Jedi Healer

by Michael Reaves

Jos pushed I-Five into an empty booth. "Your gamer friend borrowed it."

  "I-Five," Den said, "I think maybe it's time to sober up

  I-Five shrugged. Jos wouldn't have thought the gesture possible for a

  drunken droid with only one arm. "If you say so." His photoreceptors

  flickered for a moment, then resumed what Jos thought of as their normal

  glow.

  The droid looked about him in mild surprise. "Interesting."

  "Wish sobering up was that easy for me," Jos said.

  A human female brought the arm over to them, handing it to Jos. "Here,"

  she said. "You might want to program your droid to avoid games with Wookiees

  in the future. They're, uh, very competitive."

  I-Five looked at the arm. "So I have determined."

  Jos examined the arm's exposed end. "I'm no cy-bertech," he said, "but

  it looks like this can be reattached fairly easily." He looked at the droid.

  "You're lucky he didn't pull your head off."

  "True," I-Five agreed. "That would have been considerably harder to

  fix."

  "What were you thinking, challenging a Wookiee to a dejarik game?"

  "I wasn't thinking. That was the point. I was drunk- or at least as

  close to it as I could program."

  Jos shook his head in amazement. "Come on," he said. "Let's head over

  to the shop and see if anyone's still there who can fix you up. Reattaching

  mechanical limbs is a bit beyond my expertise."

  The three left the cantina and walked through the hot night air, I-Five

  holding his dismembered arm. Den said,

  "I'd feel terrible if I was responsible for you getting drunk and into

  a bar fight-if it turned out not to be worth it."

  "I think it was," I-Five said. "I think it was very worthwhile." He

  looked at Jos. "Remember my mentioning that I seemed to be having an anxiety

  attack?"

  Jos nodded.

  "I believe it was born out of conflicting impulses based on new data

  garnered from regaining all of my memory files-including several regarding

  my erstwhile friend and partner, Lorn Pavan.

  "I remembered that I have an obligation to fulfill-one that involves my

  returning to Coruscant as soon as possible. But to do so would be to abandon

  my responsibilities here. This was a problem that could not be solved by an

  application of logic. I needed intuition-the ability to sense what was right

  by mechanisms far older than logic and application of data.

  "I needed, somehow, to jar my synaptic grid cortex into another mode-a

  totally nonlinear mode. Thus, the concept of altering my sensory input and

  perception of data."

  "Did it work?" Den asked.

  "I believe so. I have decided on a course of action."

  "You leaving us, I-Five?" Jos asked.

  "Not immediately." The droid did not amplify his comment.

  Jos couldn't resist. "But," he said, "you're a machine, remember?

  Programmed to be an automaton, no more. So what does it matter how you reach

  a decision?"

  I-Five looked at him. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

  "Oh, yeah."

  "All of what I have said before is technically true," the droid said.

  "But I've come to realize it's possible for things to be more than the sum

  of their parts. And that a difference that makes no difference is, for all

  practical purposes, moot. I think I was, for lack of a better term, afraid.

  I believe that I was trying to convince myself, more than you, that I am not

  what you, Barriss, and a few others here see me as. I was, however, lacking

  necessary information to reach the right conclusion."

  "And that would be . . . ?"

  "That I am indeed sentient," I-Five said.

  Jos grinned, and slapped the droid on his durasteel back. "Took you

  long enough to figure it out."

  They found an Ishi Tib tech, half asleep under a tool bench. At first

  he was surly, but the bottle of Corellian wine that Den had grabbed as

  they'd left proved an effective bribe.

  As the tech was reattaching I-Five's arm, spot-welding snapped

  junctions and splicing sensory cables and hydraulic circulatory piping, Jos

  said, "By the way, it's none of my business, but I'm curious-just what is

  the obligation you remembered?"

  I-Five didn't answer right away, and the silence stretched long enough

  for Jos to begin to wish he hadn't asked. Then the droid said, "It was a

  request of Lorn's. He asked me to watch over his son."

  29

  Barriss could not sleep. Her experience with the Force continued to

  echo in her, stronger by far than after the first time, bringing up powerful

  flashes of the wondrous cosmic consciousness she had been a part of-along

  with the feeling of important things going undone. She wanted to return to

  that place-to stay there, if at all possible.

  Maybe it was cumulative. Maybe it would come to pass that, eventually,

  she could swim in that magical sea on her own, at will, and without the bota

  to deliver and keep her there.

  There hadn't been any new revelations. The danger to the camp was

  approaching, but it was not yet at hand. On some level, she knew she had

  enough time to decide upon a course of action. On another level, what that

  course of action would be seemed utterly beyond her capabilities.

  Beyond her unamplified capabilities. But nothing seemed too big for her

  to handle while connected in the Force by the miracle of the bota. She knew,

  right to the depths of her bones, that what she could do with the Force in

  that state would be astounding, once she got used to it. Once she learned to

  not control it, but to flow with it, to be it.

  She now understood how it was that the greatest Jedi Masters could

  sense things even parsecs away, information gained far faster than by

  subspace packet; she had now the knowledge-the certainty-that the universe

  was of an entire piece, each part connected to all the others, webbed

  together by vibrating strands of the Force that stretched through

  dimensions -utterly beyond the ken of her senses-and she knew her place in

  it, and that all things, great and small, were precisely in position. As

  they had always been, and as they always would be, worlds without end.

  There was a temptation to rush out and harvest bota by the bale, render

  it into fluid, and install a constant-feed pump on her arm to trickle it

  into her system continuously. She wondered if that was the desire of a

  seeker, or an addict.

  She wondered if there was any difference.

  In any event, she could take this new knowledge back to the Jedi

  Council, and with it the Jedi could become more powerful than anyone could

  possibly imagine. They could stop this war, as well as prevent others from

  starting. They could abolish slavery, transform barren worlds into lush

  paradises, chase evil to the ends of the galaxy and strike it down! Nothing

  would be beyond their capabilities-the power was that immense!

  It all swam in Barriss, overwhelming in its intensity. Even now, she

  could barely contain the memory of it.

  But first, before she went too far into the void, she had to deal with

  the camp situation. That would be easily accomplished. Then, she could

  address the larger issues . . . />
  Den hurried through the camp to the launch platform, hoping that he

  wasnrt too late. Milking fool, he thought, of all the days to oversleep-/

  He hardly ever bothered with alarm chronos-like most of his kind, Den

  had an inner timekeeper that went along with his keen sense of direction.

  Usually it adjusted to the day-and-night cycles of whatever world he was on

  fairly quickly, taking no more than a standard week at most, and he'd been

  on this planet a lot longer than that.

  But on the one day he needed it the most, wouldn't you just know it

  would kick out on him, and he'd sleep just long enough to maybe miss the

  transport departure of the HNE folk, including Eyar?

  After the proposal she had made and he had accepted, he couldn't let

  her leave without saying good-bye. It was hard to know just when he would

  see her again. And when he did, it would be as part of the extended family

  that would include, by all accounts, a truly staggering number of

  younglings.

  He was to be a patriarch, a hoary old dispenser of wisdom. To sit

  somewhere deep in the warren and dole out nuggets of sage advice to the

  young and foolish.

  The whole thing didn't seem quite as appealing now as it had when Eyar

  had described it to him.

  The entertainers were being ferried up to MedStar, where their own

  transport was docked. Eyar had been scheduled for the first lift up.

  Den came around the corner of the launch facility's main building in

  time to see the few members of the troupe moving up the ramp. Eyar was one

  of them,

  He ran forward, pushing his way through the taller beings that

  surrounded him, mostly techs and other workers. "Hey!" he shouted. "Eyar!

  Wait!" Blast it, he couldn't see anything but legs-legs covered with

  clothing, fur, or scales; digitigrade legs, plantigrade legs; a veritable

  forest of supporting limbs. At last he reached the gate.

  "Eyar!"

  She was walking sadly up the ramp, the last to leave. At his cry she

  whirled, and when she saw him, her eyes, her face, her whole body lit up.

  "Den-la!"

  He was so relieved she hadn't left yet that he didn't care that she'd

  attached the familiar-suffix to his name in public. They embraced.

  "I was afraid you wouldn't come! What happened?"

  To tell her he'd overslept would be a bad idea-this he knew almost

  instinctively. She'd be offended that he'd nearly missed her leave-taking

  for so trivial a reason. "Had a comm from HNE," he said. "Some talk about

  one of my articles from last year being made into a holo. Finally had to cut

  'em off and run all the way to get here."

  Amazing how easily the lie came out of him-amazing, and not a little

  bit dismaying. But it worked. She looked at him with starry-eyed love. "Come

  back to Sullust soon," she whispered. She nuzzled his dewflaps one more

  time, and then turned and ran up the ramp.

  Den moved back behind the field radius. The transport, silent save for

  the thrum of the repulsorlifts, rose quickly and disappeared into the glare

  of Drongar Prime.

  Den walked slowly back to his kiosk. It had been so easy to lie to her.

  One could argue that it was a small incident, trivial and unimportant. One

  could argue that he'd lied out of beneficence, to save her from hurt

  feelings, One could argue all kinds of things, but none of them had any more

  validity or authenticity than a Neimoidian's handshake.

  He was a scoundrel.

  Eyar was sweet and sincere and trusting. He admired those qualities in

  her. But how long would it be before those same attributes filled him with

  impatience, or annoyance .. .

  Or contempt?

  He was hardly worthy of Eyar's admiration.

  Den stopped in the middle of the compound. This was bad. He was having

  cold feet all the way up to his armpits, and he had no idea what to do about

  it.

  He looked about. From where he was standing, he had two options, each

  of which lay in practically opposite directions. To his left was the

  cantina, with its amazing and highly therapeutic varieties of distillates.

  To his right was Klo Merit's office, where he could talk to the minder, or

  at the very least make an appointment to do so later. He needed to work this

  out.

  How?

  It took Den nearly two minutes of standing in the broiling sun before

  he turned and trotted off, a direction finally chosen.

  30

  The throbbing of the medlifters, the shouts and cross talk of personnel

  running to the triage area, the screams and groans of the troopers-it was a

  litany of sounds and cries that Jos had responded to so many times that it

  seemed he could do it in his sleep by now.

  Sleep. There was a laugh. The truncated periods of naps and dozing that

  the medics of Rimsoo Seven managed to snag on good days wasn't anything even

  close to good sleep hygiene. Of course, they had delta wave inducers, but

  cramming six to eight hours of uninterrupted cycling through the four stages

  and REM periods into a ten-minute nap just didn't replenish the brain the

  same way that real-time sleep did. The only solution was a proper night's

  rest, and that was a luxury seldom afforded.

  Most of the time, the patients were clone troopers. For Jos, the

  hardest cases were not the completely alien species. They were the nonclone

  individual humans, because their anatomies were familiar to him, and yet

  subtly different from one another. When operating on such a human patient,

  he had to be very careful not to let his hands and brain fall back into

  familiar patterns that might work on a clone, but be just off enough to kill

  another human being. It had already happened once.

  Truly alien individuals didn't come through the OT very often. The few

  who did were usually on Drongarin some kind of observation or clerical

  capacity. And they often provided most of the moments of both humor and

  horror.

  The last time they'd had an unexpected incident like that had been when

  Jos had been drenched in the Nikto's life fluids. This time, it had been Uli

  who experienced the shock of the new.

  The young surgeon had been working on a female Oni. The Oni were a

  fairly bellicose species, by all accounts, that hailed from the Outer Rim

  world of Uru. What this one was doing on Drongar no one seemed to know for

  sure-probably a mercenary. In any event, she had caught a projectile from a

  slugthrower, and Uli was probing for it when there was a blue-white flash, a

  sound like someone whacking a nest of angry wingstingers, and the young

  surgeon bounced backward and hit the wall.

  He wasn't hurt that much, as was evidenced by a stream of curses. The

  usual buzz of instrument requests and readout quotes came to a stop.

  Threndy, the nurse who had been assisting, helped Uli to his feet.

  "You okay, Uli? Need any help?" Jos called.

  "I'm good, thanks. But what in the seven skies of Sumarin was that? I

  never-"

  He was interrupted by a tripedal medical droid that came in, moved to

  Uli's side, and spoke briefly to him. Jos couldn't hear the conversation,

  but after a mo
ment Uli and Threndy both broke into laughter.

  "What's up?" Jos asked.

  "Apparently, Oni females are electrophoretic, 1 must've brushed against

  a lobe of her capacitor organ during my probe." Uli shrugged. "Kinda wish

  I'd known about it sooner ..."

  Jos chuckled. "Maybe we should keep her around in case our droids need

  a jump start."

  His shift and Uli's were over at the same time, and, on impulse, Jos

  asked the younger man if he wanted to join them at sabacc. They'd been short

  several players the last couple of times. Tolk didn't show up anymore, and

  Bar-riss seemed lately to be too absorbed in "Jedi-ing," as Den put it, to

  sit in on every game. Even Klo had been too busy to put in more than an

  occasional appearance.

  Uli grinned, a smile that spread over his entire face. "Sure!" he said

  enthusiastically. "I've been hoping one of you'd ask."

  Jos grinned back. "Glad to have you." It would be nice to have

  something approaching a full set of players again. On one level, though, he

  did feel bad about it. Uli was so open and guileless, he was sure to be

  eaten alive by the others. Sabacc could be a tough game.

  Jos, Den, Barriss, and I-Five walked out of the cantina.

  "Wow," Jos said. "Who knew?"

  "Not you, I'm assuming," Den replied. "Unless you're in cahoots with

  the little-"

  "Hey, I had no idea he could play like that. I mean, look at him. He

  looks like a holorep for some nice wholesome farmworld somewhere." Jos

  shrugged. "Besides, we've been losing players. And I felt sorry for him."

  "Yeah? Well, feel sorry for me. I lost three hundred creds in there."

  Den shook his head.

  "Just a suggestion," I-Five said to Jos, "but the next time you're

  tempted to be altruistic in matters like these-don't."

  "Aw, clamp your vocabulator," Den told him sourly.

  "You're the only one who didn't lose his shirt. Not that you have one

  to lose."

  "This is true. However, for the first time in some weeks I have not won

  anything, either."

  Jos swatted futilely at a buzzing cloud of fire gnats. "Again I ask:

  what do you need money for? You're a droid."

  "A fact that seldom escapes my notice, thank you. My need for money is

  quite simple-it costs large amounts of credits to travel. Especially as far

  as Coruscant."

  "You're really going, then?" Barriss asked.