely begun rehabilitation." Miles's feet were getting wrinkled; he returned to his padded seat.

Illyan stared at the farther shore, all green and brown in the westering sun. "No . . . there is an edge to a performance. When you've balanced on that edge, played at the very top of your form . . . you can't go back to anything less. To invert your mothers old saying, anything that can't be done well is not worth doing. And . . . running ImpSec is about as far from play as anything I know. There are too many other peoples' lives on the line, every day."

"Mm," said Miles, covering his lack of useful comment in another swig of beer.

"I've had my twice-twenty-years in the Emperor's service," Illyan said. "Started when I was eighteen, in officer's training for old Ezar . . . not the Imperial Service Academy; you needed more points and money and syllables in front of your name to get in back then. I went to one of the regional schools. I never thought to make it to a three-times-twenty-years man. I knew I'd stop sometime before that, I just didn't know when. I've been serving Gregor since he was five years old. He's full-adult now, God knows."

"That's your achievement, surely," said Miles.

Illyan nodded. "Not mine alone. But I can't ... be who I am—what I was—and not know that."

"I never made it to the end of my first twenty years," said Miles glumly. "Not even close."

Illyan cleared his throat, and studied his line. "Was that a nibble, there?"

"No, I don't think so. The rod would dip more. Just the current, playing with the weight of the line."

"I wouldn't have picked now to quit, mind you," said Illyan. "I would have liked to have seen Gregor through his wedding."

"And the next crisis after that," Miles twitted him. "And the next crisis after that, and ..."

Illyan grunted resigned agreement. "So . . . maybe this isn't so bad." He added after a time, "Do you suppose all the fish in your lake have been stolen?"

"They'd have to catch 'em first."

"Ah. Good point." Illyan paused to fish up the net bag, and open another beer for himself, and hand one to Miles. He was halfway through the bottle when he said, "I ... know how much the Dendarii meant to you. I'm . . . pleased you survived."

He did not say I'm sorry, Miles noted. Miles s disaster had been a self-inflicted wound. "Death, where is thy sting?" He jiggled his rod. "Hook, where is thy fish ... ? No. Suicide wasn't an option for me anymore, I found. Not like good old adolescent angst. I'm no longer of the secret opinion that death will somehow overlook me if I don't do something personally about it. And given life ... it seems stupid not to make the most of what I do have. Not to mention deucedly ungrateful."

"D'you think . . . you and Quinn . . . how to put this delicately. D'you think you will be able to persuade Captain Quinn to take an interest in Lord Vorkosigan?"

Ah. Illyan was trying to apologize for screwing up Miles s love-life, that was it. Miles drank more beer, and thought it over seriously. "I never was able to before. I want to try. ... I have to try one more time with her. Again." When? How? Where? It hurt, to think of Quinn. It hurt still, to let himself think of the Dendarii at all. Therefore, he would not. Much. More beer. "As for the rest of it. . ."—he sipped, and smiled bitterly—"there is some convincing evidence that I was slowing down too much to play a moving target much longer. Really, my favorite missions lately scarcely engaged any military force."

"You were getting frigging clever, is all," opined Illyan, gazing at Miles's distorted form through the colored glass of his bottle. "Though even a war of maneuver requires a credible force to maneuver with."

"I liked the winning," Miles said softly. "That, I really liked."

Illyan chucked his bottle into the box with the rest of the empties, and leaned over to squint down into the lake water. He sighed, and got up and adjusted the awning again, and pulled up the string bag once more, in lieu of fish.

Miles held up his half-empty bottle, to repel the offered refill, and settled back, and watched his still white line, descending down and down into secret darkness. "I always got away with it somehow. Any way I could. On the table or under it, I won. This seizure thing . . . seems like the first enemy I couldn't outsmart."

Illyan s brows rose quizzically. "Some of the best fortresses were taken at the last by betrayal from within, they say."

"I was beaten." Miles blew thoughtfully across the top of his bottle, making it hum. "Yet I survived. Didn't expect that. I feel . . . very unbalanced about that. I had to win, always, or die. So ... what else was I wrong about? . . . I'll take that other beer, now, thanks."

Illyan popped the cap for him, and handed it over. The lake water was getting nicely icy now, definitely too late in the year for swimming. Or drowning.

"Maybe," said Illyan after a very long while, "generations of fishermen have culled this population of all fish stupid enough to bite hooks."

"'S possible," Miles allowed. His guest was getting bored, he feared. As a proper host, he ought to do something about that.

"I don't think there are any fish down there. It's a scam, Vorkosigan."

"Naw. I've seen 'em. If I had a stunner, I could prove it to you."

"You walking around these days without a stunner, boy? Not bright."

"Hey, I'm an Imperial Auditor now. I get hulking goons to carry my stunners for me, just like the big boys."

"Anyway, you couldn't stun anything through all those meters of water," said Illyan firmly.

"Well, not a stunner. A stunner power pack."

"Ah!" Illyan looked immediately enlightened, then more doubtful. "You can bomb fish, can you? I didn't realize that."

"Oh, it's an old Dendarii hill-folk trick. They didn't have time to sit on their asses dangling strings into the water; that's a Vor perversion. They were hungry, and wanted their dinners. Also, the lake's lords considered it poaching in their preserve, so there was incentive to get in and out quickly, before the Count's Armsmen came riding along."

After about another minute, Illyan mentioned, "I happen to have a stunner on me."

Dear God, we let you get out armed? "Oh?"

Illyan put down his beer, and pulled the weapon from his pocket. "Here. I offer it as sacrifice. I have to see this trick."

"Ah. Well . . ." Miles put down his own beer, handed his rod to Illyan, and looked over the stunner. Regulation issue, fully charged. He pulled out the power pack and proceeded to bugger the cartridge, in the best approved ImpSec covert ops "How to Turn Your Stunner into a Hand Grenade" style. He took another swig of beer, counted a moment, and flipped the power cartridge overboard.

"You'd better hope that sinks," noted Illyan.

"It will. See." The metallic gleam vanished into the darkness.

"How many seconds?" asked Illyan.

"You never quite know, of course. That's one of the things that always made that maneuver so damned tricky."

A half a minute later, the darkness was lit by a faint radiant flash. A few moments after that, a roiling boil of water surfaced beside the boat. The noise it made could much better be described as a belch than a boom. The boat rocked.

Onshore, the ImpSec guard stood up abruptly, and studied them through his power-binocs. Miles gave him a cheery, beery, reassuring wave; slowly, he sat back down.

"Well?" said Illyan, peering down into the water.

"Just wait."

About two minutes later, a pale gleaming shape shimmered up from below. And then another. And another. Two more, silvery and sleek, popped to the surface.

"Goodness," said Illyan, sounding impressed. "Fish." He upended his beer bottle respectfully in a toast to Miles.

Fish and then some. The smallest was half a meter long, the largest nearly two-thirds of a meter; salmon and lake trout, including one that must have been lurking down there since Miles's grandfathers day. Their eyes were glassy and reproachful, as Miles leaned precariously overboard and tried to collect them with the net. They were cool and slippery, and Miles almost joined them in their watery grave before he managed to snag them all. Illyan prudently hung on to one of his ankles as Miles swung and splashed. Their prey made an impressive row, laid out on the boat deck, scales iridescent in the late afternoon light.

"We have fished," Illyan announced, staring at the mass, which almost equaled Miles's own. "Can we go in now?"

"You got another stunner pack?"

"No."

"Any beer left?"

"That was the last."

"Then we might as well."

Illyan grinned malignantly. "I can hardly wait," he murmured, "till somebody asks me what we used for bait."

Miles managed to dock the boat without crashing it, despite a desperate need to pee and up-and-down sensations that had nothing to do with the waves in the water. He listed upslope toward the house lugging the two smaller fish on a line strung through their gills, and let Illyan struggle with the larger three.

"Do we have to eat all these?" Illyan wheezed in his wake.

"Maybe one. The rest can be cleaned and frozen."

"By whom? Will Ma Kosti mind? I really don't think you want to offend your cook, Miles."

"By no means." Miles stopped, and nodded upward. "What d'you think minions are for, anyway?"

Martin, attracted by the return of the boat—and probably about to angle for permission to take it out himself—was clumping down the path toward them.

"Ah, Martin," Miles caroled, in a tone of voice that would have made the more experienced Ivan turn and run. "Just the man I want to see. Take these to your mother"—he unloaded his burden into the appalled young man's arms—"and do what she tells you to do with 'em. Here, Simon."

Smiling blandly, Illyan handed over his own dead fishes. "Thank you, Martin."

They left Martin, ruthlessly not even looking back at his plaintive, "My lord . . . ?" and lurched on up toward the cool stone house. The greatest ambition in Miles's world right now was for a lavatory, a shower, and a nap, in that order. It would be enough.

Miles and Illyan settled down at dusk to a fish dinner in the lake house's dining room. Ma Kosti had prepared the smallest lake trout, which was enough to feed the whole household, with a sauce that would have made baked cardboard delectable, and rendered the fresh fish a feast for minor gods.

Illyan was clearly amused at this proof of their prowess as primitive providers. "Did you do this often, down here? Feed your whole family?"

"Once in a great while. Then I figured out my Betan mother, who never eats anything but vat-protein if she can help it, was munching it down bravely and lying through her teeth about what a good boy I was, and I stopped, um, challenging her culinary preferences."

"I can just picture her." Illyan grinned.

"D'you want to go out again tomorrow?"

"Let's ... at least wait until the leftovers are gone."

"The barn cats may help us out there. There are about four of them hanging around the kitchen door right now, trying to soften up my cook. When last seen, they were succeeding."

Miles made his glass of wine last, taking tiny sips. A great deal of water, the nap, and some medication had relieved his incipient beer-and-sun hangover. It was a strange and unfamiliar sensation, to be truly relaxed. Not going anywhere, on overdrive or at any other speed. Enjoying the present, the Now that partakes of eternity.

Martin trundled in, not bearing more food; Miles glanced up.

"My lord? Comconsole for you."

Whoever it is, tell them I'll call back tomorrow. Or next week. No, it might be the Countess, landing early or calling from orbit. He was ready to face her now, he thought. "Who is it?"

"Says he's Admiral Avakli."

"Oh." Miles put down his fork, and rose at once. "I'll take it, thank you, Martin."

In the private comconsole chamber off the back corridor of the house, Avakli's lean face waited above the vid plate, a disembodied head. Miles slid into his seat and adjusted the vid pickup. "Yes, Admiral?"

"My Lord Auditor." Avakli nodded. "My team is ready to make our report. We can present it simultaneously to you and General Haroche, as you requested."

"Good. When?"

Avakli hesitated. "I would recommend, as soon as possible."

Miles's belly chilled. "Why?"

"Do you wish to discuss this over a comconsole?"

"No." Miles licked lips gone dry. "I ... understand. It will take me about two hours to get back to Vorbarr Sultana." And for this conference, he'd better allow time to dress. "We could meet, say, at 2600 hours. Unless you would prefer first thing tomorrow morning."

"Your choice, my Lord Auditor."

Avakli wasn't objecting to a midnight meeting. A mild verdict of natural causes did not require such haste. Miles would get no sleep anyway, anticipating this. "Tonight, then."

"Very good, my lord." Avakli's parting nod was approving.

Miles shut down the comconsole, and blew out his breath. Life had just speeded up again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

It was late-night-quiet in the ImpSec HQ building; the clinic's conference chamber seemed almost like a tomb. The black vid projection table was ringed by five station chairs. Ah, yet another medical briefing. Miles was learning, these days, altogether more than he'd ever wanted to know about the insides of people's heads, including his own.

"We seem to be a seat short," Miles said to Admiral Avakli, nodding toward the table. "Unless you are proposing to have General Haroche stand?"

"I'll fetch another, my Lord Auditor," Avakli murmured back. "We weren't expecting . . ." His eyes shifted to Illyan, seating himself to the left of the place reserved for Miles, next to Colonel Ruibal and across from Dr. Weddell.

Miles had been uncertain about the wisdom of dragging Illyan along for this, but Avakli's obvious unease filled him with a cheery ruthlessness. "It will save my having to repeat it all to him later," Miles murmured back. "And offhand, I can't think of a man on the planet with a greater right to know."

"I can't argue with that, my lord."

You'd better not.

Avakli went out after the extra chair.

Miles was kitted out in his full brown-and-silver House uniform, though he'd left the military ornaments in his bureau drawer this trip. He didn't want the clutter to distract the eye from his Auditors chain, formally draped across his chest. Illyan had chosen soft civilian clothing: an open-throated shirt, loose trousers and jacket, giving himself an off-duty and convalescent air. As a courtesy to his struggling replacement Haroche? Except Illyan had worn civvies on-duty so often that the message, if any, was a little ambiguous.

Avakli and Haroche arrived back in the briefing room together. Haroche s lips moved in startlement as he saw Illyan; Illyan turned his head and nodded greetings. "Hello, Lucas."

Haroche's deep voice softened. "Hello, sir. It's good to see you on your feet again." Though he turned aside and whispered to Miles, "Is he going to be all right? Is he up to this?"

"Oh, yes." Miles smiled, concealing his own clueless state on that score. At a brief negating hand-movement from Haroche, the company skipped the exchange of military salutes tonight; with Illyan present, there was perhaps some lingering confusion as to who ought to be saluting whom. There was a rustle and creak, as they seated themselves, serious and attentive. Admiral Avakli remained standing at the vid display podium.

"My Lord Auditor," began Avakli. "General Haroche, gentlemen. Chief Illyan." He gave Illyan a special, if slightly uncertain, nod. "I ... don't expect it will come as any real surprise to you that we have found the damage to Chief Illyan's eidetic neural implant to have been an artificially created event."

Haroche vented a long sigh, and nodded. "I was afraid of that. I had hoped it would be something simpler."

Miles had hoped such hopes himself, on many occasions; he couldn't help but sympathize. He, too, had usually been disappointed.

"Simple," said Avakli, "is the last word I'd use to describe it."

"We're dealing with a case of deliberate sabotage, then," said Haroche.

Avakli sucked on his lower lip. "That, sir, is your department. I think I prefer to stand by my original wording, for the moment. An artificially created event. To explain this I will now turn you over to Dr. Weddell, who was"—a slight wrinkle passed over Avakli's high brow—"instrumental in assembling the chain of causality. Dr. Weddell, if you please."

By which wrinkle Miles deduced Weddell/Canaba was carrying on as usual, brilliantly and obnoxiously. If his brilliance ever failed, he'd doubtless be quite surprised at what a load of retribution his obnoxiousness had bought him. But Avakli was too honest a scientist to claim another's achievement as his own. Weddell took the podium, his patrician features weary, tense, and a little smug.

"If you would like to look at the culprit—the immediate culprit, that is—here is its portrait." Weddell fiddled with the holovid control; the plate projected a bright green, topologically complex blob, which turned slowly in air. "The color is a computer enhancement, of course—I took a little artistic license there—and the magnification several million times. That, gentlemen, is a bioengineered apoptotic prokaryote. Or so I have reconstructed it."

"A what?" said Miles. "Simplify, please."

Weddell flashed a pained smile, doubtless searching his mind for words of one syllable. Miles regretted his last four beers. "A little bug that eats things," Weddell essayed, by way of further translation.

"Not that simplified," said Miles dryly. The Barrayarans around the table, knowing the power of an Imperial Auditor, cringed at his tone; immigrant Weddell did not. Never argue with a pedant over nomenclature. It wastes your time and annoys the pedant. Miles let it go. "A prokaryote. So. Reconstructed?"

"I'll get to that in a moment, my Lord Auditor. It barely qualifies as a life-form, being smaller and simpler than the smallest bacterium, but it does perform two life-functions. In a manner of speaking it 'eats.' Specifically, it manufactures a proteolytic enzyme that breaks down the protein matrix found in the eidetic chip and several related galactic neuroenhancement applications. It destroys that and nothing else. And, after absorbing the resulting nutrients, it reproduces, by simple binary fission. A population of these prokaryotes, presented with a field, as it were, of chip proteins upon which to graze, will double and redouble in the usual geometric progression—up to a point. After a number of doublings, the prokaryote is programmed to self-destruct. By the time we obtained the chip for analysis, almost all of them had done so, leaving me a pretty jigsaw puzzle of fragments to play with. Another week, and there would have been nothing left to analyze."

Haroche winced.

"So," said Miles, "was this engineered for Illyan specifically? Or is it a commercial product, or what?"

"Your first question I cannot answer. But I could read much of its product history off its molecular structure. First of all, whoever made this did not begin from scratch. This is a modification of an existing, patented apoptotic organism originally designed to destroy neural plaque. The galactic patent code for that perfectly legitimate medical application was still readable on some of the molecular fragments. The modified prokaryote, however, bore no identifications of laboratories of origin, licensing, or patent markings. The original patent is about ten years old, by the way, which gives you the first point in your time-window problem."

"That was going to be my next question," said Miles. "I hope we can narrow things down more than that."

"Of course. But you see how much we learn already, just from the codes and their absences. The original medical prokaryote was pirated for the new purpose, and the people who modified it were obviously not concerned with legitimizing it for mass trade. It has all the signs of being a one-off job for a one-time customer."

"Illegal Jacksonian work, by chance?" asked Miles. You would know.

"The kind of shortcuts taken in its design strongly suggest it. I'm not personally familiar with it, unfortunately."

Not something from Bharaputra Labs, Weddell/Canaba's former employer, then. That would have been a happy chance. But there were a dozen other Jacksonian houses who might have taken on small work like this. For a fee.

"So how much did this cost to make? Or rather, to have made?"

"Mm . . ." Weddell stared thoughtfully into space. "Actual lab costs, something under fifty thousand Betan dollars. Who knows what the markup might have been. Any special demand for secrecy on the part of its purchasers would have driven the cost up, oh, about fivefold. Or more, depending on what the market would bear."

Not the work of a lone nut, then, unless he were a fabulously rich lone nut. An organization, perhaps. Komarran terrorists sprang to mind—they always did, unfortunately.

"Could this be Cetagandan work?" asked General Haroche.

"Oh, no, I don't think so," said Weddell. "It's not in their style at all. Genetically speaking. Cetagandan work is distinguished by its quality, originality, and, how shall I put it, elegance. This is, by comparison, slapdash. Effective, mind you, but slapdash. On a molecular level."

Illyan's lips twisted, but he said nothing.

"The self-destruct sequencing," Weddell went on, "could have been a safety-check, simply left over from the original design. Or ... it could have been deliberately intended to destroy the evidence."

"Can you tell which?"

"There were some slight modifications in it, compared to the original medical prokaryote ... it was deliberately left in the design, anyway. I can give you facts, my lord; I cannot give you the intentions of unknown persons."

That's my job, right. "So . . . when was it administered to Illyan? And how?"

"Administered is an assumptive term, though under the circumstances probably allowable. The first gross symptoms of breakdown were when, again?"

"Four weeks ago," said Haroche. "At the all-departments briefing."

"About a week before that, actually," said Miles. "According to my informant."

Haroche gave him a sharp look. "Really."

Illyan stirred, as if about to add something, but then kept his peace.

"Hm. The prokaryote does not reproduce very rapidly. Much depends on how large a dose was initially introduced."

"Yes, and how was it done?" Miles put in. "For that matter, how is this stuff stored and transported? What's its shelf life? Does it require any special conditions?"

"It's stored dry, in an encapsulated form, at room temperature, though it would not be harmed by mild freezing. Shelf life—heavens. Years. Though it's obviously less than a decade old. It is activated by wetting, presumably upon administration, which requires moist contact. Through mucous membranes—it could have been inhaled as a dust—injected as a solution, or introduced as a contaminant into a scratch. Broken skin and moisture would do it. It wouldn't have to be a large scratch."

"Swallowed?"

"Most of the prokaryotes would be destroyed by stomach acids. It could be done, but would require a larger initial dose, to be certain enough entered the bloodstream to be carried to the chip."

"So . . . when? What's the maximum possible time-window for exposure? Can't you use its reproductive rate to calculate when it was administered?"

"Only crudely. That's one of the several variables, I'm afraid, my lord. Administration must have been between ten weeks and one week before the appearance of the first symptoms."

Miles turned to Illyan. "Can you remember anything like that?"

Illyan shook his head helplessly.

Haroche said, "Is there any way . . . could it ... is it possible the exposure might have been accidental?"

Weddell screwed up his mouth. "Possible? Who can say? Likely? That's the question." And he looked as if he was glad he didn't have to answer it.

"Have there been"—Miles turned to Haroche—"any reports of anyone else on Barrayar who possesses related chip technologies undergoing a mysterious breakdown?" For that matter, did anyone else on Barrayar possess a related chip?

"Not that I know of," said Haroche.

"I would like ImpSec to double-check that, please."

"Yes, my lord." Haroche made a note.

"The jump-pilots' neural implants use an altogether different system," put in Avakli. "Thank God." He blinked, presumably at an inner vision of the chaos that would result from some sort of pilot-plague.

"This prokaryote is not communicable by ordinary means," Weddell assured them, rather offhandedly, Miles thought.

"We must assume a worst-case scenario, I think," said Miles.

"Indeed," sighed Haroche.

"It looks like sabotage to me," Miles went on. "Pinpoint deliberate, knowledgeable, and subtle." And cruel, lord, something cruel. "We now know what, and how. And some of when. But who, and why?" Ah, the motivations of men again. I have touched the elephant, and it is very like a . . . what were the six answers?—rope, tree, wall, snake, spear, fan. . . . "We have the method. The motive remains obscure. You have too many enemies, Simon, and none of them are personal. I don't think. You weren't . . . sleeping with anyone's wife or daughter or anything like that, that we don't know about, were you?"

Illyan's mouth twisted in bleak amusement. "Alas, no, Miles."

"So ... it had to be someone who was mad at ImpSec generally. Political motivations? Damn, that still leaves too wide a field. Though they did have money to burn, and, um, patience—how long would you estimate it took to develop that microbeastie, Dr. Weddell?"

"Laboratory time, oh, a couple of months. Unless they paid for a rush job. A month at least."

"Plus travel time . . . this plot has to have started at least six months ago, I'd think."

Haroche cleared his throat. "It appears probable that it came from off Barrayar. I'd like to know what laboratory it came from, and when. With your permission, my Lord Auditor, I'll immediately alert Galactic Affairs to put their agents onto the Jacksonian end of this tangle. With an eye to other possible sources for bio-work on this order—Escobar, for example. Jackson's Whole does not possess a complete monopoly on shady deals, after all."

"Yes, please, General Haroche," said Miles. It was exactly the sort of tedious legwork ImpSec could do much better than Miles. A real Imperial Auditor normally possessed a staff of his own to whom to delegate such jobs. He'd have to check the reports personally, to be sure. Ah, he was going be stuck down in the bowels of ImpSec HQ after all. He must be fated.

"And," added Haroche, "I'll review of all of Chief Illyan's movements for the last, say, sixteen weeks to five weeks ago."

"I was mostly here at HQ," said Illyan. "Two trips out of the city ... I think ... I know I never left Barrayar in that time."

"There was Gregor's State dinner," Miles pointed out. "And a few other events you personally supervised."

"Yes." Haroche made another note. "We'll need a list of every galactic visitor Chief Illyan could have physically encountered at those functions. The list will be large, but finite."

"Is there anything else you can do to narrow the time-window?" Miles asked Avakli and Weddell.

Weddell spread his hands; Avakli shook his head and said, "Not with our current data, my lord."

"Is there anything else at all you can add?" asked General Haroche.

Head shakes all around. "Not without moving into realms of speculation," said Avakli.

"It's such an odd attack," said Miles. "Targeting Illyan's function, yet not his life."

"I'm not sure you can rule out murderous intent, my lord," put in Dr. Ruibal. "If the chip had not been removed, he might well have died eventually of exhaustion. Or met some accident during his periods of confusion."

Haroche sucked in his breath. Quite, Miles thought. And if someone was targeting ImpSec chiefs for assassination, Haroche could well be next on the list.

Haroche sat up straight. "Gentlemen, you have all done an outstanding job. My personal commendation will be added to all your secret files. As soon as you have your final report ready to turn in, you may return to your regular duties."

"Tomorrow, most probably," said Avakli.

"Can I go home tonight?" put in Weddell. "My poor laboratory has been in the hands of my assistants for a week. I shudder to think of what awaits me upon my return."

Avakli glanced at Miles, tossing this one his way—You foisted him on me, you deal with him.

"I don't see why not," said Miles. "I do want a duplicate copy of the report."

"Certainly, my Lord Auditor," said Admiral Avakli.

"And anything else your office generates, General Haroche."

"Of course." Haroche started to say more, then opened his hand to Miles. "My Lord Auditor? You called this meeting."

Miles smiled, and rose. "Gentlemen, dismissed. And thank you all."

In the corridor outside, Illyan paused with Haroche, and Miles waited for him.

"Well, sir," Haroche sighed, "you've bequeathed me an ugly puzzle, I must say."

Illyan grinned. "Welcome to the hot seat. I was telling Miles . . . yesterday?—that my first job as chief of ImpSec was to investigate the assassination of my predecessor. The triumph of tradition."

You were telling me that this afternoon, Simon.

"You weren't murdered, at least," said Haroche.

"Ah." Illyan's smile thinned. "I ... forgot." He glanced at Haroche, and his voice fell to a murmur that Haroche had to bend his head to hear. "Get the bastards for me, will you, Lucas?"

"I'll do my best, sir. We all will." Gravely, and despite Illyan's civilian garb, Haroche saluted him as they turned to leave.

Miles did not fall asleep easily that night, or rather morning, despite replacing his expected insomnia of anticipation with . . . what? Information-indigestion, he supposed.

He turned in his bedsheets, and stared into a darkness considerably less opaque than the problem that had just landed in his lap. When he had leapt at the chance of playing Imperial Auditor, he'd expected it to be exactly that, a charade, acted out just long enough to spring Simon Illyan from ImpSec's clumsy medical clutches. Not that difficult a task, really, in retrospect. But now . . . now he faced a problem that would give a real Auditor, with all his staff and support, galloping insomnia.

The hollowness of his office, issued to him merely on Gregor's whim, echoed in his head. He missed his Dendarii backup. If he'd thought for a minute this appointment was going to go real, even temporarily, he'd have started building a staff of suitable experts, raided from, though independent of, all other Barrayaran organizations. He knew a number of good fellows from ImpSec, for instance, close to their twenty-year anniversaries, who might be willing to retire and lend their training to his use. Study the other Auditors' staffs, and model his from theirs. Pin Lord Auditor Vorhovis to the nearest wall, and not let him go until he'd disgorged everything he knew about doing his job. A new apprenticeship. I'm doing it backwards again, dammit. A familiar unfamiliarity. You'd think I'd learn.

So. What should he do next, or rather, first? His one piece of physical evidence, the bioengineered prokaryote, appeared to lead back to Jackson's Whole, if he could trust Weddell's technical expertise, which he did. Should he go haring off to Jackson's Whole, to supervise the search? The thought made him shudder.

That sort of fieldwork was just the sort of thing to delegate to a team of field agents, of the kind he'd formerly been himself. Speaking of expertise. So the obvious thing to do was delegate it, except... if ImpSec itself was tainted with suspicion . . .

If the production of the prokaryote had been a purely commercial enterprise, there was no motivation to be found on Jackson's Whole. Well, maybe revenge. "Admiral Naismith" had seriously annoyed several Jacksonian Great Houses there on his last visit: if they'd finally figured out who he was working for . . . Yet House Fell, which could command the resources for this nasty piece of sabotage, had not been seriously discommoded by him; House Bharaputra, which had been more upset, was perhaps not crazy enough to start a private war with Barrayar—there was no obvious profit in it, after all; House Ryoval, which both had the resources and was crazy enough, was dismembered, Baron Ryoval dead.

No. The weapon might have come from Jackson's Whole, but the crime had been committed here. Intuition, boy? So what was he supposed to do, lie in wait trying to ambush his own subconscious? He'd go quietly mad.

Maybe he needed to give his intuition demon more to chew on. Stir up ImpSec? Stir up your own assassination, maybe? At least it would be entertaining, and less frustrating than this blankness.

Do you really think it's an inside job? The intuition demon, as usual, was too coy to give him a straight answer. But there was this; anyone could go scope out Jackson's Whole. Only an Imperial Auditor could get inside ImpSec HQ. Solving this puzzle was not going to be a one-man job, but it was all too apparent what his part in it must be.

ImpSec it is, then.

The crack of noon found Miles up, fully uniformed in his House brown-and-silver and his Auditor's chain. He was sipping the last of his coffee, sitting on the padded bench in the black-and-white paved front vestibule and waiting for Martin to bring the Counts groundcar around, when a commotion arose out in the porte cochere too great to be Martin—at least, Miles hadn't heard a crunch, as of a groundcar hitting a pillar. But there were several groundcars, and canopies opening, and voices, and scuffling footsteps. He set down his coffee and stood up to answer the door, but it swung open on its own. Oh. Of course. Countess Vorkosigan and her retinue had evidently made orbit this morning, while he still slept.

Two brown-and-silver uniformed Armsmen preceded her into the vestibule, bowing her inside before turning to salute Miles. She sailed through the mob of guards, secretaries, maids, servitors, drivers, porters, dependents, and more guards like a fine yacht cutting through choppy water, and they parted around her like a bow wave, spinning aside in little eddies to their various appointed directions. She was a tall, red-haired woman of quiet presence, dressed in something cream-colored and sweeping, enhancing the nautical effect. Well preserved did not do her idiosyncratic beauty justice; she was, after all, Betan, and in her mid-sixties had barely reached middle-age by that planet's standards. A secretary, tugging at her elbow, was waved aside as Countess Vorkosigan saw her son.

"Miles, love!"

He abandoned his coffee cup and bowed over her hand, trying to short-circuit a maternal embrace. She took the hint, saying only, "My, how formal for this hour of the morning."

"I'm on my way to work," Miles explained. "More or less."

"You'll enlarge upon that, of course. ..." She took him by the arm, and towed him out of the traffic pattern of arriving luggage that reminded Miles of a column of army ants. They ducked into the next room, the antechamber to the great library; her minions carried on competently without her.

She stood him at arm's length, and looked him over. "How are you?" Her smile did not quite conceal an anxious edge.

Coming from her, that was a question of potentially dangerous depth; he floated a "Fine, thanks."

"Really?" she asked quietly.

"Really."

"You actually look . . . better than I'd expected. Not so zombie-like as in some of your, ahem, exceedingly brief communiques."

"I ... had a few bad days, right after, you know. I got over it."

"Your father and I almost came home. Several times."

"I'm glad you didn't. Not that I'm not glad to see you now," he added hastily.

"Hm. I thought that might be how the wind lay."

"I might still have had my head up my ass," he admitted ruefully, "but events intervened. You've heard about Simon."

"Yes, but not all about Simon. Though Alys has been more helpful than either you or Gregor. How is he?"

"He's fine. He's here. Sleeping in. We had a late night last night. I think . . . I'd better let him tell you about it. As much as he can." He added cautiously, "He's physically recovered, but he's a little . . . well, he's a lot vaguer than the Simon you're used to, I'm afraid. You'll figure it out pretty quickly when you talk to him."

"I see." She frowned faintly. "As soon as possible. I have a brunch meeting with Alys in an hour. I'm extremely anxious to meet Laisa."

"So did you succeed in soothing her parents, where Lady Alys says she could not?"

"Oh, Alys did a good job of laying the groundwork. Laisa's parents' feelings are naturally mixed, of course. As those Toscanes, they are understandably excited by the prospect of gaining more influence, both for themselves and their company, and, to their credit, for Komarr generally."

"They're mistaken there, if that's what they think. Gregor's too conscious of the need to appear even-handed to do too many open favors for his wife's relations."

"So I gently let them know. They're not without wit, I am happy to say. Their excitement was dampened by a genuine concern for their daughters safety and personal happiness, though they are certainly as puzzled how this is to be achieved as any other set of parents." She smiled dryly at him.

Was that to his address? Unquestionably. "So . . . how is Father? How did he take ... all this?" A shrug of Miles s shoulder in no particular direction indicated his new civilian life.

She cleared her throat. "Mixed feelings, mixed reactions. He gave me all sorts of logically conflicting assurances for you, which I think I shall simply boil down to: you have his support. Always."

"I knew that. That wasn't the question, exactly. Was he ... very disappointed?"

She shrugged in turn. "We all know how hard you worked for what you had achieved, and in the face of what odds."

She evades the answer, dammit.

She added, "He was more worried about what would happen to you afterwards, left at loose ends." One long finger tapped his chain of office. "This was very clever of Gregor, I must say. The boy's growing quite gratifyingly subtle, in his maturity."

"Wait'll Simon explains to you what load I'm expected to tow with this damned chain."

Her brow rose, but she did not press him. He reflected for a moment upon Countess Vorkosigan's cool maternal style, in contrast to the hands-on attempted arrangements of Lady Alys versus—and it was versus—

Ivan. On the whole, he found the Countess's quiet respect a hell of a lot more daunting than any overt interference could possibly have been. One found oneself wishing to be worthy of it. The Countess played the disinterested observer almost convincingly, a style Gregor had no doubt learned from her.

Martin stuck his face around the door frame, his expression awed as he took in the Countess. "My lord? Um, your car's ready and all. . . ."

The Countess waved Miles away. "If you need to go, go along. I'll tackle Simon next."

"It's going to be my job to prod his former"—he disliked the taste of that former—"department, it seems. Haroche has been slow to get into gear on this problem. Though I don't suppose I can fault ImpSec for refusing to reason in advance of its data."

"Why not? They have before, often enough."

"Now, now: Don't be snide. Milady Mother." Miles bowed himself out, very Vorishly.

She called after him, "I'm glad to find you here, anyway."

"Where else?"

She hesitated, then admitted wryly, "I bet Aral that you would choose the little Admiral."

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Miles haunted Haroche's office for the rest of that day, rechecking everything ImpSec had done since last night, and monitoring the new orders flying out. He devoured the detailed log of Illyan's locations and movements for the past three months, till he was cross-eyed and beginning to be afraid he'd miss something. Haroche patiently endured his nervous kibitzing. It would be weeks before anything could come back from the galactic inquiries. Haroche was concentrating mainly on the Jackson's Whole connection, their one physical lead, which exactly suited Miles's theories, or prejudices.

Any side-branch Haroche missed, Miles pointed out, and Haroche promptly mended the oversight. By the end of the afternoon there seemed nothing more to do with Jackson's Whole short of Miles going there in person, an idea that occurred independently to Haroche.

"You do seem to have had an extraordinary amount of experience dealing with the Jacksonian Houses," Haroche observed.

"Mm," said Miles neutrally, concealing the pull of the idea on his own imagination. Returning to Jackson's Whole in his new persona of an Imperial Auditor, with all the Barrayaran Imperial warships he cared to requisition as backup, made a delightful little power-fantasy. "No," he said vaguely, "I don't think so." The answer is here, inside ImpSec. I just wish I knew how to phrase the question.

Restless and frustrated, Miles left Jackson's Whole to the agents assigned there, and Haroche to himself for a while, and set off for a rambling tour of the building. He'd thought he'd memorized ImpSec HQ, but there were nooks and crannies he'd never penetrated before, whole departments he'd never needed-to-know. Well, he certainly had the run of the place now.

He poked into a couple of such offices at random, thoroughly alarming their inhabitants, then decided to make his tour systematic. He would inspect every department from the top floor down, not excepting Physical Plant and Food Service.

He left behind a trail of disruption and dismay, as every department head frantically searched his conscience for a reason why the Imperial Auditor might be visiting him. Ha. Guilty, every one of 'em, Miles thought dryly. Several made a point of explaining their budgetary expenditures in what Miles felt was excessive detail, though one blurted out a wholly unasked-for defense of his recent galactic vacation. Watching these normally closemouthed men babble in panic was highly entertaining, Miles had to admit. He led them on with lots of well-timed neutral noises, like "Um," and "Hm?", but it seemed to bring him no closer to formulating his right question.

Enough of the departments ran on Barrayar's whole 26.7-hour diurnal cycle that Miles could have continued his tour all night, but in the late evening he broke it off. ImpSec was a big building. Care, not speed, was called for now.

Miles woke the next morning to find Vorkosigan House full of the unaccustomed bustle of his mother's retainers. They were reordering the place: whisking away the furniture covers, efficiently taking over care of his houseguest, Illyan, and blocking his path with inquiries of what they might do for him, m'lord, as he attempted to wander the place half-dressed, thinking and drinking his morning coffee. It was the way it should be, but . . . still he was inspired to go off to work early. As long as he was being official, or officious, about it all, Miles decided to begin with a personal report to Gregor at the Imperial Residence, in his best Auditor's style. Besides, Gregor might have an idea. Miles felt particularly empty of ideas just now.

His Auditor's style melted rapidly into his usual style, once he reached Gregor's office and they were alone. They sat in the comfortable chairs overlooking the garden window, and Miles put his feet up on the low table and scowled at his boots.

"Anything new?" inquired Gregor, leaning back in his own chair.

"Not so far. What has Haroche told you?"

Gregor rattled off a tolerably complete precis of the midnight meeting, and of the orders and inquiries Haroche's office had disgorged under Miles's eye yesterday. "He said Illyan was awfully quiet at your briefing," Gregor added. "I gather Haroche believes that Illyan's a lot more damaged than he lets on."

"Mm. Illyan thinks he is too. I'm not sure he's damaged so much as he is out of practice. It's like he's forgotten how to pay attention. The inside of his head . . . must be a strange world for him right now. I think Lady Alys could probably give you better observations than Haroche on that score."

"So what have you done?"

Miles grimaced. "Nothing. I'm stuck twiddling my thumbs till the galactic reports start coming back. I've been poking through closets at ImpSec HQ, playing Inspector General. It provides some amusement, while I wait. And wait."

"You've only been waiting one day."

"It's the anticipation."

"Are you any happier with Haroche now?"

"Yes, in fact. He's doing all he should. And he learns fast, and doesn't make the same mistake . . . well, more than twice at most. It's the situation I'm not happy with. It seems singularly devoid of handles, strings . . . there are no loose ends to yank and see what happens. Or none I've found yet."

Gregor nodded in sympathy. "You've just started the real investigation."

"Yeah." Miles hesitated. "This thing has blown up a lot bigger and more complicated than I was anticipating, back when I was just being pissed at the way ImpSec was handling Illyan's medical treatment. It's no joke now. Are you sure you . . . don't want to put a real Auditor on the case? Vorhovis, for example."

"Vorhovis is still on Komarr. It would take a week to recall him. And I want him there."

"Or one of the others."

"What is this, funk?" Gregor studied Miles through narrowed eyes. "Do you want me to relieve you?"

Miles opened his mouth, closed it, and finally said, "I thought you should have an opportunity to change your mind."

"I see." Gregor sucked on his lower lip. "Thank you, Lord Vorkosigan. But no."

I hope you're not making a major mistake, Gregor. But he didn't say it out loud.

The coffee Gregor had ordered upon Miles's arrival appeared at last, borne on a tray not by Gregor's majordomo, but by Lady Alys Vorpatril herself. She had Laisa Toscane in tow. Gregor's face lit.

"Are you ready for a break, gentlemen?" Lady Alys inquired, setting the tray down with a flourish and frowning at Miles's boots. He hastily removed his feet from the table and sat up straight.

"Yes," said Gregor, holding out his hand to Laisa, who took it and sat—snuggled—in beside him. Miles felt a momentary pang of envy.

"We're actually done, I think," added Miles. "For today." My report is, there's nothing to report. Feh.

A concerned and quizzical half-smile curved Laisa's lips. "Gregor and Lady Alys have told me about Illyan. I suppose I feel . . . sorry? No, that's not the right word. Awed, maybe, that such an icon has fallen. He was such a legend on Komarr. And yet when I finally met him, he seemed just an ordinary fellow."

"Hardly that," said Lady Alys.

"Well, not really ordinary, but that's the impression he seemed to want to give. So quiet. He was not . . . what I expected."

Not a monster? Laisa was a polite Komarran; you had to give her credit for that. "Real monsters," observed Miles, answering her thought instead of her words, "often are just ordinary men. Only more confused in their thinking. Illyan was one of the least confused men I know."

Laisa colored faintly. On her, it looked good. She cleared her throat, and forged on. "We actually came in for a reason, Lord Vorkosigan."

"You may as well start calling me Miles, in private."

She glanced for approval to Gregor, who nodded. "Miles," she went on. "Lady Alys has proposed a reception and dance here at the Residence next week, for Gregor's and my particular friends. There's nothing political about it, for a change."

Or so you can wish. But Lady Alys nodded confirmation. If not politically, it was certainly socially calculated. Was this a reward, for Laisa working so hard to be a good apprentice Vor?

Laisa went on, "Won't you come, Lo—Miles, your duties permitting? As a friend to us both."

Miles, seated, half-bowed to his future Empress. "My duties permitting, I'd be honored." It was likely he'd have time on his hands then, still waiting for the galactic reports.

"And you're welcome to bring a guest, of course," Laisa added. She glanced again at Gregor, and they exchanged one of those maddening private smiles. "Do you have a regular ..."—she groped for a proper Barrayaran term—"young lady?"

"Not at this time."

"Hm." She gave him a speculative look; Gregor, who still held it, squeezed her hand. If she'd had a younger sister, Miles would have known exactly how to interpret that glance. Love, it seemed, was not only contagious, it was aggressively contagious.

"Miles has proven immune to our Vor ladies," put in his Aunt Alys, not approvingly. Good God, was she about to give up on trying to alter Ivan's single state and start in on him instead, in sheer frustration?

Laisa looked as if she was trying to work out whether Lady Alys had meant to imply Miles preferred boys, without being so rude as to ask, or at least, not till she was alone again with her mentor.

"Not immune," Miles put in hastily. "Only unlucky, so far. My former travel schedule was pretty disruptive to romance." At home, anyway. "Now that I'm based in Vorbarr Sultana permanently, who knows. Um . . . maybe I'll ask Delia Koudelka."

Laisa smiled her pleasure. "I'd love to see her again."

Alys poured the coffee all around; Laisa watched carefully. She didn't scribble notes, but Miles bet she would remember, next time, that he took his black. Alys led the conversation into lighter concerns for the time it took to drink one cup, no refills, then rose to usher Laisa back out again. Off to the ladies' lavatory, to dissect Miles in absentia? Don't be so twitchy, boy. Under Alys's tutelage, Laisa seemed to be making rapid connections with the Vor women's world, and unlike Haroche she did not seem to be underestimating its importance to her future.

Gregor released Laisa with obvious reluctance. "Lady Alys," he added, looking thoughtful. "If you think he's up to it, why don't you bring Simon to the lunch Laisa and I are having with you and Lady Vorkosigan. I find I miss his conversation." He caught Miles's eye, and smiled wryly.

"I thought Simons conversations with you were mostly reports," Miles said.

"It's rather fascinating to find out what all those reports were displacing, all these years," Lady Alys remarked. "Certainly, Gregor. I think it will be good for him." She shepherded Laisa out; Miles followed shortly.

Miles continued his self-inflicted inspection of ImpSec HQ where he'd left off. Personally, he would have preferred a pinpoint rapier thrust to this brute-force bludgeoning of the data, but when you didn't know what the hell you were looking for, you had to look at everything. Cryptography proved cryptic; their overt cooperation turned into a slyly technical explanation of their doings that lost him on the third turn. If you can't dazzle 'em with daring, hang 'em up with horseshit. Miles smiled through it all, and made a mental note to recheck this department again later. Finance seemed simply delighted that somebody cared, and threatened to go on forever. Miles fought his way clear of the spreadsheets, and escaped.

Housekeeping and Physical Plant proved unexpectedly fascinating. Miles had known the headquarters building was highly secured, but he hadn't realized in detail just how this was accomplished. He now learned where all the steel-reinforced walls and floors were, and just how much thought had gone into questions of blast containment, air circulation and filtration, and water purification. His respect for the building's late mad architect rose a notch. The building wasn't merely designed by a paranoid, it was well designed. Every room had its own biolab grade filtration system, in addition to the central unit that filtered and flash-cooked all returning air to destroy possible poison gases or microbes, before it was recirculated or vented. The heat generated was also used to distill the water, which explained its peculiar flat taste. Miles had seen spaceships with systems less tight. No colds were going to be transmitted among-personnel here.

The janitorial staff were all serving soldiers, veterans of at least ten years' standing. They were also, he discovered, the best paid of their classification of any such men in the Imperial Service. Morale was high among them; once they'd realized his visit implied no criticism of the quality of their work, they became not merely cooperative but downright friendly. It seemed no inspecting officer had actually been willing to crawl through the ductwork in person with them for quite some time; but then, most senior inspectors were a lot older, stiffer, and stouter than Miles. He also discovered, along the way, what had to be the most boring job in ImpSec HQ—checking the vid monitors of all the kilometers of ductwork and piping in the building. He could only marvel that it had never fallen to his lot before, during one of his earlier periods of semi-disgrace.

Janitorial was quite pleased with their Imperial Auditor by the time he reluctantly departed, and vice versa. Their combination of competence and camaraderie put him in mind for a brief and breathtakingly painful moment of the Dendarii, till his mind shied away from the comparison.

His busyness blocked excessive morbid reflection on the general weirdness of his current situation. On the whole, Miles thought he preferred it that way. He was an ImpSec outsider, a civilian, for the first time in his adult life, and yet he was obtaining a better view of the organization he'd so passionately served than he'd ever had before. Was this some sort of final good-bye? Enjoy it while it lasts.

Conscience-prodded, he broke off early enough that night to actually go home and have dinner with his mother and Illyan, a welcome touch of human civility. He successfully kept the conversation focused on the progress of the Imperial colony on Sergyar, about which, indeed, the Countess had much of interest to tell. He returned to HQ. early the next morning, and breathed down Haroche s neck for a bit, till Haroche began once more to wistfully enumerate the benefits of a jaunt to Jackson's Whole. Miles grinned, and continued his inspection.

Miles's visit to Analysis took the most time that day. Among other things, he stopped in to talk with Galeni, and with the analysts now assigned to this internal ImpSec problem; they too were mostly waiting for the return of galactic reports. He checked on the men working other problems as well. The high priority of Illyan's chip sabotage did not mean that all other crises went on hold. Miles had a long and interesting chat with Komarran Affairs chief General Allegre, which understandably tended to turn to Gregor's betrothal, a topic Miles had carefully avoided with Galeni. Miles wondered if it would be worth a trip at least as far as Komarr to talk in person with Allegre's counterpart in Galactic Affairs stationed there. Colonel Olshansky, in Sergyaran Affairs, inquired politely after the Countess; Miles invited him to dinner with her, a courtesy the colonel seemed to find a bit daunting, but which he accepted with alacrity.

What Miles had been thinking of as the dessert of his inspection thus fell, not by accident, the last thing that afternoon.

The ImpSec Evidence Rooms were sited in the sub-sub-basement, occupying the chambers of the old prison block—chambers of horrors, Miles had always thought of them. The block had been the best modern dungeon, in Mad Emperor Yuri's blatant last days, with a distinctly medical flavor that Miles found more chilling than dripping walls and spiderwebs and chains and scuttling vermin. Emperor Ezar had used it too, much more discreetly, for his political prisoners—starting with Yuri s own gaolers, a grace note of cosmic justice in a generally ruthless reign. Miles felt it was one of the better quiet achievements of his father's Regency that the sinister prison had then been converted into, effectively, a museum. It really ought to feature a lifelike tableau in wax of old Mad Yuri and his goon squads.

But as evidence storage rooms went, it had to be one of the most secure on the planet. It now housed all the most interesting trinkets and toys ImpSec had collected in the course of its many investigations. The several rooms were stuffed with documentation, weapons, biologicals—well sealed, Miles trusted—drugs, and even more bizarre items confiscated from the evil and the unlucky, awaiting prosecutions, further investigations, or reclassification and culling as obsolete matter.

He fancied a meditative visit to the weapons room. It had been a couple of years since he'd last been down here, bringing home some interesting goodies from one of his Dendarii missions. On one of the back shelves he'd discovered a corroded metal crossbow and some emptied soltoxin gas canisters. They were the last physical remains aside from himself of the poisoning attempt upon the then-new Imperial Regent Lord Aral Vorkosigan and his pregnant wife, thirty years and a few months ago. Alpha and omega, boy, beginnings and endings.

The sergeant in charge at the front desk, sited in the old prisoner-processing chamber at the sections only entrance, was a pale young man with the mild air of a monastic librarian. He shot up out of his comconsole station chair when Miles entered, and stood at attention, obviously uncertain whether to bow or salute. He ducked his head, by way of compromise. "My Lord Auditor. How may I assist you?"

"Sit down, relax, and cycle me in. I want a tour," Miles told him.

"Certainly, my Lord Auditor." He reseated himself as Miles, experienced in the procedures, approached the desk and laid his palm on the read-pad, and stretched his neck to catch the retina scan. He smiled a little gratefully at Miles for thus relieving him of having to decide whether an Imperial Auditor was above standard security or not, and if not, how the devil he was to attempt to enforce his rules.

His relief was short-lived, as his panel lights blinked red, and his comconsole made disapproving noises. "My lord? You are explicitly listed as not-cleared, by order of General Haroche."

"What?" Miles trod around the comconsole desk to look over his shoulder. "Ah. Check the date. That's a leftover from ... a few weeks back. If it bothers you, call Haroche's office and get the change authorized. I'll wait."

Nervously, the sergeant did so. While he was negotiating with Haroche's secretary, who sped the authorization back along with an apology the moment he understood the problem, Miles stared at the flat readout screen projected above the vid plate. It listed the dates and times of every visit he'd ever made down here, going back nearly a decade, together with codes for the items he'd carried in and out, mostly in. There was the safely lobotomized zvegan smart bomb, ah yes. And those strange Cetagandan genetic samples, now undergoing further investigation under the aegis of Dr. Weddell, he suspected. And . . . what the hell . . . ?

Miles leaned closer. "Excuse me. This comconsole lists me as visiting the evidence room twelve weeks ago." It was the date of his return from his last Dendarii mission, in fact, the fatal day Illyan had been out of town. The time logged was . . . right after he'd reported in to, and out of, Illyan's office; about the time he'd been walking home, in fact. His eyes widened, and his teeth snapped shut. "How . . . interesting," he hissed.

"Yes, my lord?" said the sergeant.

"Were you on duty that day?"

"I don't remember, my lord. I'd have to check the roster. Um . . . why do you ask, sir?"

"Because I didn't come down here that day. Or any other day since year before last."

"You're listed, sir."

"I see that." Miles grinned, his lips peeling back.

He'd found what he'd been subliminally looking for the last three days, all right and tight. The loose end. This is either the jackpot or a trap. I wonder which? So was he meant to find it? Was he meant to find it, now? Could any seer have predicted this subterranean visit? Assume nothing, boy. Just go on.

Carefully.

"Open a secured channel to Ops on your com-console," he told the sergeant. "I want Captain Vorpatril, and I want him now."

Ivan made good time, coming over from the Operations building on the other side of the city; by luck, Miles had caught him on a day he hadn't skinned out of work early. Miles, sitting on the edge of the evidence room entry port's comconsole desk, one booted leg swinging, smiled grimly at Ivan's entrance, shaking off his ImpSec internal escort—"Yes, yes, see, I'm not lost. You can go away now. Thank you." The evidence room sergeant and his supervisor, a lieutenant, waited on the Lord Auditor's pleasure. The lieutenant was green and shaking.

Ivan took one look at Miles's face, and his brows rose. "So, Lord Auditor Coz. Did you find some fun?"

"Do I look cheerful?"

"More like manic."

"It's a joy, Ivan, an absolute joy. The ImpSec internal security system is lying to me."

"Tricky, that," said Ivan cautiously. "What's it saying?"

"It thinks I visited the evidence room, here, on the day of my return from my last mission. Furthermore, the entry desk log upstairs has been altered to match—it lists me as having left the building half an hour later than I really did. The security records at Vorkosigan House still show the actual time of my arrival, though—just enough time in the gap for me to have taken a groundcar home. Except that I walked that day. Furthermore—and this is the cream—the evidence room's internal vid monitor cartridge for that day was found to be, guess what?"

Ivan glanced at the obviously distraught ImpSec lieutenant. "Missing?"

"Got it in one."

Ivan's face screwed up. "Why?"

"Why, indeed. The very question I propose to answer next. I suppose this could be totally unconnected with Illyan's sabotage. Want to take a side bet?"

"Nope." Ivan stared at him glumly. "Does this mean I need to cancel my dinner plans?"

"Yes, and mine too. Call my mother and give her my apologies, but I won't be home tonight. Then sit down here at this desk." He pointed to the sergeant's station chair; the sergeant scrambled out of it. "I declare this evidence room sealed. Let no one in, Ivan, no one at all, without my Auditor's authorization. You two"—his arm swung to point at the two ImpSec men, who flinched—"are my witnesses that I, personally, did not enter the storage areas today." He added to the lieutenant, "Tell me about your inventory procedures."

The lieutenant swallowed. "The comconsole records are continually updated, of course, my Lord Auditor. We do physical inventory once a month. It takes a week."

"And the last one was done when?"

"Two weeks ago."

"Anything turn up missing?"

"No, my lord."

"Anything missing in the last three months?"

"No."

"The last year?"

"No!"

"Do the same fellows always do the inventory?"

"It rotates. It's . . . not a popular chore."

"I'll bet not." Miles glanced at Ivan. "Ivan, while you're sitting here, call Ops and requisition yourself four men with top security clearances, who have never worked for or with ImpSec. They're going to be your team."

Ivan's face screwed up in dismay. "Oh, God," he groaned. "You're not going to make me inventory the whole damned thing, are you?"

"Yes. For obvious reasons, I can't do it myself. Somebody's planted a red flag here, with my name on it. If they wanted my attention, they've certainly got it."

"Biologicals too? The cold room too?" Ivan shuddered.

"All of it."

"What will I be looking for?"

"If I knew that, we wouldn't have to do an inventory, now, would we?"

"What if, instead of something taken out, something was added? What if it's not a lead you've got hold of, but a fuse?" Ivan asked. His hand flexed in nervous pantomime.

"Then I trust you will stamp it out." He gestured the two ImpSec men into his wake. "Come with me, gentlemen. We're going to go see General Haroche."

Haroche too came on the alert the minute he saw Miles's face, as Miles and his little train marched into his office. Haroche sealed his doors behind them, shut down his comconsole, and said, "What have you found, my lord?"

"Approximately twenty-five minutes of revised history. Your comconsoles have been buggered."

Haroche's face grew unhappy indeed as Miles explained his discovery of the added time, with corroboration from the evidence room supervisor. It darkened further with the news about the missing vid record.

"Can you show where you were?" he asked when Miles had finished. "Prove you walked home?"

Miles shrugged. "Possibly. I passed plenty of people in the street, and I am, ah, a bit more memorable than the average man. Scrounging for witnesses ages after the fact is the sort of thing the municipal guard has to do all the time, investigating their civil crimes. I may put them on it, if it seems necessary. But as an Imperial Auditor, my word is not on trial."

Yet.

"Er. Right."

Miles glanced at the evidence room men. "Gentlemen, will you wait for me in the outer office, please. Go nowhere and speak to no one."

He and Haroche waited until they'd cleared the room, then Miles continued, "What is certain, at this point, is that you have a mole in your internal security systems. Now, I can play this one of two ways. I can shut ImpSec down entirely while I bring in outside experts to check them. There are certain obvious disadvantages to this method."

Haroche groaned. "A slight understatement, my lord."

"Yes. Taking all of ImpSec off-line for a week—or more—while people unfamiliar with your system attempt to learn and then check it seems to me an invitation to disaster. But running an internal check using internal personnel also has, um, obvious drawbacks. Any ideas?"

Haroche rubbed his forehead. "I see your point. Suppose . . . suppose we set up a team of men to do the checking. At least three, who must work together at all times. They watch each other that way. One mole I must grant, but three, chosen at random . . . they can freeze the system in sections, with the minimum disruption to ImpSec's ongoing duties. If you like, I can give you the list of qualified personnel, and you can select the men."

"Yes . . ." said Miles slowly. "That works. Good. Do it."

Haroche breathed obvious relief. "I'm . . . grateful you are reasonable about this, my lord."

"I'm always reasonable."

Haroche's lip twitched, but he didn't argue. He sighed. "This thing is growing uglier all the time. I despise internal investigations. Even if you win, you lose. But what ... I confess, I don't understand this business with the evidence room. What do you make of it?"

Miles shook his head. "It looks like it's meant to be a frame. But most frames come with pictures in them. This one's empty. It's all ... very backwards. I mean, usually, you start with the crime and deduce the suspects. I'm having to start with the suspect and deduce the crime."

"Yes, but . . . who would be fool enough to try to frame an Imperial Auditor? It seems just short of insane."

Miles frowned, and paced the room, back and forth in front of Haroche's desk. How many times had he paced like this in front of Illyan, as they'd hammered out his mission plans? "That depends ... I want your systems analysts to look particularly for this. That depends on how long this thing has been sitting down there in the evidence room comconsole. It was a buried mine, set to go off only when touched. When were the changes made in the records? I mean, it could have been any time between the day I arrived downside, and this morning. But if they were done more than a few weeks back—somebody maybe didn't think they were framing an Imperial Auditor. I don't see how they could have foreseen my getting that appointment, when I didn't myself. They were framing, bluntly, a cashiered junior officer who had departed ImpSec under a cloud. The obscure son of a famous father, and some kind of demi-mutant to boot. I might have been tailor-made to be an easy target."

Then.

"I don't like being a target. I'm downright allergic to it, anymore."

Haroche shook his head in wonder. "You confound me, Lord Vorkosigan. I believe I'm finally beginning to understand why Illyan always ..."

"Why Illyan what?" Miles prodded after a long moment.

A lopsided smile lightened Haroche's heavy face. "Came out of your debriefings swearing under his breath. And then promptly turned around and sent you out again on the stickiest assignments he had."

Miles essayed a short, ironic salaam in Haroche's direction. "Thank you, General."

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Ivan found it two hours before dawn, not quite by chance.

It was in the fifth aisle of the second room he'd tackled, Weapons IV. He'd placed Biologicals, Poisons, and the Cold Room last on his list for this very contingency, in the hope that he might not have to do them at all. Miles would have chosen to knock off the worst rooms first; sometimes, he had to admit, Ivan was not such an idiot as he feigned.

Ivan trod out to the reception area. Miles had been cross-checking the inventory lists on the comconsole there for the last several hours, ever since he'd overseen Haroche's three-man security systems analysis team selected and put to work upstairs.

"I'm in a Weapons Room, right?" Ivan demanded, waving his inventory sheaf of plastic flimsies.

Miles tore his attention away from the chemical description of the nine-hundred-and-ninth item in alphabetical order in the Poisons Room: Ophidian Scrapings, Polian, Three Grams. "If you say so."

"Right. So what's a little box labeled 'Komarran virus' doing on Aisle Five, Shelf Nine, Bin Twenty-Seven? What the hell is it, and shouldn't it be in Biologicals? Did somebody misclassify it? I'm not unsealing the damned thing till you find out what it is. It might make me break out in green fungus, or bloat up like those poor suckers with the Sergyaran worm plague. Or worse."

"The worm plague has to have been the most disgusting in recent history," Miles agreed. "But it wasn't very lethal, as plagues go. Let me look. Was it on the Weapons Room listing?"

"Oh, yes, right where it should be. They think."

"So it's got to be a weapon. Maybe." Miles marked his place and re-filed the poisons list he'd been examining on the Evidence Rooms' library comconsole, and pulled up that of the weapons section instead. The "Komarran virus" had a code classification that blocked access to its description and history to any but men of the very highest security clearances. ImpSec HQ was crammed with such men. Miles smiled slightly, and overrode the lockout with his Auditor's seal.

He hadn't read more than the first three lines before he began to laugh, very softly. He would swear, but he couldn't think of any invective foul enough.

"What?" snapped Ivan, craning around to peer over Miles's shoulder.

"Not a virus, Ivan. Somebody in Classification needs a lecture from Dr. Weddell. It's a bioengineered apoptotic prokaryote. A little bug that eats things, specifically, neurochip proteins. The prokaryote, Illyan's prokaryote. It's no danger to you at all, unless you've acquired a neurochip I don't know about. Oh, God. This is where it came from ... or rather, this is where it came from last." He settled in and began to read; Ivan, hanging over the back of his station chair, knocked his hand aside when he tried to advance screens before Ivan had finished too.

This was it, hidden in plain sight, buried in an inventory of tens of thousands of other items. It had been sitting here demurely in Bin Twenty-Seven, Shelf Nine, collecting dust for nearly five years, ever since the day it was delivered to the ImpSec Evidence Room by an officer from Komarran Affairs. It had been picked up at that time by Imperial Counter-intelligence right here in Vorbarr Sultana, on an arrest-sweep of Komarran terrorist cells associated with . . . the late Ser Galen, killed on Earth while trying to launch his last complicated, dramatic, and futile plot for bringing down the Barrayaran Imperium and freeing Komarr. The plot for which Galen had created Miles's clone-brother Mark.

"Oh, hell," said Ivan. "Has your damned clone got something to do with this?"

"Brother," corrected Miles, swallowing the same fear. "I don't see how. He's been on Beta Colony for almost the last half-year. My Betan grandmother can confirm it."

"If you want confirmation," said Ivan, "then you must be thinking what I'm thinking. Could he have been pretending to be you again?"

"Not without going on one hell of a crash diet."

Ivan grunted half-assent. "Could be done, with the right drugs."

"I don't think so. I promise you, the last thing Mark wants is to be me, ever again. I'll have his whereabouts formally checked anyway, just to stop everyone from galloping down a blind alley. The ImpSec office at the embassy on Beta Colony keeps him in their sights just because Mark is ... who he is."

Miles read on. The Jacksonian connection was quite real too. The chip-eating prokaryote had indeed been made to order there for the Komarran terrorists, by one of the Houses Minor more usually known for its tailored drugs. And Illyan had been its intended target from the beginning; the disruption of ImpSec had been timed to coincide with the assassination of then-Prime Minister Count Aral Vorkosigan. The ImpSec investigation of five years ago had traced the prokaryote right back to its building of origin, and the Komarran payment to the Jacksonian biochem team's bank accounts. The new search, just launched, must sooner or later turn up the exact same data: later, if they had to totally reconstruct the first tedious investigation; sooner, if the organization overcame its collective amnesia and spotted the data in its own files. Three to eight weeks, depending, Miles estimated.

"This explains . . . the frame, at least," Miles muttered.

Ivan cocked an eyebrow. "How so?"

"I came at it in the wrong order. My ersatz visit here was meant to be found, yes, inevitably, but it wasn't meant to be found first. This data . . ."—Miles waved at the comconsole—"when it finally arrived here, would have focused attention on the Evidence Rooms. Instead of starting with the comconsole records, and then checking the inventory, the investigators would have begun with Bin Twenty-Seven and then checked the security records of people going in and out. Where they would have been quite pleased with themselves for finding me, a recently cashiered officer with no business here. Gone at that way, it would have been a much more convincing frame."

Miles sat for a moment, ordering his thoughts. Then he called ImpSec Forensics and requisitioned the senior officer on call. After that he put through a call to Dr. Vaughn Weddell's home console.

The machine blocked him, and tried to take a message; Weddell didn't care to have his beauty sleep interrupted, it appeared. He tried once more, with the same results, waited a full three seconds to recover his patience, and then called the Imperial Guards. Miles had the duty officer dispatch a couple of their largest uniformed men to Weddell's flat with instructions to wake him up by whatever means were required, and bring him at once to ImpSec HQ, carried bodily if necessary.

It still seemed an eternity—almost dawn outside, Miles gauged—before Miles had his team assembled, and marched them all before him into Weapons Room IV. Weddell was still whining under his breath about being awakened so rudely in the middle of the night; as long as he prudently kept his complaints sotto voce, Miles chose to ignore them. Neither he nor Ivan had gotten any sleep at all, not that Miles was the least tired right now.

The forensics man was given first crack at the exterior of the little sealed biocontainer.

"It's been moved a few times," he reported. "Some fingerprints, some smudges, none very fresh . . ." He duly recorded them by laser-scan, for cross-match with Evidence Rooms personnel, and the rest of the population of the Empire if necessary. "The screamer-signal circuit to detect the container's removal from the Evidence Rooms has never been activated. No hairs or fibers. I wouldn't expect much dust, given the air filters here. That's all I can say. It's all yours, gentlemen."

He stepped back; Ivan stepped forward, drew the box from its shelf, and positioned it on the lighted examination board brought in for the purpose. The box was sealed with the simplest of numeric code-locks, designed more to keep it from popping open if accidentally dropped than for any real security—for one thing, the access-code was listed right in the inventory description. Ivan referred to the flimsy, and tapped in the sequence. The little lid swung up.

"Right," drawled Ivan, peering inside, and then at his inventory-flimsy again. The box was lined with a shock-proof gel-pack, scored by six parallel slots. Three slots were filled with tiny brown capsules, small enough for a child to swallow. The other three were empty. "Six sealed vector-delivery units—that's what they're called on here, anyway—to start with, one taken out for examination five years ago and listed as destroyed. Five supposedly left—only now there are three." He opened his hand with a flourish; the forensics man again stepped forward, and bent over the box to begin checking the seal from the inside.

Right, right! Miles howled inwardly, with a small mental reservation for that one capsule removed five years back. That was going to complicate things, but perhaps the laboratory records would help, once retrieved.

"You mean," moaned Weddell, "I racked my brains for a week reassembling that damned crap, and a whole undamaged sample was sitting downstairs all that time?"

"Yep." Miles grinned. "I hope you like irony."

"Not at this hour of the morning."

The forensics man looked up and reported, "The lock has never been forced."

"All right," Miles said. "The box goes to Forensics for a full examination. Ivan, I want you to go with it. Don't let those weasels up there sneak it out of your sight. Weddell, you take one of those samples for a molecular analysis—I want you to confirm it is the same crap you flushed out of Illyan's chip, and I want to know anything else you can figure out about it. It and you don't leave the building—you can have the same lab in the clinic again, and any supplies you care to requisition, but no one—no one—but you is to touch the sample. You report to no one but me. The last two units go back into the new box on the shelf, locked under my Auditor's seal. I trust it will stay there this time." Though I'm beginning to think it would be safer in my pocket.

Haroche, the rat, had gone home to sleep last night after the systems team was assigned, an hour after midnight. While waiting for his return, Miles took a break for breakfast in the ImpSec HQ cafeteria. This was a mistake, he realized, catching himself dozing off into his coffee mug. He dared not stop. Somehow, getting started again was a lot harder than it used to be.

He was yawning in Haroche's outer office when the ImpSec chief entered, also yawning. Haroche blearily swallowed his yawn, and motioned Miles to follow into his inner sanctum. Miles pulled up a chair and sat as Haroche settled behind his desk. "So, Lord Vorkosigan. Any progress?"

"Oh, yes." Rapidly, Miles brought Haroche up to speed on the events of the last hours. Haroche, hunching forward on the edge of his station chair, wasn't yawning by the time he finished.

"Damn," Haroche breathed, leaning back again. "Damn. There goes the last hope of this being anything other than an inside job."

"I'm afraid so."

"So now we have another list. How many men could have known the samples were down there?"

"Five years' worth of Evidence Rooms inventory teams, for starters," Miles said.

"The men who captured and delivered it," Haroche added.

"And anyone working here at the time who might have been close friends with the men who captured and delivered it." Miles began to tick off the count on his hands. He wondered if he was going to have enough fingers. "It was filed under the seal of the Komarran Affairs chief who preceded Allegre. Allegre himself was still working on Komarr itself at that time, as the local section head. I checked. Also . . . any Komarrans in those revolutionary groups who escaped capture at the time, or who were imprisoned and have been recently released. People they might have talked to in prison . . . That list had better be checked too, I suppose, though, as you say . . . the comconsole tampering compels me to believe it's an inside job too."

Haroche made a note. "Right. Not a short list yet, I'm afraid, by any means."

"No. Though it's a lot shorter than the three planets full of people we started with." Miles hesitated, then added reluctantly, "I don't know if my brother Lord Mark—my clone, that is—knew about this stuff or not. It will be necessary to check, I suppose."

Haroche's gaze rose to meet Miles's, his expression arrested. "Do you suppose—"

"Not physically possible," Miles asserted. "Mark has spent the last six months on Beta Colony. Been to school every day since the term began." I hope. "His whereabouts are eminently provable."

"Hm." Haroche reluctantly subsided.

"Do you remember anything about that period?"

"I was still assistant Domestic Affairs section-chief. It was just before my last promotion. I remember the flurry of activity over Komarrans in Vorbarr Sultana. The case that had riveted Domestic's attention right about then had to do with an antigovernment group in Vorsmythe's District suspected of trying to import proscribed weapons."

"Ah. Well, I hope your data boys can help triangulate this," Miles went on. "Whoever did this must have had recent access to ImpSec's internal systems, plus a lot of wit and nerve. The short list is going to consist of the men who are on both lists."

"Why are you assuming it's only one man?" asked Haroche.

"Oh." Miles deflated. "Right. Thank you." Haroche, Miles reminded himself, was not without experience in this sort of thing.

"Not that I wouldn't prefer it that way," admitted Haroche. "I'd much rather find myself dealing with one than a conspiracy."

"Mm. But one man or a group, the motivation is growing . . . complex. Why me? Why was I picked to be the goat? Is there some special hatred at the bottom of this, or was it chance—was I simply the only ImpSec officer to be cashiered in the right time-window?"

"If I may presume to advise you, my lord, motivations are a slippery thing in this sort of business. Too wispily cerebral. I always got further faster following the facts. You can spin theories about motivation later, over your victory beer. When you know who, you'll know why. I admit, that's a philosophical preference."

When I know why, I'll know who. "It's true, there may be nothing personal in it. As soon as the crime was discovered . . . to be a crime, the, the ... I can't call him a killer, I suppose. . . ."

Haroche half-smiled, not happily. "We're short a body, for one thing."

Illyan, for all his new vagueness, was hardly a zombie. But Miles remembered that hoarse distraught voice, begging him earnestly for a clean death. . . . "The assassin," he went on, "was absolutely required to supply a goat to take the heat off himself. Because this is not a case that can ever be closed except by being solved. No 'Hold pending further data' till it's dusty and forgotten this time. He had to know ImpSec would never rest."

"You're damned right," Haroche growled.

"That crap downstairs was carefully arranged to be found, because it was inevitable. Once the hunt was up, too many records existed in too many places for it to just be made to disappear. All I've done ..." Miles's voice slowed, "was alter the timetable."

"Three days." Haroche smiled crookedly. "You went through all of ImpSec in just three days."

"Not all of ImpSec, just the headquarters building. And it was more like four days. Still . . . somebody must be squirming. I hope. If they meant to hook ex-Lieutenant Vorkosigan, and instead got Lord Auditor Vorkosigan ... it must have felt like putting in your line for a trout, and pulling up a shark. I may have arrived just in time downstairs after all. Given the several more weeks of lead time he was expecting, our assassin might well have thought to yank his plant in the evidence room and try something else. God, I'd love to know."

Who hates me, and works here? Could Lieutenant Vorberg have found out who Admiral Naismith really was . . . ? Vorberg couldn't possibly be so twisted as to destroy Illyan just to destroy Miles, could he? Surely I was a secondary target. He had to be a secondary target. The alternative was too horrible to think about.

"Nonetheless, you've made extraordinary progress, Lord Vorkosigan," said Haroche. "I've cracked cases which started with far less data than what you've uncovered. It's good, solid work."

Miles tried not to be too pleased with Haroche's measured praise, though he felt his face warm anyway. Haroche was such a contained man, his brief words were clearly the meaningful sort men might strive to win. Surely it was not disloyal to Illyan to hope his successor might yet grow to fill his place, not the same, but as well.

"It's a shame," Haroche sighed, "that so many men in ImpSec HQ are fast-penta-proofed."

"It's much too early to think of starting to pull out people's fingernails," said Miles, nibbling on one of his own. "Tempting as it is. I suppose . . . that we now wait on the reports from your systems analysis team. I suppose . . ."—another yawn cracked his face—"that I might as well go home and get some sleep while I wait. Call me the minute they have anything to report, please."

"Yes, my Lord Auditor."

"Oh, hell, will you just call me Miles? Everyone else does. This Lord Auditor stuff is only fun for the first twenty minutes, after that it's just work." Not quite true, but ...

Haroche gave him wave that nearly qualified as an analysts salute, as he departed.

Martin returned Miles to the front door of Vorkosigan House in the midmorning. Seductive visions of his soft bed filled his head. Dutifully, he went first to find his lady mother and say good-morning, or good-night.

Two or three retainers' conflicting directions eventually brought him to one of the downstairs sitting rooms on the east side, filled with unusually pleasant morning light for this chill early winter. The Countess was sipping coffee and leafing through an old leather-bound tome Miles thought he recognized from Lady Vorpatril's Imperial wedding history assignment, the one that he had ducked. Better her than me.

"Hello, love," she answered his greetings. She indulged herself by planting a maternal kiss upon his forehead; he stole a gulp of her coffee. "You were out late. Any progress on your case?"

"I think so. The first crack, anyway." Miles decided not to disturb her morning by explaining that the first crack consisted of discovering himself being framed for the crime.

"Ah. I wasn't sure if the abstracted look was that, or lack of sleep."

"Both. I'm on my way to bed, but I want to talk to Illyan first. Is he up yet, do you know?"

"I think so. Pym just took him up his breakfast."

"Breakfast in bed halfway to noon. What a life."

"I think he's earned it, don't you?"

"The hard way." He sucked up some more of her coffee, and rose to go upstairs.

"Oh. Knock, first," she advised him as he passed the doorway.

"Why?"

"He's having breakfast with Alys."

That explained the book; Lady Alys had delivered it. He wondered what piece of Vorish history she was making poor Illyan read.

As advised, he knocked politely on the door of the second-floor guest suite. No response: he knocked again. Pym had not lingered to serve the breakfast, it appeared, because instead of the retainer opening it, Illyan's voice finally floated through the wood: "Who is it?"

"Miles. I have to talk to you."

"Just a minute."

The minute became two or three or four, as he leaned against the door frame and scuffed his boot on the patterned carpet. He knocked again. "C'mon, Simon, let me in."

"Don't be so impatient, Miles," his aunt's voice admonished him firmly. "It's a bit rude."

He closed his teeth on a snappish reply, and scuffed the carpet some more, and fingered his Auditors chain, and while he was about it unfastened the high collar of his brown-and-silver tunic. Some shuffling and clinking noises came from within, and a low laugh. At long last, Lady Alys's light step approached the door; a click, as she unlocked it, and it swung aside.

"Good morning, Aunt Alys," he said dryly.

"Good morning, Miles," she responded, much more cheerfully than he'd been expecting. She waved him inside to the sitting room. The cluttered breakfast tray was jammed onto the little table in the bay window overlooking the back garden. Only crumbs left, alas. Lady Alys was dressed oddly formally for this hour of the day, Miles thought, in a gown more suitable for dinner than breakfast, and was apparently experimenting with her hairstyle; it was loose, brushed in burnished black and silver waves down her back.

Illyan appeared from the direction of the bathroom, shrugging on a tunic over his shirt and trousers, and still wearing bedroom slippers. "Good morning, Miles," he echoed Lady Alys, right down to the repellent morning-person chirp in his voice. His smile faded as he took in Miles s rumpled up-all-night look. His tone flattened. "What's happening?"

"I found some very interesting things at ImpSec HQ last night."

"Progress?"

"Two steps forward, three sideways. Um . . ." He frowned at his aunt, wondering how to throw her out politely. She failed to take a hint, instead seating herself on the little sofa beside the table and attending to him with sharpened interest. Illyan sat beside her. Miles decided cravenly to let Illyan do the dirty work. "This is all highly classified, or it's going to be."

He waited a beat, while they both looked at him. "Do you really think it's appropriate for Lady Alys's ears?" he added.

Bad choice of phrasing; Illyan merely replied, "Certainly. Out with it, Miles, don't keep us in suspense."

Well, if Illyan thought it was all right . . . Miles took a breath, and began a fast-forward description of his last day-cycle's investigation at ImpSec. Neither of his listeners interrupted him, though Lady Alys muttered, "Good for Ivan," when he got to the description of finding their prize needle in the haystack of Weapons Room IV.

Illyan's cheerful air had vanished altogether; he sat tensely. Lady Alys watched his profile in concern, and took his hand; he squeezed hers in turn.

"What I need to know," Miles finished, "is if you remember anything, anything at all, about the time that sample was brought in, during the thwarting of that last Komarran fling."

Illyan rubbed his forehead. "It's . . . pretty blank. I remember Ser Galen's plot, of course, and that initial horrific fuss over discovering the existence of Lord Mark. The Countess was very upset, in her most Betan style. Drove your father to distraction. I remember your report from Earth. A masterpiece of its literary genre. That Sector Four adventure where you smashed both your arms was . . . right after that, right?"

"Yes. But surely someone must have reported on the prokaryote to you. I can see why you might not have risked inspecting it in person."

"I'm sure someone did." Illyan's right hand released Lady Alys's, and clenched into a fist. "They doubtless gave me all the details. And I doubtless put them where I always put the details. But there's nothing left now."

Lady Alys frowned irritatedly at Miles, as if it were somehow all his fault.

"Who ought to have given you that report?" Miles pushed on.

"General Diamant, I suppose. Komarran Affairs chief before Allegre, you remember him? Died just two years after he retired, the poor sod. Miles, I really can't . . . I would surely have been reminded before this, if it were in here!" He clutched his head in frustration. Lady Alys recaptured his hand, and stroked it soothingly.

"Does your friend Captain Galeni have any ideas?" Illyan went on more calmly. "He might have some inside track. It was his fathers plot, after all."

Miles smiled unhappily.

Illyan's eyes narrowed. "You know he's going to turn up on your short list, as soon as it's generated."

"Yes."

"Did you tell Haroche?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"It would have been redundant. Duv will be checked along with everyone else. And . . . I've done him enough bad turns lately."

"Aren't you . . . prejudging your data—my Lord Auditor?"

"Yow know Galeni."

"Not so well as you do."

"Just so. I'm not judging data at all, here. I'm judging the man's character. Motivations, if you like."

"Hm," said Illyan. "Just watch your own motivations there, old son."

"Yes, yes, I know. I not only have to be impartial, I have to appear so. You taught me that one," he added rather nastily. "In a way I'm not likely to forget."

"I did? When?"

"Never mind." He pressed the bridge of his nose. He was not only exhausted, he was getting a fatigue headache. It was time to quit for the night, or he'd be unable to function properly on the next round.

"All right," he sighed. "Last thing. Do you remember, at any time in the last four months, anyone ever giving you a small brown capsule to swallow?"

"No."

"There's two missing. He might have taken one himself at the same time, right along with you." Whoever he was.

"No." Illyan sounded more certain than usual. "I haven't taken any medication in the past thirty years except what my personal physician gives me with his own hands."

Miles recalled Haroche's more-than-one-man theory. "It might even have been your own physician. It's the small brown capsule I'm trying to track."

Illyan shook his head.

Miles levered himself up, and made polite farewells, and staggered off to bed.

He woke in the mid-afternoon, and spent a futile half-hour trying to return to sleep, while his mind worried his new problems. He gave up, rose, and checked in with Haroche by comconsole; the systems analysis team had not yet offered their report. A call to Weddell in the ImpSec clinic labs elicited mostly snarls at the interruption, but also a promise of more information soon. Soon, but not yet.

His restless prowling around his room was interrupted in turn by a call from a very bleary Ivan, who reported the original biocontainer box had been duly examined and returned by Forensics, and could he for God's sakes give the damn thing to somebody else and go off-duty and go to bed now? Miles flinched guiltily, glad Ivan could not detect sleep on his breath over a comconsole, and ordered him to return the box to the guardianship of the Evidence Rooms, and take the rest of the day off.

He was just stepping into the bath when his comconsole chimed again. This time it was Dr. Chenko, from the Imperial Military Hospital's veterans clinic.

"Lord Vorkosigan." Chenko ducked his head in cheery greetings. "My apologies for taking so long. These micro-engineering challenges always prove a little more complex in the execution than the planning. But we've worked up a device small enough to insert under your skull to, we hope safely, trigger your seizures, and we're finally ready to test it on you. If it works properly, we can go ahead with the final calibrations and schedule surgery to install it."

"Oh," said Miles. "Good work." Bad timing.

"When can you come in? Tomorrow?"

Haroche might call with the systems team's report at any time, and when that happened, Miles suspected, things would start to move very quickly. And . . . somewhere in Vorbarr Sultana was a very clever ImpSec-trained man who had made Miles his special target. Did Chenko's experimental gizmo use any protein circuits, and what had happened to that missing capsule? The thought of people he didn't know very well installing devices he didn't understand into his brain gave him cold chills, just now. "I ... probably not tomorrow. I'll have to get back to you on scheduling, Doctor."

Chenko looked disappointed. "Have you had any more episodes since the one we forced in the lab?"

"Not so far."

"Hm. Well, I'd advise you not to wait too long, my lord."

"I understand. I'll do my best."

"And avoid stress," Chenko added as an afterthought, as Miles reached for the disconnect.

"Thank you, Doctor," Miles growled at the empty vid plate.

He was halfway through his shower when he suddenly recalled that this was the night of Laisa's party. His attendance had been just short of Imperially commanded; and his duties, it appeared, were going to permit. At the very least, it would be well to seize the chance beforehand to get in an interim report to Gregor. All he needed was to dredge up a dance partner.

He dressed carefully, and called Delia Koudelka.

"Hi," he greeted her blondness. At least he didn't get a crick in his neck looking up, over a comconsole. "What are you doing tonight?"

"I'm . . . rather busy," she responded politely. "Why do you ask?"

"Oh." Damn. His own fault, for waiting till the last minute, and just assuming . . .

"Or—this doesn't have anything to do with your Imperial Auditor thing, does it?" she added in worry.

A vision of a splendid opportunity to abuse his new powers danced in his head, briefly. Regretfully, he pushed it aside. "No. Just a Miles-thing."

"Sorry," she said, sounding sincere.

"Um ... is Martya in?"

"She's busy tonight too, I'm afraid."

"And Olivia?"

"Her, too."

"Ah. Well, thanks anyway."

"Whatever for?" She cut the com.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Miles's verbal report to Gregor made them both late for the party; Gregor had dozens of questions, most of which Miles could not yet answer. He chewed on his lip in frustration as they paused in the shadowed vestibule opening onto one of the Imperial Residence s smaller reception rooms. It was already bright and crowded with people. In the chamber next to it, visible through arched doors thrown open, a small orchestra was tuning up.

Colonel Lord Vortala the younger, in charge of the Residence's security tonight, had escorted Miles and the Emperor there personally. Vortala, who looked both neat and harried simultaneously, now saluted and broke away back into the hallway, already answering some subordinate though his headset.

"It's hard to get used to not having Illyan at my back," sighed Gregor, staring after him. "Though Vortalas doing a fine job," he added hastily. He glanced down at Miles. "Try not to look so grim. Even without your Auditors chain, it will make people curious what we've been up to, and then we'll both have to spend the rest of the evening trying to squelch gossip."

Miles nodded. "Same goes for you." He couldn't think of any good, or even awful, jokes just at the moment. "Think of Laisa," he advised.

Gregor's face lightened right up; smiling dryly in turn, Miles followed him into the chamber. There they completed Gregor's happiness by finding Dr. Toscane, under Lady Alys's wing as usual. Countess Vorkosigan also stood with them, chatting amiably.

"Oh, good," said the Countess. "Here they are." Gregor captured Laisa's hand, and placed it on his arm, possessively; she smiled up at him with starry eyes. The Countess continued, "Alys, now that her proper escort is here, why don't you let me play Baba for a while. You ought to relax and enjoy yourself at one of these things for a change." A slight inclination of her head: Miles followed the nod to notice Illyan, quite sharp in a dark and unusually well cut civilian-style tunic and trousers, yet managing by pure habit to look not-quite-there, as if light parted to flow around him.

"Thank you, Cordelia," murmured Lady Alys. After Gregor greeted his former security chief, and they exchanged some standard how-are-you-feeling, fine, Sire, you-look-well party chat, Alys determinedly bore Illyan off, before he could slip back into any land of attempted work-mode.

"His convalescence does seem to be going well," said Gregor, watching this byplay in approval.

"You can thank Lady Alys for that," Countess Vorkosigan told him.

"Your son too."

"So I understand."

Miles bowed slightly, and not altogether ironically. He glanced after Illyan and his aunt, who were apparently heading for the refreshment tables. "Not that I'm intimately familiar with the contents of Illyan's closet, but . . . there's something different about the way he's dressed, I swear. Conservative as hell, as always, but . . ."

Countess Vorkosigan smiled. "Lady Alys finally persuaded him to let her recommend a tailor. His taste, or lack of it, in clothing has made her tear her hair for years."

"I always thought it was part of his ImpSec persona. Blandly invisible."

"That, too, certainly."

Gregor and Laisa began comparing what they had been doing for the interminable four hours since they'd last met, a conversation mainly absorbing to its principals; Miles, having spotted Ivan across the room, left them together under his mother's indulgent eye. Ivan was escorting Martya Koudelka, ah ha.

Martya was a younger, shorter, and tawnier version of Delia, though no less striking in her own way. She wore something pale green tonight, in a shade perfectly calculated to complement Imperial dress uniforms.

As Miles neared them, Martya poked her partner and said, "Ivan, you twit, stop watching my sister. You asked me to this dance, remember?"

"Yes, but ... I asked her first."

"You were too slow off the mark. Serve you right if I step on your boots and spoil the shine." She glanced aside at Miles, and added to him, "I'm going to be so glad when Delia finally picks someone, and moves out. I'm getting as tired of hand-me-down men as I am of hand-me-down clothes."

"As well you should be, milady." Miles bowed over her hand, and kissed it.

That got Ivan's attention; he repossessed Martya's hand, and patted it soothingly. "Sorry," he apologized. But his eyes shifted left for one more surreptitious glance.

Miles looked too, and spotted the bright blond head at once. Delia Koudelka was seated on one of the little sofas next to Duv Galeni; they were apparently sharing the plate of hors d'oeuvres balanced on Galeni's knee. The dark head and the blond bent together for a moment, then Delia laughed. Galeni's long teeth flashed in one of his more saturnine smiles. Galeni's knee was touching Delia's, Miles noted with unexpectedly keen interest.

A servitor with a tray of glasses circulated near. "Would you care for a drink?" Ivan asked Martya.

"Yes, please, but not that red stuff. White, please." Ivan departed in pursuit of the servitor, and Martya confided to Miles, "When I dribble it on myself, it won't show that way. I don't know how Delia does it. She never spills anything. Some days I feel like she's practicing to be Lady Alys."

Galeni hadn't mentioned he would be here—with Delia—when they'd spoken at ImpSec HQ . . . only yesterday? "How long has this been going on?" Miles asked Martya, with a jerk of his head in Galeni's direction.

Martya smirked. "Delia told our Da a month ago that Duv was going to be the one. She likes Duv's style, she says. I think he's all right, for an old fellow."

"I have style, too," Miles pointed out.

"One all your own," Martya agreed blandly.

Miles prudently decided not to follow up on that straight line. "Um . . . and when did old Duv find out?"

"Delia's working on it. Some fellows you have to hit with a brick to get their attention. Some you have to hit with a big brick."

As Miles was trying to figure out which category she thought he fell into, Ivan returned, balancing beverages. A few minutes later the first strains of music sounded from the next room; Ivan rescued Martya's gown from its rendezvous with spiced wine and bore her away for the dancing. If the civilian strangers' faces here were work-friends of Laisa's from the shippers consortium, there was quite a sprinkling of other Komarrans in the crowd. Nothing political about this party, hah. Galeni's presence, Miles suspected, must be due to Laisa's hand in the guest list. Her best old friend, of course.

Miles grazed for a time on the hors d'oeuvres, splendid as always, then drifted into the next room to listen to the music and watch the dancers. He became keenly aware that his failure to pack along his own partner left him odd man out, and not the only one; the ratio of men to women present was easily ten to nine, if not ten to eight. He cadged one or two dances with women who knew him well enough not to mind his height, such as Henri Vorvolk's Countess, but all of them were depressingly married or attached. The rest of the time he practiced his best sinister Illyanesque holding-up-the-wall pose.

Illyan himself danced past with Alys Vorpatril. Ivan, pausing beside Miles to fortify himself with a cup of hot spiced wine, stared in astonishment.

"I didn't know old Illyan could dance," he commented.

"I sure didn't know he could dance that well," Miles agreed. Ivan was not the only one doing a double-take. Henri Vorvolk's wife, watching Alys and her partner sail by, whispered some comment in her husband's ear; he looked up with a bemused smile. "I've never seen Illyan do anything like that before. I suppose he was always on-duty." Always. Dr. Ruibal had mentioned personality changes as well as cognitive changes as a possible side effect of the chip removal . . . hell, just removing that thirty-year burden of crushing responsibility could account for it.

A wisp of hair escaped Lady Alys's elaborate beflowered coiffure, and she brushed it back from her forehead. The image of her en deshabille at breakfast burst in Miles's memory, and he had the sudden sensation of being hit with a big brick. He choked on his own wine.

Good God. Illyan's sleeping with my aunt.

And vice versa, or something. He wasn't sure if he should be indignant or pleased. The only clear thought that came to him was a suddenly renewed admiration for Illyan's cool nerve.

"Are you all right?" Ivan asked him.

"Oh, yes." I think I will let Ivan figure this one out for himself. He hid an uncontrollable grin by knocking back another gulp of wine.

He escaped Ivan and retreated into the reception room. At the buffet there he ran into Captain Galeni, selecting snacks for Delia, who waited demurely nearby. She favored Miles with a little, distant wave of her fingers.

"You, ah ... found a new dance partner, I see," Miles commented to Galeni's ear.

Galeni smiled, like a pleased fox with its mouth full of feathers. "Yes."

"I was going to ask her to this thing. She said she was busy tonight."

"Too bad, Miles."

"Is this some kind of skewed symmetry?"

Galeni's black brows twitched. "I don't pretend I'm above a little revenge, but I'm an honorable man. I asked her first if she thought you were serious about her. She said no."

"Oh." Miles pretended to nibble on a fruit pastry. "And are you serious about her?" He felt like a stand-in for Commodore Koudelka, demanding to know Galeni's intentions.

"Deathly," Galeni breathed, his smile, for a moment, utterly gone from his eyes. Miles almost recoiled. Galeni blinked, and continued more lightly, "With her background and connections, she'd make a superb political hostess, don't you think?" The slow smile widened. "The brains and beauty don't hurt, either."

"No fortune," Miles pointed out.

Galeni shrugged. "I can do something about that myself, if I put my mind to it."

Miles had no doubt of it. "Well . . ." It would not quite do to say, Better luck this time. "Would you, ah . . . like me to put in a good word for you with her da the Commodore?"

"I hope you won't take this in bad part, Miles, but I would really rather you didn't try to do me any more favors."

"Oh. I can see that, I guess."

"Thank you. I don't care to repeat mistakes. I'm going to ask her tonight, on the way home." Galeni nodded in determination, and abandoned Miles without a backwards look.

Duv and Delia. Delia and Duv. They made an alliterative couple, anyway.

Miles fended off queries from two acquaintances who had heard garbled rumors about his Imperial Auditor's appointment, then ducked back into the music chamber, where conversation was more difficult. His brain, inexorably, began turning over last night's data, as he leaned and watched with unseeing eyes as the dancers swirled past. Ten or so minutes of this aimless glowering, and people were beginning to stare at him; he pushed off from the wall and went to beg a dance from Laisa while there was still time. Gregor would surely claim the last couple of rounds for himself.

He was absorbed in keeping the beat to a rather fast-paced mirror dance with Laisa, and trying not to appreciate his Emperor's fiancee's well-padded figure too openly, when he caught a glimpse of Galeni through the arched doors into the reception room. An ImpSec colonel and two enlisted guards in ordinary undress greens had accosted him; Galeni and the colonel stood arguing in some fierce undertone. Delia stood a little away from them, blue eyes wide, her hand touching her lips. Galeni was stiff-backed, his face set in that blank and burning look that suggested well-suppressed but dangerous rage. What ImpSec emergency could be dire enough to send them to fetch their top Komarran analyst out of a party? Worried, he slid and dipped and turned so as to put Laisa's back to the archway.

The colonel, gesturing urgently, put his hand on Galeni's sleeve; Galeni shook it off. One of the guards went for a grip on his stunner, loosening it in his holster.

Laisa, breathless, froze with him, then realized this was not a move of the dance. "Miles, what's wrong?"

"Excuse me, milady. I have to attend to something. Please go back to Gregor now." He bowed hastily and slipped around her; inevitably, her gaze followed him as he walked, a little too quickly, through the archway.

"What seems to be the trouble, gentlemen?" Miles asked quietly, coming up to the tense little group. If he couldn't alter the tone of the proceedings, he might at least lower the volume. Half the people in the room were staring already.

The colonel gave him an uncertain nod—he wasn't wearing his Auditor's chain, but the ImpSec man had to know who he was. "My lord. General Haroche has ordered the arrest of this man."

Miles concealed shock, and kept his voice down. "Why?"

"The charge was not specified. I'm required to remove him immediately from the Imperial Residence."

Galeni hissed to Miles, "What the hell is this, Vorkosigan? Do you have a hand in it?"

"No. I don't know. I didn't order this—" Was this connected with his case? And if so, how dare Haroche make a move on it that blindsided him?

Ivan and Martya drifted up too, looking concerned; the colonel looked increasingly rigid, watching his doubtless ordered-to-be-quiet arrest slipping out of his control.

"You got any unpaid traffic fines I don't know about, Duv?" Miles continued, trying to lighten the tone. Both guards had their hands on their stunners now.

"No, goddammit."

"Where is General Haroche right now?" Miles demanded of the colonel. "HQ?"

"No, my lord. He's following on. He'll be here shortly."

To report to Gregor? Haroche had better have an explanation for this. Miles sucked in his breath. "Look, Duv ... I think you'd better go along quietly. I'll look into it."

The colonel shot him a grateful look; Galeni, one of baffled suspicion and enormous frustration. It was a lot to ask of Galeni, to eat this moment of public humiliation, but it could be worse; letting him get stunned or knocked around for resisting arrest at the Emperor's reception sprang to Miles's mind. That would capture the attention of all the people in the room.

Galeni glanced at Delia, a flash of agony in his dark eyes, then at Ivan. "Ivan, will you see Delia gets home all right?"

"Of course, Duv."

Delia was biting her lip; ten more seconds and she was going to mix into this, explosively, Miles gauged from some experience of her.

At Miles's hasty nod, the colonel and the guards eased Galeni out of the room, wisely letting him travel under his own steam, not touching him. Miles waved Ivan away, and followed down the corridor. As he'd feared, the minute they turned the corner, the two guards jammed Galeni up against the nearest wall, and began frisking and binding him.

Miles raised his voice a split second before Galeni rounded and swung on them. "That's not necessary, gentlemen!"

They paused; Galeni, with visible effort, unclenched his fists, if not his jaw, and shrugged them off rather than attempting to throw them bodily across the corridor.

"He'll go like a brother officer if you'll just permit it." His stern glance added silently, Won't you, Duv. Galeni brushed his tunic straight again, and nodded stiffly. "Colonel—what is Captain Galeni charged with really?"

The colonel cleared his throat. He dared not evade answer to an Imperial Auditor, regardless of what orders for public discretion Haroche might have given him. "Treason, m'lord."

"What?" Galeni bellowed, as Miles snapped, "Horse-shit!" Miles's cautionary hand on Galeni's sleeve stopped more physically violent denial.

Miles took three breaths, for control, and to set Galeni a good example, and said, "Duv, I'll come see you as soon as I've talked to Haroche, all right?"

Galeni's nostrils flared, but he echoed, "All right." His teeth set, fortunately, on any further comment. He managed a reasonably dignified stride down the corridor as the arrest-squad escorted him out.

Miles boiled back toward the reception rooms. In the corridor just outside he was intercepted by a posse consisting of Gregor, Laisa, Delia, and his mother.

"What's going on, Miles?" Gregor asked.

"Why did those men take Duv away?" Laisa added, her eyes wide and alarmed.

"Miles, do something!" Delia demanded.

Countess Vorkosigan just watched, one arm crossed over her torso, the other hand to her mouth.

"I don't know. And I bloody should know!" Miles sputtered. "Galeni's just been arrested by ImpSec on"—he stole a glance at Laisa—"some vague charge. By order of Lucas Haroche himself, apparently."

"I must assume he had a reason ..." began Gregor.

"I must assume he made a mistake!" said Delia hotly. "Cordelia, help!"

Countess Vorkosigan's gaze flicked up, past Miles's shoulder. "If you want your information ungarbled, go to the source. Here he comes now."

Miles wheeled to see Haroche round the corner, led by one of Gregor's Armsmen. Haroche's face was no less heavy than his tread. He strode up to the group and gave Gregor a formal nod, "Sire, and a more abbreviated one to Miles, "My Lord Auditor. I came as quickly as I could."

"What the hell is going on, Lucas?" Gregor said quietly. "ImpSec has just arrested one of my guests from the middle of my reception. I trust you can explain why." Did Haroche know Gregor well enough to detect the anger under that slight emphasis on the my?

"My profound apologies, Sire. And to you too, Dr. Toscane. I fully appreciate the awkwardness. But ImpSec's mandate is to keep you—and yours"—a small nod to Laisa—"safe. I was given reason just this evening to suspect the loyalty of the man, and then discovered to my alarm that he was actually in your presence. I may err on the side of caution many times, but I dare not err on the side of carelessness even once. My first priority had to be the physical removal Captain Galeni; everything else, including explanations, could wait." He glanced at the women, and meaningfully away. "For those, I am now at your disposal, Sire."

"Oh." Gregor turned to Countess Vorkosigan, and made a vague frustrated gesture at Delia and Laisa. "Cordelia, would you . . . ?"

Countess Vorkosigan smiled very dryly. "Come, ladies. The gentlemen need to go talk."

"But I want to know what's going on!" protested Laisa.

"We can get it later. I'll explain the system to you. It's really stupid, but it can be made to work. Which, come to think of it, could also sum up a great many other Vor customs. In the meantime, we need to keep the show going out there"—she nodded toward the reception rooms—"and repair what damages we can from this, ah"—a sharp glance at Haroche, which should have made him wince—"unfortunate exercise in caution."

"Repair damages, how?" asked Laisa.

"Lie, dear. Alys and I will show you the drill. . . ." Countess Vorkosigan shepherded them away; Delia looked back over her shoulder at Miles, and mouthed, Do something, dammit!

"We'd better continue this in your office, Sire,"

Haroche murmured. "We'll want the comconsole. I brought copies of my security system team's report for each of you." He touched his tunic, and smiled grimly at Miles. "I figured you'd want to see it as soon as possible, my Lord Auditor."

"Oh. Good. Yes," admitted Miles. He fell in behind the two men as they paced down the corridor, and descended the turning stairs at its end; the Armsman brought up the rear, and took up his post outside Gregor's office. Gregor sealed the door behind them.

"My short list shrank abruptly, and unexpectedly," said Haroche. "If you will, Sire . . ." He nodded to the comconsole; Gregor turned it on. Haroche slotted one secured data card into the read-slot, and handed its twin to Miles. "I'm sure you'll want to study this in more detail later, but I can give you the quick synopsis now.

"As frames go, Miles, yours was very nearly perfect. The insertion of your false visit into the Evidence Rooms' log was extremely well executed; my team had the damnedest time finding any trace of how it was done. I was really starting to wonder. Then it occurred to me to have them recheck your retina scan. Your retina scan was subtly altered by your cryo-revival, were you aware?"

Miles shook his head. "Though I'm not surprised." A lot of me was subtly altered by my cryo-revival.

"It's said that every criminal makes one mistake. In my experience, this isn't necessarily true, but it happened this time. The retina scan on the Evidence Rooms' log was a copy from one made last year, not identical to your current one. As you can see on this overlay." Haroche made the two scans coalesce above the vid plate of Gregor's comconsole; the alterations sprang out, highlighted in purple, a malignant hungover cyclops stare. "And so you are cleared, my Lord Auditor." Haroche opened his hand.

"Thanks," growled Miles. I was never accused. "What does this have to do with Duv Galeni?"

"Bear with me. From the evidence, or lack of it, my team says that the Evidence Room comconsole record had to have been altered by a mole program Galeni physically inserted via its read-slot. That machine is one of the isolated ones. There was no other way."

"Galeni or someone," Miles corrected.

Haroche shrugged. "That's not how we tagged Galeni, however. The other point of attack I turned them loose on was of course the buildings own admittance-log. That proved more fruitful. The log was not altered on-site, but at a remove, via its data links to other ImpSec HQ systems. My team had to peel it right down to the undercode level to find this one; I commend their dedication and patience to you, Sire, as well as their expertise." Haroche zipped though screen after screen of logic-links. "The significant items are highlighted in red; you can follow it out yourselves. They traced the alteration through to the section-head level—the system has lockouts in sections up to that level, y'see. Which the section-heads can override—myself, or rather my second-in-charge at Domestic Affairs, now—Allegre, Olshansky, the Galactic Affairs chief when he's here. They traced it through Allegre's comconsole, down to his Analysts' level. To Captain Galeni's comconsole."

Haroche sighed. "The affairs analysts in all our departments have an enormous amount of discretion as to the data they can access. I can't say too much, in all honesty; it's their job to review everything, since vital decisions are taken at higher levels based upon their reports and recommendations and opinions. I spent a couple of years in that job myself, in Domestic. But Galeni apparently used his analysts codes to gain access to his superior's comconsole, and from there to leapfrog into the larger system."

"Or somebody using Galeni's comconsole did," Miles suggested. He felt sick to his stomach. The highlights on the vid display looked like smears of blood. "Is this really evidence?" If one frame, why not two? Or . . . as many as necessary, till they came up with a suspect Miles neither knew nor liked?

Haroche looked glum. "It may be all we can get. I'd give my arm to be able to question the man under fast-penta, but he was given the allergy treatment when he was promoted to his current position. Fast-penta would kill him. So we have to build our case the old hard way. Any physical evidence for the crime went up in smoke long ago. We're back to your motivations after all, my Lord Auditor. Which men in the Komarran Affairs analysis department had both access to knowledge of the bioengineered prokaryote, and some reason to do this? He had the access; he met with his father, Ser Galen, on Earth just before the original Komarran plot came to grief."

"I know," said Miles shortly. "I was there." Oh, God, Duv . . .

"I don't know how much weight to give the fact that your clone-brother shot Galeni's father—"

"If that were going to be a problem, it would have been a problem before this."

"Perhaps. But it must have left some residue of feeling. Then, on top of that, you recently became instrumental in destroying his marital plans."

"He's over that."

"What marital plans?" asked Gregor.

Miles gritted his teeth. Haroche, you idiot. "At one time, Duv was rather interested in Laisa. Which is how he came to escort her to your ambassadorial reception, where you met. Duv has since, um, found another love interest."

"Oh," said Gregor, looking stricken. "I didn't quite realize . . . things were that serious between Laisa and Galeni."

"It was one-sided."

Haroche shook his head. "I'm sorry, Miles. But the man called you, and I quote, a 'smarmy goddamn little pimp.' Haroche's gaze grew abstracted, his expression for a moment so like Illyan giving one of his verbatim quotes from his chip that Miles drew in his breath. "And went on to declaim quite passionately, 'Vor does mean thief. And you goddamn Barrayaran thieves stick together all right. You and your fucking precious Emperor and the whole damn pack of you.' And you seriously expect me to construe he merely felt mild inconvenience?"

Gregor's eyebrows rose.

"It was to my face," snapped Miles. From the look on Gregor's, the Emperor did not see why this remark constituted a defense. "Not to my back," Miles tried to explain. "Never to my back, not Galeni. It's . . . not his style." He added to Haroche, "Where the hell did you get that? Does ImpSec have all its analysts' private comconsoles monitored, now? Or had someone targeted Galeni before Illyan ever went down?"

Haroche cleared his throat. "Not Galeni's comconsole, in fact, my lord. Yours."

"What!"

"All the public channels in Vorkosigan House are monitored by the ImpSec chiefs own office, for security. They have been for decades. The only three that are not are the Count and the Countess's personal machines, and your personal machine. Surely your parents mentioned this to you before. They knew."

Monitored by Illyan, of course. His father and mother would not have objected to that. And he'd taken Galeni's call that night in ... the comconsole station in the guest suite, right. Miles subsided, seething, but mostly with his mind whirling, trying to remember everything he'd said in the last three months to anyone over any comconsole in Vorkosigan House.

"Your loyalty to your friend does you great credit, Miles," Haroche went on. "But I'm not so sure he's any friend of yours."

"No," said Miles. "No. I know what Galeni paid to get here. He wouldn't piss it down the wind for some . . . personal ire. This is a trail of smoke and mirrors. And anyway, even granted Galeni has some motivation to frame me, what about the original crime? What motive did he have to take out Illyan in the first place?"

Haroche shrugged. "Political, perhaps. There are thirty years of bad blood between ImpSec under Illyan, and some Komarrans. I agree the case is not complete by any means, but it should be easier to pursue now that we have a real direction."

Gregor looked almost distraught. "I had hoped my marriage might do some little part toward healing things with Komarr. A truly unified empire ..."

"It will," Miles assured him. "Doubly so, if Galeni ends up marrying a Barrayaran." If he doesn't get jailed first on some trumped-up treason charge, that is. "You know how Imperial fashions go; you're sure to start a big fad in cross-planetary romances. And given the shortage of Barrayaran girl babies our parents created in our generation, a mob of us are going to have to import wives anyway."

Gregor's lips crooked up, in sad appreciation of Miles's attempted humor.

Miles gripped his copy of the report. "I want to review this."

"Please do," said Haroche. "Sleep on it. And if you can find anything in it that I haven't, let me know. I'm not happy to find any of my ImpSec people are disloyal, regardless of their planet of origin."

Haroche took his farewells; Miles followed immediately, sending a residence servant to find Martin and have his car brought around. If he went back to the party, he'd be jumped by women demanding explanations and action, neither of which he could offer right now. He did not envy Gregor his task of returning and having to socialize as if nothing had happened.

He was in the Counts groundcar, halfway between the Imperial Residence and ImpSec, when his view through the canopy of some dilapidated buildings, with brightly lit towers behind, suddenly sharpened. They took on an abrupt unreal reality, as if grown denser, overpowering, as if about to be outlined in green fire. He had just time to think, Oh shit oh shit oh shi—before the whole scene dissolved into the familiar colored confetti, then darkness.

He returned to consciousness laid out on the car's backseat, with Martin's panicked form looming over him in the dim yellow light. His tunic was ripped open. The canopy was raised to the night mist, and he shivered in the cold.

"Lord Vorkosigan? My lord, oh hell, are you dying? Stop it, stop it!"

"Unh . . ." he managed. It came out a muffled groan to his ringing ears. His mouth hurt; he touched his wet lips, and his fingers came away smeared, red-brown in this light, with fresh blood.

"'S all right, Martin. Only, uh, seizure."

"Is that what they look like? I couldn't think but what you'd been poisoned or shot or something." Martin looked only slightly relieved.

He tried to sit up; Martin's big hands opened in hovering uncertainty whether to help him up or shove him back down. Both his tongue and his lower lip were bitten, and bleeding freely over his best House uniform.

"Should I take you to a hospital or a doctor, my lord? Which one?"

"No."

"Let me take you back home, at least, then. Maybe . . ." Martin's harried face brightened with hope. "Maybe your lady mother will be there soon."

"And take me off your hands?" Miles grunted a pained laugh. She's not going to kiss it and make it well, Martin. No matter how much she might like to.

He wanted desperately to go on to ImpSec HQ. He'd promised Galeni. . . . But he hadn't properly reviewed the new data, and the team of men he'd want to question about it when he had were undoubtedly gone home to a well-earned night's rest. And he was still shaken, and dizzy with the postseizure lassitude.

The military medical people were all too right. The stress-triggered aspect of the damned seizures virtually guaranteed they would always occur at the most inconvenient possible moment. Unfit for duty indeed, any duty. Unfit.

I hate this.

"Home, Martin," he sighed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Miles woke the next morning with what he was coming to recognize as a postseizure hangover. A couple of painkiller tablets helped only slightly. If anything, the symptoms were getting worse with time, not better. Or maybe he was simply becoming more accurate in identifying them, now that they were not masked by a stunner-migraine or suicidal depression. I have to see Chenko soon.

He carried a carafe of coffee up to his room, and locked himself in with his comconsole and Haroche's report. He spent, or wasted, the rest of the morning reviewing it, then re-reviewing it.

The very scantiness of the data made it all the more convincing. If this was supposed to be a double-frame, there ought to be more of it. It was strongly suggestive, but not quite proof. But try as he might, he could spot no flaw in its reasoning, no break in the flow of its logic.

With nothing more optimistic to report than this, he dreaded seeing Galeni again. ImpSec had held the Komarran-born officer overnight in the temporary cells at ImpSec HQ, a small section which had replaced the more extensive downstairs dungeons of Ezar's times. There Galeni sat, pending the formal leveling of charges, after which he would presumably be moved to some more official, and dreary, military prison. Held on suspicion. Barrayaran military law was a trifle unclear just how long one could be held on suspicion. Held on bloody paranoia is more like it.

His sour meditations were interrupted by a call from Dr. Weddell, plaintively demanding to know when he could go home. Miles promised to come take his report and let him out; if he couldn't spring one ImpSec prisoner, he at least might spring another. He donned a fresh, if second-best, House uniform and his Auditor's chain, daubed more stim-salve on his lacerated lip, and called Martin to bring his car around.

The medicinal and chemical odors of the ImpSec HQ clinic still gave Miles unpleasant fluttering sensations in his belly. He entered and found the laboratory chamber Weddell had taken over. A rumpled cot in the corner gave evidence that the galactic bioexpert was following orders, and had not left the sample or his data unattended. Weddell himself was still wearing his same clothes from yesterday morning, though he'd obviously managed to shave between times. He was somewhat less bleary than Miles, which wasn't saying much.

"Well, my Lord Auditor. You probably won't be surprised to learn I have positively identified your find as the same prokaryote that was used on Chief Illyan. It's even the same batch." He led Miles to the lab's comconsole, and embarked on a detailed comparison of the two samples, with visual aids and highlights, and mild self-congratulations when the silent Imperial Auditor was not forthcoming with any.

"I spoke with Illyan," said Miles. "He reports no memory of ever having swallowed a small brown capsule in the last four months. Unfortunately, his memory isn't what it used to be."

"Oh, it wasn't swallowed," Weddell stated positively. "It was never designed to be swallowed."

"How do you know?"

"The capsule was neither permeable nor soluble. It was meant to be broken—a pinch of the fingers would do—and the sample mixed with air and breathed. The vector encapsulation design is obviously meant to be airborne. It's quite sporelike."

"The which what?"

"Here." Weddell banished the vid of the molecular chain presently occupying the vid plate, and brought up an image of an object that looked for all the world like a spherical satellite, bristling with antennae. "The actual prokaryotes would have been unmanageably tiny, if someone had simply attempted to load them naked into those large capsules. Instead, they are contained in these hollow sporelike particles"—Weddell pointed to the vid plate—"which float in air until they contact a wet surface, such as mucous membrane or bronchia. At that point, the delivery units dissolve, releasing their load."

"Could you see them in the air, like smoke or dust? Smell them?"

"If the light was strong I suppose one might see a brief puff as they were initially distributed, but then they would appear to vanish. They would be odorless."

"How long . . . would they hang in the air?"

"Several minutes, at least. Depending on the efficiency of the ventilation."

Miles stared in fascination at the malignant-looking sphere. "This is new information." Though he did not, offhand, see how it helped much.

"It was not possible to reconstruct it from the eidetic chip," noted Weddell a bit stiffly, "as no part of the vector encapsulation would ever reach the chip. There were several other potential means of administration."

"I ... quite understand. Yes. Thank you." He pictured himself going back to Illyan: Can you remember every breath you took in the last four months? Once, Illyan might have.

A bleep from the comconsole interrupted his thoughts; the delivery-spore vanished and was replaced by the head of General Haroche.

"My Lord Auditor." Haroche nodded diffidently at Miles. "My apologies for interrupting you. But since you're in the building, I wonder if you could stop in and see me. At your convenience, of course, when you're done in the labs and so on."

Miles sighed. "Certainly, General." At least it gave him an excuse to put off seeing Galeni for a few more minutes. "I'll be up to your office shortly."

Miles took possession of the code-card containing Weddell's report, and the resealed residue of the sample, and released the man, who departed gratefully. Miles s step quickened as he paced down the too-familiar hallways of ImpSec HQ, up and around to Illyan's old office, Haroche's new one. Maybe, pray God, Haroche had found something fresh to share, something to render this whole tangle less painful.

Haroche locked his office door behind Miles, and courteously pulled up a chair for the Imperial Auditor, close to his comconsole desk. "Have you had any second thoughts since last night, my lord?" Haroche inquired.

"Not really. Weddell has identified the sample, all right. You'll probably want to make a copy of this."

He handed Weddell's data card across to Haroche, who nodded and ran it through his comconsole s read-slot. "Thank you." He handed the original back to Miles and went on, "I've been taking a closer look at the other four senior Komarran Affairs analysts in Allegre's department. None were as well positioned as Galeni to know of the existence of the Komarran sample, and two can be eliminated outright by that very test. The other two lack any motivation that I can uncover."

"The perfect crime," muttered Miles.

"Almost. The truly perfect crime is the one which is never discovered at all; this came very close. Your frame, now, was by all indications a backup plan of some kind, and necessarily less than perfect."

"I never rammed a perfect tactical plan through to reality in my whole time with the Dendarii Mercenaries," Miles sighed. "The best I ever did was good enough."

"You can be assured, Domestic Affairs never did much better," Haroche admitted.

"This is all very circumstantial, without a confession."

"Yes. And I'm not sure how to elicit one. Fast-penta is out. I wondered ... if you might be able to help in that regard. Given your knowledge of the man. Use your noted powers of persuasion on him."

"I might," said Miles, "if I thought Galeni was guilty."

Haroche shook his head. "We may want more evidence, but I'm not optimistic that we're going to get more. You often must proceed with the imperfect, because you must proceed. You can't stop."

"Let the juggernaut roll on, regardless of what gets squashed underneath?" Miles's brows rose. "How are you planning to proceed?"

"A court-martial, probably. The case must be closed properly. As you pointed out, this one can't be left hanging."

What would a court-martial make of this, with ImpSec breathing down its neck urging swift decision? Guilty? Not guilty? Or a more foggy, Not proven? He must find a top military attorney, to evaluate the case. . . . "No, dammit. I don't want a panel of military judges guessing, and then going home to dinner. If the outcome is to be guessed, I can guess myself, all day long. I want to know. You have to keep looking. We can't just stop with Galeni."

Haroche blew out his breath, and rubbed his chin. "Miles, you're asking me to unleash a witch-hunt, here. Potentially very damaging to my organization. You'd have me turn ImpSec upside down, and for what? If the Komarran is guilty—and I'm provisionally convinced he is—you'll have to go very far indeed to