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Simultaneously, he plunged backward into the nearest guard, going for a
nerve-pinching grip on the hand that held the stunner. A joint snapped in one
of Miles s fingers, but he shook the stunner loose and kicked it across the
floor toward Galeni, who was lumbering bewilderedly up off his bench like a
wart-hog out of the mud. Despite his half-
conscious state, he reacted fast and accurately, lunging for the stunner,
scooping it up, and rolling across the floor out of the line of fire from the
door.
Miles s guard wrapped an arm around Miles s neck and lifted him off his feet,
lurching around to face the second guard.
The little grey rectangle of the business end of the second guard s weapon was
so close Miles almost had to cross his eyes to bring it into focus. As the
Komarran s finger tightened on the trigger the stunner s buzz fragmented, and
Miles s head seemed to explode in a burst of pain and colored lights.
Chapter Eleven
He woke in a hospital bed, an unwelcome but familiar environment. In the
distance, out his window, the towers of the skyline of Vorbarr Sultana,
capital city of Barrayar, glowed strangely green in the darkness. Imp
Mil, then, the Imperial
Military Hospital. This room was undecorated in the same severe style he had
known as a child, when he d been in and out of
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therapies so often Imp Mil had seemed his home away from home.
A doctor entered. He appeared to be about sixty: clipped greying hair, pale
lined face, body thickening with age. Dr.
Galen, his name badge read. Hyposprays clanked together in his pockets.
Copulating and breeding more, perhaps. Miles had always wondered where
hyposprays came from.
"Ah, you re awake," said the doctor gladly. "You re not going to go away on us
again this time, now, are you?"
"Go away?" He was tied down with tubes and sensor wires, drips and control
leads. It hardly seemed he was going anywhere.
"Catatonia. Cloud-cuckoo-land. Ga-ga. In short, insane. In short is the only
way you can go, I
suppose, eh? It runs in the family. Blood will tell."
Miles could hear the susurration of his red blood cells, in his ears,
whispering thousands of military secrets to each other, cavorting drunkenly in
a country dance with molecules of fast-penta which were flipping their
hydroxyl groups at him like petticoats. He blinked away the image.
Galen s hand rummaged in his pocket; then his face changed. "Ow!" He yanked
his hand out, shook off a hypospray, and sucked at his bleeding thumb. "The
little bugger bit me." He glanced down, where the young hypospray skittered
about uncertainly on its spindly metal legs, and crunched it underfoot. It
died with a tiny squeak.
"This sort of mental slippage is not at all unusual in a revived cryo-corpse,
of course. You ll get over it," Dr. Galen reassured him.
"Was I dead?"
"Killed outright, on Earth. You spent a year in cryogenic suspension."
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Oddly enough, Miles could remember that part. Lying in a glass coffin like a
fairy-tale princess under a cruel spell, while figures flitted silent and
ghostlike beyond die frosted panels.
"And you revived me?"
"Oh, no. You spoiled. Worst case of freezer-burn you ever saw."
"Oh," Miles paused, nonplussed, and added in a small voice, "Am I still dead,
then? Can I have horses at my funeral, like
Grandfather?"
"No, no, no, of course not." Dr. Galen clucked like a mother hen. "You aren t
allowed to die, your parents would never permit it. We transplanted your brain
into a replacement body. Fortunately, there was one ready to hand. Pre-owned,
but hardly used. Congratulations, you re a virgin again. Was it not clever of
me, to get your clone all ready for you?"
"My cl my brother? Mark?" Miles sat bolt upright, tubes falling away from him.
Shivering, he pulled out his tray table and stared into the mirror of its
polished metal surface. A dotted line of big black stitches ran across his
forehead. He stared at his hands, turning them over in horror. "My God. I m
wearing a corpse."
He looked up at Galen. "If I m in here, what have you done with Mark? Where
did you put the brain that used to be in this head?"
Galen pointed.
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