"It's been my experience-such as it is-that on some level, one usually knows the difference between right and wrong. Sometimes you pretend to yourself that you don't, so you can choose to eat that cream-fat puff-pie you ought to skip, but deep down, you know you shouldn't. I think you have to trust that part of yourself, when it comes to the big stuff."

"Yes, of course. But with the big stuff, you have to be sure," Barriss said. "Gorging on a rich dessert isn't exactly high up there on the list of galactic-scale evildoing."

"Depends on the dessert," he said, smiling. There was a soft cheep, and he glanced at his chrono. "Oops, look at the time. My shift starts in a few minutes. See you later, Barriss."

"Yes," she said. Uli waved and headed back toward the base, After he was gone, she thought about their conversation. She hadn't spoken of her personal trial, nor had she really intended to, but the dialogue with Uli had sharpened her thoughts a little. Barriss considered going back to her kiosk to explore these thoughts further, but decided that, however sluggish and stupid she felt, she needed to do her lightsaber forms. Sometimes she just had to push through, no matter how much she felt like quitting.

The larger question was still there. Was taking more of the bota a good idea, or a bad one? Would that path lead to a glorious swim in the rushing river that was the Force, or would it lead to the dank pool of quicksand that was the dark side? Uli couldn't tell her that.

In truth, she didn't think anybody could tell her; as far as she knew, no Jedi had ever been faced with this particular choice before. Any help, from her Master or any other, would be theoretical. Do-or not do, as Master Yoda would say.

She had a feeling, small but nagging, that this choice was supposed to be up to her. Even choosing to wait and decide later might send her in the wrong direction.

She lit her lightsaber again. Leave it for now. Do the dance you know you can do. The dilemma will still be there when you are done.

Unfortunately . . .

Kaird was feeling much better now that he had a plan of action in place. In a different and new disguise, that of a corpulent human male, he met with his agents.

They sat together in the crowded chow hall during the midday meal. It was noisy and smelly-a lot of different species eating extremely varied dishes. n.o.body was paying any attention to Kaird, Thula, and Squa Tront.

Sometimes the best place to hide was in the middle of a mob.

His thoughtshield solidly in place against mental prying, Kaird explained his desire, quietly and to the point.

As he expected, Thula and Squa Tront had some reservations.

"This will kill the operation here," Thula said. She nibbled on a greenish blue vegetable cutlet, made a face at the taste. "Gah. What a waste of good spigage. The cook should be boiled in his own pot."

"Which is exactly what would have happened to him, had his cuisine displeased the tetrarch of Anarak Four," Squa Tront said. "But he's not subject to quite such drastic repercussions here as on his homeworld."

"Lucky for him," Thula said, shoving her plate aside.

Kaird broke in on the banter. "That the operation will end has crossed my mind," he said in response to Squa. "We've decided that cutting an artery and filling our bucket is better than bleeding a few drops at a time. War is uncertain. Somebody on one side or the other might get stupid and accidentally wipe this planet out, and then n.o.body makes any profit."

This was technically true, if it had nothing to do with his reasons. The we in this case was more properly I, since Black Sun knew nothing of his plan.

"True," the Umbaran replied. "But you would get more the droplet way, in the long run, if things stay the same." -"Are you going to eat that?" Thula asked Kaird.

Kaird looked at the splatters of viscous brown, green, and white lumps on his plate. He had no idea what it was-some kind of human cuisine, served to him due to his disguise. In Kaird's opinion it smelled like a stopped-up recycler in an overcrowded s.p.a.cer bar. "It's yours," he said, pushing the swill to the Falleen. He turned back to Squa. "In the long run, we are all dust funneling into a singularity," he said. "It's my job to give Black Sun what it wants, and your jobs to give me what / want. Is thisa problem?"

Thula and Squa Tront looked quickly at each other, then back at him. They shook their heads. "Nope," they said in chorus.

The human mask smiled. "Good. You'll make enough of a bonus that it will be worth the heat if they come after you."

They glanced at each other again. "Well, the thing is," Squa said, "we'll need to be s.p.a.cing the lanes before anybody realizes the stuff is gone. After all, we're among the first people they'll come looking for. I trust you have a way offplanet?"

"Sorry. You'll have to make your own arrangements," Kaird said.

The fake flesh he wore itched. He was boiling in this thing! He'd worn it because it had a filtration system that kept those pesky Falleen pheromones from affecting him. That, at least, was working, but the fine skein of heat-exchanging tubules and cavities in the material wasn't. There was always something in these elaborate disguises that caused problems. The Silent robe was about as good as it got.

Thula swallowed and said, "In that case, timing will be critical. We either have to ship out on civilian transportation at least a couple of days before the offal hits the oscillator, or sneak onto a military transport and be well toward a nexus station when things get leggy here."

"You two aren't hatchlings just out of the egg," Kaird said. "You can work something out."

"Credits talk," Squa said. "I can see somebody being bribed in our future."

"True. And you will have enough credits to drown out a stadium full of politicians."

The Umbaran nodded. "When, then, and how much?"

"I'll need fifty or sixty kilos, in carbonite, and within a week. Something shaped like a big personal effects case, with a handle on it."

Thula looked at him. "We're talking another twenty kilos minimum for the carbonite sh.e.l.l.

Can you haul seventy or eighty kilos around without rupturing something?"

"I'm stronger than I appear," Kaird said. "And you can put wheels or a small repulsor on it."

Thula looked at her companion. He nodded. "All right," she said. "We'll need two days'

head start from the time you think the alarm will go off."

"Done. You have five days in which to set it up. That leaves you two days to track vac before I take off." He pulled a credit cube from his pocket and slid it across the table toward the Umbaran. Squa smiled at it. Thula reached over and took the cube. Squa said, "Thuia handles all the money. I'm a terrible accountant."

"My, my," the Falleen said, looking at the projection of the cube's contents inside the palms of her cupped hands. "Black Sun is being more than generous."

The human shoulders shrugged. "Share the wealth," Kaird said. "It makes for good business.

Everybody goes away happy."

All three of them smiled at each other. Rictuses all around, Kaird thought. Humanoids are always baring their teeth and pretending it means friendship.

Kaird made his way out of the dining area and to a cleaning closet with an inside lock. He went in as a fat human, and came out robed as one of The Silent, the artificial flesh having been dissolved in the ultrasonic com-pactor, as it had been designed to do once it was trie. gered. He had plenty more where that came from.

He wasn't worried about the Falleen and the Umbaran Small-time winders, thieves, and con artists were nothing if not pragmatic. The Nediji from Black Sun wants it and is willing to pay handsomely for it? No problem, boss, How many, how big, and bow soon?

The next part, however, was going to be a little more tricky. For this, Kaird needed to select a ship fast enough and with enough range, that he could escape in it with his stolen cargo. It didn't need any kind of big capacity-at the most, he would get away with fifty, maybe sixty kilos of bota. Even encased in acarbonite block, it wouldn't be so large that he could not belt it into a copilot's chair if he had to. He could, of course, attach a repulsor to a block weighing a metric ton or two and move it as easily as pushing a balloon, but something that big would be much more apt to be noticed, and stealth was a major part of his plan. Even the fastest ship likely to be found on this backrocket planet couldn't outrun a heavy charged-particle cannon's beam, and he wanted to be well out of ground battery range and beyond orbital picket ships before anybody even started thinking about shooting.

Greed had been the downfall of more than a few thieves, and Kaird had no intention of joining them. Fifty kilos of bota worth thousands of credits a gram, secured in Black Sun's Coruscant vaults, was worth a lot more than a ton of the same blasted to atoms by some razor-eyed dead-shot Republic gunner-not to mention the ship and pilot that would burn with it. Kaird had not become one of Black Sun's best operatives, an a.s.sa.s.sin who had taken out scores of the organization's enemies without ever once being arrested or even suspected, by being greedy or stupid. You made a plan. Then you made a backup plan-Then you made a backup plan for the backup plan-He already had a ship in mind, and if he could manage it, it would be the perfect vessel. He would begin scouting it as soon as possible.

He'd have to make the lift to MedStar, but the alert status had been dialed down somewhat by now, and as a member of a religious order he wouldn't have any problem getting in the air lock.

And after that, it would be smooth sailing. He could almost smell the sharp, clean air of the eyrie once more . . .

23.

Jos wanted to grill I-Five about the details of his restored memory at length, but unfortunately it was turning out to be another long day patching up the troops. There was nothing especially difficult or enormously complicated about most of the procedures; the majority of them in-volved removing shrapnel, as battlefield surgeons had done on war fronts for the past few millennia. The Sepa-ratists knew one grim fact of war very well-kill a soldier, and all you've cost your foe is the price of a recycle, Incapacitate the soldier, and you put a drain on your enemy's supplies and personnel across the board.

Jos grafted burned skin, resected pulverized tissue, re-moved perforated organs and replaced them with fresh transplants. Time crawled by.

Tolk was working with another surgeon this day, Whenever he could, Jos tried to catch her gaze, but to no avail; she simply looked at him from over her mask,her eyes betraying nothing-then turned her attention bad to her work.

By the time his shift was up, nine troopers had pa.s.sed beneath his gloved hands, and he was about to fall asleep on his feet-something he hadn't done since his residency, He went to the 'fresher and laved his face and hands, sieved tepid water through his hair.

It helped push back the exhaustion a little. Was a time when he had been just like, Ili-well, a little older-and pulling a shift like the one he just had would have slid off him like water off an Aqualish's back. But now, every time he looked in the mirror, it seemed he could find new lines in his face, more my hairs in his stubble. He was beginning to look-Creators help him, he was beginning to look like his uncle.

He hadn't had a chance to talk to Tolk-she'd gone off shift before him, and he hadn't seen her since.

When he left the 'fresher, he saw I-Five just emerging from the OT disinfection pa.s.sage.

The combination of UV light and ultrasound was complete enough to zap any pathogen that might have somehow made it through the sterile patient field, but the droid always complained that the sonics left him with the robotic equivalent of tinnitus for a few minutes afterward.

"So your memory's fully restored?" Jos said as the droid joined him.

"What?"

"Turn up your auditory sensors. You said you remembered everything," Jos said. "So tell me-are you really a lap-droid for some wealthy princess, or a groomer for a Shistavanen, or what?"

"I'm exactly what 1 was before, thank you very much for asking. I said there were gaps in my memory that needed to be filled. Now they have been. My internal cognitive function repairs are complete."

"I wish mine were. Anything in particular you recall?

C'mon, I-Five. Share." The droid c.o.c.ked his head in a puzzled pose. "Why are you so anxious to know?"

"Well, because-" Jos thought about it. Just why was he so curious?

"Because," he said slowly, "because from what you do remember, you've had an adventurous time of it, first on Coruscant and then careening around the s.p.a.ce lanes. As for me ...

the only worlds I've been to, other than here, are Coruscant and Alderaan. I look in the mirror, and l hardly recognize the aging hunk of protoplasm 1 see, 1 suppose that, when you said you remembered everything, that ..." He shrugged.

"That you would seize the opportunity to do a little vicarious sightseeing?"

"Something like that. Also," Jos paused, looking again for words. "I suppose J should be telling all this to Klo-"

"He does rate far higher than I do on the intuition scale."

"Most doctors-especially the ones here and others like them-will tell you they don't fear death, because they've seen so much of it. That may be true, for them. But as far as I'm concerned, it's for just that reason that I do fear death. Or at least the boat that makes the crossing."

"Padawan Offee might also be more able to help you than-"

"It's usually painful and protracted, death. Seems odd, with all the painkillers and stim treatments available nowadays, but there's still about a billion quadrillion or so beings just getting by for every one with his own private skyhook. In that respect, the galaxy probably won't ever change."

"There are other options."

"True. If you're rich, there are options-a personality dump, being frozen in carbonite-all kinds of options. But I'm not within a pa.r.s.ec of being that rich, and probably never will be. So I-"

"Jos," I-Five said. Jos stopped, surprised. The droid's voice hadn't really changed-it still had that slight, indefinable touch that identified its origin as a vocabulator instead of a larynx-but it was different, somehow. He hardly ever calls anyone by name, he realized suddenly.

I-Five said, "From what I've studied of popular culture, I think this is the moment where I'm supposed to remind you of all the wonderful advantages you, as an organic, have over me, a mechanical. Unfortunately, I really can't think of any. Yes, you are capable of creativity, of flights of imagination that I am not-because my core programming doesn't encompa.s.s such ephemerals. But I don't miss them. I don't yearn to be able to understand beauty and art. The same goes for love-and existential life crises such as you seem to be currently experiencing."

"1 don't believe that. You have, at the very least, a sense of humor-"

"I was programmed with one. Just about all droids that interact with organics on this level are."

"You wanted to get drunk!"

"True. I didn't say I wasn't programmed with emotions. Loyalty is one. Curiosity is another. And my lack of creativity dampers and my expanded synaptic grid allow me to extrapolate feelings. Experiencing things that organics favor-such as mind-altering concoctions-would theoretically help me understand them. And, since I'm stuck in this galaxy with all of you, I need all the data I can get.

"But I'm not the little droid in the children's tale that wants to be an organic, Jos. I'm a machine. A very complex machine, capable of mimicking the thinking processes of a sentient to an astonishing degree, if I do say so. But a machine, nonetheless. And I have no real desire to be anything else."

Jos stared at I-Five. He couldn't have been more aston-ished if the droid had just turned into a three-headed Kaminoan. Then, somewhat to his surprise, he started to feel angry.

He'd just recently had his worldview twisted, was only now starting to get comfortable with the idea that maybe droids shouldn't be treated like electrospan-ners with arms, and he was determined not to let I-Five mess with his head again.

He said slowly, "Do you remember, during one of the sabacc games, when we were discussing how a being knows if it's self-aware?"

"I remember."

"And you said something along the lines of, To be self aware enough to ask the question is to have answered it. I think you're aware enough to answer that question, I-Five. In fact, I think you already have. But now you're pulling back-you're denying your self," Jos said.

"I wonder if it might have anything to do with your memory returning?"

I-Five was quiet for what seemed a long time. When he spoke again, Jos could hear a definite tone of wonder in his voice, "I think-comparing subjective neural activity with internal files on the subject-" the droid said, "I think I'm having an anxiety attack."

24.

Sometimes the names did get a little confusing. Most of the time, it was the one the others in the Rimsoo used; after that it was Column, the op-nom bestowed by one of Count Dooku's Separatist spymasters. Lens, the code name by which Black Sun knew its agent, was the one least often utilized. None of them, of course, was the name bestowed upon the spy at birth, and that was but one of a long list that had changed time and again, as circ.u.mstances dictated.

However, Lens was the sobriquet being used now, that being the one the spy's guest was familiar with. The being sitting facing Lens was ostensibly human, but, in fact, concealed under the adipose rolls of a fat-suit disguise was Kaird, the Nediji a.s.sa.s.sin and enforcer. The two of them were in an empty office that belonged to a lab supervisor who had contracted a nasty, local form of pneumonia during the recent cold spell. The lab worker, an Askajian, was in the medical ward and wouldn't be using her room anytime soon.

The ersatz human had just laid out what sounded like the bare essence of a plan to steal a major amount of bota-and a ship in which to transport it. This didn't make any sense, and Lens was not at all hesitant to say so.

"We have our reasons."

"And you are telling me this . . . why?"