Brothers in Arms (21 page)

"Now, that
is
illegal," Elli remarked.

"What are they going to do, go to the police and complain? I think not. Ah—you want to leave any messages on the comconsole, Captain?"

"No," said Galeni softly after a moment. "No messages."

"Right."

A Dendarii rendered first aid to Miles's broken finger and numbed his hand. The sergeant was back down in less than half an hour, anti-scan belts hung over his shoulder, and flipped a data disc at Miles. "You got it, sir."

"Thank you."

Galen had not yet returned. All things considered, Miles counted that as a plus.

Miles knelt by the still-conscious Komarran and held a stunner to his temple.

"What are you going to do?" croaked the man.

Miles's lips peeled back in a grin, cracking to bleed. "Why—stun you, of course, fly you out over the south coast, and drop you in. What else? Nighty-night." The stunner buzzed, and the struggling Komarran jerked and slumped. The Dendarii soldier retrieved his restraints, and Miles left the two Komarrans lying side by side on the garage floor. They let themselves out and keyed the garage doors closed carefully.

"Back to the embassy, then, and nail the little bastard," said Elli Quinn grimly, calling up the route to their destination from her rented car's console. The rest of the patrol withdrew to covert observation positions.

Miles and Galeni settled back. Galeni looked as exhausted as Miles felt.

"Bastard?" sighed Miles. "No. That's the one thing he is not, I'm afraid."

"Nail him first," Galeni murmured. "Define him later."

"Agreed," said Miles.

* * *

"How shall we go in?" asked Galeni as they approached the embassy in the late-morning light.

"Only one way," said Miles. "Through the front door. Marching. Pull up at the front, Elli."

Miles and Galeni looked at each other and snickered. Miles's beard was well behind Galeni's in development—Galeni's after all had a four-day head start—but his split lips, bruises, and the dried blood on his shirt made up for it, Miles figured, in augmenting his general air of seedy degradation. Besides, Galeni had found his boots and uniform jacket back at the Komarrans' house, and Miles had not. Carried off by the clone, perhaps. Miles was not sure which of them smelled worse—Galeni had been incarcerated longer, but Miles fancied he'd sweated harder—and he wasn't going to ask Elli Quinn to sniff and rate them. From Galeni's twitching lips and crinkling eyes Miles thought he might be undergoing the same delayed reaction of lunatic relief that was presently bubbling up through his own chest. They were alive, and it was a miracle and a wonderment.

They matched steps, going up the ramp. Elli sauntered behind, watching the performance with interest.

The guard at the entrance saluted by reflex even as astonishment spread over his face. "Captain Galeni! You're back! And, er. . ." he glanced at Miles, opened and closed his mouth, "you. Sir."

Galeni returned the salute blandly. "Call Lieutenant Vorpatril up here for me, will you? Vorpatril only."

"Yes, sir." The embassy guard spoke into his wrist comm, not taking his eyes off them; he kept looking sideways at Miles with a very puzzled expression. "Er—glad to have you back, Captain."

"Glad to be back, Corporal."

In a moment, Ivan popped out of a lift tube and came running across the marble-paved foyer.

"My God, sir, where have you been?" he cried, grabbing Galeni by the shoulders. He remembered himself belatedly, and saluted.

"My absence wasn't voluntary, I assure you." Galeni tugged on one earlobe, blinking, and ran the hand through his beard stubble, clearly a little touched by Ivan's enthusiasm. "As I shall explain in detail, later. Right now—Lieutenant Vorkosigan? It is perhaps time to surprise your, er, other relative."

Ivan glanced at Miles. "They let you out, then?" He looked more closely, then stared. "Miles . . ."

Miles bared his teeth and moved them out of earshot of the mesmerized corporal. "All shall be revealed when we arrest the other me. Where am I, by the way?"

Ivan's lips wrinkled in dawning dismay. "Miles . . . are you trying to diddle my head? It's not very funny. . . ."

"No diddle. And not funny. The individual you've been rooming with for the last four days—wasn't me. I've been rooming with Captain Galeni, here. A Komarran revolutionary group tried to plant a ringer on you, Ivan. The sucker is my clone, for real. Don't tell me you never noticed anything!"

"Well . . ." said Ivan. Belief, and growing embarrassment, began to suffuse his features. "You did seem sort of, um, off your feed, the last couple of days."

Elli nodded thoughtfully, highly sympathetic to Ivan's embarrassment.

"In what way?" asked Miles.

"Well . . . I've seen you manic. And I've seen you depressive. But I've never seen you—well—
neutral.
"

"I had to ask. And yet you never suspected anything? He was that good?"

"Oh, I wondered about it the very first night!"

"And what?" yelped Miles. He felt like tearing his hair.

"And I decided it couldn't be. After all, you'd made that clone story up yourself a few days ago."

"I shall now demonstrate my amazing prescience. Where is he?"

"Well, that's why I was so surprised to see you, see."

Galeni was now standing with his arms crossed and his hand to his forehead, supportingly; Miles could not read his lips, though they were moving slightly—counting to ten, perhaps. "Why, Ivan?" said Galeni, and waited.

"My God, he hasn't left for Barrayar already, has he?" said Miles urgently. "We've got to stop him—"

"No, no," said Ivan. "It was the locals. That's why we're all in such a flap, here."

"Where is he?"
snarled Miles, going for a grip on Ivan's green uniform jacket with his good hand.

"Calm down, that's what I'm trying to tell you!" Ivan glanced down at Miles's white-knuckled fist. "Yeah, it's you all right, isn't it? The local police came through here a couple of hours ago and arrested you—him—whatever. Well, not arrested, exactly, but they had a detention order, forbidding you to leave this legal jurisdiction. You—he—was frantic 'cause it meant you'd miss your ship. You were shipping out tonight. They subpoenaed you for questioning, before the municipal bench's investigator, to ascertain if there was enough evidence to file formal charges."

"Charges for
what,
what are you babbling about,
Ivan!"

"Well, that's it, why it's such a mess. Somewhere, they got this short circuit in their brains about embassies—they came and arrested you, Lieutenant Vorkosigan, for suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder. To wit, you are suspected of hiring those two goons who tried to assassinate Admiral Naismith at the shuttleport last week."

Miles stamped in a circle. "Ah. Ah. Agh!"

"The ambassador is filing protests all over the place. Naturally, we couldn't tell them why we thought they were mistaken."

Miles clutched Quinn's elbow. "Don't panic."

"I'm not panicking," Quinn observed, "I'm watching you panic. It's more entertaining."

Miles pressed his forehead. "Right. Right. Let us begin by assuming all is not lost. Let us assume the kid hasn't panicked—hasn't broken. Yet. Suppose he has climbed up on an aristocratic high horse and is sneering a lot of no-comments at them. He'd do that well, it's how he thinks Vor are supposed to act. Little schmuck. Assume he's holding out."

"Assume away," remarked Ivan. "So what?"

"If we hurry, we can save—"

"Your reputation?" said Ivan.

"Your . . . brother?" ventured Galeni.

"Our asses?" said Elli.

"Admiral Naismith," Miles finished. "He's the one at risk, now." Miles's gaze crossed Elli's; her eyebrows arched in dawning worry. "The key word is
cover,
as in
blown—
or,
just possibly, permanently assured.

"You and I," he nodded to Galeni, "have to get cleaned up. Meet me back here in fifteen minutes. Ivan, bring a sandwich. Two sandwiches. We'll take you along for muscle." Ivan was well endowed in that resource. "Elli, you drive."

"Drive where?" asked Quinn.

"The Assizes. We go to the rescue of poor, misunderstood Lieutenant Vorkosigan. Who will return with us gratefully, whether he wants to or not. Ivan, better bring a hypospray with two cc's of tholizone, in addition to those sandwiches."

"Hold it, Miles," said Ivan. "If the ambassador couldn't get him sprung, how do you expect us to?"

Miles grinned. "Not us. Admiral Naismith."

* * *

The London Municipal Assizes was a big black crystal of a building some two centuries old. A slash of similar architecture erupted unevenly through a district of even older styles, representing the bombings and fires of the Fifth Civil Disturbance. Urban renewal here seemed to wait on disaster. London was so filled up, a cramped jigsaw of juxtaposed eras, with Londoners stubbornly hanging on to bits of their past; there was even a committee to save the singularly ugly disintegrating remnants of the late twentieth century. Miles wondered if Vorbarr Sultana, presently expanding madly, would look like this in a thousand years, or whether it would obliterate its history in the rush to modernize.

Miles paused in the Assizes's soaring foyer to adjust his Dendarii admiral's uniform. "Do I look respectable?" he asked Quinn.

"The beard makes you look, um . . ."

Miles had hastily trimmed the edges. "Distinguished? Older?"

"Hung over."

"Ha."

The four of them took the lift tube to the ninety-seventh level.

"Chamber W," the reception panel directed them after accessing its files. "Cubicle 19."

Cubicle 19 proved to contain a secured Euronet JusticeComp terminal and a live human being, a serious young man.

"Ah, Investigator Reed." Elli smiled winningly at him as they entered. "We meet again."

The briefest glance showed Investigator Reed to be alone. Miles cleared a twinge of panic from his throat.

"Investigator Reed is in charge of looking into that unpleasant incident at the shuttleport, sir," Elli explained, mistaking his choke for a request for an introduction and slipping back into professional mode. "Investigator Reed, Admiral Naismith. We had a long talk on my last trip here."

"I see," said Miles. He kept his face blandly polite.

Reed was frankly staring at him. "Uncanny. So you really are Vorkosigan's clone!"

"I prefer to think of him as my twin brother," Miles flung off, "once removed. We generally prefer to stay as far removed from each other as possible. So you've spoken to him."

"At some length. I did not find him very cooperative." Reed glanced back and forth uncertainly from Miles and Elli to the two uniformed Barrayarans. "Obstructive. Indeed, rather unpleasant."

"So I would imagine. You were treading on his toes. He's quite sensitive about me. Prefers not to be reminded of my embarrassing existence."

"Ah? Why?"

"Sibling rivalry," Miles extemporized. "I've gotten farther in my military career than he has in his. He takes it as a reproach, a slur on his own perfectly reasonable achievements."
God, somebody, give me another straight line
—Reed's stare was becoming piercing.

"To the point, please, Admiral Naismith," Captain Galeni rumbled.

Thank you.
"Quite. Investigator Reed—I do not pretend that Vorkosigan and I are friends, but how did you come by this curious misapprehension that he tried to arrange my rather messy death?"

"Your case has not been easy. The two would-be killers," Reed glanced at Elli, "were a dead end. So we went to other leads."

"Not Lise Vallerie, was it? I'm afraid I've been guilty of leading her slightly astray. An untimely sense of humor, I fear. It's an affliction . . ."

" . . . we all must bear," murmured Elli.

"I found Vallerie's suggestions interesting, not conclusive," said Reed. "In the past I've found her to be a careful investigator in her own right, unimpeded by certain rules of order that hamper, say, me. And most helpful in passing on items of interest."

"What's she investigating these days?" inquired Miles.

Reed gave him a bland look. "Illegal cloning. Perhaps you might give her some tips."

"Ah—I fear my experiences are some two decades out of date for your purposes."

"Well, that's neither here nor there. In this case the lead was quite objective. An aircar was seen leaving the shuttleport at the time of the attack, passing illegally through a traffic control space. We traced it to the Barrayaran embassy."

Sergeant Barth.
Galeni looked as if he wanted to spit; Ivan was acquiring that pleasant, slightly moronic expression he'd found so useful in the past for evading any accusation of responsibility.

"Oh, that," said Miles airily. "That was merely Barrayar's usual tedious surveillance of me. Frankly, the embassy I would suspect of having a hand in this is the Cetagandan. Recent Dendarii operations in their area of influence—far outside your jurisdiction—displeased them exceedingly. But it was not a charge in my power to prove, which was why I was content to leave it to your people."

"Ah, the remarkable rescue at Dagoola. I'd heard of it. A compelling motive."

"More compelling, I would suggest, than the ancient history I confided to Lise Vallerie. Does that straighten out the contratemps?"

"And are you getting something in return for this charitable service to the Barrayaran embassy, Admiral?"

"My good deed for the day? No, you're right, I warned you about my sense of humor. Let's just say, my reward is sufficient."

"Nothing that could be construed as an obstruction of justice, I trust?" Reed's eyebrows rose dryly.

"I'm the
victim,
remember?" Miles bit his tongue. "My reward has nothing to do with London's criminal code, I assure you. In the meantime, can I ask you to return poor Lieutenant Vorkosigan to the custody, say, of his commanding officer, Captain Galeni, here?"

Reed's face was a study in suspicion, his alertness multiplied.
What's wrong, dammit?
wondered Miles.
This is supposed to be lulling him. . . .