He was getting ready to step out the front door of Vorkosigan House for that appointment the next afternoon, when he encountered Illyan, just coming in. It was snowing, and white flakes clung to Illyan's civilian jacket, and dusted his thinning hair. His face was red with cold, and exhilarated. He appeared to be alone.

"Where have you been?" Miles asked. He craned his neck as the door swung shut, but didn't see Lady Alys, or a guard, or any other companion departing the entryway.

"I took a walk around town."

"By yourself?" Miles tried to keep the alarm out of his voice. After all this, to lose the man, and have to rout out the municipal guard to go hunting for him, to find him wandering frightened or bewildered and embarrassed in some oddball corner of the city . . . "You got back all right, it seems."

"Yes." Illyan positively grinned. He held out his hand, and displayed the holocube clutched there. "Your lady mother gave me a map. It has the entire North and South Continents and all the populated islands, every city and town and street and mountain range down to the one-meter scale. Now whenever I get lost, I can find my own way back."

"Most people use maps, Simon." I'm an idiot! Why didn't I think of that before this?

"It's been so long since I had to, it didn't even occur to me. It's like an eidetic chip you can hold in your hand. It even remembers things you never knew before. Wonderful!" He unfastened his jacket, and pulled a second device from an inner pocket, a perfectly ordinary, though obviously best-quality, business audionote filer. "She gave me this, too. It cross-references everything automatically by key word. Crude, but perfectly adequate for ordinary use. It's nearly a prosthetic memory, Miles."

The man hadn't had to even think about taking notes for the past thirty-five years, after all. What was he going to discover next, fire? Writing? Agriculture? "All you have to remember is where you put it down."

"I'm thinking of chaining it to my belt. Or possibly around my neck." Illyan started up the curving stairs toward the guest suite, chuckling under his breath.

The following evening Miles broke away from his now almost cross-eyed rechecking of his comconsole data, to attend a quiet dinner at home, just himself, the Countess, and Illyan. He spent the first half of the meal firmly squelching the Countess's broad hints that perhaps Ma Kosti might be made interested in emigrating to Sergyar, in which case a place for her could certainly be found on the Viceroy's household staff.

"She'll never leave Vorbarr Sultana while her son's posted here," Miles asserted.

The Countess looked thoughtful. "Corporal Kosti could be transferred to Sergyar. . . ."

"No fighting dirty," he said hurriedly. "I found her first, she's mine."

"It was an idea." She smiled fondly at him.

"Speaking of Sergyar, when is Father arriving from there?"