Memory

'I thought I'd made the Dendarii too valuable for ImpSec to even dream of doing anything else with me.'

'So, you did a little too good a job.'

'Chief of ImpSec at age thirty-five. Huh. God be praised, I'm saved from that at least. Well. No joy to Haroche, to be required to paper train some Vor puppy for the express purpose of being promoted over his head. He ought to be quite relieved.'

Galeni said apologetically, 'I gather he was, actually.'

'Ha,' said Miles blackly. He added after a moment, 'By the way, Duv. I trust it's obvious that what I've told you is private information. The official version, for ImpSec HQ and everywhere else, was that I was medically discharged without prejudice.'

'So Illyan said, when Haroche asked. Illyan was tight-lipped as hell. But you could see there had to be more to it.'

Ivan excused himself. Miles brooded into his teacup. He thought he could sleep, now. In fact, there was nothing he wanted more. Ivan returned all too soon, and dumped down a valise beside the kitchen table.

'What's that?' Miles asked suspiciously.

'My things,' said Ivan. 'For a couple of days.'

'You're not moving in!'

'What, don't you have enough space? You've got more rooms than a hotel, Miles.'

Miles slumped again, recognizing an argument he wasn't going to win. 'There's a thought, for my next career. Vorkosigan's Bed and Breakfast.'

'Rooms cheap?' Ivan cocked an eyebrow.

'Hell, no. Charge 'em a fortune.' He paused. 'So when are you planning to move back out?'

'Not until you get some people in here. Till you get your head fixed, you certainly need a driver, at the very least. I saw your lightflyer downstairs in the garage, by the way. In the shop for adjustments, my ass. And somebody to cook meals and stand over you and see you eat them. And somebody to clean up after you.'

'I don't make that much mess—'

'And clean up after all the other somebodies,' Ivan went on relentlessly. 'This place needs a staff, Miles.'

'Just like any other museum, eh? I don't know.'

'If you're saying you don't know if you want them, guess what. You don't have a choice. If you're saying you don't know how to hire them . . . want my mother to do it for you?'

'Er … I think I'd rather select my own personnel. She'd make it all too right and proper, to use Sergeant Bothari's old phrase.'

'There it is. Do it, or I'll have her do it for you. How's that for a threat?'

'Effective.'

'Right, then.'

'Don't you think I could get by with just one person? To do everything, drive, cook …'

Ivan snorted. '—chase after you and make you take your nasty medicine? For that, you'd need to hire a Baba to find you a wife. Why don't you just start with a driver and cook, and go on from there.'

Miles grimaced tiredly.

'Look,' said Ivan. 'You're a bleeding Vor lord in Vorbarr Sultana. We own this town. So live like one! Have some fun for a change!'

'Have you lost your mind, Ivan?'

'You're not a guest in Vorkosigan House, Miles. You're its only child, or you were till Mark came along, and he has his own private fortune. At least widen your possibilities! You grew so narrow, working for Illyan. It's like you hardly had a life at all, lately.'

That's quite right. Naismith had all the life. But Naismith was dead now—killed by that needle grenade on Jackson's Whole after all, though the double-take of realization had required a full year to run its course.

Miles had read of mutants, twins born joined together inseparably in their bodies. Sometimes, horrifically, one died first, leaving the other attached to a corpse for hours or days until they died too. Lord Vorkosigan and Admiral Naismith, body-bound twins. I don't want to think about this anymore. I don't want to think at all.

'Lets … go to bed, Ivan. Its late, isn't it?'

'Late enough,' said Ivan.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Miles slept till midmorning the next day. To his dismay, when he threaded the labyrinth of the house down to the kitchen, he found Ivan sitting drinking coffee, his breakfast dishes piled in the sink.

'Don't you have to go to work?' Miles inquired, pouring the chewy dregs from the coffeemaker into his cup.

'I have a few days personal leave,' Ivan informed him.

'How many?'

'As many as I need.'

As many as he needed, that is, to satisfy himself that Miles was going to behave properly. Miles thought it through. So … if he hired that unwanted staff, Ivan, relieved of the deathwatch, would slope off home to his neat little flat—which, incidentally, had no staff underfoot, only a discreet cleaning service. Then Miles could fire the staff . . . that is, discharge them again, with suitably glowing recommendations and a bonus. Yeah. That would work.

'Have you communicated to your parents about this yet?' Ivan asked.

'No. Not yet.'

'You ought to. Before they get some garbled version through some other source.'

'So I ought. It's . . . not easy.' He glanced up at Ivan. 'I don't suppose you could . . . ?'

'Absolutely not!' cried Ivan in a tone of horror. After a moment of silence, he relented to the measure of a, 'Well … if you really can't. But I'd rather not.'

'I'll . . . think about it.'

Miles slopped the last of the greenish coffee into his cup, trudged back upstairs, and dressed in a loose, embroidered backcountry-style shirt and dark trousers, which he found in the back of his closet. He'd last worn them three years ago. At least they weren't tight. While Ivan wasn't around, he pulled all his Barrayaran uniforms and boots out of his closet and bundled them into storage in an unused guest room down the hall, so he wouldn't have to look at them every time he opened his closet door. After a long hesitation, he exiled his Dendarii mercenary uniforms likewise. The few clothes left hanging seemed lonely and forlorn.

He settled himself at his comconsole in his bedroom. A message to his parents, ah God. And he ought to send one to Elli Quinn, too. Would he ever get the chance to make it right again with her? Face-to-face, body to body? It was a horribly complex thing to attempt via a comconsole message: just his thin electronic ghost, mouthing words ill-chosen or misunderstood, weeks out of synchrony. And all his messages to the Dendarii were monitored by ImpSec censors.

I can't face this now. I'll do it later. Soon. I promise.

He turned his thoughts instead to the less daunting problem of Vorkosigan House staffing. So what was the budget for this project? His lieutenant's medical-discharge half-pay would barely cover the salary and board of one full-time servant, even with a free room thrown in, at least of the sorts of superior folk normally employed by the aristocracy in the capital—he would be competing with sixty other District Counts' households in that labor market