She waited until Tibble, Whitney, and Quincy left the room. "He bought us some time, so let's use it. Peabody, field kits. Feeney, we need portable electronics-scanners, keys, data analyzers and retrievers- whatever you've got in your bag of tricks. The best you've got. We’ve taken a lot of time here, so I'm tapping my source. We'll meet up on the main helipad, twenty minutes."
"Already on the way. Kid." Feeney jerked a thumb toward the door for McNab.
McNab headed out, then stopped and turned back. "I know this is inappropriate, but I gotta say, this is freaking arctic."
He zipped out before Eve could dress him down, but she figured she could leave that to Feeney.
"I'm not part of your on-site team," Mira began. "I'm consult, and I know those limitations. But it would be a great favor to me if I could go wi
th you. I may be able to help. And if not... it would be a great favor to me."
"You're in. Twenty minutes."
She pulled out her 'link, contacted Roarke on his personal.
"Just got me," he said. "We've only just left the Center."
"You can fill me in later, I'm going to New Hampshire. I need fast transport, big enough to carry six people and portable electronics. And I need it here."
"I'll have a jet-copter to you within thirty."
"Main helipad, Central. Thanks."
She was buzzed when she pushed open the door to the roof and the primary helipad. On other towers and flats, the traffic copters or emergency air vehicles were a constant hum and clatter. She hoped to Christ they didn't shake their way to New Hampshire.
Wind tugged at her hair and sent Peabody's new 'do into wild waves. "Give me what you've got on cloning."
"I got a lot," Peabody shouted back. "Organized discs into history, debates, medical theory and procedure."
"Just give me some basics. I want to know what I'm looking for,"
"Lab work, probably a lot like what you'd see in infertility centers and surrogate facilities. Refrigeration and preservation systems for cells and eggs. Scanning equipment to test for viability. See, when you just bang and breed, the kid gets half its genes from the egg, half from the sperm."
"I know how banging and breeding work."
"Yeah, yeah. But see, in clonal reproduction, all the genes come from one person. You have a cell from the subject, and you remove the nucleus and implant it in a fertilized egg that's had its nucleus removed."
"Who things of this stuff?"
“Wacky scientists. Anyway, then they have to get the egg going. It can be triggered by chemicals or electricity so it develops into an embryo, which, if successful and viable, can be implanted in a female womb."
"You know, that's just gross."
"If you leave out the single-cell bit, it's not that different from in vitro conception. But the thing is, if the embryo is successfully brought to term, the result is an exact dupe of the subject who donated the original cell nucleus."
"Where do they keep the women?"
"Sir?"
"Where do they keep the women who get implanted? They can’t be students. It had to start somewhere. And not all students are clones.. You can't have a bunch of women with Mavis bellies walking around campus. Have to be housing, wouldn't there? They'd have to monitor them throughout gestation. They'd have to have facilities for labor and delivery, for whatever you call it after the kid comes out."
"Neonatal. And pediatrics. Yeah, they would."
"And security, to ensure nobody changes their mind or blabs. Like, 'Hey, guess what? I gave birth to myself yesterday.'"
"That is gross."
"And data fixers, crunchers, hackers. Techs who have the skill to generate IDs that'll pass the system checks. That doesn't even touch the network for moving clones out of the facility and into the mainstream. And where's the damn money? Roarke's got them donating big fat chunks. Where's the operating money?"