Lois Bujold - Weatherman

Metzov had entered the Service some thirty-five years ago. His most rapid promotions had occurred, not surprisingly, during the annexation of the planet Komarr about twenty-five years ago. The wormhole-rich Komarr system was Barrayar’s sole gate to the greater galactic wormhole route nexus. Komarr had proved its immense strategic importance to Barrayar earlier in the century, when its ruling oligarchy had accepted a bribe to let a Cetagandan invasion fleet pass through its wormholes and descend on Barrayar. Throwing the Cetagandans back out again had consumed a Barrayaran generation. Barrayar had turned its bloody lesson around in Miles’s father’s day. As an unavoidable side effect of securing Komarr’s gates, Barrayar had been transformed from backwater cul-de-sac to a minor but significant galactic power, and was still wrestling with the consequences.

Metzov had somehow managed to end up on the correct side during Vordarian’s Pretendership, a purely Barrayaran attempt to wrest power from then-five-year-old Emperor Gregor and his Regent, two decades past—picking the wrong side in that civil affray would have been Miles’s first guess why such an apparently competent officer had ended up marking out his later years on ice on Kyril Island. But the dead halt to Metzov’s career seemed to come during the Komarr Revolt, some sixteen years ago now. No hint in this file as to why, but for a cross-reference to another file. An Imperial Security code, Miles recognized. Dead end there.

Or maybe not. Lips compressed thoughtfully, Miles punched through another code on his comconsole.

“Operations, Commodore Jollif’s office,” Ivan began formally as his face materialized over the comconsole vid plate, then, “Oh, hello, Miles. What’s up?”

“I’m doing a little research. Thought you might help me out.”

“I should have known you wouldn’t call me at HQ just to be sociable. So what d’you want?”

“Ah . . . do you have the office to yourself, just at present?”

“Yeah, the old man’s stuck in committee.” Ivan’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why do you ask?”

“I want you to pull a file for me. Ancient history, not current events,” Miles reassured him, and reeled off the code-string.

“Ah.” Ivan’s hand started to tap it out, then stopped. “Are you crazy? That’s an Imperial Security file. No can do!”

“Of course you can, you’re right there, aren’t you?”

Ivan shook his head smugly. “Not any more. The whole ImpSec file system’s been made super-secure. You can’t transfer data out of it except through a coded filter-cable, which you must physically attach. Which I would have to sign for. Which I would have to explain why I wanted it and produce authorization. You got an authorization for this? Ha. I thought not.”

Miles frowned frustration. “Surely you can call it up on the internal system.”

“On the internal system, yes. What I can’t do is connect the internal system to any external system for a data dump. So you’re out of luck.”

“You got an internal system comconsole in that office?”

“Sure.”

“So,” said Miles impatiently, “call up the file, turn your desk around, and let the two vids talk to each other. You can do that, can’t you?”

Ivan scratched his head. “Would that work?”

“Try it!” Miles drummed his fingers while Ivan dragged his desk around and fiddled with focus. The signal was degraded but readable. “There, I thought so. Scroll it up for me, would you?”

Fascinating, utterly fascinating. The file was a collection of secret reports from an ImpSec investigation into the mysterious death of a prisoner in Metzov’s charge, a Komarran rebel who had killed his guard and himself been killed while attempting to escape. When ImpSec had demanded the Komarran’s body for an autopsy, Metzov had turned over cremated ashes and an apology; if only he had been told a few hours earlier the body was wanted, etc. The investigating officer hinted at charges of illegal torture—perhaps in revenge for the death of the guard?—but was unable to amass enough evidence to obtain authorization to fast-penta the Barrayaran witnesses, including a certain Tech-ensign Ahn. The investigating officer had lodged a formal protest of his superior officer’s decision to close the case, and there it ended. Apparently. If there was any more to the story it existed only in Simon Illyan’s remarkable head, a secret file Miles was not about to attempt to access. And yet Metzov’s career had stopped, literally, cold.

“Miles,” Ivan interrupted for the fourth time, “I really don’t think we should be doing this. This is slit-your-throat-before-reading stuff, here.”

“If we shouldn’t do it, we shouldn’t be able to do it. You’d still have to have the cable for flash-downloading. No real spy would be dumb enough to sit there inside Imperial HQ by the hour and scroll stuff through by hand, waiting to be caught and shot.”

“That does it.” Ivan killed the Security file with a swat of his hand. The vid image wavered wildly as Ivan dragged his desk back around, followed by scrubbing noises as he frantically rubbed out the tracks in his carpet with his boot. “I didn’t do this, you hear?”

“I didn’t mean you. We’re not spies.” Miles subsided glumly. “Still . . . I suppose somebody ought to tell Illyan about the little hole they overlooked in his Security arrangements.”

“Not me!”

“Why not you? Put it in as a brilliant theoretical suggestion. Maybe you’ll earn a commendation. Don’t tell ’em we actually did it, of course. Or maybe we were just testing your theory, eh?”

“You,” said Ivan severely, “are career-poison. Never darken my vid-plate again. Except at home, of course.”

Miles grinned, and permitted his cousin to escape. He sat awhile in the office, watching the colorful weather holos flicker and change, and thinking about his base commander, and the kinds of accidents that could happen to defiant prisoners.

Well, it had all been very long ago. Metzov himself would probably be retiring in another five years, with his status as a double-twenty-years-man and a pension, to merge into the population of unpleasant old men. Not so much a problem to be solved as to be outlived, at least by Miles. His ultimate purpose at Lazkowski Base, Miles reminded himself, was to escape Lazkowski Base, silently as smoke. Metzov would be left behind in time.

In the next weeks Miles settled into a tolerable routine. For one thing, the grubs arrived. All five thousand of them. Miles’s status rose on their shoulders, to that of almost-human. Lazkowski Base suffered its first real snow of the season, as the days shortened, plus a mild wah-wah lasting half a day, both of which Miles managed to predict accurately in advance.

Even more happily, Miles was completely displaced as the most famous idiot on the island (an unwelcome notoriety earned by the scat-cat sinking) by a group of grubs who managed one night to set their barracks on fire while lighting fart-flares. Miles’s strategic suggestion at the officers’ fire-safety meeting next day that they tackle the problem with a logistical assault on the enemy’s fuel supply, i.e., eliminate red-bean stew from the menu, was shot down with one icy glower from General Metzov. Though in the hallway later, an earnest captain from Ordnance stopped Miles to thank him for trying.

So much for the glamour of the Imperial Service. Miles took to spending long hours alone in the weather office, studying chaos theory, his readouts, and the walls. Three months down, three to go. It was getting darker.

Miles was out of bed and half dressed before it penetrated his sleep-stunned brain that the galvanizing klaxon was not the wah-wah warning. He paused with a boot in his hand. Not fire or enemy attack, either. Not his department, then, whatever it was. The rhythmic blatting stopped. They were right, silence was golden.