Cetaganda

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"I found Ivan, sir." Miles smiled into the comconsole. The background beyond Ambassador Vorob'yev's head was blurred, but the sounds of the buffet winding down—subdued voices, the clink of plates—carried clearly over the comm. "He's getting a tour of the Star Creche. We'll be here a while yet—can't insult our hostess and all that. But I should be able to extract him and catch up with you before the party's over. One of the ba will bring us back."

Vorob'yev looked anything but happy at this news. "Well. I suppose it will have to do. But Colonel Vorreedi does not care for these spontaneous additions to the planned itinerary, regardless of the cultural opportunity, and I must say I'm beginning to agree with him. Don't, ah ... don't let Lord Vorpatril do anything inappropriate, eh? The haut are not the ghem, you know."

"Yes, sir. Ivan's doing just fine. Never better." Ivan was still out cold, back in the freight bay, but the returning color to his face had suggested the synergine was starting to work.

"Just how did he obtain this extraordinary privilege, anyway?" asked Vorob'yev.

"Oh, well, you know Ivan. Couldn't let me score a coup he couldn't match. I'll explain it all later. Must go now."

"I'll be fascinated to hear it," the ambassador murmured dryly. Miles cut the comm before his smile fractured and fell off his face.

"Whew. That buys us a little time. A very little time. We need to move."

"Yes," agreed his escort, the brown-haired Rho Cetan lady. She turned her float-chair and led him out of the side-office containing the comconsole; he had to trot to keep up.

They returned to the freight bay just as Rian and the haut Pel finished re-coding the haut Nadina's bubble-chair. Miles spared an anxious glance for Ivan, laid out on the tessellated pavement. He seemed to be breathing deeply and normally.

"I'm ready," Miles reported to Rian. "My people won't come looking for us for at least an hour. If Ivan wakes up ... well, you should have no trouble keeping him under control." He licked lips gone dry. "If things go wrong ... go to ghem-Colonel Benin. Or to your Emperor himself. No Imperial Security middlemen. Everything about this, especially the ways Governor Kety has been able to diddle what everyone fondly believed were diddle-proof systems, is screaming to me that he's suborned a connection high up, probably very high up, in your own security who's giving him serious aid and comfort. Being rescued by him could be a fatal experience, I suspect."

"I understand," said Rian gravely. "And I agree with your analysis. The Ba Lura would not have taken the Great Key to Kety for duplication in the first place if it had not been convinced that he was capable of carrying out the task." She straightened from the float-chair arm, and nodded to the haut Pel.

The haut Pel had filled her sleeves with most of the little items she had taken from the haut Vio. She nodded back, straightened her robes, and gracefully settled herself aboard. The little items did not, alas, include energy weapons, the power packs of which would set off security scanners. Not even a stunner, Miles thought with morbid regret. I'm going into orbital battle wearing dress blacks and riding boots, and I'm totally disarmed. Wonderful. He took his place again at Pel's left side, perched on the cushioned armrest, trying not to feel like the ventriloquist's dummy that he glumly fancied he resembled. The bubble's force-screen enclosed them, and Rian stood back, and nodded. Pel, her right hand on the control panel, spun the bubble, and they floated quickly toward the exit, which dilated to let them pass; two other consorts exited simultaneously, and sped off in other directions.

Miles felt a brief pang in his heart that Pel and not Rian was his companion in arms. In his heart, but not in his head. It was essential not to place Rian, the most creditable witness of Kety's treason, in Kety's power. And ... he liked Pel's style. She had already demonstrated her ability to think fast and clearly in an emergency. He still wasn't sure that drop over the side of the building night before last hadn't been for her amusement, rather than for secrecy. A haut-woman with a sense of humor, almost . . . too bad she was eighty years old, and a consort, and Cetagandan, and . . . Give it up, will you? Ivan you aren't nor ever will be. But one way or another, Governor the haut Ilsum Kety's treason is not going to last the day.

They joined Kety's party as it was making ready to depart at the south gate of the Celestial Garden. The haut Vio would have been sent to collect Ivan at the last possible moment, to be sure. Kety's train was large, as befit his governor's dignity: a couple of dozen ghem-guards, plus ghem-ladies, non-ba servitors in his personal livery, and rather to Miles's dismay, ghem-General Chilian. Was Chilian in on his master's treason, or was he due to be dumped along with the haut Nadina on the way home, and replaced with Kety's own appointee? He had to be one or the other; the commander of Imperial troops on Sigma Ceta could hardly be expected to stay neutral in the upcoming coup.

Kety himself gestured the haut Vio's bubble into his own vehicle for the short ride to the Imperial shuttleport, the exclusive venue for all such high official arrivals to and departures from the Celestial Garden. Ghem-General Chilian took another car; Miles and the haut Pel found themselves alone with Kety in a van-like space clearly designed for the lady-bubbles.

"You're late. Complications?" Kety inquired cryptically, settling back in his seat. He looked worried and stern, as befit an earnest mourner—or a man riding a particularly hungry and unreliable tiger.

Yeah, and I should have known he was Lord X when I first spotted that fake gray hair, Miles decided. This was one haut-lord who didn't want to wait for what life might bring him.

"Nothing I couldn't handle," reported Pel. The voice-filter, set to maximum blur, altered her tones into a fair imitation of the haut Vio's.

"I'm sure, my love. Keep your force-screen up till we're aboard."

"Yes."

Yep. Ghem-General Chilian definitely has an appointment with an unfriendly air lock, Miles decided. Poor sucker. The haut Vio, perhaps, meant to get back into the haut-genome one way or another. So was she Kety's mistress, or his master? Or were they a team? Two brains rather than one behind this plot could account for its speed, flexibility, and confusion all together.

The haut Pel touched a control, and turned to Miles. "When we get aboard, we must decide whether to look first for the haut Nadina or the Great Key."

Miles nearly choked. "Er . . ." He gestured toward Kety, sitting less than a meter from his knee.

"He cannot hear us," Pel reassured him. It seemed to be so, for Kety turned abstracted eyes to the passing view outside the luxurious lift-van's polarized canopy.

"The recovery of the Key," Pel went on, "is of the highest priority."

"Mm. But the haut Nadina, if she's still alive, is an important witness, for Barrayar's sake. And . . . she may have an idea where the Key is being kept. I think it's in a cipher lab, but it's a damned big ship, and there's a lot of places Kety may have tucked a cipher lab."

"Both it and Nadina will be close to his quarters," Pel said.

"He won't have her in the brig?"

"I doubt . . . Kety will have wished many of his soldiers or servitors to know that he holds his consort prisoner. No. She will most likely be secreted in a cabin."

"I wonder where Kety figures to stage whatever fatal crime he's planned involving Ivan and the haut Nadina? The consorts move on pretty constricted paths. He won't site it on his own ship, nor his own residence. And he probably doesn't dare repeat the performance inside the Celestial Garden, that would be just too much. Something downside, I fancy, and tonight."

Governor Kety glanced at their force bubble, and inquired, "Is he waking up yet?"

Pel touched her lips, then her controls. "Not yet."

"I want to question him, before. I must know how much they know."

"Time enough."

"Barely."

Pel killed her outgoing sound again.

"The haut Nadina first," Miles voted firmly.

"I ... think you're right, Lord Vorkosigan," sighed Pel.

Further dangerous conversation with Kety was blocked by the confusion of loading the shuttle to convey the portion of retinue that was going to orbit; Kety himself was busied on his comm link. They did not find themselves alone with the governor again until the whole mob had disgorged into the shuttle hatch corridor aboard Kety's State ship, and gone about their various duties or pleasures. Ghem-General Chilian did not even attempt to speak with his wife. Pel followed at Kety's gesture. From the fact that Kety had dismissed his guards, Miles reasoned that they were about to get down to business. Limiting witnesses limited the murders necessary to silence them, later, if things went wrong.

Kety led them to a broad, tastefully appointed corridor obviously dedicated to upper-class residence suites. Miles almost tapped the haut Pel on the shoulder. "Look. Down the hall. Do you see?"

A liveried man stood guard outside one cabin door. He braced to attention at the sight of his master. But Kety turned in to another cabin first. The guard relaxed slightly.

Pel craned her neck. "Might it be the haut Nadina?"

"Yes. Well . . . maybe. I don't think he'd dare use a regular trooper for the duty. Not if he doesn't control their command structure yet." Miles felt a strong pang of regret that he hadn't figured out the schism between Kety and his ghem-general earlier. Talk about exploitable opportunities . . .

The door slid closed behind them, and Miles's head snapped around to see what they were getting into now. The chamber was clean, bare of decoration or personal effects: an unused cabin, then.

"We can put him here," said Kety, nodding to a couch in the sitting-room portion of the chamber. "Can you keep him under control chemically, or must we have some guards?"

"Chemically," responded Pel, "but I need a few things. Synergine. Fast-penta. And we'd better check him for induced fast-penta allergies first. Many important people are given them, I understand. I don't think you want him to die here."

"Clarium?"

Pel glanced at Miles, her eyes widening in question; she did not know that one. Clarium was a fairly standard military interrogation tranquilizer—Miles nodded.

"That would be a good idea," Pel hazarded.

"No chance of his waking up before I get back, is there?" asked Kety in concern.

"I'm afraid I dosed him rather strongly."

"Hm. Please be more discreet, my love. We don't want excessive chemical residues left upon autopsy. Though with luck, there will not be enough left to autopsy."

"I'm reluctant to count on luck."

"Good" said Kety, with a peculiar exasperation. "You're learning at last."

"I'll await you," said Pel coolly, by way of a broad hint. As if the haut Vio would have done anything else.

"Let me help you lay him out," Kety said. "It must be crowded in there."

"Not for me. I'm using him for a footrest. The float-chair is ... most comfortable. Let me ... enjoy the privilege of the haut a little longer, my love," Pel sighed. "It has been so long. ..."

Kety's lips thinned in amusement. "Soon enough, you shall have more privileges than the Empress ever had. And all the outworlders at your feet you may desire." He gave the bubble a short nod, and departed, striding quickly. Where would a haut-governor with an interrogation chemistry shopping list go? Sickbay? Security? And how long would it take?

"Now," said Miles. "Back up the corridor. We have to get rid of the guard—did you bring any of that stuff that the haut Vio used on Ivan?"

Pel pulled the tiny bulb from her sleeve and held it up.

"How many doses are left?"

Pel squinted. "Two. Vio over-prepared." She sounded faintly disapproving, as if Vio had lost style-points by this redundancy.

"I'd have taken a hundred, just in case. All right. Use it sparingly—not at all if you don't have to."

Pel floated her bubble out of the cabin again, and turned up the corridor. Miles slid around behind the float-chair, crouching with his hands gripping the high back and his boots slipping slightly on base which held the power pack. Hiding behind a woman's skirts? It was frustrating as hell to have his transportation—and everything else—under the control of a Cetagandan, even if the rescue mission was his idea. But needs must drive. Pel came to a halt before the liveried guard.

"Servitor," she addressed him.

"Haut," he nodded respectfully to the blank white bubble. "I am on duty, and may not assist you."

"This will not take long." Pel flicked off her force-screen. Miles heard a faint hiss, and a choking noise. The float-chair rocked. He popped up to find Pel with the guard slumped very awkwardly across her lap.

"Damn," said Miles regretfully, "we should have done this to Kety back in the first cabin—oh, well. Let me at that door pad."

It was a standard palm-lock, but set to whom? Very few, maybe Kety and Vio only, but the guard must be empowered to handle emergencies. "Move him up a little," Miles instructed Pel, and pressed the unconscious man's palm to the read-pad. "Ah," he breathed in satisfaction, as the door slid aside without alarm or protest. He relieved the guard of his stunner, and tiptoed inside, the haut Pel floating after.

"Oh" huffed Pel in outrage. They had found the haut Nadina.

The old woman was sitting on a couch similar to the one in the previous cabin, wearing only her white bodysuit. The effects of a century or so of gravity were enough to sag even her haut body; taking away her voluminous outer wrappings seemed a deliberate indignity only barely short of stripping her naked. Her silver hair was clamped, half a meter from its end, in a device obviously borrowed from engineering and never designed for this purpose, but locked in turn to the floor. It was not physically cruel—the length of the rest of her hair still left her nearly two meters of turning room—but there was something deeply offensive about it. The haut Vio's idea, perhaps? Miles thought he knew how Ivan had felt, contemplating the kitten tree. It seemed a Wrong Thing to do to a little old lady (even one from a race as obnoxious as the haut) who reminded him of his Betan grandmother—well, not really, Pel actually seemed more like his Grandmother Naismith in personality, but—

Pel dumped the unconscious guard unceremoniously on the floor and rushed from her float-chair to her sister consort. "Nadina, are you injured?"

"Pel!" Anyone else would have fallen on her rescuers neck in a hug; being haut, they confined themselves to a restrained, if apparently heartfelt, handclasp.

"Oh!" said Pel again, gazing furiously at the haut Nadina's situation. Her first action was to skin out of her own robes and donate about six underlayers to Nadina, who shrugged them on gratefully, and stood a little straighter. Miles completed a fast survey of the premises to be sure they were indeed alone, and returned to the women, who stood contemplating the hair-lock. Pel knelt and tugged at a few strands, which held fast.

"I've tried that," sighed the haut Nadina. "They won't come out even one hair at a time."

"Where is the key to its lock?"

"Vio had it."

Pel quickly emptied her sleeves of her mysterious arsenal; Nadina looked it over and shook her head.

"We'd better cut it," said Miles. "We have to go as quickly as possible."

Both women stared at him in shock. "Haut-women never cut their hair!" said Nadina.

"Um, excuse me, but this is an emergency. If we go at once to the ship's escape pods, I can pilot you both to safety before Kety awakes to his loss. Maybe even get away clean. Every second's delay costs us our very limited margin."

"No!" said Pel. "We must retrieve the Great Key first!"

He could not, unfortunately, send the two women off and promise to search for the Key on his own; he was the only qualified orbital pilot in the trio. They were going to have to stick together, blast it. One haut-lady was bad enough. Managing two was going to be worse than trying to herd cats. "Haut Nadina, do you know where Kety keeps the Great Key?"

"Yes. He took me to it last night. He thought I might be able to open it for him. He was very upset when I couldn't."

Miles glanced up sharply at her tone; there were no marks of violence on her face, at least. But her movements were stiff. Arthritis of age, or shock-stick trauma? He returned to the guard's unconscious body, and began searching it for useful items, code cards, weapons ... ah. A folded vibra-knife. He palmed it out of sight, and returned to the ladies.

"I've heard of animals gnawing their legs off, to escape traps," he offered cautiously.

"Ugh!" said Pel. "Barrayarans."

"You don't understand," said Nadina earnestly.

He was afraid he did. They would stand here arguing about Nadina's trapped haut-hair until Kety caught up with them. . . . "Look!" He pointed at the door.

Pel jerked to her feet, and Nadina cried, "What?"

Miles snapped open the vibra-knife, grabbed the mass of silver hair, and sliced through it as close to the clamp as he could. "There. Let's go."

"Barbarian!" cried Nadina. But she wasn't going to go over the edge into hysterics; she shrieked her belated protest quite quietly, all things considered.

"A sacrifice for the good of the haut," Miles promised her. A tear stood in her eye; Pel . . . Pel looked as if she were secretly grateful the deed had been done by him and not her.

They all boarded the float-chair again, Nadina half across Pel's lap, Miles clinging on behind. Pel exited the chamber and raised her force-screen again. Float-chairs were supposed to be soundless, but the engine whined protest at this overload. It moved forward with a disconcerting lurch.

"Down this way. Turn right here," the haut Nadina directed. Halfway down the hall they passed an ordinary servitor, who stepped aside with a bow, and did not look back at them.

"Did Kety fast-penta you?" Miles asked Nadina. "How much does he know of what the Star Creche suspects about him?"

"Fast-penta does not work on haut-women," Pel informed him over her shoulder.

"Oh? How about on haut-men?"

"Not very well," said Pel.

"Hm. Nevertheless."

"Down here." Nadina pointed to a lift tube. They descended a deck, and continued down another, narrower corridor. Nadina touched the silver hair piled in her lap, regarded the raggedly cut end with a deep frown, then let the handful fall with an unhappy, but rather final-sounding, snort. "This is all highly improper. I trust you are enjoying your opportunity for sport, Pel. And that it will be brief."

Pel made a non-committal noise.

Somehow, this was not the heroic covert ops mission that Miles had envisioned in his mind—blundering around Kety's ship in tow of a pair of prim, aging haut-ladies—well, Pel's allegiance to the proprieties was highly suspect, but Nadina appeared to be trying to make up for it. He had to admit, the bubble beat the hell out of his trying to disguise his physical peculiarities in the garb of a ba servitor, especially given that the ba appeared to be uniformly healthy and straight. Enough other haut-women were aboard that the sight of a passing bubble was unremarkable to staff and crew. . . .

No. We've just been lucky, so far.

They came to a blank door. "This is it," said Nadina.

No give-away guard this time; this was the little room that wasn't there. "How do we get in?" asked Miles. "Knock?"

"I suppose so," said Pel. She dropped her force-screen just long enough to do so, then raised it again.

"I meant that as a joke" said Miles, horrified. Surely no one was in there—he'd pictured the Great Key kept alone in some safe or coded compartment—

The door opened. A pale man with dark rings under his eyes, dressed in Kety's livery, pointed a device at the bubble, read off the electronic signature that resulted, and said, "Yes, haut Vio?"

"I ... have brought the haut Nadina to try again," said Pel. Nadina grimaced in disapproving editorial.

"I don't think we're going to need her," said the liveried man, "but you can talk to the General." He stood aside to let them pass within.

Miles, who had been calculating how to knock the man out with Pel's aerosol again, started his calculations over. There were three men in the floating cipher lab, yes. An array of equipment, festooned with temporary cables, cluttered every available surface. An even more whey-faced tech wearing the black undress uniform of Cetagandan military security sat before a console with the air of a man who'd been there for days, as evidenced by the caffeinated drink containers littered around him in a ring, and a couple of bottles of commercial painkillers sitting atop a nearby counter. But it was the third man, leaning over his shoulder, who riveted Miles's attention.

It wasn't ghem-General Chilian, as his mind had first tried to assume. This officer was a younger man, taller, sharp-faced, who wore the bloodred dress uniform of the Celestial Garden's own Imperial Security. He was not wearing his proper zebra-striped face paint, though. His tunic was rumpled and hanging open. Not the Chief of Security—Miles's mind ratcheted down the list he had memorized, weeks ago, in mis-aimed preparation for this trip—ghem-General Naru, yes, that was the man, third in command in that very inner hierarchy. Kety's deduced seduced contact. Called in, apparently, to lend his expertise in cracking the codes that protected the Great Key.

"All right," said the whey-faced tech, "start over with branch seven thousand, three-hundred and six. Only seven hundred more to go, and we'll have it, I swear."

Pel gasped, and pointed. Piled in a disorderly heap on the table beyond the console was not one but eight copies of the Great Key. Or one Great Key and seven copies . . .

Could Kety be attempting to carry out the late Empress Lisbet's vision after all? All the rest of the chaos of the past two weeks some confused misunderstanding? No ... no. This had to be some other scam. Maybe he planned to send his fellow governors home with bad copies, or give Cetagandan Imperial Security seven more decoys to chase, or ... a multitude of possibilities, as long as they advanced Kety's own personal agenda and no one else's.

Firing his stunner would set off every alarm in the place, making it a weapon of last resort. Hell, his victims, if clever—and Miles suspected he faced three very clever men—might jump him just to make him fire it.

"What else do you have up your sleeve?" Miles whispered to Pel.

"Nadina," Pel gestured to the table, "which one is the Great Key?"

"I'm not sure," said Nadina, peering anxiously at the clutter.

"Grab them all. Check later" urged Miles.

"But they could all be false," dithered Pel. "We must know, or it could all be for nothing." She fished in her bodice, and pulled out a familiar ring on a chain, with a raised screaming-bird pattern. . . .

Miles choked. "For God's sake, you didn't bring that here? Keep it out of sight! After two weeks of trying to do what that ring does in a second, I guarantee those men wouldn't hesitate to kill you for it!"

Ghem-General Naru wheeled from his tech to face the pale glowing bubble. "Yes, Vio, what is it now?" His voice was bored, and dripping with open contempt.

Pel looked a little panicked; Miles could see her throat move, as she sub-vocalized some practice reply, then rejected it.

"We're not going to be able to keep this up for much longer," said Miles. "How about we attack, grab, and run?"

"How?" asked Nadina.

Pel held up her hand for silence from the on-board debating team, and essayed a temporizing reply to the general. "Your tone of voice is most improper, sir."

Naru grimaced. "Being back in your bubble makes you proud again, I see. Enjoy it while it lasts. We'll have all of those damned bitches pried out of their little fortresses after this. Their days of being cloaked by the Emperor's blindness and stupidity are numbered, I assure you, haut Vio."

Well . . . Naru wasn't in on this plot for the sake of the late Empress's vision of genetic destiny, that was certain. Miles could see how the haut-women's traditional privacies could come to be a deep, itching offense, to a dedicated, properly paranoid security man. Was that the bribe Kety had offered Naru for his cooperation, the promise that the new regime would open the closed doors of the Star Creche, and shine light into every secret place held by the haut-women? That he would destroy the haut-women's strange and fragile power-base, and put it all into the hands of the ghem-generals, where it obviously (to Naru) belonged? So was Kety stringing Naru along, or were they near-equal co-plotters? Equals, Miles decided. This is the most dangerous man in the room, maybe even on the ship. He set the stunner for low beam, in a forlorn hope of not setting off alarms on discharge.

"Pel," Miles said urgently, "get ghem-General Naru with your last dose of sleepy-juice. I'll try to threaten the others, get the drop on them, without actually firing. Tie them up, grab the Keys, and get out of here. It may not be elegant, but it's fast, and we're out of time."

Pel nodded reluctantly, twitched her sleeves back, and readied the little aerosol bulb. Nadina gripped the chair-back: Miles prepared to spring away and take up a firing stance.

Pel dropped her bubble and squirted the aerosol toward Naru's startled face. Naru held his breath and ducked away, barely grazed by the iridescent cloud of drug. His breath puffed back out on a yell of warning.

Miles cursed, leapt, stumbled, and fired three times in rapid succession. He dropped the two scrambling techs; Naru nearly succeeded in rolling away again, but at least the beam nimbus brought the ghem-general to a twitching halt. Temporarily. Naru lumbered around on the deck like a warthog mired in a bog, his voice reduced to a garbled groan.

Nadina hurried to the table full of Keys, swept them into her outermost robe, and brought them back to Pel. Pel began trying the ring-key on each one. "Not that one . . . not that . . ."

Miles glanced at the door, which remained closed, would remain closed until an authorized hand pressed its palm-lock. Who would be so authorized? Kety . . . Naru, who was already in here . . . any others? We're about to find out.

"Not . . ." Pel continued. "Oh, what if they're all false? No . . ."

"Of course they are," Miles realized. "The real one must be, must be—" He began tracing cables from the cipher tech's comconsole. They led to a box, stuffed in behind some other equipment, and in the box was—another Great Key. But this one was braced in a comm light-beam, carrying the signals that probed its codes. "—here." Miles yanked it from its place, and sprinted back to Pel. "We've got the Key, we've got Nadina, we've got the goods on Naru, we've got it all. Let's go."

The door hissed open. Miles whirled and fired.

A stunner-armed man in Kety's livery stumbled backward. Thumps and shouts echoed from the corridor, as what seemed a dozen more men stood quickly out of the line of fire. "Yes," cried Pel happily, as the cap of the real Great Key came off in her hand, demonstrating its provenance.

"Not now!" screeched Miles. "Put it back, Pel, put your force-screen up, now!"

Miles ducked aboard the float-chair; its force-screen snapped into place. A blast of massed stunner fire roiled through the doorway. The stunner fire crackled harmlessly around the sparkling sphere, only making it glitter a bit more. But the haut Nadina had been left outside. She cried out and stumbled backward, painfully grazed by the stun-nimbus. Men charged through the door.

"You have the Key, Pel!" cried the haut Nadina. "Flee!"

An impractical suggestion, alas; as his men secured the room and the haut Nadina, Governor Kety strolled through the door and closed it behind him, palm-locking it.

"Well," he drawled, eyes alight with curiosity at the carnage before him. "Well." He might at least have had the courtesy to curse and stamp, Miles thought sourly. Instead he looked . . . quite thoroughly in control. "What have we here?"

A Kety-liveried trooper knelt by ghem-General Naru, and helped straighten him and hold him up by his shoulders. Naru, struggling to sit, rubbed a shaking hand over his doubtless numb and tingling face—Miles had experienced the full unpleasantness of being stunned himself, more than once in his past—and essayed a mumbling answer. On the second try he managed slurred but intelligible speech. "'S the Consorts Pel and Nadina. An' the Barray'arn. Tol' you those damned bubbles were a secur'ty menace!" He slumped back into the trooper's arms. "S' all right, though. We have 'em all now."

"When that voyeur is tried for his treasons," said the haut Pel poisonously, "I shall ask the Emperor to have his eyes put out, before he is executed."

Miles wondered anew at the sequence of events here last night; how had they extracted Nadina from her bubble? "I think you're getting a little ahead of us, milady," he sighed.

Kety walked around the haut Pel's bubble, studying it. Cracking this egg was a pretty puzzle for him. Or was it? He'd done it once before.

Escape was impossible; the bubbles movements were physically blocked. Kety might besiege them, starve them out, if he didn't mind waiting—no. Kety couldn't wait. Miles grinned blackly, and said to Pel, "This float-chair has communication link capacity, doesn't it? I'm afraid it's time to call for help."

They had, by God, almost brought it off, almost made the entire affair disappear without a trace. But now that they'd identified and targeted Naru, the threat of secret aid for Kety from inside Cetagandan Imperial Security was neutralized. The Cetagandans should be able to unravel the rest of it for themselves. If I can get the word out.

Governor Kety motioned the two men holding the haut Nadina to drag her forward to what he apparently guessed was in front of the bubble, except that he was actually about forty degrees offsides. He relieved one guardsman of his vibra-knife, stepped behind Nadina, and lifted her thick silver hair. She squeaked in terror, but relaxed again when he only laid the knife very lightly against her throat.

"Drop your force-screen, Pel, and surrender. Immediately. I don't think I need to go into crude, tedious threats, do I?"

"No," whispered Pel in agreement. That Kety would slit the haut Nadina's throat now, and arrange the body later, was unquestionable. He'd gone beyond the point of no return some time ago.

"Dammit," grated Miles in anguish. "Now he's got it all. Us, the Great Key ..." The Great Key. Chock full it was of ... coded information. Information the value of which lay entirely in its secrecy and uniqueness. Everywhere else people waded through floods of information, information to their eyebrows, a clogging mass of data, signal and noise ... all information was transmittable and reproducible. Left to itself, it multiplied like bacteria as long as there was money or power to be had in it, till it choked on its own reduplication and the boredom of its human receivers.

"The float-chair, your comm link—it's all Star Creche equipment. Can you download the Great Key from it?"

"Do what? Why ..." said Pel, struggling with astonishment, "I suppose so, but the chair's comm link is not powerful enough to transmit all the way back to the Celestial Garden."

"Don't worry about that. Patch it through to the commercial navigation's emergency communication net. There'll be a booster right outside this ship on the orbital transfer station. I have the standard codes for it in my head, they're made simple on purpose. Maximum emergency overrides—the booster'll split the signal and dump it into the on-board computers of every ship, commercial or military, navigating right now through the Eta Ceta star system, and every station. Supposed to be a cry-for-help system for ships in deep trouble, you see. So Kety'll have the Great Key. So will a couple thousand other people, and where is his sly little plot then? We may not be able to win, but we can take his victory from him!"

The look on Pel's face, as she digested this outrageous suggestion, transformed from horror to a fey delight, but then to dismay. "That will take—many minutes. Kety will never let—no! I have the solution for that." Pels eyes lit with understanding and rage. "What are those codes?"

Miles rattled them off; Pel's fingers flashed over her control panel. A dicey moment followed while Pel arranged the opened Great Key in the light-beam reader. Kety cried from outside the bubble, "Now, Pel!" His hand tightened on the knife. Nadina closed her eyes and stood in dignified stillness.

Pel tapped the comm link start code, dropped the bubble's force-screen, and sprang out of her seat, dragging Miles with her. "All right!" she cried, stepping away from the bubble. "We're out."

Kety's hand relaxed. The bubble's screen snapped back up. The force of it almost pushed Miles off his feet; he stumbled into the unwelcoming arms of the haut-governor's guards.

"That," said Kety coldly, eyeing the bubble with the Great Key inside, "is annoying. But a temporary inconvenience. Take them." He jerked his head at his guards, and stepped away from Nadina. "You!" he said in surprise, finding Miles in their grip.

"Me." Miles's lips peeled back on a white flash of teeth that had nothing to do with a smile. "Me all along, in fact. From start to finish." And you are finished. Of course, I may be too dead to enjoy the spectacle. . . . Kety dared not let any of the three interlopers live. But it would take a little time yet to arrange their deaths with civilized artistry. How much time, how many chances to—

Kety caught himself just before his fist delivered a jaw-cracking blow to Miles's face. "No. You're the breakable one, isn't that right," he muttered half to himself. He stepped back, nodded to a guard. "A little shock-stick on him. On them all."

The guard unshipped his standard military issue shock-stick, glanced at the white-robed haut consorts, and hesitated. He shot a covertly beseeching look at Kety.

Miles could almost see Kety grind his teeth. "All right, just the Barrayaran!"

Looking very relieved, the guard swung his stick with a will and belted Miles three times, starting with his face and skittering down his body to belly and groin. The first touch made him yell, the second took his breath away, and the third dropped him to the floor, blazing agony radiating outward and drawing his arms and legs in. Calculation stopped, temporarily. Ghem-General Naru, just being helped to his feet, chuckled in a tone of one happy to see justice done.

"General," Kety nodded to Naru, then to the bubble, "how long to get that open?"

"Let me see." Naru knelt to the unconscious whey-faced tech, and relieved him of a small device, which he pointed at the bubble. "They've changed the codes. Half an hour, once you get my men waked up."

Kety grimaced. His wrist comm chimed. Kety's brows rose, and he spoke into it. "Yes, Captain?"

"Haut-governor," came the formal, uneasy voice of some subordinate. "We are experiencing a peculiar communication over emergency channels. An enormous data dump is being speed-loaded into our systems. Some kind of coded gibberish, but it has exceeded the memory capacity of the receiver and is spilling over into other systems like a virus. It's marked with an Imperial override. The initial signal appears to be originating from our ship. Is this . . . something you intend?"

Kety's brows drew down in puzzlement. Then his gaze rose to the white bubble, glowing in the center of the room. He swore, one sharp, heartfelt sibilant. "No. Ghem-General Naru! We have to get this force-screen down now!"

Kety spared a venomous glare for Pel and Miles that promised infinite retribution later, then he and Naru fell to frantic consultation. Heavy doses of synergine from the guards' med-kit failed to return the techs to immediate consciousness, though they stirred and groaned in a promising fashion. Kety and Naru were left to do it themselves. Judging by the wicked light in Pel's eyes, as she and the haut Nadina clung together, they were going to be way too late. The pain of the shock-stick blows were fading to pins and needles, but Miles remained curled up on the floor, the better not to draw further such attentions to himself.

Kety and Naru were so absorbed in their task and their irate arguments over the swiftest way to proceed, only Miles noticed when a spot on the door began to glow. Despite his pain, he smiled. A beat later, the whole door burst inward in a spray of melted plastic and metal. Another beat, to wait out anyone's hair-trigger reflexes.

Ghem-Colonel Benin, impeccably turned out in his bloodred dress uniform and freshly applied face paint, stepped firmly across the threshold. He was unarmed, but the red-clad squad behind him carried an arsenal sufficient to destroy any impediment in their path up to the size of a pocket dreadnought. Kety and Naru froze in mid-lurch; Kety's liveried retainers suddenly seemed to think better of drawing weapons, opening their hands palm-outward and standing very still. Colonel Vorreedi, equally impeccable in his House blacks, if not quite so cool in expression, stepped in behind. Benin. In the corridor beyond, Miles could just glimpse Ivan looming behind the armed men, and shifting anxiously from foot to foot.

"Good evening, haut Kety, ghem-General Naru." Benin bowed with exquisite courtesy. "By the personal order of Emperor Fletchir Giaja, it is my duty to arrest you both upon the serious charge of treason to the Empire. And," contemplating Naru especially, Benin's smile went razor-sharp, "complicity in the murder of the Imperial Servitor the Ba Lura."