Miles in Love

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  He unfolded the device, which resembled a set of headphones with a pad on one end and a mysterious knob on the other. He fitted it over his head and adjusted it to his temples. He smiled at Ekaterin in what she belatedly realized was extreme embarrassment, and muttered, "I'm afraid this looks a little stupid," fitted a plastic mouthguard onto his teeth, and lay back.

  "Wait," said Ekaterin suddenly as his hand reached for his temple.

  "Wha'?"

  "Could . . . whoever came in here have tampered with that thing? Maybe it ought to be checked first."

  His wide eyes met hers; as certainly as if she had been telepathic, she knew she shared with him at that moment a vision of his head being blown off at the touch of his hand on the stimulator's trigger. He ripped it back off his head, sat up, spat out his mouthguard, and cried, "Shit!" He added after a moment, in a tone level but about half an octave higher than his norm, "You're quite right. Thank you. I wasn't thinking. I made . . . many cosmic promises, that if I made it back here, I'd do this first thing, and never never never put it off just one extra day again." Hyperventilating, he stared in consternation at the device clutched in his hand.

  Then his eyes rolled up, and he fell over backwards. Ekaterin caught his head just before it banged into the carpet. His lips were drawn back in a strange grin. His body shuddered, in waves passing down to his toes and fingertips, but he did not flail wildly about as she'd half-expected. The guard hovered, looking panicked. She rescued the mouth guard, and fitted it back over his teeth, not as difficult a task as it at first appeared; despite an impression to that effect, he was not rigid.

  She sat back on her heels, and stared. Triggered by stress. Yes. I see. His face was . . . altered, his personality clearly not present but in a way that resembled neither sleep nor death. It seemed terribly rude to watch him so, in all his vulnerability; courtesy urged her to look away. But he had explicitly appointed her to this task.

  She checked her chrono. About five minutes, he'd said these things lasted. It seemed a small eternity, but was in fact less than three minutes when his body stilled. He lay slumped in alarmingly flaccid unconsciousness for another minute beyond that, then drew in a shuddering breath. His eyes opened and stared about in palpable incomprehension. At least his dilated pupils were the same size.

  "Sorry. Sorry . . ." he muttered inanely. "Didn't mean to do that." He lay staring upward, his eyebrows crooked. He added after a moment, "What does it look like, anyway?"

  "Really strange," Ekaterin answered him honestly. "I like your face better when you're at home in your head." She had not realized how powerfully his personality enlivened his features, or how subtly, until she'd seen it removed.

  "I like my head better when I'm at home in it, too," he breathed. He squeezed his eyes shut, and opened them again. "I'll get out of your way now." His hands twitched, and he tried to sit up.

  Ekaterin didn't think he ought to be trying to do anything yet. She pressed him firmly back down with a hand on his chest. "Don't you dare take away that guard till my door gets fixed." Not that its expensive electronic lock had appeared to do the least good.

  "Oh. No, of course not," he said faintly.

  It was abundantly apparent that Vorkosigan's implicit claim that he bounced back out of his seizures with no ill effects was a, well, if not a lie, a gross exaggeration. He looked terrible.

  She raised her gaze to catch that of the disturbed guard. "Corporal. Would you please help me to get Lord Vorkosigan to bed until he is more recovered. Or at least until your people arrive."

  "Sure, ma'am." He seemed relieved to have this direction provided for him, and helped her pull Vorkosigan to his unsteady feet.

  Ekaterin made a lightning calculation. Nikki's bed was the only one instantly available, and his room had no comconsole. If Vorkosigan went to sleep, which he obviously desperately needed to do after this night's ordeal, there was a chance he might be let to stay that way even when the ImpSec forensic invasion arrived. "This way," she nodded to the guard, and led them down the hall.

  The incoherence of Vorkosigan's mumbled protests assured Ekaterin that she was doing precisely the right thing. He was shivering again. She helped him off with his tunic, made him lie down, dragged off his boots, covered him with extra blankets, turned the room's heat up to high, doused the lights, and withdrew.

  There was no one to put her to bed, but she did not care to attempt conversation with the guard, who took up station in her living room to wait for his overextended reinforcements. Her whole body felt as though it had been beaten. She took some painkillers and lay down fully dressed in her own bedroom, a thousand uncertainties and conflicting scenarios for what she must do next jostling in her mind.

  Tien's body, which had breathed beside her in this space last night, must be in the hands of the ImpSec medical examiner by now, laid out naked and still on a cold metal tray in some clinical laboratory here in Serifosa. She hoped they would treat his congealed husk with some measure of dignity, and not the nervous jocularity death sometimes evoked.

  When this bed had been impossible to bear in the night, it had been her habit to sneak off to her workroom and fiddle with her virtual gardens. The Barrayaran garden had increasingly been her choice, of late. It lacked the texture, the smell, the slow dense satisfactions of the real, but it had soothed her mind nonetheless. But first Vorkosigan had occupied the room, and now he'd ordered her not to touch the comconsoles till ImpSec had drained them. She sighed and turned over, huddled in her accustomed corner of the bed even though the rest was unoccupied. I want to leave this place as soon as I can. I want to be someplace where Tien has never been.

  She did not expect to sleep, but whether from the pain meds or exhaustion or the combination, she fell into a doze at last.

  Chapter Twelve

  Miles could tell right away that he wasn't going to enjoy waking up. A bad seizure usually left him with hangover-like symptoms the following day, and the lingering effects of heavy stun included muscle aches, muscle spasms, and pseudo-migraines. The combination, it appeared, was downright synergistic. He groaned, and tried to regain unconsciousness. A gentle touch on his shoulder thwarted his intent.

  "Lord Vorkosigan?"

  It was Ekaterin Vorsoisson's soft voice. His eyes sprang open on thankfully-dim lighting. He was in her son Nikki's room, and could not remember how he'd arrived here. He rolled over and blinked up at her. She had changed clothes since his last memory of her, kneeling beside him on her living room floor; she now wore a soft, high-necked beige shirt and darker-toned trousers in the Komarran style. Her long dark hair lay loose in damp new-washed strands on her shoulders. He still had on his blood-stained shirt and wrinkled trousers from yesterday's nightmare.

  "I'm sorry to wake you," she continued, "but Captain Tuomonen is here."

  "Ah," said Miles thickly. He struggled upright. Madame Vorsoisson was holding out a tray with a large mug of black coffee and a bottle of painkiller tablets. Two tablets had already been extracted from the bottle, and lay ready for ingestion beside the cup. Only in his imagination did a heavenly choir supply background music. "Oh. My."

  She didn't say anything more till he had fumbled the tablets to his lips and swallowed them. His swollen hands weren't working too well, but did manage to clutch the mug in something resembling a death-grip. A second swallow scalded away a world of nastiness lingering in his mouth, well worth the challenge to the queasiness in his stomach. "Thank you." After a third gulp, he achieved, "What time is it?"

  "It's about an hour after dawn."

  He'd been out of the loop for about four hours, then. All sorts of events could occur in four hours. Not parting with the mug, he kicked his legs out of the bed. His sock-clad feet groped for the floor. Walking was going to be a chancy business for the first few minutes.

  "Is Tuomonen in a hurry?"

  "I can't tell. He looks tired. He says they found your seal."

  That decided it; Tuomonen before a shower. He swallowed more coffe
e, handed the mug back to Ekater—to Madame Vorsoisson—and levered himself to his feet. After an awkward smile at her, he did a few bends and stretches, to be certain he could walk down the hall without falling over in front of ImpSec.

  He had not the first idea what to say to her. I'm sorry I got your husband killed was inaccurate on a couple of counts. Up to the point he had been stunned, Miles might have done half a dozen different things to have altered last night's outcome; if only Vorsoisson had checked his own damned breath mask before going out, the way he was supposed to, Miles was pretty certain he would still have been alive this morning. And the more he learned about the man, the less convinced he was that his death was any disservice to his wife. Widow. After a moment he essayed, "Are you all right?"

  She smiled wanly, and shrugged. "All things considered."

  Thin lines etched parallels between her eyes. "Did you, um . . ." he gestured at the bottle of tablets, "get any of those for yourself?"

  "Several. Thank you."

  "Ah. Good." Harm has been done you, and I don't know how to fix it. It was going to take a hell of a lot more than a couple of pills, though. He shook his head, regretted the gesture instantly, and staggered out to see Tuomonen.

  The Imp Sec captain was waiting on the circular couch in the living room, also gratefully sucking down Madame Vorsoisson's coffee. He appeared to consider standing at some sort of quasiattention, when the Lord Auditor entered the room, but then thought better of it. Tuomonen gestured, and Miles seated himself across the table from the captain; they each mumbled their good-mornings. Madame Vorsoisson followed with Miles's half-empty coffee cup and set it before him, then, after a wary glance at Tuomonen, quietly seated herself. If Tuomonen wanted her to leave, he was going to have to ask her himself, Miles decided. And then justify the request.

  In the event, Tuomonen merely nodded thanks to her, and shifted around and drew a plastic packet from his tunic. It contained Miles's gold-encased Auditor's electronic seal. He handed it across to Miles.

  "Very good, Captain," said Miles. "I don't suppose you were so fortunate as to find it on the person of its thief?"

  "No, more's the pity. You'll never guess where we did find it."

  Miles squinted and held the plastic bag up to the light. A sheen of condensation fogged the inside. "In a sewer pipe halfway between here and the Serifosa Dome waste treatment plant, would be my first guess."

  Tuomonen's jaw fell open. "How did you know?"

  "Forensic plumbing was once a sort of hobby of mine. Not to sound ungrateful, but has anyone washed it?"

  "Yes, in fact."

  "Oh, thank you." Miles opened the packet and shook the heavy little device into his palm. It appeared undamaged.

  Tuomonen said, "My lieutenant had its signal traced, or at any rate, triangulated, within half an hour of your call. He led an assault team down into the utility tunnels after it. I wish I could have seen it, when they finally figured out what was going on. You would have appreciated it, I'm almost certain."

  Miles grinned despite his headache. "I was in no shape last night to appreciate anything, I'm afraid."

  "Well, they made an impressive delegation when they went to wake up the Serifosa Dome municipal engineer. She's Komarran, of course. ImpSec coming for her in the middle of the night—her husband about had a heart spasm. My lieutenant finally got him calmed down, and got across to her what we needed . . . I'm afraid she found it an occasion for, er, considerable irony. We are all grateful that my lieutenant didn't yield to his first impulse, which was to have his team blast open the pipe section in question with their assault plasma rifles. . . ."

  Miles almost choked on a swallow of coffee. "Exceedingly grateful." He stole a glance at Ekaterin Vorsoisson, who was leaning back against the cushions listening to this, eyes alight, a hand pressed to her lips. His painkillers were cutting in; she didn't look so blurry now.

  "There was no sign by then of our human quarry, of course," Tuomonen finished with a sigh. "Long gone."

  Miles stared at his distorted reflection in the dark surface of his drink. "One sees the scenario. You should be able to work out the timetable quite precisely. Foscol and an unknown number of accomplices pick my pocket, tie me and the Administrator to the railing, fly back to Serifosa, call Madame Vorsoisson. Probably from someplace nearby. As soon as she vacates her apartment, they break in, knowing they have at least an hour to explore before the alarm goes up. They use my seal to open the data case and access my report files. Then they flush the seal down the toilet and leave. Not even breathing hard."

  "Too bad they weren't tempted to keep it."

  "Mm, they clearly realized it was traceable. Hence their little joke." He frowned. "But . . . why my data case?"

  "They might have been looking for something about Radovas. What all was in your data case, my lord?"

  "Copies of all the classified technical reports and autopsies from the soletta accident. Soudha's an engineer. He doubtless had a very good idea what was in there."

  "We're going to have an interesting time later this morning at the Terraforming Project offices," said Tuomonen glumly, "trying to figure out which employees are absent because they fled, and which ones are absent because they are fictional. I need to get over there as soon as possible, to supervise the preliminary interrogations. We'll have to fast-penta them all, I suppose."

  "I predict it will be a great waste of time and drugs," agreed Miles. "But there's always the chance of someone knowing more than they think they know."

  "Mm, yes." Tuomonen glanced at the listening woman. "Speaking of which—Madame Vorsoisson—I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to cooperate with a fast-penta interrogation as well. It's standard operating procedure, in a mysterious death of this nature, to question the closest relatives. The Dome police may also be wanting in on it, or at least demand a copy, depending on what decisions are made about jurisdiction by my superiors."

  "I understand," said Madame Vorsoisson, in a colorless voice.

  "There was nothing mysterious about Administrator Vorsoisson's death," Miles pointed out uneasily. "I was standing right next to him." Well, kneeling, technically.

  "She's not a suspect," Tuomonen said. "A witness."

  And a fast-penta interrogation would help to keep it that way, Miles realized with reluctance.

  "When do you wish to do this, Captain?" Madame Vorsoisson asked quietly.

  "Well . . . not immediately. I'll have a better set of questions after this morning's investigations are complete. Just don't go anywhere."

  Her glance at him silently inquired, Am I under house arrest? "At some point, I have to go get my son Nikolai. He was staying overnight at a friend's home. He hasn't been told anything about this yet. I don't want to tell him over the comconsole, and I don't want him to hear it first on the news."

  "That won't happen," said Tuomonen grimly. "Not yet, anyway. Though I expect I'll have the information services badgering us soon enough. Someone is bound to notice that the most boring ImpSec post on Komarr is suddenly boiling with activity."

  "I must either go get him, or call and arrange for him to stay longer."

  "Which would you prefer?" Miles put in before Tuomonen could say anything.

  "I . . . if you are going to do the interrogation here, today, I'd rather wait till its over with to get Nikki. I'll have to explain to his friend's mother something of the situation, at least that Tien was . . . killed in an accident last night."

  "Have you bugged her comconsoles?" Miles asked Tuomonen bluntly.

  Tuomonen's look queried this revelation, but he cleared his throat, and said, "Yes. You should be aware, Madame Vorsoisson, that ImpSec will be monitoring all calls in and out of here for a few days."

  She looked blankly at him. "Why?"

  "There is the possibility that someone, either from Soudha's group or some other connection we haven't yet discovered, not yet realizing the Administrator is dead, might try to communicate."

  She accepted t
his with a slightly dubious nod. "Thank you for warning me."

  "Speaking of calls," Miles added, "please have one of your people bring me a secured vid-link here. I have a few calls to make myself."

  "Will you be staying here, my lord?" asked Tuomonen.

  "For a while. Till after your interrogation, and until Lord Auditor Vorthys gets downside, as he will surely wish to do. That's the first call I want to make."

  "Ah. Of course."

  Miles looked around. His seizure stimulator, its case, and his mouthguard were still lying where they'd been dropped a few hours ago. Miles pointed. "And if you please, could you have your lab check my medical gear for any sign of tampering, then return it to me."

  Tuomonen's brows rose. "Do you suspect it, my lord?"

  "It was just a horrible thought. But I think it's going to be a very bad idea to underestimate either the intelligence or the subtlety of our adversaries in this thing, eh?"