Lois Bujold - Brothers in Arms

"You scarcely had time to do anything. You were practically the first casualty."

Siembieda looked faintly relieved. And what goes on in the head of a walking dead man? Miles wondered. What personal failure could he possibly fear more than death itself?

"If it's any consolation," put in Elli, "that sort of memory loss is common in trauma victims of all kinds, not just cryo-revivals. You ask around, you'll find you're not the only one."

"Better strap down," said Miles, as the craft yawed around for takeoff.

Siembieda nodded, looking a little more cheerful, and swung forward to find a seat.

"Do you remember your burn?" Miles asked Elli curiously. "Or is it all a merciful blank?"

Elli's hand drifted across her cheek. "I never quite lost consciousness."

The shuttle shot forward and up. Lieutenant Ptarmigan's hands at the controls, Miles judged dryly. Some hooted commentary from forward passengers confirmed his guess. Miles's hand hesitated over, and fell away from, the control in his seat-arm that would comm link him to the pilot; he would not brass-harass Ptarmigan unless he started flying upside down. Fortunately for Ptarmigan, the craft steadied.

Miles craned his neck for a look out the window as the glittering lights of Greater London and its island fell away beneath them. In another moment he could see the river mouth, with its great dykes and locks running for forty kilometers, defining the coastline to human design, shutting out the sea and protecting the historical treasures and several million souls of the lower Thames watershed. One of the huge channel-spanning bridges gleamed against the leaden dawn water beyond. And so men organized themselves for the sake of their technology as they never had for their principles. The sea's politics were unarguable.

The shuttle wheeled, gaining altitude rapidly, giving Miles a last glimpse of the shrinking maze of London. Somewhere down there in that monstrous city Galen and Mark hid, or ran, or plotted, while Destang's intelligence team quartered and re-quartered Galen's old haunts and the comconsole net looking for traces of them, in a deadly game of hide and seek. Surely Galen had the sense to avoid his friends and stay off the net at all costs. If he cut his losses and ran now, he had a chance of eluding Barrayaran vengeance for another half-lifetime.

But if Galen were running, why had he doubled back to pick up Mark? What possible use was the clone to him now? Did Galen have some dim paternal sense of responsibility to his creation? Somehow, Miles doubted it was love that bound those two together. Could the clone be used—servant, slave, soldier? Could the clone be sold—to the Cetagandans, to a medical laboratory, to a sideshow? Could the clone be sold to Miles? Now, there was a proposition that even the hyper-suspicious Galen would buy. Let him believe Miles wanted a new body, without the bone dyscrasias that had plagued him since birth … let him believe Miles would pay a high price to have the clone for this vile purpose . . . and Miles might gain possession of Mark and slip Galen enough cover and funds to finance his escape without Galen ever realizing he was the object of charity for his son's sake. The idea had only two flaws; one, until he made contact with Galen he couldn't do any deal at all; two, if Galen would make such a diabolical bargain Miles was not so sure he cared to see him elude Barrayar's time-cold vengeance after all. A curious dilemma.

It was like coming home, to step aboard the Triumph again. Knots Miles had not been conscious of undid themselves in the back of his neck as he inhaled the familiar recycled air, and soaked the small subliminal chirps and vibrations of the properly functioning, live ship in through his bones. Things were looking in rather better repair all over than at any time since Dagook, and Miles made a mental note to find out which aggressive engineering sergeants he had to thank for it. It would be good to be just Naismith again, with no problem more complex than what could be laid out in plain military language by HQ, finite and unambiguous.

He issued orders. Cancel further work contracts by individual Dendarii or their groups. All personnel presently scattered downside on work or leave to go on a six hour recall alert. All ships to begin their twenty-four hour preflight checks. Send Lieutenant Bone to me. It gave him a pleasantly megalomanic sense of drawing all things toward a center, himself, though that humor cooled when he contemplated the unsolved problem waiting for him in his Intelligence division.

Quinn in tow, Miles went to pay Intelligence a visit. He found Bel Thorne manning the security comconsole. If manning was the right term; Thorne was one of Beta Colony's hermaphrodite minority, hapless heirs of a century-past genetic project of dubious merit. It had been one of the lunatic fringe's loonier experiments, in Miles's estimation. Most of the men/women stuck to their own comfortable little subculture on tolerant Beta Colony; that Thorne had ventured out into the wider galactic world bespoke either courage, terminal boredom, or most probably if you knew Thorne, a low taste for unsettling people. Captain Thorne kept soft brown hair cut in a deliberately ambiguous style, but wore hard-earned Dendarii uniform and rank with crisp definition.

"Hi, Bel." Miles pulled up a station chair and hooked it into its clamps; Thorne greeted him with a friendly semi-salute. "Play me back everything the surveillance team picked up from Galen's house after Quinn and I rescued the Barrayaran military attache and left to deliver him back to their embassy." Quinn kept her face quite straight through this bit of revisionist history.

Thorne obediently fast-forwarded through a half hour of silence, then slowed through the disjointed conversation of the two unhappy Komarran guards awakening from stun. Then the chime of the comconsole; a somewhat degraded image resynthesized from the vid beam; the slow toneless voice and face of Galen himself, requesting a report on the guard's murderous assignment; the sharp rise in tone, as he heard of the dramatic rescue instead—"Fools!" A pause. "Don't attempt to contact me again." Cut.

"We traced the source of the call, I trust," said Miles.

"Public comconsole at a tube station," said Thorne. "By the time we got someone there, the potential search radius had widened to about a hundred kilometers. Good tube system, that."

"Right. And he never returned to the house after that?"

"Abandoned everything, apparently. He's had previous experience evading security, I take it."

"He was an expert before I was born," sighed Miles. "What about the two guards?"

"They were still at the house when the surveillance guys from the Barrayaran embassy arrived and took over and we packed our kit and went home. Have the Barrayarans paid us for this little job yet, by the way?"

"Handsomely."

"Oh, good. I was afraid they'd hold it up till after we'd delivered Van der Poole too."

"About Van der Poole—Galen," said Miles. "Ah—we're no longer working for the Barrayarans on that one. They've brought in their own team from their Sector headquarters on Tau Ceti."

Throne frowned puzzlement. "But we're still working?"

"For the time being. But you'd better pass the word along to our downside people. From this point on, contact with the Barrayarans is to be avoided."

Thorne's brows rose. "Who are we working for, then?"

"For me."

Thorne paused. "Aren't you playing this one a tad close to your chest, sir?"

"Much too close, if my own Intelligence people are to remain effective." Miles sighed. "All right. An odd and unexpected personal wrinkle has turned up in the middle of this case. Have you ever wondered why I never speak of my family background, or my past?"

"Well—there are a lot of Dendarii who don't. Sir."