Illyan averted his glance from Mark. “I shall seek Countess Vorkosigan’s advice, then. Anything else?”
“The Peregrine and the 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 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.
Bothari-Jesek rose and motioned Mark to his feet. “Come on. I want to get a few personal items from the 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. 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 hell’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. “Nobody’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 passed 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 hell going to be pissed 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 hello. 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 bemusement. “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 snatched 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… . Surely the evil fairy was himself.
Chapter Twelve
They were met in the entry hall by a pair of liveried servants wearing Vorkosigan brown and silver. In a high Vor household even the staff played soldier. One of them directed Bothari-Jesek away to the right. Mark could have wept. She despised him, but at least she was familiar. Stripped of all support and feeling more utterly alone than when locked in the darkness of his cabin, he turned to follow the other manservant through a short arched hallway and a set of doors on the left.
He had memorized the layout of Vorkosigan House under Galen’s tutelage, long ago, so he knew they were entering a room dubbed the First Parlor, an antechamber to the great library that ran from the front of the house to the back. By the standards of Vorkosigan House’s public rooms he supposed it was relatively intimate, though its high ceiling seemed to lend it a cool, disapproving austerity. His consciousness of the architectural detail was instantly obliterated when he saw the woman sitting on a padded sofa, quietly awaiting him.
She was tall, neither thin nor stout, a sort of middle-aged solid in build. Red hair streaked with natural gray wound in a complex knot on the back of her head, leaving her face free to make its own statement of cheekbone, line of jaw, and clear grey eye. Her posture was contained, poised rather than resting. She wore a soft silky beige blouse, a hand-embroidered sash that he suddenly realized matched the pattern on his own stolen one, and a calf-length tan skirt and buskins. No jewelry. He had expected something more os
tentatious, elaborate, intimidating, the formal icon of Countess Vorkosigan from the vids of reviewing stands and receptions. Or was her sense of power so fully encompassed that she didn’t need to wear it, she was it? He could see no physical similarity whatsoever between her and himself. Well, maybe eye color. And the paleness of their skins. And the bridge of the nose, perhaps. The line of the jaw had a certain congruence not apparent from vids—
“Lord Mark Vorkosigan, milady,” the manservant announced portentously, making Mark flinch.
“Thank you, Pym,” she nodded to the middle-aged retainer, dismissing him. The Armsman’s disappointed curiosity was well-concealed, except for one quick glance back before closing the doors after himself.
“Hello, Mark.” Countess Vorkosigan’s voice was a soft alto. “Please sit.” She waved at an armchair set at a slight angle opposite her sofa. It did not appear to be hinged and sprung to snap closed upon him, and it was not too close to her; he lowered himself into it, gingerly, as instructed. Unusually, it was not too high for his feet to touch the floor. Had it been cut down for Miles?
“I am glad to meet you at last,” she stated, “though I’m sorry the circumstances are so awkward.”
“So am I,” he mumbled. Glad, or sorry? And who were these I’s sitting here, lying politely to each other about their gladness and sorrow? Who are we, lady? He looked around fearfully for the Butcher of Komarr. “Where is … your husband?”
“Ostensibly, greeting Elena. Actually, he funked out and sent me into the front line first. Most unlike him.”
“I … don’t understand. Ma’am.” He didn’t know what to call her.
“He’s been drinking stomach medicine in beverage quantities for the past two days … you have to understand how the information has been trickling in, from our point of view. Our first hint that there was anything amiss came four days ago in the form of a courier officer from ImpSec HQ, with a brief standard message from Illyan that Miles was missing in action, details to follow. We were not at first inclined to panic. Miles has been missing before, sometimes for quite extended periods. It was not until Illyan’s full transmission was relayed and decoded, several hours later, together with the news that you were on your way, that it all came clear. We’ve had three days to think it through.”
He sat silent, struggling with the concept of the great Admiral Count Vorkosigan, the feared Butcher of Komarr, that massive, shadowy monster, even having a point of view, let alone one that low mortals such as himself were casually expected to understand.
“Illyan never uses weasel-words,” the Countess continued, “but he made it through that whole report without once using the term ’dead,’ ’killed,’ or any of their synonyms. The medical records suggest otherwise. Correct?”
“Um … the cryo-treatment appeared successful.” What did she want from him?
“And so we are mired in an emotional and legal limbo,” she sighed. “It would be almost easier if he …” She frowned fiercely down into her lap. Her hands clenched, for the first time. “You understand, we’re going to be talking about a lot of possible contingencies. Much revolves around you. But I won’t count Miles as dead till he’s dead and rotted.”
He remembered that tide of blood on the concrete. “Um,” he said helplessly.
“The fact that you could potentially play Miles has been a great distraction to some people.” She looked him over bemusedly. “You say the Dendarii accepted you …?”
He cringed into the chair, body-conscious under her sharp grey gaze, feeling the flesh of his torso roll and bunch under Miles’s shirt and sash, the tightness of the trousers. “I’ve … put on some weight since then.”
“All that? In just three weeks?”
“Yes,” he muttered, flushing.
One brow rose. “On purpose?”
“Sort of.”
“Huh.” She sat back, looking surprised. “That was extremely clever of you.”
He gaped, realized it emphasized his doubling chin, and closed his mouth quickly.
“Your status has been the subject of much debate. I voted against any security ploy to conceal Miles’s situation by having you pose as him. In the first place, it’s redundant. Lieutenant Lord Vorkosigan is often gone for months at a time; his absence is more normal than not, these days. It’s strategically more important to establish you as yourself, Lord Mark, if Lord Mark is indeed who you are to be.”
He swallowed in a dry throat. “Do I have a choice?”
“You will, but a reasoned one, after you’ve had time to assimilate it all.”
“You can’t be serious. I’m a clone.”
“I’m from Beta Colony, kiddo,” she said tartly. “Betan law is very sensible and clear on the topic of clones. It’s only Barrayaran custom that finds itself at a loss. Barrayarans!” She pronounced it like a swear word. “Barrayar lacks a long experience of dealing with all the technological variants on human reproduction. No legal precedents. And if it’s not a tradition” she put the same sour spin on the word as had Bothari-Jesek, “they don’t know how to cope.”
“What am I, to you as a Betan?” he asked, nervously fascinated.
“Either my son or my son once removed,” she answered promptly. “Unlicensed, but claimed by me as an heir.”
“Those are actual legal categories, on your homeworld?”
“You bet. Now, if I had ordered you cloned from Miles, after getting an approved child-license first of course, you would be my son pure and simple. If Miles as a legal adult had done the same, he would be your legal parent and I would be your mother-once-removed, and bear claims upon you and obligations to you approximately the equivalent of a grandparent. Miles was not, of course, a legal adult at the time you were cloned, nor was your birth licensed. If you were still a minor, he and I could go before an Adjudicator, and your guardianship would be assigned according to the Adjudicator’s best judgment of your welfare. You are no longer, of course, a minor in either Betan or Barrayaran law.” She sighed. “The time for legal guardianship is past. Lost. The inheritance of property will mostly be tangled in the Barrayaran legal confusions. Aral will discuss Barrayaran customary law, or the lack of it, with you when the time comes. That leaves our emotional relationship.”
“Do we have one?” he asked cautiously. His two greatest fears, that she would either pull out a weapon and shoot him, or else throw herself upon him in some totally inappropriate paroxysm of maternal affection, both seemed to be fading. He was left facing a level-voiced mystery.
“We do, though exactly what it is remains to be discovered. Realize this, though. Half my genes run through your body, and my selfish genome is heavily evolutionarily pre-programmed to look out for its copies. The other half is copied from the man I admire most in all the worlds and time, so my interest is doubly riveted. The artistic combination of the two, shall we say, arrests my attention.”
Put like that, it actually seemed to make sense, logically and without threat. He found his stomach unknotting, his throat relaxing. He promptly felt hungry again, for the first time since planetary orbit.
“Now, what’s between you and me has nothing to do with what’s between you and Barrayar. That’s Aral’s department, and he’ll have to speak for his own views. It’s all so undecided, except for one thing. While you are here, you are yourself, Mark, Miles’s six-years-younger twin brother. And not an imitation or a substitute for Miles. So the more you can establish yourself as distinct from Miles, from the very beginning, the better.”
“Oh,” he breathed, “please, yes.”
“I suspected you’d already grasped that. Good, we agree. But just not-being-Miles is no more than the inverse of being an imitation Miles. I want to know, who is Mark?”
“Lady … I don’t know.” His prodded honesty had an edge of anguish.
She watched him, sapiently. “There is time,” she said calmly. “Miles … wanted you to be here, you know. He talked about showing you around. Imagined teaching you to ride horseback.�
� She gave a furtive shudder.
“Galen tried to have me taught, in London,” Mark recalled. “It was terrifically expensive, and I wasn’t very good at it, so he finally told me just to avoid horses, when I got here.”
“Ah?” she brightened slightly. “Hm. Miles, you see, has … had … has these only-child romantic notions about siblings. Now, I have a brother, so I have no such illusions.” She paused, glanced around the room, and leaned forward with a suddenly confidential air, lowering her voice. “You have an uncle, a grandmother, and two cousins on Beta Colony who are just as much your relatives as Aral and myself and your cousin Ivan here on Barrayar. Remember, you have more than one choice. I’ve given one son to Barrayar. And watched for twenty-eight years while Barrayar tried to destroy him. Maybe Barrayar has had its turn, eh?”
“Ivan’s not here now, is he?” Mark asked, diverted and horrified.
“He’s not staying at Vorkosigan House, no, if that’s what you mean. He is in Vorbarr Sultana, assigned to Imperial Service Headquarters. Perhaps,” her eye lit in speculation, “he could take you out and show you some of the things Miles wanted you to see.”
“Ivan may still be angry for what I did to him in London,” Mark jittered.
“He’ll get over it,” the Countess predicted confidently. “I have to admit, Miles would have positively enjoyed unsettling people with you.”
A quirk Miles inherited from his mother, clearly.
“I’ve lived almost three decades on Barrayar,” she mused. “We’ve come such a long way. And yet there is still so terribly far to go. Even Aral’s will grows weary. Maybe we can’t do it all in one generation. Time for the changing of the guard, in my opinion … ah, well.”
He sat back in his chair for the first time, letting it support him, starting to watch and listen instead of just cower. An ally. It seemed he had an ally, though he was still not sure just why. Galen had not spent much time on Countess Cordelia Vorkosigan, being totally obsessed with his old enemy the Butcher. Galen, it appeared, had seriously underestimated her. She had survived twenty-nine years here … might he? For the first time, it seemed something humanly possible.
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