"Why?" Robbins asked.

Wilson grinned. "I wish I could tell you. I'm passing along what Charlie and his lab crew told me. I'm just the electron pusher here. But I do know that it means that this"—Wilson pointed to the hologram—"does you no good as it is because it needs a brain, and it needs Charlie's brain, in order to tell you what it knows. And Charlie's brain has gone missing along with the rest of him."

"If this is no damn use to us," Robbins said, "then I'd like to know why you had me come down here."

"I said it's not very useful in a general sense," Wilson said. "But in a very specific sense, it could be quite useful."

"Lieutenant Wilson," Robbins said. "Please get to the point."

"Consciousness isn't just a sense of identity. It's also knowledge and emotion and mental state," Wilson said, and motioned back to the hologram. "This thing has the capacity to know and feel everything Charlie knew and felt right up to the moment he made this copy. I figure if you want to know what Charlie's up to and why, this is where you want to start."

"You just said we needed Boutin's brain to access the consciousness," Robbins said. "It's not available to us."

"But his genes are," Wilson said. "Charlie created a clone to serve his purposes, Colonel. I suggest you create one to serve yours."

"Clone Charles Boutin," General Mattson said, and snorted. "As if one wasn't bad enough."

Mattson, Robbins and Szilard sat in the general's mess of Phoenix Station. Mattson and Szilard were having a meal; Robbins was not. Technically speaking the general's mess was open to all officers; as a practical matter no one under the rank of general ever ate there, and lesser officers entered the mess only on the invitation of a general and rarely took more than a glass of water. Robbins wondered how this ridiculous protocol ever got started. He was hungry.

The general's mess sat at the terminal of Phoenix Station's rotational axis and was surrounded by a single shaped, transparent crystal that comprised its walls and ceiling. It gave an astounding view of the planet Phoenix, which circled lazily overhead, taking up nearly the entire sky, a perfect blue-and-white jewel whose resemblance to Earth never failed to give Robbins a sharp jab in the homesickness centers of the brain. Leaving Earth was easy when one was seventy-five and the option was death of old age within a few increasingly short years. But once you left you could never go back; the longer Robbins lived in the hostile universe the human colonies found themselves in, the more fondly he remembered the flabby but relatively carefree days of his fifties, sixties and early seventies. Ignorance was bliss, or at the very least was more restful.

Too late now, Robbins thought, and directed his attention back to Mattson and Szilard. "Lieutenant Wilson seems to think it's the best chance we have of understanding what was going on in Boutin's head. In any event, it's better than what we have now, which is nothing."

"How does Lieutenant Wilson know that it's Boutin's brainwave he's got in his machine? That's what I want to know," Mattson said. "Boutin could have sampled someone else's consciousness. Shit, it could be his cat, for all we know."

"The pattern is consistent with human consciousness," Robbins said. "We can tell that much because we transfer hundreds of consciousnesses every day. It's not a cat."

"It was a joke, Robbins," Mattson said. "But it still might not be Boutin."

"It's possible it could be someone else, but it doesn't seem likely," Robbins said. "No one else in Boutin's lab knew he was working on this. There was no opportunity to sample anyone else's consciousness. It's not something you could take from someone without them noticing."

"Do we even know how to transfer it?" General Szilard asked. "Your Lieutenant Wilson said it was on a machine adapted from Consu technology. Even if we want to use it, do we know how to do it?"

"No," Robbins said. "Not yet. Wilson seems confident he can figure it out, but he's not an expert in consciousness transference."

"I am," Mattson said. "Or at least I've been in charge of the people who are long enough to know about it. The process involves physical brains as well as the consciousness that's carried over. For this we're down one brain. Not to mention there are ethical issues."

"Ethical issues?" Robbins said. He failed to keep the surprise out of his voice.

"Yes, Colonel, ethical issues," Mattson said, irritably. "Believe it or not."

"I didn't mean to question your ethics, General," Robbins said.

Mattson waved it away. "Forget it. The point stands. The Colonial Union has a long-standing law against cloning non-CDF personnel, alive or dead, but especially alive. The only time we clone humans is to stuff people back into unmodified bodies after their term of service is done. Boutin is a civilian, and a colonist. Even if we wanted to, we can't legally clone him."

"Boutin made a clone," Robbins said.

"If it's all the same we won't let the morals of a traitor guide us in this, Colonel," Mattson said, irritated again.

"You could get a research dispensation from Colonial law," Robbins said. "It's been done before. You've done it before."

"Not for something like this," Mattson said. "We get dispensations when we test weapons systems on uninhabited planets. Start messing with clones and some of the more reactionary types get a twitch in their skulls. Something like this wouldn't even get out of committee."

"Boutin's a key to whatever the Rraey and their allies have planned," Robbins said. "This might be a time to take a page from the U.S. Marines and beg forgiveness rather than ask permission."

"I'd admire your willingness to hoist the Jolly Roger, Colonel," Mattson said. "But you're not the one they'll shoot. Or not the only one."

Szilard, who had been chewing a steak, swallowed and set down his utensils. "We'll do it," he said.

"Pardon?" Mattson said.

"Give the consciousness pattern to Special Forces, General," Szilard said. "And give us Boutin's genes. We'll use them to craft a Special Forces soldier. We use more than one set of genes to make every soldier; technically, it won't be a clone. And if the consciousness doesn't take, it will make no difference. It will just be another Special Forces soldier. There's nothing to lose."

"Except that if the consciousness does take, we'll have a Special Forces soldier with treason on his mind," Mattson said. "That doesn't sound appealing."

"We can prepare for that," Szilard said, and picked up his utensils again.

"You'll be using genes from a live person, and a colonist," Rob-bins said. "My understanding was that Special Forces only took the genes from CDF volunteers who die before they can serve. That's why they're called 'the Ghost Brigades.'"

Szilard looked up sharply at Robbins. "I don't much like that name," Szilard said. "The genes of dead CDF volunteers are one component. And typically we use the volunteer genes as the template. But Special Forces has a wider latitude in the genetic material we're able to use to build our soldiers. Given our mission for the CDF, it's almost a requirement. Anyway, Boutin is legally dead—we've got a dead body with his genes in them. And we don't know that he is alive. Does he have any survivors?"

"No," Mattson said. "He had a wife and kid, but they died before he did. No other family."

"Then there's no problem," Szilard said. "After you're dead, your genes aren't yours anymore. We've used expired colonist genes before. I don't see why we can't do it again."

"I don't remember hearing this about how you build your people, Szi," Mattson said.

"We're quiet about what we do, General," Szilard said. "You know that." He cut a piece of steak and speared it into his mouth. Robbins' stomach grumbled. Mattson grunted, leaned back in his chair, and looked up at Phoenix, imperceptibly turning in the sky. Robbins followed his gaze and felt another pang of homesickness.