dissonance

[isthisart]

Dr. Cheung's at a funeral all day, so Linya decides to go up to London and see if Miles is out of his Mood.

Security has decided to be deeply unhelpful today. She is currently showing them various forms of ID and repeating in a slow, patient voice that she has been here before, there is not more than one of her, and she promises she is not there to assassinate her husband or whatever fool thing has them skittish today. Perhaps she shouldn't drop in while the captain's missing; it seems to make them worse. But she got in before while he was missing...

Comments

[isthisart]

"The much-abused secondary products of your genome," Linya remarks, "are extremely inconsistent in their reactions to being picked up."

[thisvorlunatic]

"...um?"

[isthisart]

"How many of you are there, and which one are you?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Two," he says. "I'm the one who married you. Also the one who is Admiral Naismith. They know, so why shouldn't you? Fuck it all. The one who stunned you is an actual clone-duplicate created for an actual substitution plot. By Komarrans. What did he do when you picked him up...?"

[isthisart]

"Flinched."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Oh. Maybe he's not quite an utter soulless bastard after all," says Miles. "I'm not sure whether I find that heartening, or the opposite."

[isthisart]

"He probably could have salvaged it. I was thinking to myself, 'Naismith seemed very personable and not like he wanted to impersonate my Miles at all, and there probably aren't two of them even if the project originally called for several, or that would certainly have come up, wouldn't it'. But he didn't, he just - sort of apologized and shot me."

[thisvorlunatic]

"How polite."

[isthisart]

"Well, I don't have a lot of other instances of being shot to compare to." She sighs. "How do I know you're mine?"

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles contemplates this.

"I could punch a wall," he says. "Whatever heinous treatments they've put him through can't possibly have screwed his bones to exactly the right degree and kind of fragility, and if I were them I'd save the expense and not bother trying - not to mention the fact that it would make him a hell of a lot less functional as an assassin, which they pretty clearly mean him to be."

[isthisart]

"I don't know off the top of my head how they'd wreck a clone's bones like that, but that doesn't mean there's no way to do it," she points out. "They were not restraining themselves to any ordinary standard of medical ethics. If this were the first time this had happened, I'm sure I'd buy it, but I have made two major errors about my husband's identity over the last several days."

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles sighs.

[isthisart]

"And one of those errors involved believing - what was admittedly probably you - when he told me something. How did the business with the Ariel happen? I didn't think you'd draw attention to your cover like that."

[thisvorlunatic]

"The Dendarii know me only as Admiral Naismith. They wouldn't have had any reason to look twice at the name Vorkosigan, and I wasn't personally overseeing every single job offer they took."

[isthisart]

"Right. That makes sense," she sighs.

[thisvorlunatic]

"I'm sorry," he says after a moment. "For - ugh. If I'd known there was an actual clone running around, I wouldn't have confused the issue."

[isthisart]

Linya sighs. "Well, if we get out of this alive and the light fixture stops staring at us I can, I don't know, elaborately quiz you and then see what the consumer market for programmable subcutaneous ID chips is like or something."

[thisvorlunatic]

"...While I admire your ingenuity, I'm not sure I'm comfortable being - chipped. It would be a rather awkward feature in a covert operative."

[isthisart]

"Or something," she repeats, shrugging. "I am definitely not picking up any more short people until I am certain I can tell which ones they are."

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles buries his face in his pillow-oid.

[isthisart]

Linya shifts position, gets up and sits on Galeni's bench since he's not using it, shuts her eyes.

She starts humming the melody to the song she wrote for Miles absently.

[thisvorlunatic]

Well, now he's crying again. And he's not even on any drugs he can blame it on.

[isthisart]

She stops.

But she stays where she is.

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles continues weeping very quietly into her repurposed clothing item.

[isthisart]

"So what was your maternal grandfather's middle name?"