Lois Bujold - Mirror Dance

She paused. “Can you name any names yet?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Mm.” She abandoned the fairy tale; her voice grew more clipped. “Lord Miles Vorkosigan of Barrayar was the original. He is now about twenty-eight standard years old. His first clone was made right here on Jackson’s Whole, twenty-two years ago, a purchase by a Komarran resistance group from House Bharaputra. We do not know what this clone names himself, but the Komarrans’ elaborate substitution plot failed about two years ago, and the clone escaped.”

“Galen,” he whispered.

She glanced sharply at him. “He was the chief of those Komarrans, yes. The second clone … is a puzzle. The best guess is that he was manufactured by the Cetagandans, but no one knows. He first appeared about ten years ago as a full-blown and exceptionally brilliant mercenary commander, claiming the quite legal Betan name of Miles Naismith, in his maternal line. He has shown himself no friend to the Cetagandans, so the theory that he is a Cetagandan renegade has a certain compelling logic. No one knows his age, though obviously he can be no more than twenty-eight.” She took a sip of her tea. “It is our belief that you are one of those two clones.”

“Shipped to you like a crate of frozen meat? With my chest blown out?”

“Yes.”

“So what? Clones—even frozen ones—can’t be a novelty here.” He glanced at Rowan.

“Let me go on. About three months ago, Bharaputra’s manufactured clone returned home—with a crew of mercenary soldiers at his back that he had apparently stolen from the Dendarii Fleet by the simple expedient of pretending to be his clone-twin, Admiral Naismith. He attacked Bharaputra’s clone-creche in an attempt to either steal, or possibly free, a group of clones slated to be the bodies for brain transplants, a business which I personally loathe.”

He touched his chest. “He … failed?”

“No. But Admiral Naismith followed in hot pursuit of his stolen hip and troops. In the melee that ensued downside at Bharaputra’s main surgical facilities, one of the two was killed. The other escaped, along with the mercenaries and most of Bharaputra’s very valuable clone-cattle. They made a fool of Vasa Luigi—I laughed myself sick when I first heard about it.” She sipped tea demurely.

He could actually almost picture her doing so, though it made his eyes cross slightly.

“Before they jumped, the Dendarii Mercenaries posted a reward for the return of a cryo-chamber containing the remains of a man they claim to have been the Bharaputran-made clone.”

His eyes widened. “Me?”

She held up a hand. “Vasa Luigi, Baron Bharaputra, is absolutely convinced that they were lying, and that the man in the box was really their Admiral Naismith.”

“Me?” he said less certainly.

“Georish Stauber, Baron Fell, refuses to even guess. And Baron Ryoval would tear a town apart for even a fifty percent chance of laying hands on Admiral Naismith, who injured him four years ago as no one has in a century.” Her lips curved in a scalpel-smile.

It all made sense, which made no sense at all. It was like a story heard long ago, in childhood, and re-encountered. In another lifetime. Familiarity under glass. He touched his head, which ached. Rowan matched the gesture with concern.

“Don’t you have medical records? Something?”

“At some risk, we obtained the developmental records of Bharaputra’s clone. Unfortunately, they only go up to age fourteen. We have nothing on Admiral Naismith. Alas, one cannot run a triangulation on one data point.”

He turned toward Rowan. “You know me, inside and out. Can’t you tell?”

“You’re strange.” Rowan shook her head. “Half your bones are plastic replacement parts, do you know? The real ones that are left show old breaks, old traumas. … I’d guess you not only older than Bharaputra’s clone ought to be, I’d guess you older than the original Lord Vorkosigan, and that makes no sense. If we could just get one solid, certain clue. The memories you’ve reported so far are terribly ambiguous. You know weapons, as the Admiral might—but Bharaputra’s clone was trained as an assassin. You remember Ser Galen, and only Bharaputra’s clone should do that. I found out about those sugar trees. They’re called maple trees, and they originate on Earth—where Bharaputra’s clone was taken for training. And so on.” She flung up her hands in frustration.

“If you’re not getting the right answer,” he said slowly, “maybe you’re not asking the right question.”

“So what is the right question?”

He shook his head, mutely. “Why …” His hands spread. “Why not turn my frozen body over to the Dendarii and collect the reward? Why not sell me to Baron Ryoval, if he wants me so much? Why revive me?”

“I wouldn’t sell a laboratory rat to Baron Ryoval,” Lilly stated flatly. She twitched a brief smile. “Old business, between us.”

How old? Older than he, whoever he was.

“As for the Dendarii—we may deal with them yet. Depending on who you are.”

They were approaching the heart of the matter; he could sense it. “Yes?”

“Four years ago, Admiral Naismith visited Jackson’s Whole, and besides counting a most spectacular coup on Ry Ryoval, left with a certain Dr. Hugh Canaba, one of Bharaputra’s top genetics people. Now, I knew Canaba. More to the point, I know what Vasa Luigi and Lotus paid to get him here, and how many House secrets he was privy to. They would never have let him go alive. Yet he’s gone, and no one on Jackson’s Whole has ever been able to trace him.”

She leaned forward intently. “Assuming Canaba was not just disposed of out an airlock—Admiral Naismith has shown he can get people out. In fact, it’s a speciality he’s famous for. That is our interest in him.”

“You want off-planet?” He glanced around at Lilly Durona’s comfortable, self-contained little empire. “Why?”

“I have a Deal with Georish Stauber—Baron Fell. It’s a very old Deal, as we are very old dealers. My time is surely running out, and Georish is growing,” she grimaced, “unreliable. If I die—or if he dies—or if he succeeds in having his brain transplanted to a younger body, as he has attempted at least once to arrange—our old Deal will be broken. The Durona Group might be offered less admirable deals than the one we have enjoyed so long with House Fell. It might be broken up—sold—weakened so as to invite attack from old enemies like Ry, who remembers an insult or an injury forever. It might be forced to work it does not choose. I’ve been looking for a way out for the last couple of years. Admiral Naismith knows one.”

She wanted him to be Admiral Naismith, obviously the most valuable of the two clones. “What if I’m the other one?” He stared at his hands. They were just his hands. No hints there.

“You might be ransomed.”

By whom? Was’he savior, or commodity? What a choice. Rowan looked uneasy.

“What am I to you if I can’t remember who I am?”

“No one at all, little man.” Her dark eyes glinted, momentarily, like obsidian chips.

This woman had survived nearly a century on Jackson’s Whole. It would not do to underestimate her ruthlessness on the basis of one picky prejudice about clone-brain transplants.

They finished their tea, and retreated to Rowan’s room.

“What in all that seemed familiar to you?” Rowan asked him anxiously when they were alone on her little sofa.

“All of it,” he said, in deep perplexity. “And yet—Lilly seems to think I can spirit you all away like some kind of magician. But even f I am Admiral Naismith, I can’t remember how I did it!”

“Sh,” she tried to calm him. “You’re ripe for memory-cascade, I swear. I can almost see it starting. Your speech has improved vastly in just the last few days.”