Yoda, Dark Rendezvous

by Sean Stewart

  Like smell.

  Anyway, the last time she had seen the old Jedi with a bowl of food in the

  Temple rectory, there had been a tail hanging over the edge.

  "I'm telling you, we're too low," Scout said. "We should have taken the lift

  tube to Level Fourteen. That's what the sign said."

  "That wasn't a sign. It was a scuff mark on the lift tube wall."

  "Sign."

  "Scuff."

  "Sign!"

  Whie took a breath. "Perhaps it was a sign, and I am mistaken. Let's try

  Level Fourteen."

  Scout stalked along the narrow corridor. "You know, the way you do that takes

  all the fun out of being right."

  "The way I do what?"

  "Give in. It's like even though I'm right and you're wrong, somehow you're

  just humoring me. Jedi serenity is all very well, but in a thirteen-year-old boy

  it's sort of creepy."

  "What do you want from me?"

  "Argue! Fight! Don't be this . . . this pretend Jedi," Scout said. "Can't you

  just be human, for once?"

  Whie's mouth quirked in a little smile. "No," he said.

  The truth was, Whie was preoccupied. Master Leem had hinted they were going

  to Vjun to meet with someone very important—maybe Count Dooku himself, and

  possibly the famous Jedi-killer Asajj Ventress. Whie had done a computer look-up

  on her, and found himself staring at the woman from his dream.

  Ventress would be waiting for them on Vjun. In a few days, a week at most, he

  would be standing in a room with a ticking detonator. Ventress would be smiling.

  Scout would turn to him with blood trickling down her shirt. "Kiss her,"

  Ventress would say.

  He wished he knew what he was going to answer.

  They were standing in the cooked-food line—the lines for raw were far too

  long—when someone tapped Scout politely on the shoulder. "Passenger Pho?"

  "What? I mean, Yes?" Scout said, belatedly remembering that she, Whie, and

  Jai Maruk were traveling as the Pho family, en route to a cousin's wedding on

  Corphelion.

  She found herself looking up at a tall humanoid-shaped droid that had seen

  better days. If it had ever featured any markings—paint, interface instructions,

  or even a brand name—they had long since been worn away, so its whole body had a

  dull, scuffed, scratched look, as if it had been sanded down and never

  refinished. "The ship's purser asked me to fetch you," the droid said. "It seems

  one of your belongings has been turned in to the Lost and Found."

  Scout blanched. It had become depressingly clear over their first few days

  together that Jai Maruk didn't think much of her. She could just imagine the

  expression on his lean, closed face if he heard she'd had to bail her lightsaber

  out of Reasonable Doubt's Lost and Found. "What did I lose?"

  "The purser neglected to mention," the droid said politely. "Will you come

  this way?"

  She looked at Whie, who nodded. "Go ahead. I can manage." Still Scout

  hesitated. "Don't worry," Whie said. "I won't tell."

  He isn't trying to humiliate me, Scout told herself. It just works out that

  way.

  The scuffed droid turned and headed for the lift tube. Scout trudged after

  him. "Your finish is pretty worn," she said, making conversation.

  "I am not a regular part of Reasonable Doubt's crew," he explained. "I

  offered to work for them in exchange for my passage. Regrettably, my owner is

  dead," the droid went on. "I am responsible for my own upkeep."

  The lift tube door opened. "I never thought of that," Scout said. "What would

  happen to a droid with no owner, I mean."

  "I hadn't, either," her companion remarked dryly, "until it happened to me."

  "What do you do about maintenance?" Scout asked. "Go back to the factory?

  Find a repair tech? But how would you pay for repairs?"

  "Your grasp of the problem is admirable," the droid said. "As it happens, I

  was part of a rather small production run, now very obsolete. I am programmed to

  perform a good many repairs on myself, but spare parts are hard to come by, and

  correspondingly expensive, as they must be either bought as antiques or

  custom-built from my specifications. The challenge is considerable, as you

  surmised."

  "Wouldn't cost you much for a couple of cans of metal paint, though," Scout

  said, glancing at her guide's scuffed bare metal surfaces.

  "Ornamentation is not logically a high priority."

  "Easier to get a job if you look smart, though. Think of it as a business

  expense."

  The droid shrugged, a strangely human gesture. "There is some truth in what

  you say . . . and yet, there is something honest about this," he said, touching

  the bare metal surface of his cheek. "It seems to me that most sentients live in

  a . . . cocoon of illusions and expectations. We are full of assumptions: we

  think we know ourselves and those around us; we think we know what each day will

  bring. We are confident we understand the arc and trajectory of our lives. Then

  Fate intervenes, strips us down to bare metal, and we see we are little more

  than debris, floating in darkness."

  Scout looked at him. "Whoa. You must have been a philosopher droid off the

  assembly line."

  "Quite the opposite," he said, with a sharp inward expression. "Philosophy

  has come rather late to me." The lift tube arrived at Level 34, and the doors

  slid open. "After you, Mistress Pho," he said.

  "My friends call me Scout." She stuck out her hand.

  Gravely the droid accepted it. "I don't think I can count myself as a friend,

  yet. Just a droid with a job to do."

  "Now you tell me your name," Scout prompted. "That's how this works."

  "Certainly not. However trusting you are, I certainly don't know enough about

  you to give you my real name." Relenting, he added, "For now, you may call me

  Solis, if you prefer."

  "It beats 'Hey, Scuffr " Scout had the distinct impression that if the

  droid's factory programming had included an eye-roll function, he would have

  deployed it. She grinned. "Solis it is."

  The line in the cafeteria was interminable, even for cooked food, but after

  what felt like a galactic age Whie had finally placed his orders and paid for

  them. Now he stood looking uneasily over his haul. One large bubble-and-squirt;

  five orders of vacuum flowers; half a dozen of what the menu called Blasteroids!

  and appeared to be double-fried chili dumplings; a bucket of crispy feet; and a

  sloshing half bucket of rank (extra gummy), along with five drinks and a handful

  of napkins. That ought to be enough, Whie thought. But how was he going to get

  it back to the cabin?

  Would Asajj be the one who left Scout bleeding? Or would they be captured by

  guards and taken before her already hurt?

  If he kissed her, would he taste the blood on the edge of her mouth?

  Stop! Don't think about it.

  Don't think. Don't think.

  Whie's immediate instinct was to pile the food in a stack and trust to

  balance and a little judicious application of the Force to keep it from toppling

  over, but that seemed a bit conspicuous. How would an ordinary person handle

  this? Awkwardly, he decided, glancing around the cafeteria and watching a hefty
>
  female shouldering between tables with a tray on each hand and a sniveling

  toddler attached to each leg. Maybe he could grab one of the Doubt's little

  service droids and get it to help carry trays down to their rooms.

  "May I help you, sir?" said a tall droid painted with immaculate

  cream-and-crimson livery, appearing at his elbow as if conjured by his thoughts.

  The Force is with me, Whie thought with an inward smile. "No, that's all

  right. I don't want to take you from your owner's duties. If you could help me

  find a ship's droid, though . . ."

  The droid picked up the Blasteroids and the bucket of rank. "I insist, Master

  Whie."

  "That's very k—" Whie froze. "I'm sorry. What did you call me?"

  "Master Whie," the droid said, in a low, pleasant voice.

  "My name is Pho—"

  The droid shook its head. "It won't do, Master Whieit really won't. I know a

  very great deal about you. It's possible I know more about you than you know

  about yourself."

  Whie set the food on an empty table. His hand was light and tingling, ready

  to dive beneath his robes and draw his lightsaber. "Who are you? What are you?

  Who do you belong to?"

  "I suggest," the droid said—and his voice was in deadly earnest now—"you ask

  yourself those exact questions."

  Down in the ship's exercise room, Jai Maruk was working out in anticipation

  of his second meeting with Count Dooku, honing his body as another person might

  sharpen a knife.

  Maks Leem was meditating in what had once been a storage closet, but was now

  officially listed on Reasonable Doubt's directory as Cabin 523. Master Leem had

  her own room, next door to the others. Partly this was because she liked to

  meditate for several hours every day, preferably surrounded, as now, by a

  choking cloud of Gran incense that smelled, to the human olfactory system, like

  burning thicklube. But the chief reason the others had encouraged her to take a

  room of her own was that the Gran's four ruminant stomachs worked loudly and

  continuously all night long in a way that humans found impossible to sleep

  through.

  Being at heart a social creature, Master Leem regretted being secluded from

  her human comrades, and in fact spent most of the waking hours with them. But

  now, with Jai exercising and the Padawans dispatched to the cafeteria, she had

  gone next door to her little snuggery. Surrounded by smoke thick enough to drop

  a small mammal, she was happily reestablishing her connection to the living

  Force that bound all things.

  Next door, in Cabin 524, Grand Master Yoda was wondering what in space was

  keeping the Padawans. He wasn't worried for their safety. He was starving.

  The whole point of travel, Scout reflected, was to learn about oneself. In

  that sense, this trip was going really well. She had learned all sorts of

  things. She had learned that being chosen to be a Padawan did not necessarily

  bring every happiness with it, as she had thought it would, if one's Master

  obviously viewed you as excess baggage. She had learned that her body was

  entirely too used to the comfortable and familiar food served at the Jedi

  Temple, and that the galaxy was large, and full of people who willingly ate the

  most disgusting stuff imaginable. And she had learned that she had absolutely no

  sense of direction at all, because it seemed as if her interminable trek with

  the droid Solis—whom she couldn't stop thinking of as Scuffy—must have taken her

  through the whole ship about three times. "Look, this is ridiculous," she

  finally said. "Have the purser send whatever it is to my cabin. If I can ever

  find my cabin again," she added.

  "Here we are," Solis said imperturbably; and indeed, they had turned a last

  corner and stood before a small door marked PURSER'S OFFICE: SHIP'S PERSONNEL

  ONLY in Verpine signage, which was to say, so faint that Scout's nose was

  touching the door in her attempt to make out the letters. "Wait here one

  moment," the droid said, and he disappeared inside.

  Scout waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  "That's it," she growled. But at exactly the moment she was about to stomp

  away, the door hissed open and Solis returned.

  "Good news," the droid said politely. "The missing item didn't belong to you.

  It has already been claimed."

  "What?"

  "It seems it was a handbag belonging to another Mistress Pho. A simple case

  of mistaken identity," the droid explained. "So sorry for the inconvenience."

  The Jedi, Scout reminded herself, is serene. She is not pushed lightly about

  by life's little whimsicalities. A true Jedi would not be imagining how this

  droid would look disassembled into three buckets of bolts and a heap of scrap

  metal.

  The droid's head tilted to one side. "Is there something amiss, mistress?"

  "No," Scout grated. "Nothing at all. I'll just be getting back to my room

  now." She stalked away from the purser's office and turned a corner into the

  labyrinth of ship’s corridors. Solis—whose hearing was based on the legendary

  Chiang/Xi audiofilament tech—listened to her footsteps recede for quite some

  time; stop; and slowly return.

  "All right," she growled, turning the same corner several minutes later. "How

  in the name of crushing black holes do I even find my cabin?"

  "Allow me to help," the droid said suavely.

  "Charmed," the girl snarled.

  Far away in third class, Taupe Corridor, Level 17A, the door of Cabin 524,

  registered to the Pho family, slid most of the way into the floor. The Verpine

  usually built their doors to slide downward, so that a room's occupant could see

  outside and if necessary converse with whoever was on the doorstep without

  embarrassment, even if wearing only a bathrobe. This door opened only most of

  the way, however, leaving a jutting lintel that any reasonably active

  five-year-old could have jumped over, because under the standing orders of the

  witty ship's engineer, maintenance cycles were only to be expended on third

  class if something was broken "beyond all Reasonable Doubt."

  For a bipedal human, stepping over a lintel only fifteen centimeters high was

  no great challenge. To a squat, garbage-can-shaped R2 unit on wheels, however,

  the challenge was somewhat greater.

  Routine security in the public spaces of Reasonable Doubt was handled by

  bottom-of-the-line Carbanti surveillance monads. Each monad was essentially a

  small cam and microphone slaved to a very dim little artificial intelligence.

  The making of efficient AIs was as much an art as a science, and the AIs

  assigned to surveillance monads were by and large the slowest kids in the class.

  Even by these standards, the mechanical consciousness monitoring the corridor in

  front of Cabin 524, Level 17A, was notably dim-witted. The whole range of

  criminal behavior, its patterns and motivations, was entirely beyond it. Several

  spectacular thefts and one rather amusing con game featuring a fish, a diamond,

  and two deaf-mutes had taken place directly under its cam without provoking the

  slightest urge to pass a Questionable Activity Report up to the larger and more

  intelligent AI that r
eported to ship security. The truth was, this particular

  monad had only one idea in what passed for its brain, and that idea was Fire! It

  had b een waiting its entire existence, some seventy-three trillion processor

  cycles, for something to register on its infrared or smoke detectors. Then it

  would finally be able to break its eternal silence with a scream of lights and

  klaxons.

  To say that the security monad on Taupe Corridor, Level 17A, longed for an

  event of fire would not be too strong a word. The never-flashed alarm lights and

  the never-rung klaxons were like seventy-three trillion processor cycles of a

  sneeze that wouldn't quite come. By this time, the little security monad would

  quite willingly have melted its own processors down to sand if only it could

  sound the alarm of Fire! first.

  The sight of an R2 unit rolling up to the stuck door in Cabin 524, however,

  gave it no pause whatever—even when said R2 thumped painfully into the barrier

  and emitted a surprisingly unmetallic yelp, followed by a snuff of frustration.

  The sight of the little droid reaching out with one jerking mechanical arm to

  whap the stuck door repeatedly in what was, for a machine, a markedly petulant

  manner might have provoked some curiosity in an AI of greater intellectual

  accomplishments. In strict point of fact, the engineers at Carbanti would have

  said that even their least gifted security monad would surely have been struck

  by the sight of the same R2 unit rising slowly into the air without the aid of

  any visible boosters or rockets. When the droid settled back down into the

  corridor with a clang and rolled off with a decidedly puckish, questing air, it

  would not have been too much to expect a security monad with even minimal

  initiative to flag the little droid for linked follow-up observation.

  But the monad in Taupe Corridor did nothing of the kind. The sad truth was,

  the only circumstance in which it would have paid the slightest iota of

  attention to this hungry, flying, bad-tempered R2 was if some helpful passenger

  had doused the little droid in lighter fluid and set it on fire.

  Back in the cafeteria, long lines of bored passengers were still queued up

  for food. Children dabbled designs on the plastic cafeteria tables with bits of

  dipping sauce, or tried to convince their parents they had eaten their