Cetaganda

looked back, she had already swept to her feet and was hurrying away.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Miles had not entered the sacred confines of the Barrayaran embassy's ImpSec offices before, having stayed discreetly upstairs in the diplomatic corps' plusher territory. As he'd posited, it was on the second lowest basement level. A uniformed corporal ushered him past security scanners and into Colonel Vorreedi's office.

It was not as austere as Miles expected, being decorated all about with small examples of Cetagandan art objects, though the powered sculptures were all turned off this morning. Some might be mementos, but the rest suggested the so-called protocol officer was a collector of excellent taste, if limited means.

The man himself was seated at a desk cleared in utilitarian bareness. Vorreedi was dressed as usual in the underlayers and robes of a middle-ranking ghem-lord of painfully sober preferences, subdued blues and grays. Except for the lack of face paint, in a crowd of ghem Vorreedi would practically disappear, though behind a Barrayaran ImpSec comconsole desk the effect of the ensemble was a little startling.

Miles moistened his lips. 'Good morning, sir. Ambassador Vorob'yev told me you wanted to see me.'

'Yes, thank you, Lord Vorkosigan.' Vorreedi's nod dismissed the corporal, who withdrew silently. The doors slid shut behind him with a heavy sealing sound. 'Do sit down.'

Miles slipped into the station chair across the desk from Vorreedi, and smiled in what he hoped seemed innocent good cheer. Vorreedi looked across at Miles with keen, undivided attention. Not good. Vorreedi was second in authority here only to Ambassador Vorob'yev, and like Vorob'yev, had been chosen as a top man for one of the most critical posts in the Barrayaran diplomatic corps. One might count on Vorreedi to be a very busy man, but never a stupid one. Miles wondered if Vorreedi's meditations this past night had been one half so busy as his own. Miles braced himself for an Illyanesque opening shot, such as What the hell are you up to, Vorkosigan, trying to start a damned war single-handed?!

Instead, Colonel Vorreedi favored him with a long, thoughtful stare, before observing mildly, 'Lieutenant Lord Vorkosigan. You are an ImpSec courier officer, by assignment.'

'Yes, sir. When I am on duty.'

'An interesting breed of men. Utterly reliable and loyal. They go here, go there, deliver whatever is asked of them without question or comment. Or failure, short of intervention by death itself.'

'It's not usually that dramatic. We spend a lot of time riding around in jumpships. One catches up on one's reading.'

'Mm. And to a man, these glorified mailmen report to Commodore Boothe, head of ImpSec Communications, Komarr. With one exception.' Vorreedi's gaze intensified. 'You are listed as reporting directly to Simon Illyan himself. Who reports to Emperor Gregor. The only other person I know of offhand in a chain of command that short is the Chief of Staff of the Imperial Service. It's an interesting anomaly. How do you explain it?'

'How do I explain it?' Miles echoed, temporizing. He thought briefly of replying, I never explain anything, except that was both 1) already evident and 2) clearly not the answer Vorreedi was looking for. 'Why . . . every once in a while Emperor Gregor needs a personal errand run for himself or his household which is too trivial, or too inappropriate, to assign to working military personnel. Perhaps he wants, say, an ornamental breadfruit bush brought from the planet Pol to be planted in the garden of the Imperial Residence. They send me.'

'That's a good explanation,' Vorreedi agreed blandly. There was a short silence. 'And do you have an equally good story for how you acquired this pleasant job?'

'Nepotism, obviously. Since I am clearly,' Miles's smile thinned, 'physically unfit for normal duties, this post was manufactured for me by my family connections.'

'Hm.' Vorreedi sat back, and rubbed his chin. 'Now,' he said distantly, 'if you were a covert ops agent here on a mission from God,' meaning Simon Illyan—same thing, from the ImpSec point of view, 'you should have arrived with some sort of Render all due assistance order. Then a poor ImpSec local man might know where he stood with you.'

If I don't get this man under control, he can and will nail my boots to the floor of the embassy, and Lord X will have no impediment at all to his baroque bid for chaos and empire. 'Yes, sir,' Miles took a breath, 'and so would anyone else who saw it.'

Vorreedi glanced up, startled. 'Does ImpSec Command suspect a leak in my communications?'

'Not as far as I know. But as a lowly courier, I can't ask questions, can I?'

By the slight widening of his eyes, Vorreedi caught the joke. A subtle man indeed. 'From the moment you set foot on Eta Ceta, Lord Vorkosigan, I have not noticed you stop asking questions.'

'A personal failing.'

'And … do you have any supporting evidence for your explanation of yourself?'

'Certainly.' Miles stared thoughtfully into the air, as if about to pull his words from the thinnest part. 'Consider, sir. All other ImpSec courier officers have an implanted allergy to fast-penta. It renders them interrogation-proof to illicit questioners, at fatal cost. Due to my rank and relations, that was judged too dangerous a procedure to do to me. Therefore, I am qualified for only the lowest-security sort of missions. It's all nepotism.'

'Very . . . convincing.'

'It wouldn't be much good if it weren't, sir.'

'True.' Another long pause. 'Is there anything else you'd like to tell me—Lieutenant?'

'When I return to Barrayar, I will be giving a complete report of my m—excursion to Simon Illyan. I'm afraid you'll have to apply to him. It is definitely not within my authority to try and guess what he will wish to tell you.'

There, whew. He'd told no lies at all, technically, even by implication. Yeah. Be sure and point that out when they play a transcript of this conversation at your future court-martial. But if Vorreedi chose to construe that Miles was a covert ops agent working on the highest levels and in utmost secrecy, it was no less than perfectly true. The fact that his mission here was spontaneously self-appointed and not assigned from above was . . . another order of problem altogether.

'I … could add a philosophical observation.'

'Please do, my lord.'

'You don't hire a genius to solve the most intractable imaginable problem, and then hedge him around with a lot of rules, nor try to micro-manage him from two weeks' distance. You turn him loose. If all you need is somebody to follow orders, you can hire an idiot. In fact, an idiot would be better suited.'

Vorreedi's fingers drummed lightly on his comconsole desk. Miles felt the man might have tackled an intractable problem or two himself, in his past. Vorreedi's brows rose. 'And do you consider yourself a genius, Lord Vorkosigan?' he asked softly. Vorreedi's tone of voice made Miles's skin crawl, it reminded him so much of his father's when Count Vorkosigan was about to spring some major verbal trap.

'My intelligence evaluations are in my personnel file, sir.'

'I've read it. That's why we're having this conversation.' Vorreedi blinked, slowly, like a lizard. 'No rules at all?'

'Well, one rule, maybe. Deliver success or pay with your ass.'

'You have held your current post for almost three years, I see, Lieutenant Vorkosigan. . . .Your ass is still intact, is it?'

'Last time I checked, sir.' For the next five days, maybe.

'This suggests astonishing authority and autonomy.'

'No authority at all. Just responsibility.'

'Oh, dear.' Vorreedi pursed his lips very thoughtfully indeed. 'You have my sympathy, Lord Vorkosigan.'