'Can I have a drink?' Anakin asked.

'Of course,' the doctor said, smiling. 'That was one of the things I needed to test anyway, how your new digestive system functions. I think we'll try some sugar water first, and then would you like something to eat? Do you know what yogurt is?'

Anakin thought back to the distant past. 'Fermented bantha milk, with – living beings in it?'

'Yes, except that this one comes from milk from an Earth animal called a cow, so it'll be white instead of blue. Don't worry about the living beings, they're quite tame. I just need them to populate your new intestines to help you digest your food. Your old ones were a wreck – I'd guess that you very rarely ate?' Anakin nodded. 'Makes sense, so only the hardiest bacteria would have survived, and unfortunately they weren't the ones best suited to giving you a strong digestive system and good mental health.'

Anakin could sense that the two men weren't impressed at the idea that bacteria-filled milk was good for one's mental health, but Konstantine Bothari left to fetch some anyway. Severus Snape remained, observing the conversation with, Anakin was fairly sure, a certain wry amusement.

'Do I have a waste disposal system?' Anakin asked.

'At the moment, you're in a nappy,' Severus put in maliciously.

'It's just a precaution,' Dr Durona explained. 'You're able to urinate normally now, so there's a tube running from a sheath to a bag strapped to your thigh stump, but we haven't had a chance to test your bowels yet. It might take a bit of practice to get used to controlling your own body, after everything being automated for so long, but you'll get there.'

'And until Hephaestus has time to build you some new legs, as the only wizard round here, clearly I will be left with the honour of levitating you onto the toilet,' said Severus in something that was halfway between a sneer and a sigh.

Clearly, being a cripple was going to be a lot more humiliating than being a cyborg – and being cared for by humans rather than droids made it even worse. 'I do not like the arrangement any more than you,' Anakin assured him. Nevertheless, he was curious – and somewhat uneasy. 'Whose were my "new" organs?' he asked. A horrible thought occurred to him. They'd want to take organs from a close genetic match. Not Luke's, surely – what if Luke had suffered some fatal injury while trying to rescue him…?

'They're cloned,' Dr Durona explained.

'From a clone?' He had killed a clone of himself once – a brother more closely related to him than even his own children were, and yet at the time, he hadn't even thought about it. Was that before or after he found out that he had a living son? He couldn't remember. But – he surely hadn't left the body in a fit state for someone to harvest organs from, had he?

'Not a cloned person!' said the doctor indignantly. 'I may be Jacksonian, but we're not all cannibals!' Anakin sensed that this was personal – perhaps the sister she had mentioned earlier was a clone? Perhaps she herself was a clone? 'No, these are just cloned organs – like growing protein in a vat instead of slicing a steak off a real cow. Completely ethical, even Betans need have no qualms. I can even grow you limbs, in time, but that takes longer than organs because there are so many different types of tissue involved, so it's worth having replacement prostheses made in the meantime.'

By this time, Konstantine Bothari had returned, with a tray holding a small bowl of white yogurt, and three cups. One held a paste that looked about identical to the goo that he had been moistening Anakin's lips with earlier, with a spoon in it. The next held a more viscous version of the same goo, so that it was just about pourable, and the third had something that was almost like normal liquid, with a straw in it.

'I need to check your swallowing reflexes, to make sure you can eat and drink without choking,' Dr Durona explained, 'so we need to start with thickened drinks and soft food, and if that goes well, you can try normal food and drink. Konstantine, will you do the honours?'

Konstantine lifted a small spoonful of the most thickened drink. Anakin reached out with the Force to make the cup and spoon fly across the room – fortunately, the cup was made of a tough material that didn't shatter on impact with the far wall – then levitated the cup of the most drink-like substance towards him, settled it on his chest, and slurped it through the straw. It was bland and slightly sweet, but at least it tasted better than Vitapaste, and by now he was refreshed enough to feel hungry as well as thirsty. He levitated the cup back onto the tray and started spooning yogurt into his mouth. Cow yoghurt had a similar sour-sweet taste to bantha yogurt, and felt much more like this in its creamy texture than did the marsh-fungus yogurt that Yoda liked, and yet it was an alien food, from a creature Anakin had never even seen a holo of.

'Should he be doing that?' asked Konstantine. Anakin could feel the man's wariness and disapproval. Probably he was going to fuss over Anakin like a mother tip-yip if Anakin couldn't demonstrate that he was capable of looking after himself.

'Probably,' said the doctor cheerfully. 'Most of my patients don't have telekinesis to start with, so I don't have much to compare him with, but it's best to let him do as much as he can for himself, and help him if he's tired or having difficulty. But make sure you get enough rest, won't you?' she added to Anakin. 'You've been through a lot of major surgery, your body's working overtime to heal itself, and your job is to give it a chance to do that. Now, your stomach should have grown enough that I can remove the IV and leave you to feed yourself normally, but I can't be sure yet. So I'll leave it in place, but turn it down to feed you smaller quantities, while you get used to feeding yourself.'