“Obviously.” Why are you looking at me?
“So. Tell me what happened on Jackson’s Whole. As you saw it.” Gregor sat up on his perch, hooking one heel and crossing his booted ankles, apparently centered and comfortable, like a raven on a branch.
“I’d have to start the story back on Earth.”
“Feel free.” His easy brief smile implied Mark had all the time in the world, and one hundred percent of his attention.
Haltingly, Mark began to stammer out his tale. Gregor’s questions were few, only interjected when Mark hung up on the difficult bits; few but searching. Gregor was not in pursuit of mere facts, Mark quickly realized. He had obviously already seen Illyan’s report. The Emperor was after something else.
“I cannot argue with your good intentions,” said Gregor at one point. “The brain transplant business is a loathsome enterprise. But you do realize—your effort, your raid, is hardly going to put a dent in it. House Bharaputra will just clean up the broken glass and go on.”
“It will make a permanent difference to the forty-nine clones,” Mark asserted doggedly. “Everybody makes that same damned argument. ’I can’t do it all, so I’m not going to do any.’ And they don’t. And it goes on, and on. And anyway, if I had been able to go back via Escobar as I’d planned in the first place—there would have been a big news splash. House Bharaputra might even have tried to reclaim the clones legally, and then there would really have been a public stink. I’d have made sure of it. Even if I’d been in Escobaran detention. Where, by the way, the House Bharaputra enforcers would have had a hard time getting at me. And maybe … maybe it would have interested some more people in the problem.”
“Ah!” said Gregor. “A publicity stunt.”
“It was not a stunt,” Mark grated.
“Excuse me. I did not mean to imply your effort was trivial. Quite the reverse. But you did have a coherent long-range strategy after all.”
“Yeah, but it went down the waste disintegrator as soon as I lost control of the Dendarii. As soon as they knew who I really was.” He brooded on the memory of that helplessness.
At Gregor’s prodding, Mark went on to recount Miles’s death, the screw-up with the lost cryo-chamber, their aborted efforts to retrieve it, and their humiliating ejection from Jacksonian local space. He found himself revealing far more of his real thoughts than he was comfortable doing, yet … Gregor almost put him at his ease. How did the man do it? The soft, almost self-effacing demeanor camouflaged a consummately skillful people-handler. In a garbled rush, Mark described the incident with Maree and his half-insane time in solitary confinement, then trailed off into inarticulate silence.
Gregor frowned introspectively, and was quiet for a time. Hell, the man was quiet all the time. “It seems to me, Mark, that you devalue your strengths. You have been battle-tested, and proved your physical courage. You can take an initiative, and dare much. You do not lack brains, though sometimes … information. It’s not a bad start on the qualities needed for a countship. Someday.”
“Not any day. I don’t want to be a Count of Barrayar,” Mark denied emphatically.
“It could be the first step to my job,” Gregor said suggestively, with a slight smile.
“No! That’s even worse. They’d eat me alive. My scalp would join the collection downstairs.”
“Very possibly.” Gregor’s smile faded. “Yes, I’ve often wondered where all my body parts are going to end up. And yet—I understand you were set to try it, just two years ago. Including Aral’s countship.”
“Fake it, yes. Now you’re talking about the real thing. Not an imitation.” I’m just an imitation, don’t you know? “I’ve only studied the outsides. The inner surface I can barely imagine.”
“But you see,” said Gregor, “we all start out that way. Faking it. The role is a simulacrum, into which we slowly grow real flesh.”
“Become the machine?”
“Some do. That’s the pathological version of a Count, and there are a few. Others become … more human. The machine, the role, then becomes a handily-worked prosthetic, which serves the man. Both types have their uses, for my goals. One must simply be sure where on the range of self-delusion the man you’re talking to falls.”
Yes, Countess Cordelia had surely had a hand in training this man. Mark sensed her trail, like phosphorescent footsteps in the dark. “What are your goals?”
Gregor shrugged. “Keep the peace. Keep the various factions from trying to kill each other. Make bloody sure that no galactic invader ever puts a boot on Barrayaran soil again. Foster economic progress. Lady Peace is the first hostage taken when economic discomfort rises. Here my reign is unusually blessed, with the terraforming of the second continent, and the opening of Sergyar for full colonization. Finally, now that that vile subcutaneous worm plague is under control. Settling Sergyar should absorb everyone’s excess energies for several generations. I’ve been studying various colonial histories lately, wondering how many of the mistakes we can avoid … well, so.”
“I still don’t want to be Count Vorkosigan.”
“Without Miles, you don’t exactly have a choice.”
“Rubbish.” At least, he hoped it was rubbish. “You just said it’s an interchangeable part. They could find someone else just fine if they had to. Ivan, I guess.”
Gregor smiled bleakly. “I confess, I’ve often used the same argument. Though in my case the topic is progeny. Bad dreams about the destiny of my body parts are nothing compared to the ones I have about my theoretical future children’s. And I’m not going to marry some high Vor bud whose family tree crosses mine sixteen times in the last six generations.” He contained himself abruptly, with an apologetic grimace. And yet … the man was so controlled, Mark fancied even this glimpse of the inner Gregor served a purpose, or could be made to.
Mark was getting a headache. Without Miles … With Miles, all these Barrayaran dilemmas would be Miles’s. And Mark would be free to face … his own dilemmas, anyway. His own demons, not these adopted ones. “This is not my … gift. Talent. Interest. Destiny. Something, I don’t know.” He rubbed his neck.
“Passion?” said Gregor.
“Yes, that’ll do. A countship is not my passion.”
After a moment, Gregor asked curiously, “What is your passion, Mark? If not government, or power, or wealth—you have not even mentioned wealth.”
“Enough wealth to destroy House Bharaputra is so far beyond my reach, it just … doesn’t apply. It’s not a solution I can have. I … I … some men are cannibals. House Bharaputra, its customers—I want to stop the cannibals. That would be worth getting out of bed for.” He became aware his voice had grown louder, and slumped down again in the soft chair.
“In other words … you have a passion for justice. Or dare I say it, Security. A curious echo of your, um, progenitor.”
“No, no!” Well … maybe, in a sense. “I suppose there are cannibals on Barrayar too, but they haven’t riveted my close personal interest. I don’t think in terms of law enforcement, because the transplant business isn’t illegal on Jackson’s Whole. So a policeman isn’t the solution either. Or … it would have to be a damned unusual policeman.” Like an ImpSec covert ops agent? Mark tried to imagine a detective-inspector bearing a letter of marque and reprisal. For some reason a vision of his progenitor kept coming up. Damn Gregor’s unsettling suggestion. Not a policeman. A knight-errant. The Countess had it dead-on. But there was no place for knights-errant any more; the police would have to arrest them.
Gregor sat back with a faintly satisfied air. “That’s very interesting.” His abstracted look resembled that of a man assimilating the code-key to a safe. He slid from his stool to wander along the windows and gaze down from another angle. Face to the light, he remarked, “It seems to me your future access to your … passion, depends rather heavily on getting Miles back.”