Komarr

mind, eased him out. I try never to take away somebody's face when I'm negotiating.'

'Not even a child's?' Her lips quirked, and her brows flicked up in an expression he wasn't sure how to interpret. 'A rare approach.'

'So, maybe my tactics had the novelty of surprise. I admit, I did think of ordering my ImpSec minions into the breach, but it would have looked like a very silly order. Nikki's dignity wasn't the only one on the line.'

'Well . . . thank you for being so patient. One doesn't normally expect busy and important men to take the time for kids.'

Her voice was warm; she was pleased. Oh, good. He babbled in relief, 'Well, I do. Expect it, that is. My Da always did, you see—take time for me. Later, when I learned not everyone's Da did the same, I just assumed it was only a trait of the most busy and most important men.'

'Hm.' She looked down at her hands, resting on either side of her cup, and smiled crookedly.

Professor Vorthys lumbered in, dressed for the day in his comfortable rumpled suit, scarcely more form- fitting than his pajamas. It was tailor-made garb, appropriate to his status as an Imperial Voice, but he must, Miles reflected, have driven his tailor to despair before coaxing just the fit he wanted, With lots of room in the pockets, as he'd once explained to Miles while the Professora rolled her eyes heavenward. Vorthys was stuffing data disks into these capacious compartments. 'Are you ready, Miles? ImpSec just called to say they'll have an aircar and driver waiting for us at the West Locks.'

'Yes, very good.' With an apologetic smile to Ekaterin, Miles tossed off the last of his coffee and rose. 'Will you be all right today, Madame Vorsoisson?'

'Yes, of course. I have a lot to do. I have an appointment with an estate law counselor, and any amount of sorting and packing . . . the guard won't have to go with me, will he?'

'Not unless you wish. We are leaving one man on duty here, by your leave. But if our Komarrans had wanted hostages, they could have taken me and Tien that first night.' And bought themselves loads more trouble. If only they had, Miles reflected regretfully. His case could be ever so much further along by now. Soudha was too damned smart. 'If I thought you and Nikki were in any possible danger—' I'd figure some way to use you for bait— no, no. 'If you are in the least uncomfortable, I'd be happy to assign you a man.'

'No, indeed.'

That faint smile again. Miles felt he could happily spend the rest of the morning studying all the subtle expressions of her lips. Equipment lists. You're going to go study equipment lists. 'Then I bid you good morning, Madame.'

Lord Auditor Vorthys, after his first survey of the new situation, had chosen to set up his personal headquarters out at the Waste Heat experiment station. Miles had to admit, the security there was great; no one was likely to blunder in by accident, or wander across its bleak surroundings unobserved. Well, he and Tien had, but the occupants had been distracted at the time, and Tien had apparently possessed a dire luck which amounted to antigenius. Miles wondered which had come first, for Soudha; had the administrative acquisition of such a perfect site for secret work triggered the idea for his shadow project, or had he had the idea first, and then maneuvered himself into the right promotion to capture control of the station? Just one of a long list of questions Miles was itching to ask the man, under fast-penta.

After the ImpSec aircar delivered the two Auditors, Miles went off first to check the progress of his, or rather, ImpSec Engineering Major D'Emorie's, inventory crews. The sergeant in charge promised completion of the tedious identification, counting, and cross-check of every portable object in the station before the end of today. Miles then returned to Vorthys, who had set up a sort of engineer's nest in one of the long upstairs workrooms in the office section, with roomy tables, lots of light, and a proliferating array of high-powered comconsoles. The Professor grunted greetings from behind a multicolored spaghetti-array of mathematical projections, glimmering above his vid-plate. Miles settled down in a comconsole station chair to study the growing list of real objects Colonel Gibbs claimed Waste Heat had paid for, but which were no longer to be found on Waste Heat's premises, hoping some subliminally familiar ordnance pattern might emerge.

After a while, the Professor shut off his holovid display and sighed. 'Well, no doubt they built something. The topside crews picked up some more fragments yesterday, mostly melted.'

'So does our inventory represent one something, destroyed along with Radovas, or two somethings?' Miles wondered aloud.

'Oh, I should think two, at least. Though the second may not have been assembled yet. If one thinks it through from Soudha's point of view, one realizes he's been having a very bad month.'

'Yes, if that whole mess topside wasn't some really bizarre suicide mission, or internecine sabotage, or. … and where is Marie Trogir, blast it? I'm not at all sure the Komarrans knew, either. When he talked to me, Soudha seemed to be angling to find out if I knew anything of her. Unless that was just more of his misdirection.'

'Are you seeing anything in your inventory yet?' asked Vorthys.

'Mm, not exactly what I'm looking for. The final autopsy report on Radovas revealed some cellular distortions, in addition to the gross, and I use that term advisedly, damage. They reminded me a little of what happens to human bodies which have suffered a near-miss from a gravitic imploder beam. A hit, of course, is very distinctive, in a messy and violently-distributed way, but a near-miss can kill without actually bursting the body. I've been wondering since I first saw the cell scans if Soudha has reinvented the gravitic imploder lance, or some other gravitic field weapon. Scaling them down to personnel size has been an ongoing ambition of the weapons boffins, I know. But . . . the parts list doesn't quite jibe. There's a load of heavy-duty power transmission equipment among this stuff, but I'm damned if I see what they're transmitting it to.'

'The math fragments found in Radovas's library intrigue me very much,' said Vorthys. 'You spoke to Soudha's mathematician, Cappell—what was your impression of him?'

'It's hard to say, now that I know he was lying through his teeth at me through the whole interview,' said Miles ruefully. 'I deduce that Soudha trusted him to keep his head, at a time when the whole team must have been scrambling like hell to complete their withdrawal. Soudha was very selective, I now realize, in just who he gated through to me.' Miles hesitated, not just sure he could lay out the logic of his next conclusion. 'I think Cappell was a key man. Maybe next after Soudha himself. Although the accountant, Foscol … no. I give you a foursome. Soudha, Foscol, Cappell, and Radovas. They're the core. I'll bet you Betan dollars to sand the farrago about a love affair between Radovas and Trogir was a complete fabrication, a convincing smoke screen they developed after the accident, to buy time. But in that case, where is Trogir now?' After a moment he added, 'And were they planning to use their thing, or sell it? If sell, they'd almost have to find a customer out of the Empire. Maybe Trogir double-crossed everyone and took off with the specs to some high bidder. ImpSec's got a tight watch for our missing Komarrans on all the jump-point exits from the Empire. They only had a couple hours' start, they can't have got out before the lid clamped down. But Trogir had a two-week head start. She could be long gone by now.'

Vorthys shook his head, declining to reason in advance of his data; Miles sighed, and returned to his list.

By the end of an hour, Miles was cross-eyed from staring at meters and meters of really supremely boring inventory readouts. His mind wandered, revolving a plan to go attach himself like a hyperactive leech to all the field agents searching for the fugitive Komarrans. Sequentially, he supposed; he had learned not to wish to be twins, or any other multiple of himself. Miles thought of the old Barrayaran joke about the Vor lord who jumped on his horse and rode off in all directions. Forward momentum only worked as a strategy if one had correctly identified which way was forward. After all, Lord Auditor Vorthys didn't run around in circles; he sat composedly in the center and let it all come to him.

Miles's meditations on the proven disadvantages of cloning were interrupted when Colonel Gibbs called them. Gibbs was sporting a demure smile of amazing smugness. The Professor wandered over into range of the vid pickup and leaned on the back of Miles's chair as Gibbs spoke.

'My Lord Auditor. My Lord Auditor.' Gibbs nodded to them both. 'I've found something odd I expect you want. We finally succeeded in tracing the real purchase orders of Waste Heat's largest equipment expenditures.