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

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles chooses to keep his opinions of Galeni's taste in entertainment to himself.

Hell. So now there's a fake Miles running around... maybe Ivan will notice something's up. Or Elli will. Or - God, if Linya visits him again - Miles clenches his fists until his bones creak, then forces himself to relax. Surely she would notice, before the clone could - he unclenches his fists again. Think about something else. His Dendarii, in the hands of that impostor, probably being neglected, ignored, misused - fuck. Miles resolves firmly not to consider any personal implications, lest he break all his own fingers in impotent rage.

What about the impersonal implications? Imperial implications, even? The purpose of this clone is not to drive Miles crazy - that's just a fringe benefit. The clone is... a weapon, directed at... who? Well. Aral Vorkosigan, of course. Fuck. Aral Vorkosigan and, through him, Barrayar. And what is his objective? Assassination? Intrigue? Miles isn't going to find out from inside this cell, he doesn't think.

He flops down on the hard bench, puts his arm over his eyes to block out the glare of the light, and tries to sleep. Success is mixed at best.

[alicornucopia]

Galeni tries to sleep, too.

In the morning they are delivered breakfast. Galeni eats it without apparent fear of poison, either from experience or a deathwish. There is more or less idle conversation; Galeni yields the tidbit that Miles's clone was cooked up on Jackson's Whole and confirms Miles's suspicion that Aral-Vorkosigan-and-through-him-Barrayar is the target. Galeni thinks the idea is to assassinate Gregor and make the clone the Emperor.

[thisvorlunatic]

"You're fucking kidding me," says Miles. "They'd - they'd have to kill my father and Gregor—" which would hardly prove a deterrent, but it would be difficult as hell.

Not to mention the fact that a little demi-mutant would make an extremely controversial Emperor for the approximately thirty seconds he'd last before someone assassinated him in disgust.

[alicornucopia]

Galeni has little comment on that aspect of the plan.



Before it is reasonably time for lunch, the door opens. "You, come along," says a guard to Miles.

Galeni apparently suspects that the detour isn't going to be good for Miles's health, and lunges for the guards, but the one with the stunner drops him before he closes the distance.

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles, out of his available options, chooses to go quietly. It's not like he could overpower even one-half of one of these guards in unarmed close combat, and they're not unarmed. Besides, if they're going to kill him, he'd rather be conscious at the time. Call it Vorkosigan bloody-mindedness.

But in fact they don't kill him. They haul him up to an office of some kind, where a comconsole displays a light-fixture's eye view of Miles's cell, currently containing a stunned Galeni. Miles is dragged over to stand in front of an older man, whose face looks vaguely familiar - perhaps from a scanner-shield-blurred glimpse the night before. The man sits on a comfortable curved bench and toys with a hypospray.

It takes a moment for Miles to make the connection, because the senior Galen doesn't look much like his son. He moves like him, though. Like an inverse of the connection between Miles and his clone - different bodies animated by the same program of coiled murderous tension.

"So," says Galen, rising to circle Miles like a bird of prey. Miles stands very still. "The genuine article at last. Twisted little thing. What a perfect representation of Barrayar - Aral Vorkosigan's secret moral genotype made flesh."

"Poetic," says Miles, "but biologically inaccurate. As you must know, having cloned me."

Galen smiles a horrible false little smile and shakes his head, dismissing the point. "You couldn't help being born, I suppose - no one can. But why do you stay loyal to the monster? He made you into this," with a sharp gesture at Miles's stunted body. "And yet retains your... fealty. What is the man's secret - with what charisma does he hypnotize not only his own son but everyone else's too?" Galen does not quite manage to stop himself looking at the vid feed from the cell. "Why do you follow him? Why does David? What corruption draws my son to wriggle into that uniform and march behind Vorkosigan?"

Miles tries to restrain himself, but fails. "My father is kind to me," he snaps. "You might try it sometime."

The man jerks back as though physically struck. Miles curses inwardly as Galen orbits toward the padded bench where he left his hypospray. The guards hold Miles still, and one rolls up his sleeve. The hypospray is applied.

Fast-penta or poison? Fast-penta or poison? If the former, he should be shifting gears down to a mellow friendly calm any minute now. He doesn't feel mellow, calm, or friendly. He feels anxious as hell. Maybe it's poison after all, an overdose of some stimulant, to make his heart burst in his chest. Or maybe it is fast-penta and he has a natural allergy - he has no implanted one, which they'd surely know, having no doubt accessed all his medical records, but they didn't check for a reaction... sloppy. Won't they be surprised.

And yet, he's still breathing. Hyperventilating, but not fatally. Someone shoves him into a chair; he collapses gratefully. Standing takes too much effort - all those muscles to coordinate - he can barely coordinate the inside of his own brain, just at the moment.

"Describe the security procedures for entry and exit from the Barrayaran embassy," says Galen.

Oh, it's fast-penta after all. Stupid question, though, they're bound to have gotten that out of the other fellow already, unless what they really want is a description of "...how to get Ivan to sneak you in," Miles hears himself saying; it takes him a moment to recognize his own voice saying the words and realize it is happening outside his head. "Fuck, I was hoping my reaction was screwy enough that this part wouldn't work. Sucks to be me. Spilling my brains out my mouth, ugh." The image comes to mind with unpleasant vividness.

"Describe the security procedures for entry and exit from the Barrayaran embassy!" hisses Galen.

"Sergeant Barth's the one in charge. Obnoxious fucker. Won't do what he's bloody told, and I think he thinks I'm a mutie..." Miles runs on, at a rate of about forty percent personal commentary to sixty percent secure data, except where the two categories overlap. Unable to stop himself, he goes on at length about every hole he can think of in the embassy's security net; his increasing agitation only turns the recital into a profanity-laced tirade. Galen has to hit him repeatedly in the face to stop him shouting at the top of his lungs in colourfully obscene terms about how easy it would be to get a weapon in past the security checks using simple sleight of hand.

"Fast-penta s'posed to make you immune to pain," Miles mumbles, "'s not working..." Then it does, and he falls silent in blessed relief - then it doesn't again, and his externalized monologue is stifled by sobs, tears running down his face at the whiteout intensity of the sensation. A few seconds later, tears and sobs and pain all switch off again.

"Is he beating the fast-penta?" wonders a guard.

"'s it fucking look like?" mumbles Miles.

"No..." says Galen, ignoring him. "He's not withholding information. It's hardly possible to stop him giving us more information..."

The comconsole chimes.

"I'll get it!" chirps Miles, and he surges out of his chair, only to fall flat on his bruised face. A guard hauls him back into his seat while Galen answers the com.

[unmarred]

"Reporting in," says other-Miles, in Miles's Barrayaran accent.

"How's it going?" asks Galen, leaning forward.

"Fine, mostly. They've got me rooming with the cousin, though, and he snores like a pig."

[thisvorlunatic]

"You think that's bad? Wait'll he starts making love in his sleep," says Miles. "Lucky bastard, I wish I had dreams like Ivan's... the other night I was playing polo naked against a Cetagandan zombie army with Lieutenant Murka's head for the ball. It screamed every time I hit it."

[unmarred]

"Yeah? Who won?" inquires the clone.

"Never mind that," says Galen irritably, cutting off Miles's mumbled reply. "You're going to have to deal with all kinds of people who knew him, before this is done. But if you can fool Vorpatril, you can fool anybody."

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles giggles. "Izzat what you think? Fooling Ivan's easy."

[unmarred]

Galen glares briefly at him before addressing the vid again.

"The embassy is a perfect isolated test case, a practice run before the real thing on Barrayar. If Vorpatril tumbles to you, we can eliminate him before your return, and you'll be that much better prepared."

"About that," says the clone. "We only just found out about this Admiral Naismith business. What else have you missed, in my education? A whole double life is pretty big. I can scarcely imagine where the next major hole is going to be."

"Miles, we've been over that," says Galen. "We knew there'd be gaps over which you'd have to improvise. But we'll never have a better opportunity to insert you into his life. It was now or never." He takes a steadying breath. "So, you got through the night all right...?"

"Yeah, just one thing," says the clone. "His wife showed up for a visit, and she noticed something off. I had to stun her before she had a chance to take her suspicions elsewhere. I—"

[thisvorlunatic]

"YOU WHAT!" shrieks Miles, lunging out of his chair again and this time getting all the way to the comconsole, where he claws at the image projected from the vid plate. "Don't you dare touch my wife, you little shit! Put one hand on her and I'll cut it fucking off!" He starts crying hysterically, babbling an incoherent mixture of threats and prayers, swinging wildly between rage and despair.

[unmarred]

"I just stunned her," the clone says dryly. "Get your mind out of the gutter, Miles. She's currently quite comfortably unconscious in the back of a maintenance closet, wrapped in that fur-blanket thing. While you're alive for questioning, by the way, any bright ideas about what to do with that woman you hauled out of her burning wine shop? She's suing Admiral Naismith for half a million GSA federal credits."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Countersue for medical damages," Miles says promptly. "I threw my back out lifting her. Still fucking hurts... let my wife go, you fucking bastard!"

"Ignore it," says Galen, motioning for the guards to haul Miles back to his seat. "You'll be out of there before it can matter."

"And leave the Dendarii holding the bag?" cries Miles. "You faithless fucks! They bleed for me, they die for me, and you'd just - play polo with their heads - "

[unmarred]

"Is he on fast-penta? He doesn't sound like he's on fast-penta," says clone-Miles. "He sounds like he's on some kind of serious recreational stimulant. Is this another one of his weird drug reactions?"

"It may be," says Galen. "I'm beginning to doubt the utility of keeping him alive as a data bank, if we can't trust his answers."

"I wouldn't throw them out just yet," the clone muses. "Listen to him. He's not exactly inhibited. I think you can trust his answers just fine. Can I have vid records of the interrogation to go over later? I wouldn't want to miss anything."

"Fine," says Galen.

"And now I better get going. I'll report again tonight," the clone promises, and cuts the com.

[thisvorlunatic]

Galen proceeds to question Miles ruthlessly on a wide variety of subjects. Emperor Gregor's old problems with depression come out, as does entirely too much information about the Dendarii Mercenaries, plus fountains of domestic trivia about Miles's own life. But the interrogation takes an unexpected turn the first time a chance phrasing gets Miles started reciting poetry.

It proves quite impossible to stop Miles reciting poetry, even more so than when he recites anything else. The first one is just a sonnet, but the next time it's a filthy Dendarii drinking song, and the memory-enhancing effects of fast-penta let him deliver all forty verses, alternately weeping and shrieking but never stopping except to breathe. An enraged Galen leaves off hitting him once the last verse runs down, and instead asks him the next question; he's back on track for another five minutes, until he manages to jump himself off into a series of awful limericks about five-space navigation that he composed once while bored in school. And on and on.

But the true moment of glory doesn't come until Galen asks a question beginning with 'When'. He doesn't get any farther than that; Miles, primed now to seek these things out, jumps straight to the association. A demented grin lights his face, and he launches into a shrieking cackle of, "When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning or in rain?"

Out of some dusty corner of his memory, the entire play spills torrentially forth. No amount of violence can stop him - and they do try violence. His awareness of the room around him, and his own body, fades in and out; his awareness of the words is a crystalline constant.

He's just coming in on the end of Act I Scene IV when his confused senses detect a change in his surroundings. Another prisoner? He can't quite see properly. Maybe they brought Galeni up? The play carries him on regardless. "...and in his commendations I am fed; it is a banquet to me. Let's after him, whose care is gone before to bid us welcome: it is a peerless kinsman."

Miles takes a breath between scenes and squints at the second chair.

[isthisart]

Linya, groggy from stun, notes one - no, two, hyposprays being applied to her person.

And Miles, reciting Macbeth.

Is she on the same -? What kind of drug?

She's definitely on synergine to wake her up, now that she's been tied to the chair safely. (Can she snap the ropes? Probably not, they're good synthetic stuff.) And the second one is -

She's immune, but not to the point of being a nonchemical robot. There is literature on what to expect if one is fast-penta'd. Futile, but not without trace. A subtle burning sensation, a little slipperiness in the mind.

And she's seen a non-haut on the stuff; there was a demo in one of her classes -

So she's supposed to free-associate, she supposes, and her captors probably don't know -

She chimes in with Miles's recitation, bewildered but not willing to let whoever's got them know.

"They met me in the day of success: and I have learned by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished."

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles is still having trouble connecting visuals - but he recognizes Linya's voice under his own. He delivers the next few lines through hysterical sobs, crying particularly hard on 'my dearest partner of greatness'.

[isthisart]

Linya recites right along with him, pretending perfect dreamy calm the entire time. Miles can be having a Weird Drug Reaction; she's affecting the standard one.

[thisvorlunatic]

He calms down somewhat, but only somewhat - his voice is still a strained croak, his eyes still streaming tears.

And then Galen growls something about all his prisoners being useless and slaps Linya.

"TO HAVE THEE CROWNED WITHAL!" bellows Miles. He didn't even know he could get that loud.

[isthisart]

Linya stops reciting when slapped and blinks vaguely at Galen.

She's got a high enough pain tolerance (thank you generous ancestors) that she doesn't flinch at the slap, although her head turns with it.

[thisvorlunatic]

"What is your tidings—The king comes here to-night," Miles recites in a venomous snarl. "Thou'rt mad to say it - is not thy master with him who, were't so, would have inform'd him for preparation!"

"This is ridiculous," mutters Galen.

"So please you, it is true: Our thane is coming," hisses Miles.

[isthisart]

When no one presents her anything besides Macbeth for her to free-associate unhelpfully about, Linya chimes in. "One of my fellows had the speed of him," she sighs.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more than would make up his message," says Miles, calming down a little again.

Galen paces around their chairs and curses under his breath.

[isthisart]

Linya goes on sliding through Macbeth, keeping time with Miles, smiling at a corner of the ceiling.

[thisvorlunatic]

Their interrogator is apparently too incoherently angry to apply any useful questions to either of them. He hits Miles a few more times, then gets tired of that and commands the guards to 'just take them both to the cell'.

Rather than deal with untying her, the guards just pick Linya up chair and all, and one pair carries her between them while a third man hauls Miles.

By the end of Lady Macbeth's monologue, Miles is crying again. "That my keen knife see not the wound it makes," he sobs, "nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, to cry 'Hold, hold!'"