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It's early evening, and Simon is dead on his feet. Each embroidered chair in the corridor seems to be luring him: come here, come over here, you could sit down here and have a rest. But he's got another hour left in his duty day, and the reports and briefings don't care that he didn't get a minute of sleep last night after the bomb scare at Vorhartung Castle, and not much more the night before, and before that... well, the work must be done all the same.
"Simon," says a familiar voice from an elegantly appointed office as he passes, and he stops and turns, a tired smile touching his lips, and looks in. This is a good excuse for a few minutes of rest.
But the office is empty. For a second he panics, reaching for his comm-link, and then his brain catches up with the chip and he understands: that was a memory. Usually he sees things that aren't there when he's this exhausted, visual data from previous records overlaying the present, and it's not hard to tell the two apart. But the chip records sound too, and replays it for him. With an effort he dates the memory: three years ago Lady Alys had called his name in just that fashion as he'd been passing that door.
But not tonight. Simon turns back and trudges on through the Residence, but now the chip's slipped its leash, and as he goes through the Green Reception Room the hubbub of a political party deafens him in the empty space. He knows what's happening now, but it's still annoying, and he brings one hand down in a sharp cutting-off gesture. Body and mind are linked, and when he was learning how to use the chip, he would make tiny hand gestures to reinforce the commands he was giving. He hasn't needed them for decades, except at times like this, but now it helps and he hears only the present sounds of his own footsteps and the hum of the air circulation. Perhaps he should cancel this last meeting and go and sleep. The idea is tempting, but Simon doesn't like to waste his men's time without a better reason than this.
The next voice is one he should know instantly is from the past: a man saying, "Come on, Lieutenant, we're done here." Nobody has called him 'Lieutenant' for twenty-six years. But pure instinct braces him to attention anyway, the voice going straight to his spinal cord without consulting any other part of him, and he turns and takes two steps towards where Captain Negri had stood twenty-seven years ago, before he gets it all clear in his head.
This time there's one of his men on duty watching him with a slight furrow in his forehead, and Simon tenses. As far as his men are concerned, as far as almost all Barrayar is concerned, the chip makes him omniscient and dangerous. Not confused. He nods to the man--Corporal Kemal, nine years unblemished service, specialisations in--he cuts the chip off again, this time without hand gestures, and continues through the Residence.
"Oh, there you are," he hears, and it's Lady Alys again. This time he manages not to turn, because he's made enough of a fool of himself this evening, and he can recall her approaching from just that direction six weeks ago and saying the same thing. So he's completely taken aback when a hand brushes his arm.
"Simon? Are you all right?"
Sound and sight may deceive him, but touch never does, and his other hand comes up to cover hers before he can stop it. Definitely real.
And that's even more mortifying than the guard. I'm sorry I cut you, I thought you were a hallucination? As an excuse, he supposes it would have the charm of novelty. He turns, and she is looking up at him in concern.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't--I thought..."
"You look exhausted," she says across his fumbled attempt to explain himself. "Haven't you been home to sleep since yesterday? I won't take up your time now. You ought to go and get some rest."
But she doesn't step away, and it's a moment before Simon realises that he is still holding her hand captive, preventing her from moving. She looks down at her hand on his arm, pinned in place by his left hand, and says more gently, "Is something the matter, Simon?" And when he jerks his left hand away, she does not release his arm. "Do you need me to call a medic for you? You don't seem well at all."
"I'm just tired," he says. "I'm sorry, my lady--" no, she'd told him not to call her that six months ago, his chip is playing the memory loudly across his mind before he can stop it. "I can't--"
"Come and sit down," she says, and leads him to a sofa. He follows, because he doesn't have the strength to argue, especially not with Alys. "You're really not yourself. What is it?"
It's easier to explain than prevaricate, and besides, he wants to explain, to tell someone, to tell her. "It's the chip," he says. "When I'm tired--really tired, like this--it's harder to keep control of it. It shifts around. I thought you were a memory, when you came in. I keep seeing and hearing things that aren't there--that were there, in the past, and there are so many memories here."
He doesn't think he's explaining this very well, but he's too tired to care.
"Hm," says Alys, and she's still got a hand on his arm, which is good, because his chip is trying to dump another memory from this sofa, sixteen years ago arguing with Lady Vorkosigan about Miles's education... but her hand is holding him in place and he drags himself away from the memory. "I think you'd better go home and get some sleep."
"To ImpSec," he corrects.
"Home."
They're getting tangled up somewhere. With a mental effort he locates the problem. "Didn't I mention it? They demolished my block of flats a few months ago. It was past time, it was late Yuri architecture and not in a good way. You wouldn't have liked it. So I'm staying at HQ for now."
"Oh Simon," she says, her voice both gentle and exasperated in a way that only she can manage. "If I send you back to HQ you won't stop until you actually collapse."
He ought to argue that he's not that foolish, but perhaps he is, because thinking is growing harder and harder as exhaustion swallows him whole. Sitting down was a mistake. He says nothing, and Alys presses his arm warmly.
"I'll get them to make up a room for you here. Stay here."
She stands up. He tracks her across the room, seeing layers of people, layers of time, guests and soldiers, friends and foes... the chip relentlessly identifies them all, a cacophony of names and personal data, and Alys, appearing and disappearing in the crowd. He should go and help her, she might get hurt with all those people... but standing up is too much effort, and he watches the timestreams, hypnotised.
"All right. They'll have the Olive Suite ready by the time you get there."
He can pick out her voice, but the rest is chaos, and it's not until she takes his hand, bending level with his face, that he can really see her. He inhales deeply, trying to smother the chip-memories with her distinctive perfume.
"Alys," he murmurs, and even his voice is slurred with exhaustion now.
"My dear," she says softly. "Come on. You need to sleep. Come with me."
He obeys her, letting her hand guide him to his feet, lead him through the corridors. They seem to be moving through ghosts that only he can see, and the deafening noise, sirens and music and shouts and laughter and babies crying, does not trouble her. He follows the gentle hand on his elbow, stumbling in his exhaustion. A distant voice in his head, trained to paranoia, is shouting alarms: he is helpless, defenceless, in danger. But he trusts the hand that leads him.
"Here we are."
Simon has no idea where he is or what he is required to do. The hand on his arm disappears, and suddenly he is lost again in noise and flickering dreamlike shapes. He would panic, if he had the strength.
"No," he hears himself say, almost plaintively. "Don't go. It's not safe."
The anchoring hand returns, two hands; with a massive effort he pulls the woman standing before him out of the visual data dump. Alys looks worried, her eyes narrowed, his hands held firmly in hers.
"All right," she says. "Come in." She turns to say to someone else, someone he can't pick out of the chaos, "I'll just see he has everything he needs. It's all right. You can stay out here."
"Yes, sir, um, ma'am," says a voice in the din.
She leads him on, and then he is sitting, with no clear idea of how he got to be there, sitting on the side of a bed. Alys is removing his boots, his jacket, undressing him like a child. Her hands are steady, each touch a little piece of sanity in the chaos. She pulls back the blankets, and pushes him down, and he lies back obediently, trustingly.
Lady Alys Vorpatril is undressing you and putting you to bed, shouts a voice from the back of his mind, and he pulls himself into focus enough to confirm that yes, that is exactly what is happening. It's not right, he should say something. He blinks up at her, trying to hold his focus on her face. She holds both his hands, and he follows the touch to find her.
"Sleep, Simon," she whispers. "It's all right."
Then his eyes are closing, and even the noise from the chip is not as loud as the sensory blast from the bed, cool crisp sheets and soft pillows, and a warm perfumed hand resting lightly against his cheek.