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Szilard said, from his own seat in front of the desk. “Your former head of consciousness research is still alive.”
    â€œBlowing the head off his own clone, now, that was a nice touch,” General Mattson said, sarcasm dripping out his voice. “Those poor bastards were picking brains out of the lab equipment for a week afterward.” He glanced up at Robbins. “Do we know how he did that? Grow a clone? That’s something you shouldn’t be able to do without someone noticing. He couldn’t have just whipped one up in the closet.”
    â€œAs near as we can tell, he introduced code into the clone vat monitoring software,” Robbins said. “Made it look like one of the clone vats was out of service to the monitors. It was taken out to be serviced; Boutin had it decommissioned, and then put it in his private lab storage area and ran it off its own server and power supply. The server wasn’t hooked into the system and the vat was decommissioned, and only Boutin had access to the storage area.”
    â€œSo he did whip one up in the closet,” Mattson said. “That little fucker.”
    â€œYou must have had access to the storage area after he was presumed dead,” Szilard said. “Are you saying that no one thought it odd he had a clone vat in storage?”
    Robbins opened his mouth but Mattson answered. “If he was a good research head—and he was—he’d have a lot of decommissioned and surplus equipment in storage, in order to tinker and optimize it without interfering with equipment that we were actually using. And I would assume that when we got to the vat it was drained and sterilized and disconnected from the server and the power supply.”
    â€œThat’s right,” Robbins said. “It wasn’t until we got your report that we put two and two together, General Szilard.”
    â€œI’m glad the information was useful,” Szilard said. “I wish you had put two and two together earlier. I find the idea that Military Research had a traitor in its ranks—and as the head of an extremely sensitive division—appalling. You should have known.”
    Robbins said nothing to this; to the extent that Special Forces had any reputation at all beyond its military prowess, it was that its members were profoundly lacking in tact and patience. Being three-year-old killing machines didn’t leave much time for social graces.
    â€œWhat was to know?” Mattson said. “Boutin never gave any indication he was turning traitor. One day he’s doing his work, the next we find him a suicide in his lab, or so we thought. No note. No anything that suggests he had anything on his mind but his work.”
    â€œYou told me earlier that Boutin hated you,” Szilard said to Mattson.
    â€œBoutin did hate me, and for good reason,” Mattson said. “And the feeling was mutual. But just because a man thinks his superior officer is a son of a bitch doesn’t mean he’s a traitor to his species.” Mattson pointed to Robbins. “The colonel here doesn’t particularly like me, either, and he’s my adjutant. But he’s not going to go running to the Rraey or the Enesha with top-secret information.”
    Szilard looked over at Robbins. “Is it true?” he said.
    â€œWhich part, sir?” Robbins said.
    â€œThat you don’t like General Mattson,” Szilard said.
    â€œHe can take some getting used to, sir,” Robbins said.
    â€œBy which he means I’m an asshole,” Mattson said, with a chuckle. “And that’s fine. I’m not here to win popularity contests. I’m here to deliver weapons and technology. But whatever was going through Boutin’s head, I don’t think I had much to do with it.”
    â€œSo what was it then?” Szilard said.
    â€œYou’d know better than we would, Szi,” Mattson said. “You’re the one with the pet