There he found Nikolai munching Barrayaran-style groats and milk, Administrator Vorsoisson fully dressed and apparently on the verge of leaving, and Professor Vorthys, still in pajamas, sorting through a new array of data disks and frowning. A glass of pink fruit juice sat untasted at his elbow. He looked up and said, “Ah, good morning, Miles. Glad you’re up,” seconded by Vorsoisson’s polite, “Good morning, Lord Vorkosigan. I trust you slept well?”

“Fine, thanks. What’s up, Professor?”

“Your comm link arrived from ImpSec’s local office.” Vorthys pointed to the device beside his plate. “I notice they didn’t send me one.”

Miles grimaced. “Your father was not so famous in the Komarran conquest.”

“True,” agreed Vorthys. “The old gentleman fell in that odd generation between the wars, too young to fight the Cetagandans, too old to aggress on the poor Komarrans. This lack of military opportunity was a source of great personal regret to him, we children were given to understand.”

Miles strapped the comm link onto his left wrist. It represented a compromise between himself and ImpSec Serifosa, which would otherwise be responsible for his health here. ImpSec had wanted to err on the side of caution and surround him with an inconvenient mob of bodyguards. Miles had ventured to test his Imperial Auditor’s authority by ordering them to stay out of his hair; to his delight, it had worked. But the link gave him a straight line to ImpSec, and tracked his location-he tried not to feel like an experimental animal released into the wild. “And what are those?” He nodded to the data disks.

Vorthys spread the disks like a bad hand of cards. “The morning courier also brought us recordings of last night’s haul of new bits. And something especially for you, since you kindly volunteered to take over the review of the medical end of things. A new preliminary autopsy.”