Linya follows him. "Not too long, but longer than any time before that. I probably should have called, but Dr. Cheung's tied up all day anyway and I can do pen work in transit as well as I can in a hotel room. You're looking better."

"Yeah. Feeling better, too. I have - oh - call it an hour, want to tell me all about the latest developments?"

"Sure, but if you only have an hour it'll have to be the highlights. Let's see, I did a little dental work on Adri - I can send you the updated list of tweaks if you want it?"

"Absolutely." They're almost at his room. "And how is Dr. Cheung, besides occupied?"

"Well, grieving, he's at a funeral."

"My condolences to Dr. Cheung."

"Yeah. But he's pretty resilient versus pretty much everything other than jump-sickness." She pulls her pen and sends the file off to Miles. "There, that'll go to your temporary. Has it been learning your gestures quick enough or is it agonizing the second time around? I'm probably going to roll out a version two in some number of years and I need to know how important backwards-compatibility of entrainment data is."

"Slightly more agonizing than usual today - I think I fractured a metacarpal this morning; it's been mostly ignorable until I pick something up or put any pressure on it, and then ow."

"Was this while you were out? Did you get it looked at yet?"

"It, um, didn't hurt enough for me to bother," he says sheepishly. "I probably should."

"Yes. You should." She picks him up and kisses his forehead and puts him down again. "Which way's the infirmary in here? I only theoretically know how to electrostim a bone."

Linya tilts her head.

A man curled up on one of the benches with his back to the rest of the room sits up stiffly. He holds his hands over his eyes, squinting against the harsh light. He is stubbly, unkempt, disgruntled, and Captain Galeni.

"Ah, fuck. There you are," Miles says hoarsely. "I was wondering."

"I suppose it might be pointless to ask if you're - you."

"I don't know," says Miles, almost cheerfully. "Which me were you expecting?"

Galeni doesn't dignify that with a response, just sits and regards Miles with minute attention to detail, apparently coming to no firm conclusion.

"You've met the other one, then, I take it."

"Yesterday. If you're the real one, anyway. I think it was yesterday." Galeni glances at the light.

"God, don't tell me they keep that thing on all the time," shudders Miles. "It's, let's see - maybe one in the morning, of the fifth day since you went missing. Did he really...? I mean, actually pretend to be me? To you? Did it work?"

"I thought it was you till the end, when he told me he was - practicing. Testing. And incidentally collecting information on my reactions to you. This lasted four or five hours."

"Hell," says Miles, shuddering again. "Well - historian - how do you tell a forgery from the real thing?"

"Not a perfect copy, then," Miles says with a dry, brittle smile. "Damnation... I suppose there's no reasonable way they could have given him my bones; following this logic, all I have to do to convince you is punch a wall. You'll excuse me if I don't rush to try it."

Galeni rolls his eyes.

"Anyway, regardless of my identity, surely you can tell me who they are." He gestures up at the light. "And whatever Miles Version Two let slip about his origins." (Fuck, don't say he's a clone, don't say he's a clone. That would be much, much too weird.)

"He said he was a clone. Although he might well have been lying." Galeni heaves a sigh. "It's Komarrans."

"...bugger," sighs Miles. "Twice. Ugh, I think I've even seen the little shit once before - I was coming back from my adventure at the burning wineshop, and I saw myself in the mirror, wearing the wrong uniform and looking wrecked to hell. I was feeling pretty wrecked to hell at the time, so I chalked it up to a hallucination caused by some combination of stress and strong painkillers and forgot all about it. No wonder the clone story sprang to mind when I was talking to that reporter. And here I was thinking I was just a genius, and then wondering just now if I have some kind of magical power to make all my lies come true..."

"If only. You could talk your way out of here."

"I have actually talked myself out of similar situations multiple times in my life," says Miles, faintly cheered. "By the way, they are recording us, aren't they?"

Galeni points at the light.

Miles sighs. "Right, of course. So. Talk to me. What's all this been like from your point of view, from the time you disappeared?"

"Got a call from an old Komarran... acquaintance, asking to meet. I erased the call, which was a - mistake. But he led me to believe he knew something about your mysteriously mislaid orders. I had figured the lines of communication had been compromised from inside, but didn't dare lay charges without more evidence, so..."

"...ah," says Miles. "Yes. About that."

Galeni sighs.

"From my point of view - well, I thought the only good reason not to suspect you'd made off with my money was that you had not, in fact, made off. And then you did."

"Of course," says Galeni tiredly.

"Sorry," says Miles. "If we get out of here it shouldn't be that hard to clear your name, but, well, if we don't you're going down in history as the Komarran who booked it with my money and then circled back to kill me as an afterthought."

"All for nothing," breathes Galeni.

"Yeah. Of course," his mind runs on, "it's possible that the substitution plot will work, in which case we will have an entirely different set of problems which, hearteningly, we will still be too dead to care about."

"I am tremendously heartened," says Galeni in a dead voice.

Miles quirks a humourless little smile. "Me too. Right, so, you went to meet this man - without taking a beeper or a backup...?"

"Yes. And we had lunch and he attempted to suborn me."

"Did he succeed?" inquires Miles.

Galeni looks at Miles in utter confusion.

"Making this entire conversation a play for my benefit," Miles elaborates.

Galeni grimaces. "I told him," he says loudly in the general direction of the light fixture, "to get stuffed. But should have realized that he'd told me too much to dare let me go. But we exchanged guarantees and I turned my back on him and... let sentiment cloud my judgment. Which he did not. So here I am, until he gets over the surge of sentiment, eventually."

"Hell of an old acquaintance."

"Yes," says Galeni shortly, running his fingers tiredly through his hair.

Miles eyes the haggard Galeni. "What have they been doing to you? Primitive interrogation?"

"They have fast-penta. They know Embassy security backwards and forwards, now, I've been through it three, four times. The bruises are from trying to escape - yesterday or something like it. But the fellows I tried to go through look worse."

"Happy to hear it," Miles says unhappily. "Couldn't you have pretended to cooperate? At least long enough to get away?"

Galeni shakes his head emphatically. Then he amends that with, "I suppose I should have. Too late."

"And I can hardly try it."

Galeni makes an agreeable gesture.

"If he is a clone... I can't imagine what horrors they must have put him through, to get him to turn out like this." Miles gestures at himself. "My genes by themselves would've made him six feet tall, healthy, with good bones. I can't imagine the resources it would take for them to poison a lot of fetuses and raise them all until they got one that looked just right... it must have been surgical alterations. God." He shudders. "No wonder he seemed to hate me so much. I would too..."

Galeni winces, sympathetic but without much to contribute.

Galeni fixes Miles with a look, but then says, "Five days." And: "How did you know?"

"I had a look at your personnel files. Only close relative without a morgue record."

"We believed he was dead. My brother certainly was... My mother and I had to identify what was left, but there wasn't much. It was easy to believe there was even less of my father, supposedly much closer to the center of the explosion. He was always very big on sacrifices... He talked about Komarr's freedom constantly, and all the sacrifices we had to make for it. Human or otherwise. But he never seemed beyond all the talking to care about the freedom of anyone on Komarr. Until the revolt died and him with it I wasn't free. To make my own judgments, my own choices. Or so I thought. Life's full of surprises."

"Two or three times a day I get a share of whatever they're fixing upstairs."

"That must be when you made your break..." and probably not much of an opportunity anymore, since the first attempt failed.

"Yes." Galeni shrugs. "It's almost entertaining. The door opens and it might be dinner or death."

"You think that's bad? Wait'll he starts making love in his sleep," says Miles. "Lucky bastard, I wish I had dreams like Ivan's... the other night I was playing polo naked against a Cetagandan zombie army with Lieutenant Murka's head for the ball. It screamed every time I hit it."

Miles giggles. "Izzat what you think? Fooling Ivan's easy."

"YOU WHAT!" shrieks Miles, lunging out of his chair again and this time getting all the way to the comconsole, where he claws at the image projected from the vid plate. "Don't you dare touch my wife, you little shit! Put one hand on her and I'll cut it fucking off!" He starts crying hysterically, babbling an incoherent mixture of threats and prayers, swinging wildly between rage and despair.

"I just stunned her," the clone says dryly. "Get your mind out of the gutter, Miles. She's currently quite comfortably unconscious in the back of a maintenance closet, wrapped in that fur-blanket thing. While you're alive for questioning, by the way, any bright ideas about what to do with that woman you hauled out of her burning wine shop? She's suing Admiral Naismith for half a million GSA federal credits."

Miles is still having trouble connecting visuals - but he recognizes Linya's voice under his own. He delivers the next few lines through hysterical sobs, crying particularly hard on 'my dearest partner of greatness'.

Linya recites right along with him, pretending perfect dreamy calm the entire time. Miles can be having a Weird Drug Reaction; she's affecting the standard one.

When no one presents her anything besides Macbeth for her to free-associate unhelpfully about, Linya chimes in. "One of my fellows had the speed of him," she sighs.

Linya goes on sliding through Macbeth, keeping time with Miles, smiling at a corner of the ceiling.

Linya recites and recites, dry-mouthed, pretending, assuming that of fucking course they're monitored and if someone has actual questions for her later she'd rather be fast-penta'd than tortured, considering there seems to be no qualms about the latter.

"Fast-penta," clarifies Miles.

"I have a lot of weird drug reactions. Apparently my screwy metabolism and the memory-aiding effects of poetic meter are an explosive combination. My face hurts."

There is not a prompt for a reply from Linya there. She silently continues to be tied to a chair. Galeni hesitantly approaches the knots as though expecting one or the other of his cellmates to object to him touching her.

Miles stays flopped.

"No kidding," mutters Miles.

"Oh, no," she agrees. She flops her head onto her shoulder.

When Miles wakes up he is on a bench with one of Linya's less essential articles of clothing balled up under his head and about half a meal's worth of food left to get cold at the end of the bench. Linya's napping, on the floor with a similar pillow arrangement and a sleeve of the jacket she's using flung over her eyes. She has even loaned Galeni a scarf-wrap for the same purpose. Linya's person remains decent, if underlayered.

"Urgh," says Miles. He looks at the food, then shifts the plate under his bench and flops his face into his improvised pillow to attempt real sleep.

"The light fixture is watching us," Miles mentions.

"I have been thinking of likely ways for it to be doing that and wondering what tools I'd need to improvise explosives out of its parts," she agrees. "I don't have any."

"Damn. There goes that escape plan."

"The much-abused secondary products of your genome," Linya remarks, "are extremely inconsistent in their reactions to being picked up."

"...um?"

"How many of you are there, and which one are you?"

"Two," he says. "I'm the one who married you. Also the one who is Admiral Naismith. They know, so why shouldn't you? Fuck it all. The one who stunned you is an actual clone-duplicate created for an actual substitution plot. By Komarrans. What did he do when you picked him up...?"

"Oh. Maybe he's not quite an utter soulless bastard after all," says Miles. "I'm not sure whether I find that heartening, or the opposite."

"He probably could have salvaged it. I was thinking to myself, 'Naismith seemed very personable and not like he wanted to impersonate my Miles at all, and there probably aren't two of them even if the project originally called for several, or that would certainly have come up, wouldn't it'. But he didn't, he just - sort of apologized and shot me."

"How polite."

"Well, I don't have a lot of other instances of being shot to compare to." She sighs. "How do I know you're mine?"

"I don't know off the top of my head how they'd wreck a clone's bones like that, but that doesn't mean there's no way to do it," she points out. "They were not restraining themselves to any ordinary standard of medical ethics. If this were the first time this had happened, I'm sure I'd buy it, but I have made two major errors about my husband's identity over the last several days."

Miles sighs.

"And one of those errors involved believing - what was admittedly probably you - when he told me something. How did the business with the Ariel happen? I didn't think you'd draw attention to your cover like that."

"The Dendarii know me only as Admiral Naismith. They wouldn't have had any reason to look twice at the name Vorkosigan, and I wasn't personally overseeing every single job offer they took."

"Right. That makes sense," she sighs.

Linya sighs. "Well, if we get out of this alive and the light fixture stops staring at us I can, I don't know, elaborately quiz you and then see what the consumer market for programmable subcutaneous ID chips is like or something."

"...While I admire your ingenuity, I'm not sure I'm comfortable being - chipped. It would be a rather awkward feature in a covert operative."

"Or something," she repeats, shrugging. "I am definitely not picking up any more short people until I am certain I can tell which ones they are."

Miles buries his face in his pillow-oid.

Miles continues weeping very quietly into her repurposed clothing item.

"Mark. And that comment I tossed off as Naismith about a sister-in-law... actually applies to him. By Betan law he's my brother - or my son if I choose to adopt him as such, which I don't. Mother, though... I can just hear her. 'Miles, what have you done with your little brother?'" He sighs and rubs his face with both hands. "Somehow I feel like 'I never knew he existed' is an inadequate excuse."

"That's why I asked, I don't want to keep labeling him 'the one who stunned me' in my head." She pauses. "I don't think he can fool Cordelia. Does whatever the plan is call for doing so?"

"Oh, yes. It also calls for becoming Emperor of Barrayar, which I don't think he can do either, at least not for very long."

"But he could do dramatic amounts of damage on his way down." She sighs. "How'd you get nabbed?"

"Ah." He shifts on his bench. "An unknown party hired Admiral Naismith to kidnap Lord Vorkosigan. I decided the best way to find out who and why was to take the job. I was... technically right."

After a moment, he adds, "What worries me in hindsight is that from what I can tell, Mark came up with that ploy. It shows an uncomfortably close reading of my psychology."

"He does a very good you. He probably could have salvaged things after the flinch, he just - didn't, or maybe expected to go on flinching and not be able to recover after a few of those, I'm not sure which."

"For the sake of my sanity, I cherish the hope that maybe he didn't especially want to fool you. I am not sure I can bear to think of him as my brother, if..." He lets the sentence trail off into an unhappy silence.

"I wonder what his handlers have on him. Brute psychological force, maybe."

"I shudder to think."

"Well. He did apologize. Insofar as one can do so sincerely while firing a stunner."

"What I wouldn't give for a close reading of his psychology." Miles reflects on this a moment, then amends, "As long as gaining such an understanding wouldn't make me any crazier than I already am, which I'm not sure I'm willing to take for granted. His upbringing must have been... something."

"Medically monstrous at a bare minimum, and a spectacular quantity of information crammed into less lifetime than you've had. He had an excuse for not using your pen; it might be that they weren't able to get one for him to practice on, but he can't have reasons like that to avoid everything you'd be able to do."

"Also, I had the dubious privilege of a halfway civil conversation with the man in charge of this plot. He, um... didn't seem like he'd pass the qualifications for a Betan parenting license. If you see what I mean."

"Oh, does he do things other than shout and hit people? Yes. I don't have much expectation he'll be able to hold onto Mark, although I don't guarantee it'll be any good for anybody when he loses him."

"I agree with your assessment. On all counts."

Linya eyes the hinges on the door, then sighs again and gives up, apparently finding that avenue useless.

"I had a look around when I got here. Of course, that was before you arrived, with copious clothing and ropes and a chair. Want to block the sink with a spare garment and see what happens?"

"How much do you think they value us having access to water?"

"Point."

"I could try to improvise something with the ropes, but they'd see me doing it and stun us both as soon as they open the door, I expect. And if we park over there," she gestures at the part of the room that is concealed by the door when the door is open, "they can tell we're doing it and, say, opt not to feed us or leave Galeni in a state to need confinement - this when I'm reasonably sure they didn't believe me when I told them how much I eat to begin with and am none too sure that they haven't already killed him." She eyes the half-plate of food that she left him. "It's going to take me a few hours to get hungry enough to eat that considering how poorly it's aged. I should've finished it but I've never seen you fast-penta hungover before and didn't know if you'd want it."

"Well, thanks. But yeah, you can have it. I'll probably regain my appetite sometime in the next twenty-four hours."

"I don't, ordinarily. I studied it once in school - chose it over Richard III, for reasons that are probably obvious if you've read Richard III."

"I've read them all." Pause. "When I was five I was Second Witch."

"I will cherish this mental image forever."

That startles a smile out of her.

"I hope they haven't wrecked my pen. Taking it was obvious, but it's got several hours' work on it that isn't backed up in the charger."

"Yeah," says Miles. "Well - I can't imagine what they'd get out of taking it apart, so there's that."

"At least they can't use it unless they've cloned me too."

"Which I find exceedingly unlikely."

"Yes, quite. All the obvious ways to do it would have the clone still be very young and then she'd be unable to use the pen because her grip would be wrong."

Miles falls thoughtfully silent.

"If I start singing again is it going to make you cry?"

"...Probably not."

Miles refrains from asking Galeni any questions while the drug is still active.

(Miles laughs, not entirely happily.)

"The clone's supposed to kill my father and Gregor," argues Miles. "At a bare minimum. My bones are not what I'd call an advantage in close combat."

"Both of those people are, on occasion, unarmed in your presence," says Linya. "The bone condition doesn't affect your ability to hold a nerve disruptor."

"Nor does it affect my ability to get one past Gregor's close security perimeter, who, trust me, don't grant exceptions for friends of the family."

"I've watched the Emperor's security come into Vorkosigan House. They were professional, but - I don't think I'll elaborate on where in the house you could hide nerve disruptors while the ceiling is watching, come to think of it."

"Good call. Fine. What's your take, Captain Galeni? Does my much-delayed twin brother have my bones, or no?"

"He said he didn't, but again, could have easily lied. He didn't punch a wall, or offer to."

"But then, he never tried to convince you he was me while you knew there was another option. Square one," sighs Miles.

"His excuse for not picking up your pen involved a fractured metacarpal. I imagine this was fictitious whether that would have been easy to do or not."

"Probably. Because, again, broken bones make it difficult to do things."

"There isn't actually a strong custom for third and so on sons," Miles mentions. "Although I think I read somewhere that some families have been known to start going through the great-grandparents in various contrived orders."

"Well, that will be good to know if we find ourselves free to go and I manage to confirm your identity and we decant a little Aral Adri only to find that parenthood agrees with us overwhelmingly well and we want six," she sighs.

"Now I'm tempted to start listing great-grandparents... I don't know Mother's side off the top of my head, but Father's grandfathers were Xav Aral Vorbarra and Demyan Antoly Vorkosigan."

"Xav is Ivan's middle name, seems unnecessary duplicatory. Demyan isn't bad, Antoly's already on the list for Son Two..."

"And then, let's see... Prince Xav's wife was Betan again, can't go back from there, but his father was Dorca Vorbarra, obviously. Come to think of it I don't think I know Dorca the Just's middle name. Then Grandfather's grandfathers were Pierre Vorrutyer whose middle name I don't remember either, and Piotr Isidor Vorkosigan. You get a lot of duplicates with this method, I'm discovering. A distinct flaw."

"Or collect suggestions. God knows who from."

"Yes, you do seem to bring that out in him."

"Perhaps he'll get used to me eventually." She looks up at the light fixture. "Unless of course we are all shot the next time the door opens."

"Unless that," agrees Miles. "But they'd have trouble hauling all the bodies away. Except mine - I'm nice and light."

"Come to think of it Mark was heavier. Not outside normal range, but heavier."

"Point in favour of my bones theory."

"It is. That one probably wasn't fragile. I just don't see why they couldn't have made an arbitrary number, to swap in depending on what kind of scrutiny they expected or what, exactly, they were trying to do."

"Cost. I've been to Jackson's Whole. Producing one accelerated clone is fucking expensive, beyond most people's means. Producing ten, beyond all but the richest. Producing fifty - at that point they might as well just buy several mercenary armies and wage open war. I might grant that they could have two, if they desperately wanted to, but they could only send one to Barrayar in my place - any theory that assumes they have the means to send both strongly implies they also have the means to swap them in for me without waiting for me to fall into their collective lap on Earth."

He nods, semi-happily.

"How much of a disaster is this going to be with Captain Illyan?" she wonders. "The having told me, I mean, rather than concocting an elaborate story that retained separation between you and Naismith."

"At this point I'm inclined to say that if Illyan feels like complaining about my choices he can bugger himself," says Miles. "With a plasma arc. I suppose it's possible he might fire me, but if we all get out of this alive I very much doubt it."

"What would you have done if you'd tried to sell me the story and I hadn't gotten the job bid? ...For that matter, did you wind up having to write your mother in case I did the same? I didn't, as it happens, but..."

"Of course I wrote my mother. I - don't know what I would have done. Tried harder, probably."

"I confess it's rather alarming that you were that good at lying to my face, even if I already had fair warning that you'd try it if you had to. Didn't even have the - flinch."

Miles glances at Galeni, and says, "I've recently been given cause to wonder whether I might have been getting a little too into the Naismith persona. I - when you picked me up, it didn't occur to me that I had a wife who did that occasionally until I turned around."

"And then I caught up with myself and spent the rest of that conversation internally screaming, but God knows incredible stress is practically Admiral Naismith's optimal working condition."

"The Dendarii have been in operation for a - a while. Since before I met you."

"Yeah. Admiral Naismith, uh, has never dated, if that's what you're asking. Too busy getting shot at, and then - well, I remember I'm married when people flirt with me."

"I picked Mark up, I kissed him on the forehead, I put him down, he shot me," she adds. "If you were wondering."

"That's, um. Unpleasantly reassuring?"

"I don't doubt it."

"I wonder what they're planning to do about that. There is probably no plausible deal I can offer that gets me out of here to put in soothing appearances, is there?"

"I don't know. Maybe you'll decide you like Mark better and run off with him to briefly be Empress of Barrayar," Miles jokes.

"The title only appeals in isolation of all the suggested context."

"No kidding."

"Although I do occasionally fantasize about accumulating a sufficient bankroll to buy a planet, I imagine it would be least feather-ruffling if I administrated it under the title of Vicerine and reported to Emperor Gregor rather than striking off on my political lonesome, considering choices I have made since first coming up with this daydream."

"Is there any particular planet you have your eye on?"

"Oh, no, because the details depend very much on whether I can afford much terraforming."

"Aha. Well, I'll keep an eye on the astronomical survey news and see if I can't find you a cheap one with good prospects for Winterfair."

"Not this coming Winterfair, I think. I am currently quite illiquid, being mostly invested in the pens and their export. But thank you."

"Uh, speaking of which, how likely is it that you could come up with eighteen million marks really quickly...? ImpSec would pay you back, I'm very nearly sure of it, but the Dendarii were supposed to be paid almost a month ago and if we manage to get out of here somehow before the money finally shows up I'd really like to get that sorted as fast as possible."

"We are owed that eighteen million marks for a very impressive mission. Hellish, but impressive. I don't think there'll be trouble getting the money out of ImpSec once an actual line of communication is established."

"...maybe."

"At least, since there actually are two of me, there's a chance I'll be able to pull off pretending Naismith and Vorkosigan are not the same individual."

"I don't really like the idea of putting Mark in the line of fire for the breakout. His misbehavior exists but is unrelated."

"I'm hardly going to let Mark pick up the Dendarii and run off with them. And I definitely don't want to let the Cetagandans know that Naismith and Vorkosigan are the same person, can you imagine?"

"That would at minimum result in extremely interesting correspondence with Lisbet. It's possible it could be kept to that minimum, but."

"Not likely. Whatever positive effect Lisbet has been having, it wasn't enough to prevent what was going on at Dagoola before Naismith showed up."

"Well, I haven't exactly asked her what the plan with Marilac is supposed to be. It seems unlike her, but of course she'd have to get Emperor Fletchir on board in order to effect any policy changes. Cynically I'd say she's using Marilac to prune the selection of warlike ghem she has to deal with before making some move or other."

"I can think of more appealing ways to prune one's selection of warlike ghem."

"I didn't say it was a course of action I endorsed. I'm not privy to this sort of information; I probably wouldn't be even if I'd stayed. I'm speculating wildly about ways to reconcile what I know of the imperial personalities and the goings-on that required a POW camp break."

"Mass psychological torture," he says. "That's what was going on."

"It seems unlikely that Fletchir didn't know about it. It might have escaped Lisbet. She's got an heir to design and thousands of genetic projects to oversee and eight planets and associated borders full of things that compete for her attention. And I know more about her than him." She sighs. "Anyway. Good for you, and if it will help I will stand in front of you looking extremely haut."

"Thank you. If I find myself being menaced by Cetagandan assassins while out and about as Lord Vorkosigan, I will definitely take you up on that."

This stops him in his tracks. Frozen, utterly immobile, neither tense nor loose, merely still.

"That... is technically true," he muses, still in the local accent. "Or at least the argument could be made. I hadn't—mm. Of course. Your mother wouldn't have it any other way," he cocks his head inquiringly, "isn't that right?"

Miles swallows. "Yeah." God, this is weird.

"I tried hating you," he says conversationally, now that Miles has drawn him out. "It didn't take... you did not create me. The blame for my existence cannot be laid at your door."

"I'm glad to hear that. I think," says Miles. "Is your existence such a fault?"

"Oh," he breathes, with a flash of deep anger, "yes." But then he shakes his head and resumes pacing. "Now that I'm here, though... I lack a direction, you see. In, out, up, down, forward, back. My degrees of freedom are severely curtailed. I was hoping... Ser Galen promised me I'd get to talk to you, one on one, face to face. He's been more hesitant about that recently. I suspect he has finally noticed you're not a fucking idiot. He promised me I'd be the next Emperor of Barrayar, but I bet you'd tell me differently, wouldn't you?"

"I'm not sure I'd fit in," he says with an odd little smile. "Anyway. That's my point. Somehow he's managed to train me to be you my entire life without noticing who you are. If he had, he wouldn't have tried such a stupid ruse. I'm not a future Emperor, I'm a political high explosive."

"Ah... yes, just about," says Miles. "May I ask what you plan to do about this? And... why you're telling me?"

"I've no idea. I told you. No direction." He spreads his hands. "All I know is that you are the one thing in the universe I understand perfectly."

"...That's very unsettling," says Miles.

He grins sharply. "Is it."

"I'd wondered," he says thoughtfully, "how long it might take you to start picking up on me... I don't want to let him kill you. But I don't know that I want to throw my life away trying to stop him. It's not loyalty, you understand. The day my hatred outweighs my fear, Galen is a dead man."

"...noted. Do you," Miles asks on reckless impulse, "get some kind of weird kick out of telling me things I could use to get you killed?"

"I'll take that as a yes."

"Oh, I don't want you to die," he half-giggles, half-sobs. "I like you too much."

...that, that is an unexpected turn. Miles's heart hurts.

He wipes his eyes and asks breathlessly, "When your wife picked me up, I - how do you live through it? Or do you not know what I'm talking about? Maybe you don't. If everyone felt like that when things like that happened, I - I can't conceive of how society would work."

"I'm tempted to say Linya just has that effect on people," says Miles. "The first time I met her, I literally fell to my knees. It's kind of embarrassing in retrospect."

"You're tempted, but you don't actually think that's it," says Mark, watching his face. "What do you think? I want to know."

"I'm... not sure I have enough data to comment," says Miles.

"First guess."

"...Are you so horrifyingly deprived of positive touch that being picked up and kissed by someone who thinks you're her husband nearly gives you a heart attack?"

"...I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but the more I hear about your life, the more it sounds like the most depressing thing I've ever heard."

"It probably is," he says merrily.

"...Well, I suppose being proud of that is more fun than many other options..."

"You are starting to understand me."

"To my partial regret, yes."

Mark giggles some more.

"I don't suppose I could convince you to, say, untie me and give me a weapon," says Miles hopefully.

"What the hell are you?" says Miles helplessly. "Talking to you is like - like a funhouse mirror for the soul. I can never tell where you're going to jump next. What do you mean by afraid...?"

"I don't think you can know. I think you're too - Miles. Too Naismith. You don't know how to not win."

"I'm unsettled by your accuracy. Again. That seems to be a theme."

"In retrospect, it's so obvious that Naismith had to exist, I wonder how I missed it. There had to be somewhere for all that to go, somewhere besides whatever you did to gain a haut-wife."

"My turn to non sequitur," says Miles. "Lay my mind to rest about something - do your bones break like mine?"

"No," he says, and instead of merely leaving it at that, he makes a fist and punches his other palm, bringing his hands together with sharp and sudden force.

Miles winces - he can almost hear the crack that would result if he tried such a thing. "Point proven. Um... thank you. I think."

Mark shrugs. "If I just told you, you wouldn't know."

"What a... fascinating philosophy," says Miles.

"People believe you when you tell them things. Frequently."

"...yes..." says Miles.

"I've done that now and I still don't know how it works."

"I'm really not sure I can explain."

"Probably not," Mark agrees. "It's like breathing, to you. The atmosphere of trust. I have lived my life in a vacuum."

"You could have a life," Miles says desperately. "I don't know what you've got now, but life isn't it. Don't - don't just crawl into my skin and walk away. It's damned uncomfortable to wear sometimes, and I'm afraid you'd find it stifling."

"It's not that I don't know what I stand to gain; it's that I do know what I stand to lose. I told you, you don't understand how I'm afraid."

"Maybe not. But isn't this," he does his best to make a gesture encompassing the room, given that he can only move his head, "an unauthorized venture anyway? Is it that much more of a risk?"

"Yes. This, I can pass off as obedience. The other thing - " He shudders; shakes his head.

"Fine," sighs Miles. "Fine... Look - whatever else happens - listen to Mother. She can teach you to breathe if anyone can."

"Maybe so," he says, half doubt, half hope.

"What... what do you have planned for our father?"

"Not assassination, if that's what you mean... I've read his book. It was fascinating. I think I'd enjoy talking to him. But it's hard to tell. There aren't many people I enjoy talking to." He pauses, then adds, "Ivan's fun."

...Miles can't help laughing. "Ivan?"

"Yes. Ivan, and you. That's it so far. But I might like your wife better if I didn't have to pretend to be you to talk to her. Maybe I'll make the experiment."

"...I feel like I should point out that 'tied to a chair' is probably not her optimal conversational circumstance."

"Is it yours?" inquires Mark.

Miles snorts. "No."

"It's hard to tell. You seem to be doing pretty well."

"I pride myself on my adaptability."

"Hm. Now think of something horrifying, I'm putting you back and the guards shouldn't see you looking like you had fun."

"Hey!" yelps Miles, but he restrains himself from actually trying to jump them. It wouldn't do any bloody good.

"You know, that's just what your husband said. He also said tied to a chair is not your optimal conversational context. Care to comment?"

"It really isn't. Neither is 'recently stunned'. But I'll make do, if what you want to do is talk as opposed to bringing me somewhere I can buy you a ticket to Tau Ceti and then call the police."

"Yeah, sorry about that. I think the guards are more afraid of you than I am. You're engineered but you've had no combat training; I could take you. What's a ticket to Tau Ceti supposed to do for me?"

"You might be able to take me; I very much doubt you could outrun me," she points out. "Neither could they. I don't know what you want to do, but Tau Ceti is less here than here. I'll send you all the way to Beta or something if you'd rather. With a pocketful of cash if you like."

"And you can't outrun a stunner beam. Game to me," Mark points out. "Anyway, that's a very nice offer, but if I wanted to run I could just run. All the way to Beta Colony if I felt like it. I hear I've got a grandmother there."

"You have, although I've never met her so I can't comment on her hospitality."

"I am currently very much afraid that at some point my value as a live captive will run out and I will never get to go home and finish working on the baby and help Dr. Cheung's research and make sufficiently certain that Miles is my Miles to the point where I'm willing to act like it more than conversationally and ever play the piano again and so on. This is probably not what you have in mind."

"It isn't," he agrees. "I'm afraid of different things, different ways. It's like... how do I translate...? It's like having a little invisible goblin sitting on my shoulder with a nerve disruptor," he gestures to the approximate hypothetical location of the goblin, "and every time I think about doing something that I know would make Galen angry..." He shrugs. "It doesn't matter if it would be almost impossible for him to find me after I pissed him off. The goblin's still there. A fear so strong it has separated from its source and gained a life of its own."

She shakes her head. "I've never had that, no."

"I'm happy for you. I wouldn't wish my life on anyone."

"Neither would I. I have looked at Miles's genome. I have a loose inkling of what must have happened to you."

"Oh, lots of surgery," he says dismissively. "Surgery's not so bad. I thought it was a bit much when they replaced my leg bones with synthetics, but I wasn't about to complain. There's things worse than surgery."

"They replaced -? Of course they did. But you also do an astonishingly convincing put-on of Miles for having to be younger than him, and raised in a different context, and I don't imagine that left much spare time." Pause. "And I imagine when your leg bones were replaced you didn't have anyone visiting you in the hospital to sing to you."

"You sang to him? Of course you did," says Mark, smiling. "Putting on Miles is easy. I had to learn a lot about him, but I don't think it was as hard as you're imagining. I learn fast. No, the hard part is..." he trails off and makes a vague gesture in her direction.

"The part where I picked you up." She sighs. "You probably could have rescued the act, but then of course I would have touched you again eventually."

"Yeah. And—what was it Miles said—" He looks abstracted for a moment, then quotes perfectly,

"...Are you so horrifyingly deprived of positive touch that being picked up and kissed by someone who thinks you're her husband nearly gives you a heart attack?"

"Well, I don't know, you'd have to untie at least one of my hands and I'm not sure how much of a drawback you'd consider that."

And she holds out her hand, arm straight, hand extended invitingly.

"The parameters?"

"The..." He gestures helplessly. "I know how to be Miles. I don't know how to be me. I don't - understand what you're doing, or why, or what I want to do about it."

"Well, if I presented Miles with my hand like this he'd probably kiss it, so anything other than that is an option."

Mark blinks. "Hm. Yes..." He draws back a little. "But now I'm - I remember what happened last time you touched me. Thinking of what Miles would do just makes that worse."

"True." He still eyes her hand as though it might electrocute him on contact, but he approaches close enough to clasp it in the socially approved manner.

Shake, shake.

He lets go and backs away again, shivering.

She puts her hand in her lap and watches him.