Mirror Dance

“But Aziz didn’t have a head wound. What went wrong?” asked Miles. “Are you telling me he’s going to be a vegetable?”

“I’m afraid Mr. Aziz was the victim of a bad prep. His blood was apparently drained hastily, and not sufficiently completely. Small freezing hemocysts riddled his brain tissue with necrotic patches. We removed them, and started new growth, which has taken hold successfully. But his personality is permanently lost.”

“Everything?”

“He may perhaps retain a few frustrating fragments of memories. Dreams. But he cannot re-access his neural pathways through new routes or sub-routines, because the tissue itself is gone. The new man will start over as a near-infant. He’s lost language, among other things.”

“Will he recover his intelligence? In time?”

Aragones hesitated for too long before answering. “In a few years, he may be able to do enough simple tasks to be self-supporting.”

“I see,” Miles sighed.

“What do you want to do with him?”

“He’s another one with no next of kin listed.” Miles blew out his breath. “Transfer him to a long-term care facility here on Escobar. One with a good therapy department. I’ll ask you to recommend one. I’ll set up a small trust fund to cover the costs till he’s out on his own. However long that takes.”

Aragones nodded, and both he and Quinn made notes.

After settling further administrative and financial details, the conference broke up. Miles insisted on stopping to see Aziz, before picking up the other two convalescents.

“He cannot recognize you,” Dr. Aragones warned as they entered the hospital room.

“That’s all right.”

At first glance, Aziz did not look as much like death warmed over as Miles had expected, despite the unflattering hospital gown. There was color and warmth in his face, and his natural melanin level saved him from being hospital-pale. But he lay listlessly, gaunt, twisted in his covers. The bed’s sides were up, unpleasantly suggesting a crib or a coffin. Quinn stood against the wall and folded her arms. She had visceral associations about hospitals and clinics too.

“Azzie,” Miles called softly bending over him. “Azzie, can you hear me?”

Aziz’s eyes tracked momentarily, but then wandered again.

“I know you don’t know me, but you might remember this, later. You were a good soldier, smart and strong. You stood by your mates in the crash. You had the sort of self-discipline that saves lives.” Others, not your own. “Tomorrow, you’ll go to another sort of hospital, where they’ll help you keep on getting better.” Among strangers. More strangers. “Don’t worry about the money. I’m setting it up so it’ll be there as long as you need it.” He doesn’t know what money is. “I’ll check back on you from time to time, as I get the opportunity,” Miles promised. Promised who? Aziz? Aziz was no more. Himself? His voice softened to inaudibility as he ran down.

The aural stimulation made Aziz thrash around, and emit some loud and formless moans; he had no volume control yet, apparently. Even through a filter of desperate hope, Miles could not recognize it as an attempt at communication. Animal reflexes only.

“Take care,” he whispered, and withdrew, to stand a moment trembling in the hallway.

“Why do you do that to yourself?” Quinn inquired tartly. Her crossed arms, hugging herself, added silently, And to me?

“First, he died for me, literally, and second,” he attempted to force his voice to lightness, “don’t you find a certain obsessive fascination in looking in the face of what you most fear?”

“Is death what you most fear?” she asked curiously.

“No. Not death.” He rubbed his forehead, hesitated. “Loss of mind. My game plan all my life has been to demand acceptance of this” a vague wave down the length, or shortness, of his body, “because I was a smart-ass little bastard who could think rings around the opposition, and prove it time after time. Without the brains …” Without the brains I’m nothing. He straightened against the aching tension in his belly, shrugged, and twitched a smile at her. “March on, Quinn.”

After Aziz, Durham and Vifian were not so hard to deal with. They could walk and talk, if haltingly, and Vifian even recognized Quinn. They took them back to the shuttleport in the rented groundcar, and Quinn tempered her usual go-to-hell style of driving in consideration of their half-healed wounds. Upon reaching the shuttle Miles sent them forward to sit with the pilot, a comrade, and by the time reached the Triumph Durham had recalled not only the man’s name, but some shuttle piloting procedures. Miles turned both convalescents over to the medtech who met them at the shuttle hatch door, who escorted them off to sickbay to bed down again after the exhaustion of their short journey. Miles watched them exit, and felt a little better.

“Costly,” Quinn observed reflectively.

“Yes,” Miles sighed. “Rehabilitation is starting to take an awfully bite out of the medical department’s budget. I may have Fleet accounting split it off, so Medical doesn’t find itself dangerously short-changed. But what would you have? My troops were loyal beyond measure; I cannot betray them. Besides,” he grinned briefly, “the Barrayaran Imperium is paying.”

“Your ImpSec boss was on about your bills, I thought, at your mission briefing.”

“Illyan has to explain why enough cash to fund a private army keeps disappearing in his department budget every year, without ever admitting to the private army’s existence. Certain Imperial accountants tend to accuse him of departmental inefficiency, which gives him great anguish.”

The Dendarii shuttle pilot, having shut down his ship, ducked into the corridor and sealed the hatch. He nodded to Miles. “While I was waiting for you at Port Beauchene, sir, I picked up another story on the local news net, that you might be interested in. Local news here on Escobar, that is.” The man was bouncing lightly his toes.

Say on, Sergeant Lajoie.” Miles cocked an eyebrow up at him.

“The Cetagandans have just announced their withdrawal from Marilac. They’re calling it—what was that, now—’Due to great progress in the cultural alliance, we are turning police matters over to local control.’ “

Miles’s fists clenched, joyously. “In other words, they’re abandoning their puppet government! Ha!” He hopped from foot to foot, and pounded Quinn on the back. “You hear that, Elli! We’ve won! I mean, They’ve won, the Marilacans.” Our sacrifices are redeemed… . He regained control of his tightening throat before he burst into song or some like foolishness. “Do me a favor, Lajoie. Pass the word through the Fleet. Tell them I said, You folks do good work. Eh?”

“Yes, sir. My pleasure.” The grinning pilot saluted cheerfully, and loped off up the corridor.

Miles’s grin stretched his face. “See, Elli! What Simon Illyan just bought would have been cheap at a thousand times the cost. A full-scale Cetagandan planetary invasion—first impeded—then bogged—then foundered—failed!” And in a fierce whisper, “I did it! I made the difference.”

Quinn too was smiling, but one perfect eyebrow curved in a certain dry irony. “It’s lovely, but if I was reading between the lines correctly, I thought what Barrayaran Imperial Security really wanted was for the Cetagandan military to be tied up in the guerilla war on Marilac. Indefinitely. Draining Cetagandan attention away from Barrayaran borders and jump points.”

“They didn’t put that in writing.” Miles’s lips drew back wolfishly. “All Simon said was, ’Help the Marilacans as opportunity presents.’ That was the standing order, in so many words.”

“But you knew damn well what he really wanted.”

“Four bloody years was enough. I have not betrayed Barrayar. Nor anyone else.”

“Yeah? So if Simon Illyan is so much more Machiavellian than you are, how is it that your version prevailed? Someday, Miles, you are going to run out of hairs to split with those people. And then what will you do?”

He smiled, and shook his head, evading answer.

His elation over the news from Marilac still made him feel like he was walking in half-gravity when he arrived at his cabin aboard the Triumph. After a surreptitious glance to be sure the corridor was unpeopled, he embraced and kissed Quinn, a deep kiss that was going to have to last them for a long while, and she went off to her own quarters. He slipped inside, and echoed the door’s closing sigh with his own. Home again.

It was home, for half his psyche, he reflected, tossing his flight bag onto his bed