Memory b-10

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  If only he hadn't falsified that thrice-damned report.

  Miles sighed. "This is all entirely hypothetical, I'm afraid. As for the scheduled-seizures idea . . . it's not really a cure, is it."

  "No. But while you're waiting for someone brighter than myself to come up with one, it will control your symptoms."

  "Suppose no one brighter than yourself comes along. Will I have these damned things for the rest of my life?"

  Chenko shrugged. "Honestly, I have no idea. Your condition is unique in my neurological experience."

  Miles sat silent for a time. "All right," he said at last. "Let's try it. And see what happens." He smiled briefly at Gregor's habitual turn of phrase, a private joke.

  "Very good, my lord." Chenko made a flurry of notes. "We'll need to see you again, mm, in about a week." He paused, and looked up. "Forgive my curiosity, my lord . . . but why in the world would an ImperialAuditor wish to be reinstated into the Service as a mere ImpSec lieutenant?"

  ImpSec captain. I wanted to be reinstated as an ImpSec captain. "I'm only an acting Auditor, I'm afraid. My tenure ends when my case is closed."

  "Um, and . . . what is your case?"

  "Highly sensitive."

  "Oh, quite. Sorry."

  Shutting down his comconsole, Miles reflected on Chenko's very good question. He didn't seem to have a very good answer for it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  As the days slipped by without incident, Miles was with reluctance drawn more to Haroche's growing opinion, that the chip failure had been from natural causes. The new ImpSec acting chief was certainly acting less tense about it all. Yet why should Haroche remain twitchy, when there had been no follow-up, no other attack during the time-window of confusion? The transition of power had gone smoothly. If the putative plot had been intended to derail ImpSec's organization, instead of Illyan personally, it had been a notable flop.

  Three days before Countess Vorkosigan was due to arrive at the capital, Miles's nerve broke, and he decided to flee to Vorkosigan Surleau. He had neither hope, nor, truly, desire to avoid her altogether on her visit home, he just wasn't quite ready to face her yet. Maybe a couple of days in the quiet of the country would help him marshal his courage. Besides … it would be good security for Illyan. Out in that thinly populated area, where strangers were immediately noticed, it was easier to spot trouble coming.

  Miles's one doubt about the retreat to the country house was whether he could persuade his cook to accompany them. However, Martin proved a potent bribe to draw Ma Kosti out of her familiar city into the doubtful hinterlands. Miles began to consider raising not his cook's pay, but her son's, to entice him and therefore her to stay longer. But maybe soon he wouldn't need a driver.

  Illyan was amenable to the proposed excursion, if not wildly enthusiastic.

  "This week's probably the very last of the good fall weather down there," Miles pointed out; indeed, the capital was undergoing a succession of colder and rainier days, with a nasty hint of early snow.

  "It will be … interesting, to see the place again," allowed Illyan. "See if it's as I remember."

  More of Illyan's quiet self-testing; Illyan didn't talk much about it, perhaps because the results of so many of his little tests were so discouraging. Or perhaps because he lost track of the results too quickly.

  A morning's very mild flurry of activity—both Miles and Illyan traveled light by training and habit—resulted in a restful afternoon tea taken on the long front porch of the lake house. It was impossible to stay tense in the warm afternoon, sitting in the shade and gazing down over the green lawn to the sparkling stretch of water cradled in the hills. The autumn trees were almost denuded of their colorful leaves, which opened up the view. And the demands of digestion cured the viewer of any remaining residue of ambition. If this went on, Miles thought, he was going to have to take up an exercise program, or end up looking like his clone-brother Mark, which would rather defeat Mark's purposes. He made a mental note to keep Mark and Ma Kosti separated for as long as possible.

  During a lull in the arrival of delectables, Illyan glanced down over the lawn. "Huh. That's about the spot where Captain Negri died, isn't it. The opening shot in the War of Vordarian's Pretendership."

  "So I'm told," said Miles. "Were you here then? Did you see it?"

  "No, no. I was up in the capital, being taken by surprise by Vordarian's forces, along with almost everyone else." Illyan sighed meditatively. "Or so I construe. The only image I can call up is of one of my subordinates running in with the first word—I can't remember his name— and of going somewhere in a groundcar. And of being sick-scared. I remember that, vividly, how my guts felt. Odd. Why should I remember that, and not . . . all the more important facts?"

  "I suppose," said Miles, "because you always did have to remember it. Did your chip record your emotions?"

  "Not really. Though it was possible to reconstruct them, when I was recalling."

  "Deduced. Not felt."

  "More or less."

  "That would be strange."

  "I got used to it." Illyan smiled ironically, staring down across the sunlit grass. "Almost my first job, when your father promoted me to Chief of ImpSec, was to investigate the murder of my predecessor. Come to think of it, that could be said to have been Negri's first job too. Doubtless made easier by the fact that he helped engineer the murder of his predecessor, but still. Anything done twice on Barrayar is a tradition. I believe I got off lightly. I never thought I'd get out of this job alive, though your father's retirement, last year, was rather inspiring."

  "Is that . . . when you started to think about targeting me for your successor?"

  "Oh, I had you targeted long before that. Or Gregor and I did."

  Miles wasn't sure he wanted to think about that. "So . . . after a week to reflect on it, do you now think your chip failure was natural?"

  Illyan shrugged. "Nothing lasts forever. People, devices . . . Well, Admiral Avakli will advise in due course. I wonder what Lady Alys is doing today?"

  "Triaging guest lists and choosing stationery, and prodding her new secretaries through calligraphy practice, or so she said." Lady Alys had told them both that, yesterday.

  "Ah," said Illyan.

  Pastries arrived, and silence fell for a time, broken only by the sound of munching, and little appreciative mumbles. "So," Illyan said at last. "What do a couple of retired officers and gentlemen do on a country weekend?"

  "What they please. Sleep in?"

  "We've been doing that all week."

  "Do you have any interest in horseback riding?"

  "Not really. Your grandfather the General insisted on giving me lessons, from time to time when I was down here. I can stay alive on a horse, but I don't recall its being what you would call a sybaritic pleasure. More in the masochistic line."

  "Ah. Well, there's hiking. And swimming, though that might be imprudent for me … I could wear a float-jacket, I suppose."

  "The water's a little cold by now, isn't it?"

  "Not as bad as in the spring."

  "I'll pass, I think. It all sounds a bit youthfully athletic."

  "Oh, this was a great place to be a kid." Miles thought it over. "There's fishing, I suppose. I never did much of that. Sergeant Bothari wasn't fond of cleaning fish."

  "That sounds sedate enough."

  "Tradition is, you take the local beer from the village—there's a woman there who home-brews it, extraordinary stuff—and hang the bottles over the side of the boat to stay cold. When the beer gets too warm to drink, it's too hot to fish."

  "What season is that?"

  "Never, as far as I could tell."

  "Let us by all means observe tradition," said Illyan gravely.

  It took half a day to get the power boat out of storage, which put them out on the lake in the hazy warmth of the next afternoon, instead of the foggy chill of the early morning. This suited Miles fine. The basic mechanics of fishing were not something Miles had forgotten, and he ne
ver had gone in for the refinements. The need for sticking hooks into wriggling unhappy live things had been technologically relieved by the invention of little protein cubes which, the package assured him, were guaranteed to attract fish in droves, or shoals, or whatever.

  He and Illyan arranged their beer in a net bag over the side of the boat, and their awning overhead, and settled down to enjoy the peace and the view. The ImpSec guard on-shift, one of three assigned by HQ to trail Illyan around down here, got to sit on shore with a little pontoon-fitted lightflyer and watch from a distance, out of mind if not out of sight.

  The two lines ploinked over the side nearly simultaneously, and the bait and sinkers disappeared into the water, gliding smoothly down. At this distance from the shore, the green view of the rocky bottom was replaced by a depth of black shadow. Miles and Illyan settled back in their padded chairs, and opened their first beers. The brew was smooth and nearly as dark as the lake waters, and doubtless swimming with vitamins. It slid down Miles's throat with a pleasantly bitter fizz, and its earthy aroma filled his nose.

  "This would be more like a stakeout," Illyan remarked after a while, "if the fish were armed and could fire back. If fish fished for men, what kind of bait would they use?"

  Miles pictured a line tossed onto the shore, tipped with a spiced peach tart. " 'Let's go manning?' I dunno. What kind of bait did you used to use?"

  "Ah, the motivations of men. Money, power, revenge, sex . . . they were almost never actually that simple. The screwiest case that I can recall . . . dear God, why can I remember this, when I can't . . . oh, well. In the event, then-Prime Minister Vortala was engaged in heavy negotiations with the Polians over the wormhole access treaty, and was trying anything he could think of to sweeten the deal. The Polian ambassador indicated to Vortala that what he'd really always secretly wanted most in his life was an elephant. To this day I don't know if he really wanted an elephant, or if it was just the most absurd and impossible thing to ask for he could think of on the spur of the moment. So anyway, the word came down. … It was really the Head of Galactic Affair's department, but I gave the assignment to my ImpSec agent personally, just so I could watch. I still can see this glazed look that came over his face, as he choked, 'And . . . and how big does this elephant have to be, Sir?' There aren't many moments like that in my job. I cherish 'em. It was before your time, or you know who would have been the first man I'd have thought of."

  "Oh, thanks. So … did your agent locate an elephant?"

  "He was ImpSec to the core; of course he did. A small one. I assigned myself to the detail the day Vortala delivered it to the Polian embassy, too. In that fruity, deadpan voice of his, 'A gift from my Imperial master, Gregor Vorbarra . . .' Gregor must have been about ten, then, and likely would have preferred to keep the beast himself. Your father prudently didn't let him know he'd ever given away an elephant."

  "And did Vortala get his treaty?"

  "Of course. I think the ambassador really did want an elephant, because after he got over being stunned and flummoxed, he was clearly delighted. They kept it in back of the embassy compound for about a year, and he used to bathe and groom it himself, till he took it home with him. It expanded my world view, ever after. Money, power, sex . . . and elephants."

  Miles snorted. He wondered about his own motivations, which had driven him so hard, so long, so far. To death, and beyond. He was unexcited by money, he supposed, because he had never felt its lack, except in the astronomical quantities necessary to repair battle cruisers; Mark, by contrast, was in his own quiet way downright greedy. Power? Miles had no hankering for the Imperium, or anything like it. But it itched like fire when others had power over him. That wasn't lust for power; that was fear. Fear of what? Fear of being made victim of their incompetence? Fear of being destroyed for a mutant, if he could not constantly prove his superiority? There was a bit of that, underneath. Well . . . quite a lot, really. His own grandfather had tried to kill him for his deformities, he'd been told; and there had been a few other ugly little incidents during his childhood, usually, though not always, cut short by the timely intervention of Sergeant Bothari. But that was hardly a hidden motivation, not the un-self-aware kind that got you into deep trouble and you didn't know why.

  He swallowed another chill and smoky slug of beer. Identity. That's my elephant. The thought came with certainty, without the question mark on the end this time. Not fame, exactly, though recognition was some kind of important cement for it. But what you were was what you did. And I did more, oh yes. If a hunger for identity were translated into, say, a hunger for food, he'd be a more fantastic glutton than Mark had ever dreamed of being. Is it irrational, to want to be so much, to want so hard it hurts? And how much, then, was enough?

  Illyan too took another swig of home-brew, and wriggled the carbon-fiber high-strength fishing rod, which like Miles s had come from the boathouses stores. "You sure there are fish down there?"

  "Oh, yes. Have been for centuries. You can lie on the dock and watch the little ones, nosing around the rocks, or swim with them. This lake was actually first terra-formed long before the end of the Time of Isolation, in the old crude way, which was by dumping every kind of organic waste they could lay hands on into it, followed by stolen weeds and minnows, and hoping an earth-life-form-supporting ecosystem would result. There was a lot of argument over it, back about the time of the first Counts, since the local farmers also wanted the assorted shit for their fields. Since the Count-my-Grandfather's day there's been a string of fellows who work out of the Count's Office in Hassadar, in charge of scientifically terraforming and stocking the District's waters, so it's back to being safe to drink and the fish are genetically improved. Lake trout, bass, freshwater salmon . . . there's some good stuff down there."

  Illyan leaned over and stared a little doubtfully down into the clear water. "Really." He wound up his line, and examined his hook. His bait-cube was gone.

  "Did I put bait on this thing?"

  "Yes. I saw you. Fell off, likely."

  "Light-fingered fish." But Illyan resisted any impulse to make a more extended mutant-fish joke. He rebaited the hook more firmly and ploinked it into the water again. They opened another beer each. Miles perched on the edge of the boat, and cooled his bare feet in the water for a time.

  "This is very inefficient," Illyan noted, after adjusting the awning to reposition the creeping shade.

  "I've wondered about that myself. I don't think it was designed to be efficient. I think it was created to give the appearance of doing something, while actually doing nothing. To repel chore-bearing wives, perhaps."

  "I've been doing nothing for a week." Illyan hesitated. "It hasn't seemed to help."

  "Not true. You're doing better at One-Up. I've been tracking you."

  "I thought you and Lady Alys had colluded to let me win, last time."

  "Nope."

  "Ah." Illyan looked slightly cheered, but only for a moment. "The ability to play One-Up without losing all the time is not enough to make me fit to return to ImpSec, I'm afraid."

  "Give yourself time. You've scarcely begun rehabilitation." Miles's feet were getting wrinkled; he returned to his padded seat.

  Illyan stared at the farther shore, all green and brown in the westering sun. "No . . . there is an edge to a performance. When you've balanced on that edge, played at the very top of your form . . . you can't go back to anything less. To invert your mothers old saying, anything that can't be done well is not worth doing. And . . . running ImpSec is about as far from play as anything I know. There are too many other peoples' lives on the line, every day."

  "Mm," said Miles, covering his lack of useful comment in another swig of beer.

  "I've had my twice-twenty-years in the Emperor's service," Illyan said. "Started when I was eighteen, in officer's training for old Ezar . . . not the Imperial Service Academy; you needed more points and money and syllables in front of your name to get in back then. I went to one of the regional schools. I never
thought to make it to a three-times-twenty-years man. I knew I'd stop sometime before that, I just didn't know when. I've been serving Gregor since he was five years old. He's full-adult now, God knows."

  "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."