Blackcollar: The Blackcollar

"It's not a matter of wounded pride, Damon," Faye spoke up. "Whatever you were trying to do in Henslowe, chances are Miles could have made things easier for you if you'd consulted with him beforehand. Were you hoping to find where a particular prisoner was being kept? If so, we could probably have gotten that for you from out here."

Lathe shrugged noncommittally. "There'll be other chances."

"Not if I know Apostoleris," Bakshi said. "He's bound to move the vets now—and wherever they're put it'll cost us a lot of lives to get them out. That's what your private raid really accomplished."

"Perhaps," Lathe admitted. "If so, I'm sorry. Where would the vets be sent—any ideas?"

"Cerbe Prison's their best bet," Faye said. "It's an old fortress southeast of here, out in the middle of nowhere. Smallish building, four floors up and six down, surrounded by a walled courtyard big enough to land a Corsair in. The wall's got a weapons turret at each corner, controlled either from inside or from the main building."

"If the quizlers put them there you might as well pack up and leave," Dael Valentine interjected, his face stormy above his black turtleneck. "In fact, maybe you ought to leave anyway."

"Easy, Dael," Bakshi murmured.

"Sorry, Comsquare, but I'm getting sick of this. We give them safety and information by the truckload and get absolutely nothing in return."

Bakshi cocked an eyebrow at Lathe. "You care to respond?"

"Certainly. If you'd open your eyes and imagination you'd see useful fallout from our work all around you."

"What fallout?" Valentine snorted.

"Well, for lack of a more obvious example, we just demolished a gate into the Strip. Someone's got to rebuild it, and one or two of those someones could build miniature mines into the hinges. You'd then have a one-shot chance later to bring a carload of stolen parts or whatever out of the Strip without having to actually ram the gate."

From the looks and murmurs around the table it was clear no one had thought of that. Tremayne and Bakshi exchanged glances, and Caine saw the blackcollar nod fractionally.

"Do you promise to consult with us—or at least me—before any further actions?" Tremayne asked.

"If it involves Radix perso

"That's not good enough," Valentine shook his head.

Lathe shrugged. "It's the best I can offer."

There was a moment of awkward silence. "All right," Tremayne said at last. "I guess I can see your side of it. But—" He leveled a finger at Lathe. "We can play by military rules too. If any Radix member gets killed because you didn't consult with us you'll face a summary court-martial. I mean it."

"Understood. You'll let us know right away about any prisoner transfer?"

Tremayne looked at Cameron. "Yeah, I'll get some people on that," the intelligence chief growled.

"Good. Anything new at the Chryselli front?"

"The fighting's still going on," Salli Quinlan spoke up, somewhat grudgingly. "Argent's not about to be flooded with returning Ryqril, if that's what you're worried about."

"I was," Lathe acknowledged. "Thank you." He started to stand up.

"Just a second," Valentine objected. "Assuming it's not tied up with this precious mission of yours, I want to know how Caine did his vanishing act from Earth." He sent Caine a baleful glance. "Fair is fair—you don't trust us, either."

"A government man was kidnapped by our people," Caine said evenly. "His ID was altered, and somehow the computer records were also changed."

" 'Somehow'? You'll have to do better than that."

"I don't know how it was done—"

"Oh, that's helpful. Very convenient, too."

Caine felt his face getting red. "I'm an agent, not one of the leaders. They don't tell me everything."

"That's no better an explanation," Cameron said, getting into the act.

"Just a minute," Lathe interrupted. "I think I may know how they did it." He hesitated, not meeting Caine's puzzled frown.

"Well?" Tremayne prompted.

"Near the end of the war someone apparently broke the old problem of short lifetimes for human clones...."

With a kind of numb horror Caine listened as Lathe outlined his theory. It was a possibility that had never occurred to him. His parents, the Resistance people who'd trained him—none of them had ever hinted that he was anything special. But it made sense... and the more he considered it, the more sense it made. There was no other way to explain how Rienzi's medical records had been such a perfect fit for him. No wonder Kratochvil and Marinos had been so casual about the ID records—all the hard work had been done twenty-seven years earlier!

Lathe finished, and for a moment there was silence. "Well, it's an interesting theory," Tremayne said at last. "Unprovable, of course."

"I only offered it as a possibility," Lathe reminded him.

"Yes. I suppose we'll have to settle for that." Tremayne glanced at Valentine, but the blackcollar offered no objection. "All right, then. We'll let you know about the vets; and you'll let us know your plans for getting them out."

Lathe nodded. "As I said I would."

The meeting broke up, and Caine headed straight for the door. He wanted to be alone, to sort all this out in privacy... before he reached the door Novak and Mordecai had fallen into step with him. He ignored them as he strode out into the hall. A clone. A duplicate person—and if one, why not more? He'd assumed the personal tutelage had been a normal part of Resistance agent training. But now he doubted that. Special treatment went with special tools. How many more Allen Caine Specials were there on Earth, being as carefully maneuvered through life as he had been?

A puppet, that's what he was. A clone-puppet, his broken strings picked up by Lathe and Radix.

A clone. I should feel something, he told himself dully. Anger; resentment. He'd been lied to his whole life; a piece of biological merchandise told he was a human being while everyone else chuckled at his na?vet?. At the very least, he thought, I should feel shame. But all he had was numbness—numbness and the knowledge he still had a job to do. His conditioning was too good to fall apart over even a revelation like this.

"Caine?"

The figure waiting across from the blackcollars' room stepped forward. Stopping, Caine pulled his mind back from its brooding and forced his eyes to focus.

It was Lia

"I'd like to talk to you a moment," she said.

The last thing in the universe he wanted at the moment was to talk to an Argentian, and he was opening his mouth to say so when Mordecai butted in. "Probably shouldn't," he muttered.

Something deep within Caine flipped polarity. "Sure," he told Lia

Just this once, the puppet was going to handle his own strings.

If Mordecai was upset by the decision, he didn't show it, and Novak similarly made no comment as he unlocked the door and slipped inside for a quick check. Once inside, Caine led Lia

"What can I do for you?" he asked, motioning the girl to one of the chairs as he sank into the other. Over her shoulder he could see Novak and Mordecai and realized that he'd instinctively seated Lia

So much for handling his own strings.

"Caine—"