Memory

Miles's clone-brother Mark as his next brother-in-law. If not, Miles wanted to be there when somebody told him, just to savor the look on his face. Also, he wondered if kittens would make good wedding presents. . . .

A rich, raspy baritone voice over his shoulder said, 'Congratulations on your promotion, sir.'

Miles grinned dryly, and turned around to greet his father. 'Which one, sir?'

'I admit,' said Viceroy Count Aral Vorkosigan, 'I was thinking of your Imperial Auditorship, but I understand from Gregor you slipped a captaincy in there somehow as well. You hadn't mentioned it. Congratulations on that, too, though . . . that has to be the most roundabout method of acquiring a set of blue tabs I've ever heard of.'

'If you can't do what you want, do what you can. Or how you can. The captaincy . . . completed something, for me.'

'I'm glad you survived long enough to finally grow into yourself. So, you're not losing your forward momentum with age, are you, boy?' The Count refrained from following this up with one of those we're-getting-so- old complaints mainly designed to invite the listener to offer a contradiction.

'I don't think so.' Miles's eyes narrowed in a brief moment of introspection. His new calmness was still there, inside, but it did not feel at all weary. Quite the opposite. 'It's just taking another direction. Vorhovis tells me I'm the youngest Imperial Auditor since the Time of Isolation. It's not a post you ever held, I understand.'

'No. I missed that one, somehow. Your grandfather never held it, either. Nor your great-grandfather. In fact . . . I'll have to look it up, but I don't think any Count or Lord Vorkosigan has ever been an Auditor.'

'I did. None has. I'm the first in the family,' Miles informed him smugly. 'I am unprecedented.'

The Count smiled. 'This is not news, Miles.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Miles stood in the concourse just outside Customs Processing on one of Komarr's larger orbital transfer stations. Smells like a space station, oh, yeah. It was not a sweet perfume, that odd acridity compounded of machinery, electronics, humanity and all its effluvia, and chill air run through filters which never quite succeeded in reducing its complexity. But it was familiar, universal, and an enormously nostalgic odor for him: Admiral Naismith's atmosphere, subliminally electrifying even now.

The station was one of a dozen orbiting the system's only semihabitable planet. Three more deep-space stations circled Komarr s feeble star, and each of the six wormhole exits they all served boasted both a military station and a commercial one. In this far-flung network cargo and passengers loaded, unloaded, and shuffled, bound not only for Barrayar but for Pol, the Hegen Hub, Sergyar, Escobar beyond it, and a dozen other connecting routes. The reopened trade route to Rho Ceta and the rest of the Cetagandan Empire, uneasy neighbors though they were, also supported a growing stream of traffic. The fees and taxes generated here were a vast source of income for the Barrayaran Imperium, far beyond anything squeezed out of poor backcountry groat farmers on the homeworld. This too was part of Barrayar, he must remember to point out to space-bred Elli Quinn.

Quinn might be almost happy on Komarr. Its domed cities were reminiscent of the space station upon which she had been born. True, most of Lord Vorkosigan's duties would keep him in a tight little circuit around Vorbarr Sultana. The capital drew all ambitious men like a gravity well. But one might maintain a second domicile on one of the stations here, a cozy little deep-space dacha. . . . It is far from the mountains.

He'd seen the Count and Countess off from this station yesterday, on their way back to Sergyar, having hitched a ride with them as far as Komarr in their government courier ship. Five days in the relatively uninterrupted confines of a jump-ship had actually given them time enough to talk, for a change. He had also seized the opportunity to beg an Armsman for himself from his father, the comfortable Pym by choice. The Countess grumbled they should have held out for Ma Kosti in exchange, but gave up her favorite Armsman to him nonetheless; the Count promised to send him a couple more in due time, chosen from those whose wives and families had been the most bitterly unhappy at having been forcibly transplanted from their familiar city to the wilds of Chaos Colony.

The crowd around the exit door from Customs Processing thickened, as inbound passengers began to spill through and hurry to their further destinations, or greet waiting parties with businesslike decorum or familial enthusiasm. Miles rose on his toes, futilely. Nine-tenths of this outrush dissipated before Quinn came striding through the doors, conservatively incognito in Komarran civilian fashion, a white padded silk jacket and trousers. The outfit set off her dark curls and brilliant brown eyes; but then, Quinn made anything she wore look great, including ripped fatigues and mud.

She too craned to look for him, murmured a 'Heh,' of satisfaction upon spotting him waving a hand behind a few other shoulders, and wove through the crowd. Her stride stretched as she neared; she dropped the gray duffel she swung and they embraced with an impact that nearly knocked Miles off his feet. The scent of her made up for any number of defective space station atmospheric filters. Quinn, my Quinn. After a dozen or so kisses, they parted just far enough to permit speech.

'So why did you ask me to bring all your stuff?' she demanded suspiciously. 'I didn't like the sound of that.'

'Did you?'

'Yes. It's stuck back in Customs. They choked on the contents, particularly all the weapons. I gave up arguing with them after a while—you're a Barrayaran, you sort them out.'

'Ah, Pym.' Miles gestured to his Armsman, like Miles dressed in discreet streetwear. 'Take Commodore Quinn's receipts, and rescue my property from our bureaucracy, please. Address it to Vorkosigan House, and send it by commercial shipper. Then go on back to the hostel.'

'Yes, my lord.' Pym collected the data codes, and plunged back through the doors into Customs.

'Is that all your personal luggage?' Miles asked Quinn.

'As ever.'

'Off to the hostel, then. It's a nice one.' The best on the station, in fact, luxury class. 'I, ah, got us a suite for tonight.'

'You'd better have.'

'Have you had dinner?'

'Not yet.'

'Good. Neither have I.'

A short walk brought them to the nearest bubble-car terminal, and a short ride to the hostel. Its appointments were elegant, its corridors wide and thickly carpeted, and its staff solicitous. The suite was large, for a space station, which meant nicely cozy for Miles's present purposes.

'Your General Allegre is generous,' remarked Quinn, unloading her duffel after a quick reconnoiter of the sybaritic bathroom. 'I may like working for him after all.'

'I think you will, but this is on my bill tonight, not ImpSec's. I wanted someplace quiet where we could talk, before your official meeting with Allegre and the Galactic Affairs chief tomorrow.'

'So … I don't quite understand this setup. I get one lousy message from you with you looking like a damned zombie, telling me Illyan caught up with you about poor Vorberg, and didn't I tell you so. Then a resounding silence, for weeks, and no answers to my messages to you, you rat. Then I get another one with you all chipper again, saying it's all right now, and I sure don't see the connection. Then I get this order to report to ImpSec on Komarr without delay, no explanations, no hint of what the new assignment is, except with this postscript from you to bring your whole kit with me when I come and put the freight charges on ImpSec's tab. Are you back in ImpSec, or not?'

'Not. I'm here as a consultant, to get you up and running with your new bosses, and vice versa. I, ah . . . have another job, now.'

'I really don't understand. I mean, your messages are usually cryptic—'

'It's hard to send proper love letters, when you know everything you say is going to be monitored by ImpSec censors.'

'But this time, it was frigging incomprehensible. What is going on with you?' Her voice was edged with the same suppressed fear Miles was feeling, Am I losing you? No, not fear. Knowledge.