He woke up feeling fine — till he opened his eyes and recognized the decanting room. So he'd injected himself into an accelerated clone again. Ready to be killed — or worse — for the good of Society ... as determined by the Bureau's Director, and re-iterated by the sign on the wall: "Duty, Honor, Country, and the greatest of these is Duty." Preaching to the choir in this case. Whoever told stories about renegade clones didn't understand the intimate connection between referent and avatar, even closer than the wild clones called "twins."

He slid off the proofing cot, then showered thoroughly to flush amniotic fluid out of every crevice. He dressed carefully out of the suitcase he — no, that the original Hyram Wazinski had prepared. He must appear at the office just like HW(0) would. No one must suspect: that would taint the setup, smack of entrapment.

HW(1) took the Metro, just like HW(0) would, entering from a different station, two blocks from the Bureau's back lab, but getting off at the normal stop and sauntering six blocks to the Bureau of Special Licenses. Not that HW(0) sauntered much, just something about the feel of a disposable body that brought it out in him. HW(1) wouldn't stray further. The Bureau didn't allow it, nor, for that matter, did the personality base laid down in their shared genes. Neither Hyram would consider shirking duty for a fling at life. For HW(1), in particular, a week (for he would live no longer) of La Dolce Doppia Vita wasn't worth the embarrassment his running away would cause HW(0).

Past the entrance labeled Licenses for Mildly Addictive Substances — the "chill" door. Then, Extremely Addictive Substances  — the "lotus" door. Polluting — the "damn our children" door. Animal Terrorism — the "damn species-ism" office with its separate doors for meat-eaters, leather-wearers, and true animal lovers. All a part of the government's latest move to regulate illegal activities so they could control quality and availability while restructuring the black market.

Finally, a third of the way down the concourse, his door: Licenses for Cloning. And inside the door, security. The Bureau was quite happy to serve citizens — as long as they knew exactly which citizen was being served. And the Cloning Office was even more picky. Only referents, aka Roots, could clone themselves (and not all of them, either). Can't have clones making clones. It'd be like intelligent machines making copies of themselves. Where would it all end ... or would it be better to say "terminate?"

Ordinarily, HW(0) waited patiently in the testing vestibule, called the "heir-lock." Of course, the Bureau couldn't rely on just any form of bio-metric identification (what with, you know, clones running around). During testing, HW(0) chatted with Cartaphilus, the guard, but that — one human recognizing another — wasn't enough. Neither were cards, dumb, smart, or heat-activated, for they can be lost, stolen, or counterfeited. Neither were keypads for they can be read with a simple spray (as seen on UHDTV) or fooled by a PDA program downloaded off N³et. Neither were palm-readers for they spread disease (do you wash your hands every time?). Neither were retina scans for they can be fooled by beheading.

Ordinarily, HW(0) swished and spat (39 flavors of phosphate-buffered saline), offered a different part of his brow for the blood tap (credit the WWF for that idea: what bleeds more easily?), and let the "Skrim Reaper" pluck a hair from an ear pinna (at his age, a bumper crop every week, it seemed), so they could smush a variety of cells and pick through the debris as quickly as possible. Roots differ from clones by 1) sperm-trickle within the walls of any cell and 2) mtLock (molecular channels between mitochondrial and nuclear DNA) inside the cells themselves. Testing for mtLock was quicker and cheaper, so the Bureau went with that.

Ordinarily, HW(0), being a Root, passed the test, but HW(1) didn't. So, before Cartaphilus got too excited, HW(1) waved his credentials — Route to Root, provided by the lab — and got buzzed through. Inside the lobby, he reviewed his appointments with Dollie, the receptionist, who looked pastoral in a wool caftan. At least, he wouldn't have to wait long: #2, at 9:30, was their target.

Sinn-Féin William Kennedy had eluded the Justice Department for over ten years. Reputed — but unproved — capo of the Mass-ticut-Island region of Kennedy Korporate, SWK had taken over the flight of multi-national corporations off-shore — so far off-shore, they were creating their own archipelago around Easter Island —  while keeping up the flow of cash to book clubs, motorcycle gangs, and other loopholes in the campaign-finance laws, so the KK could influence the deployment of troops from the Other United Nations, lead by the North American Union for Government, Homeland, Trade, and Industry, based here in DC (just "DC," one of the compromises to make NAUGHTI happen).

But first, his 9 o'clock: Ruth Guiterrez pranced in, her hair a wavy helmet threaded with those ellipsoid Franken-mussel pearls. Her collar framed her hair, then let down into shoulderpads any Semi-Hemisphere-Pointy-Football-League player would be tickled to wear. The rest of her ... dress? muumuu? sari? restated the theme: look at me, aren't I wonderful?

To her credit, after the requisite CV review and listing of influential medulla-phone numbers — unlisted, of course — she got right down to business. "I've borne two boys, fine sons for my first and third husbands, and for our Union of nations, but now I want a girl, someone to take after me, share my values and dreams."

A doll, HW(1) thought, to dress up as another you. But he just murmured, "I understand. A child you can be sure will appreciate her role — and yours — in the world."

She preened and nodded.

HW(1) lowered his brow in a bureaucratic frown. "We have to be sure that you thoroughly understand how this ... expression of yours might work out. You will be making a human being, a future citizen, not just a child."

Signora Guiterrez nodded gravely, but glee showed in her gilt-lensed eyes and quirked her picturesque mouth.

He continued, "We have developed a simulation, a virtual extrapolation of what it will be like living with your ... daughter for eighteen years." He stood and gestured toward a side door. "A technician will guide the automated interview, including nDNA interpolation, then settle you into the simulator. When you're done with your preview, we'll talk again."

"I have some, uh, adjustments I'd like to make. Her hair —"

"After," HW(1) intoned. His internal clock had just whispered, "9:26." He skirted his desk, took her elbow firmly, and moved her out of the way.

At 9:29, his office door burst open. SWK followed it, one hand aiming a rigid forefinger at HW(1)'s nose. Just a finger, nothing more threatening. Perhaps HW(0) had misjudged SWK's impatience with the Bureau's purposeful bumbling, a rare example of Class-1 obstruction and incompetence that had been the talk of the Assistant Manager's Cafeteria, even a standing ovation during yesterday's Middle-Staff Meeting.

"Where's your supervisor?" SWK demanded. "The receptionist bleated that you're alone in here. You promised your boss would hear my case, listen while I tell him what a buffoon you are. Where is he?"

"She," HW(1) corrected, then shrugged and spread his hands, a gesture that actually took weeks with a personal trainer to master, following a programme developed over centuries by the clandestine Bureau of Bureaus. Just the right insouciance underlying abject servitude, designed to drive pesky, pesty citizens out of the office  — or out of their minds.

"You bastard!" SWK shrieked. "I've got companies to run. I need CEOs, COOs, CFOs, CTOs, CUOs, just like me!" That finger came up at HW(1) again, only it showed a muzzle, not a nail, this time. Of course! No mere plastic gun for Kennedy Korporate. No mundane hidden pistol. Even they would struggle to cover up the gunning down of a Union official. But a microflechette with just the right poison ...

"He just keeled over on me," SWK would sigh or whine or squeal, depending on how KK's Board of Godfathers decided they'd play it.

But first, SWK made a speech. "You've given your last runaround, you sniveling peon, unless Satan has a manpower shortage in Hell."

HW(1) gasped, widened his eyes, put out a hand, all to play his role. Just a tad sorry Dollie hadn't set the appointment after lunch. He could've eaten a Reuben with Truly Organic™ Russian Dressing since it wouldn't count on HW(0)'s diet ledger. Indulgence by proxy.

But SWK fired and HW(1) died.

The original Hyram Wazinski stepped out through a secret panel. He glanced at the slumped form of his clone, then jerked his gaze away. Even after sixteen such sacrifices, it still gave him the creeps to look at his own face, twitching as it settled into death's mask.

SWK quit fumbling at the outer door (Hyram had sealed it). He squinted at Hyram, then lifted his lips in that infamous toothy smile that lopsided as he sneered, "What do you want?"

Hyram would've preferred something along the lines of "Who are you? I just killed you." But he continued with procedure. "Sinn-Féin William Kennedy, I arrest you for the attempted murder of me." Killing an accelerated clone wasn't against the law, partly because of its limited lifespan. But SWK had thought he was killing Hyram. That was almost as bad, enough to send him into a prison coma. Plus buying the finger-shooter and smuggling it into a Union facility. The Bureau could shut down his region of Korporate for a long time. Worth spinning a copy of himself and watching it die, right?

"I'm not him."

Hyram gave a don't-kid-a-kidder look. "Yes, you are, and I've got the nDNA scan to prove it. You're definitely a referent."

Shaking his pompadour so his head looked like a bobble doll, the perp said, "I'm Sean-Féin William Kennedy, Sinn's twin."

Explaining how SWK(1) got through the clone-detector. Wild twins registered as referents because they had mtLock (since the nDNA formed itself rather being injected), but no sperm-trickle (this lack might also cause the twinning of the blastocyst, but they hadn't proved that yet). Didn't matter, so Hyram said what did: "There is no authorized twin."

"Yes, there is." SWK(1) flopped a hand around. "I'm it —  him." He brightened. "Same DNA, you said so."

Hyram shook his head wearily. "You weren't listening. I said 'authorized twin.' The Bureau didn't approve any twin for Sinn-Féin." The Bureau didn't call them "wild" around citizens.

Now look who was mugging don't-kid-a-kidder. "Twins aren't against the law."

"Try reading the rules, will you? We have authority over supervised and unsupervised clones, which is all a twin is. Who came out first?"

"He — he did." A deep-rooted sadness slowed the words.

Hiram steadied his heartstrings against that tug, probably faux. "Then you're the clone, an unauthorized one. You're under arrest for that, too."

The sneer returned, though it seemed a tad forced. "But I didn't shoot him."

"Got it all on disk." Hyram grinned and cued the cameras into the open.

"But that's —"

"Unlawful? So's attempted murder." So was entrapment, but the Bureau's lawyers figured on confusing the courts with the "celebrity" clause in libel laws, and SWK(0) definitely qualified there.

"Now who's not listening?" SWK(1) raised his arm, lifting that deadly forefinger of his, and marshals burst out of three walls, their screamers aimed at head, chest, and groin, respectively. "It's not my finger. It's an implant and controlled remotely. He — I  — I'm sure I don't know whose finger's really on the trigger."

Hyram had to go intra-Bureau for his sub-vocal consult about licenses issued, so it took at least 500 micro-seconds before he could say, "No cyborg license. You, as the host, are responsible. Arrested for that, too."

"But not for murder, right?" Gloating made the smile even more goofy.

"Attempted murder. Accessory before, during, and after the fact. Penalty is not significantly different, especially if the gray naps run serially."

SWK(1) pointed the finger at his own face, and the marshals relaxed a tad. They saved the taxpayers a lot of money when suicide replaced custody. Just another clone anyway. "Hey, Sinn!" SWK(1) spoke into the muzzle. "You said they couldn't hold me." He waited for an answer ... a whole two seconds, then raised his gaze. Intelligence glowed there, if only briefly. "He won't answer, I know that. That's why they sent me, isn't it?" Honest dejection oozed from every pore, getting the carpet dirty.

Dirtier, actually. HW(1) had already spilled bodily fluids, although the smells had been neutralized by the robo-beetles (clean-up took them longer).

HW(1)? SWK(1)? Ding! An elevator door opened in Hyram's mind, and a revelation stepped out. No matter the referent, no matter whose Tinker Toys you're built from, no matter lifespan or lifestyle or birth order, you came into this world with rights, one of which was equal treatment by the law.

But wasn't there something else? The revelation frizzed, making him dig for its heart. "And it went on yesterday and it's going on tonight." Words from an old song came back to him. "Somewhere there's somebody ain't treatin' somebody right." Not just lovers broke hearts. Mothers. Fathers. Brothers. Sisters. Friends. Strangers. People are cruel, always have been. Always will be? Ay, there's the rub.

The Bureau couldn't fix the whole Human Condition, but perhaps it should rethink its use of clones, accelerated and otherwise. There'd be collateral impact on Licenses for Moreau Servants (and Dolly?) as well as the Bureau of Extra-terrestrial Musings (BEM, for short). Overturning such an engrained regulation would take considerable effort and bureaucratic skill, but it would compensate for forty-seven years of service (life-extensions came with the perks at GS-136 and above) ... and watching sixteen avatars die.

Making a mental note, Hyram clambered back on the Duty train and bored in on his original target. "Where is SWK(0)? Sinn-Féin, that is."

SWK(1) shrugged. "Anywhere in the world. Anywhere without an extradition treaty." These days, that included Africa, the Stani Confederation, and half of Euronion. "Ever since NAUGHTI made inherited oligarchical corporations illegal, he and the Board haven't been able to come home. They miss Hyannis, you know." Misty tears replaced smarts in those eyes.

Ah-ha! Hyram thought. "You weren't here before, were you, Sean-Féin? In this office?" Seeing a head shake that pompadour again, he continued. "Then Sinn-Féin walked NAUGHTI soil, and I've got the disk to prove it. He's therefore and hereby charged with invasion-tantamount-to-treason. By invoking the Unilateral Cold-Pursuit Act, we can go after him anywhere in the world. The Act covers fugitives as well as terrorists, corporate officers, and tax-evading rock stars. I'll notify the DIBHA." Decentralized Intelligence and Bounty-hunter Agency. "Thank you for your assistance."

Hyram nodded at the marshals, and they hustled SWK(1) out of the office. As he watched the foursome swarm across the lobby, the adjacent door emitted a garish harridan screaming, "That impudent bitch! Who does she think she's talking to?"

Had to be HW(1)'s first appointment. Hyram vowed to review the recording — he usually slept in when he cloned himself — but first, lunch. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. A Real Russian Reuben — the diet ledger be damned! After all, he'd earned it. On his way out, he grinned at Dolly who blinked back sheepishly.