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snapped Miles s realization into place, for the man did not greatly resemble
Captain Galeni except perhaps in the paleness of his skin. He appeared to be
about sixty. Clipped greying hair, lined face, body thickening with age, clearly
not that of an outdoorsman or athlete. He wore conservative Earther clothes
a generation removed from the historical fashions of the parading teenagers
that Miles had enjoyed in the shopping arcade. He might have been a
businessman or a teacher, anything but a hairy terrorist.Except for the
murderous tension. In that, in the coil of the hands, flare of the nostril, iron
of the mouth, stiffness of the neck, Ser Galen and Duv Galeni were as
one.Galen rose, and stalked slowly around Miles with the air of a man
studying a sculpture by an inferior artist. Miles stood very still, feeling
smaller than usual in his sock feet, stubbled and grubby. He had come to the
center at last, the secret source From which all his coiling troubles had been
emanating these past weeks. And the center was this man, who orbited him
staring back with hungry hate. Or perhaps he and Galen were both centers,
like the twin foci of an ellipse, brought together and superimposed at last to
create some diabolical perfect circle.Miles felt very small and very brittle.
Galen could very well begin by breaking Miles s arms with the same absent,
nervous air that Elli Quinn bit her nails, just to release tension. Does he see
me at all? Or am I an object, a symbol representing the enemy will he
murder me for the sake of sheer allegory?"So," Ser Galen spoke. "This is the
real thing at last. Not very impressive, to have seduced my son s loyalty. What
can he see in you? Still, you represent Barrayar very well. The monster son of
a monster father, Aral Vorkosigan s secret moral genotype made flesh for all
to see. Perhaps there is some justice in the universe after all."
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"Very poetic," choked Miles, "but biologically inaccurate, as you must know,
having cloned me."
Galen smiled sourly. "I won t insist on it." He completed his circuit and faced
Miles. "I suppose you couldn t help being born. But why have you never
revolted from the monster? He made you what you are " an expansive
gesture of Galen s open hand summed up Miles s stunted and twisted frame.
"What dictator s charisma does the man possess, that he s able to hypnotize
not only his own son but everyone else s too?" The prone figure in the vid
console seemed to pluck at Galen s eye. "Why do you follow him? Why does
David? What corrupt kick can my son get out of crawling into a Barrayaran
goon-uniform and marching behind Vorkosigan?" Galen s voice feigned light
banter very badly; the undertones twisted with anguish.
Miles, glowering, clipped out, "For one thing, my father has never abandoned
me in the presence of an enemy."
Galen s head jerked back, all pretense of banter extinguished. He turned
abruptly away, and went to take up the Hypospray from the bench.
Miles silently cursed his own tongue. But for that stupid impulse to grab the
last word, to return the cut, he might have kept the man talking, and learned
something. Now the talking, and the learning, would all be going the other
way.
The two guards took him by the elbows. The one on the left pushed up his
shirt sleeve. Here it came. Galen pressed the hypospray against the vein on
the inside of Miles s elbow, a hiss, a prickling bite. "What is it?" Miles had just
time to ask. His voice sounded unfortunately weak and nervous in his own
ears.
"Fast-penta, of course," replied Galen easily.
Miles was not surprised, though he cringed inwardly, knowing what was to
come. He had studied fast-penta s pharmacology, effects, and proper use in
the Security course at the Barrayaran Imperial Academy. It was the drug of
choice for interrogation, not only for the Imperial Service but galaxy-wide.
The near-perfect truth serum, irresistible, harmless to the subject even with
repeated doses. Irresistible and harmless, that is, except to the unfortunate
few who had either a natural or artificially-induced allergic reaction to it.
Miles had never even been considered as a candidate for this last
conditioning, his person being judged more valuable than any secret
information he might contain. Other espionage agents were less lucky.
Anaphylactic shock was an even less heroic death than the disintegration
chamber usually reserved for convicted spies.
Despairing, Miles waited to go ga-ga. Admiral Naismith had sat in on more
than one real fast-penta interrogation. The drug washed all reason out to sea
on a flood of benign good feeling and charitable cheer. Like a cat on catnip, it
was highly amusing to watch in somebody else. In moments he would be
mellow to the point of drooling idiocy.Ugly, to think of the resolute Captain
Galeni having been so shamefully reduced. Four times running, he d said. No
wonder he was twitchy.Miles could feel his heart racing, as though he d
overdosed on caffeine. His vision seemed to sharpen to an almost painful
focus. The edge lines of every object in the room glowed, the masses they
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enclosed palpable to his exacerbated senses. Galen, standing back by the
pulsing window, was a live-wiring diagram, electric and dangerous, loaded
with deadly voltage awaiting some triggering discharge.Mellow, this wasn t.
He had to be slipping into natural shock. Miles took his last breath. Would his
interrogator ever be surprised. . . .
Rather to Miles s own surprise, he kept on panting. Not anaphylactic shock,
then. Just another damned idiosyncratic drug reaction. He hoped the stuff
wouldn t bring on those ghastly hallucinations like that bloody sedative he d
been given once by an unsuspecting surgeon. He wanted to scream. His eyes
flashed white-edged to follow Galen s least motion.
One of the guards shoved a chair up behind him and sat him down. Miles fell
into it gratefully, shivering uncontrollably. His thoughts seemed to explode in
fragments and reform, like fireworks being run forward and then in reverse
through a vid. Galen frowned down at him.
"Describe the security procedures for entry and exit from the Barrayaran
embassy."
Surely they must have squeezed this basic information out of Captain Galeni
already it must merely be a question to check the effect of the fast-penta, ". . .
of the fast-penta," Miles heard his own voice echoing his thoughts. Oh, hell.
He d hoped his odd reaction to the drug might have included the ability to
resist spilling his mind out his mouth. " what a repulsive image . . ." Head
swaying, he stared down at the floor in front of his feet as if he might see a
pile of bloody brains vomited there.
Ser Galen strode forward and yanked his head up by the hair, and repeated
through his teeth, "Describe the security procedures for entry and exit from
the Barrayaran embassy!"
"Sergeant Barth s in charge," Miles began impulsively. "Obnoxious bigot. No
savoir faire at all, and a jock to boot " Unable to stop himself, Miles poured
out not only codes, passwords, scanner perimeters, but also personnel
schedules, his private opinions of each and every individual, and a scathing
critique of the Security net s defects. One thought triggered another and then
the next in an explosive chain like a string of firecrackers. He couldn t stop;
he babbled. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]