Dr. Beluine was one of only a handful who had ever seen him without it. Doctors could handle disfigurement a great deal better than most.
“Of course I’m dying,” said Fett. “I’m paying you to tell me what I can do about it.”
Beluine paused and Fett watched him glance at Koa Ne, the Kaminoan scientist now in charge of a cloning facility that was a shadow of its former self. Perhaps Beluine feared telling a professional killer that he had a terminal illness, or perhaps it was the pause of a good doctor trying to tell his patient the bad news as kindly as he could. Fett turned from the huge window, thumbs hooked over his belt, and raised his scarred brows in a silent question.
Beluine took the cue. “Nothing.”
You give up easy, Doctor. “How long?”
“You have a standard year or two, if you take it easy. Less if you don’t.”
“Don’t guess. I deal in facts.”
Beluine’s eyelids fluttered in a spasm of nervous blinking. “There are always uncertainties in prognosis, sir. But the degeneration of your tissues is accelerating, even in your transplanted leg, you have recurring tumors, and the medication isn’t controlling your liver function any longer. It might have something to do with the … unusual nature of your background.”
“That I’m a clone, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll take that as a don’t know.”
Beluine-Coruscant-trained, very expensive, very exclusive-had the look of a man on the brink of making a run for the door. “It’s understandable that you’d want a second opinion.”
“I’ve got one,” said Fett. “Mine. And my opinion is that I’ll die when I’m good and ready.”
“I’m sorry to give you bad news.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“If I had access to the original Kaminoan laboratory records, then perhaps-“
“I need to talk to Koa Ne about that. Show the doctor out.”
The Kaminoan politician, all politely unfeeling gray grace, indicated the doors, and the doctor slipped between them before they had fully opened. He was very anxious to leave. The doors hissed shut behind him.
“So where’s the data?” said Fett. “And Taun We?”
“Taun We has … left.”
Well, that was a surprise. Fett knew Taun We as well as anyone could-any human, anyway-and she’d seemed solidly loyal to her own kind. She’d looked after him as a boy when his father was away. He’d even liked her. “When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“Any reason for the timing?”
“Perhaps the galaxy’s current political instability.”
“So she bolted in the end, just like Ko Sai.”
“I admit that some of my colleagues have shown a willingness to accept employment elsewhere.”
Kaminoans weren’t exactly keen on travel. Fett couldn’t imagine anywhere they’d find tolerable beyond their own closed world. “And they took your data with them.”
Koa Ne seemed hesitant. “Yes. We have never located Ko Sai’s original research.”
“So what’s Taun We taken?”
“Apart from her human developmental expertise? A great deal of minor data.”
The Kaminoans had lost their reputation as the top cloning technologists of the galaxy more than fifty years earlier when their scientists defected, but nobody had ever equaled their quality since. Anyone who could assemble that knowledge again would make a fortune-enough to boost a whole planet’s economy, not just a bank account.
If he hadn’t been dying, Fett would have been sorely tempted to grab the opportunity.
“Are you not concerned that Beluine might talk?” asked Koa Ne.
“He won’t talk any more than my armorer or accountant would.” Fett was looking for aiwhas again, letting the distraction order his thoughts, instinctively prioritizing the actions he now had to take. “They get paid for silence. So what if he tells the galaxy that I’m dying? I’ve been a dead man before.”
“It creates instability.”
“For who?”
“Mandalorians.”
“You don’t care about us.”
Koa Ne, like all Kaminoans, didn’t care about anything except Kamino, whatever impression the polite fa§ade created. Fett’s ambivalent view of Kaminoans veered more toward dislike the older he became. They were for hire, just as he had been. He’d taken a fee for some dubious causes himself in his time. But there was still something less than admirable about a species that grew others to do their fighting for them.
“We have always had a special regard for you, Boba.”
He didn’t like Koa Ne using his first name. Have you still got any of my dad’s tissue samples? Still planning to make some use of him? No, you couldn’t keep the material intact that long, could you? “No point hunting Taun We. Even the leg she cloned for me is degenerating. Spare parts won’t help.”