The Security Chief was suitably impressed. “All of them you? Fascinating. In a sense, it’s taking Kreegan’s robots one step farther. All right—I agree we could probably strike a deal. But I suspect if you’ve lived those lives along with them, you’re not quite the man they sent any more—and they know it. I know the first for a fact, for we are having this conversation. I infer the second from your own statements. You do not expect to survive the next encounter in your lab. So that leaves me nowhere, you see. Any deal we might strike is certain to have no validity to your bosses. Still, I am touched by your attempt—and by your devotion. You do not have to go back into that lab, you know.”

The agent looked squarely at the screen, into those weird eyes that none could look into in person. “If you know me at all, you know that I do. My title is Assassin, but I am no hired killer. I have a job to do—if I can.”

“Just hypothetically—if you can survive this last entry and the report, what would you do? Where would you go? Not back to the Confederacy, surely.”

He grinned. “Are you making a hypothetical job offer?”

“Perhaps. I hope you do survive. It would be most interesting to talk to you at length.”

He laughed. “You have only to talk to Park. Or Cal Tremon. Or Qwin Zhang. Or—hmm … I’ll be damned. I don’t know what name I’ve got on Medusa, I haven’t gotten to that one yet.”

Morah was impressed. “You figured out all you have without Medusa? You have an amazing mind.”

“I was bred for it.” He “sighed. “If I survive, we will meet, and soon. If I do not, then the others, different as they now are, will carry on.”