She followed his glance. "Something. Then a nap," she decided.

"At your command." He bowed vorishly, sitting, and rose to take her hand. "Seize the night."

As was standard operating procedure for returning couriers, an ImpSec groundcar and driver picked up Miles at the military shuttleport outside Vorbarr Sultana, and whisked him directly to ImpSec headquarters downtown. He wished the driver would slow down, or circle the block a few more times, as HQ loomed up around the last corner. As if the frustrating weeks he had spent thinking about his dilemma aboard the government ship on the way home were not enough. He didn't need more thought, he needed action.

The driver passed the security checkpoint and pulled through the gates to the massive gray building, vast and grim and foreboding. The impression was not all due to Miles s state of mind; ImpSec HQ was one of the ugliest buildings in Vorbarr Sultana. Tourists from the backcountry, who might otherwise have been expected to avoid the place, drove by just to look at it, in honor of the interesting reputation of the architect, whom legend had it had died insane after the abrupt eclipse of his patron Emperor Yuri. The driver took Miles past the daunting facade, and around to the discreet side entrance reserved for couriers, spies, informers, analysts, secretaries, janitors, and others with real business in the place.

Miles dismissed driver and car with a wave, and stood in the autumn afternoon chill outside the door, hesitating one last time. He had a sinking conviction his carefully crafted plan was never going to work.

And even if it did work, I'd have my head cranked over my shoulder forever, waiting to be caught ex post facto. No. He would not go through with it. He would turn in the doctored cipher-card, yes, he'd left himself no choice there, but then (and before Illyan had a chance to review the thrice-damned thing) he would give Illyan his verbal report and tell him the exact truth. He could feign that he'd felt the news of his medical flaw was too hot to put on record even in cipher. As if he were tossing the problem, promptly and properly, into Illyan's lap for decision. It wasn't physically possible for Miles to have made it home any faster anyway.

If he stood here in the cold any longer, pretending to study the stylized granite monsters carved in low relief on the door lintel—pressed gargoyles, some wag had dubbed them—a guard would come up and make polite and pointed inquiries at him. Determined, he slid out of his military greatcoat and folded it neatly over his arm, clutched the cipher-case to his green tunic, and stepped inside.

The clerk at the desk checked him through the usual security ID procedures without comment. It was all very routine. He left his coat—which had never come from any military store, but instead had been tailor-made to fit his very nonstandard size—in the checkroom. It was a measure of his security clearance that he was sent off without an escort to find his own way to Illyan's not-very-accessible office. You had to go up two different lift tubes and down a third to get to that floor.

Once he'd arrived, and passed through the last scanner in the corridor, he found the door of the outer office open. Illyan's secretary was at his desk, talking with General Lucas Haroche, Head of Domestic Affairs. The general's title always put Miles in mind of a gigolo for bored wives, but in fact it was one of the nastier and more thankless jobs in the service, tracking would-be treason plots and antigovernment groups strictly on the Barrayaran side. His counterpart General Allegre had the full-time task of doing the same for restive, conquered Komarr.

Miles usually dealt with the Head of Galactic Affairs (a much more exotic and evocative title, in Miles's opinion) on the rare occasions when he didn't deal with Illyan directly. But the G.A. was stationed on Komarr, and Miles had been routed straight back to Barrayar this time without stopping at the planet that guarded Barrayar's only jump-point gateway to the wormhole nexus. One must assume it's urgent. Maybe it would even be urgent enough to divert Illyan's negative attentions from Miles's bad news.

"Hello, Captain. Hello, General Haroche." As the supposedly junior officer present, Miles greeted them both with a vaguely directed salute, which they returned as casually. Miles did not know Illyan's secretary well; the man had held this critical position for about two years, which gave Miles at least six years seniority on him as an Illyan-satellite, if one wanted to think of it in those terms.

The secretary held out his hand for the cipher-case. "Your report, good. Sign it in, please."

"I … sort of wanted to hand this one to the boss personally." Miles nodded to Illyan's closed inner door.

"Can't, today. He's not in."

"Not in? I expected . . . there were some things I needed to add verbally."

"I'll pass them on for you, as soon as he gets back."

"Will he be back soon? I can wait."

"Not today. He's out of town."

Shit. "Well . . ." Reluctantly, Miles handed over the case to its proper recipient, and pressed his palm four times to the comconsole's read-pad to affirm and document delivery. "So . . . did he leave any orders for me? He must have known when I would arrive."

"Yes, Lieutenant. You are to take leave until he calls you in."

"I thought this was urgent, or why rush me home on the first ship? I've just had several weeks of time off, cooped up on board."

"What can I say?" The secretary shrugged. "Occasionally, ImpSec remembers it is the military. Hurry up and wait."

Miles would get no unauthorized information out of him. But if there was that much time … his clever little plan to skin off to Escobar for secret treatment, so recently suppressed, reared up out of the mire again. "Leave, huh? Do I have time and permission to visit my parents on Sergyar?"

"I'm afraid not. You are to hold yourself ready to report back here on a one-hour notice. You'd better not depart the city." At Miles's dismayed look, he added, "Sorry, Lieutenant Vorkosigan."

Not half as sorry as I am. He was put forcibly in mind of his own sententious motto about no battle plan surviving first contact with the enemy. "Well . . . tell Illyan I'd like to see him, at his earliest convenience."

"Of course." The secretary made a note.

"And how are your parents, Lieutenant Vorkosigan?" inquired General Haroche cordially. Haroche was a graying man of fifty-odd, who wore slightly rumpled undress greens. Miles liked Haroche's voice, which was deep and rich and sometimes humorous, with a faint provincial accent from the western districts that his years in the capital hadn't quite smoothed away. Haroche's work had gained him a formidable reputation in ImpSec's inner circles, though it was practically unknown to outsiders, a dilemma Miles appreciated. He predated Miles as a fixture at ImpSec HQ by a year or so; but a decade in Haroche's job, Miles reflected, would give anybody gray hairs, and stomach trouble too.

"You probably have more recent information on them than I do, sir. I think my mail is chasing me back home from the drop at Galactic Affairs HQ on Komarr."

Haroche turned his hands palm-out, and shrugged. "No, not really. Illyan has split out Sergyar from my department, and created a separate Department for Sergyaran Affairs equal with the Komarran."

"Surely there's not that much for a separate department to do," said Miles. "The colony's less than thirty years old. The population isn't even up to a million yet,

"Just barely," put in the secretary.

Haroche smiled a bit grimly. "I thought it was premature, but what the illustrious Viceroy Count Vorkosigan requests . . . has a way of happening." He half-lidded his eyes, as if casting Miles a significant look.