"Good morning, General. I'm here to see Illyan."
"Again? I thought I'd settled that. Illyan is in no condition to socialize."
"I didn't think he was. I request admittance to see him."
"Request denied." Haroche's hand moved to cut the com.
Miles controlled his temper, and tried to muster soft words and weasely arguments. He was willing to talk all day, till he talked himself inside. No, not soft words—Haroche favored a blunt aproach, for all that he assiduously tailored his own speech to Vorbarr Sultana upper-class standard. "Haroche! Talk to me! This is getting old. What the devil's going on in there that has the hairs up your butt so bad? I'm trying to help, dammit."
For a moment, Haroche frowned less deeply, but then his face hardened again. "Vorkosigan, you have no business in this place now. Please remove yourself."
"No."
"Then I will have you removed."
"Then I will return."
Haroche's lips thinned. "I don't suppose I can have you shot, considering who your father is. And besides, it's known that you have . . . mental problems. But if you go on making a nuisance of yourself, I might have you arrested."
"On what charge?"
"Trespass in a restricted area alone is good for a year in detention. I imagine I could come up with others. Resisting arrest is almost a sure bet. But I wouldn't hesitate to have you stunned."
He wouldn't dare. "How many times?"
"How many times do you propose to make it necessary?"
Miles said through his teeth, "You can't count past twenty-two even with your boots off, Haroche." It was serious insult to imply extra digits, on this mutation-scarred planet. Both Martin and the listening clerk watched the rising temperature of this exchange with increasing alarm.
Haroche's face reddened. "That does it. Illyan was soft in the head to discharge you—I'd have had you court-martialed. Get out of my building now."
"Not until I see Illyan."
Haroche cut the com.
About a minute later, two armed guards appeared around the corner, and marched toward Miles, who was badgering the clerk to try Haroche's secretary again. Dammit, he wouldn't dare—would he . . . ?
He would. Without preamble, each guard took an arm and began hustling him toward the door. They didn't quite care if his toes touched the ground or not. Martin trailed after them like an overexcited puppy, not sure whether to bark or bite. Through the door. Through the outer gates. They deposited him on the sidewalk outside the perimeter wall, on his feet but only just barely.
The senior officer said to the gate guards, "General Haroche has just given a direct order that if this man tries to enter the building again, he is to be stunned."
"Yes, sir." The senior guard saluted, and stared uneasily at Miles. Miles, face flushed, gulped for breath against a chest tight with humiliation and rage. The guards wheeled and marched back inside.
A rather bare strip-park across the street had benches viewing ImpSec's infamous architecture, empty now in the gathering chill mist. Miles, shaken, walked across to one and sat down, staring up at the building that had defeated him for the second time. Martin followed him uncertainly, and sat down gingerly on the far end, awaiting orders. Not daring to speak.
Wild visions of a Naismith-style covert ops raid coursed through Miles's mind. He pictured himself leading gray-uniformed mercenaries descending ninja-style over the side of ImpSec HQ . . . crap. He really would get himself shot, wouldn't he? Scorn puffed from his lips. Illyan was one prisoner who was outside of Naismith's range.
How dare Haroche threaten me, Miles had raved inwardly. Hell, why shouldn't Haroche dare? Mad to be judged solely on his own supposed merits, Miles himself had spent the last thirteen years eviscerating Lord Vorkosigan. He'd wanted to be seen as himself, not his father's son, nor his grandfather's grandson, nor the descendant of any other Vorkosigan for the last eleven generations. Trying so hard, no wonder he'd succeeded in convincing everyone, even himself, that Lord Vorkosigan didn't . . . count.
Naismith was obsessed with winning at all costs, and being seen to have won.
But Vorkosigan . . . Vorkosigan couldn't surrender.
It wasn't quite the same thing, was it?
Failing to surrender was a family tradition. Vorkosigan lords through history had been stabbed, shot, drowned, trampled, and burned alive. Most recently and spectacularly, one had even been blown nearly in half, then quick-frozen, thawed out, sewn up, and pushed off to stagger punch-drunkenly on his way again. Miles wondered if the Vorkosigans' legendary obduracy wasn't partly luck, whether good or bad he could not say. Maybe one or two had actually tried to surrender, but missed their chance, as in the tale of the general whose last words were reputed to have been, Don't worry, Lieutenant, the enemy can't possibly hit us at this ran—
The joke about the Dendarii District was that they'd wanted to give in, but no one could be found who was literate enough to decipher the Cetagandan amnesty offer, so they'd fought on to a bewildered victory. There is more hillman in me than I'd thought. He should have suspected it of a man who secretly liked the taste of maple mead.
Naismith could, demonstrably, get Vorkosigan killed. He could strip-mine the little lord for every positive human trait down to bare and naked Dendarii bedrock, cold and sterile. Naismith had embezzled his energy, ransacked him for time, nerve, wit, leached the very volume from his voice, even stolen his sexuality. But at that point, even Naismith could go no further. A hillman, dumb as his rocks, just didn't know how to quit. I am the man who owns Vorkosigan Vashnoi.
Miles threw back his head and laughed, tasting the metallic tang of the misting rain sifting into his open mouth.
"My lord?" said Martin uneasily.
Miles cleared his throat, and tried to rub the weird smile back off his face. "Sorry. I just figured out why it was I hadn't gone to get my head fixed yet." And he'd thought Naismith was the sly one. Vorkosigan's Last Stand, eh? "It struck me as funny." Hilarious, in fact. He stood up, stifling another giggle.
"You're not going to try and go back in there, are you?" asked Martin in alarm.
"No. Not directly. Vorkosigan House first. Home, Martin."
He showered again, to wash off the morning's accumulation of rain and city grime, but mostly to scrub out the unpleasant, lingering scent of shame. His mother's people's custom of the baptism crossed his thoughts, as well. A towel around his waist, he visited several closets and drawers to lay out his clothing for inspection.
He had not worn his Vorkosigan House uniform for several years, not even for the Emperor's Birthdays or the Winterfair Balls, casting it aside in favor of what had seemed, to him, the higher status of real Imperial military Service uniforms, dress greens or parade red-and-blues. He laid the brown fabric out on his bed, empty as a snake's shed skin. He inspected the seams and the silver embroidery of the Vorkosigan logos on collar and shoulders and sleeves carefully for wear or damage, but some meticulous servant had put it all away clean and covered, and it was in excellent shape. The dark brown boots too came out of their protective bag still softly gleaming.
Counts and their heirs, honorably retired from more active Imperial service, were permitted by ancient custom to wear their military decorations on their House uniforms, in recognition of the Vor's official and historical status as—what was that dippy phrase? "The Sinews of the Imperium, the Emperor's Right Arm." Nobody'd ever called them the Brains of the Imperium, Miles noted dryly. So how come no one had ever claimed to be, say, the Gall Bladder of the Imperium, or the Emperor's Pancreas? Some metaphors were best left unexamined.
Miles had never once worn all his accumulated honors, in part because four-fifths of them related to classified activities, and what fun was a decoration you couldn't tell a good story about, and in part because . . . why? Because they'd belonged to Admiral Naismith?
Ceremoniously, he laid them all out on the brown tunic in what would be the correct order. The bad luck badges like the one Vorberg had just w
on for getting wounded filled one whole row and part of another. His very first medal ever was from the Vervani government. His most recent high honor had drifted in rather belatedly from the grateful Marilacans, by jump-mail. He'd loved covert ops; it had taken him to such very strange places. He laid out no less than five Barrayaran Imperial Stars in metals of various denominations, depending more on how much salt Illyan had sweated back at HQ during the particular missions they represented than the amount of blood Miles personally had shed on the front lines. Bronze only represented his commander's nails bitten to the second knuckle; gold signified gnawing to the wrist.
He hesitated, then arranged the gold medallion of the Cetagandan Order of Merit on its colorful ribbon, properly, around the tunic's high collar. It was cool and heavy under his hand. He could be one of the few soldiers in history ever to be decorated by both sides in the same war . . . though to be truthful, the Order of Merit had come later, and actually had been presented to Lord Vorkosigan, not the little Admiral for a change.
When they were all arranged, the effect was just short of looney.
Separated into all the little secret compartments, he hadn't realized just how much he'd accumulated, till he put it all together again. No, not again. For the first time.
Let's lay it all on the line. Smiling grimly, he fastened them down. He donned the white silk shirt that went underneath, the silver-embroidered suspenders, the brown trousers with the silver side-piping, the gleaming riding boots. Lastly, the heavy tunic. He fastened his grandfather's dagger in its cloisonné sheath, with the Vorkosigan seal in the jeweled hilt, on its proper belt around his waist. He combed his hair, and stepped back to regard himself, glittering in his mirror.
Going native, are we? The sarcastic voice was growing fainter.
"If you expect to open a can of worms," he spoke aloud for the first time, "you'd best trouble to pack a can-opener."
Martin, engrossed in reading a hand-viewer, looked up at the sound of Miles's booted step, and did a gratifying double-take.
"Bring my car round to the front portico," Miles instructed him coolly.
"Where are we going? My lord."
"To the Imperial Residence. I have an appointment."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Gregor received Miles in the serene privacy of his office in the Residence's north wing. He was seated behind his comconsole desk, perusing some visual display, and didn't look up till after the majordomo had announced Miles and withdrawn. He tapped a control and the holovid vanished, revealing the small, smoldering, brown-uniformed man standing across from him.
"All right, Miles, what's this all ab—good God." Gregor sat up, startled; his brows climbed as he began to take in the details. "I don't think I've ever seen you come the Vor lord with intent."
"At this point," said Miles, "intent should be steaming out both my ears. I would bet"—his catch-phrase used to be, I would bet my ImpSec silver eyes—"anything you please that there is a bigger mess with Illyan than Haroche has reported to you."
Gregor said slowly, "His reports are necessarily synopses."
"Ha. You've sensed it too, haven't you. Did Haroche ever once pass on the word that Illyan had requested to see me?"
"No . . . has he? And how do you know?"
"I had it from a, how shall I say it, a reliable anonymous source."
"How reliable?"
"To imagine he set me up with a false tale would be to attribute a mind bordering on the baroque to a person I judge to be almost painfully straightforward. And then there's the problem of motivation. Let's just say, reliable enough for practical purposes."
Gregor said slowly, "As I understand it, Illyan is at present . . . well, to be blunt, dangerously out of his mind. He's been demanding a lot of impractical things. A jump-ship raid on the Hegen Hub to turn back an imaginary invasion was mentioned to me."
"It was real once. You were there."
"Ten years ago. How do you know this isn't just more of the same hallucinatory raving?"
"That's just the point. I can't judge, because I haven't been permitted to see him. No one has. You heard from Lady Alys."
"Er, yes."
"Haroche has now blocked me twice. This morning he offered to have me stunned if I continued to make a pest of myself."
"How much of a pest were you?"
"You can doubtless request—I'd make that request and require, if I were you—a review of Haroche's comconsole recording of our last conversation. You might even find it entertaining. But Gregor—I have a right to see Illyan. Not as his ex-subordinate, but as my father's son. A Vor obligation that passes completely around ImpSec's military hierarchy and comes in through another door. To their dismay, no doubt, but that's their problem. I suspect . . . I don't know what I suspect. But I can't sit still till I figure it out."
"Do you think there's something smoky?"
"Not . . . necessarily," Miles said more slowly. "But stupidity can be just as bad as malice, sometimes. If this chip crash is anything like my cryo-amnesia, it has to be hell for Illyan. To lose yourself inside your own head . . . it was the loneliest I've ever been in my life. And nobody came for me, till Mark bulled through. At the very least, Haroche is mishandling this due to nerves and inexperience, and needs to be gently, or maybe not so gently, straightened out. At the worst—the possibility of deliberate sabotage has to have crossed your mind, too. Even though you haven't talked about it much with me."
Gregor cleared his throat. "Haroche asked me not to."
Miles hesitated. "Finally read my files, has he?"
"I'm afraid so. Haroche has . . . rigorous standards of loyalty."
"Yeah, well . . . it's not his standards of loyalty I'm questioning. It's his judgment. I still want in."
"To see Illyan? I can order that, I suppose. It's getting to be time, in my estimation."
"No, more than that. I want to go over every scrap of raw data pertaining to the case, medical or otherwise. I want oversight."
"Haroche will not be pleased."
"Haroche will go mulish, I expect. And I can't be calling you every fifteen minutes to reiterate your backup. I want some real authority. I want you to assign me an Imperial Auditor."
"What?!"
"Even ImpSec has to bend and spread 'em for an Imperial Auditor. An Auditor can legally requisition anything, and all Haroche or anyone else can do is fume—and hand it over. An Auditor speaks with your Voice. They have to listen. You can't pretend this isn't important enough to justify an Auditor's attentions."
"No, indeed, but . . . what would you be looking for?"
"If I knew already, I wouldn't have to look. All I know is that this thing has a . . ."—he spread his hands—"a wrong shape. The reasons may turn out to be trivial. Or not. Don't know. Gotta know."
"Which Auditor did you have in mind?"
"Um . . . can I have Vorhovis?"
"My top man."
"I know. I think I could work with him."
"Unfortunately, he's on his way to Komarr."
"Oh. Nothing too serious, I hope."
"Preventive maintenance. I sent him along with Lord and Lady Vorob'yev to help grease the arrangements with the Komarran oligarchy for announcing my upcoming marriage. He has considerable diplomatic talents."
"Hm." Miles hesitated. He'd really had Vorhovis in mind, when this inspiration had struck. "Vorlaisner, Valentine, and Vorkalloner are all a trifle . . . conservative."
"Afraid they'd side with Haroche against you?"
"Um."
Gregor's eyes glinted. "There's always General Vorparadijs."
"Oh, God. Spare me."
Gregor rubbed his chin, thoughtfully. "I foresee a problem here. Whatever Auditor I assign to you, there's about a fifty percent chance you'd be back here the following morning demanding another one to keep the first one under control. You don't really want an Auditor; you want an Auditor-shaped shield to cover your back while you do your very own investigating."
"Well . . . yes. I d
on't know. Maybe . . . maybe I could do something with Vorparadijs after all." His heart sank, contemplating this vision.
"An Auditor," said Gregor, "is not just my Voice. He's my eyes and ears, as well, very much in the original sense of the word. My listener. A probe, though most surely not a robot, to go places I can't, and report back with an absolutely independent angle of view. You"—Gregor's lip twisted up—"have the most independent angle of view of any man I've ever met."