They put in their orders, and she followed her uncle's gaze upward as he briefly studied the soletta from this angle. She said, "There's not really a danger of the Imperium abandoning the soletta project, is there? We'll have to at least repair it. I mean … it looks so unbalanced like that."

"In fact, it is unbalanced at present. Solar wind. They'll have to do something about that shortly," he replied. "I should certainly not like to see it abandoned. It was the greatest engineering achievement of the Komarrans' colonial ancestors, apart from the domes themselves. People at their best. If it was sabotage . . . well, that was certainly people at their worst. Vandalism, just senseless vandalism."

An artist describing the defacement of some great historic painting could hardly have been more vehement. Ekaterin said, "I've heard older Komarrans talk about how they felt when Admiral Vorkosigan's invasion forces took over the mirror, practically the first thing. I can't think that it had much tactical value, at the high speed at which the space battles went, but it certainly had a huge psychological impact. It was almost as if we had captured their sun itself. I think returning it to Komarran civilian control in the last few years was a very good political move. I hope this doesn't mess that up."

"It's hard to say." That new caution, again.

"There was talk of opening its observation platform to tourism again. Though now I imagine they're relieved they hadn't yet."

"They still have plenty of VIP tours. I took one myself, when I was here several years ago teaching a short course at Solstice University. Fortunately, there were no visitors aboard on the day of the collision. But it should be open to the public, to be seen and to educate. Do it up right, with maybe a museum on-site explaining how it was first built. It's a great work. Odd to think that its principal practical use is to make swamps."

"Swamps make breathable air. Eventually." She smiled. In her uncle's mind the pure engineering aesthetic clearly overshadowed the messy biological end view.

"Next you'll be defending the rats. There really are rats here, I understand?"

"Oh, yes, the dome tunnels have rats. And hamsters, and gerbils. All the children capture them for pets, which is likely where they came from in the first place, come to think of it. I do think the black-and-white rats are cute. The animal-control exterminators have to work in dead secret from their younger relatives. And we have roaches, of course, who doesn't? And—over in Equinox—wild cockatoos. A couple of pairs of them escaped, or were let loose, several decades ago. They now have these big rainbow-colored birds all over the place, and people will feed them. The sanitation crews wanted to get rid of them, but the Dome shareholders voted them down."

The waitress delivered their salads and iced tea, and there was a short break in the conversation while her uncle appreciated the fresh spinach, mangoes and onions, and candied pecans. She'd guessed the candied pecans would please him. The market-garden hydroponics production in Serifosa was among Komarr's best.

She used the break to redirect the conversation toward her greatest current curiosity. "Your colleague Lord Vorkosigan– did he really have a thirteen-year career in Imperial Security?" Or were you just irritated by Tien?

"Three years in the Imperial Military Academy, a decade in ImpSec, to be precise."

"How did he ever get in, past the physicals?"

"Nepotism, I believe. Of a sort. To give him credit, it seems to have been an advantage he used sparingly thereafter. I had the fascinating experience of reading his entire classified military record, when Gregor asked me and my fellow Auditors to review Vorkosigan's candidacy, before he made the appointment."

She subsided in slight disappointment. "Classified. In that case, I suppose you can't tell me anything about it."

"Well," he grinned around a mouthful of salad, "there was the Dagoola IV episode. You must have heard of it, that giant breakout from the Cetagandan prisoner-of-war camp that the Marilacans made a few years ago?"

She recalled it only dimly. She'd been heads-down in motherhood, about that time, and scarcely paid attention to news, especially any so remote as galactic news. But she nodded encouragement for him to go on.

"It's all old history now. I understand from Vorkosigan that the Marilacans are engaged in producing a holovid drama on the subject. The Greatest Escape, or something like that, they're calling it. They tried to hire him—or actually, his cover identity—to be a technical consultant on the script, an opportunity he has regretfully declined. But for ImpSec to retain security classification upon a series of events that the Marilacans are simultaneously dramatizing planetwide strikes me as a bit rigid, even for ImpSec. In any case, Vorkosigan was the Barrayaran agent behind that breakout."

"I didn't even know we had an agent behind that."

"He was our man on-site."

So that odd joke about snoring Marilacans . . . hadn't been. Quite. "If he was so good, why did he quit?"

"Hm." Her uncle applied himself to mopping up the last of his salad dressing with his multigrain roll, before replying. "I can only give you an edited version of that. He didn't quit voluntarily. He was very badly injured—to the point of requiring cryo-freezing—a couple of years ago. Both the original injury and the cryo-freeze did him a lot of damage, some of it permanent. He was forced to take a medical discharge, which he—hm!—did not handle well. It's not my place to discuss those details."

"If he was injured badly enough to need cryo-freeze, he was dead!" she said, startled.

"Technically, I suppose so. 'Alive' and 'dead' are not such neat categories as they used to be in the Time of Isolation."

So, her uncle was in possession of just the sort of medical information about Vorkosigan's mutations she most wanted to know, if he had paid any attention to it. Military physicals were thorough.

"So rather than let all that training and experience go to waste," Uncle Vorthys went on, "Gregor found a job for Vorkosigan on the civilian side. Most Auditorial duties are not too physically onerous . . . though I confess, it's been useful to have someone younger and thinner than myself to send out-station for those long inspections in a pressure suit. I'm afraid I've abused his endurance a bit, but he's proved very observant."

"So he really is your assistant?"

"By no means. What fool said that? All Auditors are coequal. Seniority is only good for getting one stuck with certain administrative chores, on the rare occasions when we act as a group. Vorkosigan, being a well-brought-up young man, is polite to my white hairs, but he's an independent Auditor in his own right, and goes just where he pleases. At present it pleases him to study my methods. I shall certainly take the opportunity to study his.

"Our Imperial charge doesn't come with a manual, you see. It was once proposed the Auditors create one for themselves, but they—wisely, I think—concluded it would do more harm than good. Instead, we just have our archives of Imperial reports; precedents, without rules. Lately, several of us more recent appointees have been trying to read a few old reports each week, and then meet for dinner to discuss the cases and analyze how they were handled. Fascinating. And delicious. Vorkosigan has the most extraordinary cook."

"But this is his first assignment, isn't it? And … he was designated just like that, on the Emperor's whim."