If there was something significant, it was well camouflaged in the tons of irrelevencies. Unfortunately, the embassy had amassed huge quantities of such information. Twenty-four hours passed, for Miles mostly in a console station chair cross-checking embassy records on Komarran refugees. Ivan, as senior man now, suddenly found all of Galeni's normal routine dumped in his lap Miles heartlessly left it there. Miles appointed himself official detective for all matters inside the embassy walls. The police, manned and equipped for such things, could take over the routine legwork such as checking the identities of any unexplained human body parts found in trash receptacles, etc. The police could be expected to be more alert and suspicious than most others, and he hadn't counted on being a two-headed crime wave.ДЄt least the police seemed to take the military attache's disappearance with proper seriousness, promising cooperation even to the extent of honoring the ambassador's request that the matter not be given to the news media. True, with the clone story now afloat he was in part protected from the chance of meeting the same people in both his personas, but there was no point in pushing it. Miles permitted Ivan to do all the dealing with the local police. And whatever his involvement, Simon Illyan had apparently known of it and been willing to let it pass into history. Too young, Miles hoped, to have been actively involved. Galeni had been fifteen when the last spasm of the Revolt had petered out. Of course, Galeni had had plenty of opportunity to edit those files, in the last two years.

Rather to his relief there were no more stray Galen relations among the Earth-bound refugees listed in the embassy's Security files. Along with Galeni's older brother, incidentally. No transport off Komarr for Galeni's father, though he was blown up with one of his own bombs during the last, futile, exhausted attack on a Barrayaran Security HQ. Old Barrayaran Security records explicitly traced some of it, transformed into smuggled weapons, payroll, and expenses of the terrorist army later, bribes for exit visas and transport off-planet for the survivors. What wealth the Barrayaran conquest had left to the once-proud family evaporated entirely at the time of the violent Revolt six years later. After his sister was killed in the Solstice Massacre, the senior Galen had apparently become an active leader in the Komarran underground. Seal that back up, Vorkosigan.' Ivan followed the ambassador out.Д«efore he closed the console, Miles traced through the documents pertinent to the tantalizing reference to Galeni's father. I think, Lieutenant Vorpatril, I will have you go ahead and file a missing person report now with the local authorities. It could be very prejudicial to the man's career. The ambassador grunted, and pushed to his feet, shaking his head. 'He might also,' Ivan Vorpatril put in, 'just be the victim of some perfectly ordinary accident.'

And the shuttleport assassination idea took on new and sinister overtones.

There was nothing here that actually disproved it, just rendered it more painful if true. Including, Miles reflected, his own pet theory of embezzlement and desertion. 'The trouble with all this,' Miles spoke aloud into the thick, ticking silence that had enveloped the room for the last thirty minutes, 'fascinating as it all is, is that it doesn't narrow the possibilities. The closing signature was the usual hasty scribble.ДЄfter that, Cadet Galeni became the concern of officers much lower in the Imperial hierarchy, his record the public and accessible one Miles had viewed earlier. Let him run, and prove himself-if he can.' This issue tires me, and I don't want to be dragged over it again. 'Put him back on the list, Simon, and leave him there this time.

Thousand arms sodina kidnapped