Memory

though. That was three years ago. God, Miles, you are out of it. No problem. I can always go for someone younger.'

'At this rate, you're going to end up courting embryos.' We all will. 'That skewed male-female birth ratio about the time we were being born is catching up with us. Well, good going with your captaincy. I know you worked for it, even though you pretend not to. You'll be Chief of Ops before I turn around, I wager.'

Ivan sighed. 'Not unless they break down and finally give me some ship duty to go on my resume. They're awfully stingy with it, these days.'

'They're pinching half-marks in the training cycles, I'm afraid. Everyone's complaining on that score.'

'You've had more ship duty than anyone I know up to the rank of commodore, in your own inimitable, ass-backwards way,' Ivan added enviously.

'Yeah, but it's all classified secret. You're among the very few who know.'

'The point is, you haven't let the lack of half-marks stop you. Or the rules. Or respect for reality, as far as I can tell.'

'I never let anything stop me. That's how you get what you want, Ivan. No one's just going to hand it to you.' Well … no one was going to just hand it to Miles. Things fell out of the sky onto Ivan, and had done so all his charmed life. 'If you can't win, change the game.'

Ivan twitched a brow upward. 'If there's no game, isn't winning a pretty meaningless concept?'

Miles hesitated. 'Out of the mouths of … Ivans. I'll … have to think about that one.'

'Don't strain yourself, little genius.'

Miles managed an unfelt smile. Ivan looked as though this whole conversation was leaving as bad a taste in his mouth as it was in Miles s. Better to cut the losses. He would make it up with Ivan later. He always did. 'I think I'd better go now.'

'Yes. You have so much to do.' With a grimace, Ivan cut the com even as Miles's hand reached for the off-key.

Miles sat in his comconsole's station chair in silence, for a full minute. Then, being quite alone, he threw back his head and spat his frustration at his bedroom ceiling, in a string of all the blue galactic curses he knew. Afterwards, he felt slightly better, as if he'd managed to eject something poisonous from his soul along with the foul words. He didn't begrudge Ivan his promotion, not really. It was just … it was just . . .

Was winning all he really wanted? Or did he still want also to be seen to have won? And by whom? ImpSec was the wrong damned department to be working for, if you hungered for fame along with your fortune. Yet Illyan knew, Miles's parents knew, Gregor, all the close people who really counted knew about Admiral Naismith, knew what Miles really was. Elena, Quinn, all the Dendarii. Even Ivan knew. Who the hell am I twirling for, if not for them?

Well . . . there was always his grandfather General Count Piotr Vorkosigan, dead these thirteen years. Miles's eye fell on his grandfather's ceremonial dagger in its elaborate sheath, sitting in a place of honor, or at least uncluttered by other detritus, on its own shelf across the room. Miles had actually insisted on carrying it around with him at all times, earlier in his career. Proving . . . what? To whom? Nothing to no one, now.

He rose, walked over to the shelf, and lifted the weapon, drawing the fine blade from its sheath and watching the light play over the textured steel. It was still a fabulous antique, but it lacked . . . some former geas it had once held upon him; the magic was gone, or at least, the curse was lifted. It was just a knife. He slid it back into its sheath, opened his hand, and let it fall back to its place.

He felt out of balance. He had felt that way increasingly, when at home, but this trip the sensation was acute. The strange absence of the Count and Countess was like a preview of their deaths. This was a taste of what it would be like to be Count Miles Vorkosigan, all day long. He wasn't sure he liked the flavor.

I need . . . Naismith. This eviscerated Vor life unnerved him. But Naismith was an expensive hobby. To get ImpSec to pay for Naismith required a reason, literally a mission in life. What have you done to justify your existence today? was a question to which Admiral Naismith had better be able to supply a daily answer, or risk being snuffed out. ImpSec's accountants were as dangerous to his continuation as enemy fire. Well . . . almost. His hand traced the spray of scars on his chest, under his shirt.

There was something wrong with his new heart. It pumped blood all right, all the ventricles and valves were in order … it was supposed to have been grown from his own tissues, but it seemed a stranger's mismatch. . . . You're going looney, all alone in this empty house.

A mission. A mission was what he needed. Then everything would be all right again. It wasn't that he wished harm on anyone, but he longed for a hijacking, a blockade, a small colonial war . . . better still, a rescue. Free the prisoners, yeah.

You've done all that. If that's what you wanted, why aren't you happy?

The taste for adrenaline, it appeared, was an appetite that grew by what it fed upon. Naismith was an addiction, a craving that required ever-stronger and more toxic doses for the same level of satisfaction.

He'd tried a few dangerous sports, by way of experiment, to soothe that hunger. He wasn't all that good at them, lacking, among other things, the time to acquire true expertise. And besides . . . that extra edge was missing. It wasn't very interesting to risk only himself.

And a trophy seemed a tawdry bit of junk, when he'd played for and won ten thousand human lives in a single round.

I want my frigging mission. Call me, Illyan!

The call, when it came at last, literally caught him napping. The chime brought him abruptly out of an exhausted afternoon doze, after a night of almost no sleep at all, racked with circular patterns of worry and useless speculation. He had practiced in his mind, Miles estimated, about three hundred versions of his upcoming interview with Illyan. The only certainty he held was that the three hundred and first would be something totally different.

The face of Illyan s secretary formed over the vid plate. 'Now?' Miles said, before the man could get his first word out. He rubbed his hand through sleep-bent hair, and over his slightly numb face.

The secretary blinked, cleared his throat, and started in with his own practiced sentences. 'Good afternoon, Lieutenant Vorkosigan. Chief Illyan requests that you report to his office in one hour.'

'I could make it quicker.'

'One hour,' the secretary repeated. 'HQ will send a car for you.'

'Oh. Thanks.' Useless to ask for more information over a comconsole; Miles's machine was more secured than a commercial model, but not that much more.

The secretary cut the com. Well, it would give him time to take another cold shower, and dress properly. After his second bath of the day he pulled a set of fresh-pressed undress greens out of his closet, and set about transferring his ImpSec silver eyes to their place on the collar, in front of the—ahem!—battered red lieutenant's tabs he'd been wearing for eight bleeding years. The rank tabs were duplicates, but the eye-of-Horus pins, built up in molecular layers of tarnish-proof silver in a hidden pattern, were issued one set (right-and left-facing) to a soldier. Name and serial number were engraved on the back, and woe to the man who lost his. ImpSec eyes were as hard to counterfeit as money, and as powerful. When Miles was finished, his appearance was as neat as for any interview with the Emperor. Neater. Gregor had less immediate control over his destiny than Illyan did.

It was all sympathetic magic. When you couldn't do something truly useful, you tended to vent the pent-up energy in something useless but available, like snappy dressing. Still he was downstairs and waiting ten minutes before the ImpSec groundcar showed up at the front portico.

When he arrived this time at Illyan's office, the door to the inner chamber was open. The secretary waved him through.