"Hi, Miles," said Ivan. "What are you doing here?"
"I might ask you the same thing," said Miles.
"I'm second assistant military attache. They assigned me here to get cultured, I guess. Earth, y'know."
"Oh," said Galeni, one corner of his mouth twitching upward, "is that what you're here for. I'd wondered."
Ivan grinned sheepishly. "How's life with the irregulars these days?" he asked Miles. "You still getting away with your Admiral Naismith scam?"
"Just barely," said Miles. "The Dendarii are with me now. They're in orbit," he jabbed his finger skyward, "eating their heads off even as we speak."
Galeni looked as if he'd bitten into something sour. "Does everybody know about this covert operation but me? You, Vorpatril—I know your Security clearance is no higher than my own!"
Ivan shrugged. "A previous encounter. It was in the family."
"Damned Vor power network," muttered Galeni.
"Oh," said Elli Quinn in a tone of sudden enlightenment, "this is your cousin Ivan! I'd always wondered what he looked like."
Ivan, who had been sneaking little peeks at her ever since he'd entered the room, came to attention with all the quivering alertness of a bird dog pointing. He smiled blindingly and bowed over Elli's hand. "Delighted to meet you, m'lady. The Dendarii must be improving, if you are a fair sample. The fairest, surely."
Elli repossessed her hand. "We've met."
"Surely not. I couldn't forget that face."
"I didn't have this face. 'A head just like an onion' was the way you phrased it, as I recall." Her eyes glittered. "Since I was blinded at the time, I had no idea how bad the plastiskin prosthesis really looked. Until you told me. Miles never mentioned it."
Ivan's smile had gone limp. "Ah. The plasma-burn lady."
Miles smirked and edged closer to Elli, who put her hand possessively through the crook of his elbow and favored Ivan with a cold samurai smile. Ivan, trying to bleed with dignity, looked to Captain Galeni.
"Since you know each other, Lieutenant Vorkosigan, I've assigned Lieutenant Vorpatril here to take you in tow and orient you to the Embassy, and to your duties here," said Galeni. "Vor or no Vor, as long as you're on the Emperor's payroll, the Emperor might as well get some use of you. I trust some clarification of your status will arrive promptly."
"I trust the Dendarii payroll will arrive as promptly," said Miles.
"Your mercenary—bodyguard—can return to her outfit. If for any reason you need to leave the Embassy compound, I'll assign you one of my men."
"Yes, sir," sighed Miles. "But I still have to be able to get in touch with the Dendarii, in case of emergencies."
"I'll see that Commander Quinn gets a secured comm link before she leaves. As a matter of feet," he touched his comconsole, "Sergeant Barth?" he spoke into it.
"Yes, sir?" a voice replied.
"Do you have that comm link ready yet?"
"Just finished encoding it, sir."
"Good, bring it to my office."
Barth, still in his civvies, appeared within moments. Galeni shepherded Elli out. "Sergeant Barth will escort you out of the Embassy compound, Commander Quinn." She glanced back over her shoulder at Miles, who sketched her a reassuring salute.
"What will I tell the Dendarii?" she asked.
"Tell them—tell them their funds are in transit," Miles called. The doors hissed shut, eclipsing her.
Galeni returned to his comconsole, which was bunking for his attention. "Vorpatril, please make getting your cousin out of that . . . costume, and into a correct uniform your first priority."
Does Admiral Naismith spook you just a little . . . sir? Miles wondered irritably. "The Dendarii uniform is as real as your own, sir."
Galeni glowered at him, across his flickering desk. "I wouldn't know, Lieutenant. My father could only afford toy soldiers for me when I was a boy. You two are dismissed."
Miles, fuming, waited until the doors had closed behind them before tearing off his grey-and-white jacket and throwing it to the corridor floor. "Costume! Toy soldiers! I think I'm gonna kill that Komarran son-of-a-bitch!"
"Oooh," said Ivan. "Aren't we touchy today."
"You heard what he said!"
"Yeah, so … Galeni's all right. A bit regulation, maybe. There's a dozen little tin-pot mercenary outfits running around in oddball corners of the worm-hole nexus. Some of them tread a real fine line between legal and illegal. How's he supposed to know your Dendarii aren't next door to being hijackers?"
Miles picked up his uniform jacket, shook it out, and folded it carefully over his arm. "Huh."
"Come on," said Ivan. "I'll take you down to Stores and get you a kit in a color more to his taste."
"They got anything in my size?"
"They make a laser-map of your body and produce the stuff one-off, computer controlled, just like that overpriced sartorial pirate you take yourself to in Vorbarr Sultana. This is Earth, son."
"My man on Barrayar's been doing my clothes for ten years. He has some tricks that aren't in the computer. . . . Well, I guess I can live with it. Can the embassy computer do civilian clothes?"
Ivan grimaced. "If your tastes are conservative. If you want something in style to wow the local girls, you have to go farther afield."
"With Galeni for a duenna, I have a feeling I'm not going to get a chance to go very far afield," Miles sighed. "It'll have to do."
Miles sighted down the forest-green sleeve of his Barrayaran dress uniform, adjusted the cuff, and jerked his chin up, the better to settle his head on the high collar. He'd half-forgotten just how uncomfortable that damn collar was, with his short neck. In front the red rectangles of his lieutenant's rank seemed to poke into his jaw; in back it pinched his still-uncut hair. And the boots were hot. The bone he'd broken in his left foot at Dagoola still twinged, even now after being re-broken, set straight, and treated with electra-stim.
Still, the green uniform was home. His true self. Maybe it was time for a vacation from Admiral Naismith and his intractable responsibilities, time to remember the more reasonable problems of Lieutenant Vorkosigan, whose sole task now was to learn the procedures of one small office and put up with Ivan Vorpatril. The Dendarii didn't need him to hold their hand for routine rest and refit, nor could he have arranged any more safe and thorough a disappearance for Admiral Naismith.
Ivan's particular charge was this tiny windowless room deep in the bowels of the embassy compound; his job, to feed hundreds of data disks to a secured computer that concentrated them into a weekly report on the status of Earth, to be sent back to Security Chief Illyan and the general staff on Barrayar. Where, Miles supposed, it was computer-collated with hundreds of other such reports to create Barrayar's vision of the universe. Miles hoped devoutly that Ivan wasn't adding kilowatts and megawatts in the same column.
"By far the bulk of this stuff is public statistics," Ivan was explaining, seated before his console and actually looking at ease in his dress greens. "Population shifts, agricultural and manufacturing production figures, the various political divisions' published military budgets. The computer adds 'em up sixteen different ways, and blinks for attention when things don't match. Since all the originators have computers too, this doesn't happen too often—all the lies are embedded before it ever gets to us, Galeni says. More important to Barrayar are records of ship movements in and out of Earth local space.