Avakli's brows rose. "I would presume, because the data is vital to ImpSec and the Imperium."

"Is it?" Miles leaned forward, staring into the brightly colored, biocybernetic nightmare chip-map hanging before his eyes above the table's central vid plate. "The chip was never installed to make Illyan into a superman. It was just a toy for Emperor Ezar, who fancied owning a vid recorder with legs. I admit, it's been handy for Illyan. Gives him a nice aura of infallibility that scares hell out of people, but that's a crock and he knows it even if they don't.

"The chip has nothing to do with running ImpSec, really. He was promoted to the job because he was standing at my father's right hand the day Vordarian's forces murdered his predecessor, and my father liked and trusted him. There was no time for a talent search, in the middle of a raging civil war. Of all the qualities that made Illyan the best chief in ImpSec's history . . . the chip is surely the most trivial." His voice had fallen to nearly a whisper. Avakli and Ruibal were leaning forward to hear him. He cleared his throat, and sat up.

"There are only four categories of information on that chip," Miles went on. "Old and obsolete. Current, which is all backed up in reality—Illyan has always had to function with the ever-present assumption that he could drop or be dropped dead at any time, and Haroche or somebody would have to take over in midstream. Then there's trash data, personal stuff of no use to anyone except Illyan. Maybe not even to Illyan. Thirty-five years of showers, meals, changing clothes, filling out forms. Not too damned many sex acts, I'm afraid. Lots of bad novels and holovid dramas, all in there, verbatim. A thousand times more of that than anything else. And, somewhere in all the billions of images, maybe a dozen hot secrets that no one else knows. Or perhaps even ought to know."

"What do you wish us to do, my Lord Auditor?" asked Ruibal, into the silence that stretched after this soliloquy.

You wanted authority. Now you've got it, boy. Miles sighed. "I want to talk with one more man. In the meanwhile . . . assemble everything you need for the surgical removal of the chip. Equipment, to be sure, but mostly, the man. I want the best pair of hands you can get, in ImpSec or out of it."

"When should we start, my lord?" asked Ruibal.

"I'd like you to be finished in two hours." Miles rapped the table, and rose. "Thank you, gentlemen. Dismissed."

Miles called Gregor on a secured comconsole right from the clinic level.

"So have you found what you wanted?" Gregor asked.