MedStar_ Jedi Healer Part 17

He reached the bar, but before he could order anything, he heard a deep growl. He turned to look.

Now there's something you don't see every day, he thought. A droid and a Wookiee playing hologames.

The game was called dejarik; although Jos didn't play, he was familiar with it. I-Five and the Wookiee sat at a small corner table amid all the commotion. The Wookiee was covered with coal-black s.h.a.ggy fur, save for a star-shaped white patch high on the left quadrant of his chest. And at the moment, he seemed really upset, even for a Wookiee-and that was saying something.

"Never a boring minute, eh?"

Jos looked down and saw Den Dhur standing beside him. Den gestured toward the dejarik table and sighed, "You might remember my mentioning once or twice before that I was trying to help I-Five get drunk?"

"Yeah?"

"Well ..."

Kaird was, after a fas.h.i.+on, enjoying himself, even though he was of necessity wearing the Kubaz suit. He didn't mind seeing people have a good time, and the fact that he knew-and would do-something that would ruin their high spirits did not diminish his enjoyment. When news of the change in the bota became widespread, chaos would most likely ensue. The misfortunes of war.

Too bad. While he wasn't sentimentally attached to anyone here-sentimentality being a luxury he could ill afford-he admired a great many of the doctors and soldiers and techs who populated this place. They were, for the most part, honorable folk. Honor, as most people seemed to think of it, was a code that limited one's options severely and, even worse, was a good way to return to the Great Egg at hyperspeed. Kaird was a practical being-he couldn't afford to have honor. But he surely did admire it in others. If nothing else, it made it far easier to predict their actions.

It was harder dealing with scalawags in some ways, easier in others. Take Thula and Squa Tront, for example. Kaird would be quite surprised-almost disappointed, in fact-if those two hadn't thought of ways to shortchange him and Black Sun on the upcoming transaction.

Not that he really minded if they found a way to skim a little for themselves-that was the nature of business, and to be expected. But he wasn't overly concerned. Rogues they might be, but they also seemed smart enough to realize the lunacy of attempting any major deception on Black Sun.

He dipped the mask's snout into his drink-one reason he liked the Kubaz ident.i.ty was because he could drink while in it. Pity he couldn't just let go and enjoy the party to the fullest, but he was also here for a practical reason. As it turned out, the human pilot Bogan had taken a double s.h.i.+ft recently, and as a result he would not be on standby for the admiral's s.h.i.+p when Kaird needed him. This was easily remedied, however. There were another two pilots in the rotation, and one of them was here in this cantina, right now. This pilot, also a human-a lot of chose around the galaxy, Kaird had noticed-was behaving in a responsible manner: since he was on standby, he was not drinking, smoking, or sniffing anything intoxicating. Sebairns, his name was, and while he seemed to be having a good time, smiling and laughing, he had restricted himself to some kind of steeped brew made from a local plant.

Because Kaird had access to all kinds of information, including medical records, he had learned that Sebairns had an allergic condition for which there was no cure or preventive treatment. If exposed to a certain common legume, the human would develop a fairly severe anaphy-lactic reaction, the symptoms of which might include urticaria and syncope secondary to ascites. Kaird had gotten this information translated via the HoloNet. It meant that the human could break out in a serious, itchy rash that could include large hives; he could faint and, if left untreated, might even choke to death as his windpipe closed. Not that it would get that bad in the middle of a Rimsoo full of doctors-he'd be whisked off to a ward in a hurry, and all his symptoms could be treated easily. But he wouldn't be able to work for a day or two, which was more than enough for Kaird's purposes.

Kaird had watched the servers with care, and his moment came. He stood and started away from his single-unit table, as if to answer a call of nature. The droid server bearing a tray for Sebairns's table started in that direction as well. Their paths would intersect, as Kaird had planned.

As Kaird neared the server, he said, "Pardon me, could you point out the 'fresher?"

Even though the refresher was clearly marked in half a dozen languages and graphic images, the droid had no doubt heard the question more than a few times from inebriated patrons.

It swiveled its head slightly and pointed with its free appendage. "That way, sir. The door under the glowing sign."

While the droid was thus engaged, Kaird brought his hand around, as if to scratch his snout, and in so doing allowed a small pinch of legume powder to fall into the man's drink.

He then headed toward the 'fresher. He would return to his table in a moment to make sure his target drank from the doctored cup and reacted appropriately. Once that was done, his objective for tonight would be accomplished.

It was unlikely that anyone would suspect the man's drink had been tampered with-it wasn't poison, after all, and the attending medics would recognize the reaction for what it was.

Even if they did suspect it had been deliberate, it wouldn't matter. There was no way to tie Kaird to the deed. Even if the serving droid was questioned, and happened to recall a Kubaz asking directions to the 'fresher, the Kubaz in question didn't exist. After tonight, Kaird would have no more need for this particular costume, and it would be rendered down to its molecular level by a recycling unit. Can't find what doesn't exist.

He had, in one of his fat human disguises, obtained from one of the entertainment group's members a copy of the most recent recording of Galactic Sports Update. Upon this GSU recording was a recent Strag Sector Match Champions.h.i.+p. If you were not a skilled player, watching a game of Strag was less interesting than watching mold grow; if you were ranked, however, such matches were fascinating. Neither the Twi'lek Vorra, nor the human pilot Bogan, would have seen this particular match; it hadn't been holocast this far out yet.

The corpulent human, whom Kaird had named Mont Shomu, would arrange soon to be heard talking about this match, which he happened to have a recording of, within Vorra's hearing. She would fall all over herself to obtain it from him. The fat man would be loath to part with it, however, being a fan of the game himself. Of course, he would be willing to share a viewing of the match with her. And, naturally, she could bring a friend . . .

Kaird smiled as he exited the 'fresher and returned to his table amid the noise and heat of the busy cantina. There was a real joy in watching a carefully made plan unfold.

"Let me get this straight," Jos said. "I-Five is drunk}*

"I've been watching him for hours," Den said, "and believe me, he's soused. If that's the proper term for a droid."

"From a program."

"Yeah."

"Which he wrote."

"Right."

Jos looked over at the game table, where the various transparent holocreatures that were the pieces of the game s.h.i.+fted and scratched restlessly on their squares. I-Five didn't look any different from here, save for a slightly increased luminosity in his photoreceptors and more exaggerated movement. Jos shook his head. "It just keeps getting weirder." He turned back to the bar and hoisted his drink.

"Ha!" I-Five said loudly. "My molator takes your hou-jix! I win!"

The Wookiee roared with rage. Jos looked back at the game just in time to see the Wookiee stand, grab I-Five's right arm, and wrench it from the droid's shoulder. Circuitry and servomotor couplings broke free in a shower of sparks and sprays of lubricating fluid.

My, my.

"Bad loser," Den said.

"Looks like," Jos agreed.

They both leapt forward, grabbed the droid, and pulled him away from the game board as the furious Wookiee harned and moaned in his own language and waved the mechanical arm over his head. Jos glimpsed several of the showfolk, including a burly Trandoshan, moving in quickly to calm down their colleague.

I-Five felt no pain, of course. He seemed more confused than anything else.

"I seem to be missing an arm," he said to Jos. "I'm sure I had it when I came in."

Jos pushed I-Five into an empty booth. "Your gamer friend borrowed it."

"I-Five," Den said, "I think maybe it's time to sober up I-Five shrugged. Jos wouldn't have thought the gesture possible for a drunken droid with only one arm. "If you say so." His photoreceptors flickered for a moment, then resumed what Jos thought of as their normal glow.

The droid looked about him in mild surprise. "Interesting."

"Wish sobering up was that easy for me," Jos said.

A human female brought the arm over to them, handing it to Jos. "Here," she said. "You might want to program your droid to avoid games with Wookiees in the future. They're, uh, very compet.i.tive."

I-Five looked at the arm. "So I have determined."

Jos examined the arm's exposed end. "I'm no cy-bertech," he said, "but it looks like this can be reattached fairly easily." He looked at the droid. "You're lucky he didn't pull your head off."

"True," I-Five agreed. "That would have been considerably harder to fix."

"What were you thinking, challenging a Wookiee to a dejarik game?"

"I wasn't thinking. That was the point. I was drunk-or at least as close to it as I could program."

Jos shook his head in amazement. "Come on," he said. "Let's head over to the shop and see if anyone's still there who can fix you up. Reattaching mechanical limbs is a bit beyond my expertise."

The three left the cantina and walked through the hot night air, I-Five holding his dismembered arm. Den said, "I'd feel terrible if I was responsible for you getting drunk and into a bar fight-if it turned out not to be worth it."

"I think it was," I-Five said. "I think it was very worthwhile." He looked at Jos.

"Remember my mentioning that I seemed to be having an anxiety attack?"

Jos nodded.

"I believe it was born out of conflicting impulses based on new data garnered from regaining all of my memory files-including several regarding my erstwhile friend and partner, Lorn Pavan.

"I remembered that I have an obligation to fulfill-one that involves my returning to Coruscant as soon as possible. But to do so would be to abandon my responsibilities here.

This was a problem that could not be solved by an application of logic. I needed intuition-the ability to sense what was right by mechanisms far older than logic and application of data.

"I needed, somehow, to jar my synaptic grid cortex into another mode-a totally nonlinear mode. Thus, the concept of altering my sensory input and perception of data."

"Did it work?" Den asked.

"I believe so. I have decided on a course of action."

"You leaving us, I-Five?" Jos asked.

"Not immediately." The droid did not amplify his comment.

Jos couldn't resist. "But," he said, "you're a machine, remember? Programmed to be an automaton, no more. So what does it matter how you reach a decision?"

I-Five looked at him. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

"Oh, yeah."

"All of what I have said before is technically true," the droid said. "But I've come to realize it's possible for things to be more than the sum of their parts. And that a difference that makes no difference is, for all practical purposes, moot. I think I was, for lack of a better term, afraid. I believe that I was trying to convince myself, more than you, that I am not what you, Barriss, and a few others here see me as. I was, however, lacking necessary information to reach the right conclusion."

"And that would be . . . ?"

"That I am indeed sentient," I-Five said.

Jos grinned, and slapped the droid on his durasteel back. "Took you long enough to figure it out."

They found an Is.h.i.+ Tib tech, half asleep under a tool bench. At first he was surly, but the bottle of Corellian wine that Den had grabbed as they'd left proved an effective bribe.

As the tech was reattaching I-Five's arm, spot-welding snapped junctions and splicing sensory cables and hydraulic circulatory piping, Jos said, "By the way, it's none of my business, but I'm curious-just what is the obligation you remembered?"

I-Five didn't answer right away, and the silence stretched long enough for Jos to begin to wish he hadn't asked. Then the droid said, "It was a request of Lorn's. He asked me to watch over his son."

29.

Barriss could not sleep. Her experience with the Force continued to echo in her, stronger by far than after the first time, bringing up powerful flashes of the wondrous cosmic consciousness she had been a part of-along with the feeling of important things going undone. She wanted to return to that place-to stay there, if at all possible.

Maybe it was c.u.mulative. Maybe it would come to pa.s.s that, eventually, she could swim in that magical sea on her own, at will, and without the bota to deliver and keep her there.

There hadn't been any new revelations. The danger to the camp was approaching, but it was not yet at hand. On some level, she knew she had enough time to decide upon a course of action. On another level, what that course of action would be seemed utterly beyond her capabilities.

Beyond her unamplified capabilities. But nothing seemed too big for her to handle while connected in the Force by the miracle of the bota. She knew, right to the depths of her bones, that what she could do with the Force in that state would be astounding, once she got used to it. Once she learned to not control it, but to flow with it, to be it.

She now understood how it was that the greatest Jedi Masters could sense things even pa.r.s.ecs away, information gained far faster than by subs.p.a.ce packet; she had now the knowledge-the certainty-that the universe was of an entire piece, each part connected to all the others, webbed together by vibrating strands of the Force that stretched through dimensions -utterly beyond the ken of her senses-and she knew her place in it, and that all things, great and small, were precisely in position. As they had always been, and as they always would be, worlds without end.

There was a temptation to rush out and harvest bota by the bale, render it into fluid, and install a constant-feed pump on her arm to trickle it into her system continuously. She wondered if that was the desire of a seeker, or an addict.

She wondered if there was any difference.

In any event, she could take this new knowledge back to the Jedi Council, and with it the Jedi could become more powerful than anyone could possibly imagine. They could stop this war, as well as prevent others from starting. They could abolish slavery, transform barren worlds into lush paradises, chase evil to the ends of the galaxy and strike it down!

Nothing would be beyond their capabilities-the power was that immense!

It all swam in Barriss, overwhelming in its intensity. Even now, she could barely contain the memory of it.

But first, before she went too far into the void, she had to deal with the camp situation.

That would be easily accomplished. Then, she could address the larger issues . . .

Den hurried through the camp to the launch platform, hoping that he wasnrt too late.

Milking fool, he thought, of all the days to oversleep-/ He hardly ever bothered with alarm chronos-like most of his kind, Den had an inner timekeeper that went along with his keen sense of direction. Usually it adjusted to the day-and-night cycles of whatever world he was on fairly quickly, taking no more than a standard week at most, and he'd been on this planet a lot longer than that.

But on the one day he needed it the most, wouldn't you just know it would kick out on him, and he'd sleep just long enough to maybe miss the transport departure of the HNE folk, including Eyar?

After the proposal she had made and he had accepted, he couldn't let her leave without saying good-bye. It was hard to know just when he would see her again. And when he did, it would be as part of the extended family that would include, by all accounts, a truly staggering number of younglings.

He was to be a patriarch, a h.o.a.ry old dispenser of wisdom. To sit somewhere deep in the warren and dole out nuggets of sage advice to the young and foolish.

The whole thing didn't seem quite as appealing now as it had when Eyar had described it to him.

The entertainers were being ferried up to MedStar, where their own transport was docked.

Eyar had been scheduled for the first lift up.

Den came around the corner of the launch facility's main building in time to see the few members of the troupe moving up the ramp. Eyar was one of them, He ran forward, pus.h.i.+ng his way through the taller beings that surrounded him, mostly techs and other workers. "Hey!" he shouted. "Eyar! Wait!" Blast it, he couldn't see anything but legs-legs covered with clothing, fur, or scales; digitigrade legs, plantigrade legs; a veritable forest of supporting limbs. At last he reached the gate.

"Eyar!"

She was walking sadly up the ramp, the last to leave. At his cry she whirled, and when she saw him, her eyes, her face, her whole body lit up. "Den-la!"

He was so relieved she hadn't left yet that he didn't care that she'd attached the familiar-suffix to his name in public. They embraced.