"It's good to be home. My trip was unpleasantly exciting towards the end. How much have you already heard?"

"Very little. Apparently Miles has a brother now, and there was a Komarran plot involved?"

"Komarran substitution plot, involved cloning Miles when Miles would have been I think about six. The clone, when he is not pretending to be Miles, has shown willing to answer to Mark. The principal Komarran plotter is dead and Mark has been turned loose with a pocketful of cash and the awareness that he may turn up on our doorstep at any time he chooses. The consensus is that there are no more clones - at least, not that survived to adulthood - and I have a medical scan I took of I'm-sufficiently-certain-it-was-Miles for baseline comparison if Mark decides to resume imposterish ways, though I don't find it overwhelmingly likely."

"Well, I'll take a copy of the scan. Did you meet Mark?"

"Yes. He attempted to impersonate Miles to me, for about five minutes, but it didn't go well and he had to kidnap me instead, and then while kidnapped I spent some time tied to a chair having as civil a conversation with him as one can have while tied to a chair, and then during the cleanup of the whole mess I was part of him passing for Miles to some witnesses."

"...In... what way did it not go well...?"

"I picked him up. He flinched."

"I wonder why."

"By his description he didn't mind the various surgical interventions that led to him looking like Miles irrespective of genetic destiny very much - but the rest of his upbringing was not so pleasant either and that's had what may well be a stronger, if less visible, effect. The way Miles put it was that he's so horrifyingly deprived of positive touch that being picked up and kissed by someone who thought he was her husband nearly gave him a heart attack."

"Poor soul."

"Very. I don't know what he's going to do with himself, but Miles sent him off with enough money that he should be able to do it comfortably for a while and - as I mentioned, he knows he can come here. Assuming he believed us."

"I'm not sure that's a safe assumption, under the circumstances. But I guess we'll find out."

"Or we won't. Although he seemed to be over the deathwish by the time he left."

"...The deathwish...?"

"During the tied-to-a-chair conversation, among other things, he solicited 'better ways to die' than going through with the substitution plot and getting himself killed due to it being a poorly thought out idea."

"...Did he define what qualified as a better way?"

"That was left unstated. I didn't come up with one he liked, anyway."

"I see. He sounds... complicated."

"Exceedingly. And he does a very good impression of Miles up until the moment someone touches him - although apparently Ivan can tell on sight because Mark likes him more than Miles does. So I'm probably going to be scanning Miles every time he's out of my sight for more than ten seconds for the next while. Whenever he gets home."

"Yes. Whenever that is."

"A fact which I am even now, alas, ignorant of."

"Me too. It seems to come with the job."

"It does." Linya sighs. She pulls her pen from her necklace and sends the medical scan to Cordelia's pen. "There's the scan file, although if you pick up a scanner of your own that prefers another format it'll need conversion."

"Thank you. I'll... just keep it on hand for now." She pauses, then adds, "I think Simon's going to want to talk to you soon. Apparently he's dissatisfied with the reports he received from Earth and wants to hear the in-person perspective of someone who was there for at least some of it."

"Well, he is welcome to come over and have lunch with me, as long as he remembers that I did not ask to be kidnapped and he is not paying me to be his spy while he does it."

"I'll be sure to tell him so."

"Any other questions before I go tell Aral about Mark?"

"I don't think so, no."

"I did tell Mark that you are a nice person to be an unexpected relative to," sighs Linya, and off she goes looking for her father-in-law.

Linya's father-in-law may be found in the library, reading the local news.

Linya knocks on the doorframe to announce her presence.

"Welcome home," he says, looking up.

"Thank you. I've just told Cordelia about the business with Miles's clone. How much do you already know? And," pen woggle, "there's a copy for you of the baseline medical scan that will tell you the difference if you're unsure."

"I know there was some business with a clone, and Illyan is quietly tearing his hair out over it."

"We've been calling the clone Mark, which he will answer to when he is not pretending to be Miles. It was part of a Komarran plot to replace Miles and wreak various havoc. Mark is currently wandering wherever he may please with a pocketful of cash and the principal plotter deceased and has been informed that he is welcome here if ever he wishes to show up."

"Well. All right."

"So if you see me pointing a medical scanner at Miles every time he wanders out of sight for ten or more seconds, that's why, I was fooled for about five minutes."

"I... see."

"Any questions?"

"Do you not think 'every time he wanders out of sight for ten or more seconds' is... a little excessive?"

"It doesn't take very long and I am not willing to make the mistake again. I will probably scale it back to spot checks after a long string of matching results, and stop entirely if I find out that Mark has taken up some sort of stable occupation somewhere."

"What qualifies as a stable occupation?"

"I didn't have anything specific in mind. If he figures out how to be Mark I will simply be less paranoid that he will decide to put Miles on like a coat again one day."

"Hmm. I see what you mean."

"And he knows what his tells are - with me, with Ivan, I suppose there could be other gaps if he impersonates Miles to you or Cordelia - and could train them away if he were determined to do it, so. Scanner."

"Yes."

She shrugs. "Questions?"

"...How was Miles, last you saw him?"

"Pleased about not being arrested," she says. "Less pleased that he had to ship out immediately after the dust settled, but - stable by Miles standards."

"That's something of a relief. Thank you."

"Most of it was pleasant. The unpleasant part was very much so, alas."

"I have heard... some things. I would like to hear more things," says Captain Illyan.

"Starting from what is most likely to interest you, then - while I was on Earth for tourism, pens, and neuroscience, Miles landed none the wiser, went to the embassy, and encountered Ivan. He was there as himself, so Ivan called me with the cheering news. I didn't ask why he was there or where he'd come from or why he looked like - his turn of phrase was 'inexpertly defrosted hell' - but there was some visiting. We picked out," she adds with a faint smile, "baby names. And then one day when I was at the bank ensuring that my agent could act as such with respect to Earthly and cooperating financial nets, who should I run into but my husband in civilian garb. And no one was looking, so I picked him up, and I was abruptly introduced to Admiral Naismith."

"I see," he says. "Go on."

"He didn't say anything along the lines of 'play along, undercover', he just fed me unadulterated lies - which might not have worked if one of the Dendarii ships hadn't picked up my job bid for transporting a neuroscientist to Komarr. I didn't think an undercover Miles would have drawn my attention to his mercenary outfit, so I tentatively bought the story, although I did call Miles-qua-Miles to confirm at the earliest opportunity. He told me Naismith was his clone and made excuses for not having ever told me he had a clone and - I was not certain I was getting the truth but I was pretty sure I was getting what Miles wanted me to pretend was the truth, so I proceeded to operate under the supplied assumptions. And then a bit later on Miles was kidnapped and replaced by his actual clone, who I will hereafter refer to as Mark."

"Mm. Yes, I've heard the name. Miles used it in his report, several times in fact."

"Mark does an exceedingly good impression of Miles. He fooled Ivan for days, although after being told about the swap Ivan retroactively learned a tell which may or may not persist. I was completely unawares - since Naismith had seemed perfectly friendly and disinterested in replacing his original when I met 'him' - until I picked Mark up and kissed him on the forehead and put him down again only to discover that he has a flinch reaction to physical affection. He dropped the act and stunned me. When I woke up I was tied to a chair in a room with Miles on fast-penta mid-recitation-of-Macbeth, and Ser Galen, the orchestrator of the clone plot. They didn't know about my fast-penta immunity, so when they dosed me too I pretended in case - as seemed likely - option two was more primitive. It was convenient that I have, actually, memorized Macbeth and Galen was too enraged to ask me any probing questions."

"That does seem convenient. What was Ivan's tell?"

"Mark likes him too much."

"Anyway, then we were put in a cell - in Miles's case back in the cell - with Captain Galeni, Galen's son, who had been kidnapped days previous. Correctly suspecting surveillance I pretended to come down off fast-penta, albeit more gently than Miles did. Having made two mistakes about my husband's identity in a very short span of time I wasn't certain the one I was locked up with was, actually, my husband, which was emotionally distressing in ways that are probably relevant to nothing you're looking for except Miles's decision to completely abandon cover with respect to me, insofar as there was anything to salvage except for dubiously protective uncertainty and confusion."

"Miles's motivations are certainly of deep interest to me."

"He is motivated," says Linya, "to stop lying to me, at least in cases where the ceiling or a facsimile thereof is not watching us."

"So noted. You may consider yourself de facto cleared to know the identity of Admiral Naismith. Please do not spread it around."

"I haven't done. I did tell Cordelia and Aral about Mark, though. And give them my medical scan of Miles for comparison. You can have a copy too if you want it."

"Cordelia and Aral are aware of Miles's dual identity and you are free to discuss it with them. As well as me, Gregor, Ivan, and three Dendarii whom you may or may not have met - Elli Quinn, Elena Bothari-Jesek, and Baz Jesek. I would be pleased to receive a copy of your medical scan."

"I briefly encountered Quinn but neither Jesek," says Linya. "Do you have a pen yet, or...?"

"I do not. Should I?"

"My personal opinion? Everyone ought to have a pen. Pens are lovely. But if you don't my existing contact information for you will be within date." Woggle. "There. Anyway, we continued to be kidnapped. Mark extracted Miles for a conversation, and then me - I was not considered safe to usher at stunner-point through the house so they just shot me and I woke up tied to a chair again. Mark - has been badly brought up, but is not intrinsically motivated to hostile behavior. I did not manage anything as dramatic as talking him into letting us all go, though. Back into the cell I went."

"Hm. And?"

"And there I sat until I was stunned again and woke up tied up on a garage floor while Miles, who had conned the guards into maybe letting me go provided I didn't make any dramatic declarations of Barryaran loyalty, was pretending to divorce me. He drew this out until a small contingent of Dendarii who'd been sent to find Captain Galeni burst in and rescued us. I left under my own power once I had my pen back and made it to my hotel without further incident and didn't bother with any of the business at hand again until Commander Quinn called me to come 'be haut at' Cetagandan assassins who were after Naismith. I was extremely haut at them. They packed up and went home."

"Miles mentioned the pretend divorce in his report, briefly. It sounded like... a spectacle."

"It was certainly that. I don't actually know if he has the authority to imbue himself with the necessary power to undo the ceremony with the groats, but he has no such power over the Cetagandan arrangement, anyway. And if they'd let me go - I'd convinced them to give my pen back first. In a block of ice so I couldn't call the police on them soon enough to matter, supposedly - they thought to ask if it was waterproof but not if it was strong enough to withstand me simply breaking through the ice, but I didn't get that far into my contingency plans. Oh, and," she adds, "while I was being haut at Cetagandans, Mark was pretending to be Miles for reasons of costuming and disparate amounts of time having practiced each role - they later found it expedient to appear together. And in the end Mark was released into the tubeway with a pocketful of cash and a reminder that he has a family if he wants one."

"Mark... is a problem whose solution is not yet apparent to me. But having him quietly followed for the rest of his natural life seems like a decent start."

"You can tell him apart from Miles with a medical scanner if he reverts to the level of his training," she says. "I plan to do this routinely once Miles is home again. I don't pretend that I can stop you from having Mark stalked on top of that, but I decline to conversationally endorse it."

"If he reverts to the level of his training there are many things he could do which a medical scanner would not adequately solve."

"Such as?"

"Of ways to carry out his creators' ultimate agenda, 'impersonate Miles' is but one, and it wouldn't necessarily be the most effective one even if telling them apart were much more difficult than it is. What worries me is not so much the prospect of a substitute Miles as the prospect of someone with Miles's potential and Miles's drive and a relationship to Barrayar with the same depth and complexity as Miles's, but considerably less positive and devoid of loyalty."

"I do not think that you can improve the positivity and loyalty situation by having him followed, but again, I can hardly stop you."

"I think I will omit some of his colorful descriptions thereof for the remote possibility that he thinks better of them before he gets here to talk to you in person. But he is no longer willing to enshroud himself in secrecy because you think my positivity and loyalty with respect to Barrayar is suspect. And he wishes Mark all the best, although it's possible he will disagree with me about the following - he will know better than I on two counts if it can be done discreetly enough to avoid antagonizing Mark."

"His feelings about Mark were... strongly hinted at in his report."

"He seems inclined to go all-in on the 'brother' interpretation."

"So I gathered. In a document in which not a single military rank went unabbreviated, he wrote out 'Lord Mark Pierre Vorkosigan' in full. Twice."

"It doesn't surprise me a bit."

"Which? The brotherly affection, or the ways he chose to express it?"

"Either. I imagine there are ways Mark could have sabotaged the fledgeling brotherly affection, but he didn't. He even apologized before he shot me."

"How... incongruously polite of him."

"A bit, yes. He wanted to know later during the part where I was tied to a chair if I was angry at him. I told him I was a little frustrated but not angry."

"Hm."

"Oh - nigh-unrelatedly - when I was being haut at Cetagandan assassins I suggested that I could also choose to be offended if they killed my husband's clone, on the grounds that the haut-wife ceremony is principally about genetics. I don't know how much that will slow them down, of course."

"I imagine it will slow them down at least a little bit. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"You look like hell," Illyan observes. "Defrosted with median expertise. Don't bother saluting."

Miles snickers, which causes him pain, but then so does breathing.

"How was surgery?"

"Much like the legs, but about twenty times as tedious - all those bone fragments, ugh. Now I have the unparalleled joy of sitting around waiting to see if the new marrow's going to settle into the synthetics all right. That part was less of a concern last time around, on account of there were fewer bones being replaced and none of them had been pulped prior to surgery."

"At least you've kept your sense of humour," says Illyan. "But I do hope you're not going to turn this into a habit - returning from your mission assignments on a stretcher."

"Hey, this is what, the second time? Wait for the third before you call it a pattern. Anyway, I have a finite number of bones in my body. I'll be harder to lay out once I've replaced them all."

"Speaking of your missions..."

"What? You have my reports," he says warily. He can't imagine what Illyan could so urgently have to say about his missions right now, but he doesn't expect he'll like it, whatever it is.

"Your reports, as usual, are masterpieces of understatement and misdirection." He sounds almost proud.

"Hey, anybody might read those," says Miles. "You never know."

"Mm," says Illyan.

Miles sighs. "So what's the problem?"

"Money," he says. "In particular, accountability for same."

Miles blinks up at him in honest and slightly pained bewilderment. "Don't you like my work?"

"Apart from your injuries, the results of your latest mission are highly satisfactory..."

"They'd fucking well better be!" he says indignantly.

"...and," he continues after a brief pause to see if Miles is done cursing, "I have no specific complaints about your conduct on Earth, besides a general despair that you will ever go six consecutive months without finding it necessary to creatively interpret or outright disobey an order. No, these charges date to the Dagoola mission."

"Charges?" blinks Miles, feeling very lost and mildly alarmed.

"I've always considered what the Emperor spends on you and your Dendarii to be worth it from the internal security perspective alone, disregarding the many other benefits. A permanent post of some kind, particularly in the capital, would serve as a standing invitation for miscellaneous plots. Such as the one currently targeting your father."

"Eh...?"

"Imperial Accounting has got hold of a theory that certain of your more incredible expenses should not, in fact, be... credited. Certain parties are pushing the peculation angle, and seem inclined to head all the way to a very publicly embarrassing court-martial if not stopped. I, of course, would prefer to stop them. To do that, I must know where all that disappearing cash disappeared off to. I do not relish the thought of being blindsided again - or had you forgotten the time I spent a month in my own prison because of you?"

"That wasn't my fault," he protests. "It was a plot against Dad!"

"Just so," Illyan agrees. "This business is more of the same. But more cleverly arranged - they have Count Vorvolk in Accounting convinced that he pursues a noble goal by digging this up, and his personal loyalty is... unquestioned. Attempts to subtly divert him will only increase his tenacity. He must be handled with exquisite care, whether he's mistaken or.. not."

"Not...?" Realization dawns on him rather like a bucket of cold water to the face, an unpleasant and sobering shock. The reason Illyan is here, now, is so he can catch Miles post-surgery in a state of maximum drugged, pained confusion, as a substitute for the fast-penta to which Miles has a known idiosyncratic reaction. "Fuck you, Simon! Why not break out the lead-lined rubber hoses, while you're at it!"

"Are you offering me amnesty?" he breathes.

"If necessary."

"I'd take the fucking court-martial over this," growls Miles.

"...I'll come back later," he decides, and backs away. "Maybe you'll be more... coherent... after some sleep."

"Mm," he says, his eyes drifting shut again. "Somewhat." He is certainly more peaceful.

He pulls up a chair and sits by the side of the hospital bed. "I apologize, Lord Vorkosigan, for doubting your word."

"Thank you," says Miles, half sincere, half dryly ironic. "You owe me as much."

"I do," he acknowledges. "But Miles... in your position, as your father's son, have you never realized how necessary it is not only to be honest, but to seem it?"

"As my father's son," he says, "no."

"Ha. I take your point." He shakes his head. "Regardless - the money. Count Vorvolk has pinpointed two troubling discrepancies in your reports. Wild cost overruns on simple personnel pickups. I realize Dagoola snowballed in true Naismith fashion, but what about the first one - that pickup on Jackson's Whole, when you left two-thirds of your cargo behind and bolted?"

"That was almost two years ago, hell," says Miles. "What do these people imagine I'm getting out of my imaginary peculation, anyway, have they noticed my wife makes nearly as much as my entire mercenary army put together...? Fuck it. Fine. What do you want to know? Wasn't the equipment bill all accounted for in my report?"

"'Accounted for' and 'explained' are, alas, distinct concepts. Often startlingly so, in your mission reports. The explanation, please. In full."

Miles grins. "He's doing pretty well. Working with the fleet surgeon to find a course of treatment that'll slow his raging metabolism, maybe extend his lifespan, without damaging combat effectiveness - and you would not believe his combat effectiveness. He seems very happy with himself."

"All right. And now, Dagoola. The last word I have had from you on this subject, I remind you, is that... report... you filed from Mahata Solaris. I might charitably describe it as 'succinct'."

He smiles in wry recollection. "Yeah, well, I was expecting to follow it up with something more substantial from Tau Ceti and an in-person report as soon as I got home. Shit happened."

"Now's your chance," Illyan says dryly. "Let's hear the shit, Miles."

"Combat fatigue?"

"The actual combat portion of that escapade lasted a couple of hours at most, sir."

"Sounded more like six weeks to me."

"Eh. But if Count Vorvolk is of the opinion that I should have traded lives for equipment, he can take that opinion, fold it until it is all sharp corners—"

Illyan holds up a hand. "I understand, Miles," he says dryly. "Believe me. I will deal with Vorvolk and his opinions. I personally guarantee that this little plot will not intrude any further on your recovery."

"Thank you for that," sighs Miles. "I'm... sorry that my carelessness shook your confidence in me, sir. I'll try to be more intelligent in future."

"As will I," Illyan says quietly.

"Ah. Yes, m'lady," he says, and departs expeditiously.

"Am I even medically cleared for visitors of any kind?" wonders Miles.

"No." She bends down and kisses his forehead. "You'll know when you are, because your wife will be here. Now rest up. The sooner you convince that doctor of your good behaviour and general recuperation, the sooner you can be down at Vorkosigan Surleau, recuperating."

"Yes, ma'am."

Lady Vorkosigan,

I find I must apologize. When I denied you clearance to know about your husband's work, I did it as a mere default, absent any well-founded suspicion. It is impossible to prove a negative; no amount of evidence could have reversed my decision. I would not have treated any other covert agent's wife the same way. I acted on prejudice, without considering the costs, and for that I am sorry.

Respectfully,
Simon

"He's... moderately unhappy. But I think he's settled down. What's the etiquette problem?"

"Captain Illyan sent me an apology." Linya calls it up to show her. "And signed it with his first name. Letting it go unacknowledged seems hostile, but I'm not sure how I am at this time supposed to format the salutation."

"I'm willing to accept his apology," says Linya. "He might have to do something beyond formally cease to consider me an information security hazard before friendship becomes likely."

"Simon considers almost everyone an information security hazard. Going as far as sending you an apology note about not trusting you enough implies that some degree of active trust has been achieved."

"Hmm. I wonder what the tipping point there was? He got my story about Earth weeks ago."

"He had a... conversation... with Miles just now. At a guess, I'd say he was moved to apologize to Miles about something, and doing so reminded him that apologies are an available course of action when one has made mistakes that affect others."

Linya laughs. "Well. Thank you for the consult. Any idea when Miles can be visited?"

"Not yet. I'll let you know first thing."

Simon,

Your apology is accepted. I acknowledge that my circumstances are exceptional and am glad that I located an opportunity to demonstrate my harmlessness sooner rather than later; thank you for your openness to necessarily finite evidence.

Likewise,
Linyabel

"Hi. Tell me where it doesn't hurt at least to a sufficient degree that I can kiss you?"

"My face is mostly fine," he says encouragingly.

So he gets a proper kiss, then, with her leaning carefully to avoid jostling his arms at all. "I was hoping Quinn had exaggerated."

"Well, what'd she say?"

"She told me that you fired an antique pistol complete with recoil when you already had a broken shoulder and were then even further bounced around. She told me this complete with gory details. Which I have barely just enough medical education to find specifically alarming rather than reducible to 'there ensued injurious action'."

"That's... just about accurate, yeah. Although she seems to have omitted the part where I was bounced around beforehand too."

"No, that was included, it just graduated from expected 'my husband is a mercenary admiral' levels of appalling into a new tier at the point where your shoulder was already broken and you had to shoot a slug-thrower with that arm." She kisses his forehead and smooths his hair.

"Aha. Well, now you know to adjust your expectations of appallingness upward," he jokes. "Anyway, I was hardly going to shoot with the other arm, then I wouldn't have had any totally functional arms left. That's generally considered a major drawback in combat."

"One which you soon suffered, to hear Quinn tell it, or is that solely for symmetry?" she asks, gesturing at his bandaged left arm.

"Ah. No, my left arm was doing pretty well when I got here, the surgeons just suggested that while they had to replace most of the bones in the other they might as well do both, and I agreed."

"Quinn said you had two fractures in your forearm and a broken finger. Apparently I'm meant to categorize that as 'pretty well' - I decline to call it 'totally functional'."

"All right," he concedes, "that's fair."

More forehead-kiss. "Hopefully soon you can come home and we can figure out some combination of hand-feeding and liquid-nutrition-plus-straws that works for you while not being hospital food."

"I admit the hand-feeding doesn't sound so bad."

Kiss. "All right. And I suppose I'll shut up the fur somewhere in case it snuggles too energetically for comfort."

He snorts. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. It's been very nice to have in your absence, though."

"I'm glad."

Kiss! "Simon apologized to me," she mentions. "After formally clearing me to know the things I know. It would have been rather awkward if I had remained barred from knowing them, I suppose."

"Yes. But apologized? That's - interesting. When?"

"Shortly after you landed. Cordelia thinks it was because he was reminded of the concept of apologies existing when he had to give you one."

"Yes, that's... more or less what I was just thinking."

Pet pet pet. "Do you want to see the notes?"

"Sure."

She defines her pen's display area where it will be easy for him to see and calls them up. As an afterthought, she collects a new medical scan, compares it with the baseline in the old rib fractures, and pockets the scanner again with the new image saved as baseline complete with synthetic arm bones.

"The new and improved Miles," he jokes.

"Well, the new and slightly less breakable Miles. Maybe try to schedule your next batch of replacements?"

"I don't know about you, but I consider being less breakable a definite improvement. Anyway, I don't know if I want to replace any more bones - they only get trickier from here, I'm told. I'll wait and see."

"If your ribs were not so breakable," Linya says, "you could be less carefully squeezed."

"Yes, but I'd have to pay for that privilege by going through this business over again with my ribs. I'm not keen on the idea. Suggest it again in a few months when I've had time to forget how much it hurts."

She kisses his forehead again. "I'll make a note of it, if you're done reading the correspondence."

"Yeah. So you're on first-name terms with Uncle Simon now. Congratulations."

She withdraws the display from its hovering position over his face. "We'll see what comes of it, I suppose." Pet pet pet.

"...Was Mother with you when you got here?" he asks, trying without much success to peer around her.

"She was. She stepped out. Do you want me to go get her?"

"No, no, it's fine. I just wanted to confirm my memory."

"Your memory's fine." Pet pet. "You have probably been outrageously bored in here, haven't you? I don't even see a setup to pipe in music, what an inhospitably designed hospital."

"It's ImpMil, Linya. It's not supposed to be hospitable."

"What a fine excuse for leaving you with no functioning arms and nothing to do. I forgive those responsible completely and at once."

Miles snickers. (Ow.)

Forehead-kiss. "I think Quinn may have saturated me with all the war stories I wish to hear this week. But I successfully coaxed Dr. Cheung to Komarr, and he arrived the other day and is recuperating and cursing my name for talking him into it and celebrating the nice workspace I rented him. And pens are now available without custom order in three more colors. And I'm going to take physics courses and a little math when the next term starts. And I have to keep stopping myself from re-offering to show you simulations of Aral Adri because he's going to be exquisitely cute."

"Which three colours?"

"The viridian and burgundy and brown were the most popular custom offers. And my agent's working on getting them available on Beta Colony now."

"Congratulations."

"Thanks." Pet pet. "Any idea how long it will take the doctors to let you go?"

"Soon, I hope. I've been promised recuperation at Vorkosigan Surleau, and now hand-feeding."

"I can hardly expect you to manage it telekinetically, now, can I?"

"I'm sure given sufficient time to come up with a creative solution, I could manage to feed myself semi-independently."

"With your feet, perhaps. Or by diving face-first into bowls of things. I believe I will spare you self-inflicted creative indignity."

He giggles, then winces. "Ow."

"Shall I entertain you less - entertainingly? I could sing."

"I like it when you sing."

Hand-feeding!

"Well," he says, "there's always the story of how Admiral Naismith got started, that's worth a laugh..."

"It has occurred to me to wonder. A version of the persona whose design were - carefully overseen - would probably have a different name for himself and his mercenaries both."

"Yeah. Well, I was seventeen, and on a visit to Beta Colony, shortly after my grandfather passed away. It all started... let me see... with Arde Mayhew's RG freighter, right. Arde's a pilot. He had a debt problem. They were going to repossess his ship, or something, and he'd rigged himself a deadman switch of some kind so that if anyone attempted to separate him from the ship, he and it would both be reduced to a rain of highly inconvenient glowing debris scattered across Beta Colony's high-traffic orbits and approach vectors. I stumbled on this scene and managed to convince someone in charge that it would be a good idea to send me up there to negotiate with him, or at least that it would be worth trying. I can't remember why I decided to do this; probably it just occurred to me that I could and I went from there. Anyway, up I went, and there he was drinking this amazing green goop - ethanol plus a stimulant, tastes like it was made from mint and the fires of hell, I haven't had any since but I still remember the flavour quite distinctly - and under the influence of this substance I concocted a plan to weasel Arde out of his situation by swearing him to me as an Armsman. And then convincing his creditors to accept my recently inherited lands - you know, Vorkosigan Vashnoi - as collateral when I bought out his debt, figuring to make a few cargo runs with the ship and come up with the balance of the price that way. Happily, nobody knew enough Barrayaran history to bother checking the radioactivity plats. Unhappily, I had vastly overestimated how fast it would be possible to raise cash by making simple cargo runs with a junky old freighter."

"Oh dear. And then where did the rest of the fleet and its crew come in?"

"The RG isn't actually a member of the fleet as such, but I'll get there. Right, so the only cargo I could find that would make us our money fast enough was a rather suspicious-looking delivery of 'farming equipment' to the other side of a wormhole blockade. I deduced that it was probably the blockaded side looking to get a shipment of Betan weapons past the blockaders, managed to convince the customer that I was a mercenary of unspecified rank detached from my outfit and looking to pass the time by smuggling his cargo - you'll find I spend a significant fraction of this story managing to convince people of things - and got it all loaded into the RG behind some state-of-the-art Betan mass detector jammers, which had only barely hit the market at the time. Then we headed for the Tau Verde system to deliver it. Which, of course, necessitated first getting past the blockade."

"And did you convince the blockaders of things?"

Linya giggles. "I can just barely picture this, and it's amazing."

"It gets better," he assures her cheerfully. "See, it would all have fallen apart eventually... except that Admiral Oser, the commander of the Oseran Mercenaries to which the Ariel had previously belonged, turned out to be an even bigger ass than Auson. When we captured that mining installation, we captured an Oseran ship called the Triumph with it, commanded by one Ky Tung. Amazing man. He escaped us and bolted back to Oser. According to the terms of Tung's contract, Oser owed him a new ship if his previous one was captured. Oser did not deliver on this promise. Tung was sufficiently offended that he turned around, came back, and offered to join the Dendarii. I happily accepted. And with a little more convincing and some clever strategy and a nice big helping of luck, we won the war. At which point Oser and the rest of his fleet also offered to join the Dendarii."

"Oh my goodness. I should have waited on this story until you were safely scoopable, this is fantastic."

"I can explain that, too, if you want."

"I'd like to know, but I don't have to know now."

"Now or later, it's all the same to me. See... growing up, Elena didn't know who her mother was. Bothari wouldn't talk about it. And when we were recruiting in Tau Verde local space, we happened to come across this woman, Elena Visconti, who looked just like my Elena. I imagined some story of - estrangement, perhaps, in any case of romance. The reality... well. I arranged an 'accidental' meeting, naively expecting some form of happiness to ensue, and Ms. Visconti happened to be armed at the time, and she walked into the room and shot Bothari in the chest with a needler. It was pretty ghastly. I'd known Bothari was a troubled soul, but not quite the full extent of the trouble. I still don't know exactly what he'd done, to provoke such an extreme reaction so many years later, but certainly his daughter was not the product of a romance."

"Oh dear. What happened to Ms. Visconti after? I know from Simon that Elena Bothari-Jesek is still with the Dendarii..."

"Left. Went back to Escobar, and as far as I know is still there."

"How did Bothari wind up with custody of their daughter...?"

"Oh... after the attempted Barrayaran invasion of Escobar, a bunch of uterine replicators with fetuses in them were sent from them to us. Probably all of unromantic origin. Seventeen, I think is the number. Mother later reused one of those very replicators to keep gestating me after they had to scoop me out."

"What an unlovely chapter of history... but I'm glad there was a place to put you when you had to relocate."

"So'm I."

"Replicators are easier to get now, right? I was thinking of looking after Little Aral Adri myself for fine-tuned environmental monitoring, at least unless I find it unexpectedly necessary to make more business trips in spite of having delegated pen-sprinkling. It will probably be harder to get one to take home if there are only a handful on the entire planet."

"In case you haven't noticed, my love, you are very, very rich. You could have your favourite model shipped here from Beta Colony if you felt like it. But yes, there are more replicators on Barrayar now than there were then."

"I actually don't know much about standard-issue models. I should look into that in case it interacts with my previous education on incubation in some way and pick one out."

"There you go, then. And then I suppose we decide when we want to start him... I confess I'm still nervous about the parenting aspect of this operation."

"He'll be precocious; I don't know if that helps or does the very opposite."

"I don't know either."

"I've been taking notes from Ekaterin's example and I am not particularly intimidated, but there's no rush. Any halfway decent replicator can be bought well in advance and permitted to collect dust in a closet until you're good and ready."

"Yeah. That sounds good to me."

She kisses his forehead. "But he is going to be outrageously cute."

"In the best family tradition."

"With his dad's eyes and everything."

"Nigh bottomless. Let's see. Would you like the story of why I'm never visiting Jackson's Whole again? Or the story of how the Dendarii pulled off the third biggest prisoner-of-war escape in history?"

"Those both sound fascinating. Can I have them in the same volume?"

"They're not actually all that connected, except that some ass from Accounting decided to grill Illyan about what he spent on them, so they're fresh in my mind. Would you like them in chronological order?"

"Sure."

"Right. So Jackson's Whole is, well, a hole. How much do you know about the place? Do I need to explain what various Houses do and who runs them or will you be sufficiently informed if I just say 'Fell, Ryoval, and Bharaputra'?"

"I haven't made much of a study of the place. I don't plan to ever visit, on the grounds that it is not a civilized planet. But I know Bharaputra's specialty."

"Heh. So. Fell does weapons. Ryoval does ghastly prostitution, often in the form of custom bioengineered sex-slaves. At the time of my first, latest, and hopefully last visit, Baron Fell was a man named Georish Stauber, half-brother to Baron Ryoval. Not that I knew that genealogical detail going in. Do you also know about the Jacksonian brain-transplant business?"

She makes a face. "Yes. If Dr. Cheung gets anywhere I may be able to render it partially obsolete."

"I will happily dance on its partial metaphorical grave. Anyway. Ryoval was on his second body at the time; Fell still on his first. And Fell had just had an attempted transplant-clone assassinated before the operation could be carried out. Fell suspected Ryoval, because they hate each other. The mission that dropped me in the middle of this mess was to pick up a geneticist, Dr. Hugh Canaba, who wanted to quit House Bharaputra. My cover was a Dendarii resupply at House Fell. I took the Ariel, me and Thorne went to schmooze with Baron Fell at one of his parties, and Thorne immediately developed an enormous crush on a quaddie musician Fell had performing - do you know quaddies?"

"I've heard of them. I haven't met any."

"She played the, what was it, double-sided hammer dulcimer, quite exquisitely. Thorne was infatuated. Then Ryoval sauntered along and made remarks about how he'd like to purchase her, and Fell made remarks about how he would ever so politely rather Ryoval go jump in a lake, and Thorne got into an offended rant about how selling people is illegal, and Ryoval decided that this was the height of humour and proceeded to bait it expertly for a few minutes until I had to drag it back onto the ship."

"What a lovely place to live, if only the rent weren't so high," mutters Linya.

"Quite. So. Canaba then called me up demanding an in-person audience before his covert pickup, which I was forced to grant because he threatened not to show up otherwise, and my orders were very clear on the subject of getting that man off the planet and onto Barrayar. He's still around, by the way, I can tell you his new name if you promise not to let on that you know anything at all about where he came from. Canaba spun me a tale about how he'd been part of a team commissioned to create a super-soldier by mixing human and animal genes, and he'd stored some samples of his other work in the last living prototype of this failed project, for unclear reasons. Then House Bharaputra sold the beast to House Ryoval. Canaba wanted me to sneak in, grab his samples, kill the critter, and sneak out again. I tried to buy the prototype first, but Ryoval decided to take the opportunity to demand that I trade him an illicitly obtained gene sample from Fell's quaddie musician. I declined this honour, and therefore had to go with the sneak-in-and-grab method."

"Why did he want the super-soldier killed?"

"Because he was a selfish arrogant ass. Well, and all the other prototypes had died agonizing deaths of premature old age and this one was slated to do the same after an unknown period of time spent in Ryoval's sex dungeons, so he imagined he was doing it a favour in the asking."

"The reason I know about Bharaputra's specialty is because it was often a subject of mockery," Linya mutters.

"Canaba's pretty brilliant, from what I can tell, but he did not do his best work on this project. But at the time I had only the vaguest idea what this prototype looked like, except 'eight feet tall with fangs'. I planned my mission, I took my team in - we got caught just inside the main building of Ryoval's biologicals facility. Or should I say, they got caught. I was hiding in the ceiling at the time. Ensign Murka, the team leader, performed an amazing feat of Managing to Convince and got them all rather gently thrown out as idiot soldiers trying to peep at Ryoval's girls and mistakenly breaking into the biologicals facility when they meant to break into the whorehouse, as opposed to what would have happened to them if anyone had realized they'd come on purpose to steal things. I promoted him for it when we got back, and then he died at Dagoola - but I'm getting ahead of myself. Since I was still in the ceiling after Murka and the boys were summarily evicted, I decided to crawl around and see if I could find any good intel before I tackled the problem of getting out again. In a stroke of brilliant anti-genius, I dropped into the facility's security ops center and interrogated their chief of security thinking he was some kind of tech or clerk. I got caught. When they brought him around from the fast-penta, he was extremely upset with me."

"Oh dear."

"In fact, he was so upset that after calling his boss and getting permission to do whatever he wanted with me, he threw me in the sub-basement with the super-soldier prototype, who was down there being starved as a punishment for nearly murdering one of Ryoval's customers. I'm sure they thought the creature would eat me or something. Instead we made friends. They were calling him 'Seven' - I named him Asterion, recruited him to the Dendarii, and started crawling around in all the ductwork we could jointly access, trying to find a way out of there. Before we managed that, we found the lab where Ryoval keeps—kept—his library of tissue samples, the gene bank from which he concocts his creations. All lined up neatly in three enormous walk-in freezers, completely unattended, because it was the dark of night and all the security arrangements were aimed at preventing people from coming in the door to the lab as opposed to crawling out of a pillar. We turned on the heat sterilization cycle on the freezers with all the samples still inside, then booked it back down the pillar and escaped out the sub-basement's vehicle entrance after a little more noodling around looking for things to pick the lock with."

Linya giggles.

"Yes, I'm very pleased with myself about that one. After that, we found our way back to the Ariel and departed in short order, pausing along the way only long enough to listen to Ryoval nearly asphyxiate on his own rage and then make a deal with Fell to let that quaddie musician come along with us. She had a nice few days with Thorne before splitting off and starting her journey back to quaddiespace. And that is the story of why Baron Ryoval wants Admiral Naismith dead in the vilest possible way."

"I am afraid I probably can't call him off by being haut at him."

"I doubt it, yeah. If you get within spitting distance he'll probably try to collect a gene sample so he can run off fifty clones of you for unsavoury purposes."

"Eugh."

"Yes, that is my feeling also."

Pet, pet. "So now you have an ineptly cobbled together friendly super-soldier. How super is he?"

"Reasonably super. Incredible strength, speed, reflexes - he pays heavy metabolic tax on it all, of course. Eats like four men, fights like five."

"Well, that seems like a reasonable tradeoff from a hiring perspective, if not the very frontier of engineering efficiency."

"Could you do better?" he half-jokes. "Should I ask Asterion to release a gene sample so you can give him hautish little siblings who'll eat like three men, fight like ten, and live past twenty-five?"

"Do you want your very own super-soldier project, Miles? For your birthday?"

He giggles. "No, thank you."

"I imagine I could improve on his genome, but I doubt I could perfect it, anyway - when I was studying I already strongly expected that I'd be doing half-haut children, not elaborate cutting-edge research and development, so that was where I focused. I am thoroughly qualified to work on Little Aral Adri and would need to study up considerably to do super-soldiers."

"I imagine the inter-species aspect would complicate matters, too."

"Yes. It's an exaggeration to say that haut never touch animal genetics - some take it up as a hobby and there is a popular toy project with designer butterflies that some of my acquaintances did when I was nine, that sort of thing - but it's definitely not a focus."

"Designer butterflies?"

"Butterflies are fun! I didn't do the project, but I critiqued color schemes when the deadline hit and everyone showed theirs off."

"That sounds terribly charming."

"They were very pretty. Do you want to see?"

"Sure."

Linya puts her pen display where he'll be able to see it from his position of dubious mobility and calls up a series of photographs of extremely elaborate and lovely butterflies in every color combination that could be reasonably described as appealing.

"Ooh. I like those swirly grey ones," he says.

"They were generally considered to be a bit understated, but they did make very cute caterpillars - I don't have pictures of the caterpillars, unfortunately. Some of the girls were very guarded about letting the competition look while their work was in progress."

"I think I like them because they're understated. It doesn't make them any less beautiful, but in that whole colourful swarm they'd stand out very strikingly."

"My favorites were the gold-and-blues with the triangle markings."

"Those were cute. They put me in mind of Ivan - if you darkened the blue by several shades and took a little shine off the gold they'd be in the Vorpatril house colours."

"I don't believe I've ever seen him in his house colors."

"I suspect he has something against his House uniform. Couldn't tell you what. The colour scheme's not that bad."

"It isn't terrible, although it doesn't seem like it would necessarily flatter him in particular."

Miles head-shrugs.

"So that's why you need to stay far, far away from Jackson's Whole..."

"Yes. And then there's Dagoola. How much do you already know...?"

"News-blurb paragraph, more or less, enough to guess what you were talking about - there was a prison camp, it was completely emptied."

"Yeah. Did the news blurb go into the conditions there?"

She shakes her head. "You mentioned it, but it didn't make the brief."

"It should have. They were... not pleasant. My mission was to get myself captured in the guise of a Marilacan rebel, locate a particular officer - Guy Tremont, I think his name was - and have him prepared for pickup when my Dendarii broke us out a little while later. I got myself captured, and that's about when the plan went straight to hell. They were keeping the prisoners bundled all together in a single huge force-bubble, issued with exactly the minimum rations required by interplanetary law, which were delivered periodically in an enormous pile of identical ration bars. Exactly one to a customer, just like the cups and bedrolls and clothing articles they sent us in with. Our floor was bare dirt, our ceiling was the sky. When I found Tremont, he'd gone catatonic, and was still alive only because a friend of his made him eat and drink periodically."

"Oh dear."

"It does," murmurs Linya, and he gets a forehead-kiss, since a thorough hug is still out of the question.

He musters another smile for her.

"And then you dragged all the way to Earth with assassins after you?"

"Yep. Dropped off our rescuees on Marilac first, of course."

"Of course."