Miles Errant - Lois McMaster Bujold [134]
"I remember that." Siembieda nodded. "Cracked power cells leaking radiation."
"Right, very good. You spotted the defect, by the way, unloading them into inventory. There are those who might simply have stored them."
"Not on my team," muttered Siembieda.
"We were jumped by a Cetagandan hit squad at the warehouse. We never did find out if there was any collusion, though we suspected some in high places when our orbital permits were revoked and we were invited to leave Mahata Solaris local space by the authorities. Or maybe they just didn't like the excitement we'd brought with us. Anyway, a gravitic grenade went off and blew out the end of the warehouse. You were hit in the neck by a freak fragment of something metal, ricocheting from the explosion. You bled to death in seconds." Quite incredible quantities of blood from such a lean young man, once it was spread out and smeared around in the fight—the smell of it, and the burning, came back to Miles as he spoke, but he kept his voice calm and steady. "We had you back to the Triumph and iced down in an hour. The surgeon was very optimistic, as you didn't have gross tissue damage." Not like one of the techs, who'd been blown most grossly to bits in that same moment.
"I'd . . . wondered what I'd done. Or not done."
"You scarcely had time to do anything. You were practically the first casualty."
Siembieda looked faintly relieved. And what goes on in the head of a walking dead man? Miles wondered. What personal failure could he possibly fear more than death itself?
"If it's any consolation," put in Elli, "that sort of memory loss is common in trauma victims of all kinds, not just cryo-revivals. You ask around, you'll find you're not the only one."
"Better strap down," said Miles, as the craft yawed around for takeoff.
Siembieda nodded, looking a little more cheerful, and swung forward to find a seat.
"Do you remember your burn?" Miles asked Elli curiously. "Or is it all a merciful blank?"
Elli's hand drifted across her cheek. "I never quite lost consciousness."
The shuttle shot forward and up. Lieutenant Ptarmigan's hands at the controls, Miles judged dryly. Some hooted commentary from forward passengers confirmed his guess. Miles's hand hesitated over, and fell away from, the control in his seat-arm that would comm link him to the pilot; he would not brass-harass Ptarmigan unless he started flying upside down. Fortunately for Ptarmigan, the craft steadied.
Miles craned his neck for a look out the window as the glittering lights of Greater London and its island fell away beneath them. In another moment he could see the river mouth, with its great dikes and locks running for forty kilometers, defining the coastline to human design, shutting out the sea and protecting the historical treasures and several million souls of the lower Thames watershed. One of the huge channel-spanning bridges gleamed against the leaden dawn water beyond. And so men organized themselves for the sake of their technology as they never had for their principles. The sea's politics were inarguable.
The shuttle wheeled, gaining altitude rapidly, giving Miles a last glimpse of the shrinking maze of London. Somewhere down there in that monstrous city Galen and Mark hid, or ran, or plotted, while Destang's intelligence team quartered and re-quartered Galen's old haunts and the comconsole net looking for traces of them, in a deadly game of hide and seek. Surely Galen had the sense to avoid his friends and stay off the net at all costs. If he cut his losses and ran now, he had a chance of eluding Barrayaran vengeance for another half-lifetime.
But if Galen were running, why had he doubled back to pick up Mark? What possible use was the clone to him now? Did Galen have some dim paternal sense of responsibility to his creation? Somehow, Miles doubted it was love that bound those two together. Could the clone be used—servant, slave, soldier? Could the clone be sold—to the Cetagandans, to a medical laboratory, to a sideshow?
Could the clone be sold to Miles?
Now, there was a proposition that even the