"Of course. My clone was another fine product of Jackson's Whole, by the way."
"Ah. It all fits, how nice."
"My congratulations to you and the whole Intelligence department. Remind me to make that an official commendation, when I next make it back to the
Triumph."
"Which is when?" She crunched a piece of ice from the bottom of her glass and swirled the remainder around, trying to look only professionally interested.
Her mouth would taste cool, and tangy. . . .
Miles blinked back into professional mode himself, conscious of the curious eyes of embassy personnel upon them. "Dunno. We're sure not done here yet. We should certainly transfer all the new data the Dendarii collected back to embassy files. Ivan's working now on what we pulled from Galen's comconsole. It's going to be harder this time. Galen—Van der Poole—will be hiding. And he's had a lot of experience at serious disappearing. But if and when you do turn him up—ah—report directly to me. I'll report to the embassy."
"Report what to the embassy?" Elli inquired, alert to his undertones.
Miles shook his head. "I'm not sure yet. I may be too tired to think straight. I'll see if it seems to make any more sense in the morning."
Elli nodded and rose.
"Where are you going?" asked Miles in alarm.
"Back to the
Triumph,
to put the mass in motion, of course."
"But you can tight-beam— Who's on duty up there right now?"
"Bel Thorne."
"Right, all right. Let's go find Ivan, we can tight-beam the data swap right from here, and the orders as well." He studied the dark circles under her luminous eyes. "And how long have you been on your feet, anyway?"
"Oh, about the last, um," she glanced at her chrono, "thirty hours."
"Who has trouble delegating work, Commander Quinn? Send the orders, not yourself. And take a sleep shift before you start making mistakes too. I'll find you a place to bunk here at the embassy—" she met his eyes, suddenly grinning, "if you like," Miles added hastily.
"Will you, now?" she said softly. "I'd like that fine."
They paid a visit to Ivan, harried at his comconsole, and made the secured data link to the
Triumph.
Ivan, Miles noted happily, had lots and lots of work left to do. He escorted Elli up the lift tubes to his quarters.
Elli dove for the bathroom by right of first dibs. While hanging up his uniform Miles found his cat blanket bunged lumpily into a dark corner of his closet, doubtless where his terrified clone had thrown it his first night. The black fur broke into ecstatic rumbling when he picked it up. He spread it out carefully on his bed, patting it into place. "There."
Elli emerged from the shower in remarkably few minutes, fluffing her short wet curls out with her fingers, a towel slung attractively around her hips. She spotted the cat blanket, smiled, and hopped up and wriggled her bare toes in it. It shivered and purred louder.
"Ah," sighed Miles, contemplating them both in perfect contentment. Then doubt snaked through his garden of delight. Elli was looking around his room with interest. He swallowed. "Is this, ah, the first time you've been up here?" he asked in what he hoped was a casual tone.
"Uh-huh. I don't know why I was expecting something medieval. Looks more like an ordinary hotel room than what I would have expected of Barrayar."
"This is Earth," Miles pointed out, "and the Time of Isolation has been over for a hundred years. You have some odd ideas about Barrayar. But I just wondered, if my clone had, uh . . . are you sure you never sensed any difference at
all
during the four days? He was that good?" He smiled wretchedly, hanging on her answer. What if she'd noticed nothing? Was he really so transparent and simple that anyone could play him? Worse, what if she had noticed a difference—and liked the clone better?
Elli looked embarrassed. "Noticed, yes. But to jump from sensing there was something wrong with you, to realizing it
wasn't
you . . . maybe if we'd had more time together. We only talked by comm link, except for one two-hour trip downtown to spring Danio and his merry men from the locals, during which I thought you'd lost your mind. Then I decided you must have something up your sleeve, and just weren't telling me 'cause I'd . . ." her voice went suddenly smaller, "fallen out of favor, somehow."
Miles calculated, and breathed relief. So the clone hadn't had time to . . . ahem. He smiled wryly up at her.
"You see, when you look at me," she went on to explain, "it makes me feel—well—good. Not in the warm and fuzzy sense, though there's that too—"
"Warm and fuzzy," sighed Miles happily, leaning on her.
"Stop it, you goof, I'm serious." But she slipped her arms around him. Firmly, as if prepared to do immediate battle with any wight who might attempt to snatch him away again. "Good, like—I can do. Competent. You make me un-afraid. Unafraid to try, unafraid of what others might think. Your—clone, good gods what a relief to know that—made me start wondering what was wrong with me. Though when I think how easily they took you, that night in the empty house, I could—"
"Sh, sh," Miles stopped her lips with one finger. "There is nothing wrong with you, Elli," he said, pleasantly muffled. "You are most perfectly Quinn."
His
Quinn . . .
"See what I mean? I suppose it saved your life. I'd been meaning to keep you—him—up to date on the hunt for Galeni, even it if was just an interim no-progress report. Which would have been
his
first tip-off that there was a hunt going on."
"Which he would have ordered stopped."
"Precisely. But then, when the break in the case came, I—thought I'd better be sure. Save it up, surprise you with the final result all wrapped up in a big bow—win back your regard, to be frank. In a way, he kept me from reporting to him."
"If it's any consolation, it wasn't dislike. You terrified him. Your face—not to mention the rest of you—has that effect on some men."
"Yes, the face . . ." Her hand touched one cheek, half-consciously, then fell more tenderly to ruffle his hair. "I think you've put your finger on it, what felt so wrong. You knew me when I had my old face, and
no
face, and the new face, and for you alone, it was all the same face."
His unbandaged hand traced over the arch of her brows, perfect nose, paused at her lips to collect a kiss, then down the ideal angle of her chin and velvet skin of her throat. "Yes, the face . . . I was young and dumb then. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was only later that I realized it could be a handicap for you."
"Me, too," sighed Elli. "For the first six months, I was delighted. But the second time a soldier made a pass at me instead of following an order, I knew I definitely had a problem. I had to discover and teach myself all kinds of tricks to get people to respond to the inside of me, and not the outside."
"I understand," said Miles.
"By the gods, you would." She looked at him for a moment as if seeing him for the very first time, then dropped a kiss on his forehead. "I just now realized how many of those tricks I learned from you. How I love you!"
When they came up for air from the kiss that followed, Elli offered, "Rub you?"
"You're a drunkard's dream, Quinn." Miles flopped down with his face in the fur and let her have her way with him. Five minutes at her strong hands parted him from all ambitions but two. Those satisfied, they both slept like stones, untroubled by any vile dream that Miles could later remember.
Miles woke muzzily to the sound of knocking at the door.
"Go
'way,
Ivan," Miles moaned into the flesh and fur he clutched. "Go sleep on a bench somewhere, hunh . . . ?"
The flesh shook him loose decisively. Elli hit the light, swung out of bed, slipping into her black tee-shirt and gray uniform trousers, and padded to the door, ignoring Miles's mumbled "No, no, doan' let 'im in . . ." The knocking grew louder and more insistent.
"Miles!" Ivan fell through the door. "Oh, hi, Elli. Miles!" Ivan shook him by the shoulder.
Miles tried to burrow underneath his fur. "All right, y'can have your bed," he muttered. "Y'don't need me to tuck you in . . ."
"Get
up,
Miles!"
Miles stuck his head out, eyes scrunched against the light. "Why? What time is it?"
"About midnight."
"Ergh." He went back under. Three hours of sleep hardly counted, after what he'd been through the last four days. Displaying a cruel and ruthless streak Miles would never have suspected, Ivan pulled the live fur from his twitching hands and tossed it aside.
"You have to get up," Ivan insisted. "Dressed. Peel off the face fungus. I hope you've got a clean uniform in here somewhere—" Ivan was rooting through his closet. "Here!"
Miles clutched numbly at the green cloth Ivan flung at him. "Embassy on fire?" he inquired.
"Damn near. Elena Bothari-Jesek just blew in from Tau Ceti. I didn't even know you'd sent her!"
"Oh!" Miles came awake. Quinn was by now fully dressed, including boots, and checking her stunner in its holster. "Yes. Gotta get dressed, sure. She won't mind the beard, though."
"Not being subject to beard burn," Elli muttered under her breath, scratching a thigh absently. Miles suppressed a grin; one of her eyelids shivered at him.
"Maybe not," said Ivan grimly, "but I don't think Commodore Destang will be too thrilled by it."
"Destang's
here?"
Miles came fully awake. He still had a little adrenaline left, apparently. "Why?" Then he thought back over some of the suspicions he'd included in his report sent with Elena, and realized why the Sector Two Security chief might have been inspired to investigate in person. "Oh, God . . . gotta get him straightened out before he shoots poor Galeni on sight—"
He ran the shower on cold, needle-spray; Elli shoved a cup of coffee into his working hand as he exited, and inspected the effect when he was dressed.
"Everything's fine but the face," she informed him, "and you can't do anything about that."
He ran a hand over his now-naked chin. "Did I miss a patch with the depilator?"
"No, I was admiring the bruises. And the eyes. I've seen brighter eyes on a strung-out juba freak three days after the supplies ran out."
"Thanks."
"You asked."
Miles considered what he knew of Destang, as they descended the lift tubes. His previous contacts with the commodore had been brief, official, and as far as Miles knew, satisfactory to both sides. The Sector Two Security commander was an experienced officer, accustomed to carrying out his varied duties—coordinating intelligence-gathering, overseeing the security of Barrayaran embassies, consulates, and visiting VIP's, rescuing the occasional Barrayaran subject in trouble—with little direct supervision from distant Barrayar. During the two or three operations the Dendarii had conducted in Sector Two areas, orders and money had flowed down, and Miles's final reports back up, through his command without impediment.
Commodore Destang was seated centrally in Galeni's office chair at Galeni's lit-up comconsole as Miles, Ivan, and Elli entered. Captain Galeni was standing, though extra chairs were available by the wall; his stiff posture worn like armor, his eyes hooded and face blank as a visor. Elena Bothari-Jesek hovered uncertainly in the background, with the worried look of one witnessing a chain of events they had started but no longer controlled. Her eyes lit with relief as she saw Miles, and she saluted—improperly, as he was not in Dendarii uniform; it was more an unstated transfer of responsibility, like someone ridding herself of a bag of live snakes,
Here, this one's all yours. . . .
He returned her a nod,
All right.
"Sir." Miles saluted.
Destang returned the salute and glowered at him, reminding Miles in a faint twinge of nostalgia of the early Galeni. Another harried commander. Destang was a man of about sixty, lean, with gray hair, shorter than what was middle height for a Barrayaran. Doubtless born just after the end of the Cetagandan occupation, when widespread malnutrition had robbed many of their full growth potential. He would have been a young officer at the time of the Conquest of Komarr, of middle rank during its later Revolt; combat-experienced, like all who had lived through that war-torn past.
"Has anyone brought you up to date yet, sir?" Miles began anxiously. "My original memo is extremely obsolete."
"I've just read Captain Galeni's version." Destang nodded at the comconsole.
Galeni
would
insist on writing reports. Miles sighed inwardly. It was an old academic reflex, no doubt. He restrained himself from craning his
neck to try to see.
"You don't seem to have made one yet," Destang noted.
Miles waved his bandaged left hand vaguely. "I've been in the infirmary, sir. But have you realized yet the Komarrans must have had control of the embassy's courier officer?"
"We arrested the courier six days ago on Tau Ceti," Destang said.
Miles exhaled in relief. "And was he—?"
"It was the usual sordid story." Destang frowned. "He committed a little sin; it gave them leverage to extract larger and larger ones, until there was no going back."
A curious mental judo, that sort of blackmail, reflected Miles. In the final analysis, it was fear of his own side, not fear of the Komarrans, that had delivered the courier into the enemy's hands. So a system meant to enforce loyalty ended by destroying it—some flaw, there . . .
"He's been owned by them for at least three years," continued Destang. "Anything that's gone in or out of the embassy since then may have passed before their eyes."
"Ouch." Miles suppressed a grin, substituting, he hoped, an expression of proper horror. So the subversion of the courier clearly predated the arrival of Galeni on Earth. Good.
"Yeah," said Ivan, "I just found copies of some of our stuff a little while ago in that mass data dump you pulled from Ser Galen's comconsole, Miles. It was quite a shock."
"I thought it might be there," said Miles. "There weren't too many other possibilities, once I realized we were being diddled. I trust the interrogation of the courier has cleared Captain Galeni of all suspicion?"