Mirror Dance b-9

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Aragones never called them corpsicles, or any of the other nervous nicknames coined by the soldiers. Always my patients. That was another thing Miles liked about the Escobaran physician.

  “In general—unfortunately—our casualties don’t arrive on a scheduled, orderly, one-by-one basis,” Miles half-apologized in turn. “In this case we had twenty-eight people hit sickbay, with every degree and sort of injury—extreme trauma, burns, chemical contamination—all at once. Triage got brutal, for a little while, till things sorted out. My people did their best.” He hesitated. “Do you think it would be worth our while to re-certify a few of our medtechs in your latest techniques, and if so, would you be willing to lead the seminar?”

  Aragones spread his hands, and looked thoughtful. “Something might be worked out … talk with Administrator Margara, before you go.”

  Quinn caught Miles’s nod, and made a note on her report panel.

  Aragones called up charts on his comconsole. “The worst first. We could do nothing for your Mr. Kee or Ms. Zelaski.”

  “I … saw Kee’s head injury. I’m not surprised.” Smashed like a melon. “But we had the cryo-chamber available, so we tried.”

  Aragones nodded understanding. “Ms. Zelaski had a similar problem, though less externally obvious. So much of her internal cranial circulation was broken during the trauma, her blood could not be properly drained from her brain, nor the cryo-fluids properly perfused. Between the crystalline freezing and the hematomas, the neural destruction was complete. I’m sorry. Their bodies are presently stored in our morgue, waiting your instructions.”

  “Kee wished his body to be returned for burial to his family on his homeworld. Have your mortuary department prepare and ship him through the usual channels. We’ll give you the address.” He jerked his chin at Quinn, who made another note. “Zelaski listed no family or next of kin—some Dendarii just don’t, or won’t, and we don’t insist. But she did once tell some of her squad mates how she wanted her ashes disposed of. Please have her remains cremated and returned to the Triumph in care of our medical department.”

  “Very well.” Aragones signed off the charts on his vid display; they disappeared like vanishing spirits. He called up others in their place.

  “Your Mr. Durham and Ms. Vifian are both presently only partially healed from their original injuries. Both are suffering from what I would call normal neural-traumatic and cryo-amnesia. Mr. Durham’s memory loss is the more profound, partly because of complications due to his pilot’s neural implants, which we alas had to remove.”

  “Will he ever be able to have another headset installed?”

  “It’s too early to tell. I would call both their long-term prognoses good, but neither will be fit to return to their military duties for at least a year. And then they will need extensive re-training. In both cases I highly recommend they each be returned to their home and family environments, if that is possible. Familiar surroundings will help facilitate and trigger re-establishment of their access to their own surviving memories, over time.”

  “Lieutenant Durham has family on Earth. We’ll see he gets there. Tech Vifian is from Kline Station. We’ll see what we can do.”

  Quinn nodded vigorously, and made more notes.

  “I can release them to you today, then. We’ve done all we can, here, and ordinary convalescent facilities will do for the rest. Now … that leaves your Mr. Aziz.”

  “My trooper Aziz,” Miles agreed to the claim. Aziz was three years in the Dendarii, had applied and been accepted for officer’s training. Twenty-one years old.

  “Mr. Aziz is … alive again. That is, his body sustains itself without artificial aids, except for a slight on-going problem with internal temperature regulation that seems to be improving on its own.”

  “But Aziz didn’t have a head wound. What went wrong?” asked Miles. “Are you telling me he’s going to be a vegetable?”

  “I’m afraid Mr. Aziz was the victim of a bad prep. His blood was apparently drained hastily, and not sufficiently completely. Small freezing hemocysts riddled his brain tissue with necrotic patches. We removed them, and started new growth, which has taken hold successfully. But his personality is permanently lost.”

  “Everything?”

  “He may perhaps retain a few frustrating fragments of memories. Dreams. But he cannot re-access his neural pathways through new routes or sub-routines, because the tissue itself is gone. The new man will start over as a near-infant. He’s lost language, among other things.”

  “Will he recover his intelligence? In time?”

  Aragones hesitated for too long before answering. “In a few years, he may be able to do enough simple tasks to be self-supporting.”

  “I see,” Miles sighed.

  “What do you want to do with him?”

  “He’s another one with no next of kin listed.” Miles blew out his breath. “Transfer him to a long-term care facility here on Escobar. One with a good therapy department. I’ll ask you to recommend one. I’ll set up a small trust fund to cover the costs till he’s out on his own. However long that takes.”

  Aragones nodded, and both he and Quinn made notes.

  After settling further administrative and financial details, the conference broke up. Miles insisted on stopping to see Aziz, before picking up the other two convalescents.

  “He cannot recognize you,” Dr. Aragones warned as they entered the hospital room.

  “That’s all right.”

  At first glance, Aziz did not look as much like death warmed over as Miles had expected, despite the unflattering hospital gown. There was color and warmth in his face, and his natural melanin level saved him from being hospital-pale. But he lay listlessly, gaunt, twisted in his covers. The bed’s sides were up, unpleasantly suggesting a crib or a coffin. Quinn stood against the wall and folded her arms. She had visceral associations about hospitals and clinics too.

  “Azzie,” Miles called softly bending over him. “Azzie, can you hear me?”

  Aziz’s eyes tracked momentarily, but then wandered again.

  “I know you don’t know me, but you might remember this, later. You were a good soldier, smart and strong. You stood by your mates in the crash. You had the sort of self-discipline that saves lives.” Others, not your own. “Tomorrow, you’ll go to another sort of hospital, where they’ll help you keep on getting better.” Among strangers. More strangers. “Don’t worry about the money. I’m setting it up so it’ll be there as long as you need it.” He doesn’t know what money is. “I’ll check back on you from time to time, as I get the opportunity,” Miles promised. Promised who? Aziz? Aziz was no more. Himself? His voice softened to inaudibility as he ran down.

  The aural stimulation made Aziz thrash around, and emit some loud and formless moans; he had no volume control yet, apparently. Even through a filter of desperate hope, Miles could not recognize it as an attempt at communication. Animal reflexes only.

  “Take care,” he whispered, and withdrew, to stand a moment trembling in the hallway.

  “Why do you do that to yourself?” Quinn inquired tartly. Her crossed arms, hugging herself, added silently, And to me?

  “First, he died for me, literally, and second,” he attempted to force his voice to lightness, “don’t you find a certain obsessive fascination in looking in the face of what you most fear?”

  “Is death what you most fear?” she asked curiously.

  “No. Not death.” He rubbed his forehead, hesitated. “Loss of mind. My game plan all my life has been to demand acceptance of this” a vague wave down the length, or shortness, of his body, “because I was a smart-ass little bastard who could think rings around the opposition, and prove it time after time. Without the brains …” Without the brains I’m nothing. He straightened against the aching tension in his belly, shrugged, and twitched a smile at her. “March on, Quinn.”

  After Aziz, Durham and Vifian were not so hard to deal with. They could walk and talk, if haltingly, and Vifian even rec
ognized Quinn. They took them back to the shuttleport in the rented groundcar, and Quinn tempered her usual go-to-hell style of driving in consideration of their half-healed wounds. Upon reaching the shuttle Miles sent them forward to sit with the pilot, a comrade, and by the time reached the Triumph Durham had recalled not only the man’s name, but some shuttle piloting procedures. Miles turned both convalescents over to the medtech who met them at the shuttle hatch door, who escorted them off to sickbay to bed down again after the exhaustion of their short journey. Miles watched them exit, and felt a little better.

  “Costly,” Quinn observed reflectively.

  “Yes,” Miles sighed. “Rehabilitation is starting to take an awfully bite out of the medical department’s budget. I may have Fleet accounting split it off, so Medical doesn’t find itself dangerously short-changed. But what would you have? My troops were loyal beyond measure; I cannot betray them. Besides,” he grinned briefly, “the Barrayaran Imperium is paying.”

  “Your ImpSec boss was on about your bills, I thought, at your mission briefing.”

  “Illyan has to explain why enough cash to fund a private army keeps disappearing in his department budget every year, without ever admitting to the private army’s existence. Certain Imperial accountants tend to accuse him of departmental inefficiency, which gives him great anguish.”

  The Dendarii shuttle pilot, having shut down his ship, ducked into the corridor and sealed the hatch. He nodded to Miles. “While I was waiting for you at Port Beauchene, sir, I picked up another story on the local news net, that you might be interested in. Local news here on Escobar, that is.” The man was bouncing lightly his toes.

  Say on, Sergeant Lajoie.” Miles cocked an eyebrow up at him.

  “The Cetagandans have just announced their withdrawal from Marilac. They’re calling it—what was that, now—’Due to great progress in the cultural alliance, we are turning police matters over to local control.’ “

  Miles’s fists clenched, joyously. “In other words, they’re abandoning their puppet government! Ha!” He hopped from foot to foot, and pounded Quinn on the back. “You hear that, Elli! We’ve won! I mean, They’ve won, the Marilacans.” Our sacrifices are redeemed… . He regained control of his tightening throat before he burst into song or some like foolishness. “Do me a favor, Lajoie. Pass the word through the Fleet. Tell them I said, You folks do good work. Eh?”

  “Yes, sir. My pleasure.” The grinning pilot saluted cheerfully, and loped off up the corridor.

  Miles’s grin stretched his face. “See, Elli! What Simon Illyan just bought would have been cheap at a thousand times the cost. A full-scale Cetagandan planetary invasion—first impeded—then bogged—then foundered—failed!” And in a fierce whisper, “I did it! I made the difference.”

  Quinn too was smiling, but one perfect eyebrow curved in a certain dry irony. “It’s lovely, but if I was reading between the lines correctly, I thought what Barrayaran Imperial Security really wanted was for the Cetagandan military to be tied up in the guerilla war on Marilac. Indefinitely. Draining Cetagandan attention away from Barrayaran borders and jump points.”

  “They didn’t put that in writing.” Miles’s lips drew back wolfishly. “All Simon said was, ’Help the Marilacans as opportunity presents.’ That was the standing order, in so many words.”

  “But you knew damn well what he really wanted.”

  “Four bloody years was enough. I have not betrayed Barrayar. Nor anyone else.”

  “Yeah? So if Simon Illyan is so much more Machiavellian than you are, how is it that your version prevailed? Someday, Miles, you are going to run out of hairs to split with those people. And then what will you do?”

  He smiled, and shook his head, evading answer.

  His elation over the news from Marilac still made him feel like he was walking in half-gravity when he arrived at his cabin aboard the Triumph. After a surreptitious glance to be sure the corridor was unpeopled, he embraced and kissed Quinn, a deep kiss that was going to have to last them for a long while, and she went off to her own quarters. He slipped inside, and echoed the door’s closing sigh with his own. Home again.

  It was home, for half his psyche, he reflected, tossing his flight bag onto his bed and heading directly for the shower. Ten years ago, Lord Miles Vorkosigan had invented the cover identity of Admiral Naismith out of his head in a desperate moment, and frantically faked his way to temporary control of the hastily re-named Dendarii Mercenaries. Barrayaran Imperial Security had discovered the cover to be useful … no. Credit where it was due. He had persuaded, schemed, demonstrated, and coerced ImpSec into finding use for this cover. Be careful what you pretend to be. You might become it.

  When had Admiral Naismith stopped being a pretense? Gradually, surely, but mostly since his mercenary mentor Commodore Tung had retired. Or perhaps the wily Tung had recognized before Miles had that his services in propping Miles up to his prematurely exalted rank were no longer required. Colored vid arrays of Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet organization bloomed in Miles’s head as he showered. Personnel—equipment—administration—logistics—he knew every ship, every trooper, every shuttle and piece of ordnance, now. He knew how they fit together, what had to be done first, second, third, twentieth, how to place a precisely calculated force at any point on the tactical field. This was expertise, to he able to look at a ship like the Triumph and see with his mind’s eye right through the walls to every engineering detail, every strength and vulnerability; to look at a commando raid, or a briefing table ringed with captains and captain-owners and know what each one would do or say before they knew it themselves. I’m on top. Finally, I’m on top of it all. With this lever, I can move worlds. He switched the shower to “dry,” and turned in the blast warm air. He left the bathroom still chortling under his breath. I like it. His chortle died away in puzzlement when he unlatched the door to his uniform cupboard, and found it bare. Had his batman taken them all off for cleaning or repairs? His bewilderment grew as he looked other drawers, and found only a residue of the wildly assorted Virilian togs he wore when he stretched the chain of his identity one link further, and played spy for the Dendarii. Plus some of his shabbier underwear. Was this some sort of practical joke? If so, he’d have have the last laugh. Naked and irritated, he snapped open the locker where his space armor dwelt. Empty. That was almost shocking. Somebody’s taken it down to Engineering to re-calibrate it, or add tactics programs, or something. His batman should have returned it by now, though. What if he needed it in a hurry?

  Time. His people would be gathering. Quinn had once claimed he could carry on naked, and only make those around him feel overdressed. He was momentarily tempted to test her assertion, but overcame the mordant vision, and put the shirt and trousers and sandals he’d been wearing back on. He didn’t need a uniform in order to dominate a briefing room, not any more.

  On the way to the meeting, he passed Sandy Hereld in the corridor, coming off duty, and gave her a friendly nod. She wheeled and walked backward in startlement. “You’re back, sir! That was quick.” He would hardly describe his several-week journey to Imperial HQ Barrayar as quick. She must mean the trip downside. “It only took two hours.”

  “What?” Her nose wrinkled. She was still walking backwards, reached the end of the corridor.

  He had a briefing room full of senior officers waiting. He waved and swung down a lift tube. The briefing room was comfortingly familiar, right down to the array of faces around the darkly shining table. Captain Auson of the Triumph. Elena Bothari-Jesek, recently promoted captain of the Peregrine. Her husband Commodore Baz Jesek, Fleet engineer and in charge, in Miles’s absence, of all the repair and refit activities of the Dendarii Fleet in Escobar orbit. The couple, Barrayarans themselves, were with Quinn among the handful of Dendarii apprised of Miles’s double identity. Captain Truzillo of the Jayhawk, and a dozen more, all tested and true. His people.

  Bel Thorne of the Ariel was late. That was unusual. One of Thorne’s driving character
istics was an insatiable curiosity; a new mission briefing was like a Winterfair gift to the Betan hermaphrodite. Miles turned to Elena Bothari-Jesek, to make small talk while they waited.

  “Did you get a chance to visit your mother, downside on Escobar?”

  “Yes, thanks.” She smiled. “It was … nice, to have a little time. We had a chance to talk about some things we’d never talked about the first time we met.”

  It had been good for both of them, Miles judged. Some of the permanent strain seemed gone from Elena’s dark eyes. Better and better, bit by bit. “Good.”

  He glanced up as the doors hissed open, but it was only Quinn, blowing in with the secured files in hand. She was back in full officer’s undress kit, and looking very comfortable and efficient. She handed the files to Miles, and he loaded them into the comconsole, and waited another minute. Still no Bel Thorne.

  Talk died away. His officers were giving him attentive, let’s-get-on-with-it looks. He’d better not stand around much longer with his thumb in his ear. Before bringing the console display to life, he inquired, “Is there some reason Captain Thorne is late?”

  They looked at him, and then at each other. There can’t be something wrong with Bel, it would have been reported to me first thing. Still, a small leaden knot materialized in the pit of his stomach. “Where is Bel Thorne?”

  By eye, they elected Elena Bothari-Jesek as spokesperson. That was an extremely bad sign. “Miles,” she said hesitantly, “was Bel supposed to be back before you?”

  “Back? Where did Bel go?”

  She was looking at him as though he’d lost his mind. “Bel left with you, in the Ariel, three days ago.”

  Quinn’s head snapped up. “That’s impossible.”

  “Three days ago, we were still en route to Escobar,” Miles stated. The leaden knot was transmuting into neutron star matter. He was not dominating this room at all well. In fact, it seemed to be tilting.