"They'll be fine, of course," said Allin. "They're merely being processed. They're foreign clones, that means they have to be registered and assigned guardians to be able to travel through our society freely. Everything is being explained to them by my fellow Councilman as we speak, I assure you, and barring the one of them that's registered as having a genetic match among the sentients of your group, we'll even allow them freedom to choose who they want as their assigned guardian during their stay."

The look on Allin's face was as reassuring as anyone could make their expression look.

"There are private scanners everywhere, looking for unmarked clones, as well as law enforcement looking for free-wandering clones not attending to their assigned duties as part of our security measures in the face of the terrorist threats facing our society. The last thing we'd would be for your people to accidentally get marked as possible terrorists. Their registration is for their own safety."

"As for the rest, of course, we can work out a contract. We intend to. What we need from you is a way of eliminating key resistance leaders so that the movement falls apart. We need a way to infiltrate the resistance itself, to get close enough to their core leadership to discern which clones aren't body doubles. We also believe they're making another run for the Mother Brains, like John Savage before them, and we need your assistance in stopping them before they permanently damage the Memory Banks."