Miles in Love (96 page)

"So what, if anything, is ImpSec planning to do about it all?" Miles asked at last.

"At present, as little as possible. It's not as though we don't have enough other tasks on our plate. We will, of course, continue to monitor all data for any key items that might lead public attention back to where we don't want it. It's a poor second choice to no attention at all, but this murder scenario does us one favor. For anyone who refuses to accept Tien Vorsoisson's death as a mere accident, it presents a plausible cover story, which entirely accounts for no further investigation being permitted."

"Oh, entirely," snarled Miles.
I see where this is going
. He sat back, and folded his arms mulishly. "Does this mean I'm on my own?"

"Ah . . ." said Galeni. He drew it out for a rather long time. Eventually, he ran out of
ah
and was forced to speak. "Not exactly."

Miles bared his set teeth, and waited for Galeni, who waited for him.

Miles broke first. "Dammit, Duv, am I supposed to just stand here and eat this shit raw?"

"Come on, Miles, you've done coverups before. I thought you covert ops fellows lived and breathed this sort of thing."

"Never in my own sandbox. Never where I had to live in it. My Dendarii missions were hit and run. We always left the stink far behind."

Galeni's shrug lacked sympathy. "I must also point out, these are first results. Just because there are no leaks yet doesn't mean none will be . . . siphoned out into the open later on."

Miles exhaled slowly. "All right. Tell Allegre he has his goat. Baaah." He added after a moment, "But I draw the line at pretending to guilt. It was a breath mask accident. Period."

Galeni waved a hand in acceptance of this. "ImpSec won't complain."

It was
good
, Miles reminded himself, that there was no security rupture in the Komarr case. But this also killed his faint, unvoiced hope that he could leave Richars and his cronies to the untender mercies of ImpSec to be disposed of. "As long as this is all gas, so be it. But you can let Allegre know, that if it goes to a formal murder charge against me in the Council . . ."
Then what?

Galeni's eyes narrowed. "Do you have reason to think someone will charge you there? Who?"

"Richars Vorrutyer. I have a sort of . . . personal promise from him."

"He can't, though. Not unless he gets a member to lay it for him."

"He can if he beats out Lord Dono and is confirmed Count Vorrutyer."
And my colleagues are like to choke on Lord Dono.

"Miles . . . ImpSec
can't
release the evidence surrounding Vorsoisson's death. Not even to the Council of Counts."

By the look on Galeni's face, Miles read that as
Especially
not to the Council of Counts. Knowing that erratic body, he sympathized. "Yes. I know."

Galeni said uneasily, "What are you planning to do?"

Miles had more compelling reasons than the strain on ImpSec's nerves to wish to sidestep this whole scenario. Two of them, mother and son. If he worked it right, none of this looming juridical mess need ever touch Ekaterin and her Nikki. "Nothing more—nor less—than my job. A little politicking. Barrayaran style."

Galeni eyed him dubiously. "Well . . . if you really intend to project innocence, you need to do a more convincing job. You . . . 
twitch
."

Miles . . . twitched. "There's guilt and there's guilt. I am not guilty of willful murder. I am guilty of screwing up. Now, I'm not alone—this one took a full committee. Headed by that fool Vorsoisson himself. If only he'd—dammit, every time you step off the downside shuttle into a Komarran dome they sit you down and make you watch that vid on breath mask procedures. He'd been living there nearly a year. He'd been
told
." He fell silent a moment. "Not that I didn't know better than to go out-dome without informing
my
contacts."

"As it happens, no one is accusing you of negligence."

Miles's mouth twisted bitterly. "They flatter me, Duv. They flatter me."

"I can't help you with that one," said Galeni. "I have enough unquiet ghosts of my own."

"Check." Miles sighed.

Galeni regarded him for a long moment, then said abruptly, "About your clone."

"Brother."

"Yes, him. Do you know . . . do you understand . . . what the devil does he
intend
, with respect to Kareen Koudelka?"

"Is this ImpSec asking, or Duv Galeni?"

"Duv Galeni." Galeni paused for a rather longer time. "After the . . . ambiguous favor he did me when we first encountered each other on Earth, I was content to see him survive and escape. I wasn't even too shocked when I learned he'd popped up here, nor—now I've met your mother—that your family took him in. I'd even reconciled myself to the likelihood that we would meet, from time to time." His level voice cracked a trifle. "I wasn't expecting him to mutate into my brother-in-law!"

Miles sat back, his brows rising in partial sympathy. He refrained from doing anything so rude as, say, cackling. "I would point out, that in an exceedingly weird sense, you are related already. He's your foster brother. Your father had him made; by some interpretations of the galactic laws on clones, that makes him Mark's father too."

"This concept makes my head spin. Painfully." He stared at Miles in sudden consternation. "Mark doesn't think of
himself
as my foster brother, does he?"

"I have not so far directed his attention to that legal wrinkle. But think, Duv, how much
easier
it will be if you only have to explain him as your brother-in-law. I mean, lots of people have embarrassing in-laws; it's one of life's lotteries. You'll have all their sympathy."

Galeni gave him a look of Very Limited Amusement.

"He'll be Uncle Mark," Miles pointed out with a slow, unholy smile. "You'll be Uncle Duv. I suppose, by some loose extension, I'll be Uncle Miles. And here I never thought I'd be anybody's uncle—an only child and all that."

Come to think of it . . . if Ekaterin ever accepted him, Miles would become an instant uncle, acquiring
three
brothers-in-law simultaneously, all with attached wives, and a pack of nieces and nephews already in place. Not to mention the father-in-law and the stepmother-in-law. He wondered if any of them would be embarrassing. Or—a new and unnerving thought—if
he
was going to be the appalling brother-in-law . . . 

"
Do
you think they'll marry?" asked Galeni seriously.

"I . . . am not certain what cultural format their bonding will ultimately take. I am certain you could not pry Mark away from Kareen with a crowbar. And while Kareen has good reasons to take it slowly, I don't think any of the Koudelkas know
how
to betray a trust."

That won a little eyebrow-flick from Galeni, and the slight mellowing that any reminder of Delia invariably produced in him.

"I'm afraid you're going to have to resign yourself to Mark as a permanent fixture," Miles concluded.

"Eh," said Galeni. It was hard to tell if this sound represented resignation, or stomach cramp. In any case, he climbed to his feet and took his leave.

Mark, entering the black-and-white tiled entry foyer from the back hallway to the lift tubes, encountered his mother descending the front staircase.

"Oh, Mark," Countess Vorkosigan said, in a just-the-man-I-want-to-see voice. Obediently, he paused and waited for her. She eyed his neat attire, his favorite black suit modified by what he trusted was an unthreatening dark green shirt. "Are you on your way out?"

"Shortly. I was just about to hunt up Pym and ask him to assign me an Armsman-driver. I have an interview set up with a friend of Lord Vorsmythe's, a food service fellow who's promised to explain Barrayar's distribution system to me. He may be a future customer—I thought it might look well to arrive in the groundcar, all Vorkosiganly."

"Very likely."

Her further comment was interrupted by two half-grown boys rounding the corner: Pym's son Arthur, carrying a smelly fiber-tipped stick, and Jankowski's boy Denys, lugging an optimistically large jar. They clattered up the stairs past her with a breathless greeting of, "Hello, milady!"

She wheeled to watch them pass, her eyebrows rising in amusement. "New recruits for science?" she asked Mark as they thumped out of sight, giggling.

"For enterprise. Martya had a flash of genius. She put a bounty on escaped butter bugs, and set all the Armsmen's spare children to rounding them up. A mark apiece, and a ten-mark bonus for the queen. Enrique is back to work splicing genes full-time, the lab is caught up again, and
I
can return my attention to financial planning. We're getting bugs back at the rate of two or three an hour; it should be all over by tomorrow or the next day. At least, none of the children seem yet to have hit on the idea of sneaking into the lab and freeing Vorkosigan bugs, to renew their economic resource. I may devise a lock for that hutch."

The Countess laughed. "Come now, Lord Mark, you insult their honor. These are our
Armsmen's
offspring."

"
I
would have thought of that, at their age."

"If it weren't their liege-lord's bugs, they might have." She smiled, but her smile faded. "Speaking of insults . . . I wanted to ask you if you'd heard any of this vile talk going around about Miles and his Madame Vorsoisson."

"I've been head-down in the lab for the last several days. Miles doesn't come back there much, for some reason. What vile talk?"

She narrowed her eyes, slipped her hand through his arm, and strolled with him toward the antechamber to the library. "Illyan and Alys took me aside at the Vorinnis's dinner party last night, and gave me an earful. I'm extremely glad they got to me first. I was then cornered by two other people in the course of the evening and given garbled alternate versions . . . actually, one of them was trolling for confirmation. The other appeared to hope I'd pass it on to Aral, as he didn't dare repeat it to his face, the spineless little snipe. It seems rumors have begun to circulate through the capital that Miles somehow made away with Ekaterin's late husband while on Komarr."

"Well," said Mark reasonably, "you know more about that than I do. Did he?"

Her eyebrows went up. "Do you care?"

"Not especially. From everything I've been able to gather—between the lines, mostly, Ekaterin doesn't talk about him much—Tien Vorsoisson was a pretty complete waste of food, water, oxygen, and time."

"Has Miles said anything to you that . . . that leaves you in doubt about Vorsoisson's death?" she asked, seating herself beside the huge antique mirror gracing the side wall.

"Well, no," Mark admitted, taking a chair across from her. "Though I gather he fancies himself guilty of some carelessness. I think it would have been a much more interesting romance if he
had
assassinated the lout for her."

She sighed, looking bemused. "Sometimes, Mark, despite all your Betan therapist has done, I'm afraid your Jacksonian upbringing still leaks out."

He shrugged, unrepentantly. "Sorry."

"I am moved by your insincerity. Just don't repeat those no doubt honest sentiments in front of Nikki."

"I may be Jacksonian, ma'am, but I'm not a complete loss."

She nodded, evidently reassured. She began to speak again, but was interrupted by the double doors to the library swinging wide, and Miles escorting Commodore Duv Galeni out through the anteroom.

Seeing them, the Commodore paused to give the Countess a civil good-day. The greeting he gave to Mark was just as civil, but much warier, as though Mark had lately erupted in a hideous skin disease but Galeni was too polite to comment on it. Mark returned the greeting in kind.

Galeni did not linger. Miles saw his visitor out the front door, and retraced his steps toward the library.

"Miles!" said the Countess, rising and following him in with an expression of sudden concentration. Mark trailed in after them, uncertain if she'd finished with him or not. She cornered Miles against one of the sofas flanking the fireplace. "I understand from Pym that your Madame Vorsoisson was here yesterday, while Aral and I were out. She was
here
, and I
missed
her!"

"It was not exactly a social call," Miles said. Trapped, he gave up and sat down. "And I could hardly have delayed her departure till you and Father returned at midnight."

"Reasonable enough," his mother said, completing her capture by plunking down on the matching sofa across from him. Gingerly, Mark seated himself next to her. "But when
are
we to be permitted to meet her?"

He eyed her warily. "Not . . . just now. If you don't mind. Things are in a rather delicate, um, situation between us just at the moment."

"Delicate," echoed the Countess. "Isn't that a distinct improvement over a life in ruins with vomiting?"

A brief hopeful look glimmered in his eye, but he shook his head. "Just now, it's pretty hard to say."

"I quite understand. But only because Simon and Alys explained it to us last night. Might I ask why we had to hear about this nasty slander from them, and not from you?"

"Oh. Sorry." He sketched her an apologetic bow. "I only first heard about it day before yesterday myself. We've been running on separate tracks the past few days, what with your social whirl."

"You've been sitting on this for two days? I should have wondered at your sudden fascination with Chaos Colony during our last two meals together."

"Well, I
was
interested in hearing about your life on Sergyar. But more critically, I was waiting on the ImpSec analysis."

The Countess glanced toward the door Commodore Galeni had lately exited. "Ah," she said, in a tone of enlightenment. "Hence Duv."

"Hence Duv." Miles nodded. "If there had been a security leak involved, well, it would have been a whole different matter."

"And there was not?"

"Apparently not. It seems to be an entirely politically motivated fiction, made up out of altogether circumstantial . . . circumstances. By a small group of Conservative Counts and their hangers-on whom I have lately offended. And vice versa. I've decided to deal with it . . . politically." His face set in a grim look. "In my own way. In fact, Dono Vorrutyer and René Vorbretten will be here shortly to consult."