Mirror dance (26 page)

"Lord Mark Vorkosigan, milady," the manservant announced portentously, making Mark flinch.

"Thank you, Pym," she nodded to the middle-aged retainer, dismissing him. The Armsman's disappointed curiosity was well-concealed, except for one quick glance back before closing the doors after himself.

"Hello, Mark." Countess Vorkosigan's voice was a soft alto. "Please sit." She waved at an armchair set at a slight angle opposite her sofa. It did not appear to be hinged and sprung to snap closed upon him, and it was not too close to her; he lowered himself into it, gingerly, as instructed. Unusually, it was not too high for his feet to touch the floor. Had it been cut down for Miles?

"I am glad to meet you at last," she stated, "though I'm sorry the circumstances are so awkward."

"So am I," he mumbled. Glad, or sorry? And who were these
I's
sitting here, lying politely to each other about their gladness and sorrow?
Who are we, lady?
He looked around fearfully for the Butcher of Komarr. "Where is . . . your husband?"

"Ostensibly, greeting Elena. Actually, he funked out and sent me into the front line first. Most unlike him."

"I . . . don't understand. Ma'am." He didn't know what to call her.

"He's been drinking stomach medicine in beverage quantities for the past two days . . . you have to understand how the information has been trickling in, from our point of view. Our first hint that there was anything amiss came four days ago in the form of a courier officer from ImpSec HQ, with a brief standard message from Illyan that Miles was missing in action, details to follow. We were not at first inclined to panic. Miles has been missing before, sometimes for quite extended periods. It was not until Illyan's full transmission was relayed and decoded, several hours later, together with the news that you were on your way, that it all came clear. We've had three days to think it through."

He sat silent, struggling with the concept of the great Admiral Count Vorkosigan, the feared Butcher of Komarr, that massive, shadowy monster, even having a point of view, let alone one that low mortals such as himself were casually expected to understand.

"Illyan never uses weasel-words," the Countess continued, "but he made it through that whole report without once using the term 'dead,' 'killed,' or any of their synonyms. The medical records suggest otherwise. Correct?"

"Um . . . the cryo-treatment appeared successful." What did she want from him?

"And so we are mired in an emotional and legal limbo," she sighed. "It would be almost easier if he . . ." She frowned fiercely down into her lap. Her hands clenched, for the first time. "You understand, we're going to be talking about a lot of possible contingencies. Much revolves around you. But I won't count Miles as dead till he's dead and
rotted
."

He remembered that tide of blood on the concrete. "Um," he said helplessly.

"The fact that you could potentially play Miles has been a great distraction to some people." She looked him over bemusedly. "You say the Dendarii accepted you . . .?"

He cringed into the chair, body-conscious under her sharp grey gaze, feeling the flesh of his torso roll and bunch under Miles's shirt and sash, the tightness of the trousers. "I've . . . put on some weight since then."

"All that? In just three weeks?"

"Yes," he muttered, flushing.

One brow rose. "On purpose?"

"Sort of."

"Huh." She sat back, looking surprised. "That was
extremely
clever of you."

He gaped, realized it emphasized his doubling chin, and closed his mouth quickly.

"Your status has been the subject of much debate. I voted against any security ploy to conceal Miles's situation by having you pose as him. In the first place, it's redundant. Lieutenant Lord Vorkosigan is often gone for months at a time; his absence is more normal than not, these days. It's strategically more important to establish you as yourself, Lord Mark, if Lord Mark is indeed who you are to be."

He swallowed in a dry throat. "Do I have a choice?"

"You will, but a reasoned one, after you've had time to assimilate it all."

"You can't be serious. I'm a
clone
."

"I'm from Beta Colony, kiddo," she said tartly. "Betan law is very sensible and clear on the topic of clones. It's only Barrayaran custom that finds itself at a loss. Barrayarans!" She pronounced it like a swear word. "Barrayar lacks a long experience of dealing with all the technological variants on human reproduction. No legal precedents. And if it's not a
tradition
," she put the same sour spin on the word as had Bothari-Jesek, "they don't know how to cope."

"What am I, to you as a Betan?" he asked, nervously fascinated.

"Either my son or my son once removed," she answered promptly. "Unlicensed, but claimed by me as an heir."

"Those are actual legal categories, on your homeworld?"

"You bet. Now, if
I
had ordered you cloned from Miles, after getting an approved child-license first of course, you would be my son pure and simple. If Miles as a legal adult had done the same, he would be your legal parent and I would be your mother-once-removed, and bear claims upon you and obligations to you approximately the equivalent of a grandparent. Miles was not, of course, a legal adult at the time you were cloned, nor was your birth licensed. If you were still a minor, he and I could go before an Adjudicator, and your guardianship would be assigned according to the Adjudicator's best judgment of your welfare. You are no longer, of course, a minor in either Betan or Barrayaran law." She sighed. "The time for legal guardianship is past. Lost. The inheritance of property will mostly be tangled in the Barrayaran legal confusions. Aral will discuss Barrayaran customary law, or the lack of it, with you when the time comes. That leaves our emotional relationship."

"Do we have one?" he asked cautiously. His two greatest fears, that she would either pull out a weapon and shoot him, or else throw herself upon him in some totally inappropriate paroxysm of maternal affection, both seemed to be fading. He was left facing a level-voiced mystery.

"We do, though exactly what it is remains to be discovered. Realize this, though. Half my genes run through your body, and my selfish genome is heavily evolutionarily pre-programmed to look out for its copies. The other half is copied from the man I admire most in all the worlds and time, so my interest is doubly riveted. The artistic combination of the two, shall we say, arrests my attention."

Put like that, it actually seemed to make sense, logically and without threat. He found his stomach un-knotting, his throat relaxing. He promptly felt hungry again, for the first time since planetary orbit.

"Now, what's between you and me has nothing to do with what's between you and Barrayar. That's Aral's department, and he'll have to speak for his own views. It's all so undecided, except for one thing. While you are here, you are yourself, Mark, Miles's six-years-younger twin brother. And not an imitation or a substitute for Miles. So the more you can establish yourself as distinct from Miles, from the very beginning, the better."

"Oh," he breathed, "please, yes."

"I suspected you'd already grasped that. Good, we agree. But just not-being-Miles is no more than the inverse of being an imitation Miles. I want to know, who is Mark?"

"Lady . . . I don't know." His prodded honesty had an edge of anguish.

She watched him, sapiently. "There is time," she said calmly. "Miles . . . wanted you to be here, you know. He talked about showing you around. Imagined teaching you to ride horseback." She gave a furtive shudder.

"Galen tried to have me taught, in London," Mark recalled. "It was terrifically expensive, and I wasn't very good at it, so he finally told me just to avoid horses, when I got here."

"Ah?" she brightened slightly. "Hm. Miles, you see, has . . . had . . . has these only-child romantic notions about siblings. Now, I have a brother, so I have no such illusions." She paused, glanced around the room, and leaned forward with a suddenly confidential air, lowering her voice. "You have an uncle, a grandmother, and two cousins on Beta Colony who are just as much your relatives as Aral and myself and your cousin Ivan here on Barrayar. Remember, you have more than one choice. I've given one son to Barrayar. And watched for twenty-eight years while Barrayar tried to destroy him. Maybe Barrayar has had its turn, eh?"

"Ivan's not here
now
, is he?" Mark asked, diverted and horrified.

"He's not staying at Vorkosigan House, no, if that's what you mean. He is in Vorbarr Sultana, assigned to Imperial Service Headquarters. Perhaps," her eye lit in speculation, "he could take you out and show you some of the things Miles wanted you to see."

"Ivan may still be angry for what I did to him in London," Mark jittered.

"He'll get over it," the Countess predicted confidently. "I have to admit, Miles would have positively enjoyed unsettling people with you."

A quirk Miles inherited from his mother, clearly.

"I've lived almost three decades on Barrayar," she mused. "We've come such a long way. And yet there is still so terribly far to go. Even Aral's will grows weary. Maybe we can't do it all in one generation. Time for the changing of the guard, in my opinion . . . ah, well."

He sat back in his chair for the first time, letting it support him, starting to watch and listen instead of just cower. An ally. It seemed he had an ally, though he was still not sure just why. Galen had not spent much time on Countess Cordelia Vorkosigan, being totally obsessed with his old enemy the Butcher. Galen, it appeared, had seriously underestimated her. She had survived twenty-nine years here . . . might he? For the first time, it seemed something humanly possible.

A brief knock sounded on the hinged double doors to the hallway. At Countess Vorkosigan's "Yes?", they swung open partway, and a man poked his head around the frame and favored her with a strained smile.

"Is it all right for me to come in now, dear Captain?"

"Yes, I think so," said Countess Vorkosigan.

He let himself through and closed the doors again. Mark's throat locked; he swallowed and breathed, swallowed and breathed, with frighteningly fragile control. He would
not
pass out in front of this man. Or vomit. He hadn't more than a teaspoon of bile left in his belly by now anyway. It was him, unmistakably him, Prime Minister Admiral Count Aral Vorkosigan, formerly Regent of the Barrayaran Empire and de facto dictator of three worlds, conqueror of Komarr, military genius, political mastermind—accused murderer, torturer, madman, too many impossible things to be contained in that stocky form now striding toward Mark.

Mark had studied vids of him taken at every age; perhaps it was not so odd that his first coherent thought was,
He looks older than I expected.
Count Vorkosigan was ten standard years older than his Betan wife, but he looked twenty or thirty years older. His hair was a whiter shade of grey than in the vids from even two years ago. He was short for a Barrayaran, eye to eye with the Countess. His face was heavy, intense, weathered. He wore green uniform trousers but no jacket, just the cream shirt with the long sleeves rolled up and open at the round collar which, if it was an attempt at a casual look, was failing utterly. The tension in the room had risen to choking levels with his entrance.

"Elena is settled," Count Vorkosigan reported, seating himself beside the Countess. His posture was open, hands on knees, but he did not lean back comfortably. "The visit seems to be stirring up more old memories than she was ready for. She's rather disturbed."

"I'll go talk to her in a bit," promised the Countess.

"Good." The Count's eyes inventoried Mark. Puzzled? Repelled? "Well." The practiced diplomat whose job it was to talk three planets down the road to progress sat speechless, at a loss, as if unable to address Mark directly. He turned instead to his wife. "
He
passed as Miles?"

A tinge of dark amusement flashed in Countess Vorkosigan's eyes. "He's put on weight since then," she said blandly.

"I see."

The silence stretched for excruciating seconds.

Mark blurted out, "The first thing I was supposed to do when I met you was try to kill you."

"Yes. I know." Count Vorkosigan settled back on the sofa, eyes on Mark's face at last.

"They made me practice about twenty different back-up methods, till I could do them in my sleep, but the primary was to have been a skin patch with a paralyzing toxin that left evidence on autopsy pointing to heart failure. I was to get alone with you, touch it to any part of your body I could reach. It was strangely slow, for an assassination drug. I was to wait, in your sight, for twenty minutes while you died, and never let on that I was not Miles."

The Count smiled grimly. "I see. A good revenge. Very artistic. It would have worked."

"As the new Count Vorkosigan, I was then to go on and spearhead a drive for the Imperium."

"
That
would have failed. Ser Galen expected it to. It was merely the chaos of its failure, during which Komarr was supposed to rise, that he desired. You were to be another Vorkosigan sacrifice then." He actually seemed to grow more at ease, professional, discussing these grotesque plots.

"Killing you was the entire reason for my existence. Two years ago I was all primed to do it. I endured all those years of Galen for no other purpose."

"Take heart," advised the Countess. "Most people exist for no reason at all."

The Count remarked, "ImpSec assembled a huge pile of documentation on you, after the plot came to light. It covers the time from when you were a mere mad gleam in Galen's eye, to the latest addition about your disappearance from Earth two months ago. But there's nothing in the documentation that suggests your, er, late adventure on Jackson's Whole was some sort of latent programming along the lines of my projected assassination. Was it?" A faint doubt colored his voice.

"No," said Mark firmly. "I've been programmed enough to know. It's not something you can fail to notice. Not the way Galen did it, anyway."