"It's rather fascinating to find out what all those reports were displacing, all these years," Lady Alys remarked. "Certainly, Gregor. I think it will be good for him." She shepherded Laisa out; Miles followed shortly.

Miles continued his self-inflicted inspection of ImpSec HQ where he'd left off. Personally, he would have preferred a pinpoint rapier thrust to this brute-force bludgeoning of the data, but when you didn't know what the hell you were looking for, you had to look at everything. Cryptography proved cryptic; their overt cooperation turned into a slyly technical explanation of their doings that lost him on the third turn. If you can't dazzle 'em with daring, hang 'em up with horseshit. Miles smiled through it all, and made a mental note to recheck this department again later. Finance seemed simply delighted that somebody cared, and threatened to go on forever. Miles fought his way clear of the spreadsheets, and escaped.

Housekeeping and Physical Plant proved unexpectedly fascinating. Miles had known the headquarters building was highly secured, but he hadn't realized in detail just how this was accomplished. He now learned where all the steel-reinforced walls and floors were, and just how much thought had gone into questions of blast containment, air circulation and filtration, and water purification. His respect for the building's late mad architect rose a notch. The building wasn't merely designed by a paranoid, it was well designed. Every room had its own biolab grade filtration system, in addition to the central unit that filtered and flash-cooked all returning air to destroy possible poison gases or microbes, before it was recirculated or vented. The heat generated was also used to distill the water, which explained its peculiar flat taste. Miles had seen spaceships with systems less tight. No colds were going to be transmitted among personnel here.

The janitorial staff were all serving soldiers, veterans of at least ten years' standing. They were also, he discovered, the best paid of their classification of any such men in the Imperial Service. Morale was high among them; once they'd realized his visit implied no criticism of the quality of their work, they became not merely cooperative but downright friendly. It seemed no inspecting officer had actually been willing to crawl through the ductwork in person with them for quite some time; but then, most senior inspectors were a lot older, stiffer, and stouter than Miles. He also discovered, along the way, what had to be the most boring job in ImpSec HQ—checking the vid monitors of all the kilometers of ductwork and piping in the building. He could only marvel that it had never fallen to his lot before, during one of his earlier periods of semidisgrace.

Janitorial was quite pleased with their Imperial Auditor by the time he reluctantly departed, and vice versa. Their combination of competence and camaraderie put him in mind for a brief and breathtakingly painful moment of the Dendarii, till his mind shied away from the comparison.