Cryoburn-ARC (43 page)

Roic stood up, reset the code, and holstered the weapon. "Better?" he asked Jin.

"Yah," said Jin, in some wonder. "It's like a tool. It's just a tool."

"That's right."

This time, when Roic smiled down at him, Jin smiled up. He let the armsman lead them back into the recovery room.

Miles leaned forward and spoke earnestly into the secure holovid recorder. "I just want you to know, Gregor, that if the planet melts down over all this, it wasn't my fault. The trip-wire was laid long before I stumbled across it."

He considered the opening remark of his report cover for a moment, then reached out and deleted it. The one good thing about the very asynchronous vid communication entailed by Nexus info-squirts, moving at light speed between jump points and ship-carried through them, was that if you didn't think before you spoke, you could at least think before you hit
send
. Not that he hadn't generated some of his best ideas as his brain raced to catch up with his moving mouth.
Also, some of my worst
. He wondered which kind his recent examples would ultimately prove to be.

He glanced around the consulate's tight-room, which he had all to himself, having run out the exhausted Johannes before embarking on this private and personal recording. Since Johannes was the closest thing to an ImpSec analyst the out-of-the-way consulate boasted, Miles had spent much of the past two days in training him in just what information, out of the uproar of the local planetary feeds, to screen and forward to Galactic Affairs on Komarr. Multitasking, always a good thing. Johannes proved a diligent enough student. If the attaché had been one of the Imperial Service's brighter stars, he'd have been sent to some hotter posting, but if he'd been less responsible, he wouldn't have been sent to such an autonomous one.

Miles added a note commending the lieutenant's conscientiousness, while he was thinking of it, which reminded him in turn of his early suspicions of the clerk, Yuuichi Matson. He'd caught the tail end of a short conversation between Matson and his boss Vorlynkin in the kitchen, day-before-yesterday, when the media siege of the consulate was just beginning.

"People told me I'd be able to pocket a tidy amount of baksheesh in this job," the clerk complained, "but in five years nobody offered me
anything
. And when they finally do, it's because they want dirt on Sato-san.
Sato-san
. As if I would! Agh!"

Vorlynkin's blue eyes crinkled. "You were doing it wrong, Yuuichi. You're not supposed to wait for offers, you're supposed to ask. Or at least hint. You should ask the Lord Auditor for pointers."

Matson just shook his head and stalked off, nursing his green tea and his umbrage. Miles grinned and bent to add a kind word for the overworked clerk, as well.

Trying to bring his mind back into focus, Miles scanned down the long index of attachments, both raw data and his synopses, that he'd generated for HQ, a tedious but necessary chore. This should suffice to keep some unfortunate team of ImpSec Galactic Affairs analysts busy and happy for a week or three, till he caught up with them in person. Well, busy, anyway. The Imperial Councilor, as the Barrayaran viceroy on Komarr was dubbed, would be invited into the loop as well when this arrived by coded tight-beam. A full analysis of the planetary voting shares scam should be awaiting the Lord Auditor by the time he made Komarr orbit, and a plan for suitable countermeasures for the vote-theft, as well.

Miles indulged himself with a brief fantasy of Ron Wing and friends waking up from cryo-stasis, expecting to have stolen a planet, as destitute and distraught as old Yani. Alas, the affair would doubtless be wound up before matters progressed that far. Cosmic justice was very appealing, but the regular kind would also do.

Putting together his Auditorial report had also sufficed to keep Miles out of the way of the consulate upstairs, and out of sight of its visitors, as the consequences had spun out from that very useful night at Madame Suze's. The NewEgypt execs were under arrest for conspiracy, and, possibly, murder, and as the degenerated-cryopreservatives-and-commodified-contracts scandal hit the newsfeeds in force, it was likely that enough other charges would be thrown in atop to keep them from wriggling out. The attempted kidnapping involving real kids looked to prove especially damaging to their cause, score another point for Jin and Mina, which Miles must remember to tell them. Lawsuits on behalf of Madame Sato and her group were in preparation, and she'd given her first interview, under the watchful protection of Vorlynkin and with the shrewd advice of her new attorney, who was working, very enthusiastically, on contingency.

WhiteChrys and a number of other cryocorps, shoved into premature responses by these breaking events, were making noises like outraged victims after all, and Miles, smirking, wished Ron Wing all the luck he deserved in his damage control. Asterzine was all very well for setting a building on fire, but if one wanted to set a world alight
.
.
.
well.

Miles hardly needed, he reminded himself for the
nth
time, to mix in further, above-stairs. Consul Vorlynkin was doing a fine job of looking out for Barrayar's interests, not to mention those of the Sato family, and Mark was atop affairs from the Durona Clinic end. Miles had danced uncomfortably close to jeopardizing his primary mission with WhiteChrys on these fascinating side-issues with NewEgypt, but given Mark's new enterprise, they might not prove so sidewise after all. Miles was not above taking credit for accidental foresight; really, none of this would have come to pass if he hadn't gone on poking just a little farther than he'd needed to. He must be sure to point that out to Gregor.

Ah. Gregor. The cover message would go to the Emperor's eyes and ears only. For inspiration, Miles called up a still vid of Gregor in full uniform and his sternest glower, the official pose that Gregor had dubbed
the rod up my Imperial butt look
. Alas, it only inspired Miles to want to clown till he made that grave face crack a smile. No, Gregor had clowns enough in his life. Starting with about half of the Council of Counts, though they seldom made him smile.

Miles hit
record
once more, and began with crisp efficiency.

"Good day, Gregor. As my follow-up note to Vorlynkin's little misguided emergency message last week indicated, suspicions of WhiteChrys chicanery on Komarr have proven correct. The raw data and my summations are in the main body of my report. I'm not sure what to do with the bribe. I'm not going to give it back, but it's not going to be worth what Ron Wing promised, either, which makes dumping it directly onto the Imperial Service Veterans' Hospice a questionable proposition. But we can deal with that later. I'll stop at Solstice on my return trip if ImpSec Komarr and the Imperial Councilor want to ask further questions, though really, this should be enough to get them started.

"Oh, and with respect to Vorlynkin, I want a suitable Auditorial commendation to go on his diplomatic department record for exemplary assistance during my visit, or, ah, visitation. And after, as I'm running away tomorrow and dumping all of the cleanup on the poor fellow."
Better him than me
.

"Meanwhile, I suppose I'd better give you a quick synopsis of the erupting NewEgypt scandal, as it has impinged on my investigation. It all started when the local loony party broke into the cryo-conference and failed to carry me off, which I described in brief in my last report, but after that
.
.
."

As succinctly as he could, Miles summarized the events of the past days, from Jin's arrival at the consulate's back door through the successful arrest of the NewEgypt crew. He was a little out of breath by the time he finished. Miles tried not to wince as he imagined the look on Gregor's face as he heard all this out. Nonplussed? Pained? Bland? Gregor could out-bland Pym.

"So far, no criminal charges have been leveled against me, and I trust I'll be long gone from Kibou-daini before anyone on the other side thinks of it," he concluded in cheerful reassurance.

He sought for an upbeat note on which to end. "In the department of
only on Kibou,
we actually got to summon the dead to testify against the bad guys, which is a moment of cosmic justice if ever there was one."

What was that creepy old quote
.
.
.
? Something read in his Academy days, or more likely on one of his Academy leaves, an ancient tale from Old Earth. Before cryonics was invented or even imagined, so seeming strangely prescient. The words were branded in his brain, though their literary source was long forgotten, buried under the chaos of his intervening decades and possibly a touch of lingering cryo-amnesia.
I will break the door of hell and smash the bolts; I will summon the dead to take food with the living, and the living shall be outnumbered by the host of them
.
.
.

Ah, not something he cared to share with Gregor, that. Gregor, as Miles had reason to know, already had enough creepy crap stuffed into his Imperial head that it was a wonder his skull hadn't exploded. But it did bring Miles to his finale.

"I shouldn't wonder if Mark's rejuvenation research here doesn't turn out to be more important, in the long run, than my mission. Too early to judge, but the Durona Group will be something to keep an eye on, and not just ImpSec's spy-eyes, either. A private word in the ear of Laisa's great-aunt, if she's looking for a better investment than WhiteChrys Solstice, might be a suitable reward for her first bringing the affair to our attention, come to think.

"I missed today's commercial jumpship to Escobar, but I've snagged berths on tomorrow's. I'm eager to get home.

"And oh, tell Laisa from me—
Good catch
."

Miles closed the recording, security-sealed it, attached it to his coded report, and sent it on its way.

Chapter Twenty

The afternoon sun warmed the consulate's back garden, murmurous with creatures. Gyre preened and muttered on his perch. The chickens scratched in the grass or dozed in their nest boxes. The sphinx nosed and mumbled among the flower beds, occasionally sneezing just like Jin's mom. Gracing the tabletop, the turtle slowly crunched a piece of lettuce, donated from Mina's lunch salad. Lucky sat in Jin's mother's lap and purred, unsheathing her claws whenever the stroking hand stopped, apparently demanding to be petted bald. Granted that the rats, let out for a run earlier and then fed special tidbits, just curled up and slept in their cages, but then they never made much noise in the first place. It was all very
alive
out here, Jin thought with satisfaction.

They had brought out a table to eat lunch under a tree, Mom and Jin and Mina and Consul Vorlynkin, and Aunt Lorna, invited for the first time to visit her revived sister. Jin had been horrified when he'd learned she was coming, but since she wanted him back in her household quite as little as he wanted to go there, they'd actually ended up on the same side, in a weird sort of way. She still seized the chance to chide him for running off. Both times.

"She's right, Jin," his mother endorsed this. "They were all very upset when they didn't know what had happened to you. You might have been killed, for all she and your uncle knew."

"But if I hadn't run away," Jin said, "I'd never have met Miles-san. And Mom would still be frozen."

Vorlynkin-san grinned at Aunt Lorna's flummoxed expression. "Unassailable logic, I'm afraid." He'd taken off his business coat in the warmth, and leaned back in his chair in his shirtsleeves, looking more relaxed than Jin had ever seen him. But then, most of the time he'd been following Miles-san around, and Miles-san had a way of un-relaxing people.

Miles-san and Armsman Roic had left yesterday, to board an orbital shuttle and catch a jumpship to Escobar, from where, Consul Vorlynkin had explained to Jin and Mina with the aid of a wormhole map, the Lord Auditor would transfer to a ship bound for the planets Sergyar and Komarr, and finally to Barrayar, where his real home was. The one with all those children and ponies, Jin supposed. Despite the steady procession of lawyers, police, and journalists into and out of the consulate, not to mention Jin and Mina and their mother and now relatives, Jin had to admit it had grown a lot quieter around here since the little man had left. It had all been very exciting for a time, but Jin wasn't sorry for the slow-down. In any case, the parade of people had been closely supervised by the consul, at his most formal and intimidating, not to mention Barrayaran and tall, and nobody had tried to take Jin's mother away again.

Mina had gone inside to go to the bathroom, but now the back door slammed open and she rushed out in excitement, a familiar box in her hands. Lieutenant Johannes followed warily, saying, "She'll be much happier returned to her natural habitat, I'm sure."

"Jin! Mommy!" said Mina. "Look! Lady Murasaki's babies all hatched!"

Their mother valiantly replied, "That's nice, dear," although Aunt Lorna winced. Mom stared down through the transparent lid, and added faintly, "My goodness, she has a lot of children, doesn't she? Perhaps it's time to move them to a larger home."

Like us?
thought Jin.
Let it be like us
. He eyed Consul Vorlynkin in fresh speculation.

"Lieutenant Johannes says I have to put them all out in the garden." Mina frowned, evidently trying to decide if this was a good idea or not. Behind her, Johannes made motions that seemed to indicate he didn't want to share the consulate with a hundred active spiderlings, which Jin thought quite narrow-minded of him.