"Rescue you from what? Miles, you ordered me a week ago to find Captain Galeni, remember?"

"Oh," said Miles. "Yes. So I did."

"So we did. We've been sitting outside this block of housing units all night, waiting to pick up a positive voiceprint analysis on him, so we could notify the local authorities. They don't appreciate false alarms. But what finally came over the sensors suggested we'd better not wait for the local authorities, so we took a chance—visions of us being arrested en masse for breaking and entering dancing in my head—"

A Dendarii sergeant drifted up and saluted. "Damn, sir, how'd you do that?" He trotted on waving a scanner without waiting for reply.

"Only to find you'd beaten us to it."

"Well, in a sense, yes . . ." Miles massaged his throbbing forehead. Galeni stood scratching his beard and taking it all in without comment. Galeni could say nothing at noticeable volume.

"Remember, three or four nights ago when you took me to be kidnapped so's I could penetrate the opposition and find out who they were and what they wanted?"

"Yeah . . ."

"Well," Miles took a deep breath, "it worked. Congratulations. You have just converted an absolute disaster into a major intelligence coup. Thank you, Commander Quinn. By the way, the guy you walked out of that empty house with—wasn't me."

Elli's eyes widened; her hand went to her mouth. Then the dark glints narrowed in furious thought. "Sonofabitch," she breathed. "But Miles—I thought the clone story was something you'd made up!"

"So did I. It's thrown everyone off, I expect."

"Then he was—he is—a real clone?"

"So he claims. Fingerprints—retina—voiceprint—all the same. There is, thank God, one objective difference. You radiograph my bones, you'll find a crazy-quilt pattern of old breaks, except for the synthetics in my legs. His bones have none. Or so he says." Miles cradled his throbbing left hand. "I think I'll leave the beard on for the moment, just in case."

Miles turned to Captain Galeni. "How shall we—Imperial Security—handle this, sir?" he said deferentially. "Do we really want to call in the local authorities?"

"Oh, so I'm 'sir' again, am I?" muttered Galeni. "Of course we want the police. We can't extradite these people. But now that they're guilty of a crime right here on Earth, the Eurolaw authorities will hold them for us. It'll break up this whole radical splinter group."

Miles tamped down his personal urgency, trying to make his voice cool and logical. "But a public trial would bring out the whole clone story. In all its details. It would attract a lot of undesirable attention to me, from a security viewpoint. Including, you may be sure, Cetagandan attention."

"It's too late to put a lid on this."