"In that case, what have they done with the discards?" Miles asked wildly. A parade of clones passed through his imagination like a chart of evolution run in reverse, upright Ivanish Cro-Magnon devolving through missing links into chimpanzee-Miles.
"I imagine they were disposed of." Galeni's voice was high and mild, not so much denying as defying honor.
Miles's belly shivered. "Ruthless."
"Oh, yes," Galeni agreed in that same soft tone.
Miles groped for logic. "In that case, he—the clone—" my twin brother, there, he had thought the thought flat out, "must be significantly younger than myself."
"Several years," agreed Galeni. "At a guess, six."
"Why six?"
"Arithmetic. You were about six when the Komarran revolt ended. That would have been the time this group would have been forced to turn its attention toward some other, less direct plan of attack on Barrayar. The idea would not have interested them earlier. Much later, and the clone would still be too young to replace you even with accelerated growth. Too young to carry off the act. It appears he must act as well as look like you, for a time."
"But why a clone at all? Why a clone of me?"
"I believe he's intended for some sabotage timed with an uprising on Komarr."
"Barrayar will never let Komarr go. Never. You're our front gate."
"I know," said Galeni tiredly. "But some people would rather drown our domes in blood than learn from history. Or learn anything at all." He glanced involuntarily at the light.
Miles swallowed, rallied his will, spoke into the silence. "How long have you known your father hadn't been blown up with that bomb?"
Galeni's eyes flashed back to him; his body froze, then relaxed, if so grating a motion could be called relaxation. But he said merely, "Five days." After a time he added, "How did you know?"
"We cracked open your personnel files. He was your only close relative with no morgue record."
"We believed he was dead." Galeni's voice was distant, level. "My brother certainly was. Barrayaran Security came and got my mother and me, to identify what was left. There wasn't much left. It was no effort to believe there was literally nothing left of my father, who'd been reported much closer to the center of the explosion."
The man was in knots, fraying before Miles's eyes. Miles found he did not relish the idea of watching Galeni come apart. Very wasteful of an officer, from the Imperium's viewpoint. Like an assassination. Or an abortion.
"My father spoke constantly of Komarr's freedom," Galeni went on softly. To Miles, to the light fixture, to himself? "Of the sacrifices we must all make for the freedom of Komarr. He was very big on sacrifices. Human or otherwise. But he never seemed to care much about the freedom of anyone on Komarr. It wasn't until the day the revolt died that I became a free man. The day he died. Free to look with my own eyes, make my own judgments, choose my own life. Or so I thought. Life," the lilt of Galeni's voice was infinitely sarcastic, "is full of surprises." He favored the light fixture with a vulpine smile.
Miles squeezed his eyes shut, trying to think straight. Not easy, with Galeni sitting two meters away emanating murderous tension on red-line overload. Miles had the unpleasant feeling that his nominal superior had lost sight of the larger strategic picture just now, locked in some private struggle with old ghosts. Or old non-ghosts. It was up to Miles.
Up to Miles to do—what? He rose, and prowled the room on shaky legs. Galeni watched him through slitted eyes without comment. No exit but the one. He scratched at the walls with his fingernails. They were impervious. The seams at floor and ceiling—he hopped up on the bench and reached dizzily—yielded not at all. He passed into the half-bath, relieved himself, washed his hands and face and sour mouth at the sink—cold water only—drank from his cupped hands. No glass, not even a plastic cup. The water sloshed nauseatingly in his stomach, his hands twitched from the aftereffects of the stun. He wondered what the result of stuffing the drain with his shirt and running the water might be. That seemed to be the maximum possible vandalism. He returned to his bench, wiping his hands on his trousers, and sat down before he fell down.
"Do they feed you?" he asked. "Two or three times a day," said Galeni. "Some of whatever they're cooking upstairs. Several people seem to be living in this house."
"That would seem to be the one time you could make a break, then."
"It was," agreed Galeni.
Was, right. Their captors' guard would be redoubled now, after Galeni's attempt. Not an attempt that Miles dared duplicate; a beating like the one Galeni had taken would incapacitate him completely. Galeni contemplated the locked door. "It does provide a certain amount of entertainment. You never know, when the door opens, if it's going to be dinner or death."
Miles got the impression Galeni was rather hoping for death. Bloody kamikaze. Miles knew the fey mood inside out. You could fall in love with that grave-narrow option—it was the enemy of creative strategic thought. It was the enemy, period.
But his resolve failed to find a practical form, though he spun it round and round inside his head. Surely Ivan must recognize the imposter immediately. Or would he just put down any mistakes the clone made to Miles having an off day? There was certainly precedent for that. And if the Komarrans had spent four days pumping Galeni dry on embassy procedures, it was quite possible the clone would be able to carry out Miles's routine duties error-free. After all, if the creature were truly a clone, he should be just as smart as Miles.
Or just as stupid . . . Miles hung on to that comforting thought. If Miles made mistakes, in his desperate dance through life, the clone could make just as many. Trouble was, would anyone be able to tell their mistakes apart?
But what about the Dendarii? His Dendarii, fallen into the hands of a—a what? What were the Komarrans' plans? How much did they know about the Dendarii? And how the hell could the clone duplicate both Lord Vorkosigan and Admiral Naismith, when Miles himself had to make them up as he went along?
And Elli—if Elli hadn't been able to tell the difference in the abandoned house, could she tell the difference in bed? Would that filthy tittle imposter dare seduce Quinn? But what human being of any of the three sexes could possibly resist an invitation to cavort between the sheets with the brilliant and beautiful. . . ? Miles's imagination curdled with detailed pictures of the clone, out there, Doing Things to his Quinn, most of which Miles hadn't even had time to try yet himself. He found his hands writhing in a white-knuckled grip on the edge of the bench, in danger of snapping his finger-bones.
He let up. Surely the clone must try to avoid intimate situations with people who knew Miles well, where he would be in most danger of getting tripped up. Unless he was a cocky little shit with a compulsive experimental bent, like the one Miles shaved daily in his mirror. Miles and Elli had just begun to get intimate—would she, wouldn't she know the difference? If she—Miles swallowed, and tried to bring his mind back to the larger political scenario.
The clone hadn't been created just to drive him crazy; that was merely a fringe benefit. The clone had been forged as a weapon, directed against Barrayar. Through Prime Minister Count Aral Vorkosigan against Barrayar, as if the two were one. Miles had no illusions; it wasn't for his own self's sake that this plot had been gotten up. He could think of a dozen ways a false Miles might be used against his father, ranging from relatively benign to horrifically cruel. He glanced across the cell at Galeni, sprawled coolly, waiting for his own father to kill him. Or using that very coolness to force his father to kill him, proving . . . what? Miles quietly dropped the benign scenarios off his list of possibilities.