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you have a regular..." - she groped for a proper Barrayaran term - "young
lady?"
"Not at this time."
"Hm." She gave him a speculative look; Gregor, who still held it, squeezed her
hand. If she d had a younger sister, Miles would have known exactly how to
interpret that glance. Love, it seemed, was not only contagious, it was
aggressively contagious.
"Miles has proven immune to our Vor ladies," put in his Aunt Alys, not
approvingly. Good God, was she about to give up on trying to alter Ivan s
single state and start in on him instead, in sheer frustration?
Laisa looked as if she was trying to work out whether Lady Alys had meant to
imply Miles preferred boys, without being so rude as to ask, or at least, not
till she was alone again with her mentor.
"Not immune," Miles put in hastily. "Only unlucky, so far. My former travel
schedule was pretty disruptive to romance."
At home, anyway
. "Now that I m based in Vorbarr Sultana permanently, who knows. Um... maybe
I ll ask Delia Koudelka."
Laisa smiled her pleasure. "I d love to see her again."
Alys poured the coffee all around; Laisa watched carefully. She didn t
scribble notes, but Miles bet she would remember, next time, that he took his
black. Alys led the conversation into lighter concerns for the time it took to
drink one cup, no refills, then rose to usher Laisa back out again. Off to the
ladies lavatory, to dissect Miles in absentia? Don t be so twitchy, boy
. Under Alys s tutelage, Laisa seemed to be making rapid connections with the
Vor women s world, and unlike Haroche she did not seem to be underestimating
its importance to her future.
Gregor released Laisa with obvious reluctance. "Lady Alys," he added, looking
thoughtful. "If you think he s up to it, why don t you bring Simon to the
lunch Laisa and I are having with you and Lady Vorkosigan. I find I miss his
conversation." He caught Miles s eye, and smiled wryly.
"I thought Simon s conversations with you were mostly reports," Miles said.
"It s rather fascinating to find out what all those reports were displacing,
all these years," Lady Alys remarked. "Certainly, Gregor. I think it will be
good for him." She shepherded Laisa out; Miles followed shortly.
Miles continued his self-inflicted inspection of ImpSec HQ where he d left
off. Personally, he would have preferred a pinpoint rapier thrust to this
brute-force bludgeoning of the data, but when you didn t know what the hell
you were looking for, you had to look at everything
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. Cryptography proved cryptic; their overt cooperation turned into a slyly
technical explanation of their doings that lost him on the third turn.
If you can t dazzle em with daring, hang em up with horseshit
. Miles smiled through it all, and made a mental note to recheck this
department again later. Finance seemed simply delighted that somebody cared
, and threatened to go on forever. Miles fought his way clear of the
spreadsheets, and escaped.
Housekeeping and Physical Plant proved unexpectedly fascinating. Miles had
known the headquarters building was highly secured, but he hadn t realized in
detail just how this was accomplished. He now learned where all the
steel-reinforced walls and floors were, and just how much thought had gone
into questions of blast containment, air circulation and filtration, and water
purification. His respect for the building s late mad architect rose a notch.
The building wasn t merely designed by a paranoid, it was well designed. Every
room had its own biolab grade filtration system, in addition to the central
unit that filtered and flash-
cooked all returning air to destroy possible poison gases or microbes, before
it was recirculated or vented. The heat generated was also used to distill the
water, which explained its peculiar flat taste. Miles had seen spaceships with
systems less tight. No colds were going to be transmitted among personnel here
.
The janitorial staff were all serving soldiers, veterans of at least ten
years standing. They were also, he discovered, the best paid of their
classification of any such men in the Imperial Service. Morale was high among
them; once they d realized his visit implied no criticism of the quality of
their work, they became not merely cooperative but downright friendly. It
seemed no inspecting officer had actually been willing to crawl through the
ductwork in person with them for quite some time; but then, most senior
inspectors were a lot older, stiffer, and stouter than Miles. He also
discovered, along the way, what had to be the most
boring job in ImpSec HQ - checking the vid monitors of all the kilometers of
ductwork and piping in the building. He could only marvel that it had never
fallen to his lot before, during one of his earlier periods of semi-disgrace.
Janitorial was quite pleased with their Imperial Auditor by the time he
reluctantly departed, and vice versa. Their combination of competence and
camaraderie put him in mind for a brief and breathtakingly painful moment of
the Dendarii, till his mind shied away from the comparison.
His busyness blocked excessive morbid reflection on the general weirdness of
his current situation. On the whole, Miles thought he preferred it that way.
He was an ImpSec outsider, a civilian, for the first time in his adult life,
and yet he was obtaining a better view of the organization he d so
passionately served than he d ever had before. Was this some sort of final
good-bye?
Enjoy it while it lasts
.
Conscience-prodded, he broke off early enough that night to actually go home
and have dinner with his mother and Illyan, a welcome touch of human civility.
He successfully kept the conversation focused on the progress of the Imperial
colony on
Sergyar, about which, indeed, the Countess had much of interest to tell. He
returned to HQ early the next morning, and breathed down Haroche s neck for a
bit, till Haroche began once more to wistfully enumerate the benefits of a
jaunt to Jackson s Whole.
Miles grinned, and continued his inspection.
Miles s visit to Analysis took the most time that day. Among other things, he
stopped in to talk with Galeni, and with the analysts now assigned to this
internal ImpSec problem; they too were mostly waiting for the return of
galactic reports. He checked on the men working other problems as well. The
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high priority of Illyan s chip sabotage did not mean that all other crises
went on hold. Miles had a long and interesting chat with Komarran Affairs
chief General Allegre, which understandably tended to turn to
Gregor s betrothal, a topic Miles had carefully avoided with Galeni. Miles
wondered if it would be worth a trip at least as far as
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