"I'm in a Weapons Room, right?" Ivan demanded, waving his inventory sheaf of plastic flimsies.
Miles tore his attention away from the chemical description of the nine-hundred-and-ninth item in alphabetical order in the Poisons Room: Ophidian Scrapings, Polian, Three Grams. "If you say so."
"Right. So what's a little box labeled 'Komarran virus' doing on Aisle Five, Shelf Nine, Bin Twenty-Seven? What the hell is it, and shouldn't it be in Biologicals? Did somebody misclassify it? I'm not unsealing the damned thing till you find out what it is. It might make me break out in green fungus, or bloat up like those poor suckers with the Sergyaran worm plague. Or worse."
"The worm plague has to have been the most disgusting in recent history," Miles agreed. "But it wasn't very lethal, as plagues go. Let me look. Was it on the Weapons Room listing?"
"Oh, yes, right where it should be. They think."
"So it's got to be a weapon. Maybe." Miles marked his place and refiled the poisons list he'd been examining on the Evidence Rooms' library comconsole, and pulled up that of the weapons section instead. The "Komarran virus" had a code classification that blocked access to its description and history to any but men of the very highest security clearances. ImpSec HQ was crammed with such men. Miles smiled slightly, and overrode the lockout with his Auditor's seal.
He hadn't read more than the first three lines before he began to laugh, very softly. He would swear, but he couldn't think of any invective foul enough.
"What?" snapped Ivan, craning around to peer over Miles's shoulder.
"Not a virus, Ivan. Somebody in Classification needs a lecture from Dr. Weddell. It's a bioengineered apoptotic prokaryote. A little bug that eats things, specifically, neurochip proteins. The prokaryote, Illyan's prokaryote. It's no danger to you at all, unless you've acquired a neurochip I don't know about. Oh, God. This is where it came from . . . or rather, this is where it came from last." He settled in and began to read; Ivan, hanging over the back of his station chair, knocked his hand aside when he tried to advance screens before Ivan had finished too.
This was it, hidden in plain sight, buried in an inventory of tens of thousands of other items. It had been sitting here demurely in Bin Twenty-Seven, Shelf Nine, collecting dust for nearly five years, ever since the day it was delivered to the ImpSec Evidence Room by an officer from Komarran Affairs. It had been picked up at that time by Imperial Counterintelligence right here in Vorbarr Sultana, on an arrest-sweep of Komarran terrorist cells associated with . . . the late Ser Galen, killed on Earth while trying to launch his last complicated, dramatic, and futile plot for bringing down the Barrayaran Imperium and freeing Komarr. The plot for which Galen had created Miles's clone-brother Mark.
"Oh, hell," said Ivan. "Has your damned clone got something to do with this?"
"Brother," corrected Miles, swallowing the same fear. "I don't see how. He's been on Beta Colony for almost the last half-year. My Betan grandmother can confirm it."
"If you want confirmation," said Ivan, "then you must be thinking what I'm thinking. Could he have been pretending to be you again?"
"Not without going on one hell of a crash diet."
Ivan grunted half-assent. "Could be done, with the right drugs."
"I don't think so. I promise you, the last thing Mark wants is to be me, ever again. I'll have his whereabouts formally checked anyway, just to stop everyone from galloping down a blind alley. The ImpSec office at the embassy on Beta Colony keeps him in their sights just because Mark is . . . who he is."
Miles read on. The Jacksonian connection was quite real too. The chip-eating prokaryote had indeed been made to order there for the Komarran terrorists, by one of the Houses Minor more usually known for its tailored drugs. And Illyan had been its intended target from the beginning; the disruption of ImpSec had been timed to coincide with the assassination of then–Prime Minister Count Aral Vorkosigan. The ImpSec investigation of five years ago had traced the prokaryote right back to its building of origin, and the Komarran payment to the Jacksonian biochem team's bank accounts. The new search, just launched, must sooner or later turn up the exact same data: later, if they had to totally reconstruct the first tedious investigation; sooner, if the organization overcame its collective amnesia and spotted the data in its own files. Three to eight weeks, depending, Miles estimated.
"This explains . . . the frame, at least," Miles muttered.
Ivan cocked an eyebrow. "How so?"
"I came at it in the wrong order. My ersatz visit here was meant to be found, yes, inevitably, but it wasn't meant to be found first. This data . . ."—Miles waved at the comconsole—"when it finally arrived here, would have focused attention on the Evidence Rooms. Instead of starting with the comconsole records, and then checking the inventory, the investigators would have begun with Bin Twenty-Seven and then checked the security records of people going in and out. Where they would have been quite pleased with themselves for finding me, a recently cashiered officer with no business here. Gone at that way, it would have been a much more convincing frame."
Miles sat for a moment, ordering his thoughts. Then he called ImpSec Forensics and requisitioned the senior officer on call. After that he put through a call to Dr. Vaughn Weddell's home console.
The machine blocked him, and tried to take a message; Weddell didn't care to have his beauty sleep interrupted, it appeared. He tried once more, with the same results, waited a full three seconds to recover his patience, and then called the Imperial Guards. Miles had the duty officer dispatch a couple of their largest uniformed men to Weddell's flat with instructions to wake him up by whatever means were required, and bring him at once to ImpSec HQ, carried bodily if necessary.
It still seemed an eternity—almost dawn outside, Miles gauged—before Miles had his team assembled, and marched them all before him into Weapons Room IV. Weddell was still whining under his breath about being awakened so rudely in the middle of the night; as long as he prudently kept his complaints sotto voce, Miles chose to ignore them. Neither he nor Ivan had gotten any sleep at all, not that Miles was the least tired right now.
The forensics man was given first crack at the exterior of the little sealed biocontainer.
"It's been moved a few times," he reported. "Some fingerprints, some smudges, none very fresh . . ." He duly recorded them by laser-scan, for cross-match with Evidence Rooms personnel, and the rest of the population of the Empire if necessary. "The screamer-signal circuit to detect the container's removal from the Evidence Rooms has never been activated. No hairs or fibers. I wouldn't expect much dust, given the air filters here. That's all I can say. It's all yours, gentlemen."
He stepped back; Ivan stepped forward, drew the box from its shelf, and positioned it on the lighted examination board brought in for the purpose. The box was sealed with the simplest of numeric code-locks, designed more to keep it from popping open if accidentally dropped than for any real security—for one thing, the access-code was listed right in the inventory description. Ivan referred to the flimsy, and tapped in the sequence. The little lid swung up.
"Right," drawled Ivan, peering inside, and then at his inventory-flimsy again. The box was lined with a shockproof gel-pack, scored by six parallel slots. Three slots were filled with tiny brown capsules, small enough for a child to swallow. The other three were empty. "Six sealed vector-delivery units—that's what they're called on here, anyway—to start with, one taken out for examination five years ago and listed as destroyed. Five supposedly left—only now there are three." He opened his hand with a flourish; the forensics man again stepped forward, and bent over the box to begin checking the seal from the inside.
Right, right! Miles howled inwardly, with a small mental reservation for that one capsule removed five years back. That was going to complicate things, but perhaps the laboratory records would help, once retrieved.
"You mean," moaned Weddell, "I racked my brains for a week reassembling that damned crap, and a whole undamaged sample was sitting downstair
s all that time?"
"Yep." Miles grinned. "I hope you like irony."
"Not at this hour of the morning."
The forensics man looked up and reported, "The lock has never been forced."
"All right," Miles said. "The box goes to Forensics for a full examination. Ivan, I want you to go with it. Don't let those weasels up there sneak it out of your sight. Weddell, you take one of those samples for a molecular analysis—I want you to confirm it is the same crap you flushed out of Illyan's chip, and I want to know anything else you can figure out about it. It and you don't leave the building—you can have the same lab in the clinic again, and any supplies you care to requisition, but no one—no one—but you is to touch the sample. You report to no one but me. The last two units go back into the new box on the shelf, locked under my Auditor's seal. I trust it will stay there this time." Though I'm beginning to think it would be safer in my pocket.
Haroche, the rat, had gone home to sleep last night after the systems team was assigned, an hour after midnight. While waiting for his return, Miles took a break for breakfast in the ImpSec HQ cafeteria. This was a mistake, he realized, catching himself dozing off into his coffee mug. He dared not stop. Somehow, getting started again was a lot harder than it used to be.
He was yawning in Haroche's outer office when the ImpSec chief entered, also yawning. Haroche blearily swallowed his yawn, and motioned Miles to follow into his inner sanctum. Miles pulled up a chair and sat as Haroche settled behind his desk. "So, Lord Vorkosigan. Any progress?"
"Oh, yes." Rapidly, Miles brought Haroche up to speed on the events of the last hours. Haroche, hunching forward on the edge of his station chair, wasn't yawning by the time he finished.
"Damn," Haroche breathed, leaning back again. "Damn. There goes the last hope of this being anything other than an inside job."
"I'm afraid so."
"So now we have another list. How many men could have known the samples were down there?"
"Five years' worth of Evidence Rooms inventory teams, for starters," Miles said.
"The men who captured and delivered it," Haroche added.
"And anyone working here at the time who might have been close friends with the men who captured and delivered it." Miles began to tick off the count on his hands. He wondered if he was going to have enough fingers. "It was filed under the seal of the Komarran Affairs chief who preceded Allegre. Allegre himself was still working on Komarr itself at that time, as the local section head. I checked. Also . . . any Komarrans in those revolutionary groups who escaped capture at the time, or who were imprisoned and have been recently released. People they might have talked to in prison . . . That list had better be checked too, I suppose, though, as you say . . . the comconsole tampering compels me to believe it's an inside job too."
Haroche made a note. "Right. Not a short list yet, I'm afraid, by any means."
"No. Though it's a lot shorter than the three planets full of people we started with." Miles hesitated, then added reluctantly, "I don't know if my brother Lord Mark—my clone, that is—knew about this stuff or not. It will be necessary to check, I suppose."
Haroche's gaze rose to meet Miles's, his expression arrested. "Do you suppose—"
"Not physically possible," Miles asserted. "Mark has spent the last six months on Beta Colony. Been to school every day since the term began." I hope. "His whereabouts are eminently provable."
"Hm." Haroche reluctantly subsided.
"Do you remember anything about that period?"
"I was still assistant Domestic Affairs section-chief. It was just before my last promotion. I remember the flurry of activity over Komarrans in Vorbarr Sultana. The case that had riveted Domestic's attention right about then had to do with an antigovernment group in Vorsmythe's District suspected of trying to import proscribed weapons."
"Ah. Well, I hope your data boys can help triangulate this," Miles went on. "Whoever did this must have had recent access to ImpSec's internal systems, plus a lot of wit and nerve. The short list is going to consist of the men who are on both lists."
"Why are you assuming it's only one man?" asked Haroche.
"Oh." Miles deflated. "Right. Thank you." Haroche, Miles reminded himself, was not without experience in this sort of thing.
"Not that I wouldn't prefer it that way," admitted Haroche. "I'd much rather find myself dealing with one than a conspiracy."
"Mm. But one man or a group, the motivation is growing . . . complex. Why me? Why was I picked to be the goat? Is there some special hatred at the bottom of this, or was it chance—was I simply the only ImpSec officer to be cashiered in the right time-window?"
"If I may presume to advise you, my lord, motivations are a slippery thing in this sort of business. Too wispily cerebral. I always got further faster following the facts. You can spin theories about motivation later, over your victory beer. When you know who, you'll know why. I admit, that's a philosophical preference."
When I know why, I'll know who. "It's true, there may be nothing personal in it. As soon as the crime was discovered . . . to be a crime, the, the . . . I can't call him a killer, I suppose. . . ."
Haroche half-smiled, not happily. "We're short a body, for one thing."
Illyan, for all his new vagueness, was hardly a zombie. But Miles remembered that hoarse distraught voice, begging him earnestly for a clean death. . . . "The assassin," he went on, "was absolutely required to supply a goat to take the heat off himself. Because this is not a case that can ever be closed except by being solved. No 'Hold pending further data' till it's dusty and forgotten this time. He had to know ImpSec would never rest."
"You're damned right," Haroche growled.
"That crap downstairs was carefully arranged to be found, because it was inevitable. Once the hunt was up, too many records existed in too many places for it to just be made to disappear. All I've done . . ." Miles's voice slowed, "was alter the timetable."
"Three days." Haroche smiled crookedly. "You went through all of ImpSec in just three days."
"Not all of ImpSec, just the headquarters building. And it was more like four days. Still . . . somebody must be squirming. I hope. If they meant to hook ex-Lieutenant Vorkosigan, and instead got Lord Auditor Vorkosigan . . . it must have felt like putting in your line for a trout, and pulling up a shark. I may have arrived just in time downstairs after all. Given the several more weeks of lead time he was expecting, our assassin might well have thought to yank his plant in the evidence room and try something else. God, I'd love to know."
Who hates me, and works here? Could Lieutenant Vorberg have found out who Admiral Naismith really was . . . ? Vorberg couldn't possibly be so twisted as to destroy Illyan just to destroy Miles, could he? Surely I was a secondary target. He had to be a secondary target. The alternative was too horrible to think about.
"Nonetheless, you've made extraordinary progress, Lord Vorkosigan," said Haroche. "I've cracked cases which started with far less data than what you've uncovered. It's good, solid work."
Miles tried not to be too pleased with Haroche's measured praise, though he felt his face warm anyway. Haroche was such a contained man, his brief words were clearly the meaningful sort men might strive to win. Surely it was not disloyal to Illyan to hope his successor might yet grow to fill his place, not the same, but as well.
"It's a shame," Haroche sighed, "that so many men in ImpSec HQ are fast-penta-proofed."
"It's much too early to think of starting to pull out people's fingernails," said Miles, nibbling on one of his own. "Tempting as it is. I suppose . . . that we now wait on the reports from your systems analysis team. I suppose . . ."—another yawn cracked his face—"that I might as well go home and get some sleep while I wait. Call me the minute they have anything to report, please."
"Yes, my Lord Auditor."
"Oh, hell, will you just call me Miles? Everyone else does. This Lord Auditor stuff is only fun for the first twenty minutes, after that it's just work." Not quite true, but
. . .
Haroche gave him wave that nearly qualified as an analyst's salute, as he departed.
Martin returned Miles to the front door of Vorkosigan House in the midmorning. Seductive visions of his soft bed filled his head. Dutifully, he went first to find his lady mother and say good-morning, or good-night.
Two or three retainers' conflicting directions eventually brought him to one of the downstairs sitting rooms on the east side, filled with unusually pleasant morning light for this chill early winter. The Countess was sipping coffee and leafing through an old leather-bound tome Miles thought he recognized from Lady Vorpatril's Imperial wedding history assignment, the one that he had ducked. Better her than me.
"Hello, love," she answered his greetings. She indulged herself by planting a maternal kiss upon his forehead; he stole a gulp of her coffee. "You were out late. Any progress on your case?"