Memory

groped for a proper Barrayaran term—'young lady?'

'Not at this time.'

'Hm.' She gave him a speculative look; Gregor, who still held it, squeezed her hand. If she'd had a younger sister, Miles would have known exactly how to interpret that glance. Love, it seemed, was not only contagious, it was aggressively contagious.

'Miles has proven immune to our Vor ladies,' put in his Aunt Alys, not approvingly. Good God, was she about to give up on trying to alter Ivan's single state and start in on him instead, in sheer frustration?

Laisa looked as if she was trying to work out whether Lady Alys had meant to imply Miles preferred boys, without being so rude as to ask, or at least, not till she was alone again with her mentor.

'Not immune,' Miles put in hastily. 'Only unlucky, so far. My former travel schedule was pretty disruptive to romance.' At home, anyway. 'Now that I'm based in Vorbarr Sultana permanently, who knows. Um . . . maybe I'll ask Delia Koudelka.'

Laisa smiled her pleasure. 'I'd love to see her again.'

Alys poured the coffee all around; Laisa watched carefully. She didn't scribble notes, but Miles bet she would remember, next time, that he took his black. Alys led the conversation into lighter concerns for the time it took to drink one cup, no refills, then rose to usher Laisa back out again. Off to the ladies' lavatory, to dissect Miles in absentia? Don't be so twitchy, boy. Under Alys's tutelage, Laisa seemed to be making rapid connections with the Vor women's world, and unlike Haroche she did not seem to be underestimating its importance to her future.

Gregor released Laisa with obvious reluctance. 'Lady Alys,' he added, looking thoughtful. 'If you think he's up to it, why don't you bring Simon to the lunch Laisa and I are having with you and Lady Vorkosigan. I find I miss his conversation.' He caught Miles's eye, and smiled wryly.

'I thought Simons conversations with you were mostly reports,' Miles said.

'It's rather fascinating to find out what all those reports were displacing, all these years,' Lady Alys remarked. 'Certainly, Gregor. I think it will be good for him.' She shepherded Laisa out; Miles followed shortly.

Miles continued his self-inflicted inspection of ImpSec HQ where he'd left off. Personally, he would have preferred a pinpoint rapier thrust to this brute-force bludgeoning of the data, but when you didn't know what the hell you were looking for, you had to look at everything. Cryptography proved cryptic; their overt cooperation turned into a slyly technical explanation of their doings that lost him on the third turn. If you can't dazzle 'em with daring, hang 'em up with horseshit. Miles smiled through it all, and made a mental note to recheck this department again later. Finance seemed simply delighted that somebody cared, and threatened to go on forever. Miles fought his way clear of the spreadsheets, and escaped.

Housekeeping and Physical Plant proved unexpectedly fascinating. Miles had known the headquarters building was highly secured, but he hadn't realized in detail just how this was accomplished. He now learned where all the steel-reinforced walls and floors were, and just how much thought had gone into questions of blast containment, air circulation and filtration, and water purification. His respect for the building's late mad architect rose a notch. The building wasn't merely designed by a paranoid, it was well designed. Every room had its own biolab grade filtration system, in addition to the central unit that filtered and flash-cooked all returning air to destroy possible poison gases or microbes, before it was recirculated or vented. The heat generated was also used to distill the water, which explained its peculiar flat taste. Miles had seen spaceships with systems less tight. No colds were going to be transmitted among-personnel here.

The janitorial staff were all serving soldiers, veterans of at least ten years' standing. They were also, he discovered, the best paid of their classification of any such men in the Imperial Service. Morale was high among them; once they'd realized his visit implied no criticism of the quality of their work, they became not merely cooperative but downright friendly. It seemed no inspecting officer had actually been willing to crawl through the ductwork in person with them for quite some time; but then, most senior inspectors were a lot older, stiffer, and stouter than Miles. He also discovered, along the way, what had to be the most boring job in ImpSec HQ—checking the vid monitors of all the kilometers of ductwork and piping in the building. He could only marvel that it had never fallen to his lot before, during one of his earlier periods of semi-disgrace.

Janitorial was quite pleased with their Imperial Auditor by the time he reluctantly departed, and vice versa. Their combination of competence and camaraderie put him in mind for a brief and breathtakingly painful moment of the Dendarii, till his mind shied away from the comparison.

His busyness blocked excessive morbid reflection on the general weirdness of his current situation. On the whole, Miles thought he preferred it that way. He was an ImpSec outsider, a civilian, for the first time in his adult life, and yet he was obtaining a better view of the organization he'd so passionately served than he'd ever had before. Was this some sort of final good-bye? Enjoy it while it lasts.

Conscience-prodded, he broke off early enough that night to actually go home and have dinner with his mother and Illyan, a welcome touch of human civility. He successfully kept the conversation focused on the progress of the Imperial colony on Sergyar, about which, indeed, the Countess had much of interest to tell. He returned to HQ. early the next morning, and breathed down Haroche s neck for a bit, till Haroche began once more to wistfully enumerate the benefits of a jaunt to Jackson's Whole. Miles grinned, and continued his inspection.

Miles's visit to Analysis took the most time that day. Among other things, he stopped in to talk with Galeni, and with the analysts now assigned to this internal ImpSec problem; they too were mostly waiting for the return of galactic reports. He checked on the men working other problems as well. The high priority of Illyan's chip sabotage did not mean that all other crises went on hold. Miles had a long and interesting chat with Komarran Affairs chief General Allegre, which understandably tended to turn to Gregor's betrothal, a topic Miles had carefully avoided with Galeni. Miles wondered if it would be worth a trip at least as far as Komarr to talk in person with Allegre's counterpart in Galactic Affairs stationed there. Colonel Olshansky, in Sergyaran Affairs, inquired politely after the Countess; Miles invited him to dinner with her, a courtesy the colonel seemed to find a bit daunting, but which he accepted with alacrity.

What Miles had been thinking of as the dessert of his inspection thus fell, not by accident, the last thing that afternoon.

The ImpSec Evidence Rooms were sited in the sub-sub-basement, occupying the chambers of the old prison block—chambers of horrors, Miles had always thought of them. The block had been the best modern dungeon, in Mad Emperor Yuri's blatant last days, with a distinctly medical flavor that Miles found more chilling than dripping walls and spiderwebs and chains and scuttling vermin. Emperor Ezar had used it too, much more discreetly, for his political prisoners—starting with Yuri s own gaolers, a grace note of cosmic justice in a generally ruthless reign. Miles felt it was one of the better quiet achievements of his father's Regency that the sinister prison had then been converted into, effectively, a museum. It really ought to feature a lifelike tableau in wax of old Mad Yuri and his goon squads.

But as evidence storage rooms went, it had to be one of the most secure on the planet. It now housed all the most interesting trinkets and toys ImpSec had collected in the course of its many investigations. The several rooms were stuffed with documentation, weapons, biologicals—well sealed, Miles trusted—drugs, and even more bizarre items confiscated from the evil and the unlucky, awaiting prosecutions, further investigations, or reclassification and culling as obsolete matter.

He fancied a meditative visit to the weapons room. It had been a couple of years since he'd last been down here, bringing home some interesting goodies from one of his Dendarii missions. On one of the back shelves he'd discovered a corroded metal crossbow and some emptied soltoxin gas canisters. They were the last physical remains aside from himself of the poisoning attempt upon the then-new Imperial Regent Lord Aral Vorkosigan and his pregnant wife, thirty years and a few months ago. Alpha and omega, boy, beginnings and endings.

The sergeant in charge at the front desk, sited in the old prisoner-processing chamber at the sections only entrance, was a pale young man with the mild air of a monastic librarian. He shot up out of his comconsole station chair when Miles entered, and stood at attention, obviously uncertain whether to bow or salute. He ducked his head, by way of compromise. 'My Lord Auditor. How may I assist you?'

'Sit down, relax, and cycle me in. I want a tour,' Miles told him.

'Certainly, my Lord Auditor.' He reseated himself as Miles, experienced in the procedures, approached the desk and laid his palm on the read-pad, and stretched his neck to catch the retina scan. He smiled a little gratefully