It was Mark's turn to be silent. Yet in a way, it was almost comforting. Ivan at least treated him as he deserved. A little welcome punishment. He felt himself reviving under the rain of scorn like a parched plant. Ivan's challenge almost brightened his day. "Why are you here?"
"It wasn't my idea, believe me," said Ivan. "I am to take you Out. For an airing."
Mark glanced at the Countess, but she was focused on her husband. "Already?" she asked.
"It is by request," said Count Vorkosigan.
"Ah ha," she said, as if enlightened. No light dawned for Mark; it wasn't
his
request. "Good. Perhaps Ivan can show him a bit of the city on the way."
"That's the idea," said the Count. "Since Ivan is an officer, it eliminates the need for a bodyguard."
Why, so they could talk frankly? A terrible idea. And who would protect him from Ivan?
"There will be an outer perimeter, I trust," said the Countess.
"Oh, yes."
The outer perimeter was the guard no one was supposed to see, not even the principals. Mark wondered what prevented the outer perimeter people from just taking the day off, and claiming they'd been there, invisible men. You could get away with the scam for quite a long time, between crises, he suspected.
Lieutenant Lord Vorpatril had his own groundcar, Mark discovered after breakfast, a sporty model featuring lots of red enamel. Reluctantly, Mark slid in beside Ivan. "So," he said, in an uncertain voice. "Do you still want to scrag me?"
Ivan whipped the car through the residence's gates and out into Vorbarr Sultana city traffic. "Personally, yes. Practically, no. I need all the bodies I can get to stand between me, and Uncle Aral's job. I wish Miles had a dozen children. He could have, by now, if only he'd started—in a way, you are a godsend. They'd have me clamped in as heir apparent right now if not for you." He hesitated, in speech only; the groundcar he accelerated through an intersection, weaving narrowly past four other vehicles bearing down in collision courses. "How dead is Miles really? Uncle Aral was pretty vague, on the vid telling me about it. I wasn't sure if it was for security, or—I've never seen him so stiff."
The traffic was worse than London's and, if possible, even more disorderly, or ordered according to some rule involving survival of the fittest. Mark gripped the edges of his seat and replied, "I don't know. He took a needle-grenade in the chest. Almost as bad as it could be without actually blowing him in half."
Did Ivan's lips ripple in suppressed horror? If so, the breezy facade re-closed again almost instantly. "It will take a top-notch revival facility to put his torso back together right," Mark continued. "For the brain . . . you never know till revival's over."
And then it's too late.
"But that's not the problem. Or not the problem yet."
"Yeah." Ivan grimaced. "That was a real screw-up, y'know? How could you
lose
. . ." He turned so sharply he trailed an edge, which struck sparks from the pavement, and swore cheerfully at a very large hovertruck which nearly lunged through Mark's side of the groundcar. Mark crouched down and shut his mouth. Better the conversation should die than him; his life could depend on not distracting the driver. His first impression of the city of Miles's birth was that half the population was going to be killed in traffic before nightfall. Or maybe just the ones in Ivan's path. Ivan did a violent U-turn and skidded sideways into a parking space, cutting off two other groundcars maneuvering toward it, and coming to a halt so abruptly Mark was nearly launched into the front panel.
"Vorhartung Castle," Ivan announced with a nod and a wave as the engine's whine died away. "The Council of Counts is not in session today, so the museum is open to the public. Though
we
are not the public."
"How . . . cultural," said Mark warily, peering out through the canopy. Vorhartung Castle really looked like a castle, a rambling, antiquated pile of featureless stone rising out of the trees. It perched on a bluff above the river rapids that divided Vorbarr Sultana. Its grounds were now a park; beds of cultivated flowers grew where men and horses had once dragged siege engines through icy mud in vain assaults. "What is this really?"
"You are to meet a man. And I am not to pre-discuss it." Ivan popped the canopy and clambered out. Mark followed.
Ivan, whether by plan or perversity, really did take him to the museum, which occupied one whole wing of the castle and was devoted to the arms and armor of the Vor from the Time of Isolation. As a soldier in uniform, Ivan was admitted free, though he dutifully paid Mark's way in with a few coins. For a cover, Mark guessed, for members of the Vor caste were also admitted free, Ivan explained in a whisper. There was no sign to that effect. If you were Vor you were presumed to know.
Or maybe it was Ivan's subtle slur on Mark's Vor-ness, or lack of same. Ivan played the upper-class lout with the same cultivated thoroughness with which he played the Imperial lieutenant, or any other role his world demanded of him. The real Ivan was rather more elusive, Mark gauged; it would not do to underestimate his subtlety, or mistake him for a simpleton.
So he was to meet a man. What man? If it was another ImpSec debriefing, why couldn't he have met the man at Vorkosigan House? Was it someone in government, or Prime Minister Count Aral's Centrist Coalition party? Again, why not come to him? Ivan couldn't be setting him up for an assassination; the Vorkosigans could have had him killed in secret anytime these past two years. Maybe he was being set up to be
accused
of some staged crime? Even more arcane plot ideas twisted through his mind, all sharing the same fatal flaw of being totally lacking in motivation or logic.
He stared at a crammed array of dual sword sets in a chronological row on a wall, displaying the evolution of the Barrayaran smiths' art over two centuries, then hurried to join Ivan in front of a case of chemical-explosive-propelled projectile weapons: highly decorated large-bore muzzle loaders that had once, the card proclaimed, belonged to Emperor Vlad Vorbarra. The bullets were peculiar in being solid gold, massive spheres the size of Mark's thumbtip. At short range, it must have been like being hit by a terminal-velocity brick. At long range, they probably missed. So what poor peasant or squire had been stuck with the job of going around retrieving the misses? Or worse, the hits? Several of the bright balls in display were flattened or misshapen, and to Mark's intense bemusement, one card informed the museum patron that this very distorted blob had killed Lord Vor So-and-so during the battle of Such-and-such . . . "taken from his brain," after death, Mark presumed. Hoped. Yech. He was only surprised someone had cleaned the ancient gore from the spent bullet before mounting it, given the blood-thirsty gruesomeness of some of the other displays. The tanned and cured scalp of Mad Emperor Yuri, for instance, on loan from some Vor clan's private collection.
"Lord Vorpatril." It was not a question. The man speaking had appeared so quietly Mark was not even sure from what direction he had come. He was dressed as quietly, middle-aged, intelligent-looking; he might have been a museum administrator. "Come with me, please."
Without question or comment, Ivan fell in behind the man, gesturing Mark ahead of him. Thus sandwiched, Mark trod in his wake, torn between curiosity and nerves.
They went through a door marked "No Admittance," which the man unlocked with a mechanical key and then locked again behind them, went up two staircases, and down an echoing wood-floored corridor to a room occupying the top floor of a round tower at the building's corner. Once a guard post, it was now furnished as an office, with ordinary windows cut into the stone walls in place of arrow slits. A man waited within, perched on a stool, gazing pensively down at the grounds falling away to the river, and the sprinkling of brightly-dressed people strolling or climbing the paths.
He was a thin, dark-haired fellow in his thirties, pale skin set off by loose dark clothing entirely lacking in pseudo-military detailing. He looked up with a quick smile at their guide. "Thank you, Kevi." Both greeting and dismissal seemed combined, for the guide nodded and exited.
It wasn't until Ivan nodded and said, "Sire," that recognition clicked.
Emperor Gregor Vorbarra. Shit.
The door behind Mark was blocked by Ivan. Mark controlled his surge of panic. Gregor was only a man, alone, apparently unarmed. All the rest was . . . propaganda. Hype. Illusion. His heart beat faster anyway.
"Hullo, Ivan," said the Emperor. "Thank you for coming. Why don't you go study the exhibits for a while."
"Seen 'em before," said Ivan laconically.
"Nevertheless." Gregor jerked his head doorward.
"Not to put too fine a point on it," said Ivan, "but this is not Miles, not even on a good day. And despite appearances, he
was
trained as an assassin, once. Isn't this a touch premature?"
"Well," said Gregor softly, "we'll find out, won't we? Do you want to assassinate me, Mark?"
"No," Mark croaked.
"There you have it. Take a hike, Ivan. I'll send Kevi for you in a bit."
Ivan grimaced in frustration, and, Mark sensed, not a little frustrated curiosity. He departed with an ironic salaam that seemed to say,
On your head be it.
"So, Lord Mark," said Gregor. "What do you think of Vorbarr Sultana so far?"
"It went by pretty fast," Mark said cautiously.
"Dear God, don't tell me you let
Ivan
drive."
"I didn't know I had a choice."
The Emperor laughed. "Sit down." He waved Mark into the station chair behind the comconsole desk; the little room was otherwise sparsely furnished, though the antique military prints and maps cluttering the walls might be spill-over from the nearby museum.
The Emperor's smile faded back into his initial pensive look as he studied Mark. It reminded Mark a little of the way Count Vorkosigan looked at him, that
Who are you?
look, only without the Count's ravenous intensity. A bearable wonder.
"Is this your office?" asked Mark, cautiously settling himself in the Imperial swivel-chair. The room seemed small and austere for the purpose.
"One of them. This whole complex is crammed with various offices, in some of the oddest niches. Count Vorvolk has one in the old dungeons. No head room. I use this as a private retreat when attending the Council of Counts meetings, or when I have other business here."
"Why do I qualify as business? Besides not being pleasure. Is this personal or official?"
"I can't spit without being official. On Barrayar, the two are not very separable. Miles . . . was . . ." Gregor's tongue tripped over that past tense too, "in no particular order, a peer of my caste; an officer in my service; the son of an extremely, if not supremely, important official; and a personal friend of lifelong standing. And the heir to the Countship of a District. And the Counts are the mechanism whereby one man," he touched his chest, "multiplies to sixty, and then to a multitude. The Counts are the first officers of the Imperium; I am its captain. You do understand, that
I
am not the Imperium? An empire is mere geography. The Imperium is a society. The multitude, the whole body—ultimately, down to every subject—
that
is the Imperium. Of which I am only a piece. An interchangeable part, at that—did you notice my great-uncle's scalp, downstairs?"
"Um . . . yes. It was, uh, prominently displayed."
"This
is
the home of the Council of Counts. The fulcrum of the lever may fancy itself supreme, but it is nothing without the lever. Mad Yuri forgot that. I don't. The Count of the Vorkosigans' District is another such living piece. Also interchangeable." He paused.
"A . . . link in a chain," Mark offered carefully, to prove he was paying attention.
"A link in a chain-mail. In a web. So that one weak link is not fatal. Many must fail at once, to achieve a real disaster. Still . . . one wants as many sound, reliable links as possible, obviously."
"Obviously." Why are you looking at me?
"So. Tell me what happened on Jackson's Whole. As you saw it." Gregor sat up on his perch, hooking one heel and crossing his booted ankles, apparently centered and comfortable, like a raven on a branch.
"I'd have to start the story back on Earth."
"Feel free." His easy brief smile implied Mark had all the time in the world, and one hundred percent of his attention.
Haltingly, Mark began to stammer out his tale. Gregor's questions were few, only interjected when Mark hung up on the difficult bits; few but searching. Gregor was not in pursuit of mere facts, Mark quickly realized. He had obviously already seen Illyan's report. The Emperor was after something else.
"I cannot argue with your good intentions," said Gregor at one point. "The brain transplant business is a loathsome enterprise. But you do realize—your effort, your raid, is hardly going to put a dent in it. House Bharaputra will just clean up the broken glass and go on."
"It will make a permanent difference to the forty-nine clones," Mark asserted doggedly. "Everybody makes that same damned argument. 'I can't do it all, so I'm not going to do any.' And they don't. And it goes on, and on. And anyway, if I had been able to go back via Escobar as I'd planned in the first place—there would have been a big news splash. House Bharaputra might even have tried to reclaim the clones legally, and then there would
really
have been a public stink. I'd have made sure of it. Even if I'd been in Escobaran detention. Where, by the way, the House Bharaputra enforcers would have had a hard time getting at me. And maybe . . . maybe it would have interested some more people in the problem."
"Ah!" said Gregor. "A publicity stunt."
"It was not a stunt," Mark grated.
"Excuse me. I did not mean to imply your effort was trivial. Quite the reverse. But you
did
have a coherent long-range strategy after all."
"Yeah, but it went down the waste disintegrator as soon as I lost control of the Dendarii. As soon as they knew who I really was." He brooded on the memory of that helplessness.