Miles Errant

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  "Trading a Barrayaran occupation for a Cetagandan one strikes me as a zero-sum move in the extreme—surely he's not that mad. But what happens to your rather expensive clone?" said Galeni, puzzling out the threads.

  Miles smiled crookedly. "Ser Galen doesn't care. He's just a means to an end." His mouth opened, closed, opened again. "Except that—I keep hearing my mother's voice, in my head. That's where I picked up that perfect Betan accent, y'know, that I use for Admiral Naismith. I can hear her now."

  "And what does she say?" Galeni's brows twitched in amusement.

  "Miles—she says—what have you done with your baby brother?!"

  "Your clone is hardly that!" choked Galeni.

  "On the contrary, by Betan law my clone is exactly that."

  "Madness." Galeni paused. "Your mother could not possibly expect you to look out for this creature."

  "Oh, yes she could." Miles sighed glumly. A knot of unspoken panic made a lump in his chest. Complex, too complex . . .

  "And this is the woman that—you claim—is behind the man who's behind the Barrayaran Imperium? I don't see it. Count Vorkosigan is the most pragmatic of politicians. Look at the entire Komarr integration scheme."

  "Yes," said Miles cordially. "Look at it."

  Galeni shot him a suspicious glance. "Persons before principles, eh?" he said slowly at last.

  "Yep."

  Galeni subsided wearily on his bench. After a time one corner of his mouth twitched up. "My father," he murmured, "was always a man of great—principles."

  CHAPTER TEN

  With every passing minute, the chances of rescue seemed bleaker. In time another breakfast-type meal was delivered, making this, if such a clock was to be relied upon, the third day of Miles's incarceration. The clone, it appeared, had not made any immediate and obvious mistake to reveal his true nature to Ivan or Elli. And if he could pass Ivan and Elli, he could pass anywhere. Miles shivered.

  He inhaled deeply, swung from his bench, and put himself through a series of calisthenics, trying to clear the residual mush of drug from his body and brain. Galeni, sunk this morning in an unpleasant mixture of drug hangover, depression, and helpless rage, sprawled on his bench and watched without comment.

  Wheezing, sweating, and dizzy, Miles paced the cell to cool down. The place was beginning to stink, and this wasn't helping. Not too hopefully, he went to the washroom and tried the sock-down-the-drain trick. As he had suspected, the same sensor system that turned on the water with a pass of his hand turned it off prior to overflow. The toilet worked fail-safe the same way. And even if by some miracle he managed to get their captors to open the door, Galeni had demonstrated how poor the chance was of fighting their way out against stunners.

  No. His sole point of contact with the enemy lay in the flow of information they hoped to squeeze from him. It was after all the only reason he was still alive. As levers went it was potentially very powerful. Informational sabotage. If the clone wasn't going to make mistakes on his own, perhaps he needed a little push. But how could Miles work it, tanked on fast-penta? He could stand in the center of the cell and make spurious confidences to the light fixture, à la Captain Galeni, but could hardly expect to be taken seriously.

  He was sitting on his bench frowning at his cold toes—the clammy wet socks were laid out to dry—when the door clicked open. Two guards with stunners. One covered Galeni, who sneered back without moving. The guard's finger twitched tensely on the trigger; no hesitation there. They did not need Galeni conscious today. The other one gestured Miles out. If Captain Galeni was to be stunned instantly, there was not a great deal of point in Miles tackling the guards unilaterally; he sighed and obeyed, stepping into the corridor.

  Miles exhaled in startlement. The clone stood waiting, staring at him with devouring eyes.

  The alter-Miles was dressed in his Dendarii admiral's uniform. It fit perfectly, right down to the combat boots.

  Rather breathlessly, the clone directed the guards to escort Miles to the study. This time he was tied firmly to a chair in the middle of the room. Interestingly, Galen was not there.

  "Wait outside the door," the clone told the guards. They looked at each other, shrugged, and obeyed, hauling a couple of padded chairs with them for comfort.

  The silence when the door closed was profound. His duplicate walked slowly around Miles at the safe distance of a meter, as though Miles were a snake that might suddenly strike. He fetched up to face him a good meter and a half away, leaning hip-slung against the comconsole desk, one booted foot swinging. Miles recognized the posture as his own. He would never be able to use it again without being painfully self-aware—a little piece of himself the clone had stolen from him. One of many little pieces. He felt suddenly perforated, frayed, tattered. And afraid.

  "How, ah," Miles began, and had to pause and clear his thick, dry throat, "however did you manage to escape the embassy?"

  "I've just spent the morning attending to Admiral Naismith's duties," the clone told him. Smugly, Miles fancied. "Your bodyguard thought she was handing me back to Barrayaran embassy security. The Barrayarans will think my Komarran guard is a Dendarii. And I win myself a little slice of unaccounted time. Neat, no?"

  "Risky," remarked Miles. "What do you hope to gain that's worth it? Fast-penta doesn't exactly work on me, y'know." In fact, Miles noticed, the hypospray was nowhere in sight. Missing, like Ser Galen. Curious.

  "It doesn't matter." The clone made a sharp throwaway gesture, another piece torn from Miles, twang. "I don't care if you talk truth or lies. I just want to hear you talk. To see you, just once. You, you, you—" the clone's voice dropped to a whisper, twang, "how I've come to hate you."

  Miles cleared his throat again. "I might point out that, in point of fact, we met for the very first time three nights ago. Whatever was done to you was not done by me."

  "You," said the clone, "screwed me over just by existing. It hurts me that you breathe." He spread a hand across his chest. "However, that will be cured very shortly. But Galen promised me an interview first." He wheeled off the desk and began to pace; Miles's feet twitched. "He promised me."

  "And where is Ser Galen this morning, by the way?" Miles inquired mildly.

  "Out." The clone favored him with a sour grin. "For a little slice of time."

  Miles's brows rose. "This conversation is unauthorized?"

  "He promised me. But then he reneged. Wouldn't say why."

  "Ah—hm. Since yesterday?"

  "Yes." The clone paused in his pacing to regard Miles through narrowed eyes. "Why?"

  "I think it may have been something I said. Thinking out loud," Miles said. "I'm afraid I figured out one too many things about his plot. Something even you weren't supposed to know. He was afraid I'd spill it under fast-penta. That suited me. The less you were able to pump from me, the more likely you'd be to make a mistake." Miles waited, barely breathing, to see which way this bait would be taken. A whiff of the exhilarated hyperconsciousness of combat thrilled along his nerves.

  "I'll bite," said the clone agreeably. His eyes gleamed, sardonic. "Spill it, then."

  When he was seventeen, this clone's age, he'd been—inventing the Dendarii Mercenaries, Miles recalled. Perhaps it would be better not to underestimate him. What would it be like to be a clone? How far under the skin did their similarity end? "You're a sacrifice," Miles stated bluntly. "He does not intend for you to make it alive to the Barrayaran Imperium."

  "Do you think I haven't figured that out?" the clone scoffed. "I know he doesn't think I can make it. Nobody thinks I can make it—"

  Miles's breath caught as from a blow. This twang bit bone-deep.

  "But I'll show them. Ser Galen," the clone's eyes glittered, "is going to be very surprised at what happens when I come to power."

  "So will you," Miles predicted morosely.

  "D'you think I'm stupid?" the clone demanded.

  Miles shook his head. "I know exactly how stupid you are, I'm afraid."

  Th
e clone smiled tightly. "Galen and his friends spent a month farting around London, chasing you, just trying to set up for the switch. It was I who told them to have you kidnap yourself. I've studied you longer than any of them, harder than all of them. I knew you couldn't resist. I can outthink you."

  Demonstrably true, alas, at least in this instance. Miles fought off a wave of despair. The kid was good, too good—he had it all, right down to the screaming tension radiating from every muscle in his body. Twang. Or was that home-grown? Could different pressures produce the same warps? What would it be like, behind those eyes . . . ?

  Miles's eye fell on the Dendarii uniform. His own insignia winked back at him malevolently as the clone paced. "But you can outthink Admiral Naismith?"

  The clone smiled proudly. "I got your soldiers released from jail this morning. Something you hadn't been able to do, evidently."

  "Danio?" Miles croaked, fascinated. No, no, say it isn't so. . . .

  "He's back on duty." The clone nodded incisively.

  Miles suppressed a small moan.

  The clone paused, glanced at Miles intently, some of his decisiveness falling away. "Speaking of Admiral Naismith—are you sleeping with that woman?"

  What kind of life had this kid led? Miles wondered anew. Secret—always watched, constantly force-tutored, allowed contact with only a few selected persons—almost cloistered. Had the Komarrans thought to include that in his training, or was he a seventeen-year-old virgin? In which case he must be obsessed with sex . . . "Quinn," said Miles, "is six years older than me. Extremely experienced. And demanding. Accustomed to a high degree of finesse in her chosen partner. Are you an initiate in the variant practices of the Deeva Tau love cults as practiced on Kline Station?" A safe challenge, Miles judged, as he'd just this minute invented them. "Are you familiar with the Seven Secret Roads of Female Pleasure? After she's climaxed four or five times, though, she'll usually let you up—"

  The clone circled him, looking distinctly unsettled. "You're lying. I think."

  "Maybe." Miles smiled toothily, only wishing the improvised fantasy were true. "Consider what you'd risk, finding out."

  The clone glowered at him. He glowered back.

  "Do your bones break like mine?" Miles asked suddenly. Horrible thought. Suppose, for every blow Miles had suffered, they had broken this one's bones to match. Suppose for every miscalculated foolish risk of Miles's, the clone had paid full measure—reason indeed to hate.

  "No."

  Miles breathed concealed relief. So, their med-sensor readings wouldn't exactly match. "It must be a short-term plot, eh?"

  "I mean to be on top in six months."

  "So I'd understood. And whose space fleet will bottle all the chaos on Barrayar, behind its wormhole exit, while Komarr rises again?" Miles made his voice light, trying to appear only casually interested in this vital bit of intelligence.

  "We were going to call in the Cetagandans. That's been broken off."

  His worst fears . . . "Broken off? I'm delighted, but why, in an escapade singularly lacking in sanity, should you have come to your senses on that one?"

  "We found something better, ready to hand." The clone smirked strangely. "An independent military force, highly experienced in space blockade duties, with no unfortunate ties to other planetary neighbors who might be tempted to muscle in on the action. And personally and fiercely loyal, it appears, to my slightest whim. The Dendarii Mercenaries."

  Miles tried to lunge for the clone's throat. The clone recoiled. Being still firmly tied to the chair, Miles and it toppled forward, mashing his face painfully into the carpet. "No, no, no!" he gibbered, bucking, trying to kick loose. "You moron! It'd be a slaughter—!"

  The two Komarran guards tumbled through the door. "What, what happened?"

  "Nothing." The clone, pale, ventured out from behind the comconsole desk where he'd retreated. "He fell over. Straighten him back, will you?"

  "Fell or was pushed," muttered one of the Komarrans as the pair of them yanked the chair back upright. Miles perforce came with it. The guard stared with interest at his face. A warm wetness, rapidly cooling, trickled itchily down Miles's upper lip and three-day moustache stubble. Bloody nose? He glanced down cross-eyed, and licked at it. Calm. Calm. The clone could never get that far with the Dendarii. His future failure would be little consolation to a dead Miles, though.

  "Do you, ah, need some help for this part?" the older of the two Komarrans asked the clone. "There is a kind of science in torture, you know. To get the maximum pain for the minimum damage. I had an uncle who told me what the Barrayaran Security goons used to do. . . . Given that the fast-penta is useless."

  "He doesn't need help," snapped Miles, at the same moment that the clone began, "I don't want help—" then both paused to stare at each other, Miles self-possessed again, regaining his wind, the clone taken slightly aback.

  But for the outward and visible marker of the damned beard, now would be the perfect time to begin screaming that Vorkosigan had overpowered and changed clothes with him, he was the clone, couldn't they tell the difference and untie me you cretins! A non-opportunity, alas.

  The clone straightened, trying to regain some dignity. "Leave us, please. When I want you, I'll call you."

  "Or maybe I will," remarked Miles sunnily. The clone glared. The two Komarrans exited with doubtful backward glances.

  "It's a stupid idea," Miles began immediately they were alone. "You've got to grasp, the Dendarii are an elite bunch—largely—but by planetary standards they are a small force. Small, you understand small? Small is for covert operations, hit and run, intelligence gathering. Not all-out slogging matches for a fixed spatial field with a whole developed planet's resources and will backing the enemy. You've got no sense of the economics of war! I swear to God, you're not thinking past that first six months. Not that you need to—you'll be dead before the end of the year, I expect."

  The clone's smile was razor-thin. "The Dendarii, like myself, are intended as a sacrifice. Dead mercenaries, after all, don't need to be paid." He paused and looked at Miles curiously. "How far ahead do you think?"

  "These days, about twenty years," Miles admitted glumly. And a fat lot of good it did him. Consider Captain Galeni. In his mind Miles already saw him as the best viceroy Komarr was ever likely to get—his death, not the loss of a minor Imperial officer of dubious origins, but of the first link in a chain of thousands of lives striving for a less tormented future. A future when Lieutenant Miles Vorkosigan would surely be subsumed by Count Miles Vorkosigan, and need sane friends in high places. If he could bring Galeni through this mess alive, and sane . . . "I admit," Miles added, "when I was your age I got through about one quarter hour at a time."

  The clone snorted. "A century ago, was it?"

  "Seems like it. I've always had the sense that I'd better live fast, if I'm to fit it all in."

  "Prescient of you. See how much you can fit into the next twenty-four hours. That's when I have my orders to ship out. At which point you will become—redundant."

  So soon. . . . No time left for experiments. No time left for anything but to be right, once.

  Miles swallowed. "The prime minister's death must be planned, or the destabilization of the Barrayaran government will not occur, even if Emperor Gregor is assassinated. So tell me," he said carefully, "what fate do you and Galen have planned for our father?"

  The clone's head jerked back. "Oh, no you don't. You are not my brother, and the Butcher of Komarr was never a father to me."

  "How about your mother?"

  "I have none. I came out of a replicator."

  "So did I," Miles remarked, "before the medics were done. It never made any difference to her that I could see. Being Betan, she's quite free of anti-birth-technology prejudices. It doesn't matter to her how you got here, but only what you do after you arrive. I'm afraid having a mother is a fate you can't avoid, from the moment she discovers your existence."

  The clone waved the phantom Countes
s Vorkosigan away. "A null factor. She is nothing in Barrayaran politics."

  "Is that so?" Miles muttered, then controlled his tongue. No time. "And yet you'd continue, knowing Ser Galen means to betray you to your death?"

  "When I am Emperor of Barrayar—then we shall see about Ser Galen."

  "If you mean to betray him anyway, why wait?"

  The clone cocked his head, eyes narrowing. "Ha?"

  "There's another alternative for you." Miles made his voice calm, persuasive. "Let me go now. And come with me. Back to Barrayar. You are my brother—like it or not; it's a biological fact, and it won't ever go away. Nobody gets to choose their relatives anyway, clone or no. I mean, given a choice, would you pick Ivan Vorpatril for your cousin?"

  The clone choked slightly, but did not interrupt. He was beginning to look faintly fascinated.

  "But there he is. And he's exactly as much your cousin as mine. Did you realize you have a name?" Miles demanded suddenly. "That's another thing you don't get to choose on Barrayar. Second son—that's you, my twin-six-years-delayed—gets the second names of his maternal and paternal grandfathers, just as the first son gets stuck with their first names. That makes you Mark Pierre. Sorry about the Pierre. Grandfather always hated it. You are Lord Mark Pierre Vorkosigan, in your own right, on Barrayar." He spoke faster and faster, inspired by the clone's arrested eyes.

  "What have you ever dreamed of being? Any education you want, Mother will see that you get. Betans are very big on education. Have you dreamed of escape—how about Licensed Star Pilot Mark Vorkosigan? Commerce? Farming? We have a family wine business, from grape vines to export crates—does science interest you? You could go live with your Grandmother Naismith on Beta Colony, study at the best research academies. You have an aunt and uncle there too, do you realize? Two cousins and a second cousin. If backward benighted Barrayar doesn't appeal to you, there's a whole 'nother life waiting on Beta Colony, to which Barrayar and all its troubles is scarcely a wrinkle on the event horizon. Your cloned origin wouldn't be novel enough to be worth mentioning, there. Any life you want. The galaxy at your fingertips. Choice—freedom—ask, and it's yours." He had to stop for breath.