Memory (38 page)

"Not that I know of," said Haroche.

"I would like ImpSec to double-check that, please."

"Yes, my lord." Haroche made a note.

"The jump-pilots' neural implants use an altogether different system," put in Avakli. "Thank God." He blinked, presumably at an inner vision of the chaos that would result from some sort of pilot-plague.

"This prokaryote is not communicable by ordinary means," Weddell assured them, rather offhandedly, Miles thought.

"We must assume a worst-case scenario, I think," said Miles.

"Indeed," sighed Haroche.

"It looks like sabotage to me," Miles went on. "Pin-point deliberate, knowledgeable, and subtle."
And cruel, lord, something cruel.
"We now know what, and how. And some of when. But who, and why?" Ah, the motivations of men again.
I have touched the elephant, and it is very like a . . . 
what were the six answers?—
rope, tree, wall, snake, spear, fan. . . .
"We have the method. The motive remains obscure. You have too many enemies, Simon, and none of them are personal. I don't think. You weren't . . . sleeping with anyone's wife or daughter or anything like that, that we don't know about, were you?"

Illyan's mouth twisted in bleak amusement. "Alas, no, Miles."

"So . . . it had to be someone who was mad at ImpSec generally. Political motivations? Damn, that still leaves too wide a field. Though they did have money to burn, and, um, patience—how long would you estimate it took to develop that microbeastie, Dr. Weddell?"

"Laboratory time, oh, a couple of months. Unless they paid for a rush job. A month at least."

"Plus travel time . . . this plot has to have started at least six months ago, I'd think."

Haroche cleared his throat. "It appears probable that it came from off Barrayar. I'd like to know what laboratory it came from, and when. With your permission, my Lord Auditor, I'll immediately alert Galactic Affairs to put their agents onto the Jacksonian end of this tangle. With an eye to other possible sources for bio-work on this order—Escobar, for example. Jackson's Whole does not possess a
complete
monopoly on shady deals, after all."

"Yes, please, General Haroche," said Miles. It was exactly the sort of tedious legwork ImpSec could do much better than Miles. A real Imperial Auditor normally possessed a staff of his own to whom to delegate such jobs. He'd have to check the reports personally, to be sure. Ah, he was going be stuck down in the bowels of ImpSec HQ after all. He must be fated.

"And," added Haroche, "I'll review of all of Chief Illyan's movements for the last, say, sixteen weeks to five weeks ago."

"I was mostly here at HQ," said Illyan. "Two trips out of the city . . . I think . . . I know I never left Barrayar in that time."

"There was Gregor's State dinner," Miles pointed out. "And a few other events you personally supervised."

"Yes." Haroche made another note. "We'll need a list of every galactic visitor Chief Illyan could have physically encountered at those functions. The list will be large, but finite."

"Is there anything else you can do to narrow the time-window?" Miles asked Avakli and Weddell.

Weddell spread his hands; Avakli shook his head and said, "Not with our current data, my lord."

"Is there anything else at all you can add?" asked General Haroche.

Head shakes all around. "Not without moving into realms of speculation," said Avakli.

"It's such an odd attack," said Miles. "Targeting Illyan's function, yet not his life."

"I'm not sure you can rule out murderous intent, my lord," put in Dr. Ruibal. "If the chip had not been removed, he might well have died eventually of exhaustion. Or met some accident during his periods of confusion."

Haroche sucked in his breath.
Quite
, Miles thought. And if someone was targeting ImpSec chiefs for assassination, Haroche could well be next on the list.

Haroche sat up straight. "Gentlemen, you have all done an outstanding job. My personal commendation will be added to all your secret files. As soon as you have your final report ready to turn in, you may return to your regular duties."

"Tomorrow, most probably," said Avakli.

"Can I go home tonight?" put in Weddell. "My poor laboratory has been in the hands of my assistants for a week. I shudder to think of what awaits me upon my return."

Avakli glanced at Miles, tossing this one his way—
You foisted him on me, you deal with him.

"I don't see why not," said Miles. "I do want a duplicate copy of the report."

"Certainly, my Lord Auditor," said Admiral Avakli.

"And anything else your office generates, General Haroche."

"Of course." Haroche started to say more, then opened his hand to Miles. "My Lord Auditor? You called this meeting."

Miles smiled, and rose. "Gentlemen, dismissed. And thank you all."

In the corridor outside, Illyan paused with Haroche, and Miles waited for him.

"Well, sir," Haroche sighed, "you've bequeathed me an ugly puzzle, I must say."

Illyan grinned. "Welcome to the hot seat. I was telling Miles . . . yesterday?—that
my
first job as chief of ImpSec was to investigate the assassination of my predecessor. The triumph of tradition."

You were telling me that this afternoon, Simon.

"You weren't murdered, at least," said Haroche.

"Ah." Illyan's smile thinned. "I . . . forgot." He glanced at Haroche, and his voice fell to a murmur that Haroche had to bend his head to hear. "Get the bastards for me, will you, Lucas?"

"I'll do my best, sir. We all will." Gravely, and despite Illyan's civilian garb, Haroche saluted him as they turned to leave.

Miles did not fall asleep easily that night, or rather morning, despite replacing his expected insomnia of anticipation with . . . what? Information-indigestion, he supposed.

He turned in his bedsheets, and stared into a darkness considerably less opaque than the problem that had just landed in his lap. When he had leapt at the chance of playing Imperial Auditor, he'd expected it to be exactly that, a charade, acted out just long enough to spring Simon Illyan from ImpSec's clumsy medical clutches. Not that difficult a task, really, in retrospect. But now . . . now he faced a problem that would give a
real
Auditor, with all his staff and support, galloping insomnia.

The hollowness of his office, issued to him merely on Gregor's whim, echoed in his head. He missed his Dendarii backup. If he'd thought for a minute this appointment was going to go real, even temporarily, he'd have started building a staff of suitable experts, raided from, though independent of, all other Barrayaran organizations. He knew a number of good fellows from ImpSec, for instance, close to their twenty-year anniversaries, who might be willing to retire and lend their training to his use. Study the other Auditors' staffs, and model his from theirs. Pin Lord Auditor Vorhovis to the nearest wall, and not let him go until he'd disgorged everything he knew about doing his job. A new apprenticeship.
I'm doing it backwards again, dammit.
A familiar unfamiliarity.
You'd think I'd learn.

So. What should he do next, or rather, first? His one piece of physical evidence, the bioengineered prokaryote, appeared to lead back to Jackson's Whole, if he could trust Weddell's technical expertise, which he did. Should he go haring off to Jackson's Whole, to supervise the search? The thought made him shudder.

That sort of fieldwork was just the sort of thing to delegate to a team of field agents, of the kind he'd formerly been himself. Speaking of expertise. So the obvious thing to do was delegate it, except . . . if ImpSec
itself
was tainted with suspicion . . .

If the production of the prokaryote had been a purely commercial enterprise, there was no motivation to be found on Jackson's Whole. Well, maybe revenge. "Admiral Naismith" had seriously annoyed several Jacksonian Great Houses there on his last visit: if they'd finally figured out who he was working for . . . Yet House Fell, which could command the resources for this nasty piece of sabotage, had not been seriously discommoded by him; House Bharaputra, which had been more upset, was perhaps not crazy enough to start a private war with Barrayar—there was no obvious profit in it, after all; House Ryoval, which both had the resources and was crazy enough, was dismembered, Baron Ryoval dead.

No. The weapon might have come from Jackson's Whole, but the crime had been committed
here
.
Intuition, boy?
So what was he supposed to do, lie in wait trying to ambush his own subconscious? He'd go quietly mad.

Maybe he needed to give his intuition demon more to chew on. Stir up ImpSec?
Stir up your own assassination, maybe?
At least it would be entertaining, and less frustrating than this blankness.

Do you really think it's an inside job?
The intuition demon, as usual, was too coy to give him a straight answer. But there was this; anyone could go scope out Jackson's Whole. Only an Imperial Auditor could get inside ImpSec HQ. Solving this puzzle was not going to be a one-man job, but it was all too apparent what his part in it must be.

ImpSec it is, then.

The crack of noon found Miles up, fully uniformed in his House brown-and-silver and his Auditor's chain. He was sipping the last of his coffee, sitting on the padded bench in the black-and-white paved front vestibule and waiting for Martin to bring the Count's groundcar around, when a commotion arose out in the porte cochere too great to be Martin—at least, Miles hadn't heard a crunch, as of a groundcar hitting a pillar. But there were several groundcars, and canopies opening, and voices, and scuffling footsteps. He set down his coffee and stood up to answer the door, but it swung open on its own.
Oh. Of course.
Countess Vorkosigan and her retinue had evidently made orbit this morning, while he still slept.

Two brown-and-silver uniformed Armsmen preceded her into the vestibule, bowing her inside before turning to salute Miles. She sailed through the mob of guards, secretaries, maids, servitors, drivers, porters, dependents, and more guards like a fine yacht cutting through choppy water, and they parted around her like a bow wave, spinning aside in little eddies to their various appointed directions. She was a tall, red-haired woman of quiet presence, dressed in something cream-colored and sweeping, enhancing the nautical effect.
Well preserved
did not do her idiosyncratic beauty justice; she was, after all, Betan, and in her mid-sixties had barely reached middle-age by that planet's standards. A secretary, tugging at her elbow, was waved aside as Countess Vorkosigan saw her son.

"Miles, love!"

He abandoned his coffee cup and bowed over her hand, trying to short-circuit a maternal embrace. She took the hint, saying only, "My, how formal for this hour of the morning."

"I'm on my way to work," Miles explained. "More or less."

"You'll enlarge upon that, of course. . . ." She took him by the arm, and towed him out of the traffic pattern of arriving luggage that reminded Miles of a column of army ants. They ducked into the next room, the antechamber to the great library; her minions carried on competently without her.

She stood him at arm's length, and looked him over. "How are you?" Her smile did not quite conceal an anxious edge.

Coming from her, that was a question of potentially dangerous depth; he floated a "Fine, thanks."

"Really?" she asked quietly.

"Really."

"You actually look . . . better than I'd expected. Not so zombielike as in some of your, ahem, exceedingly brief communiqués."

"I . . . had a few bad days, right after, you know. I got over it."

"Your father and I almost came home. Several times."

"I'm glad you didn't. Not that I'm not glad to see you now," he added hastily.

"Hm. I thought that might be how the wind lay."

"I might still have had my head up my ass," he admitted ruefully, "but events intervened. You've heard about Simon."

"Yes, but not all about Simon. Though Alys has been more helpful than either you or Gregor. How is he?"

"He's fine. He's here. Sleeping in. We had a late night last night. I think . . . I'd better let him tell you about it. As much as he can." He added cautiously, "He's physically recovered, but he's a little . . . well, he's a lot vaguer than the Simon you're used to, I'm afraid. You'll figure it out pretty quickly when you talk to him."

"I see." She frowned faintly. "As soon as possible. I have a brunch meeting with Alys in an hour. I'm extremely anxious to meet Laisa."

"So did you succeed in soothing her parents, where Lady Alys says she could not?"

"Oh, Alys did a good job of laying the groundwork. Laisa's parents' feelings are naturally mixed, of course. As
those
Toscanes, they are understandably excited by the prospect of gaining more influence, both for themselves and their company, and, to their credit, for Komarr generally."

"They're mistaken there, if that's what they think. Gregor's too conscious of the need to appear even-handed to do too many open favors for his wife's relations."

"So I gently let them know. They're not without wit, I am happy to say. Their excitement was dampened by a genuine concern for their daughter's safety and personal happiness, though they are certainly as puzzled how this is to be achieved as any other set of parents." She smiled dryly at him.

Was that to his address? Unquestionably. "So . . . how is Father? How did he take . . . all this?" A shrug of Miles's shoulder in no particular direction indicated his new civilian life.

She cleared her throat. "Mixed feelings, mixed reactions. He gave me all sorts of logically conflicting assurances for you, which I think I shall simply boil down to: you have his support. Always."

"I knew
that
. That wasn't the question, exactly. Was he . . . very disappointed?"

She shrugged in turn. "We all know how hard you worked for what you had achieved, and in the face of what odds."

She evades the answer, dammit.

She added, "He was more worried about what would happen to you afterwards, left at loose ends." One long finger tapped his chain of office. "This was very clever of Gregor, I must say. The boy's growing quite gratifyingly subtle, in his maturity."