Miles Errant

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  No one came.

  . . . Right. The boss had locked himself in his quarters with a prisoner and a surgical kit, and told his goons not to bother him. How long before one worked up the courage to interrupt his little hobby? Could be . . . quite a long time.

  The weight of hope returning was an almost intolerable burden, like walking on a broken bone. I don't want to move. He was very angry with ImpSec for abandoning him here, but thought he might forgive them everything if only they would charge in now, and waft him away without any further exertion or effort on his part. Haven't I earned a break? The room grew very silent.

  That was over-kill, he thought, staring down at Ryoval's body. A trifle unbalanced, that. And you've made a mess on the carpet.

  I don't know what to do next.

  Who was speaking? Killer? Gorge, Grunt? Howl? All of them?

  You're good troops, and loyal, but not too bright.

  Bright is not our job.

  It was time for Lord Mark to wake up. Had he ever really been asleep?

  "All right, gang," he muttered aloud, enfolding himself. "Everybody up." The low chair was a torture-device in its own right. Ryoval's last snide dig. With a groan, he regained his feet.

  It was impossible that an old fox like Ryoval would have only one entrance to his den. He poked around the underground suite. Office, living room, small kitchen, big bedroom, and a rather oddly equipped bathroom. He gazed longingly at the shower. He had not been allowed to bathe since he'd been brought here. But he was afraid it might wash off the plastic skin. He did brush his teeth. His gums were bleeding, but that was all right. He drank a little cold water. At least I'm not hungry. He vented a small cackle.

  He found the emergency exit at last in the back of the bedroom closet.

  If it's not guarded, stated Killer, it must be booby-trapped.

  Ryoval's main defenses will work from the outside in, said Lord Mark slowly. From the inside out, it will be set up to facilitate a quick escape. For Ryoval. And Ryoval alone.

  It was palm-locked. Palm-lock pads read pulse, temperature, and the electrical conductivity of the skin, as well as the whorls of fingerprints and grooves of life-lines. Dead hands didn't open palm-locks.

  There are ways around palm locks, murmured Killer. Killer had been trained in such things once, in a previous incarnation. Lord Mark let go, and floated, watching.

  The surgical array was almost as useful as an electronics kit, in Killer's hands. Given abundant time, and as long as the palm lock was never going to be required to work again. Lord Mark gazed dreamily as Killer loosened the sensor-pad from the wall, touched here, cut there.

  The control virtual on the wall lit at last. Ah, murmured Killer proudly.

  Oh, said the rest. The display projected a small glowing square.

  It wants a code-key, said Killer in dismay. His panic at being trapped quickened their heart rate. Howl's tenuous containment loosened, and electrical twinges of pain coursed through them.

  Wait, said Lord Mark. If they needed a code-key, so must Ryoval.

  Baron Ryoval has no successor. Ryoval had no second-in-command, no trained replacement. He kept all his oppressed subordinates in separate channels of communication. House Ryoval consisted of Baron Ryoval, and slaves, period. That's why House Ryoval failed to grow. Ryoval didn't delegate authority, ever.

  Therefore, Ryoval had no place nor trusted subordinates with whom to leave his private code-keys. He had to carry them on his person. At all times.

  The black gang whimpered as Lord Mark turned around and returned to the living room. Mark ignored them. This is my job, now.

  He turned Ryoval's body over on its back and searched it methodically from head to toe, down to the skin and farther. He missed no possibility, not even hollow teeth. He sat back uncomfortably, distended belly aching, sprained back on fire. His level of pain was rising as he re-integrated, which made it a very tentative process. It has to be here. It has to be here somewhere.

  Run, run, run, the black gang gibbered, in a remarkably unified chorus.

  Shut up and let me think. He turned Ryoval's right hand over in his own. A ring with a flat black stone gleamed in the light. . . .

  He laughed out loud.

  He swallowed the laugh fearfully, looking around. The Baron's soundproofing held, apparently. The ring would not slide off. Stuck? Riveted to the bone? He cut off Ryoval's right hand with the laser drill. The laser also cauterized the wrist, so it wasn't too drippy. Nice. He limped slowly and painfully back to the bedroom closet and stared at the little glowing square, just the size of the ring's stone.

  Which way up? Would the wrong rotation trigger an alarm?

  Lord Mark pantomimed Baron Ryoval in a hurry. Slap the palm lock, turn his hand over and jam the ring into the code slot—"This way," he whispered.

  The door slid open on a personal lift tube. It extended upward some twenty meters. Its antigrav control pads glowed, green for up, red for down. Lord Mark and Killer gazed around. No obvious defenses, such as a tanglefield generator. . . .

  A faint draft brought a scent of fresh air from above. Let's go! screamed Gorge and Grunt and Howl.

  Lord Mark stood spraddle-legged and stodgy, staring, refusing to be rushed. It has no safety ladder, he said at last.

  So what?

  So. What?

  Killer sagged back, and muffled the rest of them, and waited respectfully.

  I want a safety ladder, muttered Lord Mark querulously. He turned away, and wandered back through Ryoval's quarters. While he was at it, he looked for clothes. There wasn't much to choose from; this clearly was not Ryoval's main residence. Just a private suite. The garments were all too long and not wide enough. The trousers were impossible. A soft knit shirt stretched over his raw skin, though. A loose jacket, left open, provided some more protection. A Betan-style sarong, bath-wear, wrapped his loins. A pair of slippers were sloppy on his left foot, tight on his swollen, broken right foot. He searched for cash, keys, anything else of use. But there was no handy climbing gear.

  I'll just have to make my own safety ladder. He hung the laser drill around his neck on a tie made from a couple of Ryoval's belts, stepped into the bottom of the lift tube, and systematically began to burn holes in the plastic side.

  Too slow! the black gang wailed. Howl howled inside, and even Killer screamed, Run, dammit!

  Lord Mark ignored them. He turned on the "up" field, but did not let it take them. Clinging to his hot hand and foot holds, he pocked his way upward. It was not difficult to climb, buoyed in the flowing grav field, only hard to remember to keep his three points of contact. His right foot was nearly useless. The black gang gibbered in fear. Mulish and methodical, Mark ascended. Melt a hole. Wait. Move a hand, foot, hand, foot. Melt another hole. Wait. . . .

  Three meters from the top, his head came level with a small audio pick-up, flush to the wall, and a shielded motion sensor.

  I imagine it wants a code word. In Ryoval's voice, Lord Mark remarked blandly, observing. Can't oblige.

  It doesn't have to be what you guess, Killer said. It could be anything. Plasma arcs. Poison gas.

  No. Ryoval saw me, but I saw Ryoval. It will be simple. And elegant. And you will do it to yourself. Watch.

  He gripped his handhold, and extended the laser drill up past the motion sensor for the next burn.

  The lift tube's grav field switched off.

  Even half-expecting it, he was nearly ripped from his perch by his own weight. Howl could not contain it all. Mark screamed silently, flooded in pain. But he clung, and did not let them fall.

  The last three meters of ascent could have been called a nightmare, but he had new standards for nightmares now. It was merely tedious.

  There was a tanglefield trap at the top entrance, but it faced outward. The laser drill disarmed its controls. He managed a crippled, shuffling, crabwise walk into a private underground garage. It contained the Baron's lightflyer. The canopy opened at the touch of Ryoval's ring.
/>   He slid into the lightflyer, adjusted the seat and controls as best he could around his distorted and aching contours, powered it up, eased it forward. That button on the control panel—there? The garage door slid aside. Once through, he shot up, and up, and up, through the dark, the acceleration pummeling him. Nobody even fired on him. There were no lights below. A rocky winter waste. The whole little installation must be underground.

  He checked the flyer's map display, and picked his direction—East. Toward the light. That seemed right.

  He kept accelerating.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The lightflyer banked. Miles craned his neck, catching a glimpse of what was below. Or what wasn't below. Dawn was creeping over a wintry desert. There appeared to be nothing of interest for kilometers around.

  " 'S funny," said the guard who was piloting the lightflyer. "Door's open." He touched his comm, and transmitted some sort of code-burst. The other guard shifted uneasily, watching his comrade. Miles twisted around, trying to watch them both.

  They descended. Rocks rose around them, then a concrete shaft. Ah. Concealed entrance. They came to the bottom, and moved forward into an underground garage.

  "Huh," said the other guard. "Where's all the vehicles?"

  The flyer came to rest, and the bigger guard dragged Miles out of the backseat, and unfastened his ankles, and stood him upright. He almost fell down again. The scars on his chest ached with the strain from his hands bound behind his back. He got his feet under himself and stared around much as the guards were doing. Just a utilitarian garage, badly-lit, echoing and cavernous. And empty.

  The guards marched him toward an entrance. They coded through some automatic doors, and walked to an electronic security chamber. It was up and running, humming blankly. "Vaj?" one guard called. "We're here. Scan us."

  No answer. One of the guards went forward, looked around. Tapped a code into a wall pad. "Bring him through anyway."

  The security chamber passed him. He was still wearing the gray knits the Duronas had given him; no interesting devices woven into the fabric, it seemed, alas.

  The senior guard tried an intercom. Several times. "Nobody answers."

  "What should we do?" asked his comrade.

  The senior man frowned. "Strip him and take him to the boss, I guess. Those were the orders."

  They pulled his ship-knits off him; he was far too out-massed to fight them, but he regretted the loss deeply. It was too damned cold. Even the ox-like guards stared a moment at his raked and scored chest. They re-fastened his hands behind him and marched him through the facility, their eyes shifting warily at every intersection.

  It was very quiet. Lights burned, but no people appeared anywhere. A strange structure, not very large, plain and—he sniffed—decidedly medical in odor. Research, he decided. Ryoval's private biological research facility. Evidently, after the Dendarii raid of four years ago, Ryoval had decided his main facility wasn't secure enough. Miles could see that. This place did not have the business-air of the other locale. It felt military-paranoid. The sort of place where if you went there to work, you didn't come out again for years at a time. Or, considering Ryoval, ever. He glimpsed a few lab-like rooms, in passing. But no techs. The guards called out, a couple of times. No one answered.

  They came to an open door, beyond which lay some sort of study or office. "Baron, sir?" the senior guard ventured. "We have your prisoner."

  The other guard rubbed his neck. "If he's not here, should we go ahead and work him like the other one?"

  "He hasn't ordered it yet. Better wait."

  Quite. Ryoval was not the sort to reward initiative in subordinates, Miles suspected.

  With a deep, nervous sigh, the senior man stepped across the threshold and looked around. The junior man prodded Miles forward in his wake. The study was finely furnished, with a real wood desk, and an odd chair in front of it with metal wrist-locks for the person who sat in it. Nobody ran out on a conversation with Baron Ryoval till Baron Ryoval was ready, apparently. They waited.

  "What do we do now?"

  "Don't know. This is as far as my orders went." The senior man paused. "Could be a test. . . ."

  They waited about five more minutes.

  "If you don't want to look around," said Miles brightly, "I will."

  They looked at each other. The senior man, his forehead creased, drew a stunner and sidled cautiously through an archway into the next room. His voice came back after a moment. "Shit." And, after another moment, an odd mewling wail, cut off and swallowed.

  This was too much even for the dim bulb who held Miles. With his ham hand still locked firmly around Miles's upper arm, the second guard followed the first into a large chamber arranged as a living room. A wall-sized holovid was blank and silent. A zebra-grained wood bar divided the room. An extremely low chair faced an open area. Baron Ryoval's very dead body lay there face-up, naked, staring at the ceiling with dry eyes.

  There were no obvious signs of a struggle—no overturned furniture, nor plasma arc burns in the walls—except upon the body. There the marks of violence were focused, utterly concentrated: throat crushed, torso pulped, dried blood smeared around his mouth. A double line of fingertip-sized black dots were stitched neatly across the Baron's forehead. They looked like burns. His right hand was missing, cut away, the wrist a cauterized stump.

  The guards twitched in something like horror, an all-too-temporary paralysis of astonishment. "What happened?" whispered the junior man.

  Which way will they jump?

  How did Ryoval control his employee/slaves, anyway? The lesser folk, through terror, of course; the middle-management and tech layer, through some subtle combination of fear and self-interest. But these, his personal bodyguards, must be the innermost cadre, the ultimate instrument by which their master's will was forced upon all the rest.

  They could not be as mentally stunted as their stolidity suggested, or they would be useless in an emergency. But if their narrow minds were intact, it followed that they must be controlled through their emotions. Men whom Ryoval let stand behind him with activated weapons must be programmed to the max, probably from birth. Ryoval must be father, mother, family and all to them. Ryoval must be their god.

  But now their god was dead.

  What would they do? Was I am free even an intelligible concept to them? Without its focal object, how fast would their programming start to break down? Not fast enough. An ugly light, compounded of rage and fear, was growing in their eyes.

  "I didn't do it," Miles pointed out with quick prudence. "I was with you."

  "Stay here," growled the senior man. "I'll reconnoiter." He loped off through the Baron's apartment, to return in a few minutes with a laconic, "His flyer's gone. Lift tube defenses buggered all to hell, too."

  They hesitated. Ah, the downside of perfect obedience: crippled initiative.

  "Hadn't you better check around the facility?" Miles suggested. "There might be survivors. Witnesses. Maybe . . . maybe the assassin is still hiding somewhere." Where is Mark?

  "What do we do with him?" asked the junior man, with a jerk of his head at Miles.

  The senior man scowled in indecision. "Take him along. Or lock him up. Or kill him."

  "You don't know what the Baron wanted me for," Miles interrupted instantly. "Better take me along till you find out."

  "He wanted you for the other one," said the senior man, with an indifferent glance down at him. Little, naked, half-healed, with his hands bound behind him, the guards clearly did not perceive him as a threat. Too right. Hell.

  After a brief muttered conference, the junior man pushed him along, and they began as rapid and methodical a tour of the facility as Miles would have wished to make himself. They found two of their red-and-black uniformed comrades, dead. A mysterious pool of blood snaked across a corridor from wall to wall. They found another body, fully dressed as a senior tech, in a shower, the back of his head crushed with some blunt object. On descending levels they found m
ore signs of struggle, of looting, and of by-no-means-random destruction, comconsoles and equipment smashed.

  Had it been a slave revolt? Some power struggle among factions? Revenge? All three simultaneously? Was the murder of Ryoval its cause, or its goal? Had there been a mass evacuation, or a mass killing? At every corner, Miles braced himself for a scene of carnage.

  The lowest level had a laboratory with half a dozen glass-walled cells lining one end. From the smell, some experiment had been left cooking far too long. He glanced into the cells and swallowed.

  They had been human, once, those lumps of flesh, scar tissue, and growths. They were now . . . culture-dishes of some kind. Four had been female, two male. Some departing tech, as an act of mercy, had neatly cut each one's throat. He eyed them desperately, his face pressed to the glass. Surely they were all too large to have been Mark. Surely such effects could not have been achieved in a mere five days. Surely. He did not want to enter the cells for a closer examination.

  At least it explained why more of Ryoval's slaves did not try to resist. There was an air of awful ecomony about it. Don't like your work in the bordello, girl? Sick of the boredom and brutality of being a guard, man? How would you like to go into scientific research? The last stop for any would-be Spartacus among Ryoval's human possessions. Bel was right. We should have nuked this place the last time we were here.

  The guards gave the cells a brief glance, and pressed on. Miles hung back, seized by inspiration. It was worth a try. . . .

  "Shit!" Miles hissed, and jumped.

  The guards spun around.

  "That . . . that man in there. He moved. I think I'm going to vomit."

  "Can't have." The senior guard stared through the transparent wall at a body which lay with its back to them.

  "He couldn't possibly have witnessed anything from in there, could he?" said Miles. "For God's sake, don't open the door."

  "Shut up." The senior guard chewed his lip, stared at the control virtual, and after an irresolute moment, coded open the door and trod cautiously within.

  "Gah!" said Miles.