Lois Bujold - Mirror Dance

Miles is in a place that ImpSec has already checked off, in the hands of someone with hidden motivations to be interested in him.

There were still hundreds of possibilities.

I need a connection. There has to be a connection.

ImpSec had torn apart Norwood’s available Dendarii records down to the level of a word-by-word analysis. Nothing. But Norwood was medically trained. And he hadn’t sent his beloved Admiral’s cryo-chamber off at random. He’d sent it someplace to someone.

If there’s a hell, Norwood, I hope you’re roasting in it right now.

Mark sighed, leaned forward, and turned the comconsole back on.

A couple of hours later, Illyan stopped by Mark’s cubicle, closing the soundproof door behind him. He leaned, falsely casual, on the wall and remarked, “How is it going?”

Mark ran his hands through his hair. “Despite your amiable attempt to bury me, I think I’m actually making some progress.”

“Oh? What kind?” Illyan did not deny the charge, Mark noticed.

“I am absolutely convinced Miles never left Jackson’s Whole.”

“So how do you explain our finding the cryo-chamber in the Hegen Hub?”

“I don’t. It’s a diversion.”

“Hm,” said Illyan, non-committally.

“And it worked,” Mark added cruelly.

Illyan’s lips thinned.

Diplomacy, Mark reminded himself. Diplomacy, or he’d never get what he needed. “I accept that your resources are finite, sir. So put them to the point. Everything that you do have available for this, you ought to send to Jackson’s Whole.”

The sardonic expression on Illyan’s face said it all. The man had been running ImpSec for nearly thirty years. It was going to take a lot more than diplomacy for him to accept Mark telling him how to do his job.

“What did you find out about Captain Vorventa?” Mark tried another line.

“The link was short, and not too sinister. His younger brother was my Galactic Operations supervisor’s adjutant. These are not disloyal men, you understand.”

“So … what have you done?”

“About Captain Edwin, nothing. It’s too late. The information about Miles is now out on the Vorish net, as whispers and gossip. Beyond damage control. Young Vorventa has been transferred and demoted. Leaving an ugly hole in my staffing. He was good at his job.” Illyan did not sound very grateful to Mark.

“Oh.” Mark paused. “Vorventa thought I did something to the Count. Is that out on the gossip net too?”

“Yes.”

Mark winced. “Well … at least you know better,” he sighed. He glanced up at Illyan’s stony face, and felt a nauseated alarm. “Don’t you, sir?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

“How not?! You have the medical reports!”

“Mm. The cardiac rupture certainly appeared natural. But it could have been artificially created, using a surgical hand-tractor. The subsequent damage to the cardiac region would have masked its traces.”

Mark shuddered in helpless outrage. “Tricky work,” he choked. “Extremely precise. How did I make the Count hold still, and not notice, while I was doing this?”

“That is one problem with the scenario,” Illyan agreed.

“And what did I do with the hand tractor? And the medical scanner, I’d have needed one of those, too. Two or three kilos of equipment.”

“Ditched them in the woods. Or somewhere.”

“Have you found them?”

“No.”

“Have you looked?”

“Yes.”

Mark rubbed his face, hard, and clenched and unclenched his teeth. “So. You have all the men you need to quarter and re-quarter several square kilometers of woods looking for a hand tractor that isn’t there, but not enough to send to Jackson’s Whole to look for Miles, who is. I see.” No. He had to keep his temper, or he’d lose everything. He wanted to howl. He wanted to beat Illyan’s face in.

“A galactic operative is a highly-trained specialist with rare personal qualities,” said Illyan stiffly. “Area-searches for known objects can be conducted by low-level troopers, who are more abundant.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.” He was apologizing? Your goals. Remember your goals. He thought of the Countess, and drew a deep, calming breath. He drew several.

“I do not hold this as a conviction,” Illyan said, watching his face. “I hold it merely as a doubt.”

“Thank-you-I-think,” Mark snarled.

He sat for a full minute, trying to marshall his scattered thoughts, his best arguments. “Look,” he said at last. “You are wasting your resources, and one of the resources you are wasting is me. Send me back to Jackson’s Whole. I know more about the entire situation than any other agent you have. I have some training, an assassin’s training only maybe, but some. Enough to lose your spies three or four times on Earth! Enough to get this far. I know Jackson’s Whole, visceral stuff you can only acquire growing up there. And you wouldn’t even have to pay me!” He waited, holding his breath in the courage of his terror. Go back? Blood sprayed through his memory. Going to give the Bharaputrans a chance to correct their aim?

Illyan’s cool expression did not change. “Your track record so far in covert ops is not notably impressive for its successes, Lord Mark.”

“So, I’m not a brilliant combat field commander. I am not Miles. We all know that by now. How many of your other agents are?”

“If you are as, ah, incompetent as you have appeared, sending you would be a further waste. But suppose you are more sly than even I think. All your thrashing around here, a mere smokescreen.” Illyan could deliver the veiled insults too. Stiletto-sharp, right between the ribs. “And suppose you get to Miles before we do. What happens then?”

“What do you mean, what happens then?”

“If you return him to us as a room-temperature corpse, fit only for burying, instead of a cryo-stat hopeful—how will we know that was the way you found him? And you will inherit his name, his rank, his wealth, and his future. Tempting, Mark, to a man without an identity. Very tempting.”

Mark buried his face in his hands. He sat crushed, infuriated, and wildly frustrated. “Look,” he said through his fingers, “look. Either I’m the man who, by your theory, succeeded in half-assassinating Aral Vorkosigan and was so good I left no trace of proof—or I’m not. You can argue that I’m not competent enough to send. Or you can argue that I’m not trustworthy enough to send. But you can’t use both arguments at once. Pick one!”

“I await more evidence.” Illyan’s eyes were like stones.

“I swear,” Mark whispered, “excess suspicion makes us bigger fools than excess trust does.” It had certainly been true in his case. He sat up suddenly. “So fast-penta me.”

Illyan raised his brows. “Mm?”

“Fast-penta me. You never have. Relieve your suspicions.” Fast-penta interrogations could be excruciatingly humiliating experiences, by all reports. So what. What was one more humiliation in his life? Warm and familiar, that was what.

“I have longed to, Lord Mark,” Illyan admitted, “but your, ah, progenitor has a known idiosyncratic response to fast-penta that I assume you share. Not the usual allergy, exactly. It creates an appalling hyperactivity, a great deal of babble, but alas, no overwhelming compulsion to tell the truth. It is useless.”

“In Miles.” Mark seized the hope. “You assume? You don’t know! My metabolism is demonstrably not like Miles’s. Can’t you at least check?”

“Yes,” said Illyan slowly, “I can do that.” He pushed himself off from the wall, and exited the cubicle, saying, “Carry on. I’ll be back shortly.”