"Do you know how Arkanian Micro grows human beings to adulthood in a year or so?" Gilamar asked. "How any cloners operate?"

"In theory, yes. Do you work for the Arkanians?"

Skirata didn't have to say yes or no. Nenilin's assumptions did the lying for him. "If we worked for Arkanian Micro, we'd be breaking the law by working on cloning projects with a ban in force, wouldn't we?"

"I suspect that turning their production over to pedigree nerf bloodstock wasn't an option."

"I couldn't say."

But Nenilin couldn't resist filling in the gaps. He enjoyed being clever. He probably thought all Mandalorians were semi-literate grunts. "If I were Arkanian Micro, I'd want a stopgap solution-a way of extending the life of my product during the ban, but one that I had the option to reverse."

"An aging switch," Skirata said.

"Something of an impossible dream, in normal beings. But with organisms designed to mature and age faster, it would be more a matter of restoring the status quo for the species in question."

"Exactly." Skirata kept Gilamar in his peripheral vision, waiting for the point in the conversation where he would have to step in and discuss technical stuff with the prof. "And we're talking about humans. Which is your specialist area."

"I'd need to see ... a specimen genome."

Gilamar leaned forward slightly. "This is highly confidential data, and we'd like some reassurance that you understand how very sensitive this is."

Nenilin looked irritated. "Like Master Fa! said, any cloning activity, direct or ancillary, is illegal within the Republic unless licensed."

"And of course, no researcher in your position would compromise their reputation with illegal work."

So they all understood each other. If Nenilin helped them, he'd lose more than his job if he revealed his source. And he seemed hooked now. Finding out exactly how clonemasters controlled maturation was heady temptation for a gerontolo-. gist. Most commercial cloning research took place in-house, each company with its own closely guarded industrial secrets. Cloning companies spied on one another, didn't share data, and weren't averse to enforcing nondisclosure agreements with staff the hard way-with a blaster, or worse.

Skirata could almost see Nenilin's thoughts forming like a hologram above his head; the glittering bronzium globe of a Republic Science Accolade, and rippling applause.

Gotcha.

Gilamar held out a datachip. "Here are some sequences for you to examine. The geneticist on this part of the project was silencing genes H-seventy-eight-b and H-eighty-eight, one by zinc and one by methylation."

"Interesting," said Nenilin, inserting the chip into his datapad and frowning at the screen. "I'd have expected some manipulation of telomere length via checkpoint genes. Not those two ... yes, that's very interesting indeed." He paused as if framing a delicate question. "Are you really a Mandalorian?"

"You mean how come I can use big words and don't walk on my knuckles? Well, some of us evolved." Gilamar snapped his thumb and forefinger together in demonstration. "See? Give us a few more weeks and we'll invent the wheel."

Nenilin had clearly riled the doc. Skirata willed Gilamar not to take a swing at him.

"I meant that you sound as if you had a scientific education," Nenilin said carefully.

"Just a country doctor," Gilamar said. "I don't think Mandalore has produced a geneticist of note since Demagol."

Nenilin's expression said that he felt he ought to have known who Demagol was, but he didn't, and so had no idea if Gilamar was mocking him or not. When he found out-if he found out-he'd discover the insult. But Skirata could see that the biologist was now firmly hooked by insatiable curiosity, and a small matter like comparison with the most notorious and loathed scientist in Mandalorian history wasn't going to divert him from his quest now.

There was always the chance that Nenilin would fail to come up with anything useful. Ko Sai, filthy aiwha-bait though she was, had been an exceptional genetic engineer, perhaps the greatest ever. She'd be a tough act to follow.

"This isn't the entirety of your material, is it?"

"Of course not," said Skirata. "But we have associates who'd be emphatically disappointed if we handed you the whole file ..."

Nenilin looked to Gilamar as if he was the Mando with the brain cell. "What do you want me to do, then?"

"Look at the data I've given you and tell me if the silencing of those two H genes would affect any in the cluster at chromosome Nine-A, or possibly Fourteen-B."

"You've pinned that much down, then."

"You tell me."

"It's more than just telomere activity you need to control if you want to stop accelerated aging. But I suspect you know that. Do you mind my asking the obvious, though?" Nenilin had a smug little smile. Skirata thought he probably spent far too much time with adoring students who thought he was a god. Maybe he should have let Gilamar smack Nenilin after all. "If your... associates managed to achieve controlled acceleration of aging, then they'd know the route to roll back from that to an unaltered genome."

Gilamar managed a smile even more smug than Nenilin's. "They're not just manipulating maturation of humans," he said. "I can't reveal too much, obviously, but they might even be adding material from another individual's genome or ... building wholly artificial genes. You know the havoc that would play with the expression of characteristics."

Nenilin's eyes seemed to light up at the mention of artificially created genes. Maybe that was a daring new adventure for these lab jockeys. "Or does this data come from a rival, and so you're lacking critical parts of it?"

Skirata cut in. "Let's just say the geneticist who could best help us is a little indisposed because she's dead."

That knocked the smirk off Nenilin's face. Skirata hoped that his cloudy mock-rustic ale choked him, but not before he did something useful. He hadn't even asked how much he'd get paid. Skirata didn't trust anyone who didn't have a price.

"I have a condition," Nenilin said. Skirata nodded. Nice normal greed. That's a relief. "Of course."

"If I can solve your little puzzle, then I want to be able to use the research for my own study. No embarrassing revelations about the source, of course. I give you my word."

It wasn't as if the guy would forget it once he'd worked it out anyway; you didn't forget that kind of stuff, and so it was bound to influence whatever experiments he was running at the university. But Skirata didn't give a mott's backside what Nenilin did with the data as long as he got what he wanted a way of stopping the relentless accelerated aging in clones, specifically his clones, his boys-his sons. The definition of Skirata's responsibility had expanded since he'd first decided to look for a solution, and now he was ready to offer the cure to any clone in the Grand Army who wanted it, but his immediate circle, his family, came first.

"Shab, we'll even pay you," Skirata said and casually tossed him a high-denomination cash credit chip as if the scientist was a waiter. "That'll help you make a start. Buy some test tubes or whatever it is you use."

"It's refrigeration, hydraulic shearing machines, and cuvettes," Nenilin said. "But thank you."

"We'll be in touch every week, by comm." Skirata got up and headed for the exit. "Pleasure doing business, Dr. Nenilin."

Mereel and Gilamar followed Skirata out into the main salon of the cantina, through a noisy, braying crowd of well-spoken patrons with the same air of faded nobility that Nenilin had. And they say clones are all the same, do they? Skirata's ingrained mistrust of the social classes above him came from more than just his Kuati roots. It was the way they combined detached cluelessness with their certainty that they knew best. That was what got his adrenaline prompting him to take a swing every time. He inhaled the cool air in the alley outside; it felt as if he was surfacing from drowning. Even the alley was built in a mock-ancient style, trying to pass itself off as some baronial fort. It was a year old if it was a day.

Skirata pulled three strips of ruik root from his pocket, handed them around, and chewed thoughtfully. "What do you reckon, Mij?"

"Let's see what he comes up with."

"Is he talking through his shebs?"

"Well, if he is, then at least we'll know what his methodology is so we can rule it out," said Gilamar. "Knowing what doesn't work is as useful a clue as any in genetics."

"Promise me you won't kill him until you get something useful out of him."

"It'll be a challenge," Gilamar said. "I could have fun testing a large-gauge rusty syringe on that guy. Now, you want me to look in on Kad'ika before I pay my respects to Zey and tell him where to shove his offer?"

"See Zey first. And no insertion instructions . . ."

"Wad'e and I . . . well, we're not exactly persuaded that training more covert ops troopers is a productive use of a Mando'ad's time."

Here we go again. Covert ops clones had been tasked to assassinate renegade ARC troopers. Gilamar and Tay'haai had taken that news very badly, although maybe not as badly as Darman, who'd ended up killing two of them. The Republic was rotten at its core; more maggots tumbled out every time Skirata shook it. Clones forced to kill clones-yes, Skirata could see it was one insult too far.

"Mij," Skirata said, "the more of us back on the inside, the better."

"You can get any information you want. Jaing and Mereel can slice into any system in the Republic-including the Treasury. Why don't you just fleece Palpatine of his reserves and we can all thin out?"

Skirata concentrated on not blinking. Gilamar had no idea how accurate that comment was. Skirata hated deceiving him, but what he didn't know couldn't get him into more trouble. He knew what he needed to know, and no more.

"Yeah, but you can steer events ..." Skirata said. "You want to see Priest or Reau back in?"

"You wouldn't. Not them." Gilamar boiled. He loathed both of them to the point of violence. "They had the makings of the Death Watch in them, those two. Him and that perverted secret fight club, her and that let's-conquer-the-galaxy-again osik . . . that's not what either of us want Mandalore to be, is it?"

"I know how to get you going, don't I?"

Gilamar scratched the bridge of his nose thoughtfully. The conspicuous break in it from a particularly fierce game of get'shuk made him look more like a man who handed out injuries than one who healed them. That was also true, of course.

"Just keep me away from them. Him especially. Jango must have been mad to recruit him." "Joking, Mij ..."

"Okay, tell me what you're really looking for."

"Any clue about the timing of a shift in strategy," Skirata said. "Like I said before, there's a big sea change coming and I want plenty of notice so I can get our boys out."

Gilamar stood with hands on hips, staring down at Skirata's boots. "Okay, just for you. And get that leg fixed, will you? It's a simple op. What are you, a martyr or something?" Maybe I am.

Skirata had lived with the aftermath of that ankle injury for nearly forty years. He rationalized it as a reminder of stupid risks, but perhaps it was a penance. He couldn't sleep in a bed now, either; on the night he'd rescued Ordo and his brothers from the Kaminoans, he'd slept in the chair to keep an eye on them, and from that point on he felt that rest in a comfortable bed was off limits to him until he fully secured their futures. Ritual-ritual to keep the fates appeased, to focus him, whatever-had eaten a big chunk of his life.

"You're right," Skirata said. "I'll get it fixed."

Gilamar went on his way. Mereel, unusually quiet, strolled in the other direction toward the speeder parking area.

"Well, our professor's bold moral stance on not exploiting poor downtrodden clones like me didn't last long, did it?" he said. "He's got the breaking strain of a warm butter-loaf."

"Son," said Skirata, "if all scientists had nice shiny consciences, we'd still be fighting with stone axes. Who do you think developed all those handy blasters, lasers, and ion cannons?"

"A lot of academics don't support the war, though."

"Yeah, but if you went back in there, told our overeducated friend what you were, and asked him to liberate you and your clone brothers, he'd be out the doors so fast you wouldn't see his shebs for dust. It's a theoretical principle for him. It's not personal. Worse than that-he's not even motivated by creds. I hate a man who's driven by a vision. You can't trust him."

"And you're busting a gut to free us just for the cred chips and the plunder, of course . . ."

"That's different. You're my boys."

"Anyway, it's not as if we're stuck with him. He's just one scientist working on a fragment of the data. And he's not going to be chatting about the approach over a caf in the university common room, is he? None of them will. They'll all potter away on their own section of the genome, thinking they're privileged with some secret, and never have the full picture."

"Sooner or later, we're going to have to try it out. The cure, I mean." "fry it on me."

It had to be tested on a clone. Skirata didn't see any of them as expendable, even rank-and-file troopers he'd never met, but the thought of trying some unproven therapy on any of his own boys scared him. He couldn't try it out on himself. It was the one sacrifice he could never make for them, however much he wanted to.

"We'll make sure we know how to undo the effects of it before we get to that stage," Skirata said ruffling Mereel's hair. "I won't take risks with your health."

Mereel laughed. "Lots of nice healthy firefights instead."

"You could go home to Mandalore now and never fight again." Skirata felt instantly guilty. It didn't take much where his kids were concerned. "Nobody's forcing you to fight now, son."

"I'm not sitting on my shebs while my brothers fight, either." Mereel seemed more interested in an illuminated sign a little farther ahead than avoiding premature old age. He quickened his pace. "Sooner or later, though, we might have to use Kad'ika's tissue samples."

Skirata shook his head. Etain hadn't objected to letting Ko Sai take a look at her son's genome, but Ko Sai had been their prisoner, held in isolation. There was nothing the Kaminoan could have done with the knowledge. Once some Other gene cruncher got wind of the fact that Darman and Etain had a son, though, the baby would be a valuable commodity. Half Jedi, half perfect soldier: that was a genome a lot of companies-and governments-would kill to get their hands on.

"It's too dangerous, Mer'ika," Skirata said. "They can detect the midi-chlorians. They'd know."

"Maybe only the Jedi Council has the kit to do that."

"Wouldn't they see there was material in the cells that didn't add up?"

"Kad'ika's the only child of a clone that we have, and Home of the aging genes aren't present-or at least what we think are those genes." Mereel didn't sound desperate, just patient, as if Skirata didn't realize things and needed a biology lesson repeated with helpful diagrams of squalls and jakrabs. "I thought the maturation genes the Kaminoans added to the basic Jango model were recessive, for their own business reasons, but it's never quite that simple in genetics. Add take away, or change one gene-even move its position-and it can have a massive impact on the expression of all the others. They're all connected somehow. It's not a simple case of chopping bits out of gene sequences or adding them. If it was, cloning wouldn't be such a profitable or secretive business. It's very hard to get right."

Skirata didn't want to argue. The whole quest was his idea; he could hardly turn around now and say there was a limit to how far he would go to save his clone sons from an unfairly early death. Skirata wasn't sure now if his own reluctance was based on fear of exposing Kad'ikar to discovery, or just a general unease about using the kid for genetic research in any way. That was all too . . . Kaminoan.

Kid? My grandson. He really is my grandson now.

"We can approach it from the embryology end, too," Mereel said. "Dr. Elliam Baniora. Everything I've read suggests he's the top man when it comes to development. Let's tell him we want to see if we can clone humans with extended active life spans for manual labor."

Cover stories needed to have just enough truth in them to look like the real thing. Skirata wondered whether to just tell them the truth: that he'd been one of life's losers until his unhappy life had been transformed by a bunch of clone kids who needed him simply to survive, and so now he would do anything, absolutely anything, to give them a normal life and the life span that went with it.

If the scientists wanted the biotechnology as the price of saving his boys, he'd pay it. He didn't care. He just wanted them to have lives like other men.

"You know what I find funny?" Skirata unlocked his speeder, the spoils of war commandeered from a Jabiimi terrorist who was too dead to need it now, and realized the sign that had caught Mereel's attention was outside a confectionery store. Clones, always peckish, tended to have a very sweet tooth. Maybe it was linked to their maturation, the metabolic need to fuel all that fast aging. "That the guy could look you in the eye and still not know what you are. Even now, most aruetiise here don't know what a clone trooper looks like."

Nor did they care, by and large. But some did like Besany Wennen, and when they cared they could move mountains.

Mereel paused. "Can you wait a few minutes while I get something, Kal'buir?"

"Candied nuts ... nut slice ... ?"

"I hear that store does very good nut slice."

Skirata fished in his pockets automatically and crammed a stack of credit chips into Mereel's hand.

"Time we got some bank accounts sorted out for you all," he said.

Mereel shrugged. "We're not short of creds, any of us."

"I mean real bank accounts, not skimming off the Republic's budget. In case anything happens to me."

"Buir, we can slice into any banking system in the galaxy, like Mij said. We're big boys now. And nothing's going to happen to you."

Skirata walked a precarious line between wanting to protect his adopted sons from an unforgiving galaxy and giving them the space the Republic denied them to be independent. It was a parent's dilemma, magnified many times and complicated by their accelerated compressed life spans. He didn't want to dole out pocket money to them like kids; these were fighting men, and they deserved the wherewithal to lead their own lives, all the simple routine choices that citizens had.

"I don't mean money laundering," Skirata said. "I'll get Jaing to set up personal accounts for you all. Private, to spend as you like. None of my business."