Miles Errant

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  "Lord Vorpatril." It was not a question. The man speaking had appeared so quietly Mark was not even sure from what direction he had come. He was dressed as quietly, middle-aged, intelligent-looking; he might have been a museum administrator. "Come with me, please."

  Without question or comment, Ivan fell in behind the man, gesturing Mark ahead of him. Thus sandwiched, Mark trod in his wake, torn between curiosity and nerves.

  They went through a door marked "No Admittance," which the man unlocked with a mechanical key and then locked again behind them, went up two staircases, and down an echoing wood-floored corridor to a room occupying the top floor of a round tower at the building's corner. Once a guard post, it was now furnished as an office, with ordinary windows cut into the stone walls in place of arrow slits. A man waited within, perched on a stool, gazing pensively down at the grounds falling away to the river, and the sprinkling of brightly-dressed people strolling or climbing the paths.

  He was a thin, dark-haired fellow in his thirties, pale skin set off by loose dark clothing entirely lacking in pseudo-military detailing. He looked up with a quick smile at their guide. "Thank you, Kevi." Both greeting and dismissal seemed combined, for the guide nodded and exited.

  It wasn't until Ivan nodded and said, "Sire," that recognition clicked.

  Emperor Gregor Vorbarra. Shit. The door behind Mark was blocked by Ivan. Mark controlled his surge of panic. Gregor was only a man, alone, apparently unarmed. All the rest was . . . propaganda. Hype. Illusion. His heart beat faster anyway.

  "Hullo, Ivan," said the Emperor. "Thank you for coming. Why don't you go study the exhibits for a while."

  "Seen 'em before," said Ivan laconically.

  "Nevertheless." Gregor jerked his head doorward.

  "Not to put too fine a point on it," said Ivan, "but this is not Miles, not even on a good day. And despite appearances, he was trained as an assassin, once. Isn't this a touch premature?"

  "Well," said Gregor softly, "we'll find out, won't we? Do you want to assassinate me, Mark?"

  "No," Mark croaked.

  "There you have it. Take a hike, Ivan. I'll send Kevi for you in a bit."

  Ivan grimaced in frustration, and, Mark sensed, not a little frustrated curiosity. He departed with an ironic salaam that seemed to say, On your head be it.

  "So, Lord Mark," said Gregor. "What do you think of Vorbarr Sultana so far?"

  "It went by pretty fast," Mark said cautiously.

  "Dear God, don't tell me you let Ivan drive."

  "I didn't know I had a choice."

  The Emperor laughed. "Sit down." He waved Mark into the station chair behind the comconsole desk; the little room was otherwise sparsely furnished, though the antique military prints and maps cluttering the walls might be spill-over from the nearby museum.

  The Emperor's smile faded back into his initial pensive look as he studied Mark. It reminded Mark a little of the way Count Vorkosigan looked at him, that Who are you? look, only without the Count's ravenous intensity. A bearable wonder.

  "Is this your office?" asked Mark, cautiously settling himself in the Imperial swivel-chair. The room seemed small and austere for the purpose.

  "One of them. This whole complex is crammed with various offices, in some of the oddest niches. Count Vorvolk has one in the old dungeons. No head room. I use this as a private retreat when attending the Council of Counts meetings, or when I have other business here."

  "Why do I qualify as business? Besides not being pleasure. Is this personal or official?"

  "I can't spit without being official. On Barrayar, the two are not very separable. Miles . . . was . . ." Gregor's tongue tripped over that past tense too, "in no particular order, a peer of my caste; an officer in my service; the son of an extremely, if not supremely, important official; and a personal friend of lifelong standing. And the heir to the Countship of a District. And the Counts are the mechanism whereby one man," he touched his chest, "multiplies to sixty, and then to a multitude. The Counts are the first officers of the Imperium; I am its captain. You do understand, that I am not the Imperium? An empire is mere geography. The Imperium is a society. The multitude, the whole body—ultimately, down to every subject—that is the Imperium. Of which I am only a piece. An interchangeable part, at that—did you notice my great-uncle's scalp, downstairs?"

  "Um . . . yes. It was, uh, prominently displayed."

  "This is the home of the Council of Counts. The fulcrum of the lever may fancy itself supreme, but it is nothing without the lever. Mad Yuri forgot that. I don't. The Count of the Vorkosigans' District is another such living piece. Also interchangeable." He paused.

  "A . . . link in a chain," Mark offered carefully, to prove he was paying attention.

  "A link in a chain-mail. In a web. So that one weak link is not fatal. Many must fail at once, to achieve a real disaster. Still . . . one wants as many sound, reliable links as possible, obviously."

  "Obviously." Why are you looking at me?

  "So. Tell me what happened on Jackson's Whole. As you saw it." Gregor sat up on his perch, hooking one heel and crossing his booted ankles, apparently centered and comfortable, like a raven on a branch.

  "I'd have to start the story back on Earth."

  "Feel free." His easy brief smile implied Mark had all the time in the world, and one hundred percent of his attention.

  Haltingly, Mark began to stammer out his tale. Gregor's questions were few, only interjected when Mark hung up on the difficult bits; few but searching. Gregor was not in pursuit of mere facts, Mark quickly realized. He had obviously already seen Illyan's report. The Emperor was after something else.

  "I cannot argue with your good intentions," said Gregor at one point. "The brain transplant business is a loathsome enterprise. But you do realize—your effort, your raid, is hardly going to put a dent in it. House Bharaputra will just clean up the broken glass and go on."

  "It will make a permanent difference to the forty-nine clones," Mark asserted doggedly. "Everybody makes that same damned argument. 'I can't do it all, so I'm not going to do any.' And they don't. And it goes on, and on. And anyway, if I had been able to go back via Escobar as I'd planned in the first place—there would have been a big news splash. House Bharaputra might even have tried to reclaim the clones legally, and then there would really have been a public stink. I'd have made sure of it. Even if I'd been in Escobaran detention. Where, by the way, the House Bharaputra enforcers would have had a hard time getting at me. And maybe . . . maybe it would have interested some more people in the problem."

  "Ah!" said Gregor. "A publicity stunt."

  "It was not a stunt," Mark grated.

  "Excuse me. I did not mean to imply your effort was trivial. Quite the reverse. But you did have a coherent long-range strategy after all."

  "Yeah, but it went down the waste disintegrator as soon as I lost control of the Dendarii. As soon as they knew who I really was." He brooded on the memory of that helplessness.

  At Gregor's prodding, Mark went on to recount Miles's death, the screw-up with the lost cryo-chamber, their aborted efforts to retrieve it, and their humiliating ejection from Jacksonian local space. He found himself revealing far more of his real thoughts than he was comfortable doing, yet . . . Gregor almost put him at his ease. How did the man do it? The soft, almost self-effacing demeanor camouflaged a consummately skillful people-handler. In a garbled rush, Mark described the incident with Maree and his half-insane time in solitary confinement, then trailed off into inarticulate silence.

  Gregor frowned introspectively, and was quiet for a time. Hell, the man was quiet all the time. "It seems to me, Mark, that you devalue your strengths. You have been battle-tested, and proved your physical courage. You can take an initiative, and dare much. You do not lack brains, though sometimes . . . information. It's not a bad start on the qualities needed for a countship. Someday."

  "Not any day. I don't want to be a Count of Barrayar," Mark denied emphatically.

  "It
could be the first step to my job," Gregor said suggestively, with a slight smile.

  "No! That's even worse. They'd eat me alive. My scalp would join the collection downstairs."

  "Very possibly." Gregor's smile faded. "Yes, I've often wondered where all my body parts are going to end up. And yet—I understand you were set to try it, just two years ago. Including Aral's countship."

  "Fake it, yes. Now you're talking about the real thing. Not an imitation." I'm just an imitation, don't you know? "I've only studied the outsides. The inner surface I can barely imagine."

  "But you see," said Gregor, "we all start out that way. Faking it. The role is a simulacrum, into which we slowly grow real flesh."

  "Become the machine?"

  "Some do. That's the pathological version of a Count, and there are a few. Others become . . . more human. The machine, the role, then becomes a handily-worked prosthetic, which serves the man. Both types have their uses, for my goals. One must simply be sure where on the range of self-delusion the man you're talking to falls."

  Yes, Countess Cordelia had surely had a hand in training this man. Mark sensed her trail, like phosphorescent footsteps in the dark. "What are your goals?"

  Gregor shrugged. "Keep the peace. Keep the various factions from trying to kill each other. Make bloody sure that no galactic invader ever puts a boot on Barrayaran soil again. Foster economic progress. Lady Peace is the first hostage taken when economic discomfort rises. Here my reign is unusually blessed, with the terraforming of the second continent, and the opening of Sergyar for full colonization. Finally, now that that vile subcutaneous worm plague is under control. Settling Sergyar should absorb everyone's excess energies for several generations. I've been studying various colonial histories lately, wondering how many of the mistakes we can avoid . . . well, so."

  "I still don't want to be Count Vorkosigan."

  "Without Miles, you don't exactly have a choice."

  "Rubbish." At least, he hoped it was rubbish. "You just said it's an interchangeable part. They could find someone else just fine if they had to. Ivan, I guess."

  Gregor smiled bleakly. "I confess, I've often used the same argument. Though in my case the topic is progeny. Bad dreams about the destiny of my body parts are nothing compared to the ones I have about my theoretical future children's. And I'm not going to marry some high Vor bud whose family tree crosses mine sixteen times in the last six generations." He contained himself abruptly, with an apologetic grimace. And yet . . . the man was so controlled, Mark fancied even this glimpse of the inner Gregor served a purpose, or could be made to.

  Mark was getting a headache. Without Miles . . . With Miles, all these Barrayaran dilemmas would be Miles's. And Mark would be free to face . . . his own dilemmas, anyway. His own demons, not these adopted ones. "This is not my . . . gift. Talent. Interest. Destiny. Something, I don't know." He rubbed his neck.

  "Passion?" said Gregor.

  "Yes, that'll do. A countship is not my passion."

  After a moment, Gregor asked curiously, "What is your passion, Mark? If not government, or power, or wealth—you have not even mentioned wealth."

  "Enough wealth to destroy House Bharaputra is so far beyond my reach, it just . . . doesn't apply. It's not a solution I can have. I . . . I . . . some men are cannibals. House Bharaputra, its customers—I want to stop the cannibals. That would be worth getting out of bed for." He became aware his voice had grown louder, and slumped down again in the soft chair.

  "In other words . . . you have a passion for justice. Or dare I say it, Security. A curious echo of your, um, progenitor."

  "No, no!" Well . . . maybe, in a sense. "I suppose there are cannibals on Barayar too, but they haven't riveted my close personal interest. I don't think in terms of law enforcement, because the transplant business isn't illegal on Jackson's Whole. So a policeman isn't the solution either. Or . . . it would have to be a damned unusual policeman." Like an ImpSec covert ops agent? Mark tried to imagine a detective-inspector bearing a letter of marque and reprisal. For some reason a vision of his progenitor kept coming up. Damn Gregor's unsettling suggestion. Not a policeman. A knight-errant. The Countess had it dead-on. But there was no place for knights-errant any more; the police would have to arrest them.

  Gregor sat back with a faintly satisfied air. "That's very interesting." His abstracted look resembled that of a man assimilating the code-key to a safe. He slid from his stool to wander along the windows and gaze down from another angle. Face to the light, he remarked, "It seems to me your future access to your . . . passion, depends rather heavily on getting Miles back."

  Mark sighed in frustration. "It's out of my hands. They'll never let me . . . what can I do that ImpSec can't? Maybe they'll turn him up. Any day now."

  "In other words," said Gregor slowly, "the most important thing in your life at this moment is something you are powerless to affect. You have my profound sympathies."

  Mark slipped, unwilled, into frankness. "I'm a virtual prisoner here. I can't do anything, and I can't leave!"

  Gregor cocked his head. "Have you tried?"

  Mark paused. "Well . . . no, not yet, actually."

  "Ah." Gregor turned away from the window, taking a small plastic card from his inner jacket pocket. He handed it across the desk to Mark. "My Voice carries only to the borders of Barrayar's interests," he said. "Nevertheless . . . here is my private vidcom number. Your calls will be screened by only one person. You'll be on their list. Simply state your name, and you will be passed through."

  "Uh . . . thank you," said Mark, in cautious confusion. The card bore only the code-strip: no other identification. He put it away very carefully.

  Gregor touched an audiocom pin on his jacket, and spoke to Kevi. In a few moments there came a knock, and the door swung open to admit Ivan again. Mark, who had started to rock in Gregor's station chair—it did not squeak—self-consciously climbed out of it.

  Gregor and Ivan exchanged farewells as laconically as they had exchanged greetings, and Ivan led Mark out of the tower room. As they rounded the corner Mark looked back at the sound of footsteps. Kevi was already ushering in the next man for his Imperial appointment.

  "So how did it go?" Ivan inquired.

  "I feel drained," Mark admitted.

  Ivan smiled grimly. "Gregor can do that to you, when he's being Emperor."

  "Being? Or playing?"

  "Oh, not playing."

  "He gave me his number." And I think he got mine.

  Ivan's brows rose. "Welcome to the club. I can count the number of people who have that access without even taking both boots off."

  "Was . . . Miles one of them?"

  "Of course."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Ivan, apparently acting under orders—from the Countess, was Mark's first guess—took him out to lunch. Ivan followed a lot of orders, Mark noticed with a slight twinge of sympathy. They went to a place called the caravanserai, a stretched walking distance from Vorhartung Castle. Mark escaped another groundcar ride with Ivan by virtue of the narrowness of the streets—alleys—in the ancient district.

  The caravanserai itself was a curious study in Barrayaran social evolution. Its oldest core was cleaned up, renovated, and converted into a pleasant maze of shops, cafes, and small museums, frequented by a mixture of city workers seeking lunch and obvious provincial tourists, come up to the capital to do the historic shrines.

  This transformation had spread from the clusters of old government buildings like Vorhartung Castle along the river, toward the district's center; on the fringes to the south, the renovation petered out into the kind of shabby, faintly dangerous areas that had given the caravanserai its original risky reputation. On the way, Ivan proudly pointed out a building in which he claimed to have been born, during the war of Vordarian's Pretendership. It was now a shop selling overpriced hand-woven carpets and other antique crafts supposedly preserved from the Time of Isolation. From the way Ivan carried on Mark half-expected there to be a p
laque on the wall commemorating the event, but there wasn't; he checked.

  After lunch in one of the small cafes, Ivan, his mind now running on his family history, was seized with the notion of taking Mark to view the spot on the pavement where his father Lord Padma Vorpatril had been murdered by Vordarian's security forces during that same war. Feeling it fit in with the general gruesome historic tenor of the rest of the morning, Mark agreed, and they set out again on foot to the south. A shift in the architecture, from the low tan stucco of the first century of the Time of Isolation to the high red brick of its last century, marked the marches of the caravanserai proper, or improper.

  This time, by God, there was a plaque, a cast bronze square set right in the pavement; groundcars ran past and over it as Ivan gazed down.

  "You'd think they'd at least have put it on the sidewalk," said Mark.

  "Accuracy," said Ivan. "M'mother insisted."

  Mark waited a respectful interval to allow Ivan who-knew-what inward meditations. Eventually Ivan looked up and said brightly, "Dessert? I know this great little Keroslav District bakery around the corner. Mother always took me there after, when we came here to burn the offering each year. It's sort of a hole in the wall, but good."

  Mark had not yet walked down lunch, but the place proved as delectable on the inside as it was derelict on the outside, and he somehow ended up possessed of a bag of nut rolls and traditional brillberry tarts, for later. While Ivan lingered over a selection of delicacies to be delivered to Lady Vorpatril, and possibly some sweeter negotiation with the pretty counter-girl—it was hard to tell if Ivan was serious, or just running on spinal reflex—Mark stepped outside.

  Galen had placed a couple of Komarran underground spy contacts in this area once, Mark remembered. Doubtless picked up two years ago in the post-plot sweep by Barrayaran Imperial Security. Still, he wondered if he could have found them, if Galen's dreams of revenge had ever come real. Should be one street down and two over . . . Ivan was still chatting up the bakery girl. Mark took a walk.