"In other words," Tam said, "once you know what you are, nobody can ever take your 'job' from you. They can change your circumstances. They can make it hard or impossible for you to get paid." He shot Wolam a sly look, and Wolam gratified him by giving him an indignant little scowl.

"But your 'job' is part of you."

Tarc fell silent, considering that.

Tam pulled out his main-duty holocam, a recently manufactured Crystal Memories Model 17, lighter and possessing more standard memory than previous models. He passed its strap over his head. The strap grazed against the fresh scar behind his right ear, the surgical scar over his new implant, the implant that was now his only defense against the deadly headaches brought on by his conditioning. Changed circumstances, indeed.

"What should I record?" Tarc asked. "Everything?"

"At first, if you want to," Tam said. "What I do is to record everything Wolam points at, until he gives me the kill sign-"

Obligingly, Wolam made a gesture like an abbreviated ax chop. His pale hands against his black garments made the gesture especially easy to see.

"-and also anything I find interesting or unusual. You do the same, and when we review your recordings together I'll point out what looks interesting from a historical-record perspective."

"Don't spend too much of your time on the girls," Wolam cautioned.

Tarc's face twisted into an expression of disdain. "You don't have to worry about that."

Coruscant "I hate this," Luke said.

"Waiting?" Mara, eyes closed, adjusted her pose, trying to make herself comfortable-as comfortable as one could be propped up against a deformed metal wall in a hallway dripping with rainwater that had filtered through thirty or forty stories of ruined skyscraper above, on a planet ruled and increasingly ruined by alien enemies.

"Of course, waiting." Luke had returned half an hour before from the latest scattering run. Not everyone was back; a few meters down the hallway, Danni was cataloging plant samples, and Baljos and Elassar were playing sabacc underneath a flickering glowlight. The others were still unaccounted for.

"Which points to a great failing with the Jedi. The lightsabers."

Luke gave his wife a suspicious look. "A failing?"

She nodded. "You can't sharpen them. Back when I was, well, in my previous career, I could get through any boring stretch by sharpening my knives. It takes just enough of your attention to keep boredom at bay, and keeps your tools at their best. With vibroblades, even if they lose power, you still have a nice sharp edge for whatever needs cutting."

Elassar looked back over his shoulder at her. "Sometimes I think you can be spooky just singing nursery songs."

"That's easy." Mara's face took on an expression of motherly concern. "Hush, child," she sang, "the night is mild, and slumber smiles upon you..." But she sang the familiar tune in a minor key, making the words unsettling rather than soothing, evoking the mental image of an anthropomorphic Slumber that was a night-monster stealing silently up to a crib.

But she fell silent, and Luke could feel from her what he felt in himself-a wish, one that could not be fulfilled now, that they could be where Ben was, introducing him to all the little surprises and delights that came with just being alive. Instead they were here in this endless expanse of death.

Then Mara opened her eyes and looked back down the hall.

Luke felt it too-not danger, but some agitation expressed through the Force. He rose and put his hand on his lightsaber hilt.

Up through a hole in the floor swung Tahiri. She landed and extended a hand down, helping Face up to this level. She was somber. He looked dubious.

When she saw Luke, she gulped-not our of uncertainty or fear, Luke thought, hut out of nausea. "I found something," she said.

FIVE.

Now he had a name.

It had taken time, and frequent yanking of thoughts out of their heads, for him to understand names. Sounds that belonged only to one being. Each of them had a name, and when he understood that, it became vital for him to have one, too.

He was more powerful, more important than any of them. It was not right for them to have names and him not to.

So they called him Nyax. Lord Nyax. Nyax was his name, and no other might have it. Lord was a thing that made his name bigger, better. Lord meant that he was more important than anything.

Satisfied with that recognition of his status, he smiled up at the workers crawling over the surface of the tall, tall machine.

They repaired it. They cleared rubble from around it. Soon it would go. Soon it would knock down the black wall he hated.

Soon he, Lord Nyax, would have everything he wanted-which was everything. All beings would do his bidding. Except, perhaps, those whom his senses could not detect; they were surprisingly resistant to pain.

Them he would kill, every one.

Coruscant "You found a tank of goo," said Mara.

They stood on a metal walkway high over a deep, vast chamber.

They'd descended through several levels of ruined factory machinery to reach it. Now, their comparatively tiny glowrods illuminated tiny patches of the floor far below.

Not that there was much detail to illuminate. The greater portion of the floor was dominated by a gleaming white metal tank, dozens of meters wide and long, but only a meter and a half tall, and filled nearly to its rim by some reddish fluid.

Most of the others looked disinterested, or immediately cast about for another place to sit down and rest.

Not so the scientists. Baljos and Danni immediately pulled out sensor devices and began sampling the local environment.

"Definitely a living thing," Danni said. "A large quantity of monocellular life-forms."

"This chamber is unusually high in oxygen, unusually low in carbon dioxide and world-shaping toxins." Baljos pulled off his helmet and tugged the perfumed patches of cloth from his nose; he took several deep breaths, and a smile broke out on his face. "Clean air. Thought I'd never experience it again."

The others followed suit. Luke took in several breaths free of the stench of decay; he felt his spirits lift.

He checked himself before congratulating Tahiri on finding such a useful resource. She hadn't been happy when she'd returned to the others, and she wasn't happy now. She stared down into the red muck with an expression suggesting suspicion, even dread.

Luke extended his own Force senses in that direction.

He could immediately feel the life-form in the tank. It was simple, undifferentiated. It was also comparatively healthy, though he thought he felt the slightest tinge of hunger to it.

But there was something beyond the life-form, something below. It was a twinge of dark side energy. No, not a twinge-though not strong, it was constant.

"Did you find a way down from there?" Luke asked.

Tahiri shook her head. "I looked around for about an hour but couldn't find the access."

"What access?" Danni asked.

There was no power in this chamber, but a surviving metal ladder gave them an easy descent to the floor level. Up close, the tank was no more impressive; it was a rectangular pond of villainous-looking slime.

"I think," Luke said, "that this is a devourer tank."

Mara nodded soberly. "Based on your extensive knowledge of factories and city engineering."

"Based on something Wedge Antilles said to me once." Luke gave his wife an expression of simulated sternness. "There was a time, a few years ago, when he thought he wanted to give up the life of a fighting officer and turn his skills to building things, fixing things. So he headed a military crew that was deconstructing portions of Cor-uscant that were falling apart. So new portions of Corus-cant could be built there and fall apart later. He described something like this. A huge flat area filled with a living material."

"Oh, that's right," Face said. "You mentioned that the first time I met you."

"Years ago," Luke said.

"Yes."

"But you still can't tell me when."

Face shook his head. "Official secrets. If you were to remember what I looked like, who I was then, I still couldn't admit it to you."

Luke sighed.

"What's it for?" asked Danni. "The tank."

"It's one type of garbage disposal." Luke held a hand just above the red surface. In the light from Mara's glow rod, he saw the fluid swell, just slightly, toward his hand. "Anything organic that gets thrown in here is consumed. Every so often, they pump out the goo and scrape out the material that accumulates at the bottom of the tank."

"Here's the pumping equipment." Tahiri stood a few meters away, looking at a wall console near tubes that led from the tank and entered the wall, She pried the cover off the console and peered within, "Why didn't the Yuuzhan Vong smash the tank? Everything around here was smashed. We know they've been here."

"Because it's organic rather than technological, I guess." Luke watched as the redness under his hand rose almost to touch him; then he pulled his hand away and it settled down again. "That's interesting. This stuff is obviously able to sense food, and to cooperate to reach it,"

"Interesting isn't the word I'd use for it." Face sat down next to the wall, relaxing. "Baljos, can't you fine-tune that sensor of yours to detect intelligent, unattached ladies between the ages of twenty and forty?"

"If I could, do you think I'd still be working as a scientist?"

"Good point."

Tahiri, now up to her waist in the hole in the wall where the console cover had been, suddenly shoved her way out. She straightened, a puzzled expression on her face. "It's a fake."

"What's a fake?" Luke asked.

"This console. The computer equipment looks real enough, but it's not actually hooked up to any pumping equipment."

Luke and Mara moved over to look. Luke leaned into the hole and peered down at the jumble of wiring and machinery within the wall. It did not seem to have been damaged by Yuuzhan Vong depredations, but he could still trace the wiring from the pumping controls a mere meter to where it ended in a small metallic box instead of down the wall to where the pumping equipment had to be. "That is odd. Bhindi, computers are your strength; you want to dig into this and see what you can tell us?"

"Sure."

Face sighed. "If we're going to be here a while-Kell, mark exits out of this chamber, and then we'll set up a watch on the more likely Yuuzhan Vong approaches."

"To hear is to obey, Great One."

"Appealing to my vanity will not get you out of sentry duty. Well, not this time, anyway."

Luke returned to the tank, frowning. What was the use of having one of these without having pumping equip, ment attached to it? Though it would take years, the tank would eventually fill up with waste residue that would displace the red organism, might even be toxic to it.

He opened himself more to the Force and could immediately sense the red stuff again. He could feel its dimensions, could almost sense the sharp lines of its width and breadth and depth-but in one place toward the center of the tank, that depth abruptly decreased, as though there were a protrusion of some sort from the tank's surface. "I need to go out there."

Mara, beside him, snickered. "That'll be a quick, painful swim."

"Maybe." This was a living thing, awake and aware in the Force.

Perhaps... He lowered his left hand toward it again, trying to reach the organisms through the Force, uppermost in his thoughts and feelings the idea, I am not food. I am not food.

His hand came down on the surface of the organisms. He tensed, ready to snatch his hand back, but he could feel the organism go quiet, docile beneath his flesh. He felt no sensation of burning or any sort of pain.

He took his hand away. His palm was clean; no trace of red showed on it.

Hurriedly, he stripped off his false vonduun crab armoi "I need an air mask," he said. "Completely inorganic material. Preferably with a faceplate."

"I have you covered." Face dug around in his pack, came up with something irregular and gleaming, no larger than Tahiri's fist. "My backup. It's a hood made of transparisteel foil with an oxygen canister.

It'll give you maybe five minutes."

"Perfect."

"Luke, I don't want to discourage your curiosity, but I have to remind you, if something goes wrong, this is an exceptionally embarrassing way to die."

Luke grinned at Mara. "I'll trust you to improve the story. Luke Skywalker goes out in a blaze of glory in battle with a hideous red devourer." He handed her his lightsaber.

Armor off and hood in place, Luke looked over the red pond awaiting him. I am not food. 1 am not food. He swung over the lip of the tank and dropped into the goo, felt it close around his legs, rise to his waist.

But there was no pain. He moved forward. The stuff was warm and heavy enough to significantly retard his progress-much like the thickest of the sludge-ponds he'd struggled through on Dagobah, so many years ago.

In the Force, he could clearly feel the place where the red goo became more shallow, and in moments he stood next to that point. He turned on the oxygen canister, offered his wife and Tahiri a jaunty wave, and went under the surface.

Darkness closed on him immediately. Not a job for the claustrophobic, he decided. / am not food. I am not food.

Reaching down, he groped around until he felt the object he was seeking. It had a curved edge and was a little larger than some circular steering controls..

. As he felt around it, he realized that it was a metal wheel, solid of construction, attached to a hub attached to the tank's surface.

It was, in fact, identical to the sort of hatch-closing wheel found on many types of war vessels.

It wouldn't spin in one direction, but obligingly rotated a quarter-turn in the other... and immediately Luke felt a vibration in the metal wheel, in the tank throughout the goo. He hurriedly rose. When he stood up in the middle of the tank, the goo fell away from him, not clinging.

The chamber was changing.

From the floor in front of the tank something was rising-a rectangular plug three meters wide by three meters long.

The top portion of the plug was metal plating, half a meter thick.