Galen overrode this. "Ignore it," he instructed. "You'll be out of there before anything can come of it."
"All right," said the Miles-clone doubtfully.
"And leave the Dendarii holding the bag?" said Miles angrily. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying desperately to think in the wavering room. "But of course, you don't care anything about the Dendarii, do you? You must care! They put their lives on the line for you—me—it's wrong—you'll betray them, casually, without even thinking about it, you scarcely know what they are—"
"Quite," sighed the clone, "and speaking of what they are, just what is his relationship with this Commander Quinn, anyway? Did you finally decide he was screwing her, or not?"
"We're just good friends," caroled Miles, and laughed hysterically. He lunged for the comconsole—the guards grabbed for him and missed—and climbing across the desk snarled into the vid, "Stay away from her, you little shit! She's mine, you hear, mine, mine, all mine—Quinn, Quinn, beautiful Quinn, Quinn of the evening, beautiful Quinn," he sang off-key as the guards dragged him back. Blows ran him down into silence.
"I thought you had him on fast-penta," said the clone to Galen.
"We do."
"It doesn't sound like fast-penta!"
"Yes. There's something wrong. Yet he's not supposed to have been conditioned. . . . I'm beginning to seriously doubt the utility of keeping him alive any longer as a data bank if we can't trust his answers."
"That's just great," scowled the clone. He glanced over his shoulder. "I've got to go. I'll report again tonight. If I'm still alive by then." He vanished with an irritated bleep.
Galen turned back to Miles with a list of questions, about Barrayaran Imperial Headquarters, about Emperor Gregor, about Miles's usual activities when quartered in Barrayar's capital city Vorbarr Sultana, and question after question about the Dendarii Mercenaries. Miles, writhing, answered and answered and answered, unable to stop his own rapid gabble. But partway through he hit on a line of poetry, and ended by reciting the whole sonnet. Galen's slaps could not derail him; the strings of association were too strong to break into. After that he managed to jump off the interrogation repeatedly. Works with strong meter and rhyme worked best, bad narrative verse, obscene Dendarii drinking songs, anything a chance word or phrase from his interrogators could trigger. His memory seemed phenomenal. Galen's face was darkening with frustration.
"At this rate we'll be here till next winter," said one of the guards in disgust.
Miles's bleeding lips peeled back in a maniacal grin. " 'Now is the winter of our discontent,' " he cried, " 'made glorious summer by this sun of York—' "
It had been years since he'd memorized the ancient play, but the vivid iambic pentameter carried him along relentlessly. Short of beating him into unconsciousness, there seemed nothing Galen could do to turn him off. Miles was not even to the end of Act I when the two guards dragged him back down the lift tube and threw him roughly back into his prison room.
Once there, his rapid-firing neurons drove him from wall to wall, pacing and reciting, jumping up and down off the bench at appropriate moments, doing all the women's parts in a high falsetto. He got all the way through to the last Amen! before he collapsed on the floor and lay gasping.
Captain Galeni, who had been scrunched into the corner on his bench with his arms wrapped protectively around his ears for the last hour, lifted his head cautiously from their circle. "Are you quite finished?" he said mildly.
Miles rolled over on his back and stared blankly up at the light. "Three cheers for literacy … I feel sick."
"I'm not surprised." Galen looked pale and ill himself, still shaky from the aftereffects of the stun. "What was that?"
"The play, or the drug?"
"I recognized the play, thank you. What drug?"
"Fast-penta."
"You're joking."
"Not joking. I have several weird drug reactions. There's a whole chemical class of sedatives I can't touch. Apparently this is related."
"What a piece of good fortune!"
I seriously doubt the utility of keeping him alive. . . "I don't think so," Miles said distantly. He lurched to his feet, ricocheted into the bathroom, threw up, and passed out.
He awoke with the unblinking glare of the overhead light needling his eyes, and flung an arm over his face to shut it out. Someone—Galeni?—had put him back on his bench. Galeni was asleep now across the room, breathing heavily. A meal, cold and congealed, sat on a plate at the end of Miles's bench. It must be deep night. Miles contemplated the food queasily, then put it down out of sight under his bench. Time stretched inexorably as he tossed, turned, sat up, lay down, aching and nauseous, escape even into sleep receding out of reach.
The next morning after breakfast they came and took not Miles but Galeni. The captain left with a look of grim distaste in his eyes. Sounds of a violent altercation came from the hallway, Galeni trying to get himself stunned, a draconian but surely effective way of avoiding interrogation. He did not succeed. Their captors returned him, giggling vacuously, after a marathon number of hours.
He lay limply on his bench giving vent to an occasional snicker for what might have been another hour before slipping into torpid sleep. Miles gallantly resisted taking advantage of the residual effects of the drug to get in a few questions of his own. Alas, fast-penta subjects remembered their experiences. Miles was fairly certain by now that one of Galeni's personal triggers was in the key word betrayal.
Galeni returned to a thick but cold consciousness at last, looking ill. Fast-penta hangover was a remarkably unpleasant experience; in that, Miles's response to the drug had not been at all idiosyncratic.
Miles winced in sympathy as Galeni made his own trip to the washroom.
Galeni returned to sit heavily on his bench. His eye fell on his cold dinner plate; he prodded it dubiously with an experimental forefinger. "You want this?" he asked Miles.
"No, thanks."
"Mm." Galeni shoved the plate out of sight under his bench and sat back rather nervelessly.
"What were they after," Miles jerked his head doorward, "in your interrogation?"
"Personal history, mostly, this time." Galeni contemplated his socks; which were getting stiff with grime; but Miles was not sure Galeni was seeing what he was looking at. "He seems to have this strange difficulty grasping that I actually mean what I say. He had apparently genuinely convinced himself that he had only to reveal himself, to whistle, to bring me to his heel as I had run when I was fourteen. As if the weight of my entire adult life counted for nothing. As if I'd put on this uniform for a joke, or out of despair or confusion—anything but a reasoned and principled decision."
No need to ask who "he" was. Miles grinned sourly. "What, it wasn't for the spiffy boots?"
"I'm just dazzled by the glittering tinsel of neo-fascism," Galeni informed him blandly.
"Is that how he phrased it? Anyway, it's feudalism, not fascism, apart maybe from some of the late Emperor Ezar Vorbarra's experiments in centralization. The glittering tinsel of neo-feudalism I will grant you."
"I am thoroughly familiar with the principle of Barrayaran government, thank you," remarked Dr. Galeni.
"Such as they are," muttered Miles. "It was all arrived at by improvisation, y'know."
"Yes, I do. Glad to know you aren't as historically illiterate as the average young officer coming up these days."
"So . . ." Miles said, "if it wasn't for the gold braid arid the shiny boots, why are you with us?"
"Oh, of course," Galeni rolled his eyes toward the light fixture, "I get a sadistic psychosexual kick out of being a bully, goon, and thug. It's a power trip."