"Are you really a Jedi? You're not exactly General Kenobi..."
Etain concentrated on the most powerful Force grab she could muster and sent a chair crashing from one side of the room to the other, shattering it into splinters against the wall.
"Jedi enough for you?" she asked. She patted her bump. "I could run through my list, but I've got heartburn, so can we take it as read?"
"Impressive." Ko Sai could never sound impressed, so Etain took it at face value. "It's hard to tell from appearance."
"You're not interested in my conjuring tricks, though, are you? You want to crack a Jedi genome and take a look at those midichlorians."
"It would be fascinating."
"And instead of being the chief scientist who ended her career in disgrace and obscurity, you could be the preeminent authority on Force-user genetics."
"What do you care about scientific knowledge?"
"I don't, unless it can help the people I love."
"I find it staggering that anyone could destroy so much precious knowledge on a whim."
Ko Sai meant Ordo. If he'd tried to design a way to really get back at her, he couldn't have come up with a better one than vaping those datachips.
"Yes, that did come as a shock," Etain said.
"I thought it was one of Skirata's little games until I saw the effect it had on him. He's lost a great deal, too, or you wouldn't be in here-would you?"
"No." Etain stood up and walked around the room slowly, just to give Ko Sai something to ponder. The more interested the Kaminoan seemed-and she did exude a powerful curiosity-the bolder Etain felt. "If it means giving you a few cells to play with in exchange for the clones having a normal life span, it's worth it to me. Not an extra-prolonged life. Not whatever the Chancellor wanted you to do for him. Just undo what you did, for these few men, and nobody cares what you do in the future."
"Skirata cares."
"Skirata is a practical man who loves his sons, not a moral philosopher."
Ko Sai looked her in the eyes. Etain understood what Skirata meant when he said they were creepy. It was a good description: no warmth, no understanding, just intense, pitiless scrutiny.
"We all sell out in the end," she said. "Even me," said Etain.
"The father of your child is one of the clone units, isn't he?"
Etain had never heard them called unite before. But Darman-all of them-were just organic machines built to order as far as the Kaminoans were concerned: product, merchandise, units. "Yes. Imagine it. One genome you know intimately, combined with one you've never been able to get your hands on."
Ko Sai's face didn't exactly light up, but Etain sensed a slight lifting of her dark mood. "How can I trust you?"
"I'll give you a cryosuspended sample of my blood now." Etain wasn't sure where she might get a cryocontainer out here, but Rav Bralor would know. It was the kind of kit that even veterinarians kept for sending livestock samples for testing, so the next farm might have some. "You give me a list of some of the genes you regulated to achieve rapid aging, and how they're switched to reverse the process. I'm not even asking for them all at this stage. Just a demonstration that we understand we both have something to lose and gain in this."
"And what after that?"
"When the baby's born? Multipotent stem cells, maybe, from the umbilical cord."
Ko Sai did seem taken aback by that. "You've done your homework, Jedi."
Well, Mereel had, but Etain was reassured that she could still act convincingly. "Do we have a deal? Is it really worth holding out just to remind a few clones that you had that power over their life span, when you could move into a whole new area of research?"
Ko Sai went very quiet and made that odd weaving movement of her head, back and forth, very snake-like. It struck Etain as the equivalent of a human drumming her fingers on the table while thinking hard.
"Very well," she said. "There are many things I can cite from memory, even without the research from Tipoca."
Etain sat down and tried not to look triumphant. The heartburn helped a lot. Ko Sai marked screen after screen on her datapad, and then handed it to Etain.
"Those are the first sequences that can be switched back with zinc and methylation," she said. "Mereel should be able to check that those are valid."
"Thank you." Etain still wondered if the scientist actually knew the whole solution yet, but even if she didn't, they now had an extra something they didn't have before. "I'll get the blood container, and you can keep the sample with you. It need never leave your sight. Can I get you anything else?"
Ko Sai swayed her head. "Without my datapad connection to the HoloNet, I have little to read. Could you obtain the lat-est edition of the Republic Institute Journal of Endocrinology for me?"
"I'm sure I can."
Etain closed the doors behind her and breathed again. Sorry, Venku, but she's never going to be able to put it to use, is she? When she walked into the main room, which she'd come to think of as a cross between a kitchen and a salon, Mereel was finishing off the nerf. She wondered if slowing down the aging process would reduce the clones' prodigious appetites.
"Here," she said, laying the datapad in front of him. "All you have to do is offer her your firstborn and she's as good as gold."
Mereel stopped chewing and swallowed hard. He stared at the data.
"Et'ika," he said, "you're not just good for opening doors, are you?"
"We're taking it a step at a time."
"What did you offer her? Seriously?"
"First payment? A cryosample of my blood, and a holozine-the Journal of Endocrinology."
"Maybe she misses the jokes page."
"Let's keep her as sweet as we can keep a Kaminoan, shall we?"
"Seriously-well done, Etain."
"Jedi stuff." She was starting to feel good again, useful and competent. "And I've found that most beings can't look away from a pregnant female. Psyched her out a little, especially given her life's work."
It was a job well done, for the time being. Mereel made her a pot of shig-a tisane made from a plant called behot- before getting on with examining the data.
"I'll have to get this checked," he said, "and that means farming it out in sections so they don't know what it is I'm working on, but it's a hopeful start."
Etain sipped. The shig was citrus-flavored and kinder to her stomach than caf. "It's just such a shame that all that other data was... lost."
It felt too cruel to say blown to pieces by your crazy brother.
"Yeah," Mereel said, and squatted down next to her seat. He put his finger to his lips for silence and opened one of his belt pouches. Then he drew out a container, the kind that datachips were stored in, took her hand, and laid it on the little box. "Indeed."
"Mereel..."
"Don't you always do a backup, Etain? Tut tut..."
"Don't joke about this, Mereel." She was starting to get annoyed with him. Skirata had been mortified by it. "Is that what I think it is?"
"We might have behavioral problems, but we're not stupid. It is. All intact. Ordo meant what he said, but he didn't use the real set of chips."
Etain's ecstatic relief was instantly slapped down by re-calling Skirata's face. "How could you do this to Kal? What if he'd had a seizure or something? He was devastated."
Mereel replaced the datachips and stood up. "I know, I know. Ordo and I argued over it, but it was the only way I could get Kal'buir to act like it was real. He's usually a great little actor, our buir, but he isn't always good at grief. Ko Sai would probably have spotted it."
"Poor man."
"I'll comm Ordo and let him know he can tell Kal'buir."
"Kal's going to be furious. He blames himself."
"Oh, Ord'ika can get away with murder. He's the number one son." Mereel went back to the datapad, and smiled again. "And it broke Ko Sai, didn't it?"
It did. But it had very nearly broken Skirata, too, and Etain could see it.
And I just lied and used my unborn son to do a deal that I know won't be honored, so where does that leave me?
They were living in desperate times. Whether it meant that the rules no longer applied, or that the times they lived in were down to ordinary people abandoning those rules to start with, Etain wasn't sure.
Chapter 16.
I don't know why they're keeping me here. They haven't demanded information from me or tried to force me to create an antidote to the nanovirus. I'm bored with no work to do, but nobody ever died of boredom. Sometimes I wonder if the man in the cloak-the one who commissioned my research-has been trying to reach me, but they've taken away my holoreceiver.
-Dr. Ovolot Qail Uthan, bioengineer and geneticist, creator of the Fett-genome-targeted nanovirus FG36, currently held in a Republic maximum-security prison somewhere on Coruscant.
Republic Central Medcenter neurology unit, Coruscant, 483 days after Geonosis "I said move it, didn't I? You deaf or something? Clear the corridor! Armed police!"
Boots clattered outside and Besany heard the sound of doors opening and closing, shouts of "Clear!" and the familiar barked orders of a man who'd once entertained her royally in the CSF Staff and Social Club.
Captain Jailer Obrim-former Senate Guard-loved his work on secondment to the ATU so much that he'd stayed. The doors burst open, and she was staring down the barrel of a police-issue blaster with a red targeting laser blinding her. Ordo said the laser was theatrics to scare targets, and no serious sniper would give away his position with one. It certainly scared her. But she wanted to be sure who was taking her surrender before she laid down her blaster.
"Captain Obrim?"
"Agent Wennen, put the blaster down, will you?" He didn't lower his weapon, and it struck her that he thought she might open fire on him. "Come on, it's me. Jailer. Kal called."
She trusted him. If she was wrong-no, she had to trust him, and Skirata, too. She lowered the blaster, flicked the safety catch on, and put it in her jacket again.
"That's better," Obrim said. He held his blaster up in the safety position and leaned out of the doorway. "Clear, boys. Stand down. Prepare to transport a detainee. Paramedics-in here."
"I'm sorry about this, Captain." Besany could feel her legs shaking as the adrenaline finished its job. She almost sat down on the edge of Fi's bed to recover, but matters seemed too urgent now. "I had no idea what else to do."
Obrim looked over Fi and gripped his hand tightly. "Fierfek, they want to just finish him off? I've had officers recover from head wounds when they shouldn't have, and ones who died when they shouldn't have, so while I can see him breathing-I want a second opinion. Even a third. As many as it takes." He straightened up. "Where's that gurney?"
"Where are we going to take him?" Besany asked. "I appear to be stealing government property. He can stay in my guest room, but I've got to find someone to..."
"I've got a secure location, don't you worry. And care laid on." The CSF paramedics moved in and began detaching Fi from the sensors and wrapping him in blankets. "If they want to play this game, fine. I can play it bigger."
Obrim was upset and angry. She'd only seen the world-weary side of him, never fazed by anything, but this was very personal for him and it showed. He and Skirata were a matched pair. He might have been the only aruetyc friend that Skirata had. They certainly saw the galaxy the same way.
"I'd better call my boss and let him know he's going to have an unpleasant message from Coruscant Health," Besany said. "Need any clerks at CSF? Because I'm going to be fired in the morning."
Obrim moved in to tuck a stray corner of blanket under Fi's body as the gurney was steered away. "Don't worry. He'll never hear about it."
"Kind of hard to ignore, one of his senior investigators storming into a medcenter and holding patients hostage."
"I'll make it go away," Obrim said. "I'm CSF. I can make all kinds of things go away when I need to."
Outside, the medical staff had begun to swarm back, some droid and some organics, and CSF officers cleared a path for the gurney to get to the turbolift. Obrim seemed to have mobilized half a shift to extract Fi from the unit. One med droid, whose identitab showed it was the duty administrator, hovered into Obrim's path.
"I insist you return the patient to our care," it said. "Once we've admitted someone, we have to be able to account for them and show they were discharged properly."
"Make up your mind," Obrim said, steering Besany past the droid. "One minute he's a patient and the next he's government property."
"You can't take him. We're responsible for him."
"Until you shoot him full of latheniol, yeah. He dis-charged himself."
"He's incapable of doing that."
"Okay, I'm ATU. I've arrested him for looking at me funny. Now move it, or I'll book you for obstructing me."
"Then arrest that woman for threatening my staff, too."
"Unless you want your rivets felt, tinnie boy, step out of my way."
"This is an outrage. There'll be a formal complaint to your superiors."
Obrim leaned over slightly to make his point to the droid. He had weight and gravitas on his side. "Before you do that," he said quietly, "ask your chief executive about his interest in Twi'lek artistic pursuits on every fourth of the month, and if he'd like me to give police surveillance holovids of the visits to the cultural center to his lovely wife. Your call."
The droid paused, then backed off and hovered away. "We'll see," it said.
Besany slumped back against the wall of the turbolift, heart pounding again. She would never get her life back, she knew it. She wasn't sure that it mattered. "Where are we going, Captain? Who's going to look after him? I'll do what-ever I can."
"First things first, my dear. Let's get him settled. We can worry about the rest later."
"You didn't answer. Where are we going?"