"Might have guessed. I swear I'll train you to be more venturesome one of these days." Thorne shot a peculiar grin over its shoulder at him—was that intended to be some sort of double entendre? After a bit more rattling about, Thorne placed a delicately hand-painted porcelain cup and saucer upon the table at his elbow. He picked it up and sipped cautiously as Thorne hooked another chair into its clamps a quarter turn around the table, produced a cup for itself, and sat with a small grunt of satisfaction.

He was relieved to find the hot amber liquid pleasant, if astringent. Sugar? He dared not ask. Thorne hadn't put any out. The Dendarii surely would have, if it expected Naismith to use sugar. Thorne couldn't be making some subtle test already, could it? No sugar, then.

Tea-drinking mercenaries. The beverage didn't seem nearly poisonous enough, somehow, to go with the display, no, working arsenal, of weapons clamped to the wall: a couple of stunners, a needler, a plasma arc, a gleaming metal crossbow with an assortment of grenade-bolts in a bandolier hung with it. Thorne was supposed to be good at its job. If that was true, he didn't care what the creature drank.

"You're in a black study. I take it you've brought us a lovely one this time, eh?" Thorne prodded after another moment's silence.

"The mission assignment, yes." He certainly hoped that was what Thorne meant. The hermaphrodite nodded, and raised its brows in encouraging inquiry. "It's a pick-up. Not the biggest one we've ever attempted, by any means—"

Thorne laughed.

"But with its own complications."

"It can't possibly be any more complicated than Dagoola Four. Say on, oh do."

He rubbed his lips, a patented Naismith gesture. "We're going to knock over House Bharaputra's clone crèche, on Jackson's Whole. Clean it out."

Thorne was just crossing its legs; both feet now hit the floor with a thump. "Kill them?" it said in a startled voice.

"The clones? No, rescue them! Rescue them all."

"Oh. Whew." Thorne looked distinctively relieved. "I had this horrible vision for a second—they are children, after all. Even if they are clones."

"Just exactly so." A real smile tugged up the corners of his mouth, surprising him. "I'm . . . glad you see it that way."

"How else?" Thorne shrugged. "The clone brain-transplant business is the most monstrous, obscene practice in Bharaputra's whole catalog of slime services. Unless there's something even worse I haven't heard about yet."

"I think so too." He settled back, concealing his startlement at this instant endorsement of his scheme. Was Thorne sincere? He knew intimately, none better, the hidden horrors behind the clone business on Jackson's Whole. He'd lived through them. He had not expected someone who had not shared his experiences to share his judgment, though.