"I don't know." Miles considered this. "Which me were you expecting?" He staggered over to the bench opposite before his knees gave way and sat, his back against the wall, feet not quite reaching the floor. They were both silent for a few minutes, taking in the details of the other.

"It would be pointless to throw us together in the same room unless it was monitored," said Miles at last.

For answer Galeni flipped an index finger up toward the light fixture.

"Ah. Visual too?"

"Yes."

Miles bared his teeth and smiled upward.

Galeni was still regarding him with wary, almost painful uncertainty.

Miles cleared his throat. There was a bitter tang lingering in his mouth. "I take it you've met my alter-ego?"

"Yesterday. I think it was yesterday." Galeni glanced at the light.

His kidnappers had relieved Miles of his own chrono, too. "It's now about one in the morning, of the start of the fifth day since you disappeared from the embassy," Miles supplied, answering Galeni's unspoken question. "Do they leave that light on all the time?"

"Yes."

"Ah." Miles fought down a queasy twinge of associative memory. Continuous illumination was a Cetagandan prison technique for inducing temporal disorientation. Admiral Naismith was intimately familiar with it.

"I saw him for just a few seconds," Miles went on, "when they made the switch." His hand touched the absence of a dagger, massaged the back of his neck. "Do I—really look like that?"

"I thought it was you. Till the end. He told me he was practicing. Testing."

"Did he pass?"

"He was in here for four or five hours."

Miles winced. "That's bad. That's very bad."

"I thought so."

"I see." A sticky silence filled the room. "Well, historian. And how do you tell a forgery from the real thing?"

Galeni shook his head, then touched his hand to his temple as though he wished he hadn't; blinding headache, apparently. Miles had one too. "I don't believe I know anymore." Galeni added reflectively, "He saluted."

A dry grin cracked one corner of Miles's mouth. "Of course, there could be just one of me, and all this a ploy to drive you crazy. . . ."

"Stop that!" Galeni almost shouted. A ghastly answering smile lit his face for a moment nonetheless.

Miles glanced up at the light. "Well, whoever I am, you should still be able to tell me who they are. Ah—I hope it's not the Cetagandans? I would find that just a little too weird for comfort, in light of my . . . duplicate. He's a surgical construct, I trust." Not a clone—please, don't let him be my clone. . . .

"He said he was a clone," said Galeni. "Of course, at least half of what he said was lies, whoever he was."

"Oh." Stronger exclamations seemed wholly inadequate.

"Yes. It made me rather wonder about you. The original you, that is."