Mina made a faint indignant noise at this. Jin wasn't so sure.

"The lawyer will support you," Miles-san went on. "If it becomes an issue, which I doubt it will in this immediate aftermath, tell the police to come see them later at the consulate if needed-which, by then, I suspect it won't be, and in any case we'll be on home ground there."

Vorlynkin nodded reassurance at her. She shook her head in doubt, but Jin thought some of the strain eased around her eyes.

Jin glanced up to find Armsman Roic eyeing him closely. Jin shrugged uncomfortably and turned his head away.

"Madame Sato," came Roic's slow, deep voice, "can Jin and Mina come out in the corridor with me for a moment? I'd like to show them something."

Jin looked back, about to decline, but Mina was already hopping up and down in agreement, readily prevailing over their mother who seemed to want to say something to the consul anyway, so Jin ended up letting himself be shepherded out with his sister. Roic closed the door firmly behind them.

To Jin's surprise, Roic went down on one knee, which made him, well, not much shorter than Jin and still taller than Mina.

"I thought," said Roic, "that you might like to try firing my stunner." He drew the weapon that had hurt so shockingly out of the holster under his jacket, and Jin flinched.

"Ooh, ooh!" said Mina. "Wow, can we?"

Which made it impossible for Jin to say No. He nodded warily.

"You must never point a weapon at a person unless you intend to fire," Roic began a short tutorial. "No matter if you think it's uncharged, or the safety lock is on, or what. Make it an absolute habit, and it will never be a question." He pointed out the various features of the device, including a sensor in the grip that was keyed to his own palm, and which he turned off with a code. Then he let Jin take it, making sure it was pointed up the empty corridor.

The grip was still warm from Roic's hand, like a chair you'd sat down in too soon after someone else got out of it. The stunner was lighter than Jin expected, but solid enough. The power pack in the grip gave it the most of its heft. It didn't feel like a toy.

Jin stared down the sight the way Roic told him too, and squeezed the trigger. The buzz in his hand startled him, but there was no recoil, and he managed not to drop it.

Encouraged, Jin let Roic show him how the automatic laser sight worked, and fired again. This time, he didn't jump. And again. The charge hit the wall pretty nearly just where he'd intended, this time. Jin didn't exactly smile, but he felt his jaw ease.

Mina was by this time eager to try, Let me! Let me! so Jin reluctantly gave the device up to her. Roic went through his instructions once more, prudently kneeling behind Mina and keeping a hand hovering to help steady her-she had to hold the thing up in both fists-and the drill was repeated.

Roic stood up, reset the code, and holstered the weapon. "Better?" he asked Jin.

"Yah," said Jin, in some wonder. "It's like a tool. It's just a tool."

"That's right."

This time, when Roic smiled down at him, Jin smiled up. He let the armsman lead them back into the recovery room.

?

Miles leaned forward and spoke earnestly into the secure holovid recorder. "I just want you to know, Gregor, that if the planet melts down over all this, it wasn't my fault. The trip-wire was laid long before I stumbled across it."

He considered the opening remark of his report cover for a moment, then reached out and deleted it. The one good thing about the very asynchronous vid communication entailed by Nexus info-squirts, moving at light speed between jump points and ship-carried through them, was that if you didn't think before you spoke, you could at least think before you hit send. Not that he hadn't generated some of his best ideas as his brain raced to catch up with his moving mouth. Also, some of my worst. He wondered which kind his recent examples would ultimately prove to be.

He glanced around the consulate's tight-room, which he had all to himself, having run out the exhausted Johannes before embarking on this private and personal recording. Since Johannes was the closest thing to an ImpSec analyst the out-of-the-way consulate boasted, Miles had spent much of the past two days in training him in just what information, out of the uproar of the local planetary feeds, to screen and forward to Galactic Affairs on Komarr. Multitasking, always a good thing. Johannes proved a diligent enough student. If the attache had been one of the Imperial Service's brighter stars, he'd have been sent to some hotter posting, but if he'd been less responsible, he wouldn't have been sent to such an autonomous one.

Miles added a note commending the lieutenant's conscientiousness, while he was thinking of it, which reminded him in turn of his early suspicions of the clerk, Yuuichi Matson. He'd caught the tail end of a short conversation between Matson and his boss Vorlynkin in the kitchen, day-before-yesterday, when the media siege of the consulate was just beginning.

"People told me I'd be able to pocket a tidy amount of baksheesh in this job," the clerk complained, "but in five years nobody offered me anything. And when they finally do, it's because they want dirt on Sato-san. Sato-san. As if I would! Agh!"

Vorlynkin's blue eyes crinkled. "You were doing it wrong, Yuuichi. You're not supposed to wait for offers, you're supposed to ask. Or at least hint. You should ask the Lord Auditor for pointers."

Matson just shook his head and stalked off, nursing his green tea and his umbrage. Miles grinned and bent to add a kind word for the overworked clerk, as well.

Trying to bring his mind back into focus, Miles scanned down the long index of attachments, both raw data and his synopses, that he'd generated for HQ, a tedious but necessary chore. This should suffice to keep some unfortunate team of ImpSec Galactic Affairs analysts busy and happy for a week or three, till he caught up with them in person. Well, busy, anyway. The Imperial Councilor, as the Barrayaran viceroy on Komarr was dubbed, would be invited into the loop as well when this arrived by coded tight-beam. A full analysis of the planetary voting shares scam should be awaiting the Lord Auditor by the time he made Komarr orbit, and a plan for suitable countermeasures for the vote-theft, as well.

Miles indulged himself with a brief fantasy of Ron Wing and friends waking up from cryo-stasis, expecting to have stolen a planet, as destitute and distraught as old Yani. Alas, the affair would doubtless be wound up before matters progressed that far. Cosmic justice was very appealing, but the regular kind would also do.

Putting together his Auditorial report had also sufficed to keep Miles out of the way of the consulate upstairs, and out of sight of its visitors, as the consequences had spun out from that very useful night at Madame Suze's. The NewEgypt execs were under arrest for conspiracy, and, possibly, murder, and as the degenerated-cryopreservatives-and-commodified-contracts scandal hit the newsfeeds in force, it was likely that enough other charges would be thrown in atop to keep them from wriggling out. The attempted kidnapping involving real kids looked to prove especially damaging to their cause, score another point for Jin and Mina, which Miles must remember to tell them. Lawsuits on behalf of Madame Sato and her group were in preparation, and she'd given her first interview, under the watchful protection of Vorlynkin and with the shrewd advice of her new attorney, who was working, very enthusiastically, on contingency.

WhiteChrys and a number of other cryocorps, shoved into premature responses by these breaking events, were making noises like outraged victims after all, and Miles, smirking, wished Ron Wing all the luck he deserved in his damage control. Asterzine was all very well for setting a building on fire, but if one wanted to set a world alight…?well.