Memory b-10

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  But . . . suppose he played along with Haroche. Took his bribe and lay in wait, to get him later, at some better opportunity. Miles could have the Dendarii and justice.

  Yes!

  Haroche and Miles would belong to each other, for a time, or Haroche could be lulled into thinking so. … Belatedly, it occurred to Miles that if this was a bribe, Haroche's oily flattery of him back in Illyan's office, all that You and Illyan were such a great team, was pure horseshit. Haroche was not in love with Admiral Naismith. And how long would it be till Haroche arranged Miles's "accidental" death, and no cryo-revival this time? An ImpSec field agent's life was a gamble anyway. Honor among thieves, hah. It would be a fascinating race, to see who could get the other first. Death, the traditional reward of treason, on a slow fuse, burning from the middle toward both ends. What a life we'd lead, for a little while. Highly stimulating.

  A knock at the door derailed his thoughts, crashingly. He flinched in place, on his back on the floor, hyper-reactive. "Who is it?" he gasped.

  "Miles?" came his mother's low alto, vibrant with concern. "Are you all right in there?"

  "You're not having one of your seizures, are you?" Illyan's voice seconded the Countess.

  "No … no. I'm all right."

  "What are you doing?" the Countess asked. "We heard a lot of footsteps, and a thump through the ceiling. …"

  He fought to keep his words even. "Just . . . wrestling with temptation."

  Illyan's voice came back, amused. "Who's winning?"

  Miles's eye followed the cracks in the plaster, overhead. His voice came out high and light, on a sigh: "I think . . . I'm going for the best two falls out of three."

  Illyan laughed. "Right. See you later."

  "I'll be down soon, I think."

  Their footsteps receded, voices muted and gone.

  Lucas Haroche, I believe I hate you.

  But suppose Miles could know in advance that Haroche was going to play straight with him. It was possible. Suppose the offer had been only and exactly what it had seemed, no knife to the back later? What answer then? What answer ever?

  Haroche had Admiral Naismith figured, all right, forward and back. Naismith would cry Yes!, and try to weasel out of the deal after. But Haroche didn't know Lord Vorkosigan. How could he? Practically no one did, not even Miles. I just met the man myself. He'd known a boy by that name, long ago, confused and passionate and army-mad. Properly, that boy had been left behind by Admiral Naismith, striking out for his larger identity, his wider world. But this new Lord Vorkosigan was someone else altogether, and Miles scarcely dared guess his future.

  Miles was abruptly weary, sick to death of the noise inside his own head. Haroche the puppet-master had him running in circles, trying to bite himself in the back. What if he didn't play Haroche's dizzying game? What if he just . . . stopped? What other game was there?

  Who are you, boy? . . . Who are you who asks?

  On the thought a blessed silence came, an empty clarity. He took it at first for utter desolation, but desolation was a kind of free fall, perpetual and without ground below. This was stillness: balanced, solid, weirdly serene. No momentum to it at all, forward or backwards or sideways.

  I am who I choose to be. I always have been what I chose . . . though not always what I pleased.

  His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.

  He lay drained of tension, not moving, and content to be so. The oddly stretched moment was like a bite of eternity, eaten on the run. Was this quiet place inside something new-grown, or had he just never stumbled across it before? How could so vast a thing lay undiscovered for so long? His breathing slowed, and deepened.

  I elect to be . . . myself.

  Haroche dwindled, to a tiny figure in the distance. Miles hadn't realized he could make his adversary shrink like that, and it astonished him.

  But my future's gonna be short, unless I do something. . . . Truly? In fact, Haroche had killed no one, so far. And the death of an Imperial Auditor in the middle of an unclosed case would arouse the wildest suspicions; in Miles's empty place would arise, hydra-headed, a half-dozen other Auditors at least, experienced, annoyed, and immune to horseshit of all kinds. Haroche could not possibly control them all.

  It was Galeni's life which would not be worth spit. What was more traditional than for a disgraced officer to commit suicide in his cell? It was the Vorish thing to do. It would be taken as a confession of guilt, a gesture of expiation. Case closed, oh yeah. It would doubtless be a very well-staged suicide; Haroche had lots of practical experience in such things, and would not make amateurish mistakes. As soon as Haroche knew Miles knew, it would be a race against time. And all Miles had was a trail of mirrors and smoke.

  Smoke.

  Air filters.

  Miles s eyes widened.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  A scant hour before ImpSec HQ quitting time, at least for those men there so fortunate as to work day shift, Miles marshaled his little troop at the side door for what he mentally dubbed The Assault on Cockroach Central. He was grateful at last for the embarrassing dimensions of the Count's old groundcar, because he'd been able to fit everyone in the rear compartment, and finish his mission briefing on the way over from the Imperial Science Institute, thus saving a few more precious minutes. He'd pressed Ivan into service again, and Simon Illyan himself, in the undress greens with full insignia Miles had insisted he wear. Dr. Weddell followed, carefully carrying an old shipping carton labeled, but not containing, Petri-mice, frozen, lot #621A, 1 dozen. Last but by no means least important, Delia Koudelka swung out her long legs, and hurried to catch up.

  The corporal on duty at the front desk looked up anxiously as Miles entered. Miles strode up to him, and smiled tightly. "General Haroche has left your station orders to report to his office when I go in and out, has he not?"

  "Why . . . yes, my Lord Auditor." The corporal glanced around Miles and saluted Illyan, who returned the courtesy.

  "Well, don't."

  "Uh . . . yes, my Lord Auditor." The corporal looked faintly panicked, like a grain of wheat foreseeing itself about to be ground between two stones.

  "It's all right, Smetani," Illyan assured him in passing; the corporal relaxed gratefully.

  The cavalcade continued on into the corridors of ImpSec. Miles s first stop was the new detention area, now located in an inner quadrant of the second floor. Miles braced the officer in charge.

  "In a short time, I'm coming back here to interview Captain Galeni. I expect to find him alive when I arrive, an outcome for which I will hold you personally responsible. In the meanwhile, Miss Koudelka here will be visiting him. You will permit no one else—no one, not even your own superiors," especially your own superiors, "to enter the prisoner's block until I return. Is that crystal clear?"

  "Yes, my Lord Auditor."

  "Delia, don't leave Duv alone for so much as a second till I get back."

  "I understand, Miles." Her chin rose firmly. "And . . . thanks."

  Miles nodded.

  He hoped this blocked any chance of a last-minute convenient "suicide" attempt upon Galeni. Haroche had to be ready by now to move on that plan at a moments notice; the trick was to deny him the moment. Miles led the rest of his people onward, to Janitorial, where he cornered the department head, an aging colonel. Once the man was reassured that Miles's intense interest in the schedule of air filtration maintenance was no adverse reflection upon his departments services, he became very cooperative. Miles brought him along.

  Miles wanted to be in four places at once, but the thing had to be taken in as strict an order as any proof in 5-space math. Inspiration was one thing, demonstration quite another. After collecting a tech from Forensics, he hurried his team along to the sub-sub-basement, and the Evidence Rooms. In a very
few more minutes he had his array of impeccable witnesses lined up in Aisle 5, Weapons Room IV. Weddell set his box down and leaned against the shelf frame, arms crossed, his air of skeptical intellectual superiority for once almost masked by his fascination with the proceedings.

  Shelf 9 was inconveniently out of reach; Miles had to have Ivan hand him down the familiar little bio-sealed box. His Auditors seal was unbroken. The two remaining brittle brown capsules waited demurely. He picked up one and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger.

  "All right. Watch closely, all. Here goes." He pressed firmly, and the capsule snapped; he waved it twice over his head. A smoky tan comets-trail of exquisitely fine powder hung a moment in the air, then dissipated. A little smudge clung to his fingers. Ivan was holding his breath, Miles noticed.

  "How long should we wait?" Miles asked Dr. Weddell.

  "I'd give it at least ten minutes to get all over the room," Weddell advised.

  Miles attempted to compose his soul in patience. Illyan stared at the air, his expression hard. Yes, thought Miles, here is the weapon that murdered you. You can't touch it, but it can touch you. . . . Brick-colored, Ivan gave up, and started breathing again before he turned altogether purple and passed out.

  At last, Weddell bent down and opened his box. From it he drew a small transparent bottle of clear fluid, and an atomizer dispenser, which he filled. For custom-designing that precious liquid on three hours' notice, Miles was ready to forgive him all his sins of pride for the next five years, and kiss him to boot. Weddell himself seemed to regard it as trivial. Scientifically, perhaps it was. A simple chelation solution, he'd dismissed it. The vector encapsulation's exterior structure is nicely regular, specific, and unique. If you wanted something to detect the presence of the prokaryotes themselves, that would be a real challenge.

  "Now," said Miles to the colonel in charge of Janitorial, "we go to the return-air vent and filters."

  "This way, my Lord Auditor."

  They all filed through the aisle and around to the far wall, where a small rectangular grille, about the size of a standard plastic flimsy, at ankle-height marked the return-air duct. "Go ahead and pull off the outer cover," Miles instructed the colonel. "It's the very top filter I'm interested in."

  The whole crew of them ended up on their knees, watching over the colonel's shoulder. He pulled off the outer grille to reveal the sealed rectangle of fiber designed to catch dust, dirt, hairs, mold, spores, smoke particles, and the like; the tiny prokaryotes themselves, if freed from their sporelike cases, would have slipped right through this barrier and gone on, possibly, even to penetrate the electrolytic resin barrier behind it, only to be destroyed at the last when they reached the central flash-unit.

  At Miles's nod the colonel gave way to Dr. Weddell, who sat cross-legged on the floor and earnestly saturated the air around the vent with his atomizer.

  "So what's he doing?" the colonel whispered to Miles.

  Miles suppressed the reply, Were spraying for traitors. Pesky vermin this time of year, don't you find? "Watch and see."

  Weddell then pulled an ultraviolet hand-light from his box, and directed it at the filter. A pale red fluorescence slowly grew more brilliant as the black light played over the surface.

  "There you are, my Lord Auditor," Weddell said. "The vector encapsulations were caught in the filter, all right."

  "Just so." Miles scrambled to his feet. "That's our baseline, then. On to the next. You there"—he pointed to the forensics tech—"document, bag, label, and seal all that, and follow as quickly as you can."

  The parade took their positions and followed him once more. This time he led them to the Department of Komarran Affairs, where Miles asked the disturbed General Allegre to join the procession. They all fetched up crowded into Captain Galeni's cubicle-sized office, fourth door down the Komarran analysts' corridor.

  "Do you remember ever personally visiting Galeni in here in the last three months?" Miles asked Illyan.

  "I'm sure I stopped in a few times. I came down here almost every week, to discuss items in his reports of particular interest."

  As soon as the forensics tech arrived, out of breath, the colonel from Janitorial repeated his performance with the cubicle's return-air vent, identical to the one in Weapons Room IV. Weddell sprayed again, liberally. This time, Miles held his breath. The results of this test could force a major fork in his planned strategy. If Haroche had anticipated him—there had been two missing capsules, after all.

  Weddell, on one hand and his knees, played his black light over the filter. "Huh." Miles's heart seemed to stop. "There's nothing here that I can see. Do you see anything?"

  Miles inhaled, gratefully, as the other men bent to examine the filter also. It remained a slightly dirty and now-damp white.

  "Can you ascertain that this hasn't been changed since the last scheduled maintenance at Midsummer?" Miles asked the colonel.

  The colonel shrugged. "The filters are not individually numbered, my lord. They're interchangeable, of course." He checked the report panel he carried. "No one in my department has done so, anyway. It's not due to be changed again till next month at Winterfair. It looks to have about the normal amount of accumulation for this point in its cycle."

  "Thank you, Colonel. I appreciate your precision." He rose, and glanced at Illyan, who was watching stony-faced. "Your old office is next, Simon. Would you care to lead the way?"

  Illyan shook his head, politely declining. "There isn't much joy for me in this, Miles. Either way your results come out, I lose a trusted subordinate."

  "But wouldn't you rather lose the one who's actually guilty?"

  "Yes." Illyan's snort was not wholly ironic. "Carry on, my Lord Auditor."

  They trooped up three floors and down one to the level of Illyan s old office. If Miles had managed to surprise Haroche with his arrival in force, the general showed no sign of it. But was there maybe just a little discomfort in his eyes, as Haroche greeted his old boss and offered Illyan a chair?

  "No, thanks, Lucas," said Illyan coolly. "I don't think we'll be here very long."

  "What are you doing?" Haroche asked, as the colonel, practiced, went straight for the grille low on the wall to the right of his comconsole desk. The increasingly burdened forensics tech followed him.

  "Air filters," said Miles. "You didn't think of the air filters. You've never been on space duty, have you, Lucas?"

  "No, unfortunately."

  "Believe me, it makes you very conscious of things like air circulation systems."

  Haroche s brows rose as Weddell began vigorously spraying around the vent. He rocked back in his station chair, as-if-casually. He sucked thoughtfully on his lower lip, and did not ask, Have you considered my offer, Miles? He was a cool hand, and patient, and perfectly capable of waiting for the answer to emerge. No reason for him to flinch yet; whether the filters here were jammed full of vector encapsulations or not, it would prove nothing. Lots of people went in and out of Illyan s office.

  "No," said Weddell after a moment. "Take a look for yourselves, gentlemen." He passed the black light along to Ivan and General Allegre.

  "You'd think it would be here," commented Allegre, peering over Ivan's shoulder.

  Miles had given it about a twenty-five-percent chance, personally, though he'd upped the odds after finding Galeni's vent clear. That left one of the conference chambers, or …

  "Find anything?" asked Haroche.

  Miles made a small show of going over and borrowing the hand-light from Ivan. "Not in here, dammit. I was hoping it would be simple. If the prokaryote vectors are caught in the filters, they show up bright red, y'see. We tested one, downstairs."

  "What are you going to do next?"

  "There's nothing for it but to start at the top of the HQ building and check every filtered air vent till I get to the basement. Tedious, but I'll get there in the end. You know I said if I knew why, I'd know who. I've changed my mind. I now think if I know where, I'll know who."
<
br />   "Oh, really. Have you tried Captain Galeni's office?"

  "First place we looked. It's clear."

  "Hm. Perhaps . . . one of the briefing rooms?"

  "I'd give odds." Bite, Haroche. Bite my hook. Come on, come on. …

  "Very good."

  "If you want to save steps," put in Ivan, on cue, "you ought to start with the places Illyan went most, and work out from there. Rather than from the top down."

  "Good thinking," said Miles. "Shall we start with the outer office? Then—excuse me, General Allegre, but I must be complete—the offices of the department heads. Then the briefing rooms, then all the affairs analysts' offices. We should probably have done the whole of Komarran Affairs while we were first down there. After that we'll see."

  From the look on the forensics techs face, he was mentally kissing his dinner good-bye, a regret perhaps blunted by his obvious fascination with the proceedings. Allegre nodded; they all straggled back out, and the colonel began the drill again with the grille in the outer office. Miles wondered if anyone had noticed yet that Weddell didn't have nearly enough chelation solution to check every air filter in ImpSec HQ. Illyan exchanged abstracted greetings with his old secretary. After a few moments, General Haroche excused himself. Illyan did not look up.

  Miles watched out of the corner of his eye as Haroche exited into the corridor. Hook set, yes, now the line plays out. . . . He began counting in his head, timing out how a man in a suppressed panic might walk to one room, then another. He motioned Weddell to desist with his spray; when he reached one hundred, he spoke. "All right, gentlemen. If you will follow me one more time. Quietly, please."

  He led them out into the corridor and turned left, and right again at the second intersection. In the middle of that hallway, he met the commodore who had taken over Domestic Affairs from Haroche.

  "Oh, my Lord Auditor," the commodore hailed him. "How fortunate. General Haroche just sent me to get you."

  "Where did he tell you to look for me?"

  "He said you'd gone down to the Evidence Rooms. You've just saved me some steps."