Memory

'I don't think so. I promise you, the last thing Mark wants is to be me, ever again. I'll have his whereabouts formally checked anyway, just to stop everyone from galloping down a blind alley. The ImpSec office at the embassy on Beta Colony keeps him in their sights just because Mark is … who he is.'

Miles read on. The Jacksonian connection was quite real too. The chip-eating prokaryote had indeed been made to order there for the Komarran terrorists, by one of the Houses Minor more usually known for its tailored drugs. And Illyan had been its intended target from the beginning; the disruption of ImpSec had been timed to coincide with the assassination of then-Prime Minister Count Aral Vorkosigan. The ImpSec investigation of five years ago had traced the prokaryote right back to its building of origin, and the Komarran payment to the Jacksonian biochem team's bank accounts. The new search, just launched, must sooner or later turn up the exact same data: later, if they had to totally reconstruct the first tedious investigation; sooner, if the organization overcame its collective amnesia and spotted the data in its own files. Three to eight weeks, depending, Miles estimated.

'This explains . . . the frame, at least,' Miles muttered.

Ivan cocked an eyebrow. 'How so?'

'I came at it in the wrong order. My ersatz visit here was meant to be found, yes, inevitably, but it wasn't meant to be found first. This data . . .'—Miles waved at the comconsole—'when it finally arrived here, would have focused attention on the Evidence Rooms. Instead of starting with the comconsole records, and then checking the inventory, the investigators would have begun with Bin Twenty-Seven and then checked the security records of people going in and out. Where they would have been quite pleased with themselves for finding me, a recently cashiered officer with no business here. Gone at that way, it would have been a much more convincing frame.'

Miles sat for a moment, ordering his thoughts. Then he called ImpSec Forensics and requisitioned the senior officer on call. After that he put through a call to Dr. Vaughn Weddell's home console.

The machine blocked him, and tried to take a message; Weddell didn't care to have his beauty sleep interrupted, it appeared. He tried once more, with the same results, waited a full three seconds to recover his patience, and then called the Imperial Guards. Miles had the duty officer dispatch a couple of their largest uniformed men to Weddell's flat with instructions to wake him up by whatever means were required, and bring him at once to ImpSec HQ, carried bodily if necessary.

It still seemed an eternity—almost dawn outside, Miles gauged—before Miles had his team assembled, and marched them all before him into Weapons Room IV. Weddell was still whining under his breath about being awakened so rudely in the middle of the night; as long as he prudently kept his complaints sotto voce, Miles chose to ignore them. Neither he nor Ivan had gotten any sleep at all, not that Miles was the least tired right now.

The forensics man was given first crack at the exterior of the little sealed biocontainer.

'It's been moved a few times,' he reported. 'Some fingerprints, some smudges, none very fresh . . .' He duly recorded them by laser-scan, for cross-match with Evidence Rooms personnel, and the rest of the population of the Empire if necessary. 'The screamer-signal circuit to detect the container's removal from the Evidence Rooms has never been activated. No hairs or fibers. I wouldn't expect much dust, given the air filters here. That's all I can say. It's all yours, gentlemen.'

He stepped back; Ivan stepped forward, drew the box from its shelf, and positioned it on the lighted examination board brought in for the purpose. The box was sealed with the simplest of numeric code-locks, designed more to keep it from popping open if accidentally dropped than for any real security—for one thing, the access-code was listed right in the inventory description. Ivan referred to the flimsy, and tapped in the sequence. The little lid swung up.

'Right,' drawled Ivan, peering inside, and then at his inventory-flimsy again. The box was lined with a shock-proof gel-pack, scored by six parallel slots. Three slots were filled with tiny brown capsules, small enough for a child to swallow. The other three were empty. 'Six sealed vector-delivery units—that's what they're called on here, anyway—to start with, one taken out for examination five years ago and listed as destroyed. Five supposedly left—only now there are three.' He opened his hand with a flourish; the forensics man again stepped forward, and bent over the box to begin checking the seal from the inside.

Right, right! Miles howled inwardly, with a small mental reservation for that one capsule removed five years back. That was going to complicate things, but perhaps the laboratory records would help, once retrieved.

'You mean,' moaned Weddell, 'I racked my brains for a week reassembling that damned crap, and a whole undamaged sample was sitting downstairs all that time?'

'Yep.' Miles grinned. 'I hope you like irony.'

'Not at this hour of the morning.'

The forensics man looked up and reported, 'The lock has never been forced.'

'All right,' Miles said. 'The box goes to Forensics for a full examination. Ivan, I want you to go with it. Don't let those weasels up there sneak it out of your sight. Weddell, you take one of those samples for a molecular analysis—I want you to confirm itis the same crap you flushed out of Illyan's chip, and I want to know anything else you can figure out about it. It and you don't leave the building—you can have the same lab in the clinic again, and any supplies you care to requisition, but no one—no one—but you is to touch the sample. You report to no one but me. The last two units go back into the new box on the shelf, locked under my Auditor's seal. I trust it will stay there this time.' Though I'm beginning to think it would be safer in my pocket.

Haroche, the rat, had gone home to sleep last night after the systems team was assigned, an hour after midnight. While waiting for his return, Miles took a break for breakfast in the ImpSec HQ cafeteria. This was a mistake, he realized, catching himself dozing off into his coffee mug. He dared not stop. Somehow, getting started again was a lot harder than it used to be.

He was yawning in Haroche's outer office when the ImpSec chief entered, also yawning. Haroche blearily swallowed his yawn, and motioned Miles to follow into his inner sanctum. Miles pulled up a chair and sat as Haroche settled behind his desk. 'So, Lord Vorkosigan. Any progress?'

'Oh, yes.' Rapidly, Miles brought Haroche up to speed on the events of the last hours. Haroche, hunching forward on the edge of his station chair, wasn't yawning by the time he finished.

'Damn,' Haroche breathed, leaning back again. 'Damn. There goes the last hope of this being anything other than an inside job.'

'I'm afraid so.'

'So now we have another list. How many men could have known the samples were down there?'

'Five years' worth of Evidence Rooms inventory teams, for starters,' Miles said.

'The men who captured and delivered it,' Haroche added.

'And anyone working here at the time who might have been close friends with the men who captured and delivered it.' Miles began to tick off the count on his hands. He wondered if he was going to have enough fingers. 'It was filed under the seal of the Komarran Affairs chief who preceded Allegre. Allegre himself was still working on Komarr itself at that time, as the local section head. I checked. Also . . . any Komarrans in those revolutionary groups who escaped capture at the time, or who were imprisoned and have been recently released. People they might have talked to in prison . . . That list had better be checked too, I suppose, though, as you say . . . the comconsole tampering compels me to believe it's an inside job too.'

Haroche made a note. 'Right. Not a short list yet, I'm afraid, by any means.'

'No. Though it's a lot shorter than the three planets full of people we started with.' Miles hesitated, then added reluctantly, 'I don't know if my brother Lord Mark—my clone, that is—knew about this stuff or not. It will be necessary to check, I suppose.'

Haroche's gaze rose to meet Miles's, his expression arrested. 'Do you suppose—'

'Not physically possible,' Miles asserted. 'Mark has spent the last six months on Beta Colony. Been to school every day since the term began.' I hope. 'His whereabouts are eminently provable.'

'Hm.' Haroche reluctantly subsided.

'Do you remember anything about that period?'

'I was still assistant Domestic Affairs section-chief. It was just before my last promotion. I remember the