She sensed his fey mood. "Enjoying yourself?" she inquired sarcastically.
"It"s the last fun I"ll get today. Isn"t it?"
Her hand opened in dry acquiescence.
"Where are you taking me? For that matter, where are we?"
"Komarr orbit. We are about to pod over, secretly, to one of the Barrayaran military s.p.a.ce stations. There we are going to have a very private meeting with Chief of Imperial Security Captain Simon Illyan. He came by fast courier all the way from ImpSec headquarters on Barrayar on the basis of a rather ambiguous coded message I sent him, and he"s going to be extremely hot to know why I"ve interrupted his routine. He"s going to demand to know what the h.e.l.l was so important. And," her voice wavered in a sigh, "I"m going to have to tell him."
She led him out of his cabin-cell through the Peregrine Peregrine. She had evidently dismissed his door guard when she"d first come in, but in fact all the corridors seemed deserted. No, not deserted. Cleared.
They came to a personnel pod hatch, and ducked through to find Captain Bothari-Jesek herself at the controls. Bothari-Jesek and no one else. A very private party indeed.
Bothari-Jesek"s usual coolness seemed particularly frigid today. When she glanced over her shoulder at him, her eyes widened, and her dark winged brows drew down in startled disapproval of his pasty, bloated appearance.
"h.e.l.l, Mark. You look like a drowned corpse that"s floated to the surface after a week."
I feel like one. "Thank you," he intoned blandly. "Thank you," he intoned blandly.
She snorted, whether with amus.e.m.e.nt, disgust, or derision he was not sure, and turned her attention back to the pod control interface. Hatches sealed, clamps retracted, and they sped silently away from the side of the Peregrine Peregrine. Between the zero-gee and the accelerations, he found his attention centered on his stretched stomach again, and he swallowed against the nausea.
"Why is the ImpSec head man only ranked as captain?" Mark inquired, to take his mind off his queasiness. "It can"t be for secrecy, everybody knows who he is."
"Another Barrayaran tradition," Bothari-Jesek said. Her tone put a slightly bitter spin on the term tradition tradition. At least she was speaking to him. "Illyan"s predecesor in the post, the late great Captain Negri, never took a promotion beyond captain. That kind of ambition was apparently irrelevant to Emperor Ezar"s Familiar. Everybody knew Negri spoke with the Emperor"s Voice, and his orders cut across all ranks. Illyan . . . was always a little shy of promoting himself over the rank of his former boss, I guess. He"s paid a vice-admiral"s salary, though. Whatever poor sucker heads ImpSec next after Illyan retires is probably going to be stuck with the rank of captain forever."
They approached a mid-sized high orbital s.p.a.ce station. Mark finally glimpsed Komarr, turning far below, shrunken by the distance to a half-moon. Bothari-Jesek kept strictly to the flight path a.s.signed to her by an extremely laconic station traffic control. After a nervous pause while they exchanged codes and countersigns, they locked onto a docking hatch.
They were met by two silent, expressionless armed guards, very neat and trim in Barrayaran green, who ushered them through the station and into a small windowless chamber set up as an office, with a comconsole desk, three chairs, and no other decoration.
"Thank you. Leave us," said the man behind the desk. The guards exited as silently as they had done everything else.
Alone, the man seemed to relax slightly. He nodded to Bothari-Jesek. "Hullo, Elena. It"s good to see you." His light voice had an unexpected warm timbre, like an uncle greeting a favorite niece.
The rest of him seemed exactly as Mark had studied in Galen"s vids. Simon Illyan was a slight, aging man, gray rising in a tide from his temples into his brown hair. A rounded face with a snub nose was too etched with faint lines to look quite youthful. He wore, on this military installation, correct officer"s undress greens and insignia like the ones Quinn had tried to foist on Mark, with the Horus-eye badge of Imperial Security winking from his collar.
Mark realized Illyan was staring back at him with the most peculiar suffused look on his face. "My G.o.d, Miles, you-" he began in a strangled voice, then his eye lit with comprehension. He sat back in his chair. "Ah."" His mouth twisted up on one side. "Lord Mark. Greetings from your lady mother. And I am most pleased to meet you at last." He sounded perfectly sincere.
Not for long, thought Mark hopelessly. And, thought Mark hopelessly. And, Lord Mark? He can"t be serious. Lord Mark? He can"t be serious.
"Also pleased to know where you are again. I take it, Captain Quinn, that my department"s message about Lord Mark"s disappearance from Earth finally caught up with you?"
"Not yet. It"s probably still chasing us from . . . our last stop."
Illyan"s brows rose. "So did Lord Mark come in from the cold on his own, or did my erstwhile subordinate send him to me?"
"Neither, sir." Quinn seemed to have trouble speaking. Bothari-Jesek wasn"t even trying to.
Illyan leaned forward, growing more serious, though still tinged with a slight irony. "So what half-c.o.c.ked, insubordinate, I-thought-you-wanted-me-to-use-my-initiative-sir scam has he sent you to try to con me into paying for this time?"
"No scam, sir," muttered Quinn. "But the bill is going to be huge."
The coolly amused air faded altogether as he studied her grey face. "Yes?" he said after a moment.
Quinn leaned on the desk with both hands, not for emphasis, Mark fancied, but for support. "Illyan, we have a problem. Miles is dead."
Illyan took this in with a waxen stillness. Abruptly, he turned his chair around. Mark could see only the back of his head. His hair was thin. When he turned back, the lines had sprung out on his set face like a figure-ground reversal; like scars. "That"s not a problem, Quinn," he whispered. "That"s a disaster disaster." He laid his hands down flat, very carefully, across the smooth black surface of the desk. So that"s where Miles picked up that gesture So that"s where Miles picked up that gesture, Mark, who had studied it, thought irrelevantly.
"He"s frozen in a cryo-chamber." Quinn licked her dry lips.
Illyan"s eyes closed; his mouth moved, whether on prayers or curses Mark could not tell. But he only said, mildly, "You might have said that first. The rest would have followed as a logical supposition." His eyes opened, intent. "So what happened? How bad were his wounds-not a head wound, pray G.o.d? How well-prepped was he?"
"I helped do the prep myself. Under combat conditions. I . . . I think think it was good. You can"t know until . . . well. He took a very bad chest wound. As far as I could tell he was untouched from the neck up." it was good. You can"t know until . . . well. He took a very bad chest wound. As far as I could tell he was untouched from the neck up."
Illyan breathed, carefully. "You"re right, Captain Quinn. Not a disaster. Only a problem. I"ll alert the Imperial Military Hospital at Vorbarr Sultana to expect their star patient. We can transfer the cryo-chamber from your ship to my fast courier immediately." Was the man babbling, just a little, with relief?
"Uh . . ." said Quinn. "No."
Illyan rested his forehead gingerly in his hand, as if a headache was starting just behind his eyes. "Finish, Quinn," he said in a tone of m.u.f.fled dread.
"We lost the cryo-chamber."
"How could you lose a cryo-chamber?!"
"It was a portable." She intercepted his burning stare, and hurried up her report. "It was left downside in the scramble to get off. Each of the combat drop shuttles thought the other one had it. It was a mis-communication-I checked checked, I swear. It turned out the medic in charge of the cryo-chamber had been cut off from his shuttle by enemy forces. He found himself with access to a commercial shipping facility. We think he shipped the cryo-chamber from there."
"You think think? I will ask-what combat drop mission, in a moment. Where did he ship it?" combat drop mission, in a moment. Where did he ship it?"
"That"s just it, we don"t know. He was killed before he could report. The cryo-chamber could be on its way literally anywhere by now."
Illyan sat back and rubbed his lips, which were set in a thin, ghastly smile. "I see. And all this happened when? And where?"
"Two weeks and three days ago, on Jackson"s Whole."
"I sent you all to Illyrica, via Vega Station. How the h.e.l.l did you end up on Jackson"s Whole?" sent you all to Illyrica, via Vega Station. How the h.e.l.l did you end up on Jackson"s Whole?"
Quinn stood at parade rest, and took it from the top, a stiff, clipped synopsis of the events of the last four weeks from Escobar onward. "I have a complete report with all our vid records and Miles"s personal log here, sir." She laid a data cube on his comconsole.
Illyan eyed it like a snake; his hand did not move toward it. "And the forty-nine clones?"
"Still aboard the Peregrine Peregrine, sir. We"d like to off-load them."
My clones. What would Illyan do with them? Mark dared not ask. What would Illyan do with them? Mark dared not ask.
"Miles"s personal log tends to be a fairly useless doc.u.ment, in my experience," observed Illyan distantly. "He is quite canny about what to leave out." He grew introspective, and fell silent for a time. Then he rose, and walked from side to side across the little office. The cool facade cracked without warning; face contorted, he turned and slammed his fist into the wall with bone-crunching force, shouting, "d.a.m.n the boy for making a f.u.c.king farce out of his own funeral!" the boy for making a f.u.c.king farce out of his own funeral!"
He stood with his back to them; when he turned again and sat down his face was stiff and blank. When he looked up, he addressed Bothari-Jesek.
"Elena. It"s clear I"m going to have to stay here at Komarr, for the moment, to coordinate the search from ImpSec"s galactic affairs HQ. I can"t afford to put an extra five days of travel time between myself and the action. I will, of course . . . compose the formal missing-in-action report on Lieutenant Lord Vorkosigan and forward it immediately to Count and Countess Vorkosigan. I hate to think of it delivered by some subordinate, but it will have to be. But will you, as a personal favor to me, escort Lord Mark to Vorbarr Sultana, and deliver him to their custody?"
No, no, no, Mark screamed inside. Mark screamed inside.
"I . . . would rather not go to Barrayar, sir."
"The Prime Minister will have questions that only one who was on the spot can answer. You are the most ideal courier I can imagine for a matter of such . . . complex delicacy. I grant you the task will be painful."
Bothari-Jesek was looking trapped. "Sir, I"m a senior shipmaster. I"m not free to leave the Peregrine Peregrine. And-frankly-I do not care to escort Lord Mark."
"I"ll give you anything you ask, in return."
She hesitated. "Anything?"
He nodded.
She glanced at Mark. "I gave my word that all the House Bharaputra clones would be taken somewhere safe, somewhere humane, where the Jacksonians can"t reach. Will you redeem my word for me?"
Illyan chewed his lip. "ImpSec can launder their ident.i.ties readily enough, of course. No difficulty there. Appropriate placement might be trickier. But yes. We"ll take them on."
Take them on. What did Illyan mean? For all their other flaws, the Barrayarans at least did not practice slavery. What did Illyan mean? For all their other flaws, the Barrayarans at least did not practice slavery.
"They"re children," Mark blurted. "You have to remember they"re only children." It"s hard to remember It"s hard to remember, he wanted to add, but couldn"t, under Bothari-Jesek"s cold eyes.
Illyan averted his glance from Mark. "I shall seek Countess Vorkosigan"s advice, then. Anything else?"
"The Peregrine Peregrine and the and the Ariel Ariel-"
"Must remain, for the moment, in Komarr orbit and communications quarantine. My apologies to your troops, but they"ll have to tough it out."
"You"ll cover the costs for this mess?"
Illyan grimaced. "Alas, yes."
"And . . . and look hard hard for Miles!" for Miles!"
"Oh, yes," he breathed.
"Then I"ll go." Her voice was faint, her face pale.
"Thank you," said Illyan quietly. "My fast courier will be at your disposal as quickly as you can make ready to depart." His eye fell reluctantly on Mark. He had been avoiding looking at Mark for the whole last half of this interview. "How many personal guards do you wish?" he asked Bothari-Jesek. "I"ll make it clear to them that they are under your command till they see you safe to the Count."
"I don"t want any, but I suppose I have to sleep sometime. Two," Bothari-Jesek decided.
And so he was officially made a prisoner of the Barrayaran Imperial government, Mark thought. The end of the line. The end of the line.
Bothari-Jesek rose and motioned Mark to his feet. "Come on. I want to get a few personal items from the Peregrine Peregrine. And tell my exec he"s got the command, and explain to the troops about being confined to quarters. Thirty minutes."
"Good. Captain Quinn, please remain."
"Yes, sir."
Illyan stood, to see Bothari-Jesek out. "Tell Aral and Cordelia," he began, and paused. Time stretched.
"I will," said Bothari-Jesek quietly. Mutely, Illyan nodded.
The door seals hissed open for her stride. She didn"t even look back to see if Mark was following. He had to break into a run every five steps to keep up.
His cabin aboard the ImpSec fast courier proved to be even tinier and more cell-like than the one he"d occupied aboard the Peregrine Peregrine. Bothari-Jesek locked him in and left him alone. There was not even the time marker and limited human contact of three-times-a-day ration delivery; the cabin had its own computer-controlled food dispensing system, pneumatically connected to some central store. He over-ate compulsively, no longer sure why or what it could do for him, besides provide a combination of comfort and self-destruction. But death from the complications of obesity took years, and he only had five days.
On the last day his body switched strategies, and he became violently ill. He managed to keep this fact secret until the trip downside in the personnel shuttle, where it was mistaken for zero-gravity and motion sickness by a surprisingly sympathetic ImpSec guard, who apparently suffered from some such slight weakness himself. The man promptly and cheerfully slapped an anti-nausea patch from the med kit on the wall onto the side of Mark"s neck.
The patch also had some sedative power. Mark"s heart rate slowed, an effect which lasted till they landed and transferred to a sealed ground-car. A guard and a driver took the front compartment, and Mark sat across from Bothari-Jesek in the rear compartment for the last leg of his nightmare journey, from the military shuttleport outside the capital into the heart of Vorbarr Sultana. The center of the Barrayaran Empire.
It wasn"t until he found himself having something resembling an asthma attack that Bothari-Jesek looked up from her own glum self-absorption and noticed.
"What the h.e.l.l"s the matter with you?" She leaned forward and took his pulse, which was racing. He was clammy all over.
"Sick," he gasped, and then at her irritated I-could-have-figured-that-out-for-myself look, admitted, "Scared." He thought he"d been as frightened as a human being could be, under Bharaputran fire, but that was as nothing compared to this slow, trapped terror, this drawn-out suffocating helplessness to affect his destiny.
"What do you have to be afraid of?" she asked scornfully. "n.o.body"s going to hurt you."
"Captain, they"re going to kill me."
"Who? Lord Aral and Lady Cordelia? Hardly. If for any reason we fail to get Miles back, you could be the next Count Vorkosigan. Surely you"ve figured on that."
At this point he satisfied a long-held curiosity. When he pa.s.sed out, his breathing did indeed begin again automatically. He blinked away black fog, and fended off Bothari-Jesek"s alarmed attempt to loosen his clothes and check his tongue to be sure he hadn"t swallowed it. She had pocketed a couple of anti-nausea patches from the shuttle medkit, just in case, and she held one uncertainly. He motioned urgently for her to apply it. It helped.
"Who do you think these people are?" she demanded angrily, when his breathing grew less irregular.
"I don"t know. But they"re sure as h.e.l.l going to be p.i.s.sed at me."
The worst was the knowledge that it need not have been this bad. Any time before the Jackson"s Whole debacle he could in theory have walked right in and said h.e.l.lo. But he"d wanted to meet Barrayar on his own terms. Like trying to storm heaven. His attempt to make it better had made it infinitely worse.
She sat back and regarded him with slow bemus.e.m.e.nt. "You really are scared to death, aren"t you?" she said, in a tone of revelation that made him want to howl. "Mark, Lord Aral and Lady Cordelia are going to give you the benefit of every doubt. I know they will. But you have to do your part."
"What is my part?"
"I"m . . . not sure," she admitted.
"Thanks. You"re such a help."
And then they were there. The ground-car swung through a set of gates and into the narrow grounds of a huge stone residence. It was the pre-electric Time-of-Isolation design that gave it such an air of fabulous age, Mark decided. The architecture he"d seen like it in London all dated back well over a millenium, though this pile was only a hundred and fifty standard years old. Vorkosigan House.
The canopy swung up, and he struggled out of the ground-car after Bothari-Jesek. This time she waited for him. She grasped him firmly by the upper arm, either worried he would collapse or fearing he would bolt. They stepped through a pleasantly-hued sunlight into the cool dimness of a large entry foyer paved in black and white stone and featuring a remarkable wide curving staircase. How many times had Miles stepped across this threshold?
Bothari-Jesek seemed an agent of some evil fairy, which had s.n.a.t.c.hed away the beloved Miles and replaced him with this pallid, pudgy changeling. He choked down an hysterical giggle as the sardonic mocker in the back of his brain called out, Hi, Mom and Dad, I"m home. . . . Hi, Mom and Dad, I"m home. . . . Surely the evil fairy was himself. Surely the evil fairy was himself.