"So is the . . . damage or deterioration we're seeing confined to the organic or the inorganic parts? Or both?" Miles asked Avakli.

"Organic," said Avakli. "Almost certainly."

Avakli was one of those scientists who never placed an unhedged bet, Miles realized.

"Unfortunately," Avakli went on, "it was never originally designed to be downloaded. There is no single equivalent of a data-port to connect to; just these thousands and thousands of neuronic leads going into and out of the thing all over its surface."

In view of the chip's history as Emperor Ezar's ultra-secure data dump, this made sense. Miles would not have been surprised to learn the thing had been customized to be especially nondownloadable.

"Now … I was under the impression the thing worked in parallel with Illyan's original cerebral memory. It doesn't actually replace it, does it?"

"That is correct, my lord. The neurological input is only split from the sensory nerves, not shunted aside altogether. The subjects apparently have dual memories of all their experiences. This appears to have been the major contributing factor to the high incidence of iatrogenic schizophrenia they later developed. A sort of inherent design defect, not of the chip so much as of the human brain."

Ruibal cleared his throat in polite theoretical, or perhaps theological, disagreement.

Illyan must have been a born spy. To hold more than one reality balanced in your mind until proof arrived, without going mad from the suspense, was surely the mark of a great investigator.

Avakli then went into a highly technical discussion of three projected ideas for extracting some kind of data download from the chip. They all sounded makeshift and uncertain of result; Avakli himself, describing them, didn't sound too happy or enthusiastic. Most of them seemed to involve long hours of delicate micro-neurosurgery. Ruibal winced a lot.

"So," Miles interrupted this at length, "what happens if you take the chip out?"

"To use layman's terminology," said Avakli, "it goes into shock and dies. It's evidently supposed to do so, apparently to prevent, um, theft."

Right. Miles pictured Illyan mugged by chip-spies, his head hacked open, left for dead . . . someone else had anticipated that picture too. They'd been a paranoid lot, in Ezar's generation.

"It was never designed to be removed intact from its organic electrical support matrix," Avakli continued. "The chance of any coherent data retrieval is vastly reduced, anyway."

"And if it's not taken out?"

"The protein chain arrays show no signs of slowing in their dissociation."

"Or, in scientists' language, the chip is turning to snot inside Illyan's head. One of you bright boys apparently used just that phrase in his hearing, by the way."

One of Avakli s assistants had the grace to look guilty.

"Admiral Avakli, what are your top theories as to what is causing the chip to break down?"

Avakli s brows narrowed. "In order of probability—senescence, that is, old age, triggering an autodestruction, or some sort of chemical or biological attack. I'd have to have it apart to prove the second hypothesis."

"So . . . there is no question of removing the chip, repairing it, and reinstalling it."

"I hardly think so."

"And you can't repair it in situ without knowing the cause, which you can't determine without removing it for internal examination. Which would destroy it."

Avakli's lips compressed in dry acknowledgment of the inherent circularity of the problem. "Repair is out of the question, I'm afraid. I've been concentrating on trying to evolve a practical downloading scheme."

"As it happens," Miles went on, "you misunderstood my initial question. What happens to Illyan if the chip is removed?"

Avakli gestured back to Ruibal, a toss-the-hot-ball spasm.

"We can't predict with certainty," said Ruibal.

"Can you guess with reasonable odds? Does he, for example, instantly go back to being twenty-seven years old again?"

"No, I don't think so. A plain removal, with no attempt to save the chip, would in fact be a reasonably simple operation. But the brain is a complex thing. We don't know, for example, to what extent it has rerouted its own internal functions around the artifact in thirty-five years. And then there's the psychological element. Whatever he's done to his personality that has allowed him to work with it and stay sane will be unbalanced."

"Like . . . taking away a crutch, and discovering your legs have atrophied?"

"Perhaps."

"So how much cognitive damage are we talking about? A little? A lot?"

Ruibal shrugged helplessly.

"Have any aging galactic experts in this obsolete technology been located yet?" Miles asked.

"Not yet," said Ruibal. "That may take several months."

"By which time," said Miles grimly, "if I understand this, the chip will be jelly and Illyan will be either permanently insane or dead of exhaustion."

"Ah," said Ruibal.

"That about sums it up, my lord," said Avakli.

"Then why haven't we yanked the damned thing?"

"Our orders, my lord," noted Avakli, "were to save the chip, or as much of the chip's data as could be retrieved."

Miles rubbed his lips. "Why?" he said at length.

Avakli's brows rose. "I would presume, because the data is vital to ImpSec and the Imperium."

"Is it?" Miles leaned forward, staring into the brightly colored, biocybernetic nightmare chip-map hanging before his eyes above the table's central vid plate. "The chip was never installed to make Illyan into a superman. It was just a toy for Emperor Ezar, who fancied owning a vid recorder with legs. I admit, it's been handy for Illyan. Gives him a nice aura of infallibility that scares hell out of people, but that's a crock and he knows it even if they don't.

"The chip has nothing to do with running ImpSec, really. He was promoted to the job because he was standing at my father's right hand the day Vordarian's forces murdered his predecessor, and my father liked and trusted him. There was no time for a talent search, in the middle of a raging civil war. Of all the qualities that made Illyan the best chief in ImpSec s history . . . the chip is surely the most trivial." His voice had fallen to nearly a whisper. Avakli and Ruibal were leaning forward to hear him. He cleared his throat, and sat up.

"There are only four categories of information on that chip," Miles went on. "Old and obsolete. Current, which is all backed up in reality—Illyan has always had to function with the ever-present assumption that he could drop or be dropped dead at any time, and Haroche or somebody would have to take over in midstream. Then there's trash data, personal stuff of no use to anyone except Illyan. Maybe not even to Illyan. Thirty-five years of showers, meals, changing clothes, filling out forms. Not too damned many sex acts, I'm afraid. Lots of bad novels and holovid dramas, all in there, verbatim. A thousand times more of that than anything else. And, somewhere in all the billions of images, maybe a dozen hot secrets that no one else knows. Or perhaps even ought to know."

"What do you wish us to do, my Lord Auditor?" asked Ruibal, into the silence that stretched after this soliloquy.

You wanted authority. Now you've got it, boy. Miles sighed. "I want to talk with one more man. In the meanwhile . . . assemble everything you need for the surgical removal of the chip. Equipment, to be sure, but mostly, the man. I want the best pair of hands you can get, in ImpSec or out of it."

"When should we start, my lord?" asked Ruibal.

"I'd like you to be finished in two hours." Miles rapped the table, and rose. "Thank you, gentlemen. Dismissed."

Miles called Gregor on a secured comconsole right from the clinic level.

"So have you found what you wanted?" Gregor asked.