"That's your achievement, surely," said Miles.
Illyan nodded. "Not mine alone. But I can't . . . be who I am—what I was—and not know that."
"I never made it to the end of my first twenty years," said Miles glumly. "Not even close."
Illyan cleared his throat, and studied his line. "Was that a nibble, there?"
"No, I don't think so. The rod would dip more. Just the current, playing with the weight of the line."
"I wouldn't have picked now to quit, mind you," said Illyan. "I would have liked to have seen Gregor through his wedding."
"And the next crisis after that," Miles twitted him. "And the next crisis after that, and . . ."
Illyan grunted resigned agreement. "So . . . maybe this isn't so bad." He added after a time, "Do you suppose all the fish in your lake have been stolen?"
"They'd have to catch 'em first."
"Ah. Good point." Illyan paused to fish up the net bag, and open another beer for himself, and hand one to Miles. He was halfway through the bottle when he said, "I . . . know how much the Dendarii meant to you. I'm . . . pleased you survived."
He did not say I'm sorry, Miles noted. Miles's disaster had been a self-inflicted wound. "Death, where is thy sting?" He jiggled his rod. "Hook, where is thy fish . . . ? No. Suicide wasn't an option for me anymore, I found. Not like good old adolescent angst. I'm no longer of the secret opinion that death will somehow overlook me if I don't do something personally about it. And given life . . . it seems stupid not to make the most of what I do have. Not to mention deucedly ungrateful."
"D'you think . . . you and Quinn . . . how to put this delicately. D'you think you will be able to persuade Captain Quinn to take an interest in Lord Vorkosigan?"
Ah. Illyan was trying to apologize for screwing up Miles's love-life, that was it. Miles drank more beer, and thought it over seriously. "I never was able to before. I want to try. . . . I have to try one more time with her. Again." When? How? Where? It hurt, to think of Quinn. It hurt still, to let himself think of the Dendarii at all. Therefore, he would not. Much. More beer. "As for the rest of it . . ."—he sipped, and smiled bitterly—"there is some convincing evidence that I was slowing down too much to play a moving target much longer. Really, my favorite missions lately scarcely engaged any military force."
"You were getting frigging clever, is all," opined Illyan, gazing at Miles's distorted form through the colored glass of his bottle. "Though even a war of maneuver requires a credible force to maneuver with."
"I liked the winning," Miles said softly. "That, I really liked."
Illyan chucked his bottle into the box with the rest of the empties, and leaned over to squint down into the lake water. He sighed, and got up and adjusted the awning again, and pulled up the string bag once more, in lieu of fish.
Miles held up his half-empty bottle, to repel the offered refill, and settled back, and watched his still white line, descending down and down into secret darkness. "I always got away with it somehow. Any way I could. On the table or under it, I won. This seizure thing . . . seems like the first enemy I couldn't outsmart."
Illyan's brows rose quizzically. "Some of the best fortresses were taken at the last by betrayal from within, they say."
"I was beaten." Miles blew thoughtfully across the top of his bottle, making it hum. "Yet I survived. Didn't expect that. I feel . . . very unbalanced about that. I had to win, always, or die. So . . . what else was I wrong about? . . . I'll take that other beer, now, thanks."
Illyan popped the cap for him, and handed it over. The lake water was getting nicely icy now, definitely too late in the year for swimming. Or drowning.
"Maybe," said Illyan after a very long while, "generations of fishermen have culled this population of all fish stupid enough to bite hooks."
" 'S possible," Miles allowed. His guest was getting bored, he feared. As a proper host, he ought to do something about that.
"I don't think there are any fish down there. It's a scam, Vorkosigan."
"Naw. I've seen 'em. If I had a stunner, I could prove it to you."
"You walking around these days without a stunner, boy? Not bright."
"Hey, I'm an Imperial Auditor now. I get hulking goons to carry my stunners for me, just like the big boys."
"Anyway, you couldn't stun anything through all those meters of water," said Illyan firmly.
"Well, not a stunner. A stunner power pack."
"Ah!" Illyan looked immediately enlightened, then more doubtful. "You can bomb fish, can you? I didn't realize that."
"Oh, it's an old Dendarii hill-folk trick. They didn't have time to sit on their asses dangling strings into the water; that's a Vor perversion. They were hungry, and wanted their dinners. Also, the lake's lords considered it poaching in their preserve, so there was incentive to get in and out quickly, before the Count's Armsmen came riding along."
After about another minute, Illyan mentioned, "I happen to have a stunner on me."
Dear God, we let you get out armed? "Oh?"
Illyan put down his beer, and pulled the weapon from his pocket. "Here. I offer it as sacrifice. I have to see this trick."
"Ah. Well . . ." Miles put down his own beer, handed his rod to Illyan, and looked over the stunner. Regulation issue, fully charged. He pulled out the power pack and proceeded to bugger the cartridge, in the best approved ImpSec covert ops "How to Turn Your Stunner into a Hand Grenade" style. He took another swig of beer, counted a moment, and flipped the power cartridge overboard.
"You'd better hope that sinks," noted Illyan.
"It will. See." The metallic gleam vanished into the darkness.
"How many seconds?" asked Illyan.
"You never quite know, of course. That's one of the things that always made that maneuver so damned tricky."
A half a minute later, the darkness was lit by a faint radiant flash. A few moments after that, a roiling boil of water surfaced beside the boat. The noise it made could much better be described as a belch than a boom. The boat rocked.
Onshore, the ImpSec guard stood up abruptly, and studied them through his power-binocs. Miles gave him a cheery, beery, reassuring wave; slowly, he sat back down.
"Well?" said Illyan, peering down into the water.
"Just wait."
About two minutes later, a pale gleaming shape shimmered up from below. And then another. And another. Two more, silvery and sleek, popped to the surface.
"Goodness," said Illyan, sounding impressed. "Fish." He upended his beer bottle respectfully in a toast to Miles.
Fish and then some. The smallest was half a meter long, the largest nearly two-thirds of a meter; salmon and lake trout, including one that must have been lurking down there since Miles's grandfather's day. Their eyes were glassy and reproachful, as Miles leaned precariously overboard and tried to collect them with the net. They were cool and slippery, and Miles almost joined them in their watery grave before he managed to snag them all. Illyan prudently hung on to one of his ankles as Miles swung and splashed. Their prey made an impressive row, laid out on the boat deck, scales iridescent in the late afternoon light.
"We have fished," Illyan announced, staring at the mass, which almost equaled Miles's own. "Can we go in now?"
"You got another stunner pack?"
"No."
"Any beer left?"
"That was the last."
"Then we might as well."
Illyan grinned malignantly. "I can hardly wait," he murmured, "till somebody asks me what we used for bait."
Miles managed to dock the boat without crashing it, despite a desperate need to pee and up-and-down sensations that had nothing to do with the waves in the water. He listed upslope toward the house lugging the two smaller fish on a line strung through their gills, and let Illyan struggle with the larger three.
"Do we have to eat all these?" Illyan wheezed in his wake.
"Maybe one. The rest can be cleaned and frozen."
"By whom? Will Ma Kosti mind
? I really don't think you want to offend your cook, Miles."
"By no means." Miles stopped, and nodded upward. "What d'you think minions are for, anyway?"
Martin, attracted by the return of the boat—and probably about to angle for permission to take it out himself—was clumping down the path toward them.
"Ah, Martin," Miles caroled, in a tone of voice that would have made the more experienced Ivan turn and run. "Just the man I want to see. Take these to your mother"—he unloaded his burden into the appalled young man's arms—"and do what she tells you to do with 'em. Here, Simon."
Smiling blandly, Illyan handed over his own dead fishes. "Thank you, Martin."
They left Martin, ruthlessly not even looking back at his plaintive, "My lord . . . ?" and lurched on up toward the cool stone house. The greatest ambition in Miles's world right now was for a lavatory, a shower, and a nap, in that order. It would be enough.
* * *
Miles and Illyan settled down at dusk to a fish dinner in the lake house's dining room. Ma Kosti had prepared the smallest lake trout, which was enough to feed the whole household, with a sauce that would have made baked cardboard delectable, and rendered the fresh fish a feast for minor gods.
Illyan was clearly amused at this proof of their prowess as primitive providers. "Did you do this often, down here? Feed your whole family?"
"Once in a great while. Then I figured out my Betan mother, who never eats anything but vat-protein if she can help it, was munching it down bravely and lying through her teeth about what a good boy I was, and I stopped, um, challenging her culinary preferences."
"I can just picture her." Illyan grinned.
"D'you want to go out again tomorrow?"
"Let's . . . at least wait until the leftovers are gone."
"The barn cats may help us out there. There are about four of them hanging around the kitchen door right now, trying to soften up my cook. When last seen, they were succeeding."
Miles made his glass of wine last, taking tiny sips. A great deal of water, the nap, and some medication had relieved his incipient beer-and-sun hangover. It was a strange and unfamiliar sensation, to be truly relaxed. Not going anywhere, on overdrive or at any other speed. Enjoying the present, the Now that partakes of eternity.
Martin trundled in, not bearing more food; Miles glanced up.
"My lord? Comconsole for you."
Whoever it is, tell them I'll call back tomorrow. Or next week. No, it might be the Countess, landing early or calling from orbit. He was ready to face her now, he thought. "Who is it?"
"Says he's Admiral Avakli."
"Oh." Miles put down his fork, and rose at once. "I'll take it, thank you, Martin."
In the private comconsole chamber off the back corridor of the house, Avakli's lean face waited above the vid plate, a disembodied head. Miles slid into his seat and adjusted the vid pickup. "Yes, Admiral?"
"My Lord Auditor." Avakli nodded. "My team is ready to make our report. We can present it simultaneously to you and General Haroche, as you requested."
"Good. When?"
Avakli hesitated. "I would recommend, as soon as possible."
Miles's belly chilled. "Why?"
"Do you wish to discuss this over a comconsole?"
"No." Miles licked lips gone dry. "I . . . understand. It will take me about two hours to get back to Vorbarr Sultana." And for this conference, he'd better allow time to dress. "We could meet, say, at 2600 hours. Unless you would prefer first thing tomorrow morning."
"Your choice, my Lord Auditor."
Avakli wasn't objecting to a midnight meeting. A mild verdict of natural causes did not require such haste. Miles would get no sleep anyway, anticipating this. "Tonight, then."
"Very good, my lord." Avakli's parting nod was approving.
Miles shut down the comconsole, and blew out his breath. Life had just speeded up again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It was late-night-quiet in the ImpSec HQ building; the clinic's conference chamber seemed almost like a tomb. The black vid projection table was ringed by five station chairs. Ah, yet another medical briefing. Miles was learning, these days, altogether more than he'd ever wanted to know about the insides of people's heads, including his own.
"We seem to be a seat short," Miles said to Admiral Avakli, nodding toward the table. "Unless you are proposing to have General Haroche stand?"
"I'll fetch another, my Lord Auditor," Avakli murmured back. "We weren't expecting . . ." His eyes shifted to Illyan, seating himself to the left of the place reserved for Miles, next to Colonel Ruibal and across from Dr. Weddell.
Miles had been uncertain about the wisdom of dragging Illyan along for this, but Avakli's obvious unease filled him with a cheery ruthlessness. "It will save my having to repeat it all to him later," Miles murmured back. "And offhand, I can't think of a man on the planet with a greater right to know."
"I can't argue with that, my lord."
You'd better not.
Avakli went out after the extra chair.
Miles was kitted out in his full brown-and-silver House uniform, though he'd left the military ornaments in his bureau drawer this trip. He didn't want the clutter to distract the eye from his Auditor's chain, formally draped across his chest. Illyan had chosen soft civilian clothing: an open-throated shirt, loose trousers and jacket, giving himself an off-duty and convalescent air. As a courtesy to his struggling replacement Haroche? Except Illyan had worn civvies on-duty so often that the message, if any, was a little ambiguous.
Avakli and Haroche arrived back in the briefing room together. Haroche's lips moved in startlement as he saw Illyan; Illyan turned his head and nodded greetings. "Hello, Lucas."
Haroche's deep voice softened. "Hello, sir. It's good to see you on your feet again." Though he turned aside and whispered to Miles, "Is he going to be all right? Is he up to this?"
"Oh, yes." Miles smiled, concealing his own clueless state on that score. At a brief negating hand-movement from Haroche, the company skipped the exchange of military salutes tonight; with Illyan present, there was perhaps some lingering confusion as to who ought to be saluting whom. There was a rustle and creak, as they seated themselves, serious and attentive. Admiral Avakli remained standing at the vid display podium.
"My Lord Auditor," began Avakli. "General Haroche, gentlemen. Chief Illyan." He gave Illyan a special, if slightly uncertain, nod. "I . . . don't expect it will come as any real surprise to you that we have found the damage to Chief Illyan's eidetic neural implant to have been an artificially created event."
Haroche vented a long sigh, and nodded. "I was afraid of that. I had hoped it would be something simpler."
Miles had hoped such hopes himself, on many occasions; he couldn't help but sympathize. He, too, had usually been disappointed.
"Simple," said Avakli, "is the last word I'd use to describe it."
"We're dealing with a case of deliberate sabotage, then," said Haroche.
Avakli sucked on his lower lip. "That, sir, is your department. I think I prefer to stand by my original wording, for the moment. An artificially created event. To explain this I will now turn you over to Dr. Weddell, who was"—a slight wrinkle passed over Avakli's high brow—"instrumental in assembling the chain of causality. Dr. Weddell, if you please."
By which wrinkle Miles deduced Weddell/Canaba was carrying on as usual, brilliantly and obnoxiously. If his brilliance ever failed, he'd doubtless be quite surprised at what a load of retribution his obnoxiousness had bought him. But Avakli was too honest a scientist to claim another's achievement as his own. Weddell took the podium, his patrician features weary, tense, and a little smug.
"If you would like to look at the culprit—the immediate culprit, that is—here is its portrait." Weddell fiddled with the holovid control; the plate projected a bright green, topologically complex blob, which turned slowly in air. "The color is a computer enhancement, of course—I took a little artistic license there—and the magnification s
everal million times. That, gentlemen, is a bioengineered apoptotic prokaryote. Or so I have reconstructed it."
"A what?" said Miles. "Simplify, please."
Weddell flashed a pained smile, doubtless searching his mind for words of one syllable. Miles regretted his last four beers. "A little bug that eats things," Weddell essayed, by way of further translation.
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