Mirror Dance

It all made sense, which made no sense at all. It was like a story heard long ago, in childhood, and re- encountered. In another lifetime. Familiarity under glass. He touched his head, which ached. Rowan matched the gesture with concern.

“Don’t you have medical records? Something?”

“At some risk, we obtained the developmental records of Bharaputra’s clone. Unfortunately, they only go up to age fourteen. We have nothing on Admiral Naismith. Alas, one cannot run a triangulation on one data point.”

He turned toward Rowan. “You know me, inside and out. Can’t you tell?”

“You’re strange.” Rowan shook her head. “Half your bones are plastic replacement parts, do you know? The real ones that are left show old breaks, old traumas. … I’d guess you not only older than Bharaputra’s clone ought to be, I’d guess you older than the original Lord Vorkosigan, and that makes no sense. If we could just get one solid, certain clue. The memories you’ve reported so far are terribly ambiguous. You know weapons, as the Admiral might—but Bharaputra’s clone was trained as an assassin. You remember Ser Galen, and only Bharaputra’s clone should do that. I found out about those sugar trees. They’re called maple trees, and they originate on Earth—where Bharaputra’s clone was taken for training. And so on.” She flung up her hands in frustration.

“If you’re not getting the right answer,” he said slowly, “maybe you’re not asking the right question.”

“So what is the right question?”

He shook his head, mutely. “Why …” His hands spread. “Why not turn my frozen body over to the Dendarii and collect the reward? Why not sell me to Baron Ryoval, if he wants me so much? Why revive me?”

“I wouldn’t sell a laboratory rat to Baron Ryoval,” Lilly stated flatly. She twitched a brief smile. “Old business, between us.”

How old? Older than he, whoever he was.

“As for the Dendarii—we may deal with them yet. Depending on who you are.”

They were approaching the heart of the matter; he could sense it. “Yes?”

“Four years ago, Admiral Naismith visited Jackson’s Whole, and besides counting a most spectacular coup on Ry Ryoval, left with a certain Dr. Hugh Canaba, one of Bharaputra’s top genetics people. Now, I knew Canaba. More to the point, I know what Vasa Luigi and Lotus paid to get him here, and how many House secrets he was privy to. They would never have let him go alive. Yet he’s gone, and no one on Jackson’s Whole has ever been able to trace him.”

She leaned forward intently. “Assuming Canaba was not just disposed of out an airlock—Admiral Naismith has shown he can get people out. In fact, it’s a speciality he’s famous for. That is our interest in him.”

“You want off-planet?” He glanced around at Lilly Durona’s comfortable, self-contained little empire. “Why?”

“I have a Deal with Georish Stauber—Baron Fell. It’s a very old Deal, as we are very old dealers. My time is surely running out, and Georish is growing,” she grimaced, “unreliable. If I die—or if he dies—or if he succeeds in having his brain transplanted to a younger body, as he has attempted at least once to arrange—our old Deal will be broken. The Durona Group might be offered less admirable deals than the one we have enjoyed so long with House Fell. It might be broken up—sold—weakened so as to invite attack from old enemies like Ry, who remembers an insult or an injury forever. It might be forced to work it does not choose. I’ve been looking for a way out for the last couple of years. Admiral Naismith knows one.”

She wanted him to be Admiral Naismith, obviously the most valuable of the two clones. “What if I’m the other one?” He stared at his hands. They were just his hands. No hints there.

“You might be ransomed.”

By whom? Was’he savior, or commodity? What a choice. Rowan looked uneasy.

“What am I to you if I can’t remember who I am?”

“No one at all, little man.” Her dark eyes glinted, momentarily, like obsidian chips.

This woman had survived nearly a century on Jackson’s Whole. It would not do to underestimate her ruthlessness on the basis of one picky prejudice about clone-brain transplants.

They finished their tea, and retreated to Rowan’s room.

“What in all that seemed familiar to you?” Rowan asked him anxiously when they were alone on her little sofa.

“All of it,” he said, in deep perplexity. “And yet—Lilly seems to think I can spirit you all away like some kind of magician. But even f I am Admiral Naismith, I can’t remember how I did it!”

“Sh,” she tried to calm him. “You’re ripe for memory-cascade, I swear. I can almost see it starting. Your speech has improved vastly in just the last few days.”

“All that therapeutic kissing,” he smiled, a suggestive compliment :hat won him, as he’d hoped, some more therapy. But when he came up for air he said, “It won’t come back to me if I’m the other one. I remember Galen. Earth. A house in London … what’s the clone’s name?”

“We don’t know,” she said, and at his exasperated grasp of her bands added, “No, we really don’t.”

“Admiral Naismith … shouldn’t be Miles Naismith. He should be Mark Pierre Vorkosigan.” How the hell did he know that? Mark Pierre. Piotr Pierre. Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, had a wife and wouldn’t keep her, a taunt from out of a crowd that had put an old man into a terrifying murderous rage, he’d had to be restrained by— the image escaped him. Gran’da? “If the Bharaputra-made clone is the third son, he could be named anything.” Something wasn’t right.

He tried to imagine Admiral Naismith’s childhood as a Cetagandan secret covert ops project. His childhood? It must have been extraordinary, if he’d not only escaped at the age of eighteen or less, but invaded Cetagandan Intelligence and established his fortune within a year. But he could think of nothing from such a youth. A complete blank.

“What are you going to do with me if I’m not Naismith? Keep me is a pet? For how long?”

Rowan pursed her lips in worry. “If you are the Bharaputran-made clone—you’re going to need to get off Jackson’s Whole yourself. The Dendarii raid made an awful mess out of Vasa Luigi’s headquarters. He has blood to avenge, as well as property. And pride. If it’s the case—I’ll try to get you out.”

“You? Or you all?”

“I’ve never gone against the group.” She rose, and paced across her sitting room. “Yet I lived a year, on Escobar, alone, when I was taking my cryo-revival training. I’ve often wondered … what it would be like to be half of a couple. Instead of one-fortieth of a group. Would I feel bigger?”

“Were you bigger when you were all of one, on Escobar?”

“I don’t know. It’s a silly conceit. Still—one can’t help thinking of Lotus.”

“Lotus. Baronne Bharaputra? The one who left your group?”

“Yes. Lilly’s oldest daughter after Rose. Lilly says … if we don’t hang together, we’ll all hang separately. It’s a reference to an ancient method of execution that—”

“I know what hanging is,” he said hastily, before she could go into the medical details.

Rowan stared out her window. “Jackson’s Whole is no place to be alone. You can’t trust anybody.”

“An interesting paradox. Makes for quite a dilemma.”

She searched his face for irony, found it, and frowned. “It’s no joke.”

Indeed. Even Lilly Durona’s self-referential maternal strategy hadn’t quite solved the problem, as Lotus had proved.

He eyed her. “Were you ordered to sleep with me?” he asked suddenly.

She flinched. “No.” She paced again. “But I did ask permission. Lilly said to go ahead, it might help attach you to our interests.” She paused. “Does that seem terribly cold, to you?”

“On Jackson’s Whole—merely prudent.” And attachments surely ran two ways. Jackson’s Whole was no place to be alone. But you can’t trust anyone.

If anyone was sane here, he swore it was by accident.

Reading, an exercise that had at first given him a stabbing sensation in the eyes and instant excruciating headaches, was getting easier. He could go for up to ten minutes at a time now before it became too blinding to bear. Holed up in Rowan’s study, he pushed himself to the limits of pain, an information-bite, a few minutes’ rest,