Two . . . one . . ." Ekaterin's voice, almost inaudible at first, grew more firm as she counted down.
Miles thought he could almost mark Ekaterin's heartbeats, as the drug flooded her system. Her tightly clenched hands loosened in her lap. Tension in her face, neck, shoulders, and body melted away like snow in the sun. Her eyes widened and brightened, her pale cheeks flushed with soft color; her lips parted and curved, and she looked up at Miles, beyond Tuomonen, with an astonished sunny smile.
"Oh," she said, in a surprised voice. "It doesn't hurt."
"No, fast-penta doesn't hurt," said Tuomonen, in a level, reassuring tone.
That isn't what she means, Tuomonen. If a person lived in hurt like a mermaid in water, till hurt became as invisible as breath, its sudden removal—however artificial—must come as a stunning event. Miles breathed covert relief that Ekaterin apparently wasn't going to be a giggler or a drooler, nor was she one of the occasional unfortunates in whom the drug released a torrent of verbal obscenities, or an almost equally embarrassing torrent of tears.
No. The kicker here is going to be when we take it away again. The realization chilled him. But my God, isn't she beautiful when she is not in pain? Her open, smiling warmth looked strangely familiar to him, and he tried to remember just when he'd seen that sweet air about her before. Not today, not yesterday . . .
It was in your dream.
Oh.
He sat back and rested his chin in his hand, fingers across his mouth, as Tuomonen started down the list of standard neutral questions: name, birth date, parents' names, the usual. The purpose was not only to give the drug time to take full effect, but also to set up a rhythm of question-and-answer which would help carry the interrogation along when the questions, and answers, became more difficult. Ekaterin's birthday was just three weeks before his own, Miles noted in passing, but the War of Vordarian's Pretendership, which had so disrupted their mutual birth year in the regions around Vorbarr Sultana, had scarcely touched the South Continent.
The medtech had settled herself on a chair drawn up outside the conversation circle, out of the line of sight between interrogator and subject, but not, alas, entirely out of earshot. Miles trusted she had suitable top security clearances. He didn't know, and decided not to ask, if her gender represented delicacy on Tuomonen's part, tacit acknowledgment that a fast-penta interrogation could be a mind-rape. Physical brutality did not mix with fast-penta interrogation, which had helped to eliminate certain unsavory psychological types from successful careers as interrogators. But physical assault was not the only possible kind, nor even necessarily the worst. Or maybe she'd just been next up on the roster of available personnel.
Tuomonen moved on to more recent history. Exactly when had Tien acquired his Komarran post, and how? Had he known anyone in his department-to-be, or met with anyone in Soudha's group, before they'd left Barrayar? No? Had she seen any of his correspondence? Ekaterin, growing ever more cheerful in fast-penta elation, rattled on as confidingly as a child. She'd been so excited about the appointment, about the promised proximity to good medical facilities, certain she would get galactic-class help for Nikki at last. She had agonized over Tien's application and helped him to write it. Well, yes, written most of it for him. Serifosa Dome was fascinating, and their assigned apartment much larger and nicer than she'd been led to expect. Tien said the Komarrans were all techno-snobs, but she had not found them to be so . . .
Gently, Tuomonen led her back to the issue at hand. Just when had she discovered her husband's involvement in the embezzlement scheme, and how? She repeated the same story about Tien's midnight call to Soudha she had given Miles last night, larded with more extraneous details—among other things she insisted on giving Tuomonen a complete recipe for spiced brandied milk. Fast-penta did do odd things to one's memory, even though it did not, despite rumor, give one perfect recall. Her report of the overheard conversation sounded nearly verbatim, though. Despite his obvious fatigue, Tuomonen was skillful and patient, allowing her to ramble on at length, alert for the hidden gem of critical information in these flowing associations an interrogator always hoped would turn up, but usually didn't.
Her description of breaking into her husband's comconsole the following morning included the mulish side comment, "If Lord Vorkosigan could do it, I could do it," which at Tuomonen's alert query triggered an embarrassing detour into her views of Miles's earlier ImpSec-style raid on her own comconsole. Miles bit his lip and met Tuomonen's raised brows blandly.
"He did say he liked my gardens, though. Nobody else in my family wants to even look at them." She sighed, and smiled shyly at Miles. Dared he hope he was forgiven?
Tuomonen consulted his plastic flimsy. "If you didn't discover your husband's debts until yesterday morning, why did you transfer almost four thousand marks into his account on the previous morning?" His attention sharpened at Ekaterin's look of drunken dismay.
"He lied to me. Bastard. Said we were going for the galactic treatment. No! He didn't say it, damn it. Fool, me. I wanted it to be true so much. Better a fool than a liar. Is it? I didn't want to be like him."
Tuomonen sought enlightenment of Miles with a quick baffled glance. Miles blew out his breath. "Ask her if it was Nikki's money."
"Nikki's money," she confirmed with a quick nod. Despite the fast-penta wooze, she frowned fiercely.
"This make sense to you, my lord?" Tuomonen murmured.
"I'm afraid so. She had saved just that sum out of her household accounts toward her son's medical treatment. I saw the account in her files, when I was taking that, um, unfortunate tour. I take it that her husband, claiming to be using it for that purpose, instead relieved her of it to stave off his creditors." Embezzlement indeed. Miles exhaled, to bring his blood pressure back down. "Have you traced it?"
"Tien transferred it upon receipt to the Rialto Sharemarket Agency."
"There's no getting it back, I suppose?"
"Ask Gibbs, but I don't think so."
"Ah." Miles bit his knuckle, and nodded for Tuomonen to proceed. Now armed with the right questions, Tuomonen confirmed this interpretation explicitly, and went on to draw out all the intensely personal details about the Vorzohn's Dystrophy.
In exactly the same neutral tone, Tuomonen asked, "Did you arrange your husband's death?"
"No." Ekaterin sighed.
"Did you ask anyone, or pay anyone, to kill him?"
"No."
"Did you know he was to be killed?"
"No."
Fast-penta frequently made subjects bloody literal-minded; you always asked the important questions, the ones you were hot about, in a number of different ways, to be sure.
"Did you kill him yourself?"
"No."
"Did you love him?"
Ekaterin hesitated. Miles frowned. Facts were ImpSec's rightful prey; feelings, maybe less so. But Tuomonen wasn't quite out of line yet.
"I think I did, once. I must have. I remember the wonderful look on his face, the day Nikki was born. I must have. He wore it out. I can hardly remember that time."
"Did you hate him?"
"No . . . yes . . . I don't know. He wore that out too." She looked earnestly at Tuomonen. "He never hit me, you know."
What an obituary. When I go down into the ground at last, as God is my judge, I pray my best-beloved may have better to say of me than, "He didn't hit me." Miles set his jaw and said nothing.
"Are you sorry he died?"
Watch it, Tuomonen . . . .
"Oh, but it was such a relief. What a nightmare today would have been if Tien were still alive. Though I suppose ImpSec would have taken him away. Theft and treason. But I would have had to go see him. Lord Vorkosigan said I could not have saved him. There was not enough time after Foscol called me. I'm so glad. It's so ugly to be so glad. I suppose I should forgive Tien for everything, because he's dead now, but I'll never forgive him for turning me into something so ugly." Despite the drug, tears were leaking from her eyes now. "I didn't use to be this kind of person, but now I can't go back."
Some truths cut deeper than even fast-penta could soak. Expressionlessly, Miles reached past Tuomonen and handed Ekaterin a tissue. She blotted the moisture in owlish distress.
"Does she need more drug?" the medtech whispered.
"No." Miles made a hand-down gesture for silence.
Tuomonen asked some more neutral questions, till something like his subject's original sunny and confiding air returned. Yeah. Nobody should have to do this much truth all at once.
Tuomonen looked at his flimsy, glanced uneasily at Miles, licked his lips, and said, "Your cases and Lord Vorkosigan's were found together in your vestibule. Were you planning to leave together?"
Shock and fury flushed through Miles in a hot wave. Tuomonen, you dare—! But the memory of sorting through all that mixed underwear under the eye of the ImpSec guard stopped his words; so, yes, it could have looked odd, to someone who didn't know what was going on. He converted his boiling words to a slow breath, which he let out in a trickle. Tuomonen's eyes flicked sideways, wary of that sigh.
Ekaterin blinked at him in some confusion. "I'd hoped to."
What? Oh. "She means, at the same time," Miles gritted through his teeth to Tuomonen. "Not together. Try that."
"Was Lord Vorkosigan planning to take you away?"
"Away? Oh, what a lovely idea. Nobody was taking me away. Who would? I had to take myself away. Tien threw my aunt's skellytum over the balcony, but he didn't quite dare throw me. He wanted to, I think."
Miles was diverted to brood on these last words. How much physical courage had it taken her, to stand up to Tien at the last? Miles did not underestimate just what nerve it took face down large angry men who had the power to pick you up and pitch you across the room. Nerve and wit and never letting yourself get within arm's reach, nor blocked from the door. The calculations were automatic. And you had to stay in practice. For Ekaterin, it must have felt like landing a fully-loaded freight shuttle on her very first flying lesson.
Tuomonen, trying desperately for clarity and still with one eye on Miles, repeated, "Were you going to elope with Lord Vorkosigan?"
Her brows flew up. "No!" she said in astonishment.
No, of course not. Miles tried to recapture his first properly stunned reaction to the accusation, except that it now came out, What a great idea. Why didn't I think of it? which rather blunted the fine edge of his outrage. Anyway, she'd never have run off with him. It was all he could do to get a Barrayaran woman to walk down the street with a sawed-off mutie like him . . . .
Oh hell. Have you fallen in love with this woman, idiot boy?
Um. Yeah.
He'd been falling for days, he realized in retrospect. It was just that he'd finally hit the ground. He should have recognized the symptoms. Oh, Tuomonen. The things we learn under fast-penta.
He could finally see what Tuomonen was getting at, though, all complete. A nice neat little conspiracy: murder Tien, blame it on the Komarrans, run off with his wife over his dead body . . . "A most flattering scenario, Tuomonen," Miles breathed to the ImpSec captain. "Quick work on my part, considering I only met her five days ago. I thank you." Was ever woman in this humor wooed? Was ever woman in this humor won? I think not.
Tuomonen shot him a flat-lipped glower. "If my guard could think of it, and I could think of it, so could someone else. Best to knock the notion in the head as soon as possible. It's not as though I could fast-penta you. My lord."
No, not even if Miles volunteered. His known idiosyncratic reaction to the drug, so historically useful in evading hostile interrogation, also made it impossible for him to use it clear himself of any accusation. Tuomonen was just doing his job, and doing it well. Miles leaned back, and growled, "Yeah, yeah, all right. But you're optimistic, if you think even fast-penta is fast enough to compete with titillating rumor. As a courtesy to his Imperial Majesty's Auditors' reputations, do have a word with that guard of yours after this."
Tuomonen didn't argue, or pretend to misunderstand. "Yes, my lord."
Temporarily undirected, Ekaterin was burbling along on her free-association tangent. "I wonder if the scars below his belt are as interesting as the ones above. I could hardly have got him out of his trousers in that bubble-car, I suppose. I had a chance last night, and I didn't even think of it. Mutie Vor. How does he do it . . . ? I wonder what it would be like to sleep with someone you actually liked . . . ?"
"Stop," said Tuomonen belatedly. She fell silent and blinked at him.
Just when it was getting really interesting . . . Miles quelled a narcissistic, or perhaps masochistic, impulse to encourage her to go on in this strain. He'd invited himself along on this interrogation to keep ImpSec from abusing its opportunities.
"I'm finished, my lord," Tuomonen said aside to him in a low voice. He did not quite meet Miles's eyes. "Is there anything else you think I should ask, or that you wish to ask?"
Could you ever love me, Ekaterin? Alas, questions of future probability were unanswerable, even under fast-penta.
"No. I would ask you to note, nothing she's said under fast-penta substantially contradicts anything she's told us straight out. The two versions are in fact unusually congruent, compared to other interrogations in my experience."
"Mine as well," Tuomonen allowed. "Very good." He motioned to the silently waiting medtech. "Go ahead and administer the antagonist."
The woman stepped forward, adjusted the new hypospray, and pressed it against the inside of Ekaterin's arm. The lizard-hiss of the anti-drug going in licked Miles's ears. He counted Ekaterin's heartbeats again, one, two, three . . .
It was a horribly vampiric thing to watch, as if life itself were being sucked out of her. Her shoulders drew in, her whole body hunched in renewed tension, and she buried her face in her hands. When she raised it again, it was flushed and damp and strained, but she was not weeping, merely utterly exhausted, and closed again. He had thought she would weep. Fast-penta doesn't hurt, eh? Couldn't prove it now.
Oh, Milady. Can I ever make you look that happy without drugs? Of more immediate importance, would she forgive him for being a party to her ordeal?
"What a very odd experience," Madame Vorsoisson said neutrally. Her voice was hoarse.
"It was a well-conducted interview," Miles assured the room at random. "All things considered. I've . . . seen much worse."
Tuomonen gave him a dry look, and turned to Ekaterin. "Thank you, Madame Vorsoisson, for your cooperation. This has been extremely useful to the investigation."
"Tell the investigation it is welcome."
Miles was not just sure how to interpret that one. Instead he said to Tuomonen, "That will be all for her, won't it?"
Tuomonen hesitated, obviously trying to sort out whether that was a question or an order. "I hope so, my lord."
Ekaterin looked across at Miles. "I'm sorry about the suitcases, Lord Vorkosigan. I never thought how it might look."
"No, why should you have?" He hoped his voice didn't sound as hollow as it felt.
Tuomonen said to Ekaterin, "I both suggest and request you rest for a while, Madame Vorsoisson. My medtech will stay with you for about half an hour, to be sure you're fully recovered and don't have any further drug reactions."
"Yes, I . . . that would probably be wise, Captain." Rubbery-legged, she rose; the medtech went to her side and escorted her off toward her bedroom.
Tuomonen shut down his vid recorder. He said gruffly, "Sorry about that last round of questions, my Lord Auditor. It was not my intention to offer an insult to either you or Madame Vorsoisson."
"Yeah, well . . . don't worry about it. What's next, from ImpSec's point of view?"
Tuomonen's weary brow wrinkled. "I'm not sure. I wanted to make certain I conducted this interrogation myself. Colonel Gibbs has everything in hand at the Terraforming offices, and Major D'Emorie hasn't called to complain yet about anything at the experiment station. What we need next, preferably, is for the field agents to catch up with Soudha and his friends."
"I can't be in all three places," Miles said reluctantly. "Barring an arrest coming through . . . the Professor is en route, and has had the advantage of a full night's sleep. You, I believe, have had none. My field instincts say this is the time to knock off for a while. Do I need to make that an order?"
"No," Tuomonen assured him earnestly. "You have your wrist-comm, I have mine . . . Field has our numbers and orders to report the news. I'll be glad to get home for a meal, even if it is last night's dinner. And a shower." He rubbed his stubbled chin.
He finished packing the recorder, exchanged farewells with Miles, and went off to consult with his guards, hopefully to apprise them of Madame Vorsoisson's change of status from suspect/witness to free woman.
Miles considered the couch, rejected it, and wandered into Ekaterin's—Madame Vorsoisson's . . . . Ekaterin's, dammit, in his mind if not on his lips—Ekaterin's workroom. Automatic lighting still sustained the assortment of young plantings on the trellised shelves in the corners. The grav-bed was gone; oh yes, he'd forgotten she'd had it removed. The floor looked remarkably inviting, though.
A flash of scarlet in the trash bin caught his eye. Investigating, he found the remains of the bonsai'd skellytum bundled up in a square of plastic sheeting, mixed with pieces of its pot and damp loose dirt. Curiously, he dug it out and cleared a place on Ekaterin's work table, and unrolled the plastic . . . botanical body bag, he supposed.
The fragments put him in mind of the soletta array and the ore ship, and also of a couple of the more distressing autopsies he'd recently reviewed. Methodically, he began to sort them out. Broken tendrils in one pile, root threads in another, shards of the poor burst barrel of the thing in another. The five-floor plunge had had something of the same effect on the liquid-conserving central structure of the skellytum as a sledgehammer applied to a watermelon. Or a needle-grenade exploding inside someone's chest. He picked out sharp potsherds, and made tentative tries at piecing the bits of plant into place, like a jigsaw puzzle. Was there a botanical equivalent of surgical glue, which could hold it all together again and allow it to heal? Or was it too late? A brownish tinge to the pale interior lumps suggested rot already in progress.
He brushed the damp soil from his fingers, and realized suddenly that he was touching Barrayar. This bit of dirt had come from South Continent, dug up, perhaps, from a tart old Vor lady's backyard. He dragged over the station chair from the comconsole, climbed precariously up onto it, and retrieved what proved to be an empty pan from an upper shelf. Safely on his feet again, he carefully gathered up as much of the soil as he could, and dumped it in the pan.
He stood back, hands on his hips, and studied his work so far. It made a sad pile. "Compost, my Barrayaran friend, you're destined to be compost, for all of me. A decent burial may be all I can do for you. Though in your case, that might actually be the answer to your prayers . . . ."
A faint rustle and an indrawn breath made him suddenly aware that he was not alone. He turned his head to find Ekaterin, on her feet again and pausing in the doorway. Her color looked better now than it had immediately after the interrogation, her skin not so puffy and lined, though she still looked very tired. Her brows were drawn down in puzzlement. "What are you doing, Lord Vorkosigan?"
"Um . . . visiting a sick friend?" Reddening, he gestured to his efforts laid out on her work bench. "Has the medtech released you?"
"Yes, she's just left. She was very conscientious."
Miles cleared his throat. "I was wondering if there was any way to put your skellytum back together. Seemed a shame not to try, seventy years old and all that." He drew back respectfully as she came up to the bench and turned over a fragment. "I know you can't sew it up like a person, but I can't help thinking there ought to be something. I'm afraid I'm not much of a gardener. My parents let me try, once, when I was a little kid, back behind Vorkosigan House. I was going to grow flowers for my Betan mother. Sergeant Bothari ended up doing the spade work, as I recall. I dug the seeds up twice a day to see if they'd sprouted yet. My plants did not thrive, for some reason. After that we gave up and turned it into a fort."
She smiled, a real smile, not a fast-penta grin. We did not break her after all.
"No, you can't put it back together," she said. "The only way is to start over. What I could do is take the strongest root fragments—several of them, to make sure," her long hands sorted through his pile, "and set them to soak in a hormone solution. And then when it starts to put out new growth, repot it."
"I saved the dirt," Miles pointed out hopefully. Idiot. Do you know what an idiot you sound like?
But she merely said, "Thank you." Following up on her words, she rummaged in her shelves and found a shallow basin, and filled it with water from the work bench's little sink. Another cupboard yielded a box of white powder; she sprinkled a tiny amount into the water and stirred it with her fingers. Taking a knife from her tool drawer, she trimmed the most promising root fragments and pushed them into the solution. "There. Maybe something will come of that." She stretched to set the basin carefully out of the way on the shelf Miles had had to reach by standing on the chair, and shook the pan of dirt into a plastic bag, which she sealed and put next to the basin. She then rolled up the decaying remains in their tarp again, to take over and shake into another bin; the plastic went back into the trash. "By the time I'd thought of this poor skellytum again, it would have gone out with the organic recycle, and been too late. I'd abandoned hope for it last night, when I thought I had to leave with just what I could carry."
"I didn't mean to burden you. Will it be awkward, to carry home on the jumpship?"
"I'll put it in a sealed container. By the time I reach my destination, it should be just about ready to replant." She washed and dried her hands; Miles followed suit.
Damn Tuomonen anyway, for forcing to Miles's consciousness a desire his back-brain had known very well was too unripe and out of season for any fruitful result. Time is out of joint, she'd said. Now he was going to have to deal with it. Now he was going to have to wait. How long? How about till after Tien is buried, for starters? His intentions were honorable enough, at least some of them were, but his timing was lousy. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and rocked on his heels.
Ekaterin folded her arms, leaned against the counter, and stared at the floor. "I wish to apologize, Lord Vorkosigan, for anything I might have said under fast-penta that was not appropriate."
Miles shrugged. "I invited myself along. But I thought you could use a spotter. You did as much for me, after all."
"A spotter." She looked up, her expression lightening. "I had not thought of it like that."
He opened his hand and smiled hopefully.
She smiled briefly in return, but then sighed. "I'd been so frantic, all day, for ImpSec to be done so I could go get Nikki. Now I think they were doing me a favor. I dread this part. I don't know what to tell him. I don't know how much I should tell him about Tien's mess. As little as possible? The whole truth? Neither feels right."
Miles said slowly, "We're still in the middle of a classified case, here. You can't burden a nine-year-old boy with government secrets, or that kind of judgment call. I don't even know yet how much of this will eventually become public knowledge."
"Things not done right away get harder." She sighed. "As I'm finding now."
Miles drew up the comconsole chair for her, and motioned her into it, and pulled out the stool from under the work bench. He perched on it, and asked, "Had you told him you were leaving Tien?"
"Not even that, yet."
"I think . . . that for today, you should only tell him that his father suffered an accident with his breath mask. Leave the Komarrans out of it. If he asks for more details than you know how to deal with, send him to me, and I'll take the job of telling him he can't know, or can't know yet."
Her level look asked, Can I trust you? "Take care you don't stir up more curiosity than you quell."
"I understand. The problem of the whole truth is as much a question of when as what. But after we both get back to Vorbarr Sultana, I would like, with your permission, to take you to talk with Gr—with a close friend of mine. He's Vor, too. He had the experience of being in something like Nikki's position. His father died under, ah, grievous circumstances, when he was much too young to be told the details. When he stumbled across some of the uglier facts, in his early twenties, it was pretty traumatic. I'll bet he'll have a better feel than either of us for what to tell Nikki and when. He has a fine judgment."
She gave him a provisional nod. "That sounds right. I would like that very much. Thank you."
He returned her a half-bow, from his perch. "Glad to be of service, Madame." He'd wanted to introduce her to Gregor the man, his foster-brother, not Emperor Gregor the Imperial Icon, anyway. This might serve more than one purpose.
"I also have to tell Nikki about his Vorzohn's Dystrophy, and I can't put that off. I made an appointment for him at a clinic in Solstice for the day after tomorrow."
"He does not know he carries it?"
She shook her head. "Tien would never let me tell him." She studied him gravely. "I think you were in something like Nikki's position, too, when you were a child. Did you have to undergo a great many medical procedures then?"
"God, yes, years of 'em. What can I say that's useful? Don't lie about whether it's going to hurt. Don't leave him alone for long periods." Or you, either . . . There was finally something he could do for her. "Events permitting, may I ride along with you to Solstice and render what assistance I can? I can't spare your uncle to you—he's going to be buried in technical problems by day after tomorrow, if my parts list takes shape."
"I can't take you away from your duties!"
"My experience suggests to me that if Soudha hasn't been arrested by then, what I will be doing by day after tomorrow is spinning my mental wheels. A day away from the problems may be just what I will need to give me a fresh approach. You would be doing me a service, I assure you."
She pursed her lips doubtfully. "I admit . . . I would be grateful for the company."
Did she mean any company, generally, or his company particularly? Down, boy. Don't even think about it. "Good."
Voices drifted in from the vestibule: one of the guards, and a familiar rumble. Ekaterin jumped up. "My uncle is here!"
"He made very good time." Miles followed her into the hallway.
Professor Vorthys, his broad face wrinkled with concern, gave his valise over to the guard and folded his niece in his arms, murmuring condolences. Miles watched in exquisite envy. Her uncle's warm sympathy almost broke her down, as all of ImpSec's cool professionalism had not; Miles made a mental note. Cool and practical, that was the ticket. She dashed tears from her eyes, dispatched the guard with his case to Tien's old office as before, and led her uncle to the living room.
After a very brief conference, it was decided the Professor would accompany her to go collect Nikolai. Miles seconded this despite what he ironically recognized as his present lovesick mania for volunteerism. Vorthys had a family right, and Miles himself was too close to Tien's death. He was also swaying on his feet as the set of painkillers and stimulants he'd taken before lunch wore off. Taking a third dose today would be a bad mistake. Instead he saw the Professor and Ekaterin out, then checked in with ImpSec HQ in Solstice on the secured comconsole.
No new news. He wandered back toward the living room. Ekaterin's uncle was here; Miles should go, now. Collect his things and decamp to that mythical hotel he'd been gassing about for the last week. There was no room for him in this little apartment, with Vorthys reinstalled in the guest room. Nikki would need his own bed back, and he was damned if he was going to trouble Ekaterin to rustle up another grav-bed, or worse, for his Vor lordly use. What had she been expecting, when she'd ordered in that thing? He should definitely go. He was obviously not being as civilly neutral toward his hostess as he'd imagined, if that blasted guard could make whatever comment it had been that had set off Tuomonen on that list of embarrassing questions about the suitcases.
"Do you need anything, my lord?" The door guard's voice at Miles's elbow startled him awake.
"Um . . . yeah. Next time one of your boys comes over from Solstice HQ, have him bring me a standard military-issue bedroll."
In the meanwhile, Miles staggered over and curled up on the couch after all. He was asleep in minutes.
Miles awoke when the little party returned with Nikki He sat up and managed to be reasonably composed by the time he had to face the boy. Nikki looked subdued and scared, but was not weeping or hysterical; he evidently turned his reactions inward rather than outward. Like his mother.
In the absence of female friends of Ekaterin's bearing casseroles and cakes in the Barrayaran manner, Miles caused ImpSec to supply dinner. The three adults kept the conversation neutral in front of Nikki, after which he went off to play by himself in his room, and Miles and the Professor retired to the study for a data-exchange. The new equipment found topside was indeed peculiar, including some power-transfer equipment heavy-duty enough for a small jumpship, parts of which had ripped apart, melted, and apparently exploded in a shower of plasma. The Professor called it, "Truly interesting," an engineering code-phrase that caught Miles's full attention.
In the middle of this, Colonel Gibbs reported in via comconsole. He smiled dryly at both Imperial Auditors, an expression which Miles was beginning to recognize as Gibbs's version of ecstasy.
"My Lord Vorkosigan. I have the first documented connection you were looking for. We've traced the serial numbers of a pair of hastings converters my Lord Vorthys's people found topside back through the chain to a Waste Heat purchase eight months ago. The converters were originally delivered to their experiment station."
"Right," breathed Miles. "Finally, more of a link than just Radovas's body. We have hold of the real string, all right. Thank you, Colonel. Carry on."