remarkable. Like they came out of a holoduplicator."
Jos nodded without comment. He, too, was watching the clones. They sat
next to each other, laughing, chatting, some boisterous and outgoing, others
quieter, more preoccupied. He could see no real difference in their behavior
from that of a group of soldiers anywhere in the galaxy who were
anticipating being entertained for a couple of hours. True, many were eerily
alike in their mannerisms and gestures, and they also had little reti-
cence in sharing drinks or bags of cracknuts, but such behavior, he
knew, was common among monozygotic twins as well. Still, identical whorls of
DNA did not necessarily mean identical personalities, even if those
personalities had been geared toward certain similarities since birth-or
decanting, in the clones' case.
Jos bit his lip thoughtfully. He knew now that he had come to think of
the troopers as being interchangeable mostly because their organs
were-because transplantation could be performed without the need to pump
them full of immunosuppressants to prevent rejection syndrome. Klo Merit had
been right: his training as a surgeon, however benevolent its intention, had
conditioned him to look upon the vat-born as less than human. Now that he
knew the truth, he wondered how he ever could have seen them any other way.
The bleachers were full now, with some latecomers sitting on the
ground. There was no structure on the base big enough to hold the troupe of
entertainers, so a half-rotunda stage had been set up in the large center
compound. Now, abruptly, the white-noise audience sounds were stilled by the
announcer's voice: "Gentlebeingsof all species, please welcome your host,
Epoh Trebor."
On one side of the stage, the Modal Nodes, with their leader Figrin
D'an, struck up the well-known theme music for Trebor, a Bith composition
that translated into Basic as "Appreciated Reminiscences." Trebor, a human,
was one of the HoloNet's most enduring entertainers. Re-voc was the current
younger and popular holovid star whom HoloNet Entertainment had insisted
have top billing, but Trebor had been doing this in various venues for
decades. Since the beginning of the current conflict, he had been one of the
driving forces behind these tours to various battle fronts to entertain the
troops and, as he put it, "the other unsung heroes of the war." Jos had
never particularly cared for Trebor's brand of humor; he found it overly
sentimental and a bit too party line. But there was no denying his
popularity, judging by the applause.
"Good evening, fellow sentients-and a special greeting to our troops."
This brought renewed applause and cheers from the troopers. "Y'know, I hear
the Kaminoans feel that the entire clone army project has been so
successful, they're thinking of branching out into other areas. They're
planning on cloning Falleens as marriage counselors . . . Zeolosians for
farm and gardening aid ... and Gungans to teach elocution."
The laughter and applause continued as Trebor delivered his opening
monologue. Most of his quips were somewhat funny, but Jos's mood continued
to be somber. He wished Tolk were here with him, instead of high overhead on
MedStar enduring some ridiculous and unnecessary tutoring-and possibly
well-meant but equally unnecessary interrogation by Admiral Great-Uncle. He
found it difficult to get into the festive spirit with her circumstances
weighing on his mind.
He wondered how long this war was going to continue, and what their
lives together would be like afterward- always assuming that there would be
an afterward. Like Erel Kersos, if Jos espoused an ekster he could never go
home again. He had no worries about making a living- with his skill as a
surgeon he could find work just about anywhere there was a medcenter, as
could Tolk. They could even have children, since Lorrdians and Corellians
were both basically human.
But to never see his homeworld, his friends, his family, again . . .
That would be hard. Brutally hard.
Erel Kersos had lived the life of an exile, and Jos could read the
regret in the lines of the man's face. He felt his mood growing darker. He
wished Merit were here so that he could unburden himself to him, but the
minder was also away from the Rimsoo on some errand. No, he would have to
deal with these sorrows himself.
And the only reliable way he knew to do that was, of course, to drown
them.
The cantina was probably close to deserted, butTeedle would be on duty,
and his mood would be best served by drinking in solitude anyway. Thank the
stars he didn't have to worry about becoming addicted to alcohol-five
hundred milligrams of a new drug called Sinthenol before the first drink
prevented the potent concoctions from having long-lasting effects on the
brain. It also sometimes helped alleviate hangovers, and the times that it
didn't he could always go to I-Five. The droid had recently discovered in
himself the ability to soothe headaches and other postparty symptoms with
sonic tones. "Two clones walk into a cantina ..." Jos felt suddenly
impatient. The show seemed to him pointless, or worse: a classic case of
whistling past the pyre. The chances of it being interrupted by more
incoming patients were even higher than usual, since the Separatists were
currently aggressively extending their front lines. Abruptly he stood, made
his way to the steps, and left.
Den and Uli watched Jos leave the bleachers. Uli scratched his head. "I
thought he was looking forward to this."
"Probably so did he. After you've been here a little longer, you'll
realize that our good captain, while not exactly bipolar, can sometimes be a
little .. . moody."
"I think he misses Tolk."
"Of course. But he's also been waxing existential of late about the
whole war effort. I get the feeling Jos was pretty much apolitical when he
was conscripted, maybe even leaning toward war a bit. But I'd say his
sensibilities have taken a sharp turn away from the party line since he's
been on Drongar."
Uli snorted. "Show me one person who hasn't made that turn."
"I could have, but he's dead now, Went out in a blaze of glory, mowing
down Separatists and probably, it looks now, preventing an assassination
attempt that might have cost the Republic dearly." Den shrugged. "But he was
definitely in the minority. Around here, in fact, he pretty much was the
minority."
"Phow Ji," Uli said. "The Martyr of Drongar, they're calling him.
HoloNet News is doing a documentary."
"Of course they are." For a moment, Den thought about joining Jos in
the cantina, for that was surely where the captain was headed. But then Epoh
Trebor introduced Eyar Marath, a most comely Sullustan singer and dancer,
and he decided to stay for a while longer. Nothing wrong with watching a
good-looking fem wearing next to nothing, was there?
Nevertheless, it was hard not to brood on the cosmic injustice of it
all. True, Ji was dead and thus unable to enjoy his brief notoriety. But
that only deepened the irony
as far as Den was concerned.
Ah, well-all fame is fleeting. He watched Eyar Marath prance about the
stage, belting out the lyrics of one of the songs that had recently made it
onto the Galactic Top 40,000. She was beautiful, of course. She was hot
plasma now, but where would she be in ten years? And the band backing her
up-what were they called? The Modal Nodes?-were also rocketing high now, but
if, twenty years later, they wound up playing for pouch change in a dingy
spaceport bar somewhere, he wouldn't be at all surprised. It was the nature
of the business. No matter how bright the spotlight on you, sooner or later
it went out.
At that point all the lights in the camp went out. A surge of panic
enveloped the crowd. Den heard cries of shock and surprise, and the uneasy
babble of questions. Both he and Uli were small enough to hunker down and
roll under the bench, and he was about to tell the young human to be ready
to do so if the crowd around them panicked. Better an uncomfortable squeeze
than being trampled.
But before he could open his mouth, the emergency generators kicked on,
washing away the darkness. Den could see Trebor, Marath, and some other
members of the troupe looking about in puzzlement and apprehension.
The collective stir of fear ebbed with the light. But then things got
really interesting. Den felt a cold draft touch the back of his neck. Then,
in the somewhat-dimmer-but-still-sufficient-to-see lighting, fat white
flakes began to drift down upon the gathering. One of them landed on Den's
hand. He stared at it, watched it melt. Snow. Holy milking Sith! Snow?
13
Jos had just settled himself at a table in the cantina-he had plenty
from which to choose, since nobody else was in the place except the serving
droid Teedle-when the lights blinked off. The emergency generators rumbled
online and quickly replaced the darkness with a slightly dimmer, more
hard-edged lighting.
Now what? he wondered.
Teedle rolled up on her gyroscopic single-wheel platform. "Hey, Doc.
What'll it be? The usual?"
"Sure. Keep 'em coming and-" He stopped, staring at one of the windows.
Outside the transparisteel there was some kind of chaff falling. Spores? No,
these were too big, and there were too many of them. Anyway, they didn't
look like spore colonies . . . these were white and flaky, like ash or like
. . .
"Snow?"
Teedle said, "That's what it looks like, don't it? And my sensors tell
me that the temperature in here is going down faster than an off-duty
Ugnaught."
At her words, Jos noticed it himself. Son-of-a-raitch, it was getting
colder. A lot colder.
He stood and headed for the door, Teedle rolling along just behind him.
Outside, he looked up. The force-dome, high overhead,
was usually transparent, though sometimes a slight crescent of pale
bluish ionization was visible after dark. Not this time, though. Instead,
the camp glow reflected back from what looked like low, thick clouds.
Sometimes, on a particularly hot and humid day, they would get some
condensation under the dome, but nothing like this. The osmotic exchangers
were fairly efficient, letting in air and even rain, while keeping out a lot
of less desirable things. But for it to be snowing, the temperature
differential had to be far outside normal limits, Short of parking a battery
of refrigeration units on null-grav sleds up there, he had no idea how it
could happen. Zan would have known. Zan had worked for a relative on
force-domes when he'd been young.
"Never saw anything like this before," Teedle said, adding that
gum-popping sound her vocabulator sometimes made. "Of course, I've only been
operational for six weeks, so it's not like I've seen all that much."
Jos walked away from the cantina, toward the OT. The cold was
increasing, and the snow continued to drift down. The ground and most of the
other exposed surfaces were still too warm to allow it to pile up, but if
the temperature kept dropping like this, it wouldn't be long, he estimated,
before they would have to start shoveling the stuff.
He remembered hearing or reading somewhere that the dome was in fact a
spherical bubble, rather than a hemisphere, with half of it underground. He
wondered if that would have any effect on the soil temperature.
Jos shivered. He needed a jacket. Had he even brought one to Drongar?
Had anybody? The sticky wet heat that had hit him like a personal insult the
moment he'd stepped off the transport had never stopped-it had remained body
heat and hotter during the days, maybe three-quarters that at night, and a
humidity factor of less than 90 percent was big news.
Even so, the current ambient temperature, in defiance of all the laws
of thermodynamics, was fast approaching freezing. He needed a coat, at the
very least. A heavy-weather parka would be even better . . .
"Attention, all personnel," came Vaetes's voice over the public address
system. "There has been a heat-exchange malfunction of the camp's osmotic
force-dome. There is no cause for alarm-the shielding aspect of the dome
remains in effect. Technicians are working on the problem and will have it
repaired shortly. Until they do, you are advised to don warm clothing or to
remain indoors."
Jos stared around him. The flakes were turning to slush and mud upon
contact with the still-warm ground-even so, the sight was pretty
unbelievable. He'd seen this place in the lowlands practically every day for
the past year and a half, and it had looked no different after the move
here. Yet it now seemed completely transformed. He wondered what it would
look like with the buildings covered with snow, with it piled up in drifts
on the roads and against the sides of structures.
Jos couldn't help but smile. Zan would have loved this. Almost a pity
things'll be back to normal before it has a chance to accumulate, he
thought. I'd like to get in one good snowball fight with someone . . .
"Hey, look at that," he murmured aloud. There'd been less residual heat
than he would have thought-the snow was starting to pile up already.
He might get his wish after all.
Barriss stood in the falling snow, which was coming down quite heavily
now. It lay piled at least finger-length deep, turning the camp into a
glistening white tableau that was quite beautiful. She'd always loved the
sightof a snowy landscape. It transformed even the ugly durasteel and
plasticast structures of the Rimsoo into something fresh and clean and new.
The temperature was near freezing, cold enough for the stuff to keep
falling, and, somewhat to her surprise, the ground was now cold enough for
it to stick.
Along with her appreciation of the snow, Barriss also felt vindication.
That cold draft she had felt, the impossible chilly breeze that had
contributed to her accident, had been real. And, she knew, if the
force-dome's power had fluctuated at just the right frequency, the resulting
pulse could have affected the crystal of her lightsaber.
Such events were rare, but the crystals t
hat powered the center of a
force-dome were similar to those at the heart of a lightsaber-though much
larger, of course. The energies involved were more powerful, and the arc
wave was focused differently to produce a dome instead of a blade. Thus,
Barriss reasoned, it was just possible that a warble in the force-dome's
more powerful field harmonics generator might have resonated with her
weapon's focusing crystals, causing a sympathetic reverberation, just as
thunder could sometimes cause the strings of a musical instrument to
vibrate. Normaily, the shielding in a lightsaber was proof against such
interference-enemies had tried to short-circuit Jedi weapons before. But
perhaps one of the dome's crystals had a hidden flaw in it, impossible to
spot in a normal inspection, but sufficient to cause the field to pulse just
enough to shrink the blade a hair. Or to grow just a hair longer... Barriss
felt a relaxation of a tension she hadn't realized she'd been 'holding.
Perhaps it was not so, but that at least made more sense than the idea that
she had cut her own foot doing a move she should be able to do in her sleep.
The snow continued to fall, and she smiled into it. The colone! had
said that this anomaly wouldn't last long, so she planned to enjoy it while
it was here.
Sometimes the now was easier to dwell in than other times. This was
definitely one of those times.
Robed as one of The Silent, Kaird the Nediji gloried in the cold
outside the Recovery Room, watching with something akin to joy as the snow
continued to fall lazily upon the camp, adding thickness to the white shroud
that now blanketed everything exposed to it. His career in Black Sun had
been long and successful. He was respected, adept, and eventually, did he
stay with the organ-ization long enough, could look forward to becoming at
least a subvigo, perhaps a full vigo. But when he was on worlds where the
cold held sway, the call to return home was always strong. He hadn't felt it
here on this tropical pesthole, which had been entirely-until an hour ago-
hot, humid, and almost malignantly verdant. But now . . .
It really was amazing. Outside the malfunctioning dome, jungle and
swamp still ruled-you could see it just beyond the arc where the dome
touched the ground. But here, for the moment at least, the air was crisp and
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