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By Root 1688 0

damned artificial social wedge driven between himself and Elena. A father who was a bastard was about as far from being "right and proper" for a young Barrayaran virgin as anything he could think of. And it was obviously no secret—his father must know, and God knew how many hundreds of other people besides. Equally obviously, Elena did not. She was rightfully proud of her father, his elite service, his position of high trust. Miles knew how painfully hard she struggled sometimes for some expression of approval from the old stone carving. How strange to realize that pain might cut both ways—did Bothari then dread the loss of that scarcely acknowledged admiration? Well, the Sergeant's semi-secret was safe with him.

He flipped, fast-forward, through the years of Bothari's life. "Still no sign of your mother," he said to Elena. "She must be under that seal. Damn, and I thought this was going to be easy." He stared thoughtfully into space. "Try hospital records. Deaths, births—you sure you were born here in Vorbarr Sultana?"

"As far as I know."

Several minutes of tedious search produced records on a fair number of Botharis, none related to the Sergeant or Elena in any way. "Ah ha!" Miles broke out suddenly. "I know what I haven't tried. Imp Mil!"

"They don't have an obstetrics department," Elena said doubtfully.

"But if an accident—soldier's wife and all that—maybe she was rushed to the nearest facility, and the Imperial Military Hospital was it . . ." He crooned over the machine. "Searching, searching . . . huh!"

"Did you find me?" she asked excitedly.

"No—I found me." He flipped over screen after screen of documentation. "What a scramble it must have been, making military research clean up after its own product. Lucky for me they'd imported those uterine replicators—yes, there they are—they could never have tried some of those treatments in vivo, they'd have killed Mother. There's good old Dr. Vaagen—ah ha! So he was in military research, before. Makes sense—I guess he was their poison expert. I wish I'd known more about this when I was a kid, I could have agitated for two birthdays, one when Mother had the cesarian, and one when they finally popped me out of the replicator."

"Which did they choose?"

"Cesarian day. I'm glad. Makes me only six months younger than you are. Otherwise you'd be nearly a year older—and I've been warned about older women . . ." This babble won a smile at last, and he relaxed a little.

He paused, staring at the screen with slitted eyes, then entered another search query. "That's weird," he muttered.

"What?"

"A secret military medical research project—with my father as project director, no less."

"I never knew he was in research too," said Elena, sounding enormously impressed. "He sure got around."

"That's what's curious. He was a Staff tactician. Never had anything to do with research, as far as I know." A by-now-familiar code appeared at his next inquiry. "Blast! Another seal. Ask a simple question, get a simple brick wall . . . There's Dr. Vaagen, hand-in-rubber-glove with Father. Vaagen must have been doing the actual work, then. That explains that. I want under that seal, damn it . . ." He whistled a soundless tune, staring into space, fingers drumming.

Elena began to look dampened. "You're getting that mulish look," she observed nervously. "Maybe we should just let it go. It doesn't really matter by now."

"Illyan's mark's not on this one. It might be enough . . ."

Elena bit her lip. "Look, Miles, it's not really—" But he was already launched. "What are you doing?"

"Trying one of Father's old access codes. I'm pretty sure of it, all but a few digits."

Elena gulped.

"Jackpot!" Miles cried softly, as the screen began disgorging data at last. He read avidly. "So that's where those uterine replicators came from! They brought them back from Escobar, after the invasion failed. The spoils of war, by God. Seventeen of them, loaded and working. They must have seemed like really high tech, in their day. I wonder if we looted them?"

Elena paled. "Miles—they weren't doing human experiments