At that moment, he discovered why it was called a cascade.
The sensation was of being under a waterfall, of some river that emptied a continent, tons of water battering him to his knees. He emitted a tiny mewl, crouching down with his arms wrapping his head, shooting pains behind his eyes and terror locking his throat. He pressed his lips together to prevent any other sound escaping, that would attract Rowan in all her concern. He needed to be alone for this, oh yes.
No wonder I couldn’t guess. I was trying to choose between two wrong answers. Oh, Mother. Oh, Da. Oh, Sergeant. Your boy has screwed up this one, bad. Real bad. Lieutenant Lord Miles Naismith Vorkosigan crawled on the tiled floor and screamed in silence, just a faint hiss. No, no, no, oh, shit… .
Elli …
Bel, Elena, Taura …
Mark … Mark? That stout, glowering, controlled, determined fellow had been Mark?
He could not remember anything about his death. He touched his chest, fearfully, tracing the evidence of … what event? He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to remember the last that he could. The raid downside at Bharaputra’s surgical facility, yes. Mark had engineered a disaster, Mark and Bel between them, and he’d come flying down to try and pull all their nuts out of the fire. Some megalomanic inspiration to top Mark, show him how the experts did it, to take those clone-children from Vasa Luigi, who had offended him … take ’em home to Mother. Crap, what does my mother know about all this bynow? Nothing, he prayed. They were all still here on Jackson’s Whole, somehow. How long had he been dead … ?
Where the hell is ImpSec?
Besides rolling around here on this bathroom floor, of course.
Ow, ow, ow… .
And Elli. Do I know you, ma’am? he’d asked. He should have bitten his tongue out.
Rowan … Elli. It made sense, in a weird way. His lover was a tall, brown-eyed, dark-haired, tough-minded, smart woman. The first thing presented to his confused awakening senses had been a tall, brown-eyed, dark-haired, tough-minded, smart woman. It was a very natural mistake.
He wondered if Elli was going to buy that explanation. His taste for heavily-armed girlfriends did have potential drawbacks. He inhaled a hopeless laugh.
It clogged in his throat. Taura, here? Did Ryoval know it? Did he know what a lovely big clawed hand she’d had in the destruction of his gene banks, four years ago, or did he just blame “Admiral Naismith”? True, all of Ryoval’s bounty hunters he’d encountered subsequently had seemed focused obsessively and exclusively upon himself. But Ryoval’s troopers had mistaken Mark for the Admiral; had Ryoval? Surely Mark would tell him he was the clone. Hell, I’d tell him the same if it were me, on the off-chance of confusing the issue. What was happening to Mark? Why had Mark offered himself as Miles’s … ransom? Mark couldn’t possibly be cryo-amnesic too, could he? No— Lilly had said the Dendarii, and the clones, and “Admiral Naismith” had all escaped. So how did they come to be back?
They came looking for you, Admiral Dipshit.
And had run headlong into Ryoval, looking for the same thing. He was a damned rendezvous.
What a merciful state cryo-amnesia was. He wished for it back.
“Are you all right?” Rowan called doubtfully. She stepped to the bathroom door, and saw him on the floor. “Oh, no! Another convulsion?” She dropped to her knees beside him, long fingers checking for damages. “Did you hit yourself on anything?”
“Ah … ah …” I’ll not bother avenging myself upon a cryo-amnesic, Vasa Luigi had said. He had better remain a cryo-amnesic then, for the moment, till he had a better grip on things. And on himself. “I think I’m all right.”
He suffered her to anxiously put him to bed. She stroked his hair. He stared at her in dismay through half-lidded, pretend-post-convulsion-sleepy eyes. What have I done?
What am I going to do?
Chapter Twenty-Six
He had forgotten why he was here. His skin was beginning to grow back.
He wondered where Mark had gone.
People came, and tormented a nameless thing without boundaries, and went away again. He met them variously. His emerging aspects became personas, and eventually, he named them, as well as he could identify them. There was Gorge, and Grunt, and Howl, and another, quiet one that lurked on the fringes, waiting.
He let Gorge go out to handle the force-feedings, because Gorge was the only one who actually enjoyed them. Gorge, after all, would never have been permitted to do all that Ryoval’s techs did. Grunt he sent forth when Ryoval came again with the hypospray of aphrodisiac. Grunt had also been responsible for the attack on Maree, the body-sculptured clone, he rather thought, though Grunt, when not all excited, was very shy and ashamed and didn’t talk much.
Howl handled the rest. He began to suspect Howl had been obscurely responsible for delivering them all to Ryoval in the first place. Finally, he’d come to a place where he could be punished enough. Never give aversion therapy to a masochist. The results are unpredictable. So Howl deserved what Howl got. The elusive fourth one just waited, and said that someday, they would all love him best.
They did not always stay within their lines. Howl had a tendency to eavesdrop on Gorge’s sessions, which came regularly while Howl’s did not; and more than once Gorge turned up riding along with Grunt on his adventures, which then became exceptionally peculiar. Nobody joined Howl by choice.
Having named them all, he finally found Mark by process of elimination. Gorge and Grunt and Howl and the Other had sent Lord Mark deep inside, to sleep through it all. Poor, fragile Lord Mark, barely twelve weeks old.
Ryoval could not even see Lord Mark down in there. Could not reach him. Could not touch him. Gorge and Grunt and Howl and the Other were all very careful not to wake the baby. Tender and protective, they defended him. They were equipped to. An ugly, grotty, hard-bitten bunch, these psychic mercenaries of his. Unlovely. But they got the job done.
He began to hum little marching tunes to them, from time to time.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Absence makes the heart grow fonder. And, Miles feared, the converse. Rowan had pulled her pillow over her head again. He continued to pace. And talk. He couldn’t seem to stop himself. In the time that had passed since his concealed memory cascade, he had evolved a multitude of plans for their escape, all with some fatal flaw. Unable to put any of them into effect, he had re-ordered and refined them out loud. Over and over. Rowan had stopped critiquing them … yesterday? In fact, she’d stopped talking to him at all. She’d given up trying to pet him and relax him, and instead tended to stay on the far side of the room, or hide for long periods in the bathroom. He couldn’t blame her. His returning nervous energy seemed to be building to something like a frenzy.
This forced confinement was stressing her affection for him to the limit. And, he had to admit, he had not been able to conceal his slight new hesitation toward her. A coolness in his touch, an increased resistance to her medical authority. He loved and admired her, no question, and would be delighted to have her in charge of any sickbay he owned. Under his command. But guilt and the sense of no privacy had combined to cripple his interest in intimacy. He had other passions at the moment. And they were consuming him.
Dinner was due soon. Assuming three meals per long Jacksonian day, they’d been here four days. The Baron had not spoken with them again. What schemes was Vasa Luigi evolving, out there? Had he been auctioned yet? What if the next person through the door was his buyer? What if nobody bid at all, what if they left him in here forever?