"It will make a permanent difference to the forty-nine clones," Mark asserted doggedly. "Everybody makes that same damned argument. 'I can't do it all, so I'm not going to do any.' And they don't. And it goes on, and on. And anyway, if I had been able to go back via Escobar as I'd planned in the first place—there would have been a big news splash. House Bharaputra might even have tried to reclaim the clones legally, and then there would really have been a public stink. I'd have made sure of it. Even if I'd been in Escobaran detention. Where, by the way, the House Bharaputra enforcers would have had a hard time getting at me. And maybe . . .  maybe it would have interested some more people in the problem."

"Ah!" said Gregor. "A publicity stunt."

"It was not a stunt," Mark grated.

"Excuse me. I did not mean to imply your effort was trivial. Quite the reverse. But you did have a coherent long-range strategy after all."

"Yeah, but it went down the waste disintegrator as soon as I lost control of the Dendarii. As soon as they knew who I really was." He brooded on the memory of that helplessness.

At Gregor's prodding, Mark went on to recount Miles's death, the screw-up with the lost cryo-chamber, their aborted efforts to retrieve it, and their humiliating ejection from Jacksonian local space. He found himself revealing far more of his real thoughts than he was comfortable doing, yet . . . Gregor almost put him at his ease. How did the man do it? The soft, almost self-effacing demeanor camouflaged a consummately skillful people-handler. In a garbled rush, Mark described the incident with Maree and his half-insane time in solitary confinement, then trailed off into inarticulate silence.

Gregor frowned introspectively, and was quiet for a time. Hell, the man was quiet all the time. "It seems to me, Mark, that you devalue your strengths. You have been battle-tested, and proved your physical courage. You can take an initiative, and dare much. You do not lack brains, though sometimes . . . information. It's not a bad start on the qualities needed for a countship. Someday."

"Not any day. I don't want to be a Count of Barrayar," Mark denied emphatically.

"It could be the first step to my job," Gregor said suggestively, with a slight smile.

"No! That's even worse. They'd eat me alive. My scalp would join the collection downstairs."

"Very possibly." Gregor's smile faded. "Yes, I've often wondered where all my body parts are going to end up. And yet—I understand you were set to try it, just two years ago. Including Aral's countship."

"Fake it, yes. Now you're talking about the real thing. Not an imitation." I'm just an imitation, don't you know? "I've only studied the outsides. The inner surface I can barely imagine."

"But you see," said Gregor, "we all start out that way. Faking it. The role is a simulacrum, into which we slowly grow real flesh."