Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [71]
"Uh . . . maybe."
Vorsoisson nodded in satisfaction, raised the canopy, and slid into the pilot's seat. With reluctant fascination, Miles levered himself in beside him. He fastened his safety harness as the flyer lifted and glided toward the garage's vehicle lock.
"And why do you ask?" Miles probed delicately. Vorsoisson had all the air of a man anxious to spill something very interesting indeed. Not for three worlds did Miles wish to frighten him off at this point. At the same time, Miles would have to be extremely cautious about what he promised. He's your fellow Auditor's nephew-in-law. You've just stepped onto an ethical tightrope.
Vorsoisson did not answer right away, instead powering the lightflyer up into the night sky. The lights of Serifosa brightened the faint feathery clouds of valuable moisture above, which occluded the stars. But as they shot away from the dome city, the glowing haze thinned and the stars came out in force. The landscape away from the dome was very dark, devoid of the villages and homesteads that carpeted less climatically hostile worlds. Only a monorail streaked away to the southwest, a faint pale line against the barren ground.
"I believe," Vorsoisson said at last, and swallowed. "I believe I have finally accumulated enough evidence of an attempted crime against the Imperium for a successful prosecution. I hope I haven't waited too long, but I had to be sure."
"Sure of what?"
"Soudha has tried to bribe me. I'm not absolutely certain that he didn't bribe my predecessor, too."
"Oh? Why?"
"Waste Heat Management. The whole department is a scam, a hollow shell. I'm not really sure how long they've been able to keep this bubble going. They had me fooled for . . . for months. I mean . . . a building full of equipment on a quiet day, how was I supposed to know what it did? Or didn't do? Or that there weren't anything but quiet days?"
"How long—" have you known, Miles bit off. That question was premature. "Just what are they doing?"
"They're bleeding off money from the project. For all I know, it may have started small, or by accident—some departed employee mistakenly kept on the roster, an accumulation of pay that Soudha figured out how to pocket. Ghost employees—his department is full of fictitious employees, all drawing pay. And equipment purchases for the ghost employees—Soudha suborned some woman in Accounting to go along with it. They have all the forms right, all the numbers match. They've slid it through I don't know how many fiscal inspections, because the accountants HQ sends out don't know how to check the science, only the forms."
"Who does check the science?"
"That's the thing, my Lord Auditor. The Terraforming Project isn't expected to produce quick results, not in any immediately measurable way. Soudha produces technical reports, all right, plenty of them, right to schedule, but I think he mostly does them by copying other sectors' previous-period results and fudging."
Indeed, the Komarran Terraforming Project was a bureaucratic backwater, far down the Barrayaran Imperium's urgent list. Not critical: a good place to park, say, incompetent Vor second sons out of the way of their families. Where they could do no harm to anyone, because the project was vast and slow, and they would cycle out and be gone again before the damage could even be measured. "Speaking of ghost employees—how does Radovas's death connect with this alleged scam?"
Vorsoisson hesitated. "I'm not sure it does. Except to draw ImpSec down on it and burst the bubble. After all, he quit days before he died."
"Soudha said he quit. Soudha, according to you, is a proven liar and data artist. Could Radovas have, say, threatened to expose Soudha and been murdered to assure his silence?"
"But Radovas was in on it. For years. I mean, all the technical people had to know. They couldn't not know they weren't doing the work the reports said."
"Mm, that may depend on how much of an artistic genius Soudha was, arranging