"Oh, entirely," snarled Miles. I see where this is going . He sat back, and folded his arms mulishly. "Does this mean I'm on my own?"

"Ah . . ." said Galeni. He drew it out for a rather long time. Eventually, he ran out of ah and was forced to speak. "Not exactly."

Miles bared his set teeth, and waited for Galeni, who waited for him.

Miles broke first. "Dammit, Duv, am I supposed to just stand here and eat this shit raw?"

"Come on, Miles, you've done coverups before. I thought you covert ops fellows lived and breathed this sort of thing."

"Never in my own sandbox. Never where I had to live in it. My Dendarii missions were hit and run. We always left the stink far behind."

Galeni's shrug lacked sympathy. "I must also point out, these are first results. Just because there are no leaks yet doesn't mean none will be . . . siphoned out into the open later on."

Miles exhaled slowly. "All right. Tell Allegre he has his goat. Baaah." He added after a moment, "But I draw the line at pretending to guilt. It was a breath mask accident. Period."

Galeni waved a hand in acceptance of this. "ImpSec won't complain."

It was good , Miles reminded himself, that there was no security rupture in the Komarr case. But this also killed his faint, unvoiced hope that he could leave Richars and his cronies to the untender mercies of ImpSec to be disposed of. "As long as this is all gas, so be it. But you can let Allegre know, that if it goes to a formal murder charge against me in the Council . . ." Then what?

Galeni's eyes narrowed. "Do you have reason to think someone will charge you there? Who?"

"Richars Vorrutyer. I have a sort of . . . personal promise from him."

"He can't, though. Not unless he gets a member to lay it for him."

"He can if he beats out Lord Dono and is confirmed Count Vorrutyer." And my colleagues are like to choke on Lord Dono.

"Miles . . . ImpSec can't release the evidence surrounding Vorsoisson's death. Not even to the Council of Counts."

By the look on Galeni's face, Miles read that as Especially not to the Council of Counts. Knowing that erratic body, he sympathized. "Yes. I know."

Galeni said uneasily, "What are you planning to do?"

Miles had more compelling reasons than the strain on ImpSec's nerves to wish to sidestep this whole scenario. Two of them, mother and son. If he worked it right, none of this looming juridical mess need ever touch Ekaterin and her Nikki. "Nothing more—nor less—than my job. A little politicking. Barrayaran style."

Galeni eyed him dubiously. "Well . . . if you really intend to project innocence, you need to do a more convincing job. You . . . twitch ."

Miles . . . twitched. "There's guilt and there's guilt. I am not guilty of willful murder. I am guilty of screwing up. Now, I'm not alone—this one took a full committee. Headed by that fool Vorsoisson himself. If only he'd—dammit, every time you step off the downside shuttle into a Komarran dome they sit you down and make you watch that vid on breath mask procedures. He'd been living there nearly a year. He'd been told ." He fell silent a moment. "Not that I didn't know better than to go out-dome without informing my contacts."

"As it happens, no one is accusing you of negligence."

Miles's mouth twisted bitterly. "They flatter me, Duv. They flatter me."

"I can't help you with that one," said Galeni. "I have enough unquiet ghosts of my own."

"Check." Miles sighed.

Galeni regarded him for a long moment, then said abruptly, "About your clone."

"Brother."

"Yes, him. Do you know . . . do you understand . . . what the devil does he intend , with respect to Kareen Koudelka?"

"Is this ImpSec asking, or Duv Galeni?"

"Duv Galeni." Galeni paused for a rather longer time. "After the . . . ambiguous favor he did me when we first encountered each other on Earth, I was content to see him survive and escape. I wasn't even too shocked when I learned he'd popped up here, nor—now I've met your mother—that your family took him in. I'd even reconciled myself to the likelihood that we would meet, from time to time." His level voice cracked a trifle. "I wasn't expecting him to mutate into my brother-in-law!"

Miles sat back, his brows rising in partial sympathy. He refrained from doing anything so rude as, say, cackling. "I would point out, that in an exceedingly weird sense, you are related already. He's your foster brother. Your father had him made; by some interpretations of the galactic laws on clones, that makes him Mark's father too."

"This concept makes my head spin. Painfully." He stared at Miles in sudden consternation. "Mark doesn't think of himself as my foster brother, does he?"

"I have not so far directed his attention to that legal wrinkle. But think, Duv, how much easier it will be if you only have to explain him as your brother-in-law. I mean, lots of people have embarrassing in-laws; it's one of life's lotteries. You'll have all their sympathy."

Galeni gave him a look of Very Limited Amusement.

"He'll be Uncle Mark," Miles pointed out with a slow, unholy smile. "You'll be Uncle Duv. I suppose, by some loose extension, I'll be Uncle Miles. And here I never thought I'd be anybody's uncle—an only child and all that."

Come to think of it . . . if Ekaterin ever accepted him, Miles would become an instant uncle, acquiring three brothers-in-law simultaneously, all with attached wives, and a pack of nieces and nephews already in place. Not to mention the father-in-law and the stepmother-in-law. He wondered if any of them would be embarrassing. Or—a new and unnerving thought—if he was going to be the appalling brother-in-law . . .

"Do you think they'll marry?" asked Galeni seriously.

"I . . . am not certain what cultural format their bonding will ultimately take. I am certain you could not pry Mark away from Kareen with a crowbar. And while Kareen has good reasons to take it slowly, I don't think any of the Koudelkas know how to betray a trust."

That won a little eyebrow-flick from Galeni, and the slight mellowing that any reminder of Delia invariably produced in him.

"I'm afraid you're going to have to resign yourself to Mark as a permanent fixture," Miles concluded.

"Eh," said Galeni. It was hard to tell if this sound represented resignation, or stomach cramp. In any case, he climbed to his feet and took his leave.

* * *

Mark, entering the black-and-white tiled entry foyer from the back hallway to the lift tubes, encountered his mother descending the front staircase.

"Oh, Mark," Countess Vorkosigan said, in a just-the-man-I-want-to-see voice. Obediently, he paused and waited for her. She eyed his neat attire, his favorite black suit modified by what he trusted was an unthreatening dark green shirt. "Are you on your way out?"

"Shortly. I was just about to hunt up Pym and ask him to assign me an Armsman-driver. I have an interview set up with a friend of Lord Vorsmythe's, a food service fellow who's promised to explain Barrayar's distribution system to me. He may be a future customer—I thought it might look well to arrive in the groundcar, all Vorkosiganly."

"Very likely."

Her further comment was interrupted by two half-grown boys rounding the corner: Pym's son Arthur, carrying a smelly fiber-tipped stick, and Jankowski's boy Denys, lugging an optimistically large jar. They clattered up the stairs past her with a breathless greeting of, "Hello, milady!"

She wheeled to watch them pass, her eyebrows rising in amusement. "New recruits for science?" she asked Mark as they thumped out of sight, giggling.

"For enterprise. Martya had a flash of genius. She put a bounty on escaped butter bugs, and set all the Armsmen's spare children to rounding them up. A mark apiece, and a ten-mark bonus for the queen. Enrique is back to work splicing genes full-time, the lab is caught up again, and I can return my attention to financial planning. We're getting bugs back at the rate of two or three an hour; it should be all over by tomorrow or the next day. At least, none of the children seem yet to have hit on the idea of sneaking into the lab and freeing Vorkosigan bugs, to renew their economic resource. I may devise a lock for that hutch."