Haroche would do so soon enough, Miles supposed. As soon as he caught up with events and put Illyan under proper medical care, Haroche would by default and the chain of command become acting Chief of ImpSec, and his immediate next duty would be to notify Gregor of this unpleasant turn of events, and determine the Emperor's will in the matter. It would all be over before the day was done.

Maybe the cause of Illyan's confusion was something simple, easily fixed; maybe he'd be back on duty within days. A short circuit in his chip, say. There's nothing simple about that chip. But ImpSec would take care of its own.

Miles sighed, and returned to his list of self-imposed little chores, barely attentive. He tried to read, but could not concentrate. It wasn't possible for Illyan to be covering his tracks in this, was it? Suppose Haroche had gone up to view that call, and it wasn't on the log anymore? But if Illyan had that degree of self-awareness, he ought to have turned himself in for medical treatment.

The day dragged on interminably. In the evening, when he broke and called both Gregor and Haroche, he could not reach either. Mutually tied up on this crisis, perhaps. He left messages requesting return calls, which did not come. He slept badly.

* * *

He hated being out of the information circuit. By the following evening Miles was ready to go in person to pound on ImpSec's back door and demand secret reports to which he had no entitlement whatsoever, when Galeni turned up at Vorkosigan House. He'd obviously come straight from work, still in uniform, and looked grim even by his own morose standards.

"Drink?" said Miles after one look at his face, when Martin ushered him into the Yellow Parlor, with a proper announcement this time. "Dinner?"

"Drink." Galeni flung himself into the nearest armchair, and leaned his head back, as if his neck ached right down to the base of his spine. "I'll think about dinner. I'm not hungry yet." He waited until Martin had departed to add, "It's over."

"Talk. What happened?"

"Illyan broke down completely in the middle of the all-departments briefing this afternoon."

"This afternoon? You mean General Haroche didn't turn him over to the ImpSec medical department yesterday?"

"What?"

Miles described his disturbing call from Illyan. "I notified Haroche immediately. Please don't tell me the man didn't do what I told him to."

"I don't know," said Galeni. "I can only report what I saw." As a trained analyst, not to mention historian, Galeni had a keen sense of the difference between eyewitness testimony, hearsay, and speculation. You always knew which category whatever he was recounting fell into.

"Illyan's under medical care now, isn't he?" Miles demanded in worry.