Mirror Dance b-9

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “We’ll all have lifted before dusk. Listen!” She led him to her window. The Dendarii personnel shuttle, with Sergeant Taura piloting and about eight Duronas aboard, was lifting heavily from the courtyard of the walled compound. Point-women, going up to prepare the ship for the others to come.

  “Escobar, Miles!” Rowan said enthusiastically. “We’re all going to Escobar. Oh, Lilly, you’re going to love it there!”

  “Will you stay in a group when you get there?” Miles asked.

  “At first, I think. Till it gets less strange for the others. Lilly will release us at her death. Baron Fell anticipates that, I think. Less competition for him, in the long run. I expect he’ll have the top people stripped from House Ryoval and installed here by tomorrow morning.”

  Miles walked around the room, and noticed a familiar little remote box on the sofa-arm. “Ah! It was you who had the other control to the thermal grenade! I might have known. So you were listening in. I wasn’t sure if Mark was bluffing.”

  “Mark wasn’t bluffing about anything,” she stated with certainty.

  “Were you here, when he came in?”

  “Yes. It was a little before dawn this morning. He came staggering in from a lightflyer wearing the most peculiar costume, and demanding to speak with Lilly.”

  Miles raised his brows at the image. “What did the gate guards say?”

  “They said Yes, sir. He had an aura … I don’t know how to describe it. Except … I could picture large thugs in dark alleyways scrambling to get out of his way. Your clone-twin is a formidable young man.”

  Miles blinked.

  “Lilly and Chrys took him off to the clinic on a float-pallet, and I didn’t see him after that. Then the orders started flying.” She paused. “So. Will you be going back to your Dendarii Mercenaries, then?”

  “Yes. After some R&R, I guess.”

  “Not … settling down. After that close call.”

  “I confess, the sight of projectile-weapons gives me a new and unpleasant twitch, but—I hope I won’t be cashing out of the Dendarii for a long time yet. Um … these convulsions I’ve been having. Will they go away?”

  “They should. Cryo-revival is always chancy. So, you … don’t picture yourself retiring. To Escobar, say.”

  “We visit Escobar now and then, for fleet repairs. And personnel repairs. It’s a major nexus intersection. We may cross paths again.”

  “Not the same way we first met, I trust.” Rowan smiled.

  “Let me tell you, if I ever do need cryo-revival again, I’ll leave orders to look you up.” He hesitated. I need my Lady Vorkosigan, to put an end to this wandering… . Could Rowan be it? The thirty-five sisters-in-law would be a distant drawback, safely far away on Escobar. “What would you think of the planet Barrayar, as a place to live and work?” he inquired cautiously.

  Her nose wrinkled. “That backward pit? Why?”

  “I … have some interests there. In fact, it’s where I’m planning to retire. It’s a very beautiful place, really. And underpopulated. They encourage, um … children.” He was skirting dangerously close to breaking his cover, the strained identity he’d risked so much lately to retain. “And there’d be lots of work for a galactic-trained physician.”

  “I’ll bet. But I’ve been a slave all my life. Vhy would I choose to be a subject, when I could choose to be a citizen?” She smiled wryly, and came to him, and twined her arms around his shoulders. “Those five days we were locked up together at Vasa Luigi’s—that wasn’t an effect of the imprisonment, was it. That’s the way you really are, when you’re well.”

  “Pretty much,” he admitted.

  “I’d always wondered what adult hyperactives did for a living. Running several thousand troops would just about absorb your energies, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he sighed.

  “I think I’ll always love you, some. But living with you full-time would drive me crazy. You are the most incredibly domineering person I think I’ve ever met.”

  “You’re supposed to fight back,” he explained. “I rely on—” he couldn’t say Elli, or worse, all my women, “my partner fighting back. Otherwise, I couldn’t relax and be myself.”

  Right. Too much togetherness had destroyed their love, or at least her illusions. The Barrayaran system of using go-betweens to make marital arrangements was beginning to look better all the time. Maybe it would be best to get safely married first, and then get to know each other. By the time his bride figured him out, it would be too late for her to back out. He sighed, and smiled, and gave Rowan an exaggerated, courtly bow. “I shall be pleased to visit you on Escobar, milady.”

  “That would be joust perfect, sir,” she returned, deadpan.

  “Ow!” Dammit, she could be the one, she underestimated herself—

  Lilly Junior, sitting on the sofa watching all this with fascination, coughed. Miles glanced at her, and thought about her account of her time with the Dendarii.

  “Does Mark know you’re here, Lilly?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been with Rowan.”

  “The last time Mark saw you, you were going back with Vasa Luigi. I … think he’d like to know you changed your mind.”

  “He tried to talk me into staying on the ship. He didn’t talk so well as you,” she admitted.

  “He made this all happen. He bought your passage out of here.” And Miles wasn’t sure he wanted to think about the coin. “I just trailed along. Come on. At least say hello, goodbye, and thank you. It will cost you nothing, and I suspect it would mean something to him.”

  Reluctantly, she rose, and allowed him to tow her out. Rowan gave them a nod of approval, and returned to her hasty packing.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “Did you find them?” Lord Mark asked.

  “Yes,” said Bothari-Jesek tightly.

  “Did you destroy them?”

  “Yes.”

  Mark flushed, and leaned his head back against Lilly’s chair, feeling the weight of gravity. He sighed. “You looked at them. I told you not to.”

  “I had to, to be sure I was getting the right ones.”

  “No, you didn’t. You could simply have destroyed them all.”

  “That’s what I finally did. I started to look. Then I turned off the sound. Then I put them on fast-forward. Then I started just spot-checking.”

  “I wish you hadn’t.”

  “I wish I hadn’t. Mark, there were hundreds of hours of those holovids. I couldn’t believe there was so much.”

  “Actually, there were only about fifty hours. Or maybe it was fifty years. But there were multiple simultaneous recordings. I could always see a holovid pick-up hovering, out of the corner of my eye, no matter what was going on. I don’t know if Ryoval made them to study and analyze, or just to enjoy. A bit of both, I guess. His powers of analysis were appalling.”

  “I … don’t understand some of what I saw.”

  “Would you like me to explain it to you?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  “I can understand why you’d want them destroyed. Out of context … they would have been a horrible lever for blackmail. If you want to swear me to secrecy, I’ll vow anything.”

  “That’s not why. I have no intention of keeping any of this a secret. Nobody is ever going to get a handle on me again. Pull my secret strings ever again. In general outline, you can tell the whole wormhole nexus, for all I care. But—if ImpSec got hold of those holovid recordings, they would end up in Illyan’s hands. And he would not be able to keep them from the Count, or the Countess either, though I’m sure he’d try. Or, eventually, Miles. Can you imagine the Count or the Countess or Miles watching that shit?”

  She drew in her breath between her teeth. “I begin to see.”

  “Think about it. I have.”

  “Lieutenant Iverson was furious, when he broke in and found the melted casings. He’s going to send complaints up through channels.”

  “Let him. I
f ImpSec cares to air any complaints about me or mine, I will air my complaints about them. like, where the hell were they for the last five days. I will have no compunction nor mercy about calling in that debt on anyone from Illyan down. Cross me, will they …” He trailed off in a hostile mutter.

  Her face was greenish-white. “I’m … so sorry, Mark.” Her hand touched his, hesitantly.

  He seized her wrist, held it hard. Her nostrils flared, but she did not wince. He sat up, or tried to. “Don’t you dare pity me. I won. Save your sympathy for Baron Ryoval, if you must. I took him. Suckered him. I beat him at his own game, on his own ground. I will not allow you to turn my victory into defeat for the sake of your damned … feelings.” He released her wrist; she rubbed it, watching him levelly. “That’s the thing of it. I can shed Ryoval, if they’ll let me. But if they know too much—if they had those damned vids—they’d never be able to leave it alone, ever. Their guilt would keep them coming back to it, and they would keep me coming back to it. I don’t want to have to fight Ry Ryoval in my head, or in their heads, for the rest of my life. He’s dead, I’m not, it’s enough.”

  He paused, snorted. “And you have to admit, it would be particularly bad for Miles.”

  “Oh, yes,” Bothari-Jesek breathed agreement.

  Outside, the Dendarii personnel shuttle, with Sergeant Taura piloting, lifted the first load of Duronas to Mark’s yacht in orbit. He paused to watch it rise from sight. Yes. Go, go, go. Get out of this hole, you, me, all of us clones. Forever. Go be human too, if you can. If I can.

  Bothari-Jesek looked back at him and said, “They’ll insist on a physical exam, you know.”

  “Yeah, they’ll see some. I can’t conceal the beatings, and God knows I can’t conceal the force-feedings—grotesque, weren’t they?”

  She swallowed, and nodded. “I thought you were going to—oh, never mind.”

  “Right. I told you not to look. But the longer I can avoid examination by a competent ImpSec doctor, the vaguer I can be about all the rest.”

  “You have to be treated, surely.”

  “Lilly Durona has done an excellent job. And by my request, the only record is in her head. I should be able to slide right by.”

  “Don’t try to avoid it altogether,” Bothari-Jesek advised. “The Countess would spot that even if no one else did. And I can’t believe you don’t need … something more. Not physically.”

  “Oh, Elena. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past week, it’s just how badly cross-wired I really am, down in the bottom of my brain. The worst thing I met in Ryoval’s basement was the monster in the mirror, Ryoval’s psychic mirror. My pet monster, the four-headed one. Demonstrably, worse even than Ryoval himself. Stronger. Quicker. Slyer.” He bit his tongue, aware that he was starting to say far too much, aware that he sounded like he was edging into dementia. He didn’t think he was edging into dementia. He suspected he was edging into sanity, the long way around. The hard way. “I know what I’m doing. On some level, I know exactly what I’m doing.”

  “In a couple of the vids—you seemed to be fooling Ryoval with a fake split personality. Talking to yourself… ?”

  “I could never have fooled Ryoval with a fake anything. He was in this trade for decades, mucking about in the bottoms of people’s brains. But my personality didn’t exactly split. More like it … inverted.” Nothing could be called split, that felt so profoundly whole. “It wasn’t something I decided to do. It was just something I did.”

  She was looking at him with extreme worry. He had to laugh out loud. But the effect of his good cheer was apparently not so reassuring to her as he might have desired.

  “You have to understand,” he told her. “Sometimes, insanity is not a tragedy. Sometimes, it’s a strategy for survival. Sometimes … it’s a triumph.” He hesitated. “Do you know what a black-gang is?”

  Mutely, she shook her head.

  “Something I picked up in a museum in London, once. Way back in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, on Earth, they used to have ships that sailed across the tops of the oceans, that were powered by steam engines. The heat for the steam engines came from great coal fires in the bellies of the ships. And they had to have these suckers down there to stoke the coal into the furnaces. Down in the filth and the heat and the sweat and the stink. The coal made them black, so they were called the black-gang. And the officers and fine ladies up above would have nothing to do with these poor grotty thugs, socially. But without them, nothing moved. Nothing burned. Nothing lived. No steam. The black-gang. Unsung heroes. Ugly lower-class fellows.”

  Now she thought he was babbling for sure. The panegyric of fierce loyalty for his black gang that he wanted to sing into her ear was … probably not a good idea, just now. Yeah, and nobody loves me, Gorge whispered plaintively. You’d better get used to it.

  “Never mind.” He smiled instead. “But I can tell you, Galen looks … pretty small, after Ryoval. And Ryoval, I beat. In a strange sense, I feel very free, right now. And I intend to stay that way.”

  “You appear to me to be … excuse me … a little manic, right now, Mark. In Miles, this would be normal. Well, usual. But eventually, he tops out, and finally he bottoms out. I think you need to watch out for this pattern, you may share it with him.”

  “Are you saying it’s a mood swing on a bungee cord?”

  A short laugh puffed from her lips despite herself. “Yes.”

  “I’ll beware of the perigee.”

  “Hm, yes. Though it’s the apogee where everybody else has to duck and run, usually.”

  “I’m also on, well, several painkillers and stimulants, right now,” he mentioned. “Or I would never have made it through the last couple of hours. I’m afraid some of them are starting to wear off.” Good. That would account to her for some of his babble, perhaps, and had the advantage of being true.

  “Do you want me to get Lilly Durona?”

  “No. I just want to sit here. And not move.”

  “I think that might be a good idea.” Elena swung out of her chair, and picked up her helmet.

  “I know what I want to be when I grow up, now, though,” he offered to her suddenly. She paused, and raised her brows.

  “I want to be an ImpSec analyst. Civilian. One who doesn’t send his people to the wrong place, or five days late. Or improperly prepared. I want to sit in a cubicle all day long, surrounded by a fortress, and get it right.” He waited for her to laugh at him.

  Instead, to his surprise, she nodded seriously. “Speaking as the one out on the sharp end of the ImpSec stick, I would be delighted.”

  She gave him a half-salute, and turned away. He puzzled over the look in her eyes, as she descended out of sight down the lift-tube. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t fear.

  Oh. So that’s what respect looks like. Oh.

  I could get used to that.

  As Mark had declared to Elena, he just sat for a time, staring out the window. He was going to have to move sooner or later. Maybe he could use the excuse of his broken foot to inveigle a float-chair. Lilly had promised him that her stimulants would buy him six hours of coherence, after which the metabolic bill would be delivered by hulking bio-thugs with spiked clubs, virtual repo-men for his neuro-transmitter debt. He wondered if the absurd dreamy image was the first sign of the approaching biochemical breakdown. He prayed he’d hold out at least till he was safely in the ImpSec shuttle. Oh, Brother. Carry me home.

  Voices echoed up the lift tube. Miles appeared, with a Durona trailing along after him. He was skeletally thin and ghostly pale, in his Durona-issued grey suit. The two of them seemed to be on some kind of growth-reciprocal. If he could magically transfer all the kilos Ryoval had foisted on him the last week directly to Miles, they would both look much better, Mark decided. But if he kept growing fatter, would Miles attenuate altogether, and vanish? Unsettling vision. It’s the drugs, boy, it’s the drugs.

  “Oh, good,” said Miles, “Elena said you were still up here.” With th
e cheerful air of a magician presenting a particularly good trick, he urged the young woman to step forward. “Do you recognize her?”

  “It’s a Durona, Miles,” said Mark, in a gentle, weary tone. “I’m going to see them in my dreams.” He paused. “Is this a trick question?” Then he sat up, shocked by recognition. You could tell clones apart—”It’s her!”

  “Just so,” smiled Miles, pleased. “We smuggled her out from Bharaputra’s, Rowan and I. She’s going to go to Escobar with her sisters.”

  “Ah!” Mark settled back. “Ah. Oh. Good.” Hesitantly, he rubbed his forehead. Take back your coup, Vasa Luigi! “I didn’t think you were interested in rescuing clones, Miles.”

  Miles winced visibly. “You inspired me.”

  Er. He hadn’t meant that as a reference to Ryoval’s. Clearly, Miles had dragged the reluctant girl up here in a bid to make Mark feel better. Less clearly to Miles, though like crystal to himself, was an element of subtle rivalry. For the first time in his life, Miles was feeling the hot breath of fraternal competition on the back of his neck. Do I make you uneasy? Ha! Get used to it, boy. I’ve lived with it for twenty-two years. Miles had spoken of Mark as “my brother” in the same tone he’d use for “my boots,” or maybe, “my horse.” Or—give credit, now—”my child.” A certain smug paternalism. Miles hadn’t been expecting an equal with an agenda of his own. Suddenly, Mark realized he had a delightful new hobby, one that would provide entertainment for years to come. God, I’m going to enjoy being your brother.

  “Yes,” Mark said cheerily, “you can do it too. I knew you could, if you only tried.” He laughed. To his dismay, it turned into a sob in his throat. He choked off both. He didn’t dare laugh, or express any other emotion, right now. His control was much too thin. “I’m very glad,” he stated, as neutrally as he could.

  Miles, whose eye had caught the whole play, nodded. “Good,” he stated, equally neutrally.