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and didn’t comment on the irony of the question. He seemed remarkably relaxed about things now. “It’s not without risk.”
    “How do you feel about having a Kaminoan around?”
    “We coped with having Ko Sai as a houseguest …”
    “Actually, we didn’t, and she didn’t handle it too well, either. She killed herself. And Mereel—she just pressed all the wrong buttons in him.”
    Jusik realized that was the most stupid phrase he’d come out with in a long time.
Wrong buttons
. No, that didn’t even come close. Mereel, like all the Nulls, was just a faulty product as far as the Kaminoan clonemasterswere concerned, something to be put down like an ailing farm animal before they went back to the drawing board. Any normal kid would have been deeply traumatized by that kind of treatment. But kids who had been engineered to be perfect black ops troopers, ferociously intelligent killing machines—their reactions were likely to be a lot more extreme.
    Jusik still marveled at how normal the Nulls managed to be most of time. Mereel was charming and affable, a ladies’ man, always the one with the jokes. And then something would trigger the other Mereel, the tormented and haunted child buried within, and he’d change instantly for a moment before snapping back to his old self. It was as if all the Nulls knew this damaged animal within them only too well, and built new personalities on top to keep it on a leash.
    “Sorry,” Jusik said. “I’m not making light of what happened to you.”
    Ordo shrugged. “Mereel took it the worst. But we’re all messed up.” His frank assessment of his own mental health was almost touching. “Imprecise term, but it sums up the effect Kamino had on us.”
    “Have you discussed it with
Kal’buir
?”
    “Yes, and I agree with him. Kina Ha’s genetic material is too valuable to pass up just because we have nightmares about the
kaminiise
.”
    Jusik chewed over the implications of that again as he parked the speeder as close as he could to the
Oyu’baat
cantina. Kina Ha was another long shot in the bid to find a way to reverse the clones’ accelerated aging, and all of those so far had unraveled into dangerous missions and betrayals. If the Kaminoans had engineered some of their own kind to live exceptionally long lives, then there was something—some set of genes, some technique—that Dr. Uthan might exploit to reset the clones’ aging process to normal. Yes, Jusik could see how important it was; Skirata lived for his clone sons, and giving them a normal life span had become a sacred quest. But
this … 
it had to be traded off against the riskof Kyrimorut’s location leaking, and whatever would happen to Ny Vollen’s regard for Skirata when she worked out that he would turn Kina Ha into soup if he thought it would save his boys.
    That’s going to hurt Ny. Maybe him, too
.
    “Let me ask you a question,
Bard’ika,”
Ordo said. “Does it trouble you that Kina Ha is a Jedi?”
    “Why should it?”
    “Old memories.”
    “Not bothered at all.”
    Ordo looked dubious. “But Kaminoans aren’t a compassionate species, so what kind of Jedi will she be?”
    Jusik thought about it. He’d never heard of a Force-sensitive Kaminoan. And one who lived for centuries, maybe even millennia—that made her a one-off in every sense. “A lonely one, I think.”
    Ordo raised one eyebrow. “Inside, I’m crying. Really. So is
Kal’buir
, I’m sure.” Then he dropped the subject. Jusik decided that Ordo thought it was perfectly normal to try to erase your past because he’d done it, too, or as best he could. He seemed to be worrying that the arrival of real Jedi might shake Jusik’s resolve.
    No. No, it won’t. Now now
.
    Keldabe was a few hours’ flight time south of Kyrimorut and the climate was much milder. The snow hadn’t reached this far. Jusik ambled through the narrow streets and down alleys overhung by rickety buildings, relishing the sheer impossibility of the