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for the duplication of the Great Key. It was a problem of considerable
technical and cipher skill, as all of the Empire's resources went into its
original creation. Ba Lura and I had all her instructions for the banks, but
nothing for how the key was to be duplicated and delivered, or even when she
had planned this to happen. The Ba and I were not sure what to do."
"Ah," Miles said faintly. He dared not offer any comment at all, for fear of
impeding the free flow, at last, of information. He hung on her words, barely
breathing.
"Ba Lura thought ... if we took the Great Key to one of the satrap governors,
he might use his resources to duplicate it for us. I thought this was a very
dangerous idea. Because of the temptation to take it exclusively for himself."
"Ah . . . excuse me. Let me see if I follow this. I know you consider the haut
gene bank a most private matter, but what are the political side-effects of
setting up new haut reproductive centers on each of Cetaganda's eight satrap
planets?"
"The Celestial Lady thought the empire had ceased to grow at the time of the
defeat of the Barrayar expedition. That we had become static, stagnant,
enervated. She thought ... if the empire could only undergo mitosis, like a cell,
the haut might start to grow again, become re-energized. With the splitting of
the gene bank, there would be eight new centers of authority for expansion."
"Eight new potential Imperial capitals?" Miles whispered.
"Yes, I suppose."
Eight new centers . . . civil war was only the beginning of the possibilities.
Eight new Cetagandan Empires, each expanding like killer coral at their
neighbors' expense ... a nightmare of cosmic proportions. "I think I can see,"
said Miles carefully, "why perhaps the Emperor was less than enthused by his
mother's admittedly sound biological reasoning. Something to be said on both
sides, don't you think?"
"I serve the Celestial Lady," said the haut Rian Degtiar simply, "and the haut
genome. The Empire's short-term political adjustments are not my business."
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"So all this, ah, genetic shuffling . . . would the Cetagandan Emperor, by
chance, regard this as treason on your part?"
"How?" said the haut Rian Degtiar. "It was my duty to obey the Celestial
Lady."
"Oh."
"The eight satrap governors have all committed treason in it, though," she
added matter-of-factly.
"Have committed?"
"They all took delivery of their gene banks last week at the welcoming
banquet. Ba Lura and I succeeded in that part of the Celestial Lady's plan, at
least."
"Treasure chests for which none of them have keys."
"I ... don't know. Each of them, you see . . . the Celestial Lady felt it would be
better if each of the satrap governors thought that he alone was the recipient
of the new copy of the haut gene bank. Each would strive better to keep it
secret, that way."
"Do you know-I have to ask this." I'm just not sure I want to hear the answer.
"Do you know to which of the eight satrap governors Ba Lura was trying to
take the Great Key for duplication, when it ran into us?"
"No," she said.
"Ah," Miles exhaled in pure satisfaction. "Now, now I know why I was set up.
And why the Ba died."
Fine lines appeared on her ivory brow as she stared at him.
"Don't you see it too? The Ba didn't hit us Barrayarans on the way out. It hit
us on the way back.
Your Ba was suborned. Ba Lura did take the key to one of the satrap
governors, and received in return not a true copy, because there was no time
for the extensive decoding required, but a decoy. Which the Ba then was sent
to deliberately lose to us. Which it did, although not, I suspect, in quite the
manner it had originally planned." Almost certainly not as planned.
He found himself pacing, keyed up and hectic. He ought not to limp before
her, it brought attention to his deformities, but he could not keep still. "And
while everybody is off chasing Barrayarans, the satrap governor quietly goes
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home with the only real copy of the Great Key, getting a large jump-start on
the haut-competition. After first arranging the Ba's reward for its double-
treason, and incidentally eliminating the only witness to the truth. Oh. Yes. It
works. Or it would have worked, if only . . . the satrap governor had
remembered that no battle-plan survives first contact with the enemy." Not
when the enemy is me. He stared into her eyes, willing her to believe in him,
striving not to melt. "How soon can you analyze this Great Key, and support
or explode these theories?"
"I will examine it immediately, tonight. But whatever has been done to it, my
examination will not tell me who did it, Barrayaran." Her voice grew glacial
with this thought. "I doubt you could have created a true duplicate, but a non-
working forgery is certainly within your capabilities. If this one is false-where
is the real one?"
"It seems that is just what I must discover, milady, to, to clear my name. To
redeem my honor in your eyes." The intrinsic fascination of an intellectual
puzzle had brought him to this interview. He'd thought curiosity was his
strongest driving force, till suddenly his whole personality had become
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