Jedi Healer

by Michael Reaves

  those with no knowledge of the Force, find miraculous. It augments our

  strength, oxygenates our tissues, decreases reaction lag. Once, in Coruscant

  Park, I saw Master Yoda lift a rock as big as a family-sized electric cart,

  with what looked like nothing but a simple hand gesture. The results can be

  great and wonderful."

  "But it isn't all good, is it?" he said. "We've talked about that

  before."

  Young, but sharp, Uli was. "It's not all good. Count Dooku was a Jedi

  who turned to the dark side of the Force. Since the beginning of time there

  have been others who were tempted by and who gave into the desire for power.

  Four thousand years ago, Exar Kun, a Sith Lord, somehow destroyed an entire

  stellar system with his misuse of the Force. One has to constantly be aware

  of the temptation, and guard against it."

  "But you're not the sort of person who would do that," Uli said. "I

  mean-I would think someone who knew it was wrong and went for it anyway-"

  "Ah," Barriss said, "but that's the insidious part.

  Those who embrace the dark side don't see themselves as evil. They

  believe that they are doing the right thing for the right reasons. The dark

  side warps their thinking, and they come to believe that the end justifies

  the means, no matter how awful those means might be."

  Uli examined a thumbnail. "You're not, uh, by any chance, thinking of

  going over to this dark side, are you?"

  A year ago, a month ago-even a week ago-she would have laughed at this

  suggestion. Now she just shook her head. "I hope not. But it isn't a path

  with a sign that says this way lie monsters. It's more like a steep,

  slippery slope, where a misstep might turn into an unstoppable fall."

  There was another pause; then Uli said, "The Jedi have a moral code,

  right? You're taught the difference between right and wrong?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "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. Nobody 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 nobody 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 spacer 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 spacing 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 o
f 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 shell. 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 assassin 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 passed 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 passage. 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 cocked 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 space 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 parsec 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