“Well … Fell would be the hardest, I suppose. He has more troops and heavy weapons. Ryoval would be the easiest. Ryoval’s really a House Minor, except he’s so old, he gets the honors of a House Major by habit.”
“So … if one wanted someone bigger and badder than Bharaputra, one might go to Fell.”
“One might.”
“And … if one knew help were on the way … it might be tactically brighter to leave said prisoner at Ryoval’s, rather than to have him shifted to some more formidible location.”
“It might,” she conceded.
“We have to get to Fell.”
“How? We can’t even get out of this room!”
“Out of the room, yes, we must get out of the room. But we might not have to get out of the house. If one of us could just get to a comconsole for a few uninterrupted minutes. Call Fell, call someone, let the world know Vasa Luigi has us. That would start things moving.”
“Call Lilly,” said Rowan sturdily. “Not Fell.”
I need Fell. Lilly can’t break into Ryoval’s. He considered the uneasy possibility that he and the Durona Group might be starting to move at cross-purposes. He wanted a favor from Fell, whom Lilly wished to escape. Still—one would not have to offer very much to interest Fell in a raid on Ryoval. A break-even in materials, and the profit in old hatred. Yeah.
He wandered into the bathroom, and stared at himself in the mirror. Who am I? A skinny, haggard, pale, odd-looking little man with desperate eyes and a tendency to convulsions. If he could even decide which one his clone-twin was, glimpsed so painfully yesterday, he could dub himself the other by process of elimination. The fellow had looked like Naismith to him. But Vasa Luigi was no fool, and Vasa Luigi was convinced of the reverse. He had to be one or the other. Why couldn’t he decide? If I am Naismith, why did my brother claim my place?
At that moment, he discovered why it was called a cascade.
The sensation was of being under a waterfall, of some river that emptied a continent, tons of water battering him to his knees. He emitted a tiny mewl, crouching down with his arms wrapping his head, shooting pains behind his eyes and terror locking his throat. He pressed his lips together to prevent any other sound escaping, that would attract Rowan in all her concern. He needed to be alone for this, oh yes.
No wonder I couldn’t guess. I was trying to choose between two wrong answers. Oh, Mother. Oh, Da. Oh, Sergeant. Your boy has screwed up this one, bad. Real bad. Lieutenant Lord Miles Naismith Vorkosigan crawled on the tiled floor and screamed in silence, just a faint hiss. No, no, no, oh, shit… .
Elli …
Bel, Elena, Taura …
Mark … Mark? That stout, glowering, controlled, determined fellow had been Mark?
He could not remember anything about his death. He touched his chest, fearfully, tracing the evidence of … what event? He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to remember the last that he could. The raid downside at Bharaputra’s surgical facility, yes. Mark had engineered a disaster, Mark and Bel between them, and he’d come flying down to try and pull all their nuts out of the fire. Some megalomanic inspiration to top Mark, show him how the experts did it, to take those clone-children from Vasa Luigi, who had offended him … take ’em home to Mother. Crap, what does my mother know about all this bynow? Nothing, he prayed. They were all still here on Jackson’s Whole, somehow. How long had he been dead … ?
Where the hell is ImpSec?
Besides rolling around here on this bathroom floor, of course.
Ow, ow, ow… .
And Elli. Do I know you, ma’am? he’d asked. He should have bitten his tongue out.
Rowan … Elli. It made sense, in a weird way. His lover was a tall, brown-eyed, dark-haired, tough-minded, smart woman. The first thing presented to his confused awakening senses had been a tall, brown-eyed, dark-haired, tough-minded, smart woman. It was a very natural mistake.
He wondered if Elli was going to buy that explanation. His taste for heavily-armed girlfriends did have potential drawbacks. He inhaled a hopeless laugh.
It clogged in his throat. Taura, here? Did Ryoval know it? Did he know what a lovely big clawed hand she’d had in the destruction of his gene banks, four years ago, or did he just blame “Admiral Naismith”? True, all of Ryoval’s bounty hunters he’d encountered subsequently had seemed focused obsessively and exclusively upon himself. But Ryoval’s troopers had mistaken Mark for the Admiral; had Ryoval? Surely Mark would tell him he was the clone. Hell, I’d tell him the same if it were me, on the off-chance of confusing the issue. What was happening to Mark? Why had Mark offered himself as Miles’s … ransom? Mark couldn’t possibly be cryo-amnesic too, could he? No— Lilly had said the Dendarii, and the clones, and “Admiral Naismith” had all escaped. So how did they come to be back?
They came looking for you, Admiral Dipshit.
And had run headlong into Ryoval, looking for the same thing. He was a damned rendezvous.
What a merciful state cryo-amnesia was. He wished for it back.
“Are you all right?” Rowan called doubtfully. She stepped to the bathroom door, and saw him on the floor. “Oh, no! Another convulsion?” She dropped to her knees beside him, long fingers checking for damages. “Did you hit yourself on anything?”
“Ah … ah …” I’ll not bother avenging myself upon a cryo-amnesic, Vasa Luigi had said. He had better remain a cryo-amnesic then, for the moment, till he had a better grip on things. And on himself. “I think I’m all right.”
He suffered her to anxiously put him to bed. She stroked his hair. He stared at her in dismay through half- lidded, pretend-post-convulsion-sleepy eyes. What have I done?
What am I going to do?
