“But what does he say about Virek?” “He says, if I remember all this correctly, and I’m not at all certain that I do, that Virek is an even greater fluke than the industrial clans in orbit. The clans are transgenerational, and there’s usually a fair bit of medicine involved: cryogenics, genetic manipulation, various ways to combat aging. The death of a given clan member, even a founding member, usually wouldn’t bring the clan, as a business entity, to a crisis point. There’s always someone to step in, someone waiting. The difference between a clan and a corporation, however, is that you don’t
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