Lois Bujold - Brothers in Arms

"It's Galeni you're supposed to be checking," Ivan reminded him.

"Yes. So what kind of presents does Galeni buy?" He scrolled on. It didn't take long; there wasn't that much.

"Wine," Ivan pointed out. "Beer."

Miles ran a cross check. "About one-third the amount you drank in the same period. But he buys book-discs in a ratio of thirty-five to—just two, Ivan?"

Ivan cleared his throat uncomfortably.

Miles sighed. "No girls here. No boys either, I don't think . . . eh? You've been working with him for a year."

"Mm," said Ivan. "I've run across one or two of that sort in the Service, but . . . they have ways of letting you know. Not Galeni, I don't think either."

Miles glanced up at his cousin's even profile. Yes, Ivan probably had collected passes from both sexes, by this time. Scratch off yet another lead. "Is the man a monk?" Miles muttered. "Not an android, judging from the music, books, and beer, but . . . terribly elusive."

He killed the file with an irritated tap on the controls. After a moment of thought he called up Galeni's Service records instead. "Huh. Now that's unusual. Did you know Captain Galeni had a doctorate in history before he ever joined the Imperial Service?"

"What? No, he never mentioned that. …" Ivan leaned over Miles's shoulder, gentlemanly instincts overcome by curiosity at last.

"A Ph.D. with honors in Modern History and Political Science from the Imperial University at Vorbarr Sultana. My God, look at the dates. At the age of twenty-six Dr. Duv Galeni gave up a brand-new faculty position at the College of Belgravia on Barrayar, to go back to the Imperial Service Academy with a bunch of eighteen-year-olds. On a cadet's pittance." Not the behavior of a man to whom money was an all-consuming object.

"Huh," said Ivan. "He must have been an upper-classman when we entered. He got out just two years ahead of us. And he's a captain already!"

"He must have been one of the first Komarrans permitted to enter the military. Within weeks of the ruling. And he's been on the fast track ever since. Extra training—languages, information analysis, a posting at the Imperial HQ—and then this plum of a post on Earth. Duvie is our darling, clearly." Miles could see why. A brilliant, educated, liberal officer—Galeni was a walking advertisement for the success of the New Order. An Example. Miles knew all about being an Example. He drew in his breath, a long, thoughtful inhalation hissing cold through his front teeth.

"What?" prodded Ivan.

"I'm beginning to get scared."

"Why?"

"Because this whole thing is acquiring a subtle political odor. And anyone who isn't alarmed when things Barrayaran start smelling political hasn't studied . . . history." He uttered the last word with a subsiding, ironic sibilant, hunching in the chair. After a moment he hit the file again, searching on.

"Jack. Pot."

"Eh?"

Miles pointed. "Sealed file. Nobody under the rank of an Imperial Staff officer can access this part."

"That lets us out."

"Not necessarily."

"Miles …" Ivan moaned.

"I'm not contemplating anything illegal," Miles reassured him. "Yet. Go get the ambassador."

The ambassador, upon arrival, pulled up a chair next to Miles. "Yes, I do have an emergency access code that will override that one," he admitted when Miles pressed him. "The emergency in mind was something on the order of war breaking out, however."

Miles nibbled the side of his index finger. "Captain Galeni's been with you two years now. What's your impression of him?"

"As an officer, or as a man?"

"Both, sir."

"Very conscientious in his duties. His unusual educational background—"

"Oh, you knew of it?"

"Of course. But it makes him an extraordinarily good pick for Earth. He's very good, very at ease on the social side, a brilliant conversationalist. The officer who preceded him in the post was a Security man of the old school. Competent, but dull. Almost . . . ahem! . . . boorish. Galeni accomplishes the same duties, but more smoothly. Smooth security is invisible security, invisible security does not disturb my diplomatic guests, and so my job becomes that much easier. That goes double for the, er, information-gathering activities. As an officer I'm extremely pleased with him."

"What's his fault as a man?"

" 'Fault' is perhaps too strong a term, Lieutenant Vorkosigan. He's rather . . . cool. In general I find this restful. I do notice that in any given conversation he will come away knowing a great deal more about you than you of him."

"Ha." What a very diplomatic way of putting it. And, Miles reflected, thinking back over his own brushes with the missing officer, dead-on.

The ambassador frowned. "Do you think some clue to his disappearance may be in that file, Lieutenant Vorkosigan?"

Miles shrugged unhappily. "It isn't anywhere else."

"I am reluctant …" the ambassador trailed off, eyeing the strongly worded access restrictions on the vid.

"We could wait a little longer," said Ivan. "Suppose he's just found a girlfriend. If you were so worried about that as to make that other suggestion, Miles, you ought to be glad for the man. He isn't going to be too happy, coming back from his first night out in years, to find we've turned his files inside out."

Miles recognized the singsong tone of Ivan playing dumb, playing devil's advocate, the ploy of a sharp but lazy intellect to get others to do its work. Right, Ivan.

"When you spend nights out, don't you leave notice where you'll be and when you'll return?" asked Miles.

"Well, yes."

"And don't you return on time?"

"I've been known to oversleep a time or two," Ivan admitted.

"What happens then?"

"They track me down. 'Good morning, Lieutenant Vorpatril, this is your wake-up call.' " Galeni's precise, sardonic accent came through clearly in Ivan's parody. It had to be a direct quote.

"D'you think Galeni's the sort to make one rule for subordinates and another for himself, then?"

"No," said Ivan and the ambassador in unison, and glanced sideways at each other.

Miles took a deep breath, jerked up his chin, and pointed at the holovid. "Open it."

The ambassador pursed his lips and did so.

"I'll be damned," whispered Ivan after a few minutes of scrolling. Miles elbowed into the center place and began speed-reading in earnest. The file was enormous: Galeni's missing family history at last.

David Galen had been the name to which he was born. Those Galens, owners of the Galen Orbital Transshipping Warehouse Cartel, strong among the oligarchy of powerful families who had run Komarr, straddling its important wormhole connections like ancient Rhine River robber barons. Its wormholes had made Komarr rich; it was from the power and wealth pouring through them that its jewel-like domed cities sprang, not grubbed up from the planet's dire, barren soil by sweaty labor.

Miles could hear his father's voice, ticking off the points that had made the conquest of Komarr Admiral Vorkosigan's textbook war. A small population concentrated in climate-controlled cities; no place for guerillas to fall back and regroup. No allies; we had only to let it be known that we were dropping their twenty-five-percent cut of everything that passed through their wormhole nexus to fifteen percent and the neighbors that should have supported them fell into our pockets. They didn't even want to do their own fighting, till the mercenaries they'd hired saw what they were up against and turned tail. . . .

Of course, the unspoken heart of the matter was the sins of the Komarran fathers a generation earlier, who had accepted the bribe to let the Cetagandan invasion fleet pass through for the quick and easy conquest of poor, newly rediscovered, semi-feudal Barrayar. Which had proved neither quick, nor easy, nor a conquest; twenty years and a river of blood later the last of the Cetagandan warships withdrew back the way they had come, through "neutral" Komarr.