"The status quo was," sighs Linyabel, "one copy of the Key, and one copy of the gene bank it opens. As a matter of centralized control, so no one could go start - independent haut projects of any scope. The late Celestial Lady wanted to decentralize, or at any rate recentralize. She made copies of the gene bank and gave one to each satrap governor. All of them already have one of those. They don't know that the others have them, either, as an incentive to keep it a secret. She left copying the key as a project for later, and then died, and then the ba decided to attempt to continue her plan. The ba may or may not have known at the time it encountered you that it had a fake, but I suspect it did not."