"Yes, that girl. I wondered why she gave me the cold chills. I'd seen her before, in another incarnation. The clone of a clone.

"The Baronne is one of the oldest of Lilly Durona's clone daughters, or sisters, or whatever you want to call the tribe. Hive. She didn't sell herself cheaply. Lotus went renegade for one of the biggest bribes in Jacksonian history—co-control, or nearly so, of House Bharaputra. She's been Baron Bharaputra's mate for twenty years. And now it seems she's getting one other thing. The Durona Group among them have an astonishing range of bio-expertise, but they refuse to do clone-brain transplants. It was written right into Lilly Durona's foundation-deal with House Fell. But Baronne Bharaputra, who must be over sixty-standard, apparently plans to embark on her second youth very shortly. Judging from what we witnessed."

"Rats," muttered Quinn.

"So that's another cross-connection," said Mark. "In fact, it's a damned cat's cradle of cross-connections, once you get hold of the right thread. But it doesn't explain, to me at least, why the Durona Group would conceal Miles from their own House Fell bosses. Yet they must have done so."

"If they have him," Quinn said, gnawing on her cheek.

"If," Mark conceded. "Although"—he brightened slightly—"it would explain why that incriminating cryochamber ended up in the Hegen Hub. The Durona Group wasn't trying to hide it from ImpSec. They were trying to hide it from other Jacksonians."

"It almost all fits," said Thorne.

Mark opened his hands and held them apart palm to palm, as if invisible threads ran back and forth between them. "Yeah. Almost." He closed his hands together. "So here we are. And there we're going. Our first trick will be to re-enter Jacksonian space past Fell's jump-point station. Captain Quinn has brought along quite a kit for doctoring our identities. Coordinate your ideas with her on that one. We have ten days to play with it."

The group broke up to study the new problems each in his, her, or its own way. Bothari-Jesek and Quinn lingered as Mark rose and stretched his aching back. His aching brain.

"That was quite a pretty piece of analysis, Mark," said Quinn grudgingly. "If it's not all hot air."

She ought to know. "Thank you, Quinn," he said sincerely. He, too, prayed it wouldn't all turn out to be hallucinatory, an elaborate mistake.

"Yes . . . he's changed a bit, I think," Bothari-Jesek observed judiciously. "Grown."

"Yeah?" Quinn's gaze swept him, up and down. "True . . ."

Mark's heart warmed in hungry anticipation of a crumb of approval.

"—he's fatter."

"Let's get to work," Mark growled.

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-two