Mirror Dance

Without question or comment, Ivan fell in behind the man, gesturing Mark ahead of him. Thus sandwiched, Mark trod in his wake, torn between curiosity and nerves.

They went through a door marked “No Admittance,” which the man unlocked with a mechanical key and then locked again behind them, went up two staircases, and down an echoing wood-floored corridor to a room occupying the top floor of a round tower at the building’s corner. Once a guard post, it was now furnished as an office, with ordinary windows cut into the stone walls in place of arrow slits. A man waited within, perched on a stool, gazing pensively down at the grounds falling away to the river, and the sprinkling of brightly-dressed people strolling or climbing the paths.

He was a thin, dark-haired fellow in his thirties, pale skin set off by loose dark clothing entirely lacking in pseudo-military detailing. He looked up with a quick smile at their guide. “Thank you, Kevi.” Both greeting and dismissal seemed combined, for the guide nodded and exited.

It wasn’t until Ivan nodded and said, “Sire,” that recognition clicked.

Emperor Gregor Vorbarra. Shit. The door behind Mark was blocked by Ivan. Mark controlled his surge of panic. Gregor was only a man, alone, apparently unarmed. All the rest was … propaganda. Hype. Illusion. His heart beat faster anyway.

“Hullo, Ivan,” said the Emperor. “Thank you for coming. Why don’t you go study the exhibits for a while.”

“Seen ’em before,” said Ivan laconically.

“Nevertheless.” Gregor jerked his head doorward.

“Not to put too fine a point on it,” said Ivan, “but this is not Miles, not even on a good day. And despite appearances, he was trained as an assassin, once. Isn’t this a touch premature?”

“Well,” said Gregor softly, “we’ll find out, won’t we? Do you want to assassinate me, Mark?”

“No,” Mark croaked.

“There you have it. Take a hike, Ivan. I’ll send Kevi for you in a bit.”

Ivan grimaced in frustration, and Mark sensed, not a little frustrated curiosity. He departed with an ironic salaam that seemed to say, On your head be it.

“So, Lord Mark,” said Gregor. “What do you think of Vorbarr Sultana so far?”

“It went by pretty fast,” Mark said cautiously.

“Dear God, don’t tell me you let Ivan drive.”

“I didn’t know I had a choice.”

The Emperor laughed. “Sit down.” He waved Mark into the station chair behind the comconsole desk; the little room was otherwise sparsely furnished, though the antique military prints and maps cluttering the walls might be spill-over from the nearby museum.

The Emperor’s smile faded back into his initial pensive look as he studied Mark. It reminded Mark a little of the way Count Vorkosigan looked at him, that Who are you? look, only without the Count’s ravenous intensity. A bearable wonder.

“Is this your office?” asked Mark, cautiously settling himself in the Imperial swivel-chair. The room seemed small and austere for the purpose.

“One of them. This whole complex is crammed with various offices, in some of the oddest niches. Count Vorvolk has one in the old dungeons. No head room. I use this as a private retreat when attending the Council of Counts meetings, or when I have other business here.”

“Why do I qualify as business? Besides not being pleasure. Is this personal or official?”

“I can’t spit without being official. On Barrayar, the two are not very separable. Miles … was …” Gregor’s tongue tripped over that past tense too, “in no particular order, a peer of my caste; an officer in my service; the son of an extremely, if not supremely, important official; and a personal friend of lifelong standing. And the heir to the Countship of a District. And the Counts are the mechanism whereby one man,” he touched his chest, “multiplies to sixty, and then to a multitude. The Counts are the first officers of the Imperium; I am its captain. You do understand, that I am not the Imperium? An empire is mere geography. The Imperium is a society. The multitude, the whole body—ultimately, down to every subject— that is the Imperium. Of which I am only a piece. An interchangeable part, at that— did you notice my great-uncle’s scalp, downstairs?”

“Um … yes. It was, uh, prominently displayed.”

“This is the home of the Council of Counts. The fulcrum of the lever may fancy itself supreme, but it is nothing without the lever. Mad Yuri forgot that. I don’t. The Count of the Vorkosigan’s District is another such living piece. Also interchangeable.” He paused.

“A … link in a chain,” Mark offered carefully, to prove he was paying attention.

“A link in a chain-mail. In a web. So that one weak link is not fatal. Many must fail at once, to achieve a real disaster. Still … one wants as many sound, reliable links as possible, obviously.”

“Obviously.” Why are you looking at me?

“So. Tell me what happened on Jackson’s Whole. As you saw it.” Gregor sat up on his perch, hooking one heel and crossing his booted ankles, apparently centered and comfortable, like a raven on a branch.

“I’d have to start the story back on Earth.”

“Feel free.” His easy brief smile implied Mark had all the time in the world, and one hundred percent of his attention.

Haltingly, Mark began to stammer out his tale. Gregor’s questions were few, only interjected when Mark hung up on the difficult bits; few but searching. Gregor was not in pursuit of mere facts, Mark quickly realized. He had obviously already seen Illyan’s report. The Emperor was after something else.

“I cannot argue with your good intentions,” said Gregor at one point. “The brain transplant business is a loathsome enterprise. But you do realize—your effort, your raid, is hardly going to put a dent in it. House Bharaputra will just clean up the broken glass and go on.”

“It will make a permanent difference to the forty-nine clones,” Mark asserted doggedly. “Everybody makes that same damned argument. ’I can’t do it all, so I’m not going to do any.’ And they don’t. And it goes on, and on. And anyway, if I had been able to go back via Escobar as I’d planned in the first place—there would have been a big news splash. House Bharaputra might even have tried to reclaim the clones legally, and then there would really have been a public stink. I’d have made sure of it. Even if I’d been in Escobaran detention. Where, by the way, the House Bharaputra enforcers would have had a hard time getting at me. And maybe … maybe it would have interested some more people in the problem.”

“Ah!” said Gregor. “A publicity stunt.”

“It was not a stunt,” Mark grated.

“Excuse me. I did not mean to imply your effort was trivial. Quite the reverse. But you did have a coherent long-range strategy after all.”

“Yeah, but it went down the waste disintegrator as soon as I lost control of the Dendarii. As soon as they knew who I really was.” He brooded on the memory of that helplessness.

At Gregor’s prodding, Mark went on to recount Miles’s death, the screw-up with the lost cryo-chamber, their aborted efforts to retrieve it, and their humiliating ejection from Jacksonian local space. He found himself revealing far more of his real thoughts than he was comfortable doing, yet … Gregor almost put him at his ease. How did the man do it? The soft, almost self-effacing demeanor camouflaged a consummately skillful people- handler. In a garbled rush, Mark described the incident with Maree and his half-insane time in solitary confinement, then trailed off into inarticulate silence.

Gregor frowned introspectively, and was quiet for a time. Hell, the man was quiet all the time. “It seems to me, Mark, that you devalue your strengths. You have been battle-tested, and proved your physical courage. You can take an initiative, and dare much. You do not lack brains, though sometimes … information. It’s not a bad start on the qualities needed for a countship. Someday.”

“Not any day. I don’t want to be a Count of Barrayar,” Mark denied emphatically.

“It could be the first step to my job,” Gregor said suggestively, with a slight smile.

“No! That’s even worse. They’d eat me alive. My scalp would join the collection downstairs.”

“Very possibly.” Gregor’s smile faded. “Yes, I’ve often wondered where all my body parts are going to end up. And yet—I understand you were set to try it, just two years ago. Including Aral’s countship.”

“Fake it, yes. Now you’re talking about the real thing. Not an imitation.” I’m just an imitation,