"As far as I know."

Several minutes of tedious search produced records on a fair number of Botharis, none related to the Sergeant or Elena in any way. "Ah ha!" Miles broke out suddenly. "I know what I haven't tried. Imp Mil!"

"They don't have an obstetrics department," Elena said doubtfully.

"But if an accident—soldier's wife and all that—maybe she was rushed to the nearest facility, and the Imperial Military Hospital was it …" He crooned over the machine. "Searching, searching .. . huh!"

"Did you find me?" she asked excitedly.

"No—I found me." He flipped over screen after screen of documentation. "What a scramble it must have been, making military research clean up after its own product. Lucky for me they'd imported those uterine replicators—yes, there they are—they could never have tried some of those treatments in vivo, they'd have killed Mother. There's good old Dr. Vaagen—ah ha! So he was in military research, before. Makes sense—I guess he was their poison expert. I wish I'd known more about this when I was a kid, I could have agitated for two birthdays, one when Mother had the caesarian, and one when they finally popped me out of the replicator."

"Which did they choose?"

"Caesarian day. I'm glad. Makes me only six months younger than you are. Otherwise you'd be nearly a year older—and I've been warned about older women . .." This babble won a smile at last, and he relaxed a little.

He paused, staring at the screen with slitted eyes, then entered another search query. "That's weird," he muttered.

"What?"

"A secret military medical research project—with my father as project director, no less."

"I never knew he was in research too," said Elena, sounding enormously impressed. "He sure got around."