Star Wars_ MedStar 01_ Battle Surgeons - Michael Reaves [56]
"I’m sorry, Jos. I didn’t mean to-"
"No, no, it’s fine. I’ll see you later." He gave her a patently fake smile and walked away. He looked as if the weight of the planet had just been dropped on his shoulders.
Jos walked across the compound, a damp heralding wind and suddenly overcast sky cooling the muggy af-ternoon somewhat as-big surprise-another storm ap-proached. He had gotten pretty good at judging these things after all the months here. He knew he had two, maybe three minutes before the sky would open up.
"Jos?" Tolk said. "You okay?"
She had come up to walk beside him. He hadn’t even noticed her in his preoccupation with this new and sud-denly troubling knowledge.
"Me? I’m fine."
"No, you aren’t. Remember who I am. What is it?"
He shook his head. "Just had a blindfold removed I didn’t know I was wearing. Something I took for granted, never really thought about before. I’m.
.. feel-ing pretty stupid."
"Well, how unusual is that?"
He looked at her, saw the smile, and appreciated her trying to cheer him up. He managed a small smile of his own. "Bet you scored ’sharpshooter’ on your basic weapons tests."
"Actually, I rated ’master’ with the pulse rifle, and dropped down to ’sharpshooter’ only with the sidearm blaster."
"Figures. I was ’basic marksman’ with both, which means I can’t hit the side of a Destroyer-from the in-side."
"You want to talk about it?"
He stopped. The rain was almost here. She put her hand on his shoulder, and, oh, yes, he wanted to talk about it. Later-when they were holding each other, kissing, and happier than he’d been since he had been conscripted. Then he’d talk about it. She’d be hard-put to shut him up, then.
But now...
"Not really, no," he said. The touch of her hand on his shoulder was almost hypnotic in its comfort.
The storm hit then. Big, fat drops, a few at first, pattered - and then the deluge. They stood together in the rain, not moving.
20
Jos had hoped that Klo Merit could shed some light on his newfound and uncomfortable knowledge about clones, but so far, the minder was more stirring up mud from the murky bottom of his thoughts than pumping in clarity.
Clarity seemed a forlorn hope right now.
"So, what exactly are we talking about here when you say ’expertise’?"
Merit said, "Well, you can tell a lot about how much somebody knows by listening. See this ring?" He held his hand up so that Jos could view it. The piece of jew-elry was a deep golden band of metal with a thumbnail-sized stone inset into it. The stone glittered in the overhead light of Merit’s office, flashing multiple colors-reds, blues, greens, and yellows in a kind of rolling pattern, as Merit moved his hand. It was quite impressive.
Jos nodded. "Very nice. Some kind of firestone?"
Merit smiled. "Yes. And your question marks you as somebody who knows a little about them, but not much. You recognize it as a firestone, but that’s only a small step into the subject."
Jos shrugged. "I’m a surgeon. You want to know about kidney stones, I’m your boy."
"Somebody who didn’t know anything about gems would say, ’That’s nice-what kind of stone is it?’ Somebody who knows a little more will comment as you did. A person with a bit more knowledge might say, ’Is that a Gallian firestone, or a Rathalayan?’ They know there is a difference between those two and prob-ably that this is one or the other.
"Now, a real expert will look at my ring and say, ’Ah, a black Gallian firestone, very nice. Is it a crystal or a boulder matrix?’ Because he can tell that many specifics just by looking at it-that it is a firestone, that it comes from Gall, that it is a black. But the way it’s mounted, he can’t see the back of it, so he can’t tell the matrix. It’s a boulder,