The pressed gargoyles on the lintel over the side door to ImpSec HQ were looking particularly suffused this morning, Miles thought, as if weighed down with sorrow and about to burst from the internal pressure of their sinister secrets. And the expressions on the faces of some of the men he passed bore a subtle resemblance to those of their granite mascots. The clerk at the security desk in the lobby looked up at him with a harried blink. "May I help you, sir?"

"I'm Lord Vorkosigan. I'm here to see Simon Illyan."

The clerk checked his comconsole. "You aren't on my roster, my lord."

"No. I just dropped by to visit him." The clerk, and everyone else, had to at least know that Illyan was off duty, if only because they had to have been informed that Haroche was now their acting chief. "In the clinic. Give me a tag and let me in, please."

"I can't do that, my lord."

"Of course you can. It's your job. Who's duty officer today?"

"Major Jarlais, my lord."

"Good. He knows me. Call him for your authorization, then."

Jarlais's face appeared on the clerk's comconsole within a couple of minutes. "Yes?"

The clerk explained Miles's request.

"I don't think that's possible, my lord," Jarlais said uncertainly to Miles, who was leaning into range of the vid pickup over the clerk's shoulder.

Miles sighed. "Call your boss . . . no, hell, it's going to take thirty minutes to work my way up the entire chain of command. Let's cut out the middlemen, eh? I hate to bother him when he's as busy as he undoubtedly is this morning, but just call General Haroche."

Jarlais, obviously, was equally reluctant to interrupt his superior, but a Vor lord in one's lobby was hard to dismiss, and impossible to ignore. They got through to Haroche's comconsole in a mere ten minutes, good work under the circumstances, Miles thought.

"Good morning, General," Miles said to Haroche's image over the desk clerk's vid plate. "I came in to see Simon."

"Impossible," rumbled Haroche.

Miles's voice grew edged. "It's impossible only if he's dead. I think you are trying to say that you don't wish to allow it. Why not?"

Haroche hesitated. "Corporal, set your cone of silence and give up your comconsole seat to Lord Vorkosigan for a moment, please."

The clerk obediently slid aside; a shadow fell around Miles and Haroche's image from the security generator over the station chair.

"Where did you hear about this?" Haroche demanded suspiciously, as soon as their privacy was assured.

Miles raised his brows, and switched gears without a moment's pause. "I was worried. When you didn't call me back after my call to you of day before yesterday, and didn't return any of my other messages, I finally called Gregor."

"Oh," said Haroche. His suspicion faded into mere irritation.