Lois Bujold - Memory

"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."