She stared in covert astonishment; his glance caught hers. By way of apology, she said, "You weren't joking about needle grenades, were you?"
His hand touched his chest. "No. But most of this is old surgery, from the brittle bones the soltoxin gifted me with. I've had practically every bone in my body replaced with synthetics, at one time or another. Very piecemeal, though I suppose it would not have been medically practical to just whip me off my skeleton, shake me out like a suit of clothes, and pop me back on over another one."
"Oh. My."
"Ironically enough, all this show represents the successful repairs. The injury that really took me out of the Service you can't even see." He touched his forehead and wrapped a couple of the towels around himself like a shawl. The towels had giant yellow daisies on them. His shivering was diminishing now, his skin growing less purple, though still blotchy. "I didn't mean to alarm you, back there."
She thought it through. "You should have told me sooner." Yes, what if one of his seizures had taken him by surprise, sometime along their route this morning? What in the world would she have done? She frowned at him.
He shifted uncomfortably. "You're quite right, of course. Um . . . quite right. Some secrets are unfair to keep from . . . people on your team." He looked away from her, looked back, smiled tensely, and said, "I started to tell you, earlier, but I rather lost my nerve. When I was working on your comconsole yesterday morning, I accidentally ran across your file on Vorzohn's Dystrophy."
Her breath seemed to freeze in her suddenly-paralyzed chest. "Didn't I—how could you accidentally …" Had she somehow left it open last time? Not possible!
"I could show you how," he offered. "ImpSec basic training is pretty basic. I think you could pick up that trick in about ten minutes."
The words blurted out before she could stop and think. "You opened it deliberately!"
"Well, yes." His smile now was false and embarrassed. "I was curious. I was taking a break from looking at vids of autopsies. Your, um, gardens are lovely, too, by the way."
She stared at him in disbelief. A mixture of emotions churned in her chest: violation, outrage, fear . . . and relief? You had no right.
"No, I had no right," he agreed, watching her obviously too-open expression; she tried to school her face to blankness. "I apologize. I can only plead that ImpSec training inculcates some pretty bad habits." He took a deep breath. "What can I do for you, Madame Vorsoisson? Anything you need to ask, or ask about … I am at your service." The little man half-bowed, an absurdly archaic gesture, sitting wrapped in his towels like some wizened old Count from the Time of Isolation in his robes of office.
"There's nothing you can do for me," Ekaterin said woodenly. She became aware that her legs and arms were tightly crossed, and she was starting to hunch over; she straightened with a conscious effort. Dear God, how would Tien react to her spilling, however inadvertently, his deadly—well, he acted as though it were deadly—secret? Now of all times, when he seemed on the verge of overcoming his denial, or whatever it was, and taking effective action at last?
"I beg your pardon, Madame Vorsoisson, but I'm afraid I'm still uncertain exactly what your situation is. It's obviously very private, if even your uncle doesn't knov, and I'd give odds he doesn't—"
"Don't tell him!"
"Not without your permission, I assure you, Madame. But … if you are ill, or expect to become ill, there is a great deal that can be done for you." He hesitated. "The contents of that file tell me you already know this. Is anyone helping you?"
Help. What a concept. She felt as though she might melt through the floor of the bubble car at the mere thought. She retreated from the terrible temptation. "I'm not ill. We don't require assistance." She raised her chin defiantly, and added with all the frost she could muster, "It was very wrong of you to read my private files, Lord Vorkosigan."
"Yes," he agreed simply. "A wrong I do not care to compound by either concealing my breach of trust, or failing to offer what help I can command."
Just how much help Imperial Auditor Vorkosigan might command . . . was not to be thought about. Too painful. Belatedly, she realized that declaring herself unaffected was tantamount to naming Tien afflicted. She was rescued from her confusion by the bubble-car sliding to a stop at her home station. "This is very much not your business."
"I beg you will think of your uncle as a resource, then. I'm certain he would wish it."
She shook her head, and hit the canopy release sharply.
They walked in stiff and chilled silence back to her apartment building, in awkward contrast, Ekaterin felt, to their earlier odd ease. Vorkosigan didn't look happy either.
Uncle Vorthys met them at the apartment door, still in shirtsleeves and with a data disk in his hand. "Ah! Vorkosigan! Back earlier than I expected, good. I almost rang your comm link." He paused, staring at their damp and bizarre bedragglement, but then shrugged and went on, "We had a visit from a second courier. Something for you."
"A second courier? Must be something hot. Is it a break in the case?" Vorkosigan shrugged an arm free of his towel-shawl and took the proffered disk.
"I'm not at all sure. They found another body."
"The missing were all accounted for. A body part, surely– a woman's arm, perhaps?"
Uncle Vorthys shook his head. "A body. Almost intact. Male. They're working on the identification now. They were all accounted for." He grimaced. "Now, it seems, we have a spare."
CHAPTER SIX
Miles boiled himself in the shower for a long time, trying to regain control of his shocky body and scattered wits. He'd realized quickly, earlier, that all Madame Vorsoisson's anxious questions about his mother camouflaged oblique concerns about her son Nikolai, and he'd answered her as openly and carefully as he could. He'd been rewarded, through the extremely pleasant morning's expedition, by seeing her gradually relax and grow nearly open herself. When she'd laughed, her light blue eyes had sparkled. The animated intelligence had illuminated her face, and spilled over to loosen and soften her body from its original tight defensive density. Her sense of humor, creeping slowly out from hiding, had even survived his dropping them into that idiot pond.
Her brief appalled look when he'd half-stripped in the bubble-car had almost thrown him back into earlier modes of painful somatic self-consciousness, but not quite. It seemed he had grown comfortable at last in his own ill-used body, and the realization had given him a lunatic courage to try to clear things with her. So when all expression in her face shut down as he'd confessed his snooping . . . that had hurt.
He'd handled a bad situation as well as he could, hadn't he? Yes? No? He wished now he'd kept his mouth shut. No. His false stance with Madame Vorsoisson had been unbearable. Unbearable? Isn't that a little strong? Uncomfortable, he revised this hastily downward. Awkward, anyway.
But confession was supposed to be followed by absolution. If only the damned bubble-car had been delayed again, if only he'd had ten more minutes with her, he might have made it come out right. He shouldn't have tried to piss it off with that stupid joke, I could show you how . . .
Her icy, armored We don't require assistance felt like . . . missing a catch. He would be forced onward, she would spin down into the fog and never be seen again.
You're overdramatizing, boy. Madame Vorsoisson wasn't in a combat zone, was she?
Yes, she is. She was just falling toward death in exquisitely slow motion.
He wanted a drink desperately. Preferably several. Instead he dried himself off, dressed in another of his Auditor-suits, and went to see the Professor.
Miles leaned on the Professor's comconsole in the guest room which doubled as Tien Vorsoisson's home office, and studied the ravaged face of the dead man in the vid. He hoped for some revelation of expression, surprise or rage or fear, that would give a clue as to how the fellow had died. Besides suddenly. But the face was merely dead, its frozen distortions entirely physiological and familiar.
"First of all, are t
hey sure he's really ours?" Miles asked, pulling up a chair for himself and settling in. On the vid, the anonymous medtech's examination recording played on at low volume, her voice-over comments delivered in that flat clinical tone universally used at moments like this. "He didn't drift in from somewhere else, I suppose."
"No, unfortunately," Vorthys said. "His speed and trajectory put him accurately at the site of our accident at the time of the smash-up, and his initial estimated time of death also matches."
Miles had wished for a break in the case, some new lead that would take him in a more speedily fruitful direction. He hadn't realized his desires were so magically powerful. Be careful what you wish for …
"Can they tell if he came from the ship, or the station?"
"Not from the trajectory alone."
"Mm, I suppose not. He shouldn't have been aboard either one. Well … we wait for the ID, then. News of this find has not yet been publicly released, I trust."
"No, nor leaked yet either, amazingly."
"Unless the explanation for his being there turns out to be rock-solid, I don't think secondhand reports are going to be enough on this one." He had read, God knew, enough reports in the last two weeks to saturate him for a year.
"Bodies are your department." The Professor ceded this one to him with a wave of his hand and a good will clearly laced with relief. Above the vid-plate, the preliminary examination wound to its conclusion; no one reached for the replay button.
Well, strictly speaking, political consequences were Miles's department. He really ought to visit Solstice soon, though in the planetary capital a visiting Auditor was more likely to get handled; he'd wanted this open provincial angle of view first, free of VIP choreographing.
"Engineering equipment," Vorthys added, "is mine. They've also just retrieved some of the ship's control systems I was waiting for. I'm think I'm going to have to go back topside soon."
"Tonight?" Miles could move out, and into a hotel, under the cover of that avuncular withdrawal. That would be a relief.
"If I went up now, I'd get there just in time for bed. I'll wait till morning. They've also found some odd things. Not accounted for in inventory."
"Odd things? New or old?" There had been tons of poorly inventoried junk equipment on the station, a century's accumulation of obsolete and worn-out technology that had been cheaper to store than haul away. If the probable-cause techs had the unenviable task of sorting it now, it must mean the highest-priority retrieval tasks were almost done.
"New. That's what's odd. And their trajectories were associated with this new body."
"I hardly ever saw a ship where somebody didn't have an unauthorized still or something operating in a closet somewhere."
"Nor a station either. But our Komarran boys are sharp enough to recognize a still."
"Maybe . . . I'll go up with you, tomorrow," Miles said thoughtfully.
"I would like that."
Gathering up the remains of his nerve, Miles went to seek out Madame Vorsoisson. This would be, he guessed, his last chance to ever have a conversation alone with her. His footsteps echoed hollowly through the empty rooms, and his tentative speaking of her name went unanswered. She had left the apartment, perhaps to pick up Nikolai from school or something. Missed again. Damn.
Miles took the examination recording off to the comconsole in her workroom for a more careful second run-through, and stacked up the terraforming reports from yesterday next in line. With a self-conscious twinge, he keyed on the machine. His guilty conscience irrationally expected she might pop in at any moment to check up on him. But no, more likely she would avoid him altogether. He vented a depressed sigh and started the vid.
He found little to add to the Professor's synopsis. The mysterious eighth victim was middle-aged, of average height and build for a Komarran, if he was a Komarran. It was not possible at this point to tell if he had been handsome or ugly in life. Most of his clothing had been ripped or burned off in the disaster, including any handy pockets containing traceable credit chits, etcetera. The shreds that were left appeared to be anonymous ship-knits, common wear for spacers who might have to slide into a pressure suit at a moment's notice.
What was delaying the man's identification? Miles deliberately held in check the dozen theories his mind wanted to generate. He longed to gallop up immediately to the orbital station where the body had been taken, but his arrival in person topside, to breathe over the actual investigators' shoulders, would only distract them and slow things down. Once you had delegated the best people to do a job for you, you had to trust both them and your judgment.
What he could do without admitting impediment was go bother another useless high-level supervisor like himself. He punched up the private code for the Chief of Imperial Security-Komarr at his office in Solstice, which the man had properly sent him upon the Imperial Auditors' first arrival in Komarr local space.
General Rathjens appeared at once. He looked middle-aged, alert, and busy, all appropriate qualities for his rank and post. Interestingly, he took advantage of the latter and wore civilian Komarran-style street wear rather than Imperial undress greens, suggesting he was either subtly politically-minded, or preferred his comfort. Miles guessed the former. Rathjens was the ImpSec's top man on Komarr, reporting directly to Duv Galeni at ImpSec HQ in Vorbarr Sultana. "Yes, my Lord Auditor. What can I do for you?"
"I'm interested in the new corpse they found this morning topside in association, apparently, with our soletta disaster. You've heard of it?"
"Only just. I haven't had a chance to view the preliminary report yet."
"I just did. It's not very informative. Tell me, what's your standard operating procedure for identifying this poor fellow? How soon do you expect to have anything substantive?"
"The identification of a victim of an ordinary accident, topside or downside, would normally be left to the local civil security. Since this one came within our orbit as possible sabotage, we're running our own search in parallel with the Komarran authorities."
"Do you cooperate with each other?"
"Oh, yes. That is, they cooperate with us."
"I understand," said Miles blandly. "How long is ID likely to take?"
"If the man was Komarran, or if he was a galactic who came through Customs at one of the jump point stations, we should have something within hours. If he was Barrayaran, it may take a little longer. If he was somehow unregistered . . . well, that becomes another problem."
"I take it he hasn't been matched with any missing person report?"
"That would have sped things up. No."
"So he's been gone for almost three weeks, but nobody's missed him. Hm."
General Rathjens glanced aside at some readout on his own comconsole desk. "Do you know you are calling from an unsecured comconsole, Lord Vorkosigan?"
"Yes." That was why all his and the Professor's reports and digests from topside were being hand-carried to them from the local Serifosa ImpSec office. They hadn't expected to be here long enough to bother having ImpSec install their own secured machine. Should have. "I'm only seeking background information just now. When you do find out who this fellow is, how are the relatives notified?"
"Normally, local dome security sends an officer in person, if at all possible. In a case like this with potential ImpSec connections, we send an agent of our own with them, to make an initial evaluation and recommend further investigation."
"Hm. Notify me first, please. I may want to ride along and observe."
"It could come at an odd hour."
"That's fine." He wanted to feed his back-brain on something besides second-hand data; he wanted action for his restless body. He wanted out of this apartment. He'd thought it had been uncomfortable that first night because the Vorsoissons were strangers, but that was as nothing to how awkward it had become now he'd begun to know them.
"Very well, my lord."
"Thank you, General. That's all for now." Miles cut the com.
With a sig
h, he turned again to the stack of terraforming reports, starting with Waste Heat Management's excessively complete report on dome energy flows. It was only in his imagination that the gaze from a pair of outraged light blue eyes burned into the back of his head.
He had left the workroom door open with the thought– hope?—that if Madame Vorsoisson just happened to be passing by, and just happened to want to renew their truncated conversation, she might realize she had his invitation to do so. The awareness that this left him sitting alone with his back to the door came to Miles simultaneously with the sense that he was no longer alone. At a surreptitious sniff from the vicinity of the doorway, he fixed his most inviting smile on his face and turned his chair around.
It was Nikki, hovering in the frame and staring at him in uncertain calculation. He returned Miles's misdirected smile shyly. "Hello," the boy ventured.
"Hello, Nikki. Home from school?"
"Yep."
"Do you like it?"
"Naw."
"Ah? How was today?"
"Boring."
"What are you studying, that's so dull?"
"Nothin'."
What a joy such monosyllabic exchanges must be to his parents, paying for that exclusive private school. Miles's smile twisted. Reassured, perhaps, by the glint of humor in his eye, the boy ventured within. He looked Miles up and down more openly than he had done heretofore; Miles bore being Looked At. Yes, you can get used to me, kiddo.
"Were you really a spy?" Nikki asked suddenly.
Miles leaned back, brows rising. "Now, wherever did you get that idea?"
"Uncle Vorthys said you were in ImpSec Galactic operations," Nikki reminded him.
Ah, yes, that first night at the dinner table. "I was a courier officer. Do you know what that is?"
"Not . . . 'zactly. I thought a courier was a jumpship . . . ?"
"The ship is named after the job. A courier is a kind of glorified delivery man. I carried messages back and forth for the Imperium."
Nikki's brow wrinkled dubiously. "Was it dangerous?"
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