The clone threw back his head and laughed, a sharp hysterical bark. "My God, look at yourself! A prisoner, tied to a chair, hours from death—" He swept Miles a huge, ironic bow. "Oh noble lord, I am overwhelmed by your generosity. But somehow, I don't think your protection is worth spit, just now." He strode up to Miles, the closest he had yet ventured. "Flaming megalomaniac. You can't even protect yourself—" impulsively, he slapped Miles across the face, across yesterday's bruises, "can you?" He stepped back, startled by the force of his own experiment, and unconsciously held his stinging hand to his mouth a moment. Miles's bleeding lips peeled back in a grin, and the clone dropped his hand hastily.

So. This one has never struck a man for real before. Nor killed either, I wager. Oh, little virgin, are you ever in for a bloody deflowering.

"Can you?" the clone finished.

Gah! He takes my truth for lies, when I meant to have him take my lies for truth—some saboteur I am. Why am I compelled to speak the truth to him?

Because he is my brother, and we have failed him. Failed to discover him earlier—failed to mount a rescue— "Did you ever dream of rescue?" Miles asked suddenly. "After you knew who you were—or even before? What kind of childhood did you have, anyway? Orphans are supposed to dream of golden parents, riding to their rescue—for you, it could have been true."

The clone snorted bitter contempt. "Hardly. I always knew the score. I knew what I was from the beginning. The clones of Jackson's Whole are farmed out, y'see, to paid foster parents, to raise them to maturity. Vat-raised clones tend to have unpleasant health problems—susceptibility to infection, bad cardio-vascular conditioning—the people who are paying to have their brains transplanted expect to wake up in a healthy body.

"I had a kind of foster-brother once—a little older than me—" the clone paused, took a deep breath, "raised with me. But not educated with me. I taught him to read, a little. . . . Shortly before the Komarrans came and got me, the laboratory people took him away. It was sheer chance that I saw him again afterwards. I'd been sent on an errand to pick up a package at the shuttleport, though I wasn't supposed to go into town. I saw him across the concourse, entering the first-class passenger lounge. Ran up to him. Only it wasn't him any more. There was some horrible rich old man, sitting in his head. His bodyguard shoved me back. . . ."

The clone wheeled, and snarled at Miles. "Oh, I knew the score. But once, once, just this once, a Jackson's Whole clone is turning it around. Instead of you cannibalizing my life, I shall have yours."