Memory b-10

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Miles swallowed, not certain he was grateful to Galeni for saying out loud something he scarcely dared think. "I wish I could say so. But no. There was nothing wrong with his judgment then. It followed quite logically from his principles."

  "So when did this start? It's a critical question."

  "Yes. I've asked it of myself. Everyone else will be asking too, I'm sure. We'll all have to wait on the ImpSec physicians to tell us, I guess. Speaking of which, was there any word yet as to exactly what did cause this thing?"

  "Nothing that trickled down to me. But they can hardly have started to examine the problem yet. I suppose they'll have to fly in obscure experts."

  Martin appeared at last with their drinks, and Galeni elected to stay to dinner, a bit of news that made Martins face fall. Since Ma Kosti served the two men elegantly and abundantly on zero notice, Miles could only assume Martin had been forced to give up his portion to the guest, and been required to subsist on sandwiches. Having seen Ma Kosti's idea of a quick snack, Miles did not feel overly guilty about this, though her art tonight was somewhat wasted on his and Galeni's distraction.

  Still . . . the worst was over, with Illyan, and the larger dangers averted. The rest would just be cleanup.

  The pressed gargoyles on the lintel over the side door to ImpSec HQ were looking particularly suffused this morning, Miles thought, as if weighed down with sorrow and about to burst from the internal pressure of their sinister secrets. And the expressions on the faces of some of the men he passed bore a subtle resemblance to those of their granite mascots. The clerk at the security desk in the lobby looked up at him with a harried blink. "May I help you, sir?"

  "I'm Lord Vorkosigan. I'm here to see Simon Illyan."

  The clerk checked his comconsole. "You aren't on my roster, my lord."

  "No. I just dropped by to visit him." The clerk, and everyone else, had to at least know that Illyan was off duty, if only because they had to have been informed that Haroche was now their acting chief. "In the clinic. Give me a tag and let me in, please."

  "I can't do that, my lord."

  "Of course you can. It's your job. Who's duty officer today?"

  "Major Jarlais, my lord."

  "Good. He knows me. Call him for your authorization, then."

  Jarlais's face appeared on the clerk's comconsole within a couple of minutes. "Yes?"

  The clerk explained Miles's request.

  "I don't think that's possible, my lord," Jarlais said uncertainly to Miles, who was leaning into range of the vid pickup over the clerk's shoulder.

  Miles sighed. "Call your boss . . . no, hell, it's going to take thirty minutes to work my way up the entire chain of command. Let's cut out the middlemen, eh? I hate to bother him when he's as busy as he undoubtedly is this morning, but just call General Haroche."

  Jarlais, obviously, was equally reluctant to interrupt his superior, but a Vor lord in one's lobby was hard to dismiss, and impossible to ignore. They got through to Haroche's comconsole in a mere ten minutes, good work under the circumstances, Miles thought.

  "Good morning, General," Miles said to Haroche s image over the desk clerk's vid plate. "I came in to see Simon."

  "Impossible," rumbled Haroche.

  Miles's voice grew edged. "It's impossible only if he's dead. I think you are trying to say that you don't wish to allow it. Why not?"

  Haroche hesitated. "Corporal, set your cone of silence and give up your comconsole seat to Lord Vorkosigan for a moment, please."

  The clerk obediently slid aside; a shadow fell around Miles and Haroche's image from the security generator over the station chair.

  "Where did you hear about this?" Haroche demanded suspiciously, as soon as their privacy was assured.

  Miles raised his brows, and switched gears without a moment's pause. "I was worried. When you didn't call me back after my call to you of day before yesterday, and didn't return any of my other messages, I finally called Gregor."

  "Oh," said Haroche. His suspicion faded into mere irritation.

  That was a close one, Miles realized. If Haroche hadn't reported to Gregor yet, it could have been a major stumble, potentially very damaging to Galeni. He'd better be carefully vague about when he'd supposedly talked to the Emperor, until he actually did. "I want to see Illyan."

  "Illyan may not even be able to recognize you," said Haroche, after a long pause. "He's babbling classified material at a meter a minute. I had to assign guards of the highest security levels."

  "So what? I'm cleared at the highest security levels." Hell, he was classified material.

  "Surely not. Your clearance must have been revoked when you were . . . discharged."

  "Check it." Ah, hell. Haroche had access to all of Illyan's files, now; he could look up the full true story of Miles's termination any time he had a minute. Miles hoped he hadn't had too many spare minutes to devote to such inquiries in the last day.

  Haroche, after a narrow-eyed look at Miles, tapped out a code on his comconsole. "Your clearance is still on file," he said in some surprise.

  "There you go."

  "Illyan must have forgotten to alter it. Was he growing confused as early as that? Well …" His hand tapped on. "I revoke it now."

  You can't do that! Miles bit back the outraged scream. Haroche most certainly could. Miles stared at him, frustrated. So what was he going to do? Flounce out of ImpSec with an angry cry of, We'll just see about that! I'm going to tell my big brother on you! No. Gregor was a card he dared only play once, and only in the direst emergency. He let out his breath, and his anger, in a carefully controlled sigh. "General. Prudence is one thing. Paranoia that can't tell friend from foe is quite another."

  "Lord Vorkosigan," said Haroche, equally tightly. "We don't yet know what we have here. I don't have time to spend entertaining idly curious civilians this morning, friendly or not. Please do not pester my staff any more. Whatever the Emperor chooses to pass on to you is his business. My only duty is to report to him. Good day." He cut the com with a firm swipe; the cone of silence vanished from around Miles, leaving him in the lobby again, with the clerk staring earnestly at him.

  That did not go well.

  The first thing he did upon returning to Vorkosigan House was lock himself in his bedroom and call Gregor. It took forty-five minutes to get through. If it had taken forty-five hours, he would have persisted just the same.

  "Gregor," Miles began without preamble, when the Emperor's face appeared over his vid plate. "What the hell is going on with Illyan?"

  "Where did you hear about it?" asked Gregor, unconsciously echoing Haroche, and looking worried.

  Miles summed up Illyan's call to him, and his call to Haroche, of two days ago. He again left Galeni out of it. "And then what happened? Something's happened, obviously."

  Gregor gave him a brief precis of Illyan s breakdown, minus most of the harrowing details supplied by Galeni. "Haroche had him admitted to ImpSec's own clinic, which makes sense under the circumstances."

  "Yes, I tried to see Illyan this morning. Haroche wouldn't let me in."

  "They can bring whatever equipment or experts they need in there. I've personally granted funds and authority for anything Haroche wants to requisition."

  "Gregor, track this for a moment. Haroche wouldn't let me in. To see Illyan."

  Gregor's fingers spread in a frustrated gesture. "Miles, give the man a break. He has his hands full, suddenly taking over all Illyan's duties, transferring his own department to the administration of his second—let him settle for a few days, without jogging his elbow, please. When he feels more in control, I'm sure he will relax. You have to admit, Simon would be the first to approve a cautious approach to such an emergency."

  "True. Simon would prefer to be in the hands of people who really cared about security. But I'm beginning to think I would prefer it if there were any signs he was in the hands of people who really cared about Simon Illyan." He remembered the lingering nightmare of his own bout of post-cryo-reviva
l amnesia. It had been one of the most terrifying periods of his life, to have so lost his memories, himself. . . was Illyan experiencing something like that right now? Or something even more grotesque? Miles had been lost among strangers. Illyan seemed lost among what should have been friends.

  Miles sighed. "All right, I'll leave poor Haroche alone. God knows I don't envy him his job. But would you keep me posted on the medical bulletins? I find all this . . . unexpectedly dismaying."

  Gregor looked sympathetic. "Illyan really was a mentor to you, wasn't he?"

  "In his own acerbic and demanding way, yes. It was an excellent way, in retrospect. But before that, even … he served my father for thirty years, my whole life. Until I was eighteen years old, I called him "Uncle Simon," till I was admitted to the Service Academy, after which I just called him "Sir." He had no surviving family of his own by then, and his job and, I'm beginning to think, that damned chip in his head ate any chance of his starting a new one for himself."

  "I didn't realize you thought of him as some sort of foster father, Miles."

  Miles shrugged. "A foster uncle, anyway. It's … a family matter. And I am Vor."

  "Pleased to hear you admit it," murmured Gregor. "One wonders if you realize the fact, sometimes."

  Miles flushed. "What I owe to Illyan is something all mixed up between a foster uncle and a family retainer . . . and I'm the only Vorkosigan on the planet at the moment. It feels like . . . no, it is my responsibility."

  "The Vorkosigans," granted Gregor, "were always nothing if not loyal."

  "It gets to be kind of a habit."

  Gregor sighed. "Of course I'll keep you informed."

  "Once a day? Haroche will be giving you bulletins once a day, I know, with your morning ImpSec briefing."

  "Yes, Illyan and my coffee always used to arrive together. Sometimes, if he came in person, he'd bring the coffee himself. I always felt it was a polite hint: Sit up and pay attention."

  Miles grinned. "That's Illyan. Once a day, yes?"

  "Oh, very well. Look, I must go now."

  "Thanks, Gregor."

  The Emperor cut the com.

  Miles sat back, partially satisfied. He had to give events and people time to sort themselves out. He thought of his own placid advice to Galeni about intuition versus proof. His intuition demon could just go back in its box—he pictured himself stuffing a small Naismith-shaped gnome into a trunk, and fastening the lid with straps. And little tiny meeping and banging noises coming from inside … I didn't become Illyan's top agent because I was better at following the rules than anybody else. But it was too damned early to say There's something wrong with this picture, or even to think it very loudly.

  ImpSec would take care of its own; it always did. And he wasn't going to make a fool of himself in public again. He would wait.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The week dragged past. The daily short briefings via comconsole from Gregor seemed all right at first, but as each one fell atop the last with little sense of progress, ImpSec's caution began to seem downright glacial to Miles. He complained of this to Gregor.

  "You're always impatient, Miles," Gregor pointed out. "Nothing ever goes fast enough to suit you."

  "Illyan shouldn't have to wait on doctors. Other people must, maybe, but not him. Don't they have any conclusions yet?"

  "They ruled out stroke."

  "They ruled out stroke the first day. Then what? What about the chip?"

  "There is apparently some evidence of deterioration or damage to the chip."

  "We guessed that already, too. What kind? When? How? Why? What the hell are they doing in there all this time?"

  "They're still working on ruling out other neurological problems. And psychological ones. Its apparently not easy."

  Miles hunched, grouchily. "I don't buy the iatrogenic psychosis idea. He's had that chip in too long without any signs of problems like this before."

  "Well . . . that's just the point, it seems. Illyan has had this particular neural augmentation in place and running for longer than any other human being ever. There are no standards for comparison. He's the baseline. No one knows what thirty-five years of accumulated artificial memory does to a personality. We may be finding out."

  "I still think we ought to be finding out faster."

  "They're doing all they can, Miles. You'll just have to wait like the rest of us."

  "Yeah, yeah . . ."

  Gregor cut the com; Miles stared unseeing into the empty space over the vid plate. The trouble with synopsized information was that it was always so nebulous. The devil was in the details, the raw data; embedded therein were all the tiny clues that fed the intuition demon until it became strong and fat and, sometimes, grew up to become an actual Theory, or even a Proof. Miles was at least three layers away from reality; the ImpSec physicians synopsized it to Haroche, who boiled it down for Gregor, who filtered it to Miles. There weren't enough facts left in the clarified drippings by that time to color an opinion.

  Lady Alys Vorpatril returned from her official journey to Komarr the following morning; that afternoon, she called Miles on his comconsole. He braced himself for the impact of descending social duties; some repressed inner voice cried Incoming!, and dove for cover, uselessly. The inner man would simply have to be dragged out again by the heels and propped upright to march on her orders.

  But instead her first words were, "Miles, how long have you known about this dreadful nonsense going on with Simon?"

  "Um … a couple of weeks."

  "Did it never occur to any of you three young louts that I would wish to be informed?"

  Young louts—Ivan, Miles, and . . . Gregor? She was upset.

  "There was nothing you could do. You were halfway to Komarr. And you already had a top-priority job. But no, I confess I didn't think of it."

  "Fools," she breathed. Her brown eyes smoldered.

  "Um . . . how did things go, by the way? On Komarr."

  "Not terribly well. Laisa's parents are rather upset. I did what I could to soothe their fears, given that I judge some of their anxieties to be quite well founded. I asked your mother to stop on her way and speak to them some more."

  "Mothers on her way home?"

  "Soon, I hope."

  "Ah . . . are you sure my mother is the best person for that job? She can be awfully blunt in her opinions of Barrayar. And she's not always the most diplomatic."

  "No, but she's absolutely honest. And she has this peculiar trick of making the most outlandish things seem perfectly sensible, at least for the duration of the time she's talking to you. People end up agreeing with her, and then spending the next month wondering how it happened. I have, at any rate, accomplished all the proper forms and duties of Gregor's Baba."

  "So … is Gregor's wedding on, or off?"

  "Oh, on, of course. But there is a difference between things done in a scramble, and things done superbly well. There will be enough tensions that I can't ease. I don't intend to leave any hanging that I can eliminate. Goodwill is going to be at a premium." She frowned fiercely. "Speaking of goodwill, or the lack of it—they told me Simon was in the ImpSec Headquarters clinic, so of course I went immediately to see him. That idiot general what's-his-name wouldn't let me in!"

  "Haroche?" ventured Miles.

  "Yes, that was it. Not a Vor, that fellow, and it shows. Miles, can't you do something?"

  "Me! I have no authority."

  "But you worked with those, those, those . . . men for years. You understand them, presumably."

  I am ImpSec, he'd once told Elli Quinn. He'd been quite proud to identify himself with that powerful organization, as if they'd flowed together to become some sort of higher cyborg. Well, he was amputated now, and ImpSec seemed to be stumping along without him in perfect indifference. "I don't work for them anymore. And if I did, I'd still be just a lowly lieutenant. Lieutenants don't give orders to generals, not even Vor lieutenants. Haroche wouldn't let me in either. I think you need to talk to Gregor.
"

  "I just did. He was quite maddeningly vague about it all."

  "Maybe he didn't want to distress you. I gather Illyan is in a pretty disturbing mental state right now, not recognizing people and so on."

  "Well, how can he, if no one he knows is allowed to see him?"

  "Um. Good point. Look, I have no intention of defending Haroche to you. I'm pretty annoyed at him myself."

  "Not annoyed enough," snapped Lady Alys. "Haroche actually had the nerve to tell me—me!— that it was no sight for a lady. I asked him what he had been doing during the War of Vordarian's Pretendership." Her voice trailed off in a hiss—Miles's ear was not quite sure, but he thought it detected suppressed barracks language. "I can see Gregor is thinking he may have to work with Haroche for a long time yet. He didn't say it in so many words, naturally, but I gather Haroche has persuaded Gregor that his status as acting Chief of ImpSec is too new and fragile to bear interference from such dangerously unauthorized—and female—persons such as myself. Simon never had any such qualms. I wish Cordelia were here. She was always better than I at cutting through masculinist drivel."

  "So to speak," said Miles, thinking of Vordarian's fate at his mothers hands. But Lady Alys was quite correct: Illyan had always treated her as a valued, though different, member of Gregor's support team. Haroche's new and tighter professional order must have come as a bit of a shock to her. Miles went on, "Haroche is in an excellent position to persuade Gregor. He's in total control of the flow of all information to him." Though you couldn't call that a change in how things were done; it had always been that way, but when Illyan had been the sluice keeper it had somehow never bothered Miles.

  Alys's dark brows twitched; she said nothing aloud to this. Beneath her speculative frown the silence grew . . . noticeable.

  To break the discomfort his unguarded words had engendered, Miles said lightly, "You could go on strike. No wedding till Gregor twists Haroches arm for you."

  "If something sensible isn't done and done soon, I just might."