Novel with clones grown in organages and a princess who has visions of fate

Question

Can anyone identify this SF novel?

I don't remember that much about it, except the main character was grown in an orphanage, that was later referred to as an organage, as most of them are basically used by the wealthy to ensure they have available clone parts in case they need them.

The main character is brought to his mother / grandmother / someone's place, who is a big-wig, or in charge of the system, and granted high level access to her computers. (As it turns out, by another of his clones.)

He becomes involved with a princess of some sort who has visions, or 'Satori' from time to time, and, who used them to track him down, erroneously finding his clones at first.

At the end, he's used via conditioned training to assist in a coup, then gets to go settle on a new world.

I want to say that in the author's notes is the phrase 'Yes, Virginia, there Is a super-string theory.'

Answer 1

I believe the story you're looking for is Strings by David Duncan.

Alya's hunches were never wrong. So the scientists of 4-I were happy to promise her a place in the next offworld colonization team if she agreed to assess the potential of the latest worlds they had discovered. Then she met Cedric, the grandson of 4-I's brilliant and tyrannical director, and for the first time ever she began to doubt her uncanny intuition.

Cedric dreamed of becoming a scout and exploring other worlds. When he met the lovely Alya he was more determined than ever to leave Earth -- with her. His grandmother, though, needed him as a pawn in her Machiavellian plot to cover up a murder and protect 4-I itself from being destroyed.

She had no intention of letting him go. But the director underestimated her grandson -- and the woman whose destiny seemed linked with his...

And yes, the postscript has the phrase you remember:

Postscript YES, VIRGINIA, THERE is a superstring theory.