Mirror Dance

flipped back her hair, mustered words. “When I first saw you,” she said to Mark, “I didn’t like you much.”

When you first saw me, I didn’t like me much either. “Yes?” he encouraged.

“I still think you’re funny-looking. Even funnier-looking than the other one,” she nodded at Miles, who smiled blandly. “But … but …” Words failed her. As cautiously and hesitantly as a wild bird at a feeder, she ventured nearer to him, bent, and kissed him on one puffy cheek. Then like a bird, she fled.

“Hm,” said Miles, watching her swoop back down the lift-tube. “I was hoping for a little more enthusiastic a demonstration of gratitude.”

“You’ll learn,” said Mark equably. He touched his cheek, and smiled.

“If you think that’s ingratitude, try ImpSec,” Miles advised glumly. ” ’You lost how much equipment?’ “

Mark cocked an eyebrow. “An Illyan-quote?”

“Oh, you’ve met him?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I wish I could have been there.”

“I wish you could have been there too,” said Mark sincerely. “He was … acerb.”

“I’ll bet. He does acerb almost better than anyone I know, except for my mother when she’s lost her temper, which thank God is not very often.”

“You should have seen her annihilate him, then,” said Mark. “Clash of the titans. I think you’d have enjoyed it. I did.”

“Oh? We have a lot to talk about, it seems—”

For the first time, Mark realized, they did. His heart lifted. Unfortunately, so did another interruption, via the tube. A man in House Fell livery looked over the chromium railing, saw him, and gave him a semi-salute. “I have a courier delivery for an individual named Mark,” he said.

“I’m Mark.”

The courier trod over to him, flashed a confirming scanner over his face, opened a thin case chained to his wrist, and handed him a card in an unmarked envelope. “Baron Fell’s compliments, sir, and he trusts this will help speed you on your way.”

The credit chit. Ah, ha! And a very broad hint along with it. “My compliments to Baron Fell, and … and … what do we want to say to Baron Fell, Miles?”

“I’d keep it down to Thank you, I think,” Miles advised. “At least till we’re far, far away.”

“Tell him thank you,” Mark told the courier, who nodded and marched out again the way he had come in.

Mark eyed Lilly’s comconsole, in the corner of the room. It seemed a very long way off. He pointed. “Could you, um, bring me the remote-reader off that comconsole over there, Miles?”

“Sure.” Miles retrieved and handed him the board.

“I predict,” said Mark, waving the card around, “that I will be seriously short-changed, but not quite enough so that I would risk going back to Fell and arguing about it.” He inserted the card into the read-slot, and smiled. “Spot-on.”

“What did you get?” asked Miles, craning his neck.

“Well, that’s a very personal question,” said Mark. Miles uncraned guiltily. “Trade. Were you sleeping with that surgeon?”

Miles bit his lip, curiosity obviously struggling with his gentlemanly manners. Mark watched with interest to see how it would come out. Personally, he’d bet on curiosity.

Miles took a rather deep breath. “Yes,” he said at last.

Thought so. Their good fortune, Mark decided, was divided exactly fifty-fifty; Miles got the good luck, and he got the rest. But not this time. “Two million.”

Miles whistled. “Two million Imperial marks? Impressive!”

“No, no. Two million Betan dollars. What, about eight million marks, I guess, isn’t it? Or is it closer to ten. Depends on the current exchange rate, I guess. It’s not nearly ten percent of the value of House Ryoval, anyway. More like two percent,” Mark calculated aloud. And had the rare and utter joy of rendering Miles Vorkosigan speechless.

“What are you going to do with it all?” Miles whispered, after about a minute.

“Invest,” said Mark fiercely. “Barrayar has an expanding economy, doesn’t it?” He paused. “First, though, I’m going to kick back one million to ImpSec, for their services the last four months.”

“Nobody gives money to ImpSec!”

“Why not? Look at your mercenary operations, for instance. Isn’t being a mercenary supposed to be profitable? The Dendarii Fleet could be a veritable cash cow for ImpSec, if it were run right.”

“They take out their profit in political consequences,” said Miles firmly. “Though—if you really do it, I want to be there. To see the look on Illyan’s face.”

“If you’re good, I’ll let you come along. Oh, I’m really going to do it, all right. There are some debts I cannot ever repay,” he thought of Phillipi, and the others. “But I intend to pay the ones I can, in their honor. Though you can bet I’ll keep the rest. I should be able to double it again in about six years, and be back to where I started. Or better. It’s a lot easier to make two million out of one million than it is to make two out of one, if I understand the game correctly. I’ll study up.”

Miles stared at him in fascination. “I bet you will.”

“Do you have any idea how desperate I was, when I started on that raid? How scared? I intend to have a value no one can ignore again, even if it’s only measured in money. Money is a kind of power almost anyone can have. You don’t even need a Vor in front of your name.” He smiled faintly. “Maybe, after a while, I’ll get a place of my own. Like Ivan’s. After all, it would look funny if I was still living in my parents’ house at the age of, say, twenty-eight.”

And that was probably enough Miles-baiting for one day. Miles would, demonstrably, lay down his life for his brother, but he did have a notable tendency to try to subsume the people around him into extensions of his own personality. I am not your annex. I am your brother. Yes. Mark rather fancied they were both going to be able to keep track of that, now. He slumped wearily, but happily.

“I do believe,” said Miles, still looking nicely stunned, “you are the first Vorkosigan to make a profit in a business venture for five generations. Welcome to the family.”

Mark nodded. They were both silent for a time.

“It’s not the answer,” Mark sighed finally. He nodded around at the Durona Group’s clinic, and by implication to all of Jackson’s Whole. “This piecemeal clone-rescue business. Even if I blew Vasa Luigi entirely away, someone else would just take up where House Bharaputra left off.”

“Yes,” Miles agreed. “The true answer has to be medical-technical. Somebody has to come up with a better, safer life-extension trick. Which I believe somebody will. A lot of people have to be working on it, in a lot of places. The brain-transplant technique is too risky to compete. It must end, someday soon.”

“I … don’t have any talents in the medical-technical direction,” said Mark. “In the meantime, the butchery goes on. I have to take another pass at the problem before someday. Somehow.”

“But not today,” Miles said firmly.

“No.” Out the window, he saw a personnel shuttle descending into the Duronas’ compound. But it wasn’t the Dendarii one returning, yet. He nodded. “Is that by chance our transport?”

“I believe so,” said Miles, going to the window and looking down. “Yes.”

And then there was no more time. While Miles was gone checking on the shuttle, and couldn’t watch, Mark rounded up half a dozen Duronas to help pry his stiff, bent, half-paralyzed body out of Lilly’s chair and lay him on a float-pallet. His crooked hands shook uncontrollably, till Lilly pursed her lips and gave him another hypospray of something wonderful. He was perfectly content to be carried out horizontally. His broken foot was a socially acceptable reason not to be able to walk. He looked nicely invalidish, with his leg propped up conspicuously, the better to persuade the ImpSec fellows to carry him to his bunk, when they arrived topside.

For the first time in his life, he was going home.