The arrangement was simple, though the surgical procedure upon which it was based was fiendishly complex. A clone was grown from a customer’s somatic cell, gestated in a uterine replicator and then raised to physical maturity in Bharaputra’s creche, a sort of astonishingly-appointed orphanage. The clones were valuable, after all, their physical conditioning and health of supreme importance. Then, when the time was right, they were cannibalized. In an operation that claimed a total success rate of rather less than one hundred percent, the clone’s progenitor’s brain was transplanted from its aged or damaged body into a duplicate still in the first bloom of youth. The clone’s brain was classified as medical waste.

The procedure was illegal on every planet in the wormhole nexus except Jackson’s Whole. That was fine with the criminal Houses that ran the place. It gave them a nice monopoly, a steady business with lots of practice upon the stream of wealthy off-worlders to keep their surgical teams at the top of their forms. As far as he had ever been able to tell, the attitude of the rest of the worlds toward it all was out of sight, out of mind.” The spark of sympathetic, righteous anger in Thorne’s eyes touched him on a level of pain so numb with use he was scarcely conscious of it any more, and he was appalled to realize he was a heartbeat away from bursting into tears. It’s probably a trick. He blew out his breath, another Naismith-ism.

Thorne’s brows drew down in intense thought. “Are you sure we should be taking the Ariel? Last I heard,Baron Ryoval was still alive. It’s bound to get his attention.”

House Ryoval was one of Bharaputra’s minor rivals in the illegal medical end of things.