Miles Errant - Lois McMaster Bujold [96]
Galeni's eyes snapped in truculence. "Never," he hissed. The spasm of rage evaporated with a weary sigh. "I suppose I should have. Too late now."
Had they scrambled the captain's brains with their drugs? If old cold Galeni had let emotion ambush his reason to that extent, well—it must be a bloody strong emotion. The down-deep deadlies that IQ could do nothing about.
"I don't suppose they'd buy an offer to cooperate from me," Miles said glumly.
Galeni's voice returned to its original drawl. "Hardly."
"Right."
A few minutes later Miles remarked, "It can't be a clone, y'know."
"Why not?" said Galeni.
"Any clone of mine, grown from my body cells, ought to look—well, rather like Ivan. Six feet tall or so and not . . . distorted in his face and spine. With good bones, not these chalk-sticks. Unless," horrid thought, "the medics have been lying to me all my life about my genes."
"He must have been distorted to match," Galeni offered thoughtfully. "Chemically or surgically or both. No harder to do that to your clone than to any other surgical construct. Maybe easier."
"But what happened to me was so random an accident—even the repairs were experimental—my own doctors didn't know what they'd have till it was over."
"Getting the duplicate right must have been tricky. But obviously not impossible. Perhaps the . . . individual we saw represents the last in a series of trials."
"In that case, what have they done with the discards?" Miles asked wildly. A parade of clones passed through his imagination like a chart of evolution run in reverse, upright Ivanish Cro-Magnon devolving through missing links into chimpanzee-Miles.
"I imagine they were disposed of." Galeni's voice was high and mild, not so much denying as defying horror.
Miles's belly shivered. "Ruthless."
"Oh, yes," Galeni agreed in that same soft tone.
Miles groped for logic. "In that case, he—the clone—" my twin brother, there, he had thought the thought flat out, "must be significantly younger than myself."
"Several years," agreed Galeni. "At a guess, six."
"Why six?"
"Arithmetic. You were about six when the Komarran revolt ended. That would have been the time this group would have been forced to turn its attention toward some other, less direct plan of attack on Barrayar. The idea would not have interested them earlier. Much later, and the clone would still be too young to replace you even with accelerated growth. Too young to carry off the act. It appears he must act as well as look like you, for a time."
"But why a clone at all? Why a clone of me?"
"I believe he's intended for some sabotage timed with an uprising on Komarr."
"Barrayar will never let Komarr go. Never. You're our front gate."
"I know," said Galeni tiredly. "But some people would rather drown our domes in blood than learn from history. Or learn anything at all." He glanced involuntarily at the light.
Miles swallowed, rallied his will, spoke into the silence. "How long have you known your father hadn't been blown up with that bomb?"
Galeni's eyes flashed back to him; his body froze, then relaxed, if so grating a motion could be called relaxation. But he said merely, "Five days." After a time he added, "How did you know?"
"We cracked open your personnel files. He was your only close relative with no morgue record."
"We believed he was dead." Galeni's voice was distant, level. "My brother certainly was. Barrayaran Security came and got my mother and me, to identify what was left. There wasn't much left. It was no effort to believe there was literally nothing left of my father, who'd been reported much closer to the center of the explosion."
The man was in knots, fraying before Miles's eyes. Miles found he did not relish the idea of watching Galeni come apart. Very wasteful of an officer, from the Imperium's viewpoint. Like an assassination. Or an abortion.
"My father spoke constantly of Komarr's freedom," Galeni went on softly. To Miles, to the light fixture, to himself? "Of the sacrifices we must all make for the freedom of Komarr.