- Prologue

'Liad is a war zone, Pilot. I cannot say it will be without risk.'

He sipped his tea.

'The rest meets with your approval? In short: I provide a ship, a destination for the ship, and a list of items or documents to be delivered or picked up. At each port you will have a public pickup or delivery; which permits you to claim time, ports, from the Guild; as well as a reason to be in system. From time to time I may provide a 'wait for' order as items must reach your location, at times I may issue a 'skip run' and you will then not follow the previous route but move beyond, or rendezvous as is pertinent. You provide piloting, care of my ship, and act as delivery or receiving agent. You will be issued three pinbeam codes for use as required in emergencies or other exigencies, which you will use with care.'

'What will I be carrying, Uncle?'

He smiled, and raised his hand like a lecturer looking for attention from a class.

'To the best of your knowledge you will be carrying rare books, special or unique reference items, and the occasional replacement part. Some of these are antiques, some are reproductions, some are both. You will not be carrying drugs, jewels, or other material generally considered illicit.'

'This is good pay.'

'A good pilot is worth good pay.'

'What about Win Ton?'

He raised both hands as if weighing an invisible cat.

'Yes, you see, these things are all run together. Win Ton has saved the Scouts, and myself, some difficulty by acting with haste. His actions have brought to him the problems he discussed with you—but see, I tell you that he is not giving away confidences, but rather was subject to an interview after he was given a drug to relax him into the device in which he now sleeps. It is not a mere med unit like the best ships and hospitals have, it is a med unit of the type the Scouts have long abjured and fought against, in that it uses forbidden, even secret, technology.'

He paused, seeing her concentrate, spun the comment query off of his fingers in that clipped accent of his.

'How can you forbid technology?' Theo asked. 'How can you keep it secret? If someone can make something, so can someone else, eventually.'

Uncle nodded slightly.

'That would be my understanding, as well, Theo Waitley. The med unit operating on your Win Ton is something more than a standard autodoc unit in that, if required, it can replace tissue to the point of . . . let us say near to the point of creating a clone. Our med unit onboard, as it stands, is Win Ton's best chance to survive the next two Standards or so.'

Theo eyes widen, hope quickening. 'It will cure him?'

'It will not cure him!'

At this Uncle rose, and began to pace, hands making rhythmic motions as if he posted to a keyboard, or struck a small drum set.

'If I had been permitted to work with and collect this technology several hundred years ago when I wished to, we might again be at that point. But I was not and in any case—at hand what we have is a machine which is far more powerful than the Scout catastrophe units; if you have a brain to hand, almost any other injury you might name can be healed over time; if you have time, even aging can be reduced considerably. But to do that, we need a very complete sample, a very secure sample.'

He paced, and Theo's hands won the race with her mouth, confirm data several hundred years outpacing her spoken, 'Sample?'

He pause, and smiled slowly.

'In fact, a secure sample: what we have now of your Win Ton is contaminated; his blood and his cells carry within them the very things of which we need to cure him. The Win Ton you saw in the viewport of the machine, that Win Ton, the biologic system, has been altered to hide what is new among what is old, to make all of him somewhat other than the Win Ton you knew previously.'

Theo shuddered, wondering, saw data confirmed go past as she considered—

'Clones, people clones, aren't legal, are they?'

He waved his hand with no meaning other than frustration, walking a few steps away and back as he thought.

'Fashion,' he said finally. 'It is a matter of fashion to make these rules. Cloning has been legal, it has been illegal. Good people have died a final death because they might not be cloned, my relatives among them—and for that matter, yours. Progress has been held back until the point that these Liaden fools Win Ton has been tangled with can threaten everything out of ignorance!'

'The Scouts?'

He sat suddenly, anger leached into an earnest and almost beseeching tone.

'The dissidents, the Department of the Interior. The fools who have collected good and bad Old Tech without discrimination and use it without understanding. The Scouts, the old Scouts, made it easy for them by putting these devices in safe places where they thought no one would find them, not knowing that technology cannot be suppressed over time. Banned, perhaps, outlawed certainly, but that's a passing thing waiting for the right person or group to write new rules.

'What may cure your Win Ton is what the Scouts are afraid of. Bechimo has a med unit that far surpasses even the unit on this ship, upon which both Dulsey and I depend. More! Bechimo certified Win Ton yo'Vala as copilot. It holds a sample—a secure sample— enough to rebuild him completely, properly, and without contamination.'