Memory

'I rather thought she was.'

'Then why do you do this to me?'

'Because you have to decide now, Elli, once and for all.'

'You're forcing this choice, not me!'

'Yes. That's just exactly right. I can go on with you. I can go on without you, if I have to. But I can't freeze, Elli, not even for you. Perfect preservation isn't life, it's death. I know.'

She nodded, slowly. 'I understand that part, anyway.' She began spooning her soup, watching him watching her watching him. . . .

They made love one last time, for old times' sake, for good-bye, and, Miles realized halfway through, each in a desperate last-ditch effort to please and pleasure the other so much, they would change their mind. We'd have to change more than our minds. We'd have to change our whole selves.

With a sigh, he sat up in the suite's vast bed, disentangling their limbs. 'This isn't working, Elli.'

'I'll make it work,' she mumbled. He captured her hand, and kissed the inside of her wrist. She took a deep breath, and sat up beside him. They were both silent for a long time.

'You were destined to be a soldier,' she said at last. 'Not some kind of, of, superior bureaucrat.'

He gave up trying to explain the ancient and noble post of Imperial Auditor to a non-Barrayaran. 'To be a great soldier, you need a great war. There doesn't happen to be one on, just now, not around here. The Cetagandans are quiescent for the first time in a decade. Pol is not aggressive, and anyway, we're in good odor in the whole Hegen Hub these days. Jackson's Whole is nasty enough, but they're too disunited to be a military threat at this distance. The worst menace in the neighborhood is us, and Sergyar is absorbing our energies. I'm not sure I could lend myself to an aggressive war anyway.'

'Your father did. With remarkable success.'

'Mixed success. You should study our history more closely, love. But I am not my father. I don't have to repeat his mistakes; I can invent bright-new ones.'

'You're turning into such a political animal, these days.'

'It goes with my territory. And . . . they may also serve who only stand and wait, but life is short enough already. If the Imperium ever wants me in a military capacity again, they can forward a bloody comconsole message.'

Her brows rose; she sat back, and plumped pillows around them. He drew her head down, to rest on his scored chest, and stroked her hair, curling it around his fingers; her free hand idled up and down his body. He could feel the letting-go in them, with the easing of the tension and the terror, with the slowing of every pulse of their blood. Not pain, or not so much pain, but only a just sadness, a due measure of melancholy, quiet and right.

'Now . . .' he said at last, 'that's not to say there won't be need for the odd rescue mission or whatever, from time to time. Mind you, as Admiral Quinn, the place for your sweet ass is in a nice soft tactics room chair. Don't you be going out with the squads all the time. It's not appropriate for a senior staff officer, and it's way too dangerous.'

Her fingernails traced the spider-nest lines of his most spectacular scars, making the hairs stand up on his arms. 'You are a howling hypocrite, my love.'

He elected prudently not to quibble over that one. He cleared his throat. 'That . . . brings up another thing I wanted to ask you. A favor. About Sergeant Taura.'

She stiffened slightly. 'What?'

'Last time I saw her, I noticed she's getting some gray in her hair. You know what that means. I talked recently to old Canaba about it, you remember him. He gives no more than two months between the time she starts to go into serious metabolic failure, and the end. I want you to promise me, you'll let me know in time, time to get out there with the Fleet, or wherever she is, before she goes. I … don't want her to be alone, then. It's a promise I made to myself once, that I mean to keep.'

She settled back. 'All right,' she said seriously. After a moment she added, 'So . . . did you sleep with her?'

'Um . . .' He swallowed. 'She was before your time, Elli.' After another minute he was compelled to add, 'And after, from time to time. Very rarely.'

'Hah. I thought so.'

As long as we're being morbid . . . 'How . . . about you? Was there ever anyone else, when I was gone?'

'No. I was good. Huh!' She added after a moment, 'Now, before your time, that's another Quinn.'

That dig, he decided, was within her rights; he let it go by. 'It should go without saying, but just in case . . . you do know you are free of any personal obligation to me hereafter?'

'So you can be too? Is that what this is all about?' She touched his face, and smiled. 'I don't need you to free me, love. I can free myself, any time I choose.'

'That's part, I think, of what I've always loved about you.' He hesitated. 'But can you choose any time you choose?'

'Well. That's the other question, isn't it,' she said softly. They each of them gazed long at the other, as if memorizing the image for some interior cache. After a time she added, with unerring perceptiveness and wry goodwill, 'I hope you find your Lady Vorkosigan, Miles. Whoever she is.'

'I hope so too, Elli,' he sighed. 'I dread the search, though.'

'Lazy,' she murmured.

'That, too. You were a drunkard's dream, Quinn. You've quite spoiled me, you know.'

'Shall I apologize?'

'Never.'

She came up for breath from the long kiss that followed this to ask, 'Till your search prospers, shall we have flings? From time to time?'

'Perhaps … I don't know. If we're ever on the same planet at the same time. It's a big universe.'

'Then why do I keep running into the same people over and over?'

They fell then to unhurried caresses, without agenda; no future, no past, just a little bubble in time containing Miles and Elli. After that things went much better.

In the afterglow, Elli murmured into his hair, 'Do you think you'll like your new job as much as I'll like mine?'

'I'm beginning to suspect so. You are ready, you know. I've lately had some sharp lessons on what a bad idea it is to leave competent subordinates unpromoted for too long. Watch out for that in'—he almost said, my— 'your staff.'

'So is there, like, a top spot you can go for? Work your way up to First Auditor from Eighth Auditor, say?'

'Only by longevity. Which, come to think of it, could happen; I'm the youngest by three decades. But the Auditors are numbered for convenience. It doesn't denote rank. They all seem to be sort of equal. When they meet, they sit in a circle. Very unusual for hierarchy-conscious Barrayar, really.'

'Like the Knights of the Round Table,' Elli suggested.

Miles choked on a laugh. 'Not if you could see them. . . .' He hesitated. 'Well, I don't know. Those original Round Table knights competed for honors, obsessively. I mean, that's why old Arthur had to make the table round in the first place, to defuse all that. But most of the Auditors are … I can't say, not ambitious, or they wouldn't all have achieved what they have. Post-ambitious? These old Barrayaran paladins are an amazingly disinterested lot. I'm actually looking forward to getting to know them better.' He provided her with a few giggles, by giving a vigorously worded description of his new colleagues' odder quirks.

She ran a hand through her dark curls, grinning despite herself. 'Dear godlings, Miles. I begin to think you're going to fit right in after all.'

'Have you ever come home, to a place you've never been before? It feels like that. It's . . . very odd. But not at all unpleasant.'

She kissed his forehead, for benediction; he kissed her palm, for luck.

'Well, if you insist on being a civilian, you be a good bureaucrat-paladin, then,' she told him firmly. 'Do me proud.'