Miles Errant - Lois McMaster Bujold [126]
"Oh, about the last, um," she glanced at her chrono, "thirty hours."
"Who has trouble delegating work, Commander Quinn? Send the orders, not yourself. And take a sleep shift before you start making mistakes too. I'll find you a place to bunk here at the embassy—" she met his eyes, suddenly grinning, "if you like," Miles added hastily.
"Will you, now?" she said softly. "I'd like that fine."
They paid a visit to Ivan, harried at his comconsole, and made the secured data link to the Triumph. Ivan, Miles noted happily, had lots and lots of work left to do. He escorted Elli up the lift tubes to his quarters.
Elli dove for the bathroom by right of first dibs. While hanging up his uniform Miles found his cat blanket bunged lumpily into a dark corner of his closet, doubtless where his terrified clone had thrown it his first night. The black fur broke into ecstatic rumbling when he picked it up. He spread it out carefully on his bed, patting it into place. "There."
Elli emerged from the shower in remarkably few minutes, fluffing her short wet curls out with her fingers, a towel slung attractively around her hips. She spotted the cat blanket, smiled, and hopped up and wriggled her bare toes in it. It shivered and purred louder.
"Ah," sighed Miles, contemplating them both in perfect contentment. Then doubt snaked through his garden of delight. Elli was looking around his room with interest. He swallowed. "Is this, ah, the first time you've been up here?" he asked in what he hoped was a casual tone.
"Uh-huh. I don't know why I was expecting something medieval. Looks more like an ordinary hotel room than what I would have expected of Barrayar."
"This is Earth," Miles pointed out, "and the Time of Isolation has been over for a hundred years. You have some odd ideas about Barrayar. But I just wondered, if my clone had, uh . . . are you sure you never sensed any difference at all during the four days? He was that good?" He smiled wretchedly, hanging on her answer. What if she'd noticed nothing? Was he really so transparent and simple that anyone could play him? Worse, what if she had noticed a difference—and liked the clone better?
Elli looked embarrassed. "Noticed, yes. But to jump from sensing there was something wrong with you, to realizing it wasn't you . . . maybe if we'd had more time together. We only talked by comm link, except for one two-hour trip downtown to spring Danio and his merry men from the locals, during which I thought you'd lost your mind. Then I decided you must have something up your sleeve, and just weren't telling me 'cause I'd . . ." her voice went suddenly smaller, "fallen out of favor, somehow."
Miles calculated, and breathed relief. So the clone hadn't had time to . . . ahem. He smiled wryly up at her.
"You see, when you look at me," she went on to explain, "it makes me feel—well—good. Not in the warm and fuzzy sense, though there's that too—"
"Warm and fuzzy," sighed Miles happily, leaning on her.
"Stop it, you goof, I'm serious." But she slipped her arms around him. Firmly, as if prepared to do immediate battle with any wight who might attempt to snatch him away again. "Good, like—I can do. Competent. You make me un-afraid. Unafraid to try, unafraid of what others might think. Your—clone, good gods what a relief to know that—made me start wondering what was wrong with me. Though when I think how easily they took you, that night in the empty house, I could—"
"Sh, sh," Miles stopped her lips with one finger. "There is nothing wrong with you, Elli," he said, pleasantly muffled. "You are most perfectly Quinn." His Quinn . . .
"See what I mean? I suppose it saved your life. I'd been meaning to keep you—him—up to date on the hunt for Galeni, even it if was just an interim no-progress report. Which would have been his first tip-off that there was a hunt going on."
"Which he would have ordered stopped."
"Precisely. But then, when the break in the case