He thought of Ivan, crying in the shadows. Of the Count, dying in the woods. The Countess had kept her mask up better than any of them. She had to. She had more to hide. Miles himself, the man who had created a whole other personality just to escape into… .
The trouble, Mark decided, was that he had been trying to be Miles Vorkosigan all by himself. Even Miles didn’t do Miles that way. He had co-opted an entire supporting cast. A cast of thousands. No wonder I can never catch up with him.
Slowly, curiously, Mark opened his tunic and removed Gregor’s comm card from his inner breast pocket, and set it on the comconsole desk. He stared hard at the anonymous plastic chip, as if it bore some coded message for his eyes only. He rather fancied it did.
You knew. You knew, didn’t you, Gregor you bastard. You’ve just been waiting for me to figure it out for myself.
With spasmodic decision, Mark jammed the card into the comconsole’s read-slot.
No machines this time. A man in ordinary civilian clothing answered immediately, though without identifying himself. “Yes?”
“I’m Lord Mark Vorkosigan. I should be on your list. I want to talk to Gregor.”
“Right now, my lord?” said the man mildly. His hand danced over a keypad array to one side.
“Yes. Now. Please.”
“You are cleared.” He vanished.
The vid plate remained dark, but the audio transmitted a melodious chime. It chimed for quite a long time. Mark began to panic. What if—but then it stopped. There was a mysterious clanking sound, and Gregor’s voice said, “Yes?” in a bleary tone. No visuals.
“It’s me. Mark Vorkosigan. Lord Mark.”
“Yeah?”
“You told me to call you.”
“Yes, but it’s …” a short pause, “five in the bleeding morning, Mark!”
“Oh. Were you asleep?” he carolled frantically. He leaned forward and heat his head gently on the hard cool plastic of the desk. Timing. My timing.
“God, you sound just like Miles when you say that,” muttered the Emperor. The vid plate activated; Gregor’s image came up as he turned on a light. He was in some sort of bedroom, dim in the hack-ground, and was wearing nothing but loose black silky pajama pants. He peered at Mark, as if making sure he wasn’t talking to a ghost. But the corpus was too corpulant to be anyone but Mark. The Emperor heaved an oxygenating sigh and blinked himself to focus. “What do you need?”
How wonderfully succinct. If he answered in full, it could take him the next six hours.
“I need to be in on ImpSec’s search for Miles. Illyan won’t let me. You can override him.”
Gregor sat still for a minute, then barked a brief laugh. He swiped a hand through sleep-bent black hair. “Have you asked him?”
“Yes. Just now. He turned me down.”
“Mm, well … it’s his job to be cautious for me. So that my judgment may remain untrammeled.”
“In your untrammeled judgment, sir. Sire. Let me in!”
Gregor studied him thoughtfully, rubbing his face. “Yes …” he drawled slowly after a moment. “Let’s … see what happens.” His eyes were not bleary now.
“Can you call Illyan right now, sire?”
“What is this, pent-up demand? The dam breaks?”
I am poured out like water … where did that quote come from? It sounded like something of the Countess’s. “He’s still up. Please. Sire. And have him call me back at this console to confirm. I’ll wait.”
“Very well,” Gregor’s lips twisted up in a peculiar smile, “Lord Mark.”
“Thank you, sire. Uh … good night.”
“Good morning.” Gregor cut the comm.
Mark waited. The seconds ticked by, stretched out of all recognition. His hangover was starting, but he was still slightly drunk. The worst of both worlds. He had started to doze when the comconsole chimed at last, and he nearly spasmed out of his chair.
He slapped urgently at the controls. “Yes. Sir?”
Illyan’s saturnine face appeared over the vid plate. “Lord Mark.” He gave Mark the barest nod. “If you come to ImpSec headquarters at the beginning of normal business hours tomorrow morning, you will be permitted to review the files we discussed.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Mark sincerely.
“That’s two-and-one-half hours from now,” Illyan mentioned with, Mark thought, an understandable hint of sadism. Illyan hadn’t slept either.
“I’ll be there.”
Illyan acknowledged this with a shiver of his eyelids, and vanished.
Damnation through good works, or grace alone? Mark meditated on Gregor’s grace. He knew. He knew it before I did. Lord Mark Vorkosigan was a real person.
Chapter Eighteen
The level light of dawn turned the night’s lingering mist to gold, a smoky autumnal haze that gave the city of Vorbarr Sultana an almost magical air. The Imperial Security Headquarters building stood windowless, foursquare against the light, a vast utilitarian concrete block with enormous gates and doors certainly designed to diminish any human supplicant fool enough to approach it. In his case, a redundant effect, Mark decided.
“What awful architecture,” he said to Pym, beside him, chauffeuring him in the Count’s ground car.
“Ugliest building in town,” the armsman agreed cheerfully. “It dates back to Mad Emperor Yuri’s Imperial architect, Lord Dono Vorrutyer. An uncle to the later vice-admiral. He managed to get up five major structures before Yuri was killed, and they stopped him. The Municipal Stadium runs this a close second, but we’ve never been able to afford to tear it down. Still stuck with it, sixty years later.”
“It looks like the sort of place that has dungeons in the basement. Painted institutional green. Run by ethics-free physicians.”
“It did,” said Pym. The Armsman negotiated their way past the gate guards and slowed in front of a vast flight of steps.
“Pym … aren’t those steps a bit oversized?”
“Yep,” grinned the Armsman. “You’d have a cramp in your leg by the time you reached the top, if you tried to take it in one go.” Pym eased the ground car forward, and stopped to let Mark off “But if you go around the left end, here, you’ll find a little door at ground level, and a lift tube foyer. That’s where everybody actually goes in.”
“Thank you.” Pym popped the front canopy, and Mark climbed out. “Whatever happened to Lord Dono, after Mad Yuri’s reign? Assassinated by the Architectural Defense League, I hope?”
“No, he retired to the country, lived off his daughter and son-in-law, and died stark mad. There’s a bizarre set of towers he built on their estate, that they charge admission to see, now.” With a wave, Pym lowered the canopy and pulled away.
Mark trod around to the left, as directed. So here he was, bright and early … or at least, early. He’d taken a long shower, donned comfortable dark civilian clothes, and tanked himself on enough painkillers, vitamins, hangover remedies, and stimulants to leave him feeling artificially normal. More artificial than normal, but he was determined not to let Illyan bully him out of his chance.
He presented himself to the ImpSec guards in the foyer. “I’m Lord Mark Vorkosigan. I’m expected.”
“Hardly that,” growled a voice from the lift tube. Illyan himself swung out. The guards braced; Illyan put them back at ease with an unmilitary wave. Illyan too had showered, and changed back into his usual undress greens. Mark suspected Illyan had eaten pills for breakfast too. “Thank you, Sergeant, I’ll take him up.”
“What a depressing building to work in,” Mark commented, as he rose in the lift tube beside the ImpSec chief.
“Yes,” sighed Illyan. “I visited the Investigatif Federate building on Escobar, once. Forty-five stories, all glass … I was never closer to emigrating. Dono Vorrutyer should have been strangled at birth. But … it’s mine now.” Illyan glanced around with a dubious possessiveness.