Miles came up out of the all-too-familiar colored confetti and blackness to find himself still lying on the examination table, head clamped in a scanner half the size of the room, body wired every which way. The three alert techs stationed around him had perhaps been placed to keep him from spasming off the table, but more likely to keep the monitors correctly adjusted. Colonel Dr. Chenko, the neurologist, and Captain Dr. D'Guise, the cryonicist, were bouncing up and down and chortling, loudly pointing out fascinating readouts to each other. It was apparently the best show since the bicycle-riding bear had come to the Hassadar Fair and spooked the horses. Miles groaned, but it did not gain him any immediate attention; the monitors were apparently much more engrossing.

The doctors didn't really start talking to him, instead of each other, until he was dressed again and awaited them in Dr. Chenko's office. Even his Imperial Auditor's status didn't rush them this time. Chenko, a fit and energetic middle-aged man who seemed a walking advertisement for the medical profession, came in at last, an assortment of data disks in his hand; his initial air of pleased excitement had by this time subsided to mere smugness. "We know what's happening with you, Lord Vorkosigan," he announced, seating himself at his comconsole. "As we'd guessed, the mechanism of your seizures was idiosyncratic. But we have it now!"

"Wonderful," said Miles flatly. "What is it?"

Undaunted by his tone, Chenko plugged the data disks into his comconsole, and made the holovid display models and graphs to illustrate his points as he talked. "Apparently, after your cryonic revival, your brain began generating an unusually high level of neurotransmitters. These build up over time in their neural reservoirs to a quite abnormal level of engorgement, as you see here, so. There's a layover view of a normal reservoir, by way of contrast, d'you see the difference? Then something happens to trigger some unusually heavy brain activity—stress or excitement of some kind, say—and the reservoirs cascade-release all at once. That's this spike in this graph, here. This shuts down your normal neural functions temporarily, and incidentally accounts for the hallucinatory effects you report. After a minute or two, your neurotransmitter reservoirs empty out to normal—actually, below-normal—levels. Thus the few minutes of unconsciousness that follow. Then equilibrium begins to reassert itself, and you return to consciousness, though in a somewhat fatigued mode. And the cycle begins again. It is an entirely biochemical, rather than phase-electrical, form of epilepsy. Quite fascinating and unique. Dr. D'Guise wants to write it up for the ImpMil Medical Journal—your patient-anonymity will be protected, of course."

Miles digested the news of his upcoming place in medical history in silence. "So," he said at last. "What can you do about it?"