"The point is, you haven't let the lack of half-marks stop you. Or the rules. Or respect for reality, as far as I can tell."
"I never let anything stop me. That's how you get what you want, Ivan. No one's just going to hand it to you." Well . . . no one was going to just hand it to Miles. Things fell out of the sky onto Ivan, and had done so all his charmed life. "If you can't win, change the game."
Ivan twitched a brow upward. "If there's no game, isn't winning a pretty meaningless concept?"
Miles hesitated. "Out of the mouths of . . . Ivans. I'll . . . have to think about that one."
"Don't strain yourself, little genius."
Miles managed an unfelt smile. Ivan looked as though this whole conversation was leaving as bad a taste in his mouth as it was in Miles's. Better to cut the losses. He would make it up with Ivan later. He always did. "I think I'd better go now."
"Yes. You have so much to do." With a grimace, Ivan cut the com even as Miles's hand reached for the off-key.
Miles sat in his comconsole's station chair in silence, for a full minute. Then, being quite alone, he threw back his head and spat his frustration at his bedroom ceiling, in a string of all the blue galactic curses he knew. Afterwards, he felt slightly better, as if he'd managed to eject something poisonous from his soul along with the foul words. He didn't begrudge Ivan his promotion, not really. It was just . . . it was just . . .
Was winning all he really wanted? Or did he still want also to be seen to have won? And by whom? ImpSec was the wrong damned department to be working for, if you hungered for fame along with your fortune. Yet Illyan knew, Miles's parents knew, Gregor, all the close people who really counted knew about Admiral Naismith, knew what Miles really was. Elena, Quinn, all the Dendarii. Even Ivan knew. Who the hell am I twirling for, if not for them?
Well . . . there was always his grandfather General Count Piotr Vorkosigan, dead these thirteen years. Miles's eye fell on his grandfather's ceremonial dagger in its elaborate sheath, sitting in a place of honor, or at least uncluttered by other detritus, on its own shelf across the room. Miles had actually insisted on carrying it around with him at all times, earlier in his career. Proving . . . what? To whom? Nothing to no one, now.
He rose, walked over to the shelf, and lifted the weapon, drawing the fine blade from its sheath and watching the light play over the textured steel. It was still a fabulous antique, but it lacked . . . some former geas it had once held upon him; the magic was gone, or at least, the curse was lifted. It was just a knife. He slid it back into its sheath, opened his hand, and let it fall back to its place.
He felt out of balance. He had felt that way increasingly, when at home, but this trip the sensation was acute. The strange absence of the Count and Countess was like a preview of their deaths. This was a taste of what it would be like to be Count Miles Vorkosigan, all day long. He wasn't sure he liked the flavor.
I need . . . Naismith. This eviscerated Vor life unnerved him. But Naismith was an expensive hobby. To get ImpSec to pay for Naismith required a reason, literally a mission in life. What have you done to justify your existence today? was a question to which Admiral Naismith had better be able to supply a daily answer, or risk being snuffed out. ImpSec's accountants were as dangerous to his continuation as enemy fire. Well . . . almost. His hand traced the spray of scars on his chest, under his shirt.
There was something wrong with his new heart. It pumped blood all right, all the ventricles and valves were in order . . . it was supposed to have been grown from his own tissues, but it seemed a stranger's mismatch. . . . You're going looney, all alone in this empty house.
A mission. A mission was what he needed. Then everything would be all right again. It wasn't that he wished harm on anyone, but he longed for a hijacking, a blockade, a small colonial war . . . better still, a rescue. Free the prisoners, yeah.
You've done all that. If that's what you wanted, why aren't you happy?
The taste for adrenaline, it appeared, was an appetite that grew by what it fed upon. Naismith was an addiction, a craving that required ever-stronger and more toxic doses for the same level of satisfaction.
He'd tried a few dangerous sports, by way of experiment, to soothe that hunger. He wasn't all that good at them, lacking, among other things, the time to acquire true expertise. And besides . . . that extra edge was missing. It wasn't very interesting to risk only himself. And a trophy seemed a tawdry bit of junk, when he'd played for and won ten thousand human lives in a single round.
I want my frigging mission. Call me, Illyan!
The call, when it came at last, literally caught him napping. The chime brought him abruptly out of an exhausted afternoon doze, after a night of almost no sleep at all, racked with circular patterns of worry and useless speculation. He had practiced in his mind, Miles estimated, about three hundred versions of his upcoming interview with Illyan. The only certainty he held was that the three hundred and first would be something totally different.
The face of Illyan's secretary formed over the vid plate.
"Now?" Miles said, before the man could get his first word out. He rubbed his hand through sleep-bent hair, and over his slightly numb face.
The secretary blinked, cleared his throat, and started in with his own practiced sentences. "Good afternoon, Lieutenant Vorkosigan. Chief Illyan requests that you report to his office in one hour."
"I could make it quicker."
"One hour," the secretary repeated. "HQ will send a car for you."
"Oh. Thanks." Useless to ask for more information over a comconsole; Miles's machine was more secured than a commercial model, but not that much more.
The secretary cut the com. Well, it would give him time to take another cold shower, and dress properly.
After his second bath of the day he pulled a set of fresh-pressed undress greens out of his closet, and set about transferring his ImpSec silver eyes to their place on the collar, in front of the—ahem!—battered red lieutenant's tabs he'd been wearing for eight bleeding years. The rank tabs were duplicates, but the eye-of-Horus pins, built up in molecular layers of tarnish-proof silver in a hidden pattern, were issued one set (right- and left-facing) to a soldier. Name and serial number were engraved on the back, and woe to the man who lost his. ImpSec eyes were as hard to counterfeit as money, and as powerful. When Miles was finished, his appearance was as neat as for any interview with the Emperor. Neater. Gregor had less immediate control over his destiny than Illyan did.
It was all sympathetic magic. When you couldn't do something truly useful, you tended to vent the pent-up energy in something useless but available, like snappy dressing. Still he was downstairs and waiting ten minutes before the ImpSec groundcar showed up at the front portico.
When he arrived this time at Illyan's office, the door to the inner chamber was open. The secretary waved him through.
Illyan looked up from his own oversized, overworked comconsole desk, and nodded in return to Miles's slightly-sharper-than-analyst's salute. He reached for a control, and the door to the outer office slid closed, and secure-locked itself. The locking was an unusual gesture, and Miles quelled a rising hope that it meant that this time, something bloody big was in the works, something really challenging.
There was a chair waiting, good. Illyan had been known, when particularly furious, to keep one standing till the yelling part was done. Not that Illyan ever raised his voice; he tended to the devastatingly well-chosen word to convey his emotions, a style Miles admired and hoped to emulate. But there was a peculiar tension in the ImpSec chief today. Grim, much more so than normal. Miles seated himself, and gave Illyan a short nod, signifying his commander had all his attention: I'm ready. Let's go.
Illyan leaned not forward, but back, studying Miles across the wide black surface of the desk. "You told my secretary you had something you wanted to add to your last report?"
Shit. Now or never. But the confession of his little medical problem would be certain to totally derail whateve
r mission assignment was coming up. Never it is, then. I'll fix it myself, later. As soon as possible. "Nothing important now. What's up?"
Illyan sighed, and drummed his fingers once, introspectively, on the black glass before him. "I received a disturbing report from Jackson's Whole."
Miles's breath drew in. I died there once. "Admiral Naismith is notably unwelcome in those parts, but I'm ready for a rematch. What have the bastards done now?"
"This is not a new mission, nor a new report. This is in relation to your last . . . I can hardly call it a mission, since I never ordered it. Your last adventure there." Illyan looked up at him.
"Oh?" said Miles cautiously.
"Complete copies of your cryo-revival surgeon's medical records finally surfaced. It took some time, due to the confusion of the Durona Group's hurried departure from Jackson's Whole, with their records scattered between Escobar and House Fell. House Fell, needless to say, was not forthcoming with extra data. It took even more time for the records to be received and processed by my analysis section, and to finally be read in detail by someone who realized their significance and implications. Some months, in fact."
Miles's belly went abruptly very cold, as if in memory of his freezing death. He had a sudden insight as to the exact state of mind of a person who fell/jumped/was pushed from the top of a very tall building, in that subjectively stretched eternity it took for them to reach the pavement below. We have just made a major mistake. Oh, yes.
"What bothers me most, of course," Illyan went on, "is not your seizures themselves, but the fact that you concealed them from the ImpSec physicians who were trying to return you fit for duty. You lied to them, and through them, to me."
Miles swallowed, searching his paralyzed consciousness for a defense for the indefensible. What couldn't be defended could only be denied. He pictured himself chirping brightly, What seizures, sir? No. "Dr. Durona . . . said they would go away on their own." She had, dammit, she had. "Or . . . they might," he corrected. "At that time, I thought they had."
Illyan grimaced. He picked a cipher-card from his desktop, and held it up between thumb and forefinger. "This," he stated, "is my latest independent report from the Dendarii. Including your fleet surgeon's medical reports. The ones she kept in her cabin, not in her sick bay office. They were not easy to obtain. I've been waiting for them. They came in last night."
He had a third observer. I might have known. I should have figured it.
"Do you want to try to play any more little guessing games about this?" Illyan added dryly.
"No, sir," Miles whispered. He hadn't meant it to come out a whisper. "No more games."
"Good." Illyan rocked slightly in his station chair, and tossed the card back to the desktop. His face looked like death itself. Miles wondered what his own face looked like. As wide-eyed as an animal in the headlights, as viewed from a groundcar traveling toward it at a hundred kilometers an hour, he suspected.
"This"—Illyan pointed to the cipher-card—"was a betrayal of the subordinates who depended on you as well as of the superiors who trusted you. And it was a knowing betrayal, proved on Lieutenant Vorberg's body. Do you have anything to say in your defense?"
If the tactical situation was bad, change your ground. If you can't win, change the rules. Miles's internal tension shot him up out of his chair, to pace back and forth before Illyan's desk. His voice rose. "I have served you, body and blood—and I've bled plenty—for nine years, sir. Ask the Marilacans how well I've served you. Ask a hundred others. Over thirty missions, and only two that could remotely be classified as failures. I've laid my life on the line dozens of times, I've literally laid it down. Does that suddenly count for nothing now?"
"It counts"—Illyan inhaled—"for much. That's why I am offering you a medical discharge without prejudice, if you resign now."
"Resign? Quit? This is your idea of a favor? ImpSec has made worse scandals than this disappear—I know you can do more than that, if you choose!"
"It's the best way. Not just for you, but for your name's sake. I have thought this through from every angle. I've been thinking about it for weeks."
This is why he called me home. No mission. There never was. Only this. I was screwed from before the beginning. No chance.
"After serving your father for thirty years," Illyan continued, "I can do no less. And no more."
Miles froze. "My father . . . asked for this? He knows?"
"Not yet. Apprising him is a task I leave to you. This is one last report I do not care to make."
Rare cowardice on Illyan's part, and a fearsome punishment. "My father's influence," said Miles bitterly. "Some favor."
"Believe me, without your record you so justly quote, even your father could not gain you this mercy from me. Your career will end quietly, with no public scandal."
"Yeah," Miles panted. "Real convenient. It shuts me up, and gives me no appeal."
"I advise—with all my heart—against your forcing this to a court-martial. You will never get a more favorable judgment than this private one, between us. It is with no intent to be humorous that I tell you, you haven't a leg to stand on." Illyan tapped the cipher-card, for emphasis. Indeed, there was no amusement at all in his face. "On the documented evidence here alone, never mind the rest of it, you'd be lucky to get out with only a dishonorable discharge, and no further sentence atop it."
"Have you discussed this with Gregor?" Miles demanded. Imperial favor, his last emergency defense, the one he'd sworn he'd die rather than call upon—
"Yes. At great length. I was closeted with him all this morning over nothing but this."
"Oh."
Illyan gestured at his comconsole. "I have your records ready, for you to sign out here and now. Palm-print, retina-scan, and it's done. Your uniforms . . . didn't come from military stores, so need not be returned, and it is traditional to keep one's insignia, but I'm afraid I must ask you to hand in your silver eyes."
Miles, turning on his heel, aborted the half-gesture of his agitated hands reaching to clamp defensively to his collar. "Not my eyes! It's . . . not true, I can explain, I can—" The edges and surfaces of the objects in the room, the comconsole desk, the chairs, Illyan's face, seemed suddenly sharper than before, as if imbued with some heightened measure of reality. A nimbus of green fire broke up into colored confetti, closing over him, No—!
He came to consciousness flat on his back on Illyan's carpet. Illyan's blood-drained face hovered over him, tense and worried. Something was lodged in Miles's mouth—he turned his head and spat out a stylus, a light-pen from Illyan's desk. His collar was unfastened—his hand reached to touch it—but his silver eyes were still in place. He just lay there, for a moment.
"Well," he said thinly at last. "I imagine that was quite a show. How long?"
"About"—Illyan glanced at his chrono—"four minutes."
"About standard."
"Lie still. I'll call a medic."
"I don't need a goddamn medic. I can walk." He tried to get up. One leg buckled, and he went down again, face mashed in the carpet. His face was sticky—he'd evidently hit his mouth, which was swelling, on the first fall, and his nose, which was bleeding. Illyan handed him a handkerchief, and he pressed it to his face. After about a minute, he suffered Illyan to help him back into the chair.
Illyan half-sat on the edge of his desk, watching him. Watching over him, always. "You knew," said Illyan. "And you lied. To me. In writing. In that damned falsified report, you pissed away . . . everything. I'd have mistrusted my memory chip before I mistrusted you. Why, Miles? Were you that panicked?" The anguish leaked into that level voice like blood into a bruise.
Yes. I was that panicked. I didn't want to lose Naismith. I didn't want to lose . . . everything. "It doesn't matter now." He fumbled at his collar. One pin tore the green fabric, coming off in his shaking hands. He thrust the pins blindly at Illyan. "There. You win."
Illyan's hand closed over them. "God save me," he said softly, "from another such
victory."
"Fine, good, give me the read-pad. Give me the retinal scan. Let's get this the hell over with. I'm sick of ImpSec, and eating ImpSec shit. No more. Good." The shaking didn't stop, radiating outward in hot waves from the pit of his belly. He was terrified he was about to start crying in front of Illyan.
Illyan sat back, his closed hand turning inward. "Take a couple of minutes to compose yourself. Take as long as you need. Then go into my washroom and wash your face. I'm not unlocking my door till you're fit to go out."
Strange mercies, Illyan. You kill me so courteously. But he nodded, and stumbled to Illyan's little lavatory. Illyan followed him to the door, then, apparently deciding he would stay on his feet this time, left him alone. The face in the mirror was indeed unfit to be seen, bloody and ravaged. It was very like the face he had last seen looking back at him the day Sergeant Beatrice had been killed, except about a hundred years older now. Illyan will not shame a great name. Neither should I. He washed carefully, though he failed to get all the bloodstains out of his torn collar and the cream-colored shirt opened under it.