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Jos sighed as he headed for the dressing room. It was too bad he didn’t have a Bamasian bread ring now to offer him solace...

Barriss was on her way to the medical ward when she passed a trooper standing in the hall outside the main operating theater. He didn’t seem to be doing anything other than simply standing there, staring at a blank wall.

To the unaided eye, they all looked alike, but to one who was connected to the Force, this was not the case. She knew this one. He had been her patient.

She stopped. "CT-Nine-one-four," she said.

He looked at her. "Yes?"

She could feel his question roiling in his mind, and she smiled. "You might all look alike, but you aren’t all the same. Your experiences shape you as much as your her-itage.

The Force can recognize this."

He nodded. She regarded him. "You have no prob-lems with your blood pressure," she said, and it was not a question-she knew it was true.

"No. I feel fine-physically."

"Why, then, are you here?"

She felt rather than saw Jos Vondar emerge from the OT behind her, was aware of him listening.

"I helped transport another trooper here yesterday. CT-Nine-one-five."

"Ah. And how does he fare?"

"I don’t know. He’s still in surgery."

Jos drifted over. "Nine-one-five? He, ah, didn’t make it."

The wave of grief that broke from CT-914 and washed over Barriss was sudden and strong. To look at his face, however, it was hardly apparent that he felt this deep emotional chord.

He said, "Unfortunate. He was"-he hesitated, just a heartbeat or two, - "a good soldier.

The loss of someone so well trained is... re-grettable."

Barriss could see that, even without the Force, Jos picked up on something either in CT-914’s tone of voice or his body language, as subtle as both were. He said, "You knew him?"

"He was decanted just after me. We trained together, were posted here together, we were part of the same co-hort." CT-914 hesitated again. "He... I thought of him as my brother."

Jos frowned. "But you’re all brothers, in a sense."

"True." The clone trooper straightened. "Thank you for your efforts to save him, Doctor.

I’m going back to my unit now."

He turned and strode away. Barriss and Jos watched him go. "If I didn’t know better," Jos said, "I’d say that he was upset."

"And how is it that you know better? Wouldn’t you feel upset if it had been your brother?"

She half expected him to answer with a wisecrack - his standard response under circumstances like these. He didn’t, however. Instead, he frowned. "He’s a clone, Barriss.

Those sorts of feelings are bred out of them."

"Who told you that? True, they are standardized, trained, and toughened, but they are not mindless au-tomata. They’re made from the same kind of flesh and mind as are you and I, Jos. They bleed when cut, they live and die, and they grieve at the loss of a brother.

CT-Nine-one-four is in emotional pain. He covers it well enough, but such things can’t be hidden from the Force."

Jos looked as if she had just slapped his face. "But - but-"

"The clones are bred for combat, Jos. It’s what they were designed to do, and they accept it without ques-tion. Were it not for war, they would not exist. A hard life as a soldier is better than no life at all. But even without the Force, you felt it," she said, her voice gen-tle. "Stoic as he tried to be, it came out. Nine-one-four grieves. He suffers the loss of his comrade. His brother."

Jos stood speechless. She felt emotion radiating from him as she had from CT-914. "It never occurred to you before, did it?"

"I-it-of course, I..." He ran down. No. It hadn’t occurred to him, not like this. She could see that.

How blind those who did not know the Force were. How sad for them.

"Surgeons are notorious for their lack of bedside manners," she said. "They tend to view and treat in-juries without worrying about the whole patient, even with ’real’ people.

Most beings consider clones nothing more than blaster fodder-why should you be any dif-ferent?"

Jos shook his head, confusion still bubbling in his thoughts. She