Miles Errant

by Lois McMaster Bujold

"Not yet. It's probably still chasing us from . . . our last stop."

  Illyan's brows rose. "So did Lord Mark come in from the cold on his own, or did my erstwhile subordinate send him to me?"

  "Neither, sir." Quinn seemed to have trouble speaking. Bothari-Jesek wasn't even trying to.

  Illyan leaned forward, growing more serious, though still tinged with a slight irony. "So what half-cocked, insubordinate, I-thought-you-wanted-me-to-use-my-initiative-sir scam has he sent you to try to con me into paying for this time?"

  "No scam, sir," muttered Quinn. "But the bill is going to be huge."

  The coolly amused air faded altogether as he studied her gray face. "Yes?" he said after a moment.

  Quinn leaned on the desk with both hands, not for emphasis, Mark fancied, but for support. "Illyan, we have a problem. Miles is dead."

  Illyan took this in with a waxen stillness. Abruptly, he turned his chair around. Mark could see only the back of his head. His hair was thin. When he turned back, the lines had sprung out on his set face like a figure-ground reversal; like scars. "That's not a problem, Quinn," he whispered. "That's a disaster." He laid his hands down flat, very carefully, across the smooth black surface of the desk. So that's where Miles picked up that gesture, Mark, who had studied it, thought irrelevantly.

  "He's frozen in a cryo-chamber." Quinn licked her dry lips.

  Illyan's eyes closed; his mouth moved, whether on prayers or curses Mark could not tell. But he only said, mildly, "You might have said that first. The rest would have followed as a logical supposition." His eyes opened, intent. "So what happened? How bad were his wounds—not a head wound, pray God? How well-prepped was he?"

  "I helped do the prep myself. Under combat conditions. I . . . I think it was good. You can't know until . . . well. He took a very bad chest wound. As far as I could tell he was untouched from the neck up."

  Illyan breathed, carefully. "You're right, Captain Quinn. Not a disaster. Only a problem. I'll alert the Imperial Military Hospital at Vorbarr Sultana to expect their star patient. We can transfer the cryo-chamber from your ship to my fast courier immediately." Was the man babbling, just a little, with relief?

  "Uh . . ." said Quinn. "No."

  Illyan rested his forehead gingerly in his hand, as if a headache was starting just behind his eyes. "Finish, Quinn," he said in a tone of muffled dread.

  "We lost the cryo-chamber."

  "How could you lose a cryo-chamber?!"

  "It was a portable." She intercepted his burning stare, and hurried up her report. "It was left downside in the scramble to get off. Each of the combat-drop shuttles thought the other one had it. It was a mis-communication—I checked, I swear. It turned out the medic in charge of the cryo-chamber had been cut off from his shuttle by enemy forces. He found himself with access to a commercial shipping facility. We think he shipped the cryo-chamber from there."

  "You think? I will ask—what combat drop mission, in a moment. Where did he ship it?"

  "That's just it, we don't know. He was killed before he could report. The cryo-chamber could be on its way literally anywhere by now."

  Illyan sat back and rubbed his lips, which were set in a thin, ghastly smile. "I see. And all this happened when? And where?"

  "Two weeks and three days ago, on Jackson's Whole."

  "I sent you all to Illyrica, via Vega Station. How the hell did you end up on Jackson's Whole?"

  Quinn stood at parade rest and took it from the top, a stiff, clipped synopsis of the events of the last four weeks from Escobar onward. "I have a complete report with all our vid records and Miles's personal log here, sir." She laid a data cube on his comconsole.

  Illyan eyed it like a snake; his hand did not move toward it. "And the forty-nine clones?"

  "Still aboard the Peregrine, sir. We'd like to off-load them."

  My clones. What would Illyan do with them? Mark dared not ask.

  "Miles's personal log tends to be a fairly useless document, in my experience," observed Illyan distantly. "He is quite canny about what to leave out." He grew introspective, and fell silent for a time. Then he rose and walked from side to side across the little office. The cool facade cracked without warning; face contorted, he turned and slammed his fist into the wall with bone-crunching force, shouting, "Damn the boy for making a fucking farce out of his own funeral!"

  He stood with his back to them; when he turned again and sat down his face was stiff and blank. When he looked up, he addressed Bothari-Jesek.

  "Elena. It's clear I'm going to have to stay here at Komarr, for the moment, to coordinate the search from ImpSec's galactic affairs HQ. I can't afford to put an extra five days of travel time between myself and the action. I will, of course . . . compose the formal missing-in-action report on Lieutenant Lord Vorkosigan and forward it immediately to Count and Countess Vorkosigan. I hate to think of it delivered by some subordinate, but it will have to be. But will you, as a personal favor to me, escort Lord Mark to Vorbarr Sultana, and deliver him to their custody?"

  No, no, no, Mark screamed inside.

  "I . . . would rather not go to Barrayar, sir."

  "The Prime Minister will have questions that only one who was on the spot can answer. You are the most ideal courier I can imagine for a matter of such . . . complex delicacy. I grant you the task will be painful."

  Bothari-Jesek was looking trapped. "Sir, I'm a senior shipmaster. I'm not free to leave the Peregrine. And—frankly—I do not care to escort Lord Mark."

  "I'll give you anything you ask, in return."

  She hesitated. "Anything?"

  He nodded.

  She glanced at Mark. "I gave my word that all the House Bharaputra clones would be taken somewhere safe, somewhere humane, where the Jacksonians can't reach. Will you redeem my word for me?"

  Illyan chewed his lip. "ImpSec can launder their identities readily enough, of course. No difficulty there. Appropriate placement might be trickier. But yes. We'll take them on."

  Take them on. What did Illyan mean? For all their other flaws, the Barrayarans at least did not practice slavery.

  "They're children," Mark blurted. "You have to remember they're only children." It's hard to remember, he wanted to add, but couldn't, under Bothari-Jesek's cold eyes.

  Illyan averted his glance from Mark. "I shall seek Countess Vorkosigan's advice, then. Anything else?"

  "The Peregrine and the Ariel—"

  "Must remain, for the moment, in Komarr orbit and communications quarantine. My apologies to your troops, but they'll have to tough it out."

  "You'll cover the costs for this mess?"

  Illyan grimaced. "Alas, yes."

  "And . . . and look hard for Miles!"

  "Oh, yes," he breathed.

  "Then I'll go." Her voice was faint, her face pale.

  "Thank you," said Illyan quietly. "My fast courier will be at your disposal as quickly as you can make ready to depart." His eye fell reluctantly on Mark. He had been avoiding looking at Mark for the whole last half of this interview. "How many personal guards do you wish?" he asked Bothari-Jesek. "I'll make it clear to them that they are under your command till they see you safe to the Count."

  "I don't want any, but I suppose I have to sleep sometime. Two," Bothari-Jesek decided.

  And so he was officially made a prisoner of the Barrayaran Imperial government, Mark thought. The end of the line.

  Bothari-Jesek rose and motioned Mark to his feet. "Come on. I want to get a few personal items from the Peregrine. And tell my exec he's got the command, and explain to the troops about being confined to quarters. Thirty minutes."

  "Good. Captain Quinn, please remain."

  "Yes, sir."

  Illyan stood, to see Bothari-Jesek out. "Tell Aral and Cordelia," he began, and paused. Time stretched.

  "I will," said Bothari-Jesek quietly. Mutely, Illyan nodded.

  The door seals hissed open for her stride. She didn't even look back to see if Mark was following. He had to break into a run every
five steps to keep up.

  His cabin aboard the ImpSec fast courier proved to be even tinier and more cell-like than the one he'd occupied aboard the Peregrine. Bothari-Jesek locked him in and left him alone. There was not even the time marker and limited human contact of three-times-a-day ration delivery; the cabin had its own computer-controlled food dispensing system, pneumatically connected to some central store. He over-ate compulsively, no longer sure why or what it could do for him, besides provide a combination of comfort and self-destruction. But death from the complications of obesity took years, and he only had five days.

  On the last day his body switched strategies, and he became violently ill. He managed to keep this fact secret until the trip downside in the personnel shuttle, where it was mistaken for zero-gravity and motion sickness by a surprisingly sympathetic ImpSec guard, who apparently suffered from some such slight weakness himself. The man promptly and cheerfully slapped an anti-nausea patch from the med kit on the wall onto the side of Mark's neck.

  The patch also had some sedative power. Mark's heart rate slowed, an effect which lasted till they landed and transferred to a sealed groundcar. A guard and a driver took the front compartment, and Mark sat across from Bothari-Jesek in the rear compartment for the last leg of his nightmare journey, from the military shuttleport outside the capital into the heart of Vorbarr Sultana. The center of the Barrayaran Empire.

  It wasn't until he found himself having something resembling an asthma attack that Bothari-Jesek looked up from her own glum self-absorption and noticed.

  "What the hell's the matter with you?" She leaned forward and took his pulse, which was racing. He was clammy all over.

  "Sick," he gasped, and then at her irritated I-could-have-figured-that-out-for-myself look, admitted, "Scared." He thought he'd been as frightened as a human being could be, under Bharaputran fire, but that was as nothing compared to this slow, trapped terror, this drawn-out suffocating helplessness to affect his destiny.

  "What do you have to be afraid of?" she asked scornfully. "Nobody's going to hurt you."

  "Captain, they're going to kill me."

  "Who? Lord Aral and Lady Cordelia? Hardly. If for any reason we fail to get Miles back, you could be the next Count Vorkosigan. Surely you've figured on that."

  At this point he satisfied a long-held curiosity. When he passed out, his breathing did indeed begin again automatically. He blinked away black fog, and fended off Bothari-Jesek's alarmed attempt to loosen his clothes and check his tongue to be sure he hadn't swallowed it. She had pocketed a couple of anti-nausea patches from the shuttle medkit, just in case, and she held one uncertainly. He motioned urgently for her to apply it. It helped.

  "Who do you think these people are?" she demanded angrily, when his breathing grew less irregular.

  "I don't know. But they're sure as hell going to be pissed at me."

  The worst was the knowledge that it need not have been this bad. Any time before the Jackson's Whole debacle he could in theory have walked right in and said hello. But he'd wanted to meet Barrayar on his own terms. Like trying to storm heaven. His attempt to make it better had made it infinitely worse.

  She sat back and regarded him with slow bemusement. "You really are scared to death, aren't you?" she said, in a tone of revelation that made him want to howl. "Mark, Lord Aral and Lady Cordelia are going to give you the benefit of every doubt. I know they will. But you have to do your part."

  "What is my part?"

  "I'm . . . not sure," she admitted.

  "Thanks. You're such a help."

  And then they were there. The groundcar swung through a set of gates and into the narrow grounds of a huge stone residence. It was the pre-electric Time-of-Isolation design that gave it such an air of fabulous age, Mark decided. The architecture he'd seen like it in London all dated back well over a millenium, though this pile was only a hundred and fifty standard years old. Vorkosigan House.

  The canopy swung up, and he struggled out of the groundcar after Bothari-Jesek. This time she waited for him. She grasped him firmly by the upper arm, either worried he would collapse or fearing he would bolt. They stepped through a pleasantly-hued sunlight into the cool dimness of a large entry foyer paved in black and white stone and featuring a remarkable wide curving staircase. How many times had Miles stepped across this threshold?

  Bothari-Jesek seemed an agent of some evil fairy, which had snatched away the beloved Miles and replaced him with this pallid, pudgy changeling. He choked down an hysterical giggle as the sardonic mocker in the back of his brain called out, Hi, Mom and Dad, I'm home. . . . Surely the evil fairy was himself.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  They were met in the entry hall by a pair of liveried servants wearing Vorkosigan brown and silver. In a high Vor household even the staff played soldier. One of them directed Bothari-Jesek away to the right. Mark could have wept. She despised him, but at least she was familiar. Stripped of all support and feeling more utterly alone than when locked in the darkness of his cabin, he turned to follow the other manservant through a short arched hallway and a set of doors on the left.

  He had memorized the layout of Vorkosigan House under Galen's tutelage, long ago, so he knew they were entering a room dubbed the First Parlor, an antechamber to the great library that ran from the front of the house to the back. By the standards of Vorkosigan House's public rooms he supposed it was relatively intimate, though its high ceiling seemed to lend it a cool, disapproving austerity. His consciousness of the architectural detail was instantly obliterated when he saw the woman sitting on a padded sofa, quietly awaiting him.

  She was tall, neither thin nor stout, a sort of middle-aged solid in build. Red hair streaked with natural gray wound in a complex knot on the back of her head, leaving her face free to make its own statement of cheekbone, line of jaw, and clear gray eye. Her posture was contained, poised rather than resting. She wore a soft silky beige blouse, a hand-embroidered sash that he suddenly realized matched the pattern on his own stolen one, and a calf-length tan skirt and buskins. No jewelry. He had expected something more ostentatious, elaborate, intimidating, the formal icon of Countess Vorkosigan from the vids of reviewing stands and receptions. Or was her sense of power so fully encompassed that she didn't need to wear it, she was it? He could see no physical similarity whatsoever between her and himself. Well, maybe eye color. And the paleness of their skins. And the bridge of the nose, perhaps. The line of the jaw had a certain congruence not apparent from vids—

  "Lord Mark Vorkosigan, milady," the manservant announced portentously, making Mark flinch.

  "Thank you, Pym," she nodded to the middle-aged retainer, dismissing him. The armsman's disappointed curiosity was well-concealed, except for one quick glance back before closing the doors after himself.

  "Hello, Mark." Countess Vorkosigan's voice was a soft alto. "Please sit." She waved at an armchair set at a slight angle opposite her sofa. It did not appear to be hinged and sprung to snap closed upon him, and it was not too close to her; he lowered himself into it, gingerly, as instructed. Unusually, it was not too high for his feet to touch the floor. Had it been cut down for Miles?

  "I am glad to meet you at last," she stated, "though I'm sorry the circumstances are so awkward."

  "So am I," he mumbled. Glad, or sorry? And who were these I's sitting here, lying politely to each other about their gladness and sorrow? Who are we, lady? He looked around fearfully for the Butcher of Komarr. "Where is . . . your husband?"

  "Ostensibly, greeting Elena. Actually, he funked out and sent me into the front line first. Most unlike him."

  "I . . . don't understand. Ma'am." He didn't know what to call her.

  "He's been drinking stomach medicine in beverage quantities for the past two days . . . you have to understand how the information has been trickling in, from our point of view. Our first hint that there was anything amiss came four days ago in the form of a courier officer from ImpSec HQ, with a brief standard message from Illyan that Mi
les was missing in action, details to follow. We were not at first inclined to panic. Miles has been missing before, sometimes for quite extended periods. It was not until Illyan's full transmission was relayed and decoded, several hours later, together with the news that you were on your way, that it all came clear. We've had three days to think it through."

  He sat silent, struggling with the concept of the great Admiral Count Vorkosigan, the feared Butcher of Komarr, that massive, shadowy monster, even having a point of view, let alone one that low mortals such as himself were casually expected to understand.

  "Illyan never uses weasel-words," the Countess continued, "but he made it through that whole report without once using the term 'dead,' 'killed,' or any of their synonyms. The medical records suggest otherwise. Correct?"

  "Um . . . the cryo-treatment appeared successful." What did she want from him?

  "And so we are mired in an emotional and legal limbo," she sighed. "It would be almost easier if he . . ." She frowned fiercely down into her lap. Her hands clenched, for the first time. "You understand, we're going to be talking about a lot of possible contingencies. Much revolves around you. But I won't count Miles as dead till he's dead and rotted."

  He remembered that tide of blood on the concrete. "Um," he said helplessly.

  "The fact that you could potentially play Miles has been a great distraction to some people." She looked him over bemusedly. "You say the Dendarii accepted you . . . ?"

  He cringed into the chair, body-conscious under her sharp gray gaze, feeling the flesh of his torso roll and bunch under Miles's shirt and sash, the tightness of the trousers. "I've . . . put on some weight since then."

  "All that? In just three weeks?"

  "Yes," he muttered, flushing.

  One brow rose. "On purpose?"

  "Sort of."

  "Huh." She sat back, looking surprised. "That was extremely clever of you."

  He gaped, realized it emphasized his doubling chin, and closed his mouth quickly.

  "Your status has been the subject of much debate. I voted against any security ploy to conceal Miles's situation by having you pose as him. In the first place, it's redundant. Lieutenant Lord Vorkosigan is often gone for months at a time; his absence is more normal than not, these days. It's strategically more important to establish you as yourself, Lord Mark, if Lord Mark is indeed who you are to be."