Miles answered with a spate of swearing, plucking off and throwing a few last clinging ice cubes from his tunic at Ivan's head along with the curses.

"Glad to hear it," said Ivan genially. "Now I'm going to tell you what you're going to do, and you're going to do it. First thing is, you're going to go to your room and take off that wet uniform. Then depilate that repellent beard stubble and get a hot shower. And then you're going to get dressed. And then we're going to take you out to dinner."

"Don't want to go out," Miles mumbled, surly.

"Did I ask for an argument? Did you hear me ask for a Betan vote, Duv?"

Galeni, watching in fascination, shook his head.

"Right," Ivan continued. "I don't want to hear it, and you don't have a choice. I've got another fifty kilos of ice tucked in the freezer downstairs, and you know I won't hesitate to use it."

Miles could read the utter, indeed, enthusiastic sincerity of this threat in Ivan's face. His bad words trailed off into a disagreeable, but not disagreeing, hiss. "You enjoyed that," he grumbled at last.

"Damn straight," said Ivan. "Now go get dressed."

Ivan made few further demands upon Miles until he had dragged him out to a nearby restaurant. There he made sotto voce threats until Miles put a few bites of food into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. Once he started eating, he found he was very hungry, and Ivan desisted, satisfied with his performance.

"Now," said Ivan, shoveling in the last bite of his own dessert. "What the hell is going on with you?"

Miles glanced up at the two captains, at Galeni's eye-of-Horus pins. "You first. Did Illyan send you both?"

"He asked me to check on you," said Galeni, "having got the idea that we were friends of a sort. Since the gate guard reported you had gone in, but never come out, and you didn't answer your comconsole after repeated calls and messages, I thought I'd better take a look in person. I felt . . . less than comfortable invading Vorkosigan House by myself, so I rounded up Ivan, whom I construed as having a family right to be there. On the authorization I had from Illyan, the gate guard overrode your locks and let us in, so we didn't have to break a window." Galeni hesitated. "I also didn't fancy having to pull your body down from a rafter somewhere all by myself."

"Told you not," said Ivan. "Not his style. If he ever does do himself in, I'm betting it'll be something that involves large explosions. And lots of innocent bystanders, probably."

Miles and Ivan exchanged sneers.

"I . . . wasn't so sure," said Galeni. "You didn't see him, Ivan, when he came out of Illyan's office. The last time I saw anybody who looked that shocky was a fellow I helped pull out of his crashed lightflyer."