Illyan led him deep into the—yes, this building definitely had bowels, Mark decided. The bowels of ImpSec. Their footsteps echoed down a bare corridor lined with tiny, cubicle-like rooms. Mark glanced through a few half-open doors at highly-secured corn-consoles manned by green-uniformed men. One man at least had a bank of non-regulation full spectrum lights blazing away, aimed at his station chair. There was a large coffee dispenser at the end of the corridor. He didn’t think it was random chance that Illyan led him to the cubicle numbered thirteen.
“This comconsole has been loaded with every report I’ve received pertaining to the search for Lieutenant Vorkosigan,” said Illyan coolly. “If you think you can do better with it than my trained analysts have, I invite you to try.”
“Thank you, sir.” Mark slid into the station chair, and powered up the vid plate. “This is unexpectedly generous.”
“You should have no complaint, my lord,” Illyan stated, in the tone of a directive. Gregor must have lit quite a fire under him, earlier this morning, Mark reflected, as Illyan bowed himself out with a distinctly ironic nod. Hostile? No. That was unjust. Illyan was not nearly as hostile as he had a right to be. It’s not only obedience to his Emperor, Mark realized with a shiver. Illyan could have stood up to Gregor on a security issue like this if he’d really wanted to. He’s getting desperate.
He took a deep breath and plunged into the files, reading, listening, and viewing. Illyan hadn’t been joking about the everything part. There were literally hundreds of reports, generated by fifty or sixty different agents scattered throughout the near wormhole nexus. Some were brief and negative. Others were long and negative. But somebody seemed to have visited, at least once, every possible cryo-facility on Jackson’s Whole, its orbital and jump point stations, and several adjoining local space systems. There were even recently-received reports tracing as far away as Escobar.
What was missing, Mark realized after quite a while, were any synopses or finished analyses. He had received raw data only, in all its mass. On the whole, he decided he preferred it that way.
Mark read till his eyes were dry and aching, and his stomach gurgled with festering coffee. Time to break for lunch, he thought, when a guard knocked at his door.
“Lord Mark, your driver is here,” the guard informed him politely.
Hell—it was time to break for dinner. The guard escorted him back through the building and delivered him to Pym. It was dark outside. My head hurts.
Doggedly, Mark returned the next morning and started again. And the next. And the next. More reports arrived. In fact, they were arriving faster than he could read them. The harder he worked, the more he was falling behind. Halfway through the fifth day he leaned back in his station chair and thought, This is crazy. Illyan was burying him. From the paralysis of ignorance, he had segued with surprising speed to the paralysis of information-glut. I’ve got to triage this crap, or I’ll never get out of this repulsive building.
“Lies, lies, all lies,” he muttered wildly to his comconsole. It seemed to blink and hum back at him, sly and demure.
With a decisive punch, he turned off the comconsole with its endless babble of voices and fountains of data, and sat for a while in darkness and silence, till his ears stopped ringing.
ImpSec hasn’t. Hasn’t found Miles. He didn’t need all this data. Nobody did. He just needed one piece. Let’s cut this down to size.
Start with a few explicit assumptions. One. Miles is recoverable.
Let ImpSec look for a rotted body, unmarked grave, or disintegration record all they wanted. Such a search was no use to him, even if successful. Especially if successful.
Only cryo-chambers, whether permanent storage banks or other portables, were of interest. Or—less likely, and notably less common—cryo-revival facilities. But logic put an upper cap on his optimism. If Miles had been successfully revived by friendly hands, the first thing he would do would be to report in. He hadn’t, ergo: he was still frozen. Or, if revived, in too bad a shape to function. Or not in friendly hands. So. Where?
The Dendarii cryo-chamber had been found in the Hegen Hub. Well … so what? It had been sent there after it was emptied. Sinking down into his station chair with slitted eyes, Mark thought instead about the opposite end of the trail. Were his particular obsessions luring him into believing what he wanted to believe? No, dammit. To hell with the Hegen Hub. Miles never got off the planet. In one stroke, that eliminated over three-fourths of the trash-data clogging his view.
We look at Jackson’s Whole reports only, then. Good. Then what?
How had ImpSec checked all the remaining possible destinations? Places without known motivations or connections with House Bharaputra? For the most part, ImpSec had simply asked, concealing their own identity but offering a substantial reward. All at least four weeks after the raid. A cold trail, so to speak. Quite a lot of time for someone to think about their surprise package. Time to hide it, if they were so inclined. So that, in those cases where ImpSec did a second and more complete pass, they were even more likely to come up empty.
Miles is in a place that ImpSec has already checked off, in the hands of someone with hidden motivations to be interested in him.
There were still hundreds of possibilities.
I need a connection. There has to be a connection.
ImpSec had torn apart Norwood’s available Dendarii records down to the level of a word-by-word analysis. Nothing. But Norwood was medically trained. And he hadn’t sent his beloved Admiral’s cryo-chamber off at random. He’d sent it someplace to someone.
If there’s a hell, Norwood, I hope you’re roasting in it right now.
Mark sighed, leaned forward, and turned the comconsole back on.
A couple of hours later, Illyan stopped by Mark’s cubicle, closing the soundproof door behind him. He leaned, falsely casual, on the wall and remarked, “How is it going?”
Mark ran his hands through his hair. “Despite your amiable attempt to bury me, I think I’m actually making some progress.”
“Oh? What kind?” Illyan did not deny the charge, Mark noticed.
“I am absolutely convinced Miles never left Jackson’s Whole.”
“So how do you explain our finding the cryo-chamber in the Hegen Hub?”
“I don’t. It’s a diversion.”
“Hm,” said Illyan, non-committally.
“And it worked,” Mark added cruelly.
Illyan’s lips thinned.
Diplomacy, Mark reminded himself. Diplomacy, or he’d never get what he needed. “I accept that your resources are finite, sir. So put them to the point. Everything that you do have available for this, you ought to send to Jackson’s Whole.”
The sardonic expression on Illyan’s face said it all. The man had been running ImpSec for nearly thirty years. It was going to take a lot more than diplomacy for him to accept Mark telling him how to do his job.
“What did you find out about Captain Vorventa?” Mark tried another line.
“The link was short, and not too sinister. His younger brother was my Galactic Operations supervisor’s adjutant. These are not disloyal men, you understand.”
“So … what have you done?”
“About Captain Edwin, nothing. It’s too late. The information about Miles is now out on the Vorish net, as whispers and gossip. Beyond damage control. Young Vorventa has been transferred and demoted. Leaving an ugly hole in my staffing. He was good at his job.” Illyan did not sound very grateful to Mark.
“Oh.” Mark paused. “Vorventa thought I did something to the Count. Is that out on the gossip net too?”