Cryoburn

Chapter Thirteen

Dr. Seiichiro Leiber proved to live in a rented row-house in a residential district on the west side of Northbridge, not far from his work. Miles had Johannes, driving the lift van, circle the block to give him a feel for the neighborhood. On this pleasant weekend morning, not a few folks were out tending their tiny plots of greenery; a gang of children raced noisily across the lawns, got yelled at by a gardener, and vanished, giggling, around the corner. Jin and Mina might well have grown up in a place much like this.

Miles’s more focused researches last night had mainly turned up Leiber’s school records, with police records drawing a bland and virtuous blank. He wasn’t listed on any of Lisa Sato’s rosters of supporters or contributors, nor did his name appear among the arrestees at the rally riot, most of whom had been released without being charged. Charges had been made but later dropped against the two dead and the three, including Sato, who’d been suspiciously frozen. All tidy and quiet now.

This Dr. Leiber had acquired his Ph.D. at the unprecocious age of twenty-eight, and gone directly into employment with NewEgypt for the four years subsequently. His thesis, which Miles had read—well, skimmed—had focused on improvements in cryonics fluids, which, given that a consortium of cryocorps had funded his scholarship, seemed perfectly reasonable. Several of the larger cryocorps maintained research departments that, in addition to overseeing quality control, worked on proprietary advances in their procedures designed to lure customers from their competition. Nothing odd about that, either.

Miles had Johannes pull up at the corner. “I think our biggest problem here is going to be nosy neighbors, not electronic surveillance. You aren’t going to be able to sit or stand around without people coming out to see what you’re up to. So I’ll run an open comlink to you, Johannes”—Miles set his to record while he was at it—“and you find a place to pull in and buy coffee or something. Drop Roic around back on the way.” Miles eyed his bodyguard, dressed fairly neutrally but not quite locally. “I wish we could disguise you as a lamp post or something.”

“I’ll manage,” said Roic.

Miles nodded, waved Raven to follow him, and descended to the sidewalk.

The door buzzer was answered by a dark-haired, blinking fellow with a tea mug in his hand, wearing a T-shirt and trousers, barefoot. Despite the weekend jaw shadow and lack of a lab coat, he was immediately recognizable as Miles’s quarry.

Miles smiled. “Dr. Leiber?” Not giving the man time to answer, he continued, “My name is Miles Vorkosigan, and this is my associate, Dr. Raven Durona of the Durona Group.”

A flash of recognition crossed Leiber’s face at the latter name, followed by puzzlement. “Durona?” said Leiber. “From the Escobar clinic?”

“Oh, you’ve heard of us?” Raven smiled sunnily.

“I read the journals.”

Miles forged on, “We were both in town for the inter-Nexus cryo-conference last week, and hoped to see you. May we come in?” Leaving implied that the associate was bio-research. Miles would save the insinuation of interstellar cops for after they’d made it through the front door, and only if needed.

At this reasonable-sounding explanation, Leiber gulped down his last swallow of tea and gave way. Miles hustled gratefully inside. He let his host guide them into his little living room, and took a seat promptly, the harder to be dislodged. The others naturally followed suit. “Did you attend the conference? I don’t recall seeing you.” In fact, Miles had checked—Leiber hadn’t been there.

“No, but I was sorry to have missed it. Were you fellows caught up in that mess I saw on the news with the N.H.L.L.?”

“I wasn’t, but Raven here was—” Miles gave Raven a go-ahead, and Raven supplied a few ice-breaking anecdotes about his brief adventures as a hostage, with the Barrayaran connections downplayed. Raven then went into a technical riff about the conference, drawing Leiber into questions in turn, equally divided between biochemistry and scurrilous gossip. He also touched on Leiber’s thesis, which Raven had actually read all the way through last night without his eyes glazing over. By this time Leiber seemed fully at ease.

Miles decided on a direct approach. “I’m actually here this morning on behalf of the next-of-kin of Lisa Sato. I believe you had some dealings with her eighteen months ago, just before her arrest?”

Shock and dismay bloomed unconcealed on Leiber’s face. Well, he was the scientist type, not a con artist, nor, probably, a very good liar. Fine by me.

“How do you know—what makes you think that?” Leiber fumbled, confirming Miles’s judgment.

“Eyewitness testimony.”

“But no one saw—there wasn’t—but Suwabi died.”

“There was one other.”

Leiber gulped and seemed to pull himself together. “I’m sorry. It was an awkward time. A frightening time.”

Miles prepared to utter something soothing, but his witness leaped to his feet. “I’m sorry, you’ve rattled me a bit. Some tea. I’ll fix some more tea. Would you like some tea?”

Miles would rather not have given him time to invent lies, which they would then have to spend more time pulling apart, but he was already headed to his tiny kitchen. Miles waved an assent that Leiber didn’t even look back to see.

Raven raised an eyebrow at Miles. “Congratulations.”

“Indeed, a hit, a palpable hit.”

Dishes rattled, water ran. A faint squeak and quiet tick of a door opening and closing…

“Whoops.” Miles grabbed his cane and lurched to his feet.

The kitchen was empty, silent but for the simmering electric kettle. Only one door led out. Onto the patio, its alley gate swinging.

Miles lifted his wristcom to his lips. “Roic? Our suspect just ran out the back.”

“I’m on him, m’lord,” Roic said grimly.

The thump of big footsteps, quick gasps. A yelp, not from Roic. More footsteps. “Crap.”

That last had been Roic. “What happened?” Miles demanded.

Roic, a little breathless, returned, “He just dodged into a neighbor’s place. Gone to ground. There’s a woman and two kids staring at me out the glass. Now she’s arguing with Leiber. Well, she’s arguing, he’s wheezing.” And, after a moment, “You don’t want me to go in there. Trespassing. Assault.”

Roic’s very firm tone of voice discouraged Miles from descanting on diplomatic immunity. He continued, “Now she’s gone off. To call the police, I’m guessing. What did you two do to the fellow?”

Nothing was plainly not the right answer. “I’m not sure,” Miles said. “Well, withdraw for now and rendezvous with Johannes.”

“Understood.”

Miles turned to Raven. “All right, we have maybe five minutes to go over the place here. You take downstairs, I’ll take up.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Whatever he’s hiding.”

Upstairs held a bedroom, a bedroom-turned-office, and a bathroom. An endearingly tame, by galactic standards, porn collection in the bedroom was out in plain sight, suggesting Leiber did not have a girlfriend at present. The closets held clothes and shoes, and a residue of old sporting equipment. Miles was just eyeing the comconsole in the next room in frustration—he likely didn’t have time for a stealth download before the locals arrived, and besides the ImpSec devices that made such tasks a snap were back at the consulate—when Raven’s voice came from his wristcom.

“Miles?”

“We’ve got to fly, Raven—I expect the police are on their way by now.”

“I don’t think he’ll have called them, actually.” An arresting remark, for all that it was delivered in an amused drawl.

“What have you found down there?”

“Come look.”

Miles made his way down the stairs with rather more care than he’d pelted up them, collecting his cane on the way.

The lowest level—it was not quite a basement—of Leiber’s townhouse was much as one might expect: a laundry area, the mechanical and electrical guts of the dwelling, a larger room left half-finished for dirty projects or whatever were the owner’s needs. Leiber’s need seemed to be for a great deal of junk stowage. Raven stood between a dusty exercise machine and a long shape covered with an old bedspread.

“Tah-dah!” he cried, and whisked off the bedspread. Revealing a portable cryochamber. Plugged into the house power. Running, and apparently occupied.

“Do we know what we’re both thinking?” asked Raven.

“Yeah,” said Miles, with proper admiration. “Although… could it be it normal to keep frozen people in your basement? Around here, I mean?”

“Don’t know,” said Raven, running his hands over the machine in a search for identifying marks. “You’d have to ask Johannes, or Vorlynkin. Or Jin. What I wonder is how he ever got it in here.”

“Dark of night, at a guess.”

“No, I mean how he got it down the stairs. It would never make the turn. There has to be—ah, garage door. That’s better.” Raven climbed over some junk, opened it, and stuck his head through. “Ooh, nice float bike.”

Miles checked underneath the cryochamber. It was a less expensive model, without a built-in float pallet, but it was propped up on stacks of miscellaneous bricks, concrete blocks, and a wedge of squashed flimsies—the top one seemed to be a scientific paper—revealing where a float pallet had been slid out from underneath. No sign of the pallet in the other piles.

He raised his wristcom. “Johannes?”

“I just picked up Roic, sir,” Johannes returned at once. “Should we swing around to get you now?”

“One question, first. Do you still have the float pallet on board that we used the other day?”

“Yes, sorry, I haven’t had time to return it to the rental place yet.”

“Excellent. Come around to the back of the row. There will be a sunken garage entry. We’ll meet you there. I have some heavy lifting for you.”

“On our way.”

Raven raised his eyebrows. “Isn’t that theft? Breaking and entering?”

“No, the homeowner let us in. Breaking and exiting, maybe. If it’s theft, I’m guessing it’s the second time around for this item. And while it’s not true that you can’t cheat an honest man, crooked men are less likely to complain to the authorities, afterward. I don’t think Leiber will tell anyone.” He went on, still peering underneath, “Did you spot any IDs on this thing?”

“Maker’s mark. It’s a common brand. Ah, here’s a serial number. That may help.”

“Later, yeah.” First things first. If I don’t know how to recognize and seize a tactical moment by now… He could be spectacularly wrong. Or spectacularly right. In any case, it’ll be spectacular.

By the time Johannes and Roic arrived with the van, they had the garage door open. Leaving muscle to do what muscle did best, Miles repaired upstairs to the kitchen and searched for something to write with, and on. A half-composed grocery list and a stylus came to hand. He thought, turned the list over, bent, and scribbled.

Roic came up to find him. “A bit awkward, but we horsed it in. Had to lean on the rear hatch to close it. What are you doing?”

“Leaving Leiber a note.” Miles affixed it to the refrigerator door.

“What t’ devil… ?” Roic bent to read it. “What kind of burglar leaves a note?”

Miles was actually rather proud of the vague wording. Call on me at my consulate at your earliest convenience. Not even an initial in signature.

“We never finished our conversation,” Miles explained. “We now have something he wants. He’ll come. Saves putting a trace on him, at least. Damn. Johannes is the only one of us he hasn’t seen yet, but I need him for other tasks. You’ll be glad to know I now regret not having brought that ImpSec team you always want.”

“Cold comfort,” sighed Roic. “Why not just wait for Leiber to come back?”

“He won’t, not while we’re here. If I’ve guessed right he risked his job, maybe his life, to secure what we found in the basement. He’ll be skittish, till he has time to calm down and think it through.” And then he’ll be terrified.

After considerately closing the garage door behind them, they all piled back into the lift van. “To Madame Suze’s,” Miles directed Johannes. “Circuitously and sedately.”

Raven leaned over the seat back. “You know, if we’ve just stolen that poor man’s grandmother, we’re going to be very embarrassed.”

Miles grinned, exhilarated. “Then we’ll simply return her. Leave her on the lawn after dark. Or maybe ship her back anonymously. No, it would take a lot more than that to embarrass me.”

The thought was less amusing when Miles remembered yesterday morning’s debacle. He wasn’t sure if that noise from Roic was a sigh or a snort, but in either case, he elected to ignore it.

Back when he’d been a young municipal street guard for the town of Hassadar, Roic had undergone first-aid training. Later, after taking the solemn oath of a Count’s Armsman, he’d been sent off for a much more advanced course in military field aid. It had included how to do an emergency cryoprep, with practice on a disturbingly realistic and anatomically complete model person and fake cryo-fluid. It hadn’t given him nightmares. Helping shift Madame Sato’s body onto the procedure table, he wasn’t so sure that would remain the case.

Cutting away the protective caul and prepping the still form, Raven and Medtech Tanaka were too professional to permit much embarrassment on the helpless woman’s behalf. But she didn’t look like the model, she didn’t—quite—look like a corpse, and she didn’t look alive, either. Maybe no one had a slot in their old ape brain for this. Yet if he ever had to perform a cryoprep for real, God forbid, Roic suspected this experience would help him do a better job, knowing what all those rote steps were aimed at. He was conscious of an odd sense of privilege.

At least m’lord had made damned sure he had the right woman this time, after that unholy mess day before yesterday. Fortunately, he’d stopped short of bringing in those poor kids to ID his new prize last night, after they’d got her to Suze’s and unwrapped her. This time around, Jin and Mina hadn’t even been told she was found yet. When he’d asked m’lord, But which is better? M’lord had replied simply, Neither. Which just about summed it up.

Roic tried not to flinch as Raven punched the assorted tubings through thawed skin and carefully seated them in his vessels-of-choice. Roic did start at a brief rap on the door, and turned on his heel, alert.

Consul Vorlynkin stuck his head in. “Lord Vorkosigan, a message came—oh.”

“You didn’t bring the kids this time, did you?” demanded m’lord, alarmed.

“No, no. Johannes is baby-sitting. They still don’t know.”

“Whew. Though perhaps you could bring them over soon, if all goes well.”

“And if it doesn’t?” asked Vorlynkin grimly.

M’lord sighed. “Then maybe I can bring them.”

“You can come in,” said Raven over his shoulder, “but you have to put on a filtering mask. You can’t hang in the doorway like a cat.”

Ako hastened to hand Vorlynkin a mask, and helped him adjust it; he grimaced as the memoryseal bonded to his skin. He came cautiously up to the procedure table. “I did wonder what this was like.”

“Any problems so far?” m’lord asked. He was perched on a tall stool, partly to oversee the procedure, but mostly, Roic suspected, to block him from pacing.

“Not yet,” said Raven. He reached over and started the first flush of warmed, hyper-oxygenated IV fluid. His patient’s skin began to turn from clay gray to an ethereal ice-pale. Someone had made an unexpected effort to preserve her long hair, treated with gel and rolled in a wrapping; it lay curled like a snail shell above her shoulder. Ms. Chen’s hair had been cropped in a medically utilitarian bob.

Madame Sato was taller than Roic had expected, fully five-foot-eight. That and her dark hair gave her a slight, unsettling resemblance to m’lord’s wife Lady Ekaterin, actually, which Roic elected not to point out. Sato’s face was a rounder shape, if also stretched over a fine symmetrical scaffolding of jaw and cheekbone, and her body was thinner in a way that suggested stress rather than athleticism. An elf-lady strung out on bad drugs and bad company.

“She’s not what…” Vorlynkin stared, mesmerized. “I thought you said she’d look terrible. Skin flaking and bleeding, hair falling out and so on.”

“There wasn’t a thing wrong with her when they put her in cryo-stasis,” said Raven, “and this appears to have been first-class prep, and recent at that. When he arrived on our operating table, Lord Vorkosigan was in much worse shape than average. To put it mildly. I suppose someone has to be better, to keep the average balanced.”

“She looks like something out of a fairy tale.”

“What,” said m’lord, swinging one heel to tap upon a stool leg, “Snow White with just one dwarf?”

Vorlynkin reddened, an I-didn’t-say-that look in his eyes.

M’lord snickered at him. “Now all we need is a prince.”

“So who’s t’ frog?” asked Roic, secretly glad not to be alone in his fanciful impressions.

“Different fairy tale,” m’lord told him kindly. “I hope.”

Raven switched tubing, and the clear fluid was replaced with dark red. The ice-woman look slowly changed, the skin tone shifting through faint pinkness like a chill spring to a warmer gold-ivory, as though she was receiving a transfusion of summer. At length, Raven closed the exit line draining from her leg, sealing vein and skin with plastic bandage. Raven and Tanaka fussed about with the leads and wires and the strange cap. “Clear,” Raven called, looking up to be sure his amateur audience had stepped back. The snap of the electrical stimulus was quieter than Roic had expected, but still made him recoil.

For the first time, the silent woman’s chest rose, and her skin seemed suddenly not just pliable but alive. A few moments of uneven stuttering, while Tanaka watched their monitors and Raven stared narrow-eyed at his patient. His face was calm but his gloved hands, Roic noticed, were clenched. Then her lips parted on a longer indrawn breath, then another, and Raven’s fists relaxed. Roic remembered to exhale before he disgraced himself by passing out, but only just.

“Got it in one,” said Raven, and shut down the external pump.

M’lord’s eyes squeezed closed in gratitude. Vorlynkin, transfixed, breathed, “That’s astounding.”

“I just love this part,” Raven confided, to the air generally as far as Roic could tell. “It makes me feel quite godlike. Or at least wizardly.”

M’lord’s lips twitched. “Are you saying this is an ego-trip for you?”

“The best ever,” agreed Raven. “I live for these moments.”

“Always glad to see a man happy in his work,” m’lord murmured.

Raven circled his patient’s body, tapping here and there with a stylus in a pattern Roic suspected was meaningful. And very old. “We have reflexes. Peripheral nerves are firing up nicely,” he reported. He returned to her head, smoothing a stray strand of hair back from her forehead in a curiously tender gesture. “Madame Sato?” he called. “Lisa?”

The eyelids fluttered, opened, squeezed shut. The lids bore the epicanthic folds of her Earth ancestry, the eyes the classic almond shape. The irises were a rich, dark brown, further reducing her resemblance to Lady Vorkosigan, whose eyes were a striking blue-gray.

“Hearing’s working,” Raven murmured. “Grossly, at least.” And, “Lisa?” he repeated. “Are you with us yet?”

It could hardly be reassuring to the woman to open her eyes on a circle of masked faces, like bandits. Especially if the last thing she remembered were the faces of her all-but-murderers. Had they been leering? Coolly professional? Indifferent? But bandits indeed, stealing her will, her world, her life from her.

Roic leaned in. In his best reassuring guardsman’s tones, he tried, “Ma’am, you’re all right. Safe and alive. Rescued. Your children are both safe and secure as well. You’ll get to see them soon.”

Another fluttering of lids; a moan.

“And larynx,” said Raven happily. “That should please you, my Lord Auditor.”

“Indeed,” said m’lord.

She sighed again, the tension passing out of her.

“She’ll sleep for some hours, after this,” said Raven. “The longer, the better.”

“We’ll clean her up and move her to the isolation booth,” said Medtech Tanaka. “Ako, you can help with the skin treatment.”

Tubes and needles were pulled away, lines coiled up, machines turned off. Roic helped shift the live woman off the procedure table onto the transfer cart. M’lord slid down from his stool, stretched his back, and leaned on his cane. “How soon till we can move her to the consulate?”

“Depends on her white blood count, and a few other things,” said Raven. “But possibly as early as the day after tomorrow. You’ll have to keep her quiet in one of those upstairs bedrooms for a few days.”

“We can do that,” said Vorlynkin.

M’lord turned his head toward the consul. “Wait, why are you here? Has Leiber shown up?”

“No, not yet. You have a sealed message from Barrayar that’s arrived in the tight-room. We can’t access it, so I don’t know how urgent it may be.” He added with reluctant honesty, “Also, I was curious how this was going. Given the need to deal with Mina and Jin.” He didn’t want to be blindsided again, Roic read this. Understandable.

“Ah, all right,” said m’lord. “Raven, if you’re on top of things here, I guess I can go back.”

Raven waved assent and turned to follow the medtech and Ako, trundling his patient away. The room seemed very empty when they’d left, disconsolate and messy like the morning after a winter solstice party.

Vorlynkin blinked and rolled his shoulders, as if trying to come back into himself from somewhere far away. “That was very strange. I’ve never seen anyone die, but this—it was like watching time run backwards. Or something.”

“I have, and yes,” said m’lord.

“Were we playing god?” Vorlynkin asked uneasily.

“No more so than the people who put her down in the first place. And our cause is much more just.” M’lord added in a mutter, “I hope.” Frowning, he fished out his Auditor’s seal on its chain for a slightly cross-eyed downward glance. “Sealed message, eh? You know, when I was Jin’s age, I’d have been thrilled to own a secret decoder ring. Now I have one, it feels more like a sack of bricks. There’s something sadly out of phase about that.”

When m’lord limped off to exchange one last word with Raven, Roic found himself briefly alone with the consul, who gazed in bemusement up the corridor after the short, retreating form. “Lord Vorkosigan is not exactly what I expected, when I was told the consulate should prepare for a visit from an Imperial Auditor.”

Roic, stoutly, didn’t snicker. “The nine Imperial Auditors are actually a pretty varied lot, once you meet them. Lord Auditor Vorthys, who’s also m’lady’s uncle, looks like a rumpled old engineering professor because that’s exactly what he is. There’s this crusty admiral, a retired diplomat, an industrialist… m’lord’s become more-or-less Gregor’s galactic affairs expert. The Emperor’s uncannily shrewd at matching his Auditors to their cases. Although I suppose we’ll have to hit a dud one of these days, he hasn’t sent us off-world on a fool’s errand yet.” Roic actually hoped for a dud case, someday. It could be restful.

“That’s reassuring.” Vorlynkin hesitated. “I think.”

Roic smiled crookedly at the council. “Yeah.”

Back in the consulate’s tight-room, Miles saw the address code on his message and relaxed. It looked to be the weekly report from Ekaterin, which explained why it didn’t bear any of the usual urgent markers. Something nice, amid all this muddle. Reflecting on the difference between urgent and important, he leaned forward to let his Auditor’s seal swing out on its chain, and unsealed the message.

His wife’s face appeared, smiling, above the vid plate, and he paused the vid just to get a good look at her. She sailed through her days under such a constant barrage of interruptions, lately, he hardly ever saw her holding still unless she was sleeping. Clear blue-gray eyes raised in a candid gaze, sleek dark hair untouched by frost although she was his age plus a couple of months. Considering that he’d stuck her with four offspring in under six years, her lack of gray hairs seemed increasingly remarkable. They’d all been gestated in uterine replicators, but still. He’d been an only child himself, racked from birth by medical issues now not so much solved as exchanged for new ones. Perhaps—no, make that certainly—he’d underestimated how much work normal healthy children would take, even with all the help his money and position could buy. For there were some tasks you didn’t want to delegate, because then you’d be missing the best parts.

She was actually staring at a vid pick-up, not at him, he reminded himself, but under the weight of her faintly ironic look he set her back in motion, irrationally guilty at delaying her.

“Greetings, my love,” she said. “We’ve received your latest here with much relief and rejoicing, though fortunately I didn’t tell the children about that first alarming message before the second had overtaken it. I shudder to think what your parents went through during your old career. Though I suppose your father kept his high-Vor upper lip suitably stiff, and your mother, well, I can scarcely imagine. Said tart Betan things, I suppose.”

Actually, he’d dodged those issues during his covert ops days by almost never sending any messages, or updates. It wasn’t as if his father couldn’t have demanded a report on his missions from the head of ImpSec any time he wanted one. Or nerved himself to it, he imagined his mother’s voice remarking tartly.

Ekaterin swung into a crisp recounting of a few Vorkosigan District matters, before the news from his household, always first things first—if ever she put matters the other way around, he’d know to be really alarmed for his family. He was reminded that he was neglecting duties down in the District, as well, although this week there did not seem to be anything that called for an urgent message to his—his father’s, really—voting proxy in the Council of Counts. But both his parents were off tending to the Emperor’s business on Sergyar, viceroy and vicereine respectively, and had been for some years.

A fine tradition of neglect of one’s own in service to the Imperium, those Vorkosigans. At a cost. Miles recalled with a touch of wry pride what a District village speaker had once said to him of Ekaterin: We feel as though you belong to the Imperium, but Lady Vorkosigan belongs to us.

Indeed.

“On the home front,” Ekaterin went on, “here’s the latest achievement…”

The vid cut to another, less steady. “Good job, Helen,” said Ekaterin’s voice as a room spun dizzily—the library at Vorkosigan House, Miles recognized despite its rabbiting speed, “but pan more slowly or you’ll give your papa vertigo.”

“What’s vertigo?” came a young voice from off-side—Sasha? no, Lizzie, good heavens—and Ekaterin responded at once, “Dizzy.”

“Oh.” The new word was duly accepted.

The vid steadied on Taurie, ten months old, gray eyes wide under a mop of wispy black curls, clinging grimly to the edge of a low table. Sasha, five going on six, as he and his twin, Helen, phrased it, and their sister Lizzie, three, sat on a couch in the background, Sasha watching with interest, Lizzie looking bored and kicking her feet, as if to say, I’ve already done this, what’s the fuss?

“Come on, Taurie,” Ekaterin’s voice cooed. “Come to mama.” Effective—Miles undertook not to fall through the vid plate, reaching for that seductive voice.

Taurie turned, rocking, on her stout little legs, releasing one hand, which waved for balance. Then the other. Then began a bow-legged toddle toward her mama’s outstretched arms. How any child learned to walk while swaddled in a diaper, Miles didn’t know, but there she went, thump-thump-thump, to fall chortling into Ekaterin’s arms and be swung high in triumph.

“Let me try her,” said Sasha, much as if his little sister were a robot car. He slid to his knees on the rug across from Ekaterin, and called encouragingly, “Come on, Taurie, you can do it!”

Fresh from her first victory, Taurie screeched and toddled toward him even faster, promptly falling on her chin and setting up a wail, clearly more of outrage than pain—Miles could discern the different timbres while still lunging up from his sleep. Sasha gathered her up, laughing. “Hey, you’re supposed to learn to walk before you run!” He got her turned around and aimed back toward her mama, and the trial was repeated more successfully.

Lizzie, who had slid down off the couch during all this, gave up spinning herself in circles singing, “Vertigo, vertigo, vertigo!” and made a grab for the vid recorder, which, judging from the way the view jerked wildly, her elder sister promptly raised out of her reach. “No, I wanna run the vid now,” came Lizzie’s voice. “Let me, let me! Mama, make her let me… !”

Too soon, the domestic drama came to an end. Miles backed it up and re-ran it, wondering if these were indeed Taurie’s first steps, or a reenactment for his benefit. The vid recorder suggested the latter.

Ekaterin’s face returned against the cluttered background of her third-floor office, the one on the north side overlooking her Barrayaran garden through the Earth-import treetops.

“I’m so sorry Sergeant Taura never lived to see her namesake,” she said, looking reflective, “but I’m glad you were at least able to tell her about Taurie, before the end. Maybe we should have given her name to Lizzie, sooner, rather than your Betan grandmother’s. Oh, speaking of names. Sasha has now announced that he is Alex, I suppose because he gave up trying to talk everyone into Xander. Lexie and A.A. appear to be permanently rejected, now, too. Same rationale—if we don’t call him Aral because of Grandda Aral, we shouldn’t call him Sasha because of Grandpa Sasha, either. He seems to be sticking to this one, however, and he has Helen on his side at last, so in your next message, be sure to call him Lord Alex. That much logic and determination should be rewarded, I think.”

Indeed. Miles had been deeply alarmed, earlier in his fatherhood, by what seemed Sasha’s—Alex’s—delay in verbal development, compared to his age-mate Helen, till Ekaterin had pointed out that the boy’s sister never let him ask a question for himself or get a word in edgewise after. He wasn’t delayed, merely amiable, and had caught up with complete sentences soon enough thereafter, as long as Helen wasn’t in the same room translating for him.

“Come to think of it,” Ekaterin went on, “didn’t you once have some trouble deciding what you wanted to be called? And at a much older age. History does not so much repeat as echo, I suppose.

“But he loves you, whatever he’s named. We all do. Take care out there, Miles, and hurry home when you can.” The vid went dark.

If only I could crawl through that vid plate and have myself beamed back to Barrayar at the speed of light… Miles sighed. All his life, his home had been something he couldn’t wait to escape. How had his polarity become so profoundly reversed?

Roic’s remark stung: If only you’d quit while you were winning… Well, this tangle on Kibou-daini wasn’t all of his own making.

He wished Leiber would show the hell up. Now would be a good time. Miles was surprised he was taking so long. He might have to send someone to collect the man after all. Or if Lisa Sato woke up with temporary cryo-amnesia, or simply didn’t know the answers. No, she has to know whatever Leiber knows. Because I’d bet Betan dollars to sand he’s the one who told her in the first place.

Leiber’s evident alarm niggled at Miles. Why should he have been so afraid of us? He didn’t even know us. Leiber was obviously responding to some local threat, perhaps the very one that Miles wanted to know all about. But Miles was still having some trouble guessing what it might be.

Just as Sato was bait for Leiber, the pair of them would be bait for… who? Why? Miles had staked people out like goats to draw the tiger du jour in the past, but not, knowingly, when they had children in tow. Or had you just never noticed their webs of relationships, before? He couldn’t remember. But if he didn’t have the personnel here to chase down Leiber, he surely didn’t have the personnel to put a round-the-clock guard on the consulate and the people it sheltered. Roic and Johannes between them weren’t enough, even if they hadn’t had other duties—handing the task to them without support would be downright abusive. Raven wasn’t the only one who didn’t like being set up to fail.

Despite the distance it put between him and his family, Miles felt a little shiver of gratitude to Gregor for sending him so far afield on his sporadic Auditorial labors. Because it put that same distance between his family and whoever his investigations managed to piss off. Pissing off bad guys for the greater glory of Barrayar, that would be my job description, just about. Speaking of being happy in one’s work.

He bent to the comconsole and began composing an Auditorial requisition to the Barrayaran embassy on Escobar for a security team, to be dispatched immediately, with a heads-up to put an ImpSec forensic accountant and, perhaps, legal team on stand-by. He knew nothing of his invisible enemy but that they played for keeps. Five days for the squad to get here, at their best speed. Had he known enough, five days ago, to ask for this? I suppose not.

Miles called up the background data on NewEgypt Cryonics once more, and began to slog through it. Lisa Sato could not regain her voice soon enough.