Vorhovis seated himself on the Emperor's left.
"So," Gregor said to him, "what do you gentlemen think?"
"This"—Vorhovis leaned forward, and laid the data case containing Miles's Auditor's report on the comconsole—"is an extraordinary document, Gregor."
"Yes," seconded Vorthys. "Concise, coherent, and complete. Do you know how rare that is? I congratulate you on it, young man."
Do I get a good grade, professor? "Simon Illyan trained me. He didn't have much tolerance for slop. If he didn't like my field reports, he'd fire them back to me for additions. It got to be something of a hobby with him, I think. I could always tell when ImpSec HQ was having a really slow week, because my report would come back shot full of little query boxes with these dryly worded corrections for grammar and style. Ten years of that, and you learn to do it right the first time."
Vorkalloner smiled. "Old Vorsmydie," he noted, "used to turn in handwritten plastic flimsys. Never more than two pages. He insisted anything important could always be said in two pages."
"Illegibly handwritten," muttered Gregor.
"We used to have to go and squeeze the footnotes out of him in person. It became somewhat irritating," added Vorkalloner.
Vorhovis, with a gesture at the data case, went on to Miles, "You appear to have left the military prosecutor with very little to do."
"Nothing, in fact," said Gregor. "Allegre reported to me last night that Haroche has given up and is going to plead guilty, trying to reduce his sentence through cooperation. Well, he could hardly have confessed to Us and then turned around and tried to pretend innocence to a Service judge."
"I wouldn't have bet on that. He did have nerve," said Miles. "But I'm glad to hear it's not going to be dragged out.
"It was a truly bizarre case," Vorhovis went on. "I'd been worried something might be very wrong when I first heard that Illyan had gone down. But I could not have unraveled the events as you did, Lord Vorkosigan."
"I'm sure you would have unraveled them in your own way, sir," said Miles.
"No," said Vorhovis. He tapped the data case. "By my analysis, the critical juncture was when you brought in that galactic biochemist, Dr. Weddell. It was from that point that Haroche's plans began to go irretrievably wrong. I would not have known of Weddell's existence, and would have left the selection of the chip autopsy team entirely to Admiral Avakli."
"Avakli was good," Miles said, uncertain if this was
a criticism. The biocyberneticist had done his best, certainly.
"We"—a circular wave of Vorhovis's finger indicated the Auditors there assembled—"do not often work directly together. But we do consult with one another. 'What resources do you know of that I don't, that might have a bearing on this problem?' It increases our access to odd knowledge fivefold."
"Five-fold? I thought there were seven of you."
Vorthys smiled faintly. "We think of General Vorparadijs as a sort of Auditor Emeritus. Respected, but we don't make him come to meetings anymore."
"In fact," muttered Vorgustafson under his breath, "we don't even mention them to him."
"And Admiral Valentine has been too frail for some years to actively participate," Vorhovis added. "I would have urged him to resign, but as long as the gap left by the death of General Vorsmythe was still unfilled, there seemed no need to beg his space."
Miles had been dimly aware of the loss two years ago of the eighth Auditor, the elderly Vorsmythe. The position of ninth Auditor, which Miles had lately held, was by tradition always left open for acting Auditors, men with particular expertise called up at the Imperium's need, and released again when their task was done.
"So we four here," Vorhovis went on, "constitute a quorum of sorts. Vorlaisner couldn't be here, he's tied up on South Continent, but I've kept him apprised."
"That being so, my lords," said Gregor, "how do you advise Us?"
Vorhovis glanced around at his colleagues, who gave him nods, and pursed his lips judiciously. "He'll do, Gregor."
"Thank you." Gregor turned to Miles. "We were discussing job openings, a bit ago. It happens I also have a place this week for the position of eighth Auditor. Do you want it?"
Miles swallowed shock. "That's … a permanent post, Gregor. Auditors are appointed for life. Are you sure . . . ?"
"Not necessarily for life. They can resign, be fired, or impeached, as well as be assassinated or just drop dead."
"Aren't I a little young?" And he'd just been feeling so old. . . .
"If you take it," said Vorhovis, "you'll be the youngest Imperial Auditor in post Time-of-Isolation history. I looked it up."
"General Vorparadijs . . . will surely disapprove. As will like-minded men." Hell, Vorparadijs thinks I'm a mutant.
"General Vorparadijs," said Vorhovis, "thought I was too young for the job, and I was fifty-eight when I was appointed. Now he can switch his disapproval to you. I shall not miss it. And along with ten years of quite unique ImpSec training, you have more galactic experience than any three out of four of us in this room right now. Rather odd experience, but very wide-ranging. It will add a great deal of scope to our mutual data store."
"Have you, ah, read my personnel files?"
"General Allegre was kind enough to lend us complete copies, a few days ago." Vorhovis's glance swept Miles's chest, and the commendations there. Fortunately for the hang of his tunic, the Imperial Service did not also give out material symbols for one's demerits.
"Then you know . . . there was a little problem with my last ImpSec field report. A major problem," he corrected himself. He searched Vorhovis's face for whatever judgment lurked there. Vorhovis's expression was grave, but free of censure. Didn't he know? Miles looked around at all of them. "I almost killed one of our courier officers, while I was having one of my seizures. Illyan discharged me for lying about it." There. That was as bald and flat and true as he could make it.
"Yes. We and Gregor spent several hours yesterday afternoon, discussing that. Chief Illyan sat in." Vorhovis's eyes narrowed, and he regarded Miles with the utmost seriousness. "Given your falsification of that field report, what kept you from also taking Haroche's extraordinary bribe? I can almost guarantee no one would ever have figured it out."
"Haroche would have known. Galeni would have known. And I would have known. Two can keep a secret, if one of them is dead. Not three."
"You would certainly have outlived Captain Galeni, and you might have outlived Haroche. What then?"
Miles blew out his breath, and answered slowly. "Someone might have survived, with my name, in my body. It wouldn't have been me, anymore. It would have been a man I didn't much . . . like."
"You value yourself, do you, Lord Vorkosigan?"
"I've learned to," he admitted wryly.
"Then so, perhaps, shall we." Vorhovis sat back, an oddly satisfied smile playing about his lips.
"Note," said Gregor, "as the most junior member of this rather eclectic group, you will almost certainly be awarded the worst jobs."
"So true," murmured Vorhovis, a light in his eye. "It will be nice to pass that position off to someone more, ah, active."
"Every assignment," Gregor went on, "may be totally unrelated to any other. Unpredictable. You'll be tossed in to sink or swim."
"Not entirely unsupported," objected Vorthys. "The rest of us will be willing to call advice from shore, now and then."
For some reason Miles had a mental flash of the whole lot of them sitting in beach chairs holding drinks with fruit on little sticks, awarding him judiciously discussed points for style as he went under, frantically gulping and splashing, the water filling his nose.