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It was midday on Escobar, and Simon Illyan was having the most intense case of building-envy.
Illyan was not generally prone to jealousy. Years of being the closest observer of the Vor-class, numerous elements of which dealt with more wealth on a daily basis than he would ever accumulate in his lifetime, had long left him accustomed to the idea that there were things in life that he would never have.
But upon coming face to face with the forty-five storeys of gleaming glass facade that was Escobar's Investigatif Federale building, Illyan was rapidly discovering that he was not, in fact, immune to jealousy at all.
His memory chip (quite unbidden) called up images of the monstrosity that was his own Imperial Security Headquarters back on Barrayar – a windowless, square concrete block that looked like it had been dropped from orbit and left there because no one could afford to move it. And to remind everyone of just what function it served, it was also painted service green – as green as Illyan felt at the moment.
Glass, Illyan thought, and his chip helpfully pulled up a list of fifty-six ways in which a glass building could be compromised using tools that you could obtain from your nearest D.I.Y. store. But even that list wasn't sufficient to ground the flights of fancy that were trying to embark from his brain, the ones that wondered what the view was like from the corner office right at the top.
Imagine the sunsets, an insidious little voice said in his head. The entire city sprawled out beneath, painted in gold and red from horizon to horizon...
Barrayar didn't even have buildings that were forty-five storeys tall. Or thirty. His chip proceeded to dump the entire list of emigration procedures from Barrayar to Escobar into his conscious mind, along with the unhelpful annotation that it wouldn't be that hard to get a visa, really – Illyan swallowed, hard.
"Simon?" a voice, not in his head this time, called. Illyan's spine pegged it immediately as Aral Vorkosigan and straightened, even as he glanced around. The Prime Minister of Barrayar was giving him a concerned look. "Is something the matter?"
Reluctantly, Illyan tore his gaze away from the --beautiful piece of art-- building, and schooled his features into the blandest, most impassive expression he had in his arsenal. "Nothing," he said, and gestured towards the entrance. "Let's go."
The building was every bit as beautiful on the inside as it was on the outside, if not more so. It was decorated in galactic fashion, all modern, clean-cut lines in black and white and chrome, a far cry from the baroque décor of Vorbarr Sultana. Lady Alys would have hated it. Illyan approved on both a personal and a professional level – the wide, open spaces and the lack of clutter meant clear sight lines in all directions. Granted, it was somewhat of a double edged sword – the space meant that there was also no place to hide from snipers, but Illyan rather thought that if he owned the building, this was exactly how he would have designed the reception himself.
Well, he thought, the schematics of the ImpSec building flashing past his mind's eye. Perhaps I could do a little redecorating...
"Simon," Aral said again, in a low voice, and Illyan blinked back into the present before realising that an Escobaran officer was holding out a palm scanner and sheepishly trying to capture his attention.
Illyan kicked himself for an unforgiveable lapse in concentration. Escobar was officially at peace with Barrayar, but official meant nothing when the casualties of the Barrayar-Escobar war were still burned into human memory. They could scarcely afford to let their guard down, even if they were surrounded by ImpSec guards who were hopefully doing better than their commander in staying focused on the job instead of … gaping.
Attention recalled to his duty, Illyan re-ran the recording of the last few seconds of his observation of the foyer, even as he pressed his palm to the scanner. The foyer had been crowded – there had been a fair number of Escobaran officers hurrying in and out of the glass doors (so unlike the steps in front of the ImpSec building that no one ever used). His chip recalled faces and ran through them, discarding each image as it failed to bring up any cross-references. The process continued to run without a blink even as Illyan took the digital guestbook presented to them and signed against his name, and trailed after the Escobar lieutenant assigned to be their guide.
The recall paused; a red-flag came up. Illyan suppressed a frown, checked the cross-references by habit, and zoomed in on the name tag on the officer's uniform. And turned to his own aide, an ImpSec officer whose Lieutenant's tabs were still new enough to be shiny. "Alert the outer perimeter – a man with the name R. Z. Patoka, apparently holding the rank of--" he paused, checking against his chip's database of Escobaran ranks, "--Lieutenant, Escobar military intelligence, left the building just as we entered. Track his movements and keep him away from the convoy when we leave."
He saw a look of awe and terror flicker very briefly across his aide's face – the man was still new enough that he hadn't had a chance to get used to the idea that the Chief truly remembered everything. It was a familiar enough look, and Illyan disliked it even as he relied on it to help build the aura of infallibility that kept their enemies on their toes and at bay. He glanced away, and scanned the corridor out of old reflex, noting security cameras, calculating trajectories and guessing at possible locations for bugs.
It was a routine enough state visit. The earlier days had been filled with talks – Escobar had been friendly and cordial, and Aral had been pleased with the outcome. The shadow that had plagued the Prime Minister on the flight in from Barrayar seemed to have lifted as well - How could it not, Illyan thought, away from the oppressive, stifling atmosphere of Barrayar's official state buildings...
He was thinking of those emigration forms again. It took just 14 days for an application to be processed-- he squashed that train of thought before it could go any further.
Their guide was chattering on about the building's design. Illyan murmured a question about the security risks of glass, and listened with half an ear to the – likely very sanitised – explanation of the security countermeasures. Force shielding. Chemical shielding. Radiation shielding.
I bet it isn't idiot proof enough to last against Miles and Ivan, Illyan thought.
The corridor widened out into another, smaller foyer, the reception area between meeting rooms. Illyan, by sheer force of habit, stepped in front of Aral and preceded him into the foyer, scanning every corner as he did so. His gaze slid past a man wearing captain's stripes. Paused. Slid back. Met the man's gaze.
Illyan froze. The ImpSec officers around him read his body language and instantly went on alert, half a dozen trigger happy men reaching for stunners that they weren't carrying. Illyan forced himself to relax, raising a hand. There was a general shuffle as his men stood down, unease radiating from them. "One second, Prime Minister," Illyan said, then stepped towards the Escobaran captain.
"Simon Illyan," the man said, the corner of his mouth turning up into a smile that wasn't entirely friendly.
"Aaron," Illyan replied.
"Call me Alex," the man said, and Illyan and glanced at the name tag on the other's uniform. A. Daniels, it read. It wasn't the name that Illyan had known him by, the last time they had met.
"I trust," Alex said, lowering his voice and infusing it with just the slightest hint of threat, "That you aren't going to start an interplanetary diplomatic incident by arresting me in the middle of a state visit."
"Hardly," Illyan replied, his voice equally soft. "For one, I'd need to jump through quite a few more loops to get an extradition order for a deserter. I am, however, surprised to see you here. They told me you'd died."
"The usual cover story. It would be a huge embarrassment to ImpSec if the secret got out that they couldn't keep track of one of their own."
"Especially one carrying a rather … expensive piece of equipment in his head," Illyan murmured.
"...Indeed," Alex smirked. "They told me that you were the only one who managed to adapt to it successfully. Twenty years on and you're still not insane. Professor Lyon would have been so disappointed. He was betting that your brain would give up after five, tops."
Illyan's smile was glacial. "I see. In the circumstances, I'm rather glad to disappoint."
"Well, then." There was an assessing look in Alex's eyes … and a great deal of curiosity. Illyan suspected that his own gaze was no different. A fellow survivor of the procedure to implant the eidetic memory chip – apparently sane, two decades down the line … he hadn't even imagined that he would ever meet anyone from that ill-fated experiment again. Aaron Kranova had been one of those who had – if reports were to be believed – developed severe schizophrenia five months after the implant, a month before the expiry of the recommended trial period. The order that had filtered down from the top had been to remove the chip immediately. From Alex's failure to deny Illyan's earlier allegation that the chip was still implanted – there was a possibility that not only had the chip not been removed, but that Alex had somehow slipped ImpSec's surveillance to escape to Escobar. And then stayed off ImpSec's radar until this chance meeting... if it was a chance meeting at all.
"Well?" Illyan prompted.
"If you're not going to arrest me, perhaps we should have dinner? We do, after all, have a lot to catch up on. Twenty years of eidetic memory, and all that," Alex said.
Security concerns raged in the back of Illyan's mind at the mere suggestion. He balanced them against the possible information he could get out of this, and found them falling silent. No gain without risk, and the risks could still be mitigated, up to a point...
"At the time and place of my choosing, then," Illyan replied.
"And deny me the chance of introducing you to my favourite haunts on the planet? You are, as ever, the poster child of ImpSec paranoia," Alex sighed with feigned regret. "But be my guest." He handed him a namecard. "I look forward to your gracious presence, Simon."
Alex had changed, Illyan reflected, accepting the card without removing his gloves, making a mental note to have it checked for any contact poisons. But change was inevitable. Twenty years was a long time, long enough to destroy the bright enthusiasm of over-eager volunteers, each filled with dreams of making a difference to the Imperium and to their Emperor, of gaining legendary abilities and rising to exalted ranks. Three months had been enough to crush that dream into dust, Illyan recalled, as the reports came back with failure after failure. Twenty of them. One survivor. And now, it seemed, there had been one more.
He pocketed the card. "Till dinner, then."
"Friend of yours?" Aral asked, when Illyan rejoined him.
"An old acquaintance," Illyan replied, and said nothing more on the subject.
*
The restaurant that he chose was one that had been cleared by ImpSec. He left his men outside, except for an undercover agent who took a table nearby. It barely counted as sufficient security, when dining with someone who was still a potential threat. But Illyan's instincts, honed through fire and war and various assassination attempts, told him that Alex wanted to talk more than he wanted him dead.
Illyan arrived early, taking the seat at the table with the best sight lines across the rest of the restaurant, with its back to the wall and not to a window. Alex arrived right on the dot, in his Escobaran dress uniform, and Illyan wondered whether this was supposed to be some subtle insult.
"A fair choice of venue," Alex commented, noting Illyan's seat choice with a tiny, ironic smirk, then taking the other chair. "There are, of course, better restaurants in the capital, but I hear that you only draw a Vice Admiral's pay, despite your exalted position."
"It's no less than what Negri drew," Illyan replied.
"Do you know," Alex said, sitting back. "That your Escobaran counterpart holds a rank equivalent to that of Fleet Admiral, and draws pay commensurate with Escobar's naval and army chiefs?"
Illyan inclined his head. "And your point is?"
Alex chuckled. "Typical ImpSec – ask questions, never give away any answers. Tell me, Simon, how has it been, serving Barrayar all these years? You live to serve, if I recall the ImpSec motto correctly."
It had to be a barbed joke. All memory jokes were, to a person with an eidetic memory chip. The thought that there was someone else who actually had a chip still took some getting used to – he found himself disconcerted, automatically on the defensive, replaying lines and trying to tease out shades of meaning in every word, considering every line carefully before he voiced it. Checking and cross-referencing constantly to make sure that that the next sentence out of his mouth didn't become an unwitting disclosure. It made his nerves raw. Relax, he told himself firmly, and thought of his awe-struck aide. The aura of infallibility was a mere myth, no one knew that better than he did.
He smiled. "A Vice Admiral's pay is not inconsiderable. Particularly given that board and lodging are fully provided for."
Alex's eyes glittered with amusement. "And is Service issue food any better at the top than it is at the bottom?"
"I'm certain you've heard the rumours that I test-taste all of the Emperor's food," Illyan replied, deadpan. It was a rumour with no substance behind it, but he'd allowed it to perpetuate. It had its uses.
"I've heard. And I scarcely believe it." The waiter arrived to take their orders. Alex never so much as opened the menu or the wine list, and his eyes never left Illyan's face as he recited his orders, an impeccable reflection of the names on the menu.
Illyan, in contrast, made a pointed effort to refer to the menu when placing his order. He'd spent a lifetime perfecting the art of blending in, of being invisible. Blatantly flaunting the abilities of his memory chip didn't exactly fit into that framework.
"You haven't answered the question," Alex said, a little plaintive, when the waiter had left.
Illyan shrugged. "As you say, we live to serve. I doubt the ImpSec of today is very different from the ImpSec that you remember." He placed only the slightest emphasis on the last word. Some emotion flashed across Alex's face. The chip caught it; Illyan replayed it – a slight tightening of the mouth, a minute narrowing of the eyes. Anger, maybe? Or an echo of the bitterness that seemed to radiate off him? He filed it away. "And how is the Escobaran service treating you?"
Alex Daniels. What official records they had of him placed him as a captain in Escobar Intelligence, who had joined the service some eighteen years ago and risen quickly, from analyst to senior analyst, forensics, then vice-head of his department, which was where he had apparently gotten stuck, ten years ago. Privately, Illyan wondered where he would have been, himself, if not for his impromptu field promotion to his exalted position, as Alex put it.
"Better than the Barrayaran service," Alex said, and his voice was low, the snarl not quite hidden.
Illyan raised his eyebrows. His hand, resting on his lap under the table, moved closer to the stunner that was concealed in a thigh holster which was in turn hidden under the fall of his service tunic. Escobar regulations didn't allow the carrying of energy weapons without a special permit. Illyan didn't care enough about Escobar regulations to go unarmed anywhere, let alone into a potential combat situation. If the stunner (or its counterpart in his concealed shoulder holster, or the more deadly needler strapped behind his back) was an issue, then there was always the pair of combat knives sheathed in his boots.
Still, he hoped it wouldn't come to that. He was fairly certain that Alex too, was armed to the gills. You could take a boy out of ImpSec, but you could never take the ImpSec paranoia out of him.
"You weren't in the Service for very long," Illyan replied. "What did it ever do to you?"
Alex gave him an incredulous look, before smoothing it into something more unreadable. "Funny that you should ask that," he said, and the bitter note that had laced his tone giving way to what sounded like genuine curiosity. "Don't you ever wish that you could take this damn thing out?"
No question as to what the damn thing was. Illyan considered his responses. I'm sure all of us must have, at some point, was rejected immediately. Until this afternoon, he had had no reason to believe that anyone else had a memory chip, and no reason to speculate on what they would have thought about it. Until now, it had always been his unique blessing, and curse. He was starting to suspect that he knew why Alex had asked for this meeting. "Yes," he said at last, settling on honesty. "There are times. But as far as I'm aware, there is no way of removing it."
"Yes, they all died, isn't that what the reports said? All attempts to remove the chips failed. All subjects perished in the process." Alex shook his head. "Simon. You were always the smart one. Did it never occur to you to think that they might all be lying? Did it never occur to you to check, when you became Chief?"
"I was promoted in the middle of a war," Illyan said softly. "I had bigger things to worry about it. By the time I had time to breathe … it was years in the past. A closed book, full of things I didn't want to revisit." His gaze hardened. "Are you saying that there are other survivors?"
Alex took a deep breath, evidently wrestling some emotion back under control. "If there are, I don't know of them. What I do know is that – one died during the process of the installation. For five others - the installation couldn't be completed, for various reasons."
"I'm aware of those five," Illyan said. "They returned to regular roles in the Service." Two were still alive, and no worse for the experience.
"Of the fourteen who were successful, two died within days of the installation. Two went insane immediately. For three – the chip didn't work at all. The rest of us – went down slowly, by degrees. And then there was you, the success story."
"The report indicated that for the six who developed... complications... during the trial period, removal of the chip was recommended as the immediate course of action. All six removals were unsuccessful, all subjects died in the process." Illyan's voice was a flat monotone as he quoted. "So, where did the report go wrong?"
Alex barked a laugh, sudden and bitter. "Oh, they didn't die. Not immediately, anyway. The chips were removed, yes, but the damage was already done. Following the operation, two of them turned into blinking idiots overnight, completely brain dead. You weren't there. You were already gone, released into the outside world, the lucky one who got away." Alex took a breath. "The blinking idiots weren't the worst, in my opinion. The other three – one of them dashed his own brains out against the wall. The other two couldn't remember what day they were in any more. I tried to talk to them – you could pour dates into their heads and it just went out like water. They were completely useless – mostly. One of them had occasional periods of lucidity; that was the hardest damn thing to watch. He begged me to kill him, said he couldn't take it any more. That bastard Ezar ordered all of them put down."
That bastard Ezar had commanded Illyan's absolute loyalty for years, before he released him to Aral's service. Illyan still lit an offering to him every year. He swallowed bile, feeling his hands going cold. He hadn't seen any of this. They'd kept him isolated from all the other test subjects, and he was beginning to see why. "Then," he said, "What happened to the last one? What happened to you?" His voice wasn't as level as he would have liked it to be.
"I never developed schizophrenia. Or maybe I did; there were periods... of instability." Alex shook his head. "Time skips. Blinks, gaps. They said it was normal, or as normal as they could postulate. That it would be fine if it just evened out over time. And it did. It was getting better... I was told that there was a good chance that I was adapting, and that I'd be able to go home. Did you ever have those?"
Illyan could hear the raw edge of emotion in Alex's voice. Calm, he told himself, struggling to keep back the horror that was starting to surface in the back of his mind. He'd had nightmares about this – about being one of those left behind, about doctors in white coats telling him that he'd failed... and yet it seemed that his nightmares had never truly brushed the surface of what had actually transpired. "Not exactly, no," he said. "There were times when it was hard to focus, when it felt like I was running two datastreams at the same time, and it was … distracting. There were times when I felt like I couldn't access the chip's data, like it was a switch in my head that I couldn't toggle. Times of temporal confusion, usually when I triggered a memory cascade when asleep and woke up not knowing what was real. Nothing that affected the personality. As far as I know."
Alex exhaled slowly, and pinched the bridge of his nose, like it hurt to recall. "Yeah, so everything was fine, progressing well..." his voice went flat, "Then one day, while I'm eating breakfast, a medtech comes in and tries to kill me."
Illyan narrowed his eyes. "Go on."
"I guess ImpSec paranoia is good for something. There was something about his movements that made me wary – not to mention the fact that a tech coming in the middle of breakfast wasn't part of the usual routine. He had a hypospray hidden behind his back – classic, stupid technique. I wrestled him to the ground, disarmed him – he claimed that he was just asked to sedate me, and I said – 'Sedate, hell. Then you shouldn't be afraid of your own needle' – and I jabbed him." He laughed, something hollow and humourless. "The guy screamed, and passed out. I didn't stop to check whether he was just passed out or dead, I was too busy making a break for it."
The first course arrived. Neither of them touched it.
"I ran like hell. You don't need to know the details – I got away, took the first ship off Illyrica that I could find, and headed for neutral space. I had no way of knowing whether it was the bastards in the lab who tried to off me, or whether it was the bastards back on Barrayar trying to put down their fucked up experiment. It took me a damn long time to dig up the dirt, but I finally figured out what had happened.
"It turns out that Barrayar thought the entire project was a failure and a bloody waste of money, and Ezar decided to pull the project. The lab wasn't happy, of course – they said they still had one subject, and Ezar said – get this, get this - that a damn walking encyclopedia with psychotic tendencies wasn't what he needed. And he wanted all records of the project and all existing samples destroyed. I doubt Prof Lyon had any intention of doing that – he probably wanted to rip the chip out of my brain and keep it. I'm glad I didn't hang around to find out." He paused, and shot Illyan a grim smile. "Imagine all the excitement you missed out on, Simon."
Very carefully, Illyan picked up his fork, keeping the tightest lid he could on his emotions. He pushed bits of salad around on his plate, his appetite absolutely dead. What could one say, in the circumstances? I'm sorry just didn't work. "I'm... surprised that ImpSec didn't find you."
"Negri knew about me. I tried to contact him, once. His message came – 'stay the hell away from Barrayar'. I never figured whether he was covering up for me, or whether he just didn't have enough galactic agents to send after me."
Negri was not known to be sentimental. Yet, as Aral had said, once, even Negri was known to make a private judgment, from time to time. Whatever his motivations had been, Illyan couldn't even begin to guess at them, so long after the fact.
"Exile, all because I wanted to serve my damn Emperor," Alex said, all but spitting the words out. "You can imagine, of course, that I tracked your career with interest. We both wanted ship duty, both thought that this chip was the key to becoming tactical geniuses like Admiral Vorkosigan..."
Oh yes, Illyan remembered that dream, exchanged in quiet sheepish voices between nervous Ensigns waiting to go under the knife. Dreams that they had talked about, in order to keep the fear of death – or a fate worse than death – at bay.
Alex was looking straight at him. "What happened to your dreams?"
"As you can tell, I didn't end up with ship duty," Illyan said dryly.
"Chief of ImpSec isn't half bad. But that, I hear, has nothing to do with the chip."
Illyan remained silent.
"Vorkosigan liked you, is the version I heard. And with typical Vor nepotism – except that he probably forgot in the heat of the moment that you weren't Vor – promoted the person he liked to fill a spot that needed to be filled. I wonder if he expected you to be able to survive the initiation into the post of Chief, or whether he planned to find a more suitable successor once the Pretendership was over."
Even knowing the type of man that Aral was, Illyan hadn't been able to stop himself from considering that possibility. The transition into power had been a baptism of fire in itself, a war that had gone on long after the Pretendership had ended.
"And so here you are," Alex said, "You were the second most powerful man in the Imperium during the Regency – or should have been, just as Negri was Ezar's right hand. And yet, yet Barrayar still discounts you. How was that month in the ImpSec dungeons, by the way? Educational?"
"You may wish to hurry to the point that you're driving at," Illyan said quietly.
Alex's lip curled. "No reaction? No mind of your own? We live to serve - you've totally bought into that, haven't you? You know, they called Negri Ezar's Familiar. Do you know what they call you? Vorkosigan's dog." He planted his palms on the tabletop. "You're better than that. We're better than that."
Illyan shoved his plate away from him, suddenly angry. "I find myself content. If that's all you called me here to say, then this conversation is over."
But are you really content? that little voice that had been so damnably vocal this afternoon was whispering in his ear again. Is it really just the building that you're envious of?
Alex sighed, and leaned back. "Well, maybe you are. Calm down, Simon. It's not like I was asking you to defect or anything."
Yes you were, Illyan thought, but he refrained from storming out. "I don't see Escobar treasuring your talents either."
Alex's expression soured. "There have been … issues." He fiddled with his cutlery, and took a half-hearted stab at his salad. Illyan drank a mouthful of water and waited with the patience of a seasoned interrogator who knew that information was forthcoming.
Sure enough, Alex slammed his fork down and leaned forward, something intense burning in his gaze. "Okay, so maybe you don't want a promotion. But don't you ever want out? Don't you ever want a normal life like everyone else around you? We go through all this shit to get this thing installed, and then it bloody swallows our personal lives, and what do we get out of it?" His fingers curled into the table cloth. "Nothing, that's what. A huge damn lot of nothing."
Under the table, the fingernails of lllyan's right hand were digging into the back of his left hand. "There have been occasions," he admitted, despite himself.
"How do you deal with it?"
Illyan's mind had taken a little wander of its own accord off into a fantasy land that didn't involve the chip, or ImpSec, that involved being the officer with the glitter on his parade red-and-blues and the pretty lady on his arm, instead of the silent observer in the corner watching everyone and standing apart from it all. He wrestled his thoughts firmly back on track. "What's done is done. Ship duty was a dream that vanished a long time before the chip."
Alex stared at him. "That's what keeps you warm on long winter nights? That it's done – that there's nothing you can do about it? That things are what they are?" He shook his head, then abruptly buried his face in his hands. The sudden movement made Illyan jump, twitchy with hair-trigger nerves, until he realised that Alex was laughing.
"There is little point speculating on the impossible," Illyan said, pushing the thoughts away before they could fester into bitterness. Chief of ImpSec. It was more than he had ever hoped for, back in officer's training. It wasn't as glamorous, was a whole lot of dirty work, was too many sleepless nights and too many hours spent cooped up in the ugliest building in town and needing Exceptional Circumstances to get off planet, but it was still something.
Except that Alex was right. It didn't keep him warm on those long, dark winter nights.
"Impossible, you say?" Alex said, glancing up at him, and there was a gleam in his eye that made Illyan want to back off. "No, not quite." He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whisper. "I think I've found someone who can reverse the process. Someone who can take it out. Imagine what it'll be like again - freedom. Glorious, wonderful freedom."
Illyan sucked in a breath as that word struck him, a bolt to the heart. The unspoken dreams of the last twenty years, the longings that he didn't even dare to whisper, the fantasies and speculations that crept in, in the deepest hours of the night – abruptly given flesh and face and form.
"You understand, don't you?" Alex asked, leaning forward even more, and his voice was the voice of desperation. "You, of all people, would understand..."
"...Risks," Illyan managed, his voice sounding like it was coming from far away. His ImpSec agent at the other table was eying him with concern, and Illyan twitched his fingers in a covert stand down signal. "Risks," he said again, managing to wrestle his voice back into some semblance of control. "As you pointed out – previous removals were not... successful."
"I know. Oh God, I know." Alex scratched the back of his neck, a nervous habit that Illyan remembered. "But these guys – they're good."
"Can they guarantee results?" Illyan asked - demanded. He noted the sharpness of his tone and moderated it. "After all, I can't imagine that they would have had any test cases."
"They work with jump pilots," Alex said. "But you're right – they haven't done anything like this before. No one really knows what will happen. No one's ever tried to take a memory chip out of a person who's had it for twenty years. They say it's possible that I might lose the last twenty years, but right now, the opinion is leaning towards the idea that the biochip memory and the organic memory are separate. But think about it, Simon! What kind of life is this? Is this living at all? Could the alternative be any worse?"
Chief of ImpSec, he thought desperately, clinging to it like drowning man to driftwood. The words rang hollow in his head. The promotion had meant something, once. Years of gruelling service had stolen all joy from it, until all that was left was duty. And who was to say that he'd lose the position if he lost the chip? Generations of ImpSec chiefs before him had survived without. Perhaps he could even claim an early retirement, take up a teaching post, ask Lady Alys--
--there was another train of thought that he shied away from. What was he to her, if he wasn't the Chief of ImpSec, her colleague of many years? What was he to Aral, to Gregor, to any one? Not nothing – he knew them well enough to believe that they would not write off so many years of service, so many years of friendship. But if he left his post or if he could not longer continue in it, how would things change? He had no clear successor, and Aral and Gregor still needed an ImpSec Chief. Living to serve – if it gave any comfort, any value to his life, it was a cold one.
In that instant, he felt utterly trapped.
"You're probably wondering why I'm asking you," Alex was saying. "I'll admit it – I don't want to go through this alone. But I'll do it, even if you don't. The moment they give me the green light, I'm going ahead. But I thought – hell, we were friends, once. I thought I'd ask you..."
A cynical part of Illyan's brain wondered whether this was yet another convoluted assassination attempt. What had his life become, he wondered, that everything was a security issue?
What kind of life is this?
"How far away are they to completing their research? Who are these people?"
"Illyrican. One of them was from the lab – Doctor Radals, did you meet her?"
"Radals." He ran through memories he thought he would never touch again. "That brilliant post-doc – just twenty seven... the one that Chris had a huge crush on..."
"Yeah. She's the one. She split from Lyon after the incident, and has been running her own lab ever since. If there's anyone who could get it out..."
Hope was a serpent in his gut, twisting and turning, and its other face was Fear. He looked into Alex's eyes and saw the same mad gleam shining there. The unspoken dream that he had unknowingly shared with someone for so long, the dark secret that he had locked away in the darkest dungeon of his mind. He'd never forgotten it. He couldn't.
"I'll have to consider this," he said.
"You do that," Alex replied. Illyan nodded, eating mechanically. He still couldn't discount the possibility of it being an assassination attempt. He would have to run through the proper procedures, do his research. But what if it was real? What if it could be done? Emigration forms rose up in his mind again, except that their destination didn't read Escobar. The entire horizon spread out before his mind's eye, boundless, infinite in possibility.
Freedom.
Freedom.
*
Aral was the one who intercepted him, when he made his way back to the hotel. Illyan swiped his access card through the reader of the floor that the Barrayaran delegation had requisitioned, and came face to face with the Prime Minister.
"Aral—" he started to say, then found himself being steered into the sitting room of Aral's suite. "What's going--"
"Your man radioed ahead to say that you were out of sorts. He's right – you're as white as a ghost. What happened? No, wait. Sit. I'll get you a drink--"
"No drink." Illyan sank into the indicated armchair. "Damn, is it that bad?"
"I don't have a memory chip, but I've seen you almost every day for almost two decades now. I think I'm qualified to make an assessment," Aral said, the hint of humour not quite masking the concern in his voice. He took the opposite chair. "What did that guy say to you?"
Illyan scrubbed his hands over his face, vaguely hoping that it would restore whatever colour he'd supposedly lost. "Aaron Kranova, Lieutenant, Imperial Security," he recited. "Part of a special detachment that was sent to Illyrica to test pilot a new and experimental technology, twenty years ago."
Aral's expression had gone still.
"I know," Illyan sighed. "I was supposed to have been the only survivor. His story is that he escaped when the project was called off by Ezar and remaining test subjects were supposed to be terminated. And before you ask, I don't think he's a major security risk – we were chosen back then because we were expendable." He didn't miss the way Aral's expression darkened at the word 'expendable'. Different era. "He's a Captain in Escobar Intelligence now, holding some dead end job of mid-level rank in forensics. I don't doubt that if I dig deeper, I'll find things on his record that says stuff like talented, but disinterested. Possibly even unreliable. My guess is that he's there only because these are the only skills that we have--" he caught himself at the 'we', too late to stop it from coming out, "—and because the military would want him under their eye. I doubt they'll ever trust him enough to promote him further."
What kind of life is this? Illyan pressed his fingers to his temples and tried to massage away the growing headache.
"I see," Aral replied. "Did he call you just to reminisce and exchange war stories?"
"He didn't, as you've guessed," Illyan returned, his tone wry. "According to him, he's found a lab that can take the chip out. He was trying to convince me to undergo the procedure as well. And before you ask – I don't know whether it's an elaborate ploy to dispose of me. I'll have to investigate further. Can't just fast-penta him, I'm afraid." He'd been trying to sound as nonchalant as possible about the entire thing. He must have failed, because Aral's eyes narrowed.
"Assuming that it is possible," Aral said, and Illyan thought damn, damn, damn. "Assuming that this isn't an elaborate ploy. What then?"
Illyan never lied to Aral Vorkosigan. Or to any Vorkosigan, for that matter. He turned his gaze on the window that lay behind Aral – damn windows, such a security hazard – and tried to cajole the sweeping chaos of his mind into something coherent. "...I don't know," he said at last, feeling that honesty tear at his heart. He pushed himself out of the chair and started to pace the room. "I don't know."
Aral let him pace, eyes tracking him across the room, in a curious reversal of roles.
The silence grew, broken only by the soft fall of his footsteps on carpet. Illyan felt compelled to speak. "Even assuming that there aren't any side effects – which is an unlikely scenario, in my estimation – there's also the question of whether I can continue to function effectively in my role without the chip. It's become a tool – more than a tool. A weapon, possibly. One that we can't just … replicate, given present technology."
"The report on the man you identified back in the Investigatif Federale building came through while you were out," Aral said. "You were correct – Escobar Intelligence apprehended him two hours ago, in unlicensed possession of homecooked explosives."
Illyan sighed, and rested a hand against the window pane. It was cold beneath his fingertips. Long, dark winter nights...
"You are correct in that the chip is a valuable resource," Aral continued. "We don't know what would have happened if you hadn't been there, or hadn't been able to cross reference a single visual against our database. But you are one man, Simon. You don't run field operations any more. And across the galaxy, thousands of your operatives keep us safe every day without the use of chips. In your role as Chief, you can have the support of as many commconsoles and analysts as you require." He rose and crossed the floor to stand beside him. Illyan instinctively pushed him gently but firmly away from the window. Aral shot him a look, but complied.
"In my estimation," Aral said, "Of all the things that make you the best chief in ImpSec's history, the chip is surely the most trivial."
Illyan froze. "Surely you jest," he whispered against the glass, and his breath made fog form briefly on the window pane. But Aral Vorkosigan never lied to him. No Vorkosigan had ever lied to him.
"You are more than the chip to me, Simon," Aral said quietly. "The chip was... never even a factor, when I made the decision to promote you." He glanced away. "And if you want it removed, you have my blessing to do so."
Freedom unfurled its wings, a glittering phoenix of hope and rebirth. It hovered before him, and all he had to do was to reach out his hand to take it...
Gregor would have to approve it, he thought faintly, but he knew it was only a formality. Gregor had come into his majority, but he would not withhold his permission if Aral had already given his. Not in this.
Outside, the lights of the Escobar capital looked like a sea of twinkling stars. Skyscrapers soared overhead, so different from his Vorbarr Sultana. A world where the sky wasn't the limit, a world that encouraged you to reach as high as you could go. A world where Vor meant nothing, where a man could turn his back on ImpSec forever, and carve out a new life for himself.
What is this life that we live--
But the images that came to mind when he closed his eyes were – the face of an elegant Vor lady, all garbed in mourning grey. The flash of grey flank as Miles' gelding bolted, jumped the fence and took off over the fields, and the curse that Illyan bit off as he whirled his bay around and took off in hot pursuit, clinging on for dear life. The icy blast of cold as the beast screeched to a halt and dumped him into the lake. Aral, concern melting into laughter as he hauled him out. A young Gregor, turned to him in gratitude and shining adoration as Illyan tackled him to the ground and shoved him away from a blast that destroyed the ground car he'd almost stepped into. ...Lady Alys, pushing through the crowd of ImpSec men to help them up, and the warmth of her lingering touch on his elbow.
His life wasn't a job. It was people. People and the home that they had carved out through laughter and tears, in fire and in blood.
We live to serve, the old motto went, but what were they, without that service? His eyes moved of their own accord to Aral, leaning against the wall. He was still in his dress greens, collar unbuttoned and sleeves rolled up. It is the man who makes the uniform, Illyan thought, in a flash of insight. Not the uniform that makes the man...
He thought of Alex, bereft of a home, forsaking his name, trying desperately to build a new life in a world that should have been more forgiving. How would things have been different, Illyan wondered, if Alex hadn't allowed his resentment of the chip to become his stumbling block? The chip was, ultimately, a tool. They themselves... were the architects of their own successes and failures.
...The chip is surely the most trivial.
"Simon?" Aral said. Illyan looked up at his face. His chip recorded the warmth and concern in Aral's eyes, but it was his heart that remembered it.
"Our lives are... simply what we make of it," he murmured, and Aral frowned quizzically. For the first time that evening, Illyan smiled. "Thank you for the offer, but I think I'll keep it, for now. I'm rather attached to it. Or it to me, as it were."
It was strange how easy it was to say those words, in the end.
Aral chuckled, and the worry that left lines in his face melted slowly away.
The chip was ultimately a tool, and a job was ultimately a job, but his job was the protection of the people and the home that he loved – even if it had ugly buildings. And he would do whatever it took, use whatever tools it took, to make sure that no harm ever came to them. That was, after all, the life that he had chosen. And it was enough. He was content.
finis.