Brothers in Arms b-8

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  "I don't want a clone," said Miles, I want a brother. "But I seem to have been . . . issued this one."

  "I thought Ser Galen bought and paid for him," complained Elli. "The only thing that Komarran meant to issue you was death. By Jackson's Whole law, the planet of his origin, the clone clearly belongs to Galen."

  Jockey of Norfolk, be not bold, the old quote whispered through Miles's memory, for Dickon thy master is bought and sold. . . . "Even on Barrayar," he said mildly, "no human being can own another. Galen descended far, in pursuit of his … principle of liberty."

  "In any case," said Ivan, "you're out of the picture now. High command has taken over. I heard your marching orders."

  "Did you also hear Destang say he meant to kill my—the clone, if he can?"

  "Yeah, so?" Ivan was looking mulish indeed, an almost panicked stubbornness. "I didn't like him anyway. Surly little sneak."

  "Destang has mastered the art of the final report too," said Miles. "Even if I went AWOL right now, it would be physically impossible for me to get back to Barrayar, beg the clone's life from my father, have him lean on Simon Illyan for a countermand, and get the order back here to Earth before the deed was done."

  Ivan looked shocked. "Miles—I always figured to be embarrassed to ask Uncle Aral for a career favor, but I thought you'd let yourself be peeled and boiled before you'd cry to your Dad for anything! And you want to start by hopscotching a commodore? No C.O. in the service would want you after that!"

  "I would rather die," agreed Miles tonelessly, "but I can't ask another to die for me. But it's irrelevant. It couldn't succeed."

  "Thank God." Ivan stared at him, thoroughly unsettled.

  If I cannot convince two of my best friends I'm right, thought Miles, maybe I'm wrong.

  Or maybe I have to do this one alone.

  "I just want to keep a line open, Ivan," he said. "I'm not asking you to do anything—"

  "Yet," came Ivan's glum interpolation.

  "I'd give the comm link to Captain Galeni, but he will certainly be closely watched. They'd just take it away from him, and it would look . . . ambiguous."

  "So on me it looks good?" asked Ivan plaintively.

  "Do it." Miles finished fastening his jacket, stood, and held out his hand to Ivan for the return of the comm link. "Or don't."

  "Argh." Ivan broke off his gaze, and shoved the comm link disconsolately into his trouser pocket. "I'll think about it."

  Miles tilted his head in thanks.

  They caught a Dendarii shuttle just about to lift from the London shuttleport, returning personnel from leave. Actually, Elli called ahead and had it held for them; Miles rather relished the sensation of not having to rush for it, and might have outright sauntered if the pressures of Admiral Naismith's duties, now boiling up in his head, hadn't automatically quickened his steps.

  Their delay was another's gain. A last duffle-swinging Dendarii sprinted across the tarmac as the engines revved, and just made it up the retracting ramp. The alert guard at the door put up his weapon as he recognized the sprinter, and gave him a hand in as the shuttle began to roll.

  Miles, Elli Quinn, and Elena Bothari-Jesek held seats in the rear. The running soldier, pausing to catch his breath, spotted Miles, grinned, and saluted. Miles returned both. "Ah, Sergeant Siembieda." Ryann Siembieda was a conscientious tech sergeant from Engineering, in charge of maintenance and repair of battle armor and other light equipment. "You're thawed out."

  "Yes, sir."

  "They told me your prognosis was good."

  "They threw me out of the hospital two weeks ago. I've been on leave. You too, sir?" Siembieda nodded toward the silver shopping bag at Miles's feet containing the live fur.

  Miles shoved it unobtrusively under his seat with his boot heel. "Yes and no. Actually, while you were playing, I was working. As a result, we will all be working again soon. It's good you got your leave while you could."

  "Earth was great," sighed Siembieda. "It was quite a surprise to wake up here. Did you see the Unicorn Park? It's right here on this island. I was there yesterday."

  "I didn't see much, I'm afraid," said Miles regretfully.

  Siembieda dug a holocube out of his pocket and handed it over.

  The Unicorn and Wild Animal Park (a division of GalacTech Bioengineering) occupied the grounds of the great and historical estate of Wooton, Surrey, the guide cube informed him. In the vid display, a shining white beast that looked like a cross between a horse and a deer, and probably was, bounded across the greensward into the topiary.

  "They let you feed the tame lions," Siembieda informed him.

  Miles blinked at an unbidden mental image of Ivan in a toga being tossed out the back of a float truck to a herd of hungry, tawny cats galloping excitedly along behind. He'd been reading too much Earth history. "What do they eat?"

  "Protein cubes, same as us."

  "Ah," said Miles, trying not to sound disappointed. He handed the cube back.

  The sergeant hovered on, however. "Sir …" he began hesitantly.

  "Yes?" Miles let his tone be encouraging.

  "I've reviewed my procedures—been tested and cleared for light duties—but… I haven't been able to remember anything at all about the day I was killed. And the medics wouldn't tell me. It … bothers me a bit, sir."

  Siembieda's hazel eyes were strange and wary; it bothered him a lot, Miles judged. "I see. Well, the medics couldn't tell you much anyway; they weren't there."

  "But you were, sir," said Siembieda suggestively.

  Of course, thought Miles. And if I hadn't been, you wouldn't have died the death intended for me. "Do you remember our arriving at Mahata Solaris?"

  "Yes, sir. Some things, right up to the night before. But that whole day is gone, not just the fight."

  "Ah. Well, there's no mystery. Commodore Jesek, myself, you, and your tech team paid a visit to a warehouse for a quality-control check of our re-supplies—there'd been a problem with the first shipment—"

  "I remember that," nodded Siembieda. "Cracked power cells leaking radiation."

  "Right, very good. You spotted the defect, by the way, unloading them into inventory. There are those who might simply have stored them."

  "Not on my team," muttered Siembieda.

  "We were jumped by a Cetagandan hit squad at the warehouse. We never did find out if there was any collusion, though we suspected some in high places when our orbital permits were revoked and we were invited to leave Mahata Solaris local space by the authorities. Or maybe they just didn't like the excitement we'd brought with us. Anyway, a gravitic grenade went off and blew out the end of the warehouse. You were hit in the neck by a freak fragment of something metal, ricocheting from the explosion. You bled to death in seconds." Quite incredible quantities of blood from such a lean young man, once it was spread out and smeared around in the fight—the smell of it, and the burning, came back to Miles as he spoke, but he kept his voice calm and steady. "We had you back to the Triumph and iced down in an hour. The surgeon was very optimistic, as you didn't have gross tissue damage." Not like one of the techs, who'd been blown most grossly to bits in that same moment.

  "I'd . . . wondered what I'd done. Or not done."

  "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 consc
iousness."

  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 theTriumph 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."

  "Quite. I was born a clone, Bel."

  Thorne looked only mildly sympathetic. "Some of my best friends are clones."

  "Perhaps I should say, I was created a clone. In the military laboratory of a galactic power that shall remain nameless. I was created for a covert substitution plot against the son of a certain important man, key of another galactic power—you can figure out who with a very little research, I'm sure—but about seven years ago I declined the honor. I escaped, fled, and set up on my own, creating the Dendarii Mercenaries from, er, materials found ready to hand."

  Thorne grinned. "A memorable event."

  "But this is where Galen comes in. The galactic power abandoned their plot, and I thought I was free of my unhappy past. But several clones had been run off, so to speak, in the attempt to generate an exact physical duplicate, with certain mental refinements, before the lab finally came up with me. I thought they were all long dead, callously murdered, disposed of. But apparently, one of the earlier, less-successful efforts had been put into cryo-suspension. And somehow, he has fallen into Ser Galen's hands. My sole surviving clone-brother, Bel." Miles's hand closed in a fist. "Enslaved by a fanatic. I want to rescue him." His hand opened pleadingly. "Can you understand why?"

  Thorne bli
nked. "Knowing you … I guess I do. Is it very important to you, sir?"

  "Very."

  Thorne straightened slightly. "Then it will be done."

  "Thank you." Miles hesitated. "Better have all our downside patrol leaders issued a small medical scanner. Keep it on themselves at all times. As you know, I had my leg bones replaced with synthetics a bit over a year ago. His are normal bone. It's the quickest way to tell the difference between us."

  "Your appearance is that close?" said Thorne.

  "Our appearances are identical, apparently."

  "They are," confirmed Quinn to Thorne. "I've seen him."

  "I … see. Interesting possibilities for confusion there, sir." Thorne glanced at Quinn, who nodded ruefully.

  "Too right. I trust the dissemination of the medical scanners will help keep things dull. Carry on—call me at once if you get a break in the case."

  "Right, sir."

  In the corridor, Quinn remarked, "Nice save, sir."

  Miles sighed. "I had to find some way to warn the Dendarii about Mark. Can't have him playing Admiral Naismith again unimpeded."

  "Mark?" said Elli. "Who's Mark, or dare I guess? Miles Mark Two?"

  "Lord Mark Pierre Vorkosigan," said Miles calmly. Anyway, he hoped he appeared calm. "My brother."

  Elli, alive to the significances of Barrayaran clan claims, frowned, "Is Ivan right, Miles? Has that little sucker hypnotized you?"

  "I don't know," said Miles slowly. "If I'm the only one who sees him that way, then maybe, just maybe—"

  Elli made an encouraging noise.

  A slight smile turned one corner of Miles's mouth. "Then maybe everybody's wrong but me."

  Elli snorted.

  Miles turned serious again. "I truly don't know. In seven years, I never abused the powers of Admiral Naismith for personal purposes. That's not a record I'm anxious to break. Well, perhaps we'll fail to turn them up, and the question will become moot."

  "Wishful thinking," said Elli disapprovingly. "If you don't want to turn them up, maybe you'd better stop looking for them."