She drew in her breath between her teeth. “I begin to see.”

“Think about it. I have.”

“Lieutenant Iverson was furious, when he broke in and found the melted casings. He’s going to send complaints up through channels.”

“Let him. If ImpSec cares to air any complaints about me or mine, I will air my complaints about them. like, where the hell were they for the last five days. I will have no compunction nor mercy about calling in that debt on anyone from Illyan down. Cross me, will they …” He trailed off in a hostile mutter.

Her face was greenish-white. “I’m … so sorry, Mark.” Her hand touched his, hesitantly.

He seized her wrist, held it hard. Her nostrils flared, but she did not wince. He sat up, or tried to. “Don’t you dare pity me. I won. Save your sympathy for Baron Ryoval, if you must. I took him. Suckered him. I beat him at his own game, on his own ground. I will not allow you to turn my victory into defeat for the sake of your damned … feelings.” He released her wrist; she rubbed it, watching him levelly. “That’s the thing of it. I can shed Ryoval, if they’ll let me. But if they know too much—if they had those damned vids—they’d never be able to leave it alone, ever. Their guilt would keep them coming back to it, and they would keep me coming back to it. I don’t want to have to fight Ry Ryoval in my head, or in their heads, for the rest of my life. He’s dead, I’m not, it’s enough.”

He paused, snorted. “And you have to admit, it would be particularly bad for Miles.”

“Oh, yes,” Bothari-Jesek breathed agreement.

Outside, the Dendarii personnel shuttle, with Sergeant Taura piloting, lifted the first load of Duronas to Mark’s yacht in orbit. He paused to watch it rise from sight. Yes. Go, go, go. Get out of this hole, you, me, all of us clones. Forever. Go be human too, if you can. If I can.

Bothari-Jesek looked back at him and said, “They’ll insist on a physical exam, you know.”

“Yeah, they’ll see some. I can’t conceal the beatings, and God knows I can’t conceal the force-feedings—grotesque, weren’t they?”

She swallowed, and nodded. “I thought you were going to—oh, never mind.”

“Right. I told you not to look. But the longer I can avoid examination by a competent ImpSec doctor, the vaguer I can be about all the rest.”

“You have to be treated, surely.”

“Lilly Durona has done an excellent job. And by my request, the only record is in her head. I should be able to slide right by.”

“Don’t try to avoid it altogether,” Bothari-Jesek advised. “The Countess would spot that even if no one else did. And I can’t believe you don’t need … something more. Not physically.”

“Oh, Elena. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past week, it’s just how badly cross-wired I really am, down in the bottom of my brain. The worst thing I met in Ryoval’s basement was the monster in the mirror, Ryoval’s psychic mirror. My pet monster, the four-headed one. Demonstrably, worse even than Ryoval himself. Stronger. Quicker. Slyer.” He bit his tongue, aware that he was starting to say far too much, aware that he sounded like he was edging into dementia. He didn’t think he was edging into dementia. He suspected he was edging into sanity, the long way around. The hard way. “I know what I’m doing. On some level, I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“In a couple of the vids—you seemed to be fooling Ryoval with a fake split personality. Talking to yourself… ?”

“I could never have fooled Ryoval with a fake anything. He was in this trade for decades, mucking about in the bottoms of people’s brains. But my personality didn’t exactly split. More like it … inverted.” Nothing could be called split, that felt so profoundly whole. “It wasn’t something I decided to do. It was just something I did.”

She was looking at him with extreme worry. He had to laugh out loud. But the effect of his good cheer was apparently not so reassuring to her as he might have desired.

“You have to understand,” he told her. “Sometimes, insanity is not a tragedy. Sometimes, it’s a strategy for survival. Sometimes … it’s a triumph.” He hesitated. “Do you know what a black-gang is?”

Mutely, she shook her head.

“Something I picked up in a museum in London, once. Way back in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, on Earth, they used to have ships that sailed across the tops of the oceans, that were powered by steam engines. The heat for the steam engines came from great coal fires in the bellies of the ships. And they had to have these suckers down there to stoke the coal into the furnaces. Down in the filth and the heat and the sweat and the stink. The coal made them black, so they were called the black-gang. And the officers and fine ladies up above would have nothing to do with these poor grotty thugs, socially. But without them, nothing moved. Nothing burned. Nothing lived. No steam. The black-gang. Unsung heroes. Ugly lower-class fellows.”

Now she thought he was babbling for sure. The panegyric of fierce loyalty for his black gang that he wanted to sing into her ear was … probably not a good idea, just now. Yeah, and nobody loves me, Gorge whispered plaintively. You’d better get used to it.

“Never mind.” He smiled instead. “But I can tell you, Galen looks … pretty small, after Ryoval. And Ryoval, I beat. In a strange sense, I feel very free, right now. And I intend to stay that way.”

“You appear to me to be … excuse me … a little manic, right now, Mark. In Miles, this would be normal. Well, usual. But eventually, he tops out, and finally he bottoms out. I think you need to watch out for this pattern, you may share it with him.”

“Are you saying it’s a mood swing on a bungee cord?”

A short laugh puffed from her lips despite herself. “Yes.”

“I’ll beware of the perigee.”

“Hm, yes. Though it’s the apogee where everybody else has to duck and run, usually.”

“I’m also on, well, several painkillers and stimulants, right now,” he mentioned. “Or I would never have made it through the last couple of hours. I’m afraid some of them are starting to wear off.” Good. That would account to her for some of his babble, perhaps, and had the advantage of being true.

“Do you want me to get Lilly Durona?”

“No. I just want to sit here. And not move.”

“I think that might be a good idea.” Elena swung out of her chair, and picked up her helmet.

“I know what I want to be when I grow up, now, though,” he offered to her suddenly. She paused, and raised her brows.

“I want to be an ImpSec analyst. Civilian. One who doesn’t send his people to the wrong place, or five days late. Or improperly prepared. I want to sit in a cubicle all day long, surrounded by a fortress, and get it right.” He waited for her to laugh at him.

Instead, to his surprise, she nodded seriously. “Speaking as the one out on the sharp end of the ImpSec stick, I would be delighted.”

She gave him a half-salute, and turned away. He puzzled over the look in her eyes, as she descended out of sight down the lift-tube. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t fear.

Oh. So that’s what respect looks like. Oh.

I could get used to that.

As Mark had declared to Elena, he just sat for a time, staring out the window. He was going to have to move sooner or later. Maybe he could use the excuse of his broken foot to inveigle a float-chair. Lilly had promised him that her stimulants would buy him six hours of coherence, after which the metabolic bill would be delivered by hulking bio-thugs with spiked clubs, virtual repo-men for his neuro-transmitter debt. He wondered if the absurd dreamy image was the first sign of the approaching biochemical breakdown. He prayed he’d hold out at least till he was safely in the ImpSec shuttle. Oh, Brother. Carry me home.