Memory

'Er. Right.'

Miles glanced at the evidence room men. 'Gentlemen, will you wait for me in the outer office, please. Go nowhere and speak to no one.'

He and Haroche waited until they'd cleared the room, then Miles continued, 'What is certain, at this point, is that you have a mole in your internal security systems. Now, I can play this one of two ways. I can shut ImpSec down entirely while I bring in outside experts to check them. There are certain obvious disadvantages to this method.'

Haroche groaned. 'A slight understatement, my lord.'

'Yes. Taking all of ImpSec off-line for a week—or more—while people unfamiliar with your system attempt to learn and then check it seems to me an invitation to disaster. But running an internal check using internal personnel also has, um, obvious drawbacks. Any ideas?'

Haroche rubbed his forehead. 'I see your point. Suppose . . . suppose we set up a team of men to do the checking. At least three, who must work together at all times. They watch each other that way. One mole I must grant, but three, chosen at random . . . they can freeze the system in sections, with the minimum disruption to ImpSec's ongoing duties. If you like, I can give you the list of qualified personnel, and you can select the men.'

'Yes . . .' said Miles slowly. 'That works. Good. Do it.'

Haroche breathed obvious relief. 'I'm . . . grateful you are reasonable about this, my lord.'

'I'm always reasonable.'

Haroche's lip twitched, but he didn't argue. He sighed. 'This thing is growing uglier all the time. I despise internal investigations. Even if you win, you lose. But what … I confess, I don't understand this business with the evidence room. What do you make of it?'

Miles shook his head. 'It looks like it's meant to be a frame. But most frames come with pictures in them. This one's empty. It's all … very backwards. I mean, usually, you start with the crime and deduce the suspects. I'm having to start with the suspect and deduce the crime.'

'Yes, but . . . who would be fool enough to try to frame an Imperial Auditor? It seems just short of insane.'

Miles frowned, and paced the room, back and forth in front of Haroche's desk. How many times had he paced like this in front of Illyan, as they'd hammered out his mission plans? 'That depends … I want your systems analysts to look particularly for this. That depends on how long this thing has been sitting down there in the evidence room comconsole. It was a buried mine, set to go off only when touched. When were the changes made in the records? I mean, it could have been any time between the day I arrived downside, and this morning. But if they were done more than a few weeks back—somebody maybe didn't think they were framing an Imperial Auditor. I don't see how they could have foreseen my getting that appointment, when I didn't myself. They were framing, bluntly, a cashiered junior officer who had departed ImpSec under a cloud. The obscure son of a famous father, and some kind of demi-mutant to boot. I might have been tailor-made to be an easy target.'

Then.

'I don't like being a target. I'm downright allergic to it, anymore.'

Haroche shook his head in wonder. 'You confound me, Lord Vorkosigan. I believe I'm finally beginning to understand why Illyan always …'

'Why Illyan what?' Miles prodded after a long moment.

A lopsided smile lightened Haroche's heavy face. 'Came out of your debriefings swearing under his breath. And then promptly turned around and sent you out again on the stickiest assignments he had.'

Miles essayed a short, ironic salaam in Haroche's direction. 'Thank you, General.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Ivan found it two hours before dawn, not quite by chance.

It was in the fifth aisle of the second room he'd tackled, Weapons IV. He'd placed Biologicals, Poisons, and the Cold Room last on his list for this very contingency, in the hope that he might not have to do them at all. Miles would have chosen to knock off the worst rooms first; sometimes, he had to admit, Ivan was not such an idiot as he feigned.

Ivan trod out to the reception area. Miles had been cross-checking the inventory lists on the comconsole there for the last several hours, ever since he'd overseen Haroche's three-man security systems analysis team selected and put to work upstairs.

'I'm in a Weapons Room, right?' Ivan demanded, waving his inventory sheaf of plastic flimsies.

Miles tore his attention away from the chemical description of the nine-hundred-and-ninth item in alphabetical order in the Poisons Room: Ophidian Scrapings, Polian, Three Grams. 'If you say so.'

'Right. So what's a little box labeled 'Komarran virus' doing on Aisle Five, Shelf Nine, Bin Twenty-Seven? What the hell is it, and shouldn't it be in Biologicals? Did somebody misclassify it? I'm not unsealing the damned thing till you find out what it is. It might make me break out in green fungus, or bloat up like those poor suckers with the Sergyaran worm plague. Or worse.'

'The worm plague has to have been the most disgusting in recent history,' Miles agreed. 'But it wasn't very lethal, as plagues go. Let me look. Was it on the Weapons Room listing?'

'Oh, yes, right where it should be. They think.'

'So it's got to be a weapon. Maybe.' Miles marked his place and re-filed the poisons list he'd been examining on the Evidence Rooms' library comconsole, and pulled up that of the weapons section instead. The 'Komarran virus' had a code classification that blocked access to its description and history to any but men of the very highest security clearances. ImpSec HQ was crammed with such men. Miles smiled slightly, and overrode the lockout with his Auditor's seal.

He hadn't read more than the first three lines before he began to laugh, very softly. He would swear, but he couldn't think of any invective foul enough.

'What?' snapped Ivan, craning around to peer over Miles's shoulder.

'Not a virus, Ivan. Somebody in Classification needs a lecture from Dr. Weddell. It's a bioengineered apoptotic prokaryote. A little bug that eats things, specifically, neurochip proteins. The prokaryote, Illyan's prokaryote. It's no danger to you at all, unless you've acquired a neurochip I don't know about. Oh, God. This is where it came from … or rather, this is where it came from last.' He settled in and began to read; Ivan, hanging over the back of his station chair, knocked his hand aside when he tried to advance screens before Ivan had finished too.

This was it, hidden in plain sight, buried in an inventory of tens of thousands of other items. It had been sitting here demurely in Bin Twenty-Seven, Shelf Nine, collecting dust for nearly five years, ever since the day it was delivered to the ImpSec Evidence Room by an officer from Komarran Affairs. It had been picked up at that time by Imperial Counter-intelligence right here in Vorbarr Sultana, on an arrest-sweep of Komarran terrorist cells associated with . . . the late Ser Galen, killed on Earth while trying to launch his last complicated, dramatic, and futile plot for bringing down the Barrayaran Imperium and freeing Komarr. The plot for which Galen had created Miles's clone-brother Mark.

'Oh, hell,' said Ivan. 'Has your damned clone got something to do with this?'

'Brother,' corrected Miles, swallowing the same fear. 'I don't see how. He's been on Beta Colony for almost the last half-year. My Betan grandmother can confirm it.'

'If you want confirmation,' said Ivan, 'then you must be thinking what I'm thinking. Could he have been pretending to be you again?'

'Not without going on one hell of a crash diet.'

Ivan grunted half-assent. 'Could be done, with the right drugs.'