Mirror Dance b-9

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  With a deep, nervous sigh, the senior man stepped across the threshold, and looked around. The junior man prodded Miles forward in his wake. The study was finely furnished, with a real wood desk, and an odd chair in front of it with metal wrist-locks for the person who sat in it. Nobody ran out on a conversation with Baron Ryoval till Baron Ryoval was ready, apparently. They waited.

  “What do we do now?”

  “Don’t know. This is as far as my orders went.” The senior man paused. “Could be a test. …”

  They waited about five more minutes.

  “If you don’t want to look around,” said Miles brightly, “I will.”

  They looked at each other. The senior man, his forehead creased, drew a stunner and sidled cautiously through an archway into the next room. His voice came back after a moment. “Shit.” And, after another moment, an odd mewling wail, cut off and swallowed.

  This was too much even for the dim bulb who held Miles. With his ham hand still locked firmly around Miles’s upper arm, the second guard followed the first into a large chamber arranged as a living room. A wall-sized holovid was blank and silent. A zebra-grained wood bar divided the room. An extremely low chair faced an open area. Baron Ryoval’s very dead body lay there face-up, naked, staring at the ceiling with dry eyes.

  There were no obvious signs of a struggle—no overturned furniture, nor plasma arc burns in the walls—except upon the body. There the marks of violence were focused, utterly concentrated: throat crushed, torso pulped, dried blood smeared around his mouth. A double line of fingertip-sized black dots were stitched neatly across the Baron’s forehead. They looked like burns. His right hand was missing, cut away, the wrist a cauterized stump.

  The guards twitched in something like horror, an all-too-temporary paralysis of astonishment. “What happened?” whispered the junior man.

  Which way will they jump?

  How did Ryoval control his employee/slaves, anyway? The lesser folk, through terror, of course; the middle-management and tech layer, through some subtle combination of fear and self-interest. But these, his personal bodyguards, must be the innermost cadre, the ultimate instrument by which their master’s will was forced upon all the rest.

  They could not be as mentally stunted as their stolidity suggested, or they would be useless in an emergency. But if their narrow minds were intact, it followed that they must be controlled through their emotions. Men whom Ryoval let stand behind him with activated weapons must be programmed to the max, probably from birth. Ryoval must be father, mother, family and all to them. Ryoval must be their god.

  But now their god was dead.

  What would they do? Was I am free even an intelligible concept to them? Without its focal object, how fast would their programming start to break down? Not fast enough. An ugly light, compounded of rage and fear, was growing in their eyes.

  “I didn’t do it,” Miles pointed out with quick prudence. “I was with you.”

  “Stay here,” growled the senior man. “I’ll reconnoiter.” He loped off through the Baron’s apartment, to return in a few minutes with a laconic, “His flyer’s gone. Lift tube defenses buggered all to hell, too.”

  They hesitated. Ah, the downside of perfect obedience: crippled initiative.

  “Hadn’t you better check around the facility?” Miles suggested. “There might be survivors. Witnesses. Maybe … maybe the assassin is still hiding somewhere.” Where is Mark?

  “What do we do with him?” asked the junior man, with a jerk of his head at Miles.

  The senior man scowled in indecision. “Take him along. Or lock him up. Or kill him.”

  “You don’t know what the Baron wanted me for,” Miles interrupted instantly. “Better take me along till you find out.”

  “He wanted you for the other one,” said the senior man, with an indifferent glance down at him. Little, naked, half-healed, with his hands bound behind him, the guards clearly did not perceive him as a threat. Too right. Hell.

  After a brief muttered conference, the junior man pushed him along, and they began as rapid and methodical a tour of the facility as Miles would have wished to make himself. They found two of their red-and-black uniformed comrades, dead. A mysterious pool of blood snaked across a corridor from wall to wall. They found another body, fully dressed as a senior tech, in a shower, the back of his head crushed with some blunt object. On descending levels they found more signs of struggle, of looting, and of by-no-means-random destruction, comconsoles and equipment smashed.

  Had it been a slave revolt? Some power struggle among factions? Revenge? All three simultaneously? Was the murder of Ryoval its cause, or its goal? Had there been a mass evacuation, or a mass killing? At every corner, Miles braced himself for a scene of carnage.

  The lowest level had a laboratory with half a dozen glass-walled cells lining one end. From the smell, some experiment had been left cooking far too long. He glanced into the cells, and swallowed.

  They had been human, once, those lumps of flesh, scar tissue, and growths. They were now … culture-dishes of some kind. Four had been female, two male. Some departing tech, as an act of mercy, had neatly cut each one’s throat. He eyed them desperately, his face pressed to the glass. Surely they were all too large to have been Mark. Surely such effects could not have been achieved in a mere five days. Surely. He did not want to enter the cells for a closer examination.

  At least it explained why more of Ryoval’s slaves did not try to resist. There was an air of awful economy about it. Don’t like your work in the bordello, girl? Sick of the boredom and brutality of being a guard, man? How would you like to go into scientific research? The last stop for any would-be Spartacus among Ryoval’s human possessions. Bel was right. We should have nuked this place the last time we were here.

  The guards gave the cells a brief glance, and pressed on. Miles hung back, seized by inspiration. It was worth a try… .

  “Shit!” Miles hissed, and jumped.

  The guards spun around.

  “That … that man in there. He moved. I think I’m going to vomit.”

  “Can’t have.” The senior guard stared through the transparent wall at a body which lay with its back to them.

  “He couldn’t possibly have witnessed anything from in there, could he?” said Miles. “For God’s sake, don’t open the door.”

  “Shut up.” The senior guard chewed his lip, stared at the control virtual, and after an irresolute moment, coded open the door and trod cautiously within.

  “Gah!” said Miles.

  “What?” snapped the junior guard.

  “He moved again. He, he, sort of spasmed.”

  The junior man drew his stunner and followed his comrade inside, covering him. The senior man extended his hand, faltered, and on second thought pulled his shock stick from his belt and prodded it warily toward the body.

  Miles smacked the door control with a duck of his forehead. The glass seal slid shut, barely in time. The guards smashed into the door and up it like rabid dogs. It barely transmitted the vibration. Their mouths were open, howling curses and threats at him, but no sound passed. The transparent walls must be space-grade material; it stopped stunner fire, too.

  The senior man pulled out a plasma arc and began burning. The wall started to glow slightly. Not good. Miles studied the control panel … there. He pushed at menu blocks with his tongue till it brought up oxygen, and re-set it down as far as it would go. Would the guards pass out before the wall gave way to the plasma arc?

  Yes. Good environmental system, that. Ryoval’s dogs crumpled against the glass, clawed hands relaxing in unconsciousness. The plasma arc fell from nerveless fingers, and shut off.

  Miles left them sealed in their victim’s tomb.

  It was a lab. There had to be cutters, and tools of all sorts … right. It took several minutes of contortions, working behind his back, during which he nearly passed out, but his shackles gave way at last. He whimpered with relief as his hands came free.

&
nbsp; Weapons? All weapons per se had been taken, apparently, by the departing inhabitants, and without a biotainer suit he was disinclined to re-open the glass cell and retrieve the guards’ gear. But a laser-scalpel from the lab made him feel less vulnerable.

  He wanted his clothing. Shivering from the cold, he trotted back through the eerie corridors to the security entrance, and donned his knits again. He turned back into the facility, and began to seriously search. He tried every comconsole he came to that wasn’t smashed. All were internally dedicated, no way to tap an outside channel.

  Where is Mark? It occurred to him suddenly that if there could be anything worse than being held prisoner in some cell here, waiting for his tormentors to come again, it would be to be locked in a cell here waiting for tormentors who never came again. In what was perhaps the most frantic half-hour he’d ever experienced in his life, he opened or broke open every door in the facility. Behind every one he expected to find a sodden little body, its throat mercifully cut … He was wheezing and fearing another convulsion when, with great relief, he found the cell—closet—near Ryoval’s quarters. Empty. It stank of recent occupation, though. And the bloodstains and other stains on the walls and floor turned his stomach cold and sick. But wherever Mark was, and in whatever condition, he was not here. He had to get out of here too.

  He caught his breath, and found a plastic basket, and went shopping in the labs for useful electronic equipment. Cutters and wires, circuit-diagnostics, readers and relays, whatever he could find. When he thought he had enough, he returned to the Baron’s study, and proceeded to dissect the damaged comconsole. He finally managed to jump the palm-lock, only to have a little bright square patch come up on-view and demand, Insert code-key. He cursed, and stretched his aching back, and sat again. This was going to be tedious.

  It took another pass through the facility for equipment before he was able to jump the code-key block. And the comconsole would never be the same. But at last, finally, he punched through to the planetary communications net. There was another short glitch while he figured out how to charge the call to House Ryoval’s account; all fees were collected in advance, here on Jackson’s Whole.

  He paused a moment, wondering who to call. Barrayar kept a consulate on the Hargraves-Dyne Consortium Station. Some of the staff were actually diplomatic and/or economic personnel, but even they doubled as ImpSec analysts. The rest were agents-proper, running a thin network of informants scattered across the planet and its satellites and stations. Admiral Naismith had a contact there. But had ImpSec been here already? Was this their work, rescuing Mark? No, he decided. It was ruthless, but not nearly methodical enough. In fact, it was utter chaos.

  So why didn’t you guys come looking for Mark? A bothersome question, and one to which he had no answer. He punched through the consulate’s code. Let the circus begin.

  They were down on him in half an hour, a tense ImpSec lieutenant named Iverson with a rented squad of local muscle from House Dyne in paramilitary uniforms and with decent military equipment. They’d dropped straight from orbit in a shuttle; heat wavered off its skin in the watery morning light. Miles sat on a rock outside the pedestrian entrance, or more properly speaking, emergency exit he’d found, and watched sardonically as they all galloped out, weapons at the ready, and spread out as if to take the installation by assault.

  The officer hurried up to him, and half-saluted. “Admiral Naismith?”

  Iverson was no one he knew; at this level of the echelon the man must take him for a valued, but non-Barrayaran, ImpSec hireling. “The one and only. You can tell your men to relax. The installation is secured.”

  “You secured it yourself?” Iverson asked in faint disbelief.

  “More or less.”

  “We’ve been looking for this place for two years!”

  Miles suppressed an irate remark about people who couldn’t find their own prick with a map and a hand-light. “Where is, ah, Mark? The other clone. My double.”

  “We don’t know, sir. Acting on a tip from an informant, we were about to make an assault on a House Bharaputra location to retrieve you, when you called.”

  “I was there last night. Your informant did not know I was moved.” Had to be Rowan—she’d got out, hooray! “You would have been embarrassingly late.”

  Iverson’s lips thinned. “This has been an incredibly fouled-up operation from first to last. The orders kept changing.”

  “Tell me,” Miles sighed. “Have you heard anything from the Den-darii Mercenaries?”

  “A covert ops team from your outfit is supposed to be on its way, sir.” Iverson’s “sirs” were tinged with uncertainty, the dubious regard of a Barrayaran regular for a self-promoted mercenary. “I … wish to ascertain for myself if the installation is fully secure, if you don’t mind.”

  “Go ahead,” Miles said. “You’ll find it an interesting tour. If you have a strong stomach.” Iverson marched his troopers indoors. Miles would have laughed, if he weren’t screaming inside. He sighed, slipped from his perch, and followed them.

  Miles’s people came in a small personnel shuttle, swooping right into the concealed garage. He watched them on the monitor from Ryoval’s study, and gave them directions how to find him. Quinn, Elena, Taura and Bel, all in half-armor. They came clanking into the study double-time, almost as impressively useless as the ImpSec crowd.

  “Why the party clothes?” was his first weary question as they heaved into view. He should stand, and receive and return salutes and things, but Ryoval’s station chair was incredibly comfortable and he was incredibly tired.

  “Miles!” Quinn cried passionately.

  With the sight of her concerned face he realized just how very angry he was, and guilty for it. Furiously angry because furiously afraid. Where is Mark, damn you all? “Captain Quinn,” he put her on notice that this was duty-time before she could fling herself on him. She skidded to a halt in mid-fling, and came to a species of attention. The others piled up behind her.

  “We were just coordinating with ImpSec for a raid on House Bharaputra,” Quinn said breathlessly. “You’ve come back to yourself! You were cryo-amnesic—have you recovered? That Durona doctor said you would—”

  “About ninety percent, I think. I’m still finding holes in my memory. Quinn—what happened?”

  She looked slightly overwhelmed. “Since when? When you were killed—”

  “Start from five days ago. When you came to the Durona Group.”

  “We came looking for you. Found you, after nearly four bleeding months!”

  “You were stunned, Mark was taken, and Lilly Durona hustled me and my surgeon off to what she thought was going to be safety,” Miles cued her to the focus he wanted.

  “Oh, she was your doctor. I thought—never mind.” Quinn bit back her emotions, pulled off her helmet and pushed back her hood, raked red-tipped fingers through her smashed curls, and began organizing the information into its essentials, combat-style. “We lost hours at the start. By the time Elena and Taura got another aircar, the snatchers were long gone. They searched, but no luck. When they got back to the Durona Group, Bel and I were just waking up. Lilly Durona insisted you were safe. I didn’t believe her. We pulled out, and I contacted ImpSec. They started to pull in their people, who were scattered all over the planet looking for clues as to your whereabouts, and sent them to focus on Mark. More delays, while they worked through their pet theory that the kidnappers were Cetagandan bounty-hunters. And House Ryoval had about fifty different sites and facilities to check on, not including this one, which really was secret.

  “Then Lilly Durona decided you were missing after all. Since it seemed more important to find you, we diverted all available forces to that. But we had fewer leads. We didn’t even find the abandoned lightflyer for two days. And it yielded up no clues.”

  “Right. But you suspected Ryoval had Mark.”

  “But Ryoval wanted Admiral Naismith. We thought Ryoval would figure out he had the wrong man.”


  He ran his hands over his face. His head was aching. And so was his stomach. “Did you ever figure that Ryoval wouldn’t care? In a few minutes, I want you to go down the corridor and look at the cell they kept him in. And smell it. I want you to look closely. In fact, go now. Sergeant Taura, stay.” ,

  Reluctantly, Quinn led Elena and Bel out. Miles leaned forward; Taura bent to hear.

  “Taura, what happened? You’re a Jacksonian. You know what Ryoval is, what this place is. How did you all lose sight of that?”

  She shook her big head. “Captain Quinn thought Mark was a complete screw-up. After your death, she was so angry she could barely give him the time of day. And at first I agreed with her. But … I don’t know. He tried so hard. The creche raid only failed by a hair. If we’d been faster, or if the shuttle defense perimeter had done their job, we would have brought it off, I think.”

  He grimaced in agreement. “There’s no mercy for failures of timing in no-margin operations like that one was. Commanders can have no mercy either, or you might as well stay in orbit and feed your troops directly into the ship’s waste disintegrators, and save steps.” He paused. “Quinn will be a good commander someday.”

  “I think so, sir.” Taura pulled off her helmet and hood, and stared around. “I kind of came to like the little schmuck, though. He tried. He tried and failed, but no one else tried at all. And he was so alone.”

  “Alone. Yes. Here. For five days.”

  “We really did think Ryoval would figure out he wasn’t you.”

  “Maybe … maybe so.” Some part of his mind clung to that hope himself. Maybe it hadn’t been as bad as it looked, as bad as his galloping imagination supplied.

  Quinn and company returned, looking universally grim.

  “So,” he said, “you’ve found me. Now maybe we can all focus on Mark. I’ve been all over this place in the last hours, and I haven’t found a clue. Did the absconding staff take him along? Is he out wandering around in the desert somewhere, freezing? I’ve got six of Iverson’s men looking outside with ’scopes, and another one checking the facility’s disintegration records for fifty-plus kilo lumps of protein. And other bright ideas, folks?”