Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [125]
"If that was the fourth," said Miles slowly, "where's the fifth?"
The Professor shrugged. "The same place as the first, second, and third?"
"Do you have enough information from the inventory to reconstruct its power supply? At that point, we'd have the whole machine mapped, wouldn't we?"
"Mm, maybe. It will certainly supply some parameters. How much power? Continuous, or phased? Bollen had to know, to supply the proper coupler . . . ah." He noodled again with the specs and fell into a study of the complicated diagram.
Miles rocked impatiently on his heels. When he felt could no longer maintain his respectful silence without the top of his head blowing off, he said, "Yes, but what does it do?"
"Just what it says, presumably. Generates a five-space distortion field."
"Which does what? To what?"
"Ah." The Professor sank back in his station chair and rubbed his chin ruefully. "Answering that may take a little longer."
"Can't we run comconsole simulations?"
"To be sure. But to get the right answer, one must first correctly frame the question. I want—humph!—a mathematical physicist specializing in five-space theory. Probably Dr. Riva, she's at the University of Solstice."
"If she's Komarran, ImpSec will object."
"Yes, but she's here on-planet. I've consulted her before, when I investigated a politically suspicious wormhole jump accident on the Sergyar route two years ago. She thinks sideways better than any of the other five-space people I know."
Miles was under the impression that all five-space math experts thought sideways to the rest of humanity, but he nodded understanding of the importance of this character trait.
"I want her; I shall have her. But before I drag her out of her comfortable academic routine, I think I want to visit Bollen in person. Your Colonel Gibbs is very good, but he can't have asked all the questions."
Miles considered denying personal ownership of ImpSec and anyone in it, but recognized ruefully that he was now identified as the authority on ImpSec among the Auditors just as Vorthys was identified as the engineering expert. It's an ImpSec problem, he pictured some future conclave of his colleagues concluding. Give it to Vorkosigan. "Right."
The trip to Bollen Design's plant did not prove as enlightening as Miles had hoped. A hop in a suborbital shuttle to a dome one Sector west of Serifosa soon brought Miles and Vorthys face-to-face with Bollen's upset owners. Since they'd already thrown open all their records to ImpSec that morning, they had little more to offer the Imperial Auditors. The administrative people knew only of financial and contractual details with Soudha's mythical "private research institute" that had supposedly ordered the work; some techs who'd worked in the fabrication shop had very little to add to the specs already in Vorthys's possession. If the missing engineer had been as innocent of the true identity of the customer and purpose of the device as were the rest of the Bollen employees, he'd have had no reason to flee; Bollen Design had committed no crime that Miles could identify.
However, the techs were able to recall dates of several visits from men answering to descriptions of Soudha, Cappell, and Radovas, definitely one from Soudha as recently as the previous week. Their supervisor had never included them in these conferences. They had been told never to discuss the odd Necklin generators outside their work group, as the devices were experimental and not yet patented, trade secrets soon to transmute into profit (or loss). The progression so far had looked a lot more like loss than profit.
The customers