"Leige-lady. You can. You must. I'll be with you." He writhed, gripped by some sadistic giant. "You are true Vor, not I … Must have been changlings, back there in those replicators." He gave her a death's head grin. "Forward momentum—"
She rose then, determination crowding out the hot terror in her face, the ice that had run like water transmuted to marble.
"Right, my lord," she whispered. And more loudly, "Right! Get back there, let the medtechs do their job—" she drove away his admirers. He was flipped efficiently onto a float pallet.
He watched his booted feet, dark and distant hillocks, waver before him as he was borne aloft. Feet first, it would have to be feet first. He barely felt the prick of the first I.V. in his arm. He heard Elena's voice, raised tremblingly behind him.
"All right you clowns! No more games. We're going to win this one for Admiral Naismith!"
Heroes. They sprang up around him like weeds. A carrier, he was seemingly unable to catch the disease he spread.
"Damn it," he moaned. "Damn it, damn it, damn it…" He repeated this litany like a mantra, until the medtech's second sedative injection parted him from his pain, frustration, and consciousness.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
He wandered in and out of reality, like being lost in the Imperial Residence when he was a boy, trying various doors, some leading to treasures, others to broom closets, but none to familiarity. Once he awoke to Tung, sitting beside him, and worried about it; shouldn't the mercenary be in the tactics room?
Tung eyed him with affectionate concern. "You know, son, if you're going to last in this business, you have to learn to pace yourself. We almost lost you there."
It sounded like a good dictum; perhaps he'd have it calligraphed for the wall of his bedroom.
Another time, Elena. How had she come to sickbay? He'd left her in the shuttle. Nothing stayed where you put it …
"Damn it," he mumbled apologetically, "things like this never happened to Vorthalia the Bold."
She raised a thoughtful eyebrow. "How do you know? The histories of those times were all written by minstrels and poets. You try and think of a word that rhymes with 'bleeding ulcer'."
He was still dutifully trying when the greyness swallowed him again.
Once, he woke alone and called over and over for Sergeant Bothari, but the Sergeant didn't come. It's just like the man, he thought petulantly, underfoot all the time and then gone on long leave just when he needed him. The medtech's sedative ended that bout with consciousness, not in Miles's favor.
It was an allergic reaction to the sedative, the surgeon told him later. His grandfather came, and smothered him with a pillow, and tried to hide him under the bed. Bothari, bloody-chested, and the mercenary pilot officer, his implant wires somehow turned inside out and waving about his head like some strange brachiated coral, watched. His mother came at last and shooed away the deadly ghosts like a farm wife clucking to her chickens. "Quick," she advised Miles, "calculate the value of e to the last decimal place, and the spell will be broken. You can do it in your head if you're Betan enough."
Miles waited eagerly all day for his father, in this parade of hallucinatory figures; he had done something extremely clever, although he could not quite remember what, and he ached for a chance at last to impress the Count. But his father never came. Miles wept with disappointment.
Other shadows came and went, the medtech, the surgeon, Elena and Tung, Auson and Thorne, Arde Mayhew, but they were distant, figures reflected on lead glass. After he had cried for a long time, he slept.
When he woke again, the little private room off the sickbay of the Triumph was clear and unwavering in outline, but Ivan Vorpatril sat beside his bed.
"Other people" Miles groaned, "get to hallucinate orgies and giant cicadas and things. What do I get? Relatives. I can see relatives when I'm conscious. It's not fair …"
Ivan turned worriedly to Elena, who was perched on the end of the bed. "I thought the surgeon said the antidote would have cleared him out by now."
Elena rose, and bent over Miles in concern, long white fingers across his brow. "Miles? Can you hear me?"
"Of course I can hear you." He suddenly realized the absence of another sensation. "Hey! My stomach doesn't hurt."
"Yes, the surgeon blocked off some nerves during the repair operation. You should be completely healed up inside within a couple of weeks."
"Operation?" He attempted a surreptitious peek down the shapeless garment he seemed to be occupying, looking for he knew not what. His torso seemed to be as smooth, or lumpy, as ever, no important body parts accidentally snipped off—"I don't see any dotted lines."
"He didn't cut. It was all shoving things down your gullet, and hand-tractor work, except for installing the biochip on your vagus nerve. A bit grotesque, but very ingenious."
"How long was I out?"
"Three days. You were—"
"Three days! The payroll raid—Baz—" he lunged convulsively upward; Elena pushed him back down firmly.
"We took the payroll. Baz is back, with his whole group. Everything's fine, except for you almost bleeding to death."
"Nobody dies of ulcers. Baz back? Where are we, anyway?"
"Docked at the refinery. I didn't think you could die of ulcers either, but the surgeons says holes in your body with blood pouring out are the same whether they're on the inside or the outside, so I guess you can. You'll get a full report—" she pushed him back down again, looking exasperated, "but I thought you'd better see Ivan privately first, without all the Dendarii standing around."
"Uh, right." He stared in bewilderment at his big cousin. Ivan was dressed in civilian gear, Barrayaran-style trousers, a Betan shirt, but Barrayaran regulation Service boots.
"Do you want to feel me, to see if I'm real?" Ivan asked cheerfully.
"It wouldn't do any good, you can feel hallucinations, too. Touch them, smell them, hear them …" Miles shivered. "I'll take your word for it. But Ivan—what are you doing here?"
"Looking for you."
"Did Father send you?"
"I don't know."
"How can you not know?"
"Well, he didn't talk to me personally—look, are you sure Captain Dimir hasn't arrived yet, or got any messages to you, or anything? He had all the dispatches and secret orders and things."
"Who?"
"Captain Dimir. He's my commanding officer."
"Never heard of him. Or from him."
"I think he works out of Captain Illyan's department," Ivan added helpfully. "Elena thought you might have heard something that you didn't have time to mention, maybe."
"No …"
"I don't understand it," sighed Ivan. "They left Beta Colony a day ahead of me in an Imperial fast courier. They should have been here a week ago."
"How was it you traveled separately?"
Ivan cleared his throat. "Well, there was this girl, you see, on Beta Colony. She invited me home—-I mean, Miles, a Betan! I met her right there in the shuttleport, practically the first thing. Wearing one of those sporty little sarongs, and nothing else—" Ivan's hands were beginning to wave in dreamy descriptive curves; Miles hastened to cut off what he knew could be a lengthy digression.
"Probably trolling for galactics. Some Betans collect them. Like a Barrayaran getting banners of all the provinces." Ivan had such a collection at home, Miles recalled. "So what happened to this Captain Dimir?"
"They left without me." Ivan looked aggrieved. "And I wasn't even late!"
"How did you get here?"
"Lieutenant Croye reported you'd gone to Tau Verde IV. So I hitched a ride with a merchant vessel bound for one of those neutral countries down there. The Captain dropped me off here at this refinery."