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and rate them. From Galeni s twitching lips and crinkling eyes Miles thought
he might be undergoing the same delayed reaction of lunatic relief that was
presently bubbling up through his own chest. They were alive, and it was a
miracle and a wonderment.
They matched steps, going up the ramp. Elli sauntered behind, watching the
performance with interest.
The guard at the entrance saluted by reflex even as astonishment spread over
his face. "Captain Galeni! You re back! And, er. . ." he glanced at Miles,
opened and closed his mouth, "you. Sir."
Galeni returned the salute blandly. "Call Lieutenant Vorpatril up here for me,
will you? Vorpatril only."
"Yes, sir." The embassy guard spoke into his wrist comm, not taking his eyes
off them; he kept looking sideways at Miles with a very puzzled expression.
"Er glad to have you back, Captain."
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"Glad to be back, Corporal."
In a moment, Ivan popped out of a lift tube and came running across the
marble-paved foyer.
"My God, sir, where have you been?" he cried, grabbing Galeni by the
shoulders. He remembered himself belatedly, and saluted.
"My absence wasn t voluntary, I assure you." Galeni tugged on one earlobe,
blinking, and ran the hand through his beard stubble, clearly a little touched
by Ivan s enthusiasm. "As I shall explain in detail, later. Right now
Lieutenant Vorkosigan? It is perhaps time to surprise your, er, other
relative."
Ivan glanced at Miles. "They let you out, then?" He looked more closely, then
stared "Miles . . ."
Miles bared his teeth, and moved them out of earshot of the mesmerized
corporal. "All shall be revealed when we arrest the other me. Where am I, by
the way?"
Ivan s lips wrinkled in dawning dismay. "Miles . . . are you trying to diddle my
head? It s not very funny. . . ."
"No diddle. And not funny. The individual you ve been rooming with for the
last four days wasn t me. I ve been rooming with Captain Galeni, here. A
Komarran revolutionary group tried to plant a ringer on you, Ivan. The
sucker is my clone, for real. Don t tell me you never noticed anything!"
"Well . . ." said Ivan. Belief, and growing embarrassment, began to suffuse his
features. "You did seem sort of, um, off your feed, the last couple of days."
Elli nodded thoughtfully, highly sympathetic to Ivan s embarrassment.
"In what way?" asked Miles.
"Well. . . I ve seen you manic. And I ve seen you depressive. But I ve never
seen you well neutral."
"I had to ask. And yet you never suspected anything? He was that good?"
"Oh, I wondered about it the very first night!"
"And what?" yelped Miles. He felt like tearing his hair.
"And I decided it couldn t be. After all, you d made that clone story up
yourself a few days ago."
"I shall now demonstrate my amazing prescience. Where is he?"
"Well, that s why I was so surprised to see you, you see."
Galeni was now standing with his arms crossed, and his hand to his forehead,
supportingly; Miles could not read his lips, though they were moving
slightly counting to ten, perhaps. "Why, Ivan?" said Galeni, and waited.
"My God, he hasn t left for Barrayar already, has he?" said Miles urgently.
"We ve got to stop him "
"No, no," said Ivan. "It was the locals. That s why we re all in such a flap,
here."
"Where is he?" snarled Miles, going for a grip on Ivan s green uniform jacket
with his good hand.
"Calm down, that s what I m trying to tell you!" Ivan glanced down at Miles s
white-knuckled fist. "Yeah, it s you all right, isn t it? The local police came
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through here a couple of hours ago and arrested you him whatever. Well,
not arrested, exactly, but they had a detention order, forbidding you to leave
this legal jurisdiction. You he was frantic, cause it meant you d miss your
ship. You were shipping out tonight. They subpoenaed you for questioning,
before the municipal bench s investigator, to ascertain if there was enough
evidence to file formal charges."
"Charges for what, what are you babbling about, Ivan!"
"Well, that s it, why it s such a mess. Somewhere, they got this short circuit in
their brains about embassies they came and arrested you, Lieutenant
Vorkosigan, for suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder. To wit, you are
suspected of hiring those two goons who tried to assassinate Admiral
Naismith at the shuttleport last week."
Miles stamped in a circle. "Ah. Ah. Agh!"
"The ambassador is filing protests all over the place. Naturally, we couldn t
tell them why we thought they were mistaken."
Miles clutched Quinn s elbow. "Don t panic."
"I m not panicking," Quinn observed, "I m watching you panic. It s more
entertaining."
Miles pressed his forehead. "Right. Right. Let us begin by assuming all is not
lost. Let us assume the lad hasn t panicked hasn t broken. Yet. Suppose he
has climbed up on an aristocratic high horse and is sneering a lot of no-
comments at
them. He d do that well, it s how he thinks Vor are supposed to act. Little
schmuck. Assume he s holding out."
"Assume away," remarked Ivan. "So what?"
"If we hurry, we can save "
"Your reputation?" said Ivan.
"Your . . . brother?" ventured Galeni.
"Our asses?" said Elli.
"Admiral Naismith," Miles finished. "He s the one at risk, now." Miles s gaze
crossed Elli s; her eyebrows arched in dawning worry. "The key word is cover,
as in blown or, just possibly, permanently assured.
"You and I," he nodded to Galeni, "have to get cleaned up. Meet me back here
in fifteen minutes. Ivan, bring a sandwich. Two sandwiches. We ll take you
along for muscle." Ivan was well endowed in that resource. "Elli, you drive."
"Drive where?" asked Quinn.
"The Assizes. We go to the rescue of poor, misunderstood Lieutenant
Vorkosigan. Who will return with us gratefully, whether he wants to or not.
Ivan, better bring a hypospray with two cc s of tholizone, in addition to those
sandwiches."
"Hold it, Miles," said Ivan. "If the ambassador couldn t get him sprung, how
do you expect us to?"
Miles grinned. "Not us. Admiral Naismith."
The London Municipal Assizes was a big black crystal of a building some two
centuries old. A slash of similar architecture erupted unevenly through a
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district of even older styles, representing the bombings and fires of the Fifth
Civil Disturbance. Urban renewal here seemed to wait on disaster. London
was so filled up, a cramped jigsaw of juxtaposed eras, with Londoners
stubbornly hanging on to bits of their past; there was even a committee to
save the singularly ugly disintegrating remnants of the late twentieth century.
Miles wondered if Vorbarr Sultana, presently expanding madly, would look
like this in a thousand years, or whether it would obliterate its history in the
rush to modernize.Miles paused in the Assizes s soaring foyer to adjust his
Dendarii admiral s uniform. "Do I look respectable?" he asked Quinn.
"The beard makes you look, um . . ."
Miles had hastily trimmed the edges. "Distinguished? Older?"
"Hung over."
"Ha."
The four of them took the lift tube to the ninety-seventh level.
"Chamber W," the reception panel directed them after accessing its files;
"Cubicle 19."
Cubicle 19 proved to contain a secured Euronet JusticeComp terminal and a
live human being, a serious young man.
"Ah, Investigator Reed." Elli smiled winningly at him as they entered. "We
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