Memory b-10

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  And unlike Galeni, whose father Ser Galen had spent his life pursuing a futile Komarran revenge, the Toscane position had left Laisa with no embarrassing connections to live down. Ser Galen was a topic neither Miles nor Galeni broached; Miles wondered how much Galeni had told her of his late, mad father.

  It was halfway between midnight and dawn, with another bottle of the best wine killed among them, before Miles could bring himself to let his yawning company go home. He watched reflectively as Galeni's groundcar turned out of the drive and down the night-quiet street, saluted on its way by the lone ImpSec night guard. Galeni, like Miles, had spent the last decade pursuing an all-consuming career; its secret strains had left him, perhaps, a bit romantically retarded. Miles hoped, when the time came, Galeni didn't put his proposal to Laisa as some sort of business proposition, but he was very much afraid that would be the only mode Galeni could allow himself. Galeni didn't have enough forward momentum. That desk job suited him.

  That one won't be lingering for you very damned long, Galeni. Someone with more nerve will move in and snap her up, and carry her off to keep greedily for himself. As a would-be Baba, a traditional Barrayaran marriage-broker, Miles did not feel the evening had advanced Galeni's agenda nearly enough. Sexually frustrated enough by proxy for both his friends, Miles went back inside. The door secure-locked itself.

  He undressed slowly, and sat on his bed, watching his comconsole with the same malignant intensity with which Zap the Cat eyed a human bearing food. It remained silent. Chime, damn you. In the natural perversity of things, this ought to be the hour Illyan called him in, when he was tired and half-drunk and unfit to report. Now, Illyan. I want my mission! Every hour that passed seemed a greater strain. Every hour, another hour wasted. If enough time went by before Illyan called him in that he might have made it to Escobar and back, he'd be fit to chew the carpet even when not having a seizure.

  He considered hauling up another bottle, and getting really drunk, in an act of sympathetic magic to make Illyan really likely to call. But nausea and vomiting tended to make time move subjectively slower, not faster. An unattractive prospect. Maybe Illyan's forgotten me.

  A thin joke; Illyan never forgot anything. He couldn't. Sometime back when he'd been an ImpSec lieutenant in his late twenties, then-Emperor Ezar had sent him off to distant Illyrica, to have an experimental eidetic memory-chip installed in his brain. Old Ezar had fancied owning a walking recording device answerable to himself alone. The technology had not caught on as a commercial development, due to the 90% incidence of iatrogenic schizophrenia the chip had subsequently induced in its wearers. Ruthless Ezar had been willing to take that 90% risk for the 10% reward, or rather, had been willing for a disposable young officer to take it for him. Ezar in pursuit of his policies had disposed of thousands of soldiers like Illyan, in his lifetime.

  But Ezar had died soon after, and left Illyan, like a wandering planetoid, to fall into orbit around Admiral Aral Vorkosigan, who proved to be one of the major political stars of the century. Illyan had worked Security for Miles's father, one way or another, for the next thirty years.

  Miles wondered what it would be like to have thirty-five years of memories at your beck and call, as sharp and instantaneous as if just experienced. The past would never be softened by that welcome roseate fog of forgetfulness. To be able to rerun every mistake you'd ever made, in perfect sound and color … it had to be something like eternal damnation. No wonder the chip-bearers had gone mad. Although maybe remembering other people's mistakes was not so painful. You learned to watch your mouth, around Illyan. He could quote you back every idiotic, stupid, or ill-considered thing you'd ever said, verbatim, with gestures.

  All in all, Miles didn't think he'd care for a chip, himself, even if he were medically qualified. He felt close enough to schizoid dementia already without any further technological boost in that direction, thanks.

  Galeni, now, seemed the bland unimaginative sort who would qualify; but Miles had reason to believe Galeni harbored hidden depths, as hidden as his father Ser Galen's terrorist past. No. Galeni was not a suitable candidate either. Galeni would just go insane so quietly, he would rack up huge damages before anyone caught on.

  Miles stared at his comconsole, willing it to light up. Call. Call. Call. Give me my goddamn mission. Get me out of here. Its silence seemed almost mocking. At length, he gave up and went to get another bottle of wine.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was evening two full days later before the personal comconsole in his bedchamber chimed again. Miles, who had been sitting next to it all day, nearly flinched out of his chair. He let it chime again, deliberately, while he tried to slow his racing heart and catch his breath. Right. This has to be it. Cool, calm, and collected, boy. Don't let Illyan's secretary see you sweat.

  But to his bitter disappointment, the face that formed over the vid plate was only his cousin Ivan. He'd obviously just blown in from his day's work at Imperial Service Headquarters, still wearing his undress greens . . . with blue, not red, rank rectangles on the collar behind his bronze Ops pins. Captain's tabs? Ivan is wearing captain's tabs?

  "Hi, coz," said Ivan cheerily. "How was your day?"

  "Slow." Miles fixed his features into a polite smile, hoping to conceal the sinking feeling in his gut.

  Ivan's smile broadened; he ran a hand over his hair, preening. "Notice anything?"

  You know damned well I noticed instantly. "You have a new hairstylist?" Miles feigned to hazard uncertainly.

  "Ha." Ivan tapped a tab with a fingernail, making it click.

  "You know, impersonating an officer is a crime, Ivan. True, they've never caught you yet. . . ." Ivan got promoted to captain before me . . . ?!

  "Ha," Ivan repeated smugly. "It's all official, as of today. My new pay grade started at reveille this morning. I knew this was in the pipeline, but I've been sitting on the news. Thought you all deserved a little surprise."

  "How come they promoted you beforeme? Who the hell have you been sleeping with?" boiled off Miles's lips before he could bite it back down. He hadn't meant his tone of voice to come out quite that harsh.

  Ivan shrugged, smirking. "I do my job. And I do it without going around bending all the rules into artistic little origami shapes, either. Besides, you've spent I don't know how much time on medical leave. Deduct that, and I've probably got years of seniority on you."

  Blood and bone. Every bit of that unwelcome leave had been bought with blood and bone and endless pain, laid down willingly enough in the Emperors service. Blood and bone and they promote Ivan? Before me . . . ?! Something like rage choked him, clotting words in his throat like cotton.

  Ivan's face, watching his, fell. Yes, of course, Ivan had expected to be applauded, in some suitably backhanded way, expected Miles to share his pride and pleasure in his achievement, which truly made a sad dish when eaten alone. Miles struggled for better control of his face, his words, his thoughts. He tried to return his voice to the proper tone of light banter. "Congratulations, coz. Now that your rank and pay grade have become so exalted, what excuse are you going to give your mother not to get married to some fine Vor bud?"

  "They have to catch me first," grinned Ivan, lightening again in response. "I move fast."

  "Mm. Better not wait too long. Didn't Tatya Vorventa give up and get married recently? Though there's still Violetta Vorsoisson, I suppose."

  "Well, no, actually, she got married last summer," Ivan admitted.

  "Helga Vorsmythe?"

  "Picked off by one of her Da's industrialist friends, of all things. He wasn't even Vor. Wealthy as hell, though. That was three years ago. God, Miles, you are out of it. No problem. I can always go for someone younger."

  "At this rate, you're going to end up courting embryos." We all will. "That skewed male-female birth ratio about the time we were being born is catching up with us. Well, good going with your captaincy. I know you worked for it, even though you pretend not to. You'll be Chief of Ops before I turn ar
ound, I wager."

  Ivan sighed. "Not unless they break down and finally give me some ship duty to go on my resume. They're awfully stingy with it, these days."

  "They're pinching half-marks in the training cycles, I'm afraid. Everyone's complaining on that score."

  "You've had more ship duty than anyone I know up to the rank of commodore, in your own inimitable, ass-backwards way," Ivan added enviously.

  "Yeah, but it's all classified secret. You're among the very few who know."

  "The point is, you haven't let the lack of half-marks stop you. Or the rules. Or respect for reality, as far as I can tell."

  "I never let anything stop me. That's how you get what you want, Ivan. No one's just going to hand it to you." Well … no one was going to just hand it to Miles. Things fell out of the sky onto Ivan, and had done so all his charmed life. "If you can't win, change the game."

  Ivan twitched a brow upward. "If there's no game, isn't winning a pretty meaningless concept?"

  Miles hesitated. "Out of the mouths of … Ivans. I'll … have to think about that one."

  "Don't strain yourself, little genius."

  Miles managed an unfelt smile. Ivan looked as though this whole conversation was leaving as bad a taste in his mouth as it was in Miles s. Better to cut the losses. He would make it up with Ivan later. He always did. "I think I'd better go now."

  "Yes. You have so much to do." With a grimace, Ivan cut the com even as Miles's hand reached for the off-key.

  Miles sat in his comconsole's station chair in silence, for a full minute. Then, being quite alone, he threw back his head and spat his frustration at his bedroom ceiling, in a string of all the blue galactic curses he knew. Afterwards, he felt slightly better, as if he'd managed to eject something poisonous from his soul along with the foul words. He didn't begrudge Ivan his promotion, not really. It was just … it was just . . .

  Was winning all he really wanted? Or did he still want also to be seen to have won? And by whom? ImpSec was the wrong damned department to be working for, if you hungered for fame along with your fortune. Yet Illyan knew, Miles's parents knew, Gregor, all the close people who really counted knew about Admiral Naismith, knew what Miles really was. Elena, Quinn, all the Dendarii. Even Ivan knew. Who the hell am I twirling for, if not for them?

  Well . . . there was always his grandfather General Count Piotr Vorkosigan, dead these thirteen years. Miles's eye fell on his grandfather's ceremonial dagger in its elaborate sheath, sitting in a place of honor, or at least uncluttered by other detritus, on its own shelf across the room. Miles had actually insisted on carrying it around with him at all times, earlier in his career. Proving . . . what? To whom? Nothing to no one, now.

  He rose, walked over to the shelf, and lifted the weapon, drawing the fine blade from its sheath and watching the light play over the textured steel. It was still a fabulous antique, but it lacked . . . some former geas it had once held upon him; the magic was gone, or at least, the curse was lifted. It was just a knife. He slid it back into its sheath, opened his hand, and let it fall back to its place.

  He felt out of balance. He had felt that way increasingly, when at home, but this trip the sensation was acute. The strange absence of the Count and Countess was like a preview of their deaths. This was a taste of what it would be like to be Count Miles Vorkosigan, all day long. He wasn't sure he liked the flavor.

  I need . . . Naismith. This eviscerated Vor life unnerved him. But Naismith was an expensive hobby. To get ImpSec to pay for Naismith required a reason, literally a mission in life. What have you done to justify your existence today? was a question to which Admiral Naismith had better be able to supply a daily answer, or risk being snuffed out. ImpSec's accountants were as dangerous to his continuation as enemy fire. Well . . . almost. His hand traced the spray of scars on his chest, under his shirt.

  There was something wrong with his new heart. It pumped blood all right, all the ventricles and valves were in order … it was supposed to have been grown from his own tissues, but it seemed a stranger's mismatch. . . . You're going looney, all alone in this empty house.

  A mission. A mission was what he needed. Then everything would be all right again. It wasn't that he wished harm on anyone, but he longed for a hijacking, a blockade, a small colonial war . . . better still, a rescue. Free the prisoners, yeah.

  You've done all that. If that's what you wanted, why aren't you happy?

  The taste for adrenaline, it appeared, was an appetite that grew by what it fed upon. Naismith was an addiction, a craving that required ever-stronger and more toxic doses for the same level of satisfaction.

  He'd tried a few dangerous sports, by way of experiment, to soothe that hunger. He wasn't all that good at them, lacking, among other things, the time to acquire true expertise. And besides . . . that extra edge was missing. It wasn't very interesting to risk only himself.

  And a trophy seemed a tawdry bit of junk, when he'd played for and won ten thousand human lives in a single round.

  I want my frigging mission. Call me, Illyan!

  The call, when it came at last, literally caught him napping. The chime brought him abruptly out of an exhausted afternoon doze, after a night of almost no sleep at all, racked with circular patterns of worry and useless speculation. He had practiced in his mind, Miles estimated, about three hundred versions of his upcoming interview with Illyan. The only certainty he held was that the three hundred and first would be something totally different.

  The face of Illyan s secretary formed over the vid plate. "Now?" Miles said, before the man could get his first word out. He rubbed his hand through sleep-bent hair, and over his slightly numb face.

  The secretary blinked, cleared his throat, and started in with his own practiced sentences. "Good afternoon, Lieutenant Vorkosigan. Chief Illyan requests that you report to his office in one hour."

  "I could make it quicker."

  "One hour," the secretary repeated. "HQ will send a car for you."

  "Oh. Thanks." Useless to ask for more information over a comconsole; Miles's machine was more secured than a commercial model, but not that much more.

  The secretary cut the com. Well, it would give him time to take another cold shower, and dress properly. After his second bath of the day he pulled a set of fresh-pressed undress greens out of his closet, and set about transferring his ImpSec silver eyes to their place on the collar, in front of the—ahem!—battered red lieutenant's tabs he'd been wearing for eight bleeding years. The rank tabs were duplicates, but the eye-of-Horus pins, built up in molecular layers of tarnish-proof silver in a hidden pattern, were issued one set (right-and left-facing) to a soldier. Name and serial number were engraved on the back, and woe to the man who lost his. ImpSec eyes were as hard to counterfeit as money, and as powerful. When Miles was finished, his appearance was as neat as for any interview with the Emperor. Neater. Gregor had less immediate control over his destiny than Illyan did.

  It was all sympathetic magic. When you couldn't do something truly useful, you tended to vent the pent-up energy in something useless but available, like snappy dressing. Still he was downstairs and waiting ten minutes before the ImpSec groundcar showed up at the front portico.

  When he arrived this time at Illyan's office, the door to the inner chamber was open. The secretary waved him through.

  Illyan looked up from his own oversized, overworked comconsole desk, and nodded in return to Miles's slightly-sharper-than-analyst's salute. He reached for a control, and the door to the outer office slid closed, and secure-locked itself. The locking was an unusual gesture, and Miles quelled a rising hope that it meant that this time, something bloody big was in the works, something really challenging.

  There was a chair waiting, good. Illyan had been known, when particularly furious, to keep one standing till the yelling part was done. Not that Illyan ever raised his voice; he tended to the devastatingly well-chosen word to convey his emotions, a style Miles admired and hoped to emulate. But there was
a peculiar tension in the ImpSec chief today. Grim, much more so than normal. Miles seated himself, and gave Illyan a short nod, signifying his commander had all his attention: I'm ready. Let's go.

  Illyan leaned not forward, but back, studying Miles across the wide black surface of the desk. "You told my secretary you had something you wanted to add to your last report?"

  Shit. Now or never. But the confession of his little medical problem would be certain to totally derail whatever mission assignment was coming up. Never it is, then. I'll fix it myself, later. As soon as possible. "Nothing important now. What's up?"

  Illyan sighed, and drummed his fingers once, introspectively, on the black glass before him. "I received a disturbing report from Jackson's Whole."

  Miles's breath drew in. I died there once. "Admiral Naismith is notably unwelcome in those parts, but I'm ready for a rematch. What have the bastards done now?"

  "This is not a new mission, nor a new report. This is in relation to your last … I can hardly call it a mission, since I never ordered it. Your last adventure there." Illyan looked up at him.

  "Oh?" said Miles cautiously.

  "Complete copies of your cryo-revival surgeon's medical records finally surfaced. It took some time, due to the confusion of the Durona Group s hurried departure from Jackson's Whole, with their records scattered between Escobar and House Fell. House Fell, needless to say, was not forthcoming with extra data. It took even more time for the records to be received and processed by my analysis section, and to finally be read in detail by someone who realized their significance and implications. Some months, in fact."

  Miles's belly went abruptly very cold, as if in memory of his freezing death. He had a sudden insight as to the exact state of mind of a person who fell/jumped/was pushed from the top of a very tall building, in that subjectively stretched eternity it took for them to reach the pavement below. We have just made a major mistake. Oh, yes.