"How's it going?" Galen leaned anxiously across the comconsole.

"I nearly lost it all in the first five minutes last night. That big Dendarii sergeant-driver turned out to be the damned cousin." The clone's voice was low and tense. "Blind luck, I was able to carry off my first mistake as a joke. But they've got me rooming with the bastard. And he snores."

"Too true," Miles remarked, unasked. "For real entertainment, wait'll he starts making love in his sleep. Damn, I wish I had dreams like Ivan's. All I get are anxiety nightmares—playing polo naked against a lot of dead Cetagandans with Lieutenant Murka's severed head for the ball. It screamed every time I hit it toward the goal. Falling off and getting trampled …" Miles's mutter trailed off as they continued to ignore him.

"You're going to have to deal with all kinds of people who knew him, before this is done," said Galen roughly to the vid. "But if you can fool Vorpatril, you'll be able to carry it off anywhere—"

"You can fool all of the people some of the time," chirped Miles, "and some of the people all of the time, but you can fool Ivan anytime. He doesn't pay attention."

Galen glanced over at him in irritation. "The embassy is a perfect isolated test-microcosm," he went on to the vid, "before you go on to the larger arena of Barrayar itself. Vorpatril's presence makes it an ideal practice opportunity. If he tumbles to you, we can find some way to eliminate him."

"Mm." The clone seemed scarcely reassured. "Before we started, I thought you'd managed to stuff my head with everything it was possible to know about Miles Vorkosigan. Then at the last minute you find out he's been leading a double life all this time—what else have you missed?"

"Miles, we've been over that—"

Miles realized with a start that Galen was addressing the clone with his name. Had he been so thoroughly conditioned to his role that he had no name of his own? Strange . . .

"We knew there'd be gaps over which you'd have to improvise. But we'll never have a better opportunity than this chance visit of his to Earth has given us. Better than waiting another six months and trying to maneuver in on Barrayar. No. It's now or never." Galen took a calming breath. "So. You got through the night all right."

The clone snorted. "Yeah, if you don't count waking up being strangled by a damned animated fur coat.

"What? Oh, the live fur. Didn't he give it to his woman?"

"Evidently not. I nearly peed myself before I realized what it was. Woke up the cousin."

"Did he suspect anything?" Galen asked urgently.

"I passed it off as a nightmare. It seems Vorkosigan has them fairly often."

Miles nodded sagely. "That's what I told you. Severed heads . . . broken bones . . . mutilated relatives . . . unusual alterations to important parts of my body …" The drug seemed to be imparting some odd memory effects, part of what made fast-penta so effective for interrogation, no doubt. His recent dreams were coming back to him far more clearly than he'd ever consciously remembered them. All in all, he was glad he usually tended to forget them.

"Did Vorpatril say anything about it in the morning?" asked Galen.

"No. I'm not talking much."

"That's out of character," Miles observed helpfully.

"I'm pretending to have a mild episode of one of those depressions in his psyche report—who is that, anyway?" The clone craned his neck,

"Vorkosigan himself. We've got him on fast-penta."

"Ah, good. I've been getting calls all morning over a secured comm link from his mercenaries, asking for orders."

"We agreed you'd avoid the mercenaries."

"Fine, tell them."

"How soon can you get orders cut getting you out of the embassy and back to Barrayar?"

"Not soon enough to avoid the Dendarii completely. I broached it to the ambassador, but it appears Vorkosigan's in charge of the search for Captain Galeni. He seemed surprised I'd want to leave, so I backed off for now. Has the captain changed his mind about cooperating yet? If not, you'll have to generate my return-home orders from out there and slip them in with the courier or something."

Galen hesitated visibly. "I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, keep trying."

Doesn't Galen know we know the courier's compromised? Miles thought in a flash of near-normal clarity. He managed to keep the vocalization to a low mumble.

"Right. Well, you promised me you'd keep him alive for questions until I left, so here's one. Who is Lieutenant Bone, and what is she supposed to do about the surplusage from the Triumph? She didn't say what it was a surplus of."

One of the guards prodded Miles. "Answer the question."

Miles struggled for clarity of thought and expression. "She's my fleet accountant. I suppose she should dump it into her investment account and play with it as usual. It's a surplus of money," he felt compelled to explain, then cackled bitterly. "Temporary, I'm sure."

"Will that do?" asked Galen.

"I think so. I told her she was an experienced officer and to use her discretion, and she seemed to go off satisfied, but I sure wondered what I'd just ordered her to do. All right, next. Who is Rosalie Crew, and why is she suing Admiral Naismith for half a million GSA federal credits?"

"Who?" gaped Miles in genuine astonishment as the guard prodded him again. "What?" Miles was confusedly unable to convert half a million GSA credits to Barrayaran Imperial marks in his drug-scrambled head with any precision beyond "lots and lots and lots"; for a moment the association of the name remained blocked, then clicked in. "Ye gods, it's that poor clerk from the wine shop. I saved her from burning up. Why sue me? Why not sue Danio, he burned down her store—of course, he's broke …"

"But what do I do about it?" asked the clone.

"You wanted to be me," said Miles in a surly voice, "you figure it out." His mental processes clicked on anyway. "Slap her with a countersuit for medical damages. I think I threw my back out, lifting her. It still hurts …"

Galen overrode this. "Ignore it," he instructed. "You'll be out of there before anything can come of it."

"All right," said the Miles-clone doubtfully.

"And leave the Dendarii holding the bag?" said Miles angrily. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying desperately to think in the wavering room. "But of course, you don't care anything about the Dendarii, do you? You must care! They put their lives on the line for you—me—it's wrong—you'll betray them, casually, without even thinking about it, you scarcely know what they are—"

"Quite," sighed the clone, "and speaking of what they are, just what is his relationship with this Commander Quinn, anyway? Did you finally decide he was screwing her, or not?"

"We're just good friends," caroled Miles, and laughed hysterically. He lunged for the comconsole—the guards grabbed for him and missed—and climbing across the desk snarled into the vid, "Stay away from her, you little shit! She's mine, you hear, mine, mine, all mine—Quinn, Quinn, beautiful Quinn, Quinn of the evening, beautiful Quinn," he sang off-key as the guards dragged him back. Blows ran him down into silence.

"I thought you had him on fast-penta," said the clone to Galen.

"We do."

"It doesn't sound like fast-penta!"

"Yes. There's something wrong. Yet he's not supposed to have been conditioned. . . . I'm beginning to seriously doubt the utility of keeping him alive any longer as a data bank if we can't trust his answers."

"That's just great," scowled the clone. He glanced over his shoulder. "I've got to go. I'll report again tonight. If I'm still alive by then." He vanished with an irritated bleep.

Galen turned back to Miles with a list of questions, about Barrayaran Imperial Headquarters, about Emperor Gregor, about Miles's usual activities when quartered in Barrayar's capital city Vorbarr Sultana, and question after question about the Dendarii Mercenaries. Miles, writhing, answered and answered and answered, unable to stop his own rapid gabble. But partway through he hit on a line of poetry, and ended by reciting the whole sonnet. Galen's slaps could not derail him; the strings of association were too strong to break into. After that he managed to jump off the interrogation repeatedly. Works with strong meter and rhyme worked best, bad narrative verse, obscene Dendarii drinking songs, anything a chance word or phrase from his interrogators could trigger. His memory seemed phenomenal. Galen's face was darkening with frustration.