Memory

his words, reflecting the kaleidoscopic chaos inside his head.

Even Alys found it unbearable. Her rest breaks lengthened, and her visits to Illyan grew shorter. Miles stuck it out, wondering why he was doing so. Would Illyan remember any of this? Will I ever be able to forget it?

Illyan was no longer combative, but his lurching movements were abrupt and unpredictable. It was decided no attempt would be made to keep him conscious during the surgery. Monitoring of his higher neural functions would have to wait till after the fact. It was a profound relief to Miles when the techs came to anesthetize Illyan and prep him, and he became still at last.

As Gregor's appointed observer, Miles followed the procession right into the surgery, near the labs a few steps down the corridor from the patient rooms. No one even suggested he stay out. Where does the forty kilo Imperial Auditor sit? Anywhere he wants to. A tech assisted him into only slightly oversized sterile garb, and provided him with a comfortable stool with a good view of the holovid monitors that would record every aspect of the procedure, inside Illyan's skull and out, and a reasonable glimpse of the top of Illyan's head past the surgeon's shoulder. On the whole, Miles thought he would rather watch the monitors.

The tech depilated a little rectangular patch in the center of Illyan's scalp, almost unnecessary in the thinning hair. Miles felt he ought to be inured to bloodshed of all kinds by now, but his stomach still turned as the surgeon deftly cut through scalp and bone and peeled them back for access. The incision was tiny, really, a mere slot. Then the computer-aided microwaldoes were moved into place, concealing the cut, and the surgeon leaned into his vid enhancers, hunching over Illyan's head. Miles switched his attention back to the monitors. The rest of it took barely fifteen minutes. The surgeon laser-cauterized the tiny arterioles that fed the chip with blood and kept its deteriorating organic parts alive, and swiftly burnt through the cilia-like array of neural connectors, finer than spider silk, across the chip's surface. The most delicate surgical hand-tractor lifted the chip neatly from its matrix. The surgeon dropped it into a dish of solution held out for it by the anxious Dr. Avakli, hovering nearby.

Avakli and his tech headed for the door, hustling the dead chip off to the lab. Avakli paused and glanced back at Miles, as if they'd expected him to follow it. 'Are you coming, my lord?' Avakli inquired.

'No. I'll see you later. Carry on, Admiral.'

Miles was barely able to interpret what he was seeing on the monitors, but at least he could read Dr. Ruibal, attending to Illyan's physiological state alongside the surgeon; Ruibal was attentive but relaxed. No emergencies yet, then.

The surgeon fitted the sliver of skull back into its place with biotic glue, and closed the incision and cleaned it. Nothing but a neat, thin red line showed on the pale scalp; Zap the Cat had left gorier-looking scratches on human flesh than this.

The surgeon stood, and stretched. 'That's it, then. He's all yours, Dr. Ruibal.'

'That was . . . simpler than I had anticipated,' Miles commented.

'Several orders of magnitude simpler than installing it must have been,' agreed the surgeon. 'I had a horrible few minutes, when I first looked at the map of the thing, thinking that I was going to have to go in and remove all those neural connectors from their other ends, throughout the brain, until I realized they could just be left in situ.'

'There won't be any consequences from leaving them all in there?'

'No. They'll just sit there, inert and harmless. Like any other sort of cut wire, there's no circuit now. Nothing flows.'

The anesthetist inquired of Dr. Ruibal and the surgeon, 'Are you ready for me to administer the antagonist now?'

Ruibal took a deep breath. 'Yes. Wake him up. Let's find out what we've done.'

A hiss of a hypospray; the anesthetist watched Illyan's quickening breathing, then at a nod from the surgeon removed the tubes from Illyan's mouth, and loosened the head-restraints. A little more color warmed Illyan's pale features, the death-warmed-over look of unconsciousness fading.

Illyan's brown eyes opened; he squinted, and his gaze flicked from face to face. He moistened his dry lips.

'Miles?' he husked. 'Where the hell am I? What are you doing here?'

Miles s heart sank, momentarily, at this instant replay of the opening of most of Illyan's conversations of the last four days. But Illyan's gaze, though uncertain, remained steady on his face.

Miles shouldered forward through the medical mob, who gave way to him. 'Simon. You're in surgery at ImpSec HQ. Your eidetic memory chip broke down, irreparably. We've just removed it entirely.'

'Oh.' Illyan frowned.

'What is the last thing you can remember, sir?' Ruibal asked, watching closely.

'… remember?' Illyan winced. His right hand twitched, rose to the side of his head, waved forward, clenched, and fell back. 'I … it's like a dream.' He was silent a moment. 'A nightmare.'

Miles thought this an admirable demonstration of coherence and correct perception, though Ruibal's forehead wrinkled.

'Who,' Illyan added, 'decided . . . this?' A vague wave at his head.

'Me,' Miles admitted. 'Or rather, I advised Gregor, he consented.'

'Did he. Gregor put you in charge here?'

'Yes.' Miles quailed inwardly.

'Good,' Illyan sighed. Miles breathed again. Illyan's eyes grew more intent. 'And ImpSec? What's happening? How long . . . ?'

'General Haroche is flying your comconsole right now.'

'Lucas? Oh, good.'

'He has everything under control. No major crises aside from yours. You can rest.'

'I admit,' murmured Illyan, 'I'm tired.'

He looked absolutely beaten. 'I'm not surprised,' said Miles. 'This has been going on for over three weeks.'

'Has it, now.' Illyan's voice went lower, even more tentative. Once more, his hand made that strange gesture beside his face, as if calling up … as if trying to call up a vid image that failed to appear, before his mind's eye. His hand jerked again, then closed; he almost seemed to force it back to his side.

Ruibal the neurologist stepped in then, and administered his first few tests; Illyan reported no worse overt effects than a slight headache, and some muscle pain. Illyan studied his own bruised knuckles with some bemusement, but did not inquire about them, nor about the marks on his wrists. Miles trailed after as they trundled Illyan back to the patient room in the clinic.

Ruibal briefed Miles in the corridor, after Illyan was put back to bed. 'As soon as his physical recovery is established—as soon as he's eaten, eliminated, and slept—I'll start the battery of cognitive tests.'

'How soon can he … no, I suppose it's too early to ask that,' Miles began. 'I was about to ask, how soon could he go home.' Such as home was, for Illyan. Miles remembered his own long-ago sojourn in those windowless witness apartments downstairs, and shuddered inwardly.

Ruibal shrugged. 'Barring new developments, I'd be willing to release him after two days of close observation. He would need to come back in for daily follow-up testing, of course.'

'That soon?'

'As you saw, the surgery was not very invasive. It almost qualified as minor. Physically.'

'And nonphysically?'

'We'll have to find that out.'

Miles returned his sterile gear to a tech, and hunted up his tunic and its assorted decorations again. As soon as he'd dressed, he poked his head around the corner to a side office. Lady Alys Vorpatril sat patiently there; she looked up at the motion.

'All done,' Miles reported. 'It's all right so far. He seems to be back to something like normal, on track. Though he's a bit subdued. I don't see why you couldn't see him, if you want.'

'Yes. I want.' Lady Alys rose, and swept past him.

Miles paid a visit to the secured lab down the corridor that Avakli's team had taken over.

Avakli had the chip under a scanner already, but he'd not yet started to take it apart. A new face in the