"Part of the time Galen would treat Mark like the great hope for a Komarran uprising, or pet him and set him up with the idea that they were going to make him Emperor of Barrayar in a coup. But part of the time Galen would slip a cog, and see Mark as the personal genetic representative of our father, and make him whipping-boy for all his hatred of the Vorkosigans and Barrayar. Disguising the most ferocious punishments, tortures really—from himself, and maybe even from Mark—as 'training discipline.' Illyan's agent had some of this from a rather illegal fast-penta interrogation of an ex-subordinate of Galen's, so it's flat truth." Around and around.

"For example, apparently Mark's and my metabolisms are not the same. So whenever Mark's weight exceeded my parameters, instead of doing the intelligent thing and having Mark's appetite medically adjusted, Galen would first withhold food for days, then let him gorge, and then force him at shock-stick point to exercise till he vomited. Weird stuff like that, really disturbing. Galen apparently had a hair-trigger temper, at least where Mark was concerned. Or maybe he was deliberately trying to make Mark crazy. Create a Mad Emperor Miles, to replay Mad Emperor Yuri's reign and destroy the Barrayaran government from the top down. Once—this fellow reported—Mark tried to get a night out, just a night out, and actually got away for a while, till Galen's goons brought him back. Galen went nuts, accused him of trying to escape, took his shock-stick and"—his eye caught Elena's paling face, and he hastily edited his nervous outburst—"and did some ugly things." Which couldn't have helped Mark's sexual adjustment any. It had been so bad that Galen's own goons had begged him to stop, according to the informant.

"No wonder he hated Galen," said Quinn softly.

Elena's glance was rather sharper. "There's nothing you could have done. You didn't even know Mark existed, back then."

"We should have known."

"Right. So to what extent is this retroactive guilt distorting your thinking right now, Admiral?"

"Some, I suspect," he admitted. "That's why I called you all here. I feel the need of a cross-check, on this." He paused and forced himself to sit again. "That's not the only reason, however. Before this mess with the Ariel leaped out of the wormhole, I had started out to give you a real, bona fide mission assignment."

"Ah, ha," said Baz with satisfaction. "At last."

"The new contract." Despite his distractions, he smiled. "Before Mark showed up, I had it figured for a mission where nothing could possibly go wrong. An all-expenses-paid vacation."

"What, a no-combat-special?" quipped Elena. "I thought you always looked down on old Admiral Oser for those."

"I've changed." He felt, as ever, a brief flash of regret for the late Admiral Oser. "His command philosophy looks better all the time. I'm growing old, I guess."

"Or up," suggested Elena. They exchanged a dry look.