Children of the Jedi

by Barbara Hambly

  "You'd better stay out in the corridor," whispered Nichos to Pothman. In the dim glow from the mess-hall door--the only area on Deck 12 that retained any power--the antigrav sled bobbed behind them like a dory at a wharf. The overburdening it had taken in the lift shaft had left it with a blown stabilizer, but it was still easier to tow it than to carry what Luke had instructed them to bring back to the fabrications lab.

  "Threepio and I are perceived as droids--that is, something they don't have to worry about." Indeed, with the fine metal mesh that had covered his joints and neck torn away and hanging in rags to expose the linkages and servos beneath, he looked more than ever like a droid. "I don't think they'll even notice us or ask us about what we're doing. They might recognize you as a Klagg."

  Pothman nodded. He was rather like a shining robot himself in the white armor of a stormtrooper, a blaster slung at his side, except for the thin dark face with its lines of age, its gentle eyes and fluff of graying hair. "I'll make sure the coast stays clear," he said, and gave a shy half smile. "You boys be careful in there."

  Threepio halted in turning away, running a swift scan of possible intentions to see if the slight sensation of offense he experienced was appropriate, but Nichos, in a sudden rare flash of humanity, grinned.

  In the mess hall, the celebration was going full swing. Imperial battle stations and cruisers were equipped with automatic limiters on the total amount of alcohol they could produce at any one time but the Eye's designers had reckoned without the brewing skills of Gamorrean females. Dish after brimming dish of heady potwa beer were dippered out of the giant plastic oil drum that stood in the middle of the room; the tables were strewn with stews, steaks, and fragments of sodden bread; a bowl of beer clattered off the wall beside Threepio the moment he put his head around the door, and he drew back hastily.

  There were shouts in the room, "I got him!" ”No, you didn't!" "Well, I'll get him this time!"

  "Come on, Threepio," said Nichos resignedly. "We've got sealed circuits. We might as well get this over with."

  "Really, the things I've had to put up with..."

  Threepio braced himself visibly and stepped back through the door. Bowls of beer and plates shied discus-wise clacked and bounced off the wall beside him as he made his way toward the food slots, Nichos in his wake. The Gamorreans weren't any better with tableware than they were with blaster carbines or handguns; one bowl caught the golden droid glancingly on the back and doused him with beer, but that was the extent of it. An argument immediately developed among the Gamorreans as to whether the hit counted. It turned violent, Gakfedds hammering one another with plates, axes, and chairs, screaming and squealing, while Bullyak sat back and smiled benevolently upon the scene in utter content.

  Part of the programming of a protocol droid was to understand not only the language, but the customs and biologies of the various sentient races of the galaxy. Though he understood that intense sexual competitiveness for the attention of the Alpha female underlay all the outrageous violence of Gamorrean society--though he realized that, biologically and socially, the Gamorreans had no choice but to behave, think, and feel as they did--the droid felt a momentary flash of sympathy for Dr. Mingla's irrational prejudices against individuals who behaved exactly as they were programmed to behave.

  Threepio bypassed the limiters on the food slots with a few simple commands--the language was absurdly easy--and asked for twenty gallons of Scale-5 syrup. When the half-gallon containers started appearing behind the plexi shields, he drew them out and handed them to Nichos, who carried them back to the hall where Pothman waited with the sled. A large number of morrts, shaken off their hosts during the fight and evidently drawn to the sugary smell of the syrup, scurried over to investigate.

  "Get away from here!" Threepio waved angrily. "Filthy things... shoo! Shoo!"

  They sat up and regarded him with beady black eyes, tongues flicking in and out of the toothed lances of their probosci, but took no further notice of his gestures. The Gamorreans, now happily smashing one another over the head with tables, took no notice of him at all.

  When Threepio had borne the last of the containers out into the darkened hallway, he found Pothman and Nichos flattened, with the sled, against the wall to let an armed column of Affytechans pass--188 of them, Threepio counted, and "armed" with brooms, fragments of dissected SP'S, pieces of pipe, and blaster carbines gutted of their power cells, all held weapon-like over their shoulders.

  "Riiight--turn! Paraaade--march!" Their commander's voice snapped briskly as they vanished into the utter darkness of the hall.

  "Really," said the protocol droid disapprovingly, as he set the last of the syrup canisters on the sled, "though I find laudable Master Luke's desire to remove all the passengers from this vessel before destroying it, I must admit to a certain amount of doubt about whether it can be achieved."

  A bowl of beer came flying through the mess-hall doors and crashed sloppily into the wall.

  "There has to be an alternative to blowing up the ship."

  "Not one that's foolproof. Not one that's chance-proof."

  "It doesn't need to be proof," said Luke desperately. "Just... enough. To cripple the motivators. To disengage the guns."

  "Whoever has summoned it--whoever has learned how to manipulate the Force to this extent--is going to come looking for it, Luke. And he--or she--is powerful. I can feel that. I know it."

  Luke knew it, too.

  "The station has to be destroyed, Luke. As soon as it can be done. It takes two people, one of them a Jedi... The Jedi uses the Force to interfere with the firing of the enclision grid above the gun room ceiling long enough for the other person to climb. That's how Geith and I were going to do it. I can tell you, or Cray--whichever one of you is going to do the climbing--which switches to pull, which cores to overload once you get to the top. Whoever stays at the bottom... there's a mission-log jettison pod in the bay at the end of the corridor by the gun room. I didn't know about it when Geith--when Geith and I..." Her voice hesitated over the name of the lover who had abandoned her to die. Then she went on. ”Anyway, I've found it since. It can be fitted with an oxygen bottle and the person who stays at the bottom can make it to that tube, if they run."

  There was silence, shaped by her presence beside him.

  "It has to be that way, Luke. You know it, and I know it."

  "Not right away. Eventually, yes, when I've had time--”

  "There is no time."

  Luke shut his eyes. Everything she said was true. He knew it, and he knew she was aware of it. At last he could only say, "Callista, I love you."

  Who had he said that to? Leia, once, before he'd known... And he loved her still, and in pretty much the same way. This was something he'd never felt, he'd never known that he could feel. ”I don't... want you to die."

  Her mouth on his, her arms around his body... the dream had been real, more real than some experiences of the flesh. There had to be a way...

  "Luke," she said gently, "I died thirty years ago. I'm just... I'm glad we had this time. I'm glad I stayed to... to know you."

  "There has to be a way," he insisted. "Cray..."

  "Cray what?"

  Luke turned, sharply, at the new voice. Cray leaned wearily in the door of the office, the silver blanket that half hid her torn and dirty uniform gleaming like armor, the marks of exhaustion and bitterness and the death of hope gouged into her bruised face as if with knives.

  "To turn her into what Nichos is? To cannibalize parts from the computers, wire together enough memory to digitalize her, so you can have the metal illusion around to remind you what isn't yours--and can't be yours? I can do that... if that's what you want."

  "You said Djinn Altis showed you--taught you--to transfer your self, your consciousness, your... your reality--to another object. You've done it with this ship, Callista. You're really here, I know you are..."

  "I am," she said softly. "There's enough circuitry, enough size, enough power in the cen
tral core. But a thing of metal, a thing programmed and digitalized, isn't human, and can't be human, Luke. Not the way I'm human now."

  "Not the way you and I are human." Cray came over to them, her blond hair catching fire glints in the greasy light. "Not the way Nichos was human. I should never have done it, Luke," she went on. "Never have... tried to go up against what had to be. My motto was always "If it doesn't work, get a bigger hammer." Or a smaller chip. Nichos..."

  She shook her head. "He doesn't remember dying, Luke. He doesn't remember a switchover of any kind. And as much as I love... Nichos... as much as he loves me... I keep coming back to that. It isn't Nichos. He isn't human. He tries to be, and he wants to be, but flesh and bone have a logic of their own, Luke, and machinery just doesn't think the same way."

  Her mouth twisted, her dark eyes chill and bitter as the vacuum of space. "If you want me to I'll make you something that'll hold a digitalized version of her memories, her consciousness... But it won't be the consciousness that's alive on this vessel. And you'll know it, and I'll know it. And that digitalized version will know it, too."

  "No," said Callista, and Luke, through a blind haze of grief, still noticed that Cray and he both looked at the same place, as if Callista were there...

  And she was, indeed, all but there.

  She went on. "Thank you, Cray. And don't think I'm not tempted. I love you, Luke, and I want... I want not to have to leave you, even if it means... being what I am now, forever. Or being what Nichos is now, forever. But we don't have the choice. We don't have time. And any components, any computers, you take from this ship, Cray, will have the Will in them as well. And if you disconnected the weapons, if you disa4 the motivators, if you pulled the cores, to leave the Eye floating in the darkness of space until you could find some way to build another computer, or droid, unconnected to the Will...I think the Will would lie to you about being disa4. I think it would wait until your back was turned, and seek out whoever it was that called it.

  "It has to be destroyed, Luke. It has to be destroyed now, while we can."

  No, he was screaming inside. No...

  She'd said that she loved him.

  He knew she was right.

  Cray went on tiredly. "I'll be the one who goes up the shaft, Luke. Your command of the Force is worlds stronger than mine," she added, as Luke started to protest, "but I don't think you can levitate that far, and I can't hold it off you long enough for you to make the climb with a bad leg. If we're going to blow off all three of our lives we can't risk you losing strength halfway."

  Luke nodded. With the little rest he'd been able to get he felt stronger, but it took everything he could summon of the Force to keep the pain in his leg from utterly swamping his mind. He would probably, he thought, be able to misfire the grid, but in spite of what Yoda had taught him, levitation took a lot of energy.

  "We can program the lander to take off with the Sand People in it," she went on, "if you insist on getting them off the ship."

  "If it's at all possible," said Luke. ”I think it will be, once Threepio and... and Nichos"--he hesitated to speak her lover's name to her, but though her eyes moved from his she didn't flinch--"get back here with the syrup. It can be picked up and towed back to Tatooine."

  "Triv and Nichos can each pilot a shuttle. Once they're out of the ship's jamming field they can transmit distress signals, though somebody's going to have their work cut out for them deprogramming the Gamorreans... not to mention convincing the Affytechans they aren't stormtroopers. They're multiplying, too, you know..."

  "I know." Luke sighed.

  "How you're going to get the Kitonaks on the shuttles..."

  "I think I've got that figured out, too," he said. It was in his mind that even as he couldn't drag his staff up the shaft with him--even as he wouldn't be able to move quickly enough among the stations at the computer core--he probably wouldn't be able to make it down the long corridor to the jettison pod before the engines blew.

  But that, he understood, was a technicality.

  "Callista..."

  He didn't know what he would have said. Tried to talk her, one more time, into letting Cray try to make some kind of computerized vessel for her mind and memories, her thought and heart... tried to talk her into escaping...

  But the bench on which he was sitting gave a sudden, jarring lurch, almost throwing him to the floor, and the cold sickness of gravity flux drew at his belly, dizzying...

  Another lurch, and he caught at one of the lamp-bowls as Cray grabbed the other halfway to the floor. Far off they felt the humming vibration rising within the ship's bones, the drag of power shifting...

  Callista said quietly, "That's it. Hyperspace."

  Chapter 21

  Even before he and Chewie got up the steps of the lightless house, Han had a bad feeling about things.

  "I'm terribly sorry, General Solo." The Bith in charge of the MuniCenter Records Office--and of the sales, invoice, and workers' benefits archives of the three major corporations that actually owned Plawal's central computer--tilted its domed, putty-colored head in the dim shiver of the holo field and regarded with huge black oil-slick eyes the point before it where Han's holo-phone image would be. ”Her Excellency does not appear to be in the building."

  Han glanced out the long windows, to the black fog pierced only by the raveled blurs of the orchard lights. Chewbacca, standing beside the glass, turned his head with a sound between a growl and a moan.

  "Can you tell me when she left?" It was even possible, thought Han, that she might have stopped at the Bubbling Mud--which did serve pretty decent meat pies--for dinner, though that was something she liked company for...

  "My apologies," said the Bith politely. ”Her Excellency does not appear to have been in the building all day."

  "What?"

  "There is no record of her access card in any of the file banks, nor has--”

  "Get me Jevax!"

  The Bith inclined its head. "I will endeavor to do so, sir. Will you remain at your current location?"

  "Yeah, just find him and get him... Uh, thank you," added Han belatedly, remembering Leia's repeated admonitions. "I appreciate it. I knew it, Chewie," he added as the slight image faded, "I knew she shouldn't have gone out with Artoo!"

  The Wookiee made a questioning noise and flipped in his paw the restraining bolt they'd found on the table.

  "Of course she pulled it off him," said Han. "She wouldn't think any harm of that little can of bolts if he... Well, he did try to murder her, dammit!" He surged to his feet, paced like a caged Endoran vethiraptor to the table where the bolt had lain beside Chewie's open toolkit.

  The Wookiee growled again.

  "I know she stands by her friends! But she--”

  The holo phone blipped again, and Han leaped at the pickup switch as if it were the cancel toggle on a planetwide self-destruct cycle. But instead of the green local light, the blue star of the subspace receiver flickered on. A moment later Mara Jade's slim, leather-clad form appeared in the booth.

  "Got your coordinates for you." She held up a yellow plastene wafer. "What's your receiving speed?"

  "Why didn't you tell us you were after Nubblyk the Slyte?" demanded Han roughly.

  "Because I don't lie to my friends," replied Mara sharply. "And if that's all you've got to say--”

  "I'm sorry." Han looked away, angry with himself. "But I heard..."

  "What's the matter, Solo?" She took another look at his face and all the sarcasm sponged away like yesterday's makeup.

  "Leia's disappeared. She went up to the MuniCenter this afternoon and I just found out she never made it there. She's with Artoo-Detoo...He went haywire last night and tried to kill us, we had him in a restraining bolt but it looks like Leia pulled it off him and took him with her..."

  Mara made an extremely unladylike comment and Lando Calrissian appeared behind her shoulder, waxed and combed and dressed in his best purple satin for an evening out.

  "What is it?" />
  Han told him, adding, "We're waiting on Jevax now. She talked about visiting the city repair center, so maybe she took Artoo with her to get him checked, but it's after dark already and there's been too many weird things going on lately."

  "Why'd you ask about Nubblyk?" asked Mara. ”Who told you I was after him? I spent all of about twelve hours on that ball of ice and I don't think I could finger Nubblyk in a lineup if he'd picked my pocket."

  "He told his toady the Emperor's Hand was after him," said Solo. "The Emperor's Hand was on the planet, and he had to get out of there before she found him. Nubblyk disappeared about seven years ago--after you'd said you'd been and gone. I figured you'd come back..."

  He fell silent, just from the change in her eyes.

  For a moment she said nothing, but even through the medium of the subspace holo, her rage was tangible, like the shock wave of a thermonuclear blast.

  When she spoke her tone was deceptively normal, and very calm. "That reptile," she said. Her eyes stared out unseeingly, filled with a sudden, vicious, killing hate. "That son of a slime-crawler."

  "What?" Lando stepped quickly back, almost out of range of the holo. "What's...?"

  "He told me I was the only one," said Mara, still in that calm, almost conversational voice. ”The only Hand of the Emperor. His weapon of choice, he said, when he needed a scalpel rather than a sword... his trusted servant." The set of her red-lipped mouth was hard, the settled rage of one whose position had been not only her pride, but her entire life.

  "That lying, drooling, scum-swallowing, superannuated underhanded festering filth-sucking parasite! He had another Hand!" Her voice sank to a deadly whisper. "He had another Hand all along!"

  She had not moved from her seat, but the fury that radiated from her was like the pressure drop before a storm. Though it was directed against a dead man it made Solo very glad he was several hundred parsecs away in another star system entirely. ”He lied to me! He used me! His "trusted servant"! Everything he told me was a lie! Everything!"

  "Mara," said Lando uneasily, "Mara, he's dead--”