scale plates," he said to Paleel, the circulating nurse who wasn't scrubbed
sterile. "Find out what does that to a Nikto."
"Already got it," the nurse said. "Myoplexaril, variant four. Three
milligrams per kilo of body weight, IV."
"Okay. What does he weigh?"
"Sixty kilograms."
Jos did the math. "Give him one eighty of Myoplexaril, vee-four, IV
push."
Somebody had started an intravenous big-bore, TKO, which was good.
Running IVs was a primitive process at best, and, on top of that, Jos had
never enjoyed starting them on reptiloids-finding a vein under scaled skin
was always a challenge. But all the osmotic drips were in use at the moment,
so he had to make do with what was available. Threndy, the other nurse,
filled an injector with mus-
cle relaxant, double-checked the medicine vial and dosage, and pressed
the injector against the IVs Rx portal.
It would take a moment for the pharmaceutical to do, the trick. Jos
said, "Threndy, why don't you finish the instrument sort? Paleel, go and get
a second reptiloid kit, just m case. Tolk, over here and help me categorize
wounds."
The nurses moved.
With Tolk now standing next to him, if they kept their voices down,
they could have a private conversation. "You okay?" he asked.
She kept her gaze on the patient. "I'm fine."
"You don't seem fine. Since you got back from Med-Star, you've seemed,
well . . . distant."
She looked at him, then back at the patient. "Looks like this one got
hit in the spleen-if they have spleens." She pointed at a puncture wound
with a stat-patch.
"Tolk."
She sighed. "What do you want me to say, Jos? It wasn't a visit to a
pleasure dome. I saw people spewed into space like ripe poptree seeds. The
lucky ones died right away."
"People die here every day," he said. "You seem to be able to deal with
that."
"Not the same," she said.
"It wasn't like you did it, Tolk."
She gave him a sharp glance, and was about to say something when the
patient's abdominal plate relaxed and retracted-and a gush of purplish
hemolymph from one of the now exposed wounds lanced out and hit him squarely
in the chest.
The next few minutes were occupied with stopping the flow of vital
fluid. The nurses and droids handled that, while Jos stepped away from the
table. He'd have to change clothes and rescrub. Which meant a serious
conversation with Tolk wasn't going to happen now.
Blast.
But he wasn't going to drop it. Something was wrong, something over and
above the trauma of what had happened. There was something that Tolk wasn't
telling him. And he wouldn't rest until he knew what it was.
Barriss Offee was having a hard time concentrating on her work.
In front of her, in a bed in the recovery ward, a trooper lay-or
rather, most of him did." His legs had been chewed by shrapnel up to
midthigh. The solution waste outfit the soldier with cybertronic
prosthetics-robotic legs that, once covered with a layer of synthflcsh,
would be nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. Barriss's job was to
use the Force to prepare the trooper for the circuit grafts and implants by
easing systemic shock reaction. It was a fairly easy task-a simple matter of
soothing the autonomic nervous system and stimulating biological response
modifiers. She'd done it dozens of times before with no glitches. There was
no reason to assume it would be any different this time.
Nevertheless, she could not do it.
Since experiencing that searing, that "cosmic" connection, Barriss had
been afraid to reach out to the Force again. Though there was no logical
reason to fear it, still she found herself paralyzed every time she
attempted a link.
She was aware that this was not a good situation, especially given her
position here on this war-ravaged world, Though the last few days had been
light on casualties, Rimsoo Seven could be inundated again at any time, and
when that happened her abilities would be needed to save lives. She couldn't
afford to remain helpless.
Her mind knew all this. Her heart, however, still shied away from the
bond that had been a part of her life for so long.
That couldn't be any more wrong.
She told the FX-7 droid on duty to put the clone back in short-term
cryosupport. She'd be doing him no favors trying to modulate his BRMs now,
given the uncertain state she was in. She needed to get out, to clear her
head. Perhaps a game of sabacc was indicated . . .
Alone in her kiosk, Barriss sat and stared at the wall. She had sought
out company, but being in the presence of her friends hadn't helped to
resolve matters. The power of her experience-and she was sure it had been
real, not a hallucination-still thrummed in her, though it was now but a
faint echo of what it had been; the drip of a single raindrop after the roar
of a storm.
Even so, playing cards in the cantina and exchanging small talk with
the doctors and nurses hadn't helped her do anything other than put off
dealing with it. She couldn't talk to any of her colleagues-what was she
going to say? Hey, Jos, I just became one with the entire galaxy. . . and
how's that case of Ortolan rhinorrhea you've been dealing with?
None of them could help her, and there was nobody else she knew of who
had experienced it-certainly not anyone at hand.
If anyone else ever had experienced it...
Barriss knew she wasn't the smartest Jedi who had ever lived, but she
wasn't anywhere close to the stupidest, either. She knew what had happened.
She had taken a ther-
apeutic, if accidental, dose of the bota extract. There was no doubt in
her mind that the unintentional injection and her sudden, overpowering
connection to the Force had been cause and effect. She didn't know the why
or the how, but she was certain that the panaceatic chemical concoction had
produced yet another miracle, this time by intensifying her connection to
the Force by an order of magnitude she couldn't even begin to tally.
When, as a youngling, she had first learned to use the Force, it seemed
to her as if she had been living in a dark cave, and had finally been given
a lamp to light her way, She could, of a moment, see, whereas before she had
been feeling her way in the murk. It had been a most intense and profound
revelation.
Compared to that, the experience she'd had after the accident in the
ward had been like trading in that lamp for her own personal sun-a
difference comparable to being able to see a vast plain, all the way to the
horizon, in every minute detail, as opposed to the corner of a single small
room. It was as if she were a hawk-bat, capable of spotting a rock shrew the
size of her thumb from a thousand meters away, as opposed to being a blind
granite slug, grubbing myopically at the few millimeters directly before
her.
What did it mean?
Her first reaction had been to comm her Master. Lumi-nara Unduli would
know, or she would have acce
ss to somebody with knowledge. In any event,
there was certainly no reason to try to puzzle it out on her own, certainly
not when she had the vast resources of the Temple's archives at her
disposal.
And so she had tried-but her communications unit was not working.
Everything seemed fine, all the circuits tested clean, but there was no
signal. Something was jam-
ming the frequency; she could not even get an offworld carrier
hyperwave, and she had no idea why. Possibly it was due to some military
operation-it was entirely feasible that the Republic or the Separatists had
recently implemented some device that could blanket a planet and stop
transmissions such as hers. Or could it be a natural phenomenon? There were
magnetic and flux storms in realspace that sometimes cast subspatial
reverberations and interrupted comm signals. Drongar Prime was a hot sun;
its coronal discharges were certainly strong enough . . .
Barriss made a frustrated gesture. No point in theorizing-she had to
talk to somebody who knew more about the Force than she did, to pass this
along and decide what-if anything-needed to be done about it. She'd tried
the unit again, as soon as she'd gotten back to her kiosk, but of course it
still wasn't working.
There was another way, however, an elegantly simple way: take another
blast of the bota. She was almost certain that she could figure out just
about anything, once she returned to that ineffable state in which she had
been before, if this time she was expecting it and prepared for St. The
experience held within it all manner of knowledge; she could still feel the
truth of that. Once she understood the parameters of the event, Barriss
could present the Jedi Council with something of incalculable value. She
couldn't even imagine the miracles that a true Jedi Master could perform
while suffused with such power. Why, even the small handful of the Order
remaining could turn the course of the war, could easily defeat Dooku's
forces and restore galactic peace, did they but have access to the kind of
power Barriss had experienced. She knew this to be true; she had felt as if
she could accomplish all that by herself, so she knew that, with such
mystical strength in the hands of Luminara or Obi-Wan or Yoda, anything
would be possible.
But-could she prepare herself sufficiently to ride that massive and
all-powerful wave again? It seemed entirely possible that the next time it
might roll over her, and she wouldn't be able to struggle free. Maybe it
would claim her for itself, and never let her go, transform her somehow into
something totally outside the experience of her or anyone else . . .
Barriss sighed. This was beyond her skill, her talents, her ability.
She needed help, but there wasn't anyone here capable of providing it. It
seemed that, until she could talk to Master Unduli, she would be better off
doing nothing.
But that wasn't as easy as it sounded, by any means. The memory of the
power, frightening as it was, nevertheless cried out to her. Its call was so
tempting. Even though she was afraid, she longed to try it again.
It would be easy. There were several skinpoppers filled with the
distillate literally within arm's reach. It would be but a second's work to
take one, push it against her flesh, trigger it... So easy . . .
Barriss wrapped her arms around herself and shivered, feeling a cold
that had nothing to do with the snow outside.
20
Jos, my friend. How are you feeling?"
Jos looked at the minder. "Well, if truth be known, I've had better
days. Better months. Decades."
"Oh?"
Jos squirmed uncomfortably-a difficult task in the formchair that
fought to match his every move and make the position comfortable. "You, uh,
know about me and Tolk."
The Equani steepled his fingers. "Fortunately, I have not gone blind or
deaf recently."
"Yeah, well ... I thought we were flying like a land-speeder with
custom harmonics. Only lately she's . . . cooled."
"How so?"
Jos sighed. Everything about Klo and his office was designed to be
calming-his manner, the decor, the patient's formchair-but Jos had yet to be
able to relax when he came here. It wasn't that he felt distrustful of Klo,
or of the whole minder process, the way many of his family did. Even though
he came from a long line of medics, many of his immediate ancestors looked
askance upon the concept of healing through mental therapy. Though his
father would never come right out and admit it, Jos knew that the senior
Vandar was much more com-
fortable curing depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and the like with
adjustments of dopamine, serotonin, and somatostatin levels, rather than by
empathetic feedback. Jos told himself he didn't share this bias, but even
so, he was always tense in Merit's office.
He wasn't sure why he had come this time. He hadn't had an appointment,
he'd just taken advantage of Merit's free time. He needed to bounce this
problem off somebody, and his kiosk mate was not as old as some of Jos's
boots.
"Tolk and I were doing fine . . . then she went up to take a CME class
on MedStar. She was there when the decks blew-and since she's gotten back,
she's been frostier than the snow outside your window."
Merit nodded. "Why do you think that is?"
"If I knew, I wouldn't be here, now would I?"
"Did you two argue about anything?"
"No."
Merit nodded, and leaned back in his own formchair, which adjusted to
match his new balance and contours. "Well, the accident was distressing to a
lot of people."
"The way I heard it," Jos said, "it wasn't an accident."
Merit shrugged. "I've heard those rumors as well. Of course, the
powers-that-be might want people to think that way-after all, if it was
sabotage, that lets Security off the hook. The Republic is not immune to
watching-your-backside disease."
Jos knew that. He shrugged. "Barriss says it was deliberate. I believe
her."
"Well, it doesn't really matter for the purposes of our discussion.
Whether the blowout was an accident or on purpose, it seems that the trauma
of it may have hit Tolk harder than she's letting on."
"I've thought of that. But I don't see how. We have more people die in
this Rimsoo in any given month-in a week, sometimes-than died in the MedStar
blast. Tolk is often working on them when they go, looking them right in the
eyes. Why wouldn't that bother her more than a bunch of people she didn't
know, and didn't have to deal with?"
"I can't say." Klo paused, as if considering something.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"I'm not a face reader, a Jedi, or a minder, Klo, but I didn't just
fall off the melbulb freighter, either. What?"
"How well do you know Tolk? I mean, yes, you've worked with her during
your tour here, and you have established a relationship that, I assume, is
physical?"
"You can assume that."
"But-what do you know of her background? Her people, her politics, her
social development?"
"What are you getting at?"
"Perhaps she has reasons to be upset that you can't see. Perhaps
there's something in her background she hasn't revealed to you."
"I don't think I like the way this conversation is going."
The minder raised a pacifying hand. "I meant no insult to Tolk," he
said. "I'm merely suggesting that, as you point out, there would seem no
ostensible reason for her to be more upset about an explosion on the MedStar
than she'd be in the day-to-day goings-on "here in the Rimsoo. Therefore,
there could be another reason."
Jos blinked at him. "Are you suggesting that she had something to do
with it?"
"Of course not, Jos. Only that there is apparently something going on
with Tolk about which you seem to be in the dark. If you had any idea what
that might be, maybe you could resolve this. At the very least, you'd have
more tools to work with."
Jos brooded. "So far, I haven't been able to get her to talk to me
about anything of substance."
"And therefore you lack enough information to make even an educated
guess. You might see if you can find out more. It could be nothing
serious-some past trauma connected to her family or friends that triggered
old memories, for example. But until you gather more data, all you have is
speculation," Klo said. "There's no future in that."
Jos nodded. Klo was right. He needed to talk to Tolk about this, find
out what was really bothering her. They could deal with it together,
whatever it was.
Unless, of course, Tolk had had something to do with the bombing . . .
Jos shook his head. No way. He wasn't sure of much these days, but he
was sure that Tolk could never have anything to do with such a horrendous
crime, no matter what. What healer could? Their job was to save lives,not
take them.
"Thanks, Klo. I won't take any more of your time."
"They're still playing cards in the cantina. I-Five was winning.
Cleaned me to my daily limit," Klo said with a smile, "which is why I'm back
here."
Jos stood. "Maybe I'll go have a drink and play a few hands."
"Why not?"
Jos smiled and left.
He didn't make it as far as the cantina. When he was halfway there,
crossing the open area referred to as the Quad, he and several others
braving the cold stopped in their tracks, momentarily paralyzed by an
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