You Sexy Thing was anxious. It chose to assuage that anxiety by doing something. Niko had not forbidden this particular action yet, but the ship thought she would, once she returned and thought harder about that clone. There was a very strong chance that she might have the clone never wake up, but simply continue sleeping in its space, or else even jettison it. It would be much harder for her to jettison it if it had already been decanted, the ship decided. That way it could plead its own case.
The ship would not have done it, perhaps, if Atlanta had not insisted on spending time with the servitor and ignoring the ship. The indignity of being ignored in favor of a part of itself was too much to bear. If she was too obtuse to understand its clever sarcasm about her ear, then it would find something else to be its pet.
And there in the chambers, there was the person who would be Thorn but also not Thorn. The ship was still very unclear on the whole question of identity, but as mentioned, it also was very anxious about those who had gone to the space moth. This may have contributed to its decision as well.
There was a point of no return when the fluid levels would change and could not be reversed. Those microseconds were nearing. The ship considered possibilities, spun out paths, and considered its options. And then the fatal second came, and it started the process of waking up the clone.
The first thing they knew was contentment. There was darkness and bland warmth, and floating, and while they had no words for any of these things, they felt them.
And then these things ebbed away, and there was HEAVY and then there was COLD and then there was harsh LIGHT and then all the words for these things came strong and bright—too strong! too bright!—into its head.
Words in the air—a voice, a voice speaking—
“Happy birthday!”
Dabry knew only when the ship said, “If you are preparing a meal, then I believe there are six to feed instead of five.”
“What?” he said blankly, setting down the spoon he had been using while his mind fanned out a hand of possibilities and considered it.
The ship said, “The clone has woken.”
It had spent a great deal of time preparing that phrasing of the statement, which took no responsibility for the action.
Dabry cut straight to the core of things in a way that dismayed the ship. “What clone?”
“The clone of Thorn.”
“Who … no, that can wait. What is the clone’s status?”
“It has woken,” the ship repeated.
“Who woke it?”
The ship considered the phrasing of possible answers. In the end, it said, “I did.”
“And the clone is awake and who has been tending it?”
“Talon is there with it and I have several servitors in attendance. I have installed basic language and skills packages already while it was still in vitro,” the ship said proudly. It was quite pleased with how quickly it had mastered the clone sac’s technology in order to install and monitor it.
Dabry moved to the door with uncharacteristic haste. “Tell Skidoo to meet me in the cloning chamber.”
As he ran toward the chamber, he said to the ship, “Have you taught him how to shapeshift yet?”
“I lack the technology for that,” the ship said. “It will be something that Talon will teach him.”
“That’s one small mercy,” Dabry said, thinking of how much damage a panicked were-lion that found itself cornered on a spaceship might wreak.
Talon could hear Dabry in the former warball chamber, footsteps thundering in a way that meant Dabry was serious, and probably angry.
“The sergeant will be here in three minims,” the Thing said.
The clone was not his brother.
When he’d fallen out of the sack into Talon’s arms, his first action had been to push himself out of them and away, away from his brother, scrambling to the wall to stare at Talon. He even held himself differently. But it was the cold indifference in his look that was the most convincing, that froze the excitement racing through him and stopped it dead.
Still. It was done. And hope still surged in him. Even this confusion and fear was better than grief.
“You have to pretend,” he told the stranger Thorn.
The clone had been awake for two minims total now, but it had preinstalled knowledge and skills to draw on. It understood the basics of the universe in which it now found itself and had been given knowledge of three languages, the last of which he spoke much better than Talon, or would, once he’d had a chance to sort out all this newness.
“Pretend?” he said.
His voice was wrong, pitched differently than Thorn’s, just one of a hundred little differences that made it clear just how badly Talon had fucked up this time. But he smelled right, he smelled like the absent Thorn. That had to mean something, after all. That had to be a good sign.
“Your imprint went wrong,” Talon said. “You have to persuade them that you remember being my brother or they won’t believe it.”
“Why pretend?” not-Thorn demanded.
“You’re an illegal clone,” Talon said urgently, and watched as the clone processed and understood. Its preinstalled knowledge included a basic understanding of the legal system that held sway through most of the Known Universe.
“Who pretend?” he demanded.
“My brother,” Talon said, trying to hope that all of this could be salvaged somehow. “All you have to do is say you know somehow that I’m your brother and that will be enough to convince them you’re him.”
The hatred that smoldered in the other’s eyes surprised him.
“Not him,” not-Thorn said flatly. But before Talon could deny it, the door had opened and Dabry was upon them, Skidoo at his heels. Startled, the clone screamed, flinching away from the sight of Dabry’s towering, angry form.
Dabry went to his knees a meter away from him, holding a hand out, not close enough to touch. Talon held his breath, willing things to go the way he wanted and desperately, achingly afraid that they wouldn’t.
“Sssshhh,” Dabry said. “It’s all right. You are with friends. I’m sorry you were awakened suddenly and without preparation. It’s all right.”
It did look exactly like Thorn, although a Thorn two or three years younger than the one they had lost. A Thorn unscarred and shiny as new metal. Dabry noted that it would be easy to tell the two apart at first. Later, it would be a problem, he suspected. If there was a later.
So many things about this creature—person, he reminded himself—would be a problem.
Skidoo stepped forward and the clone flinched, re-curled into its ball.
“Steady,” Dabry said. “I’m Sergeant Dabry. This is Skidoo.”
“You are not,” the clone rasped. He flinched again at the sound of his own voice, cowering back as though unsure where the noise had come from. “You are. I am not.”
He repeated, his voice filled with terror as he tried to pick and choose among all the concepts that had been forced into his mind in the last hour, “I am not! I am?”
Dabry was perplexed, but Skidoo said, “They is being requesting their name.”
“Name,” Dabry said blankly. His mind was racing. This complicated things enormously. They would have to fake documents for this clone, good enough to pass most places, and as long as they stuck to the edges of Known Space, everything should be fine enough, but this complication was most unwelcome. He’d seen Gnarl’s ship earlier, but all Niko had disclosed over the comms was that Gnarl would be accompanying her party and that they’d talk about it once they were out of the moth.
He cast about in his mind. He said, “I will give you a name, a name from my people. Is that acceptable?”
The clone nodded, his eyes calming a little, but only a grain or two.
He said, “Your name is Rebbe, which means the lost has been found. Do you like that?”
The clone nodded eagerly, as though seizing on the concept. He said, “Rebbe,” and his shoulders sagged as though some weight had been lifted.
“Rebbe,” Dabry repeated. “We are friends. Will you let us take you elsewhere, to feed you and get you used to things?”
The trust in the clone’s eyes as he held out his hand gave him pause. He knew that trust. It was the same trust that had always filled both twins’ faces, a sunny serenity unshakable in its faith that all would be well eventually. He had missed it lately in Talon’s face. Even now Talon was hanging back, as though frightened to push too close.
Would this creature lose that trust as well, given time? Or would it bring the expression back to Talon’s face? This wouldn’t be Thorn; that was impossible.
Instead, the clone would be his own person, although Dabry had his doubts that Talon would be able to resist at least trying to force his expectations on Rebbe.
And after all, didn’t everyone grow up with expectations forced on them by those around them? Would it really be any different here, even with the accelerated development that the clone had experienced?