By noon the next day the problem of food was becoming acute, despite a couple of painkillers for breakfast, and the absence of coffee and tea turning downright desperate. I'm ImpSec trained. I can figure out this problem. Somebody must have been going for groceries all these years . . . no, come to think of it, kitchen supplies had been delivered daily by a lift-van; he remembered the Armsmen inspecting it. The chief cook had practically had the duties of a company quartermaster, handling the nutritional logistics of Count, Countess, a couple dozen servants, twenty Armsmen, an assortment of their dependents, peckish ImpSec guards not above cadging a snack, and frequent State dinners, parties, or receptions where guests might number in the hundreds.

The comconsole in the cook's cubicle off the kitchen soon yielded up the data Miles sought. There had been a regular supplier—the account was now closed, but he could surely open it again. Their list of offerings was astonishing in its scope, their prices even more so. How many marks had they been paying for eggs?—oh. That was twelve dozen eggs to a crate, not twelve eggs. Miles tried to imagine what he could do with a hundred and forty-four eggs. Maybe back when he'd been thirteen years old. Some opportunities just came too late in life.

Instead he turned to the vid directory. The closest purveyor was a small midtown grocery about six blocks away. Another quandary: dare he drive? Walk there. Take a commercial cab home.

The place turned out to be an odd little hole in the wall, but it supplied coffee, tea, milk, a reasonable number of eggs, a box of instant groats, and an array of prepackaged items labeled Reddi-Meals! He stacked up two of each of the five flavors. On impulse, he also snagged a half-dozen foil packets of expensive squishy cat food, the smelly stuff cats liked. So . . . should he slip it to the gate guard? Or attempt to seduce Zap the Cat to his own following? After the incident with the tangle-field, the beast probably would not be hanging around the back door of Vorkosigan House much.

He gathered up his spoils and took them to the checkout, where the clerk looked him up and down and gave him a peculiar smile. He braced himself inwardly for some snide remark, Ah, mutant? He should have worn his ImpSec uniform; nobody dared sneer at that Horus-eye winking from his collar. But what she said was, "Ah. Bachelor?"