Scout struggled with the lid of the pot of ointment and then gave up; it was screwed on too tightly for her to manage with her damaged hands. “Open this for me, would you?” she said, handing the jar back to the medical droid. Its gears and servos whined as it extended its metal claws and popped the lid smartly off the jar. The smell of beeswax and burned oranges stole into the room. “I can't imagine how we could smuggle you off the planet. Unless⦔ Her eyes flicked over to Yoda. An idea bloomed in her eyes, and she choked back a snort of laughter.
“Unless
what
?” Jai Maruk, her new Master, said impatiently.
Scout choked back another laugh and shook her head. “No. Nothing. It's a terrible idea.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” Master Maruk said, his voice gone alarmingly soft.
Scout looked pleadingly at him, then at Master Yoda. “Do I have to say?”
The ancient green-faced humpbacked gnome was staring at her with narrow eyes. “Oh,
yes.
”
It was raining again on Vjun, harder than usual. A wind had come up, shaking the blood-and-ivory rosebushes in the gardens of Château Malreaux. Ugly weather. Count Dooku watched the acid raindrops hurl themselves against his study windows, like the Republic troops who every day flung themselves against his battle droids and computer-controlled combat installations across the length and breadth of the galaxy. Each little splotch leaving the imprint of its death on the glass, then dissolving into a featureless wet spill and trickle.
The half-mad old woman Dooku had found haunting the château when he moved in claimed to be able to read the future in the fall of broken plates, the spill patterns of drinks carelessly overturned. An amusing mania. He wondered what she would see in the pattern of raindrops. Something ominous, no doubt.
Beware: one you love is plotting your betrayal!
or
You will soon hear from an unwelcome guest.
Some such claptrap.
Outside, the wind picked up another notch, shrieking and groaning among the eleven chimneys, as if to announce the arrival of a hideous guest.
Dooku's comm console chimed. He glanced over, expecting the daily report from General Grievous, or perhaps a message from Asajj Ventress. He reached over to open the channel, recognized the digital signature of the incoming transmission, jabbed the channel open, and snapped to his feet. “You called, my Master?”
The hologrammic projector on his desk sprang to life, and the wavering form of Darth Sidious regarded him. As always the picture was oozy and unclear, as if light itself were uneasy in the presence of the Lord of the Sith. Dark robes, purple shadowsâa patch of skin, pale and mottled under his hooded cloak like a fungus growing under a rotten log. From under heavy lids the Master's eyes, snake-cold and serpent-wise, regarded him.
“What would you have from me, Master?”
“From you? Everything, of course.” Darth Sidious sounded amused. “There was a time when I wasn't sure if you would be able to overcome thatâ¦independent streak of yours. After all, you were born to one of the wealthiest families in the galaxy, with gifts and abilities far, far greater than any amount of wealth could bestow. Your understanding is deep; your will, adamant. Is it any wonder you should be proud? Why, how could it be otherwise?”
Dooku said, “I have always served you well and faithfully, my Master.”
“You have. But you must admit, your spirit was not made for fidelity. After all, a man who will not bow to the Jedi Council, or even Master Yodaâ¦I wondered if perhaps loyalty was too mean, too confining a thing to ask from so great a being as yourself.”
Dooku tried to smile. “The war progresses well. Our plans are on schedule. I have dealt out your deaths, your schemes, your betrayals. I have paid for your war with my time, my riches, my friends, and my honor.”
“Holding nothing back?” Sidious asked lightly.
“
Nothing.
I swear it.”
“Excellent,” Darth Sidious said. “Yoda came to the Chancellor's office this morning. He is going on a very special mission. Top secret.” He laughed, a harsh sound like the bark of a crow. The wind rose again, shrieking around the mansion like a creature in torment. “When he arrives, Dookuâ¦see that you treat him
as he deserves.
”
Darth Sidious laughed. Dooku wanted to laugh along, but couldn't quite manage it before his Master cut the connection and disappeared.
Dooku paced in his office. With the end of Sidious's call, the storm had slackened, and the shrieking wind outside now only sobbed quietly under the gables of Château Malreaux.
He paused by his desk and examined the small red button he'd had installed the day after he first heard Yoda was intending to come to Vjun. It held a very considerable importance for such a small button. A last card to play.
Dooku found his hand was shaking.
He was still looking at it when the study door slid open, revealing a tattered pink ball gown. “AhâWhirry. I was about toâ”
“Call a droid to bring you a hot cup of stimcaf, sure you was.” The madwoman waddled through the door with a lovely old tray in the blood-and-ivory Malreaux check, on top of which sat a silver pot of stimcaf and a cup already poured into a demitasse of finest boneshell china, also in the Malreaux colors. Her evil-faced pet, the brindled fox with the cunning hands, loped in behind her. “Which I saw downstairs when the chambermaid broke an egg on accident, didn't I. Slapped her nasty knuckles; if we be wasting eggs, that's a short stop and a long drop down into ruin, isn't it, sir? Sir?” she said.
Dooku let her live in the old house mostly on a whim; she seemed to give it a quaint touch of madness perfectly in keeping with its setting. But for some reason the Count found himself on edge. It was clear the old hawk-bat wanted something from him, but he had no interest in letting her try to flatter and wheedle favors out of him. “Hustle along, now,” he said. “I have important work toâ”
Crash.
“Oh, Count, ever so sorry! I don't know how come Miss Vix got a-tangled up in your feets! And your lovely cup of stimcaf all over like that!”
There was something undeniably comical about the whole scene, Dooku thought. Him tripping over the fox, the cup smashed on the tile floor. He rather suspected Whirry had arranged the whole incident. Already she was crouching greedily over the fragments of the shattered cup, staring at the patterns of china and spilled stimcaf on the tile floor. It cleared his head, to see her scheming so nakedly below him; restored the proper sense of perspective. “Well, Whirry?” he asked, amused. “What does the future hold for us, eh?”
“Death from a high place,” she said, her fat pink fingers fluttering over the spill, her black eyes greedy. “And here's the Footman, which stands for the easy destruction of a faithful servant.” She glanced sideways. “Not me, I hope and pray, Your Honor. You wouldn't be a-doing that to old Whirry, now, would you?”
“Please me, and don't find out,” he said, half mocking; and then, unbidden, a thought returned to his mind:
How easily we betray our creatures.
He stirred uneasily. “Clean this up,” he said abruptly. The comm console chimed, and he sat down to read General Grievous's daily dispatch, dismissing the old woman from his attention. So it was he didn't see her verminous companion, Miss Vix, start lapping at the stimcaf. Nor did he hear the old lady as she put her finger on the china cup's broken stem, lovingly tracing the curled handle, and said, “And here's the Baby, coming home, my love. Coming home at last.”
Palleus Chuff was, almost certainly, the greatest adult actor on Coruscant under one meter tall. As a boy, he had loved pretending to be a starfighter pilot, a Jedi Knight, a swashbuckling hero. That's why he'd written
Jedi!
when he grew up; when one was a single meter tall, one didn't get many chances to play the dashing hero. Mostly villainous scheming dwarfs, or comic relief. Not much that spoke to that boy who had pretended to be a space pirate so long ago.
Of course it was the
pretending
he really loved. The acting. The flying he wasn't so keen on. When the government had approached him about doing his terrific Yoda impersonation (“An astonishing re-creation of the Grand Master himselfâthe Force is with this 4-star performance!” as the
TriNebulon News
had been kind enough to put it) on behalf of the war effort, he had been flattered, and perhaps a bit intimidated. When people wearing uniforms and carrying blasters ask one for a favor, one says yes.
But now, standing on the Jedi Temple landing platform about to get into a real starfighter, which was going to launch his body into Outer Space at some unspeakable multiple of the speed of light, he was beginning to have very serious second thoughts.
The Jedi handlers gave him his cue. Chuff swallowed. “Showtime, it is!” he murmured to himself.
He stumped out of the docking bay and onto the flight deck of the Jedi Temple landing platform. A volley of questions came from the throng of reporters in the roped-off press area twenty meters away:
“Can you tell us the nature of the mission? What's so important about Ithor?”
“When will you be back, Master?”
“Are you worried that an abrupt change in the front might cut you off from communications with the Chancellor's office?”
Palleus waved his walking stick at the reporters and waggled his ears. The ears were very good, top-notch prosthetics, and he was expert at using them.
Keep smiling, Chuff,
he told himself.
Don't think about the pressure, just look your audience square in the eye and sell it.
Palleus had Yoda's smiles down pat: the Gleeful Cackle; the Sleepy Grin; the Slow Almost Menacing Smirk; the Gentle Joy that came so often to the Master's face in the presence of children. But he wasn't going to try the voice: he didn't dare risk missing an inflection, getting a flaw in tone that would cause someone to take voiceprint sonograms and go around claiming that the Yoda clambering into the
Seltaya
-class courier today was not the real Yoda.
He reached the transport and clambered in. This was the part he was dreading. He'd never been a fan of enclosed spaces. Or starflight. Or rapid acceleration. They had promised him the ship's R2 unit would do the actual piloting. They also had an emergency override that would allow them to fly the ship from the control tower, they said. Well, maybe they did. But what if the Trade Federation had gotten to the little R2, eh? After all, why wouldn't a droid side with the other droids? Maybe it was part of some sort of mechanical fifth column. A traitor droid would probably sacrifice itself in a heartbeat for the sake of getting rid of the senior member of the Jedi Council.
The starship canopy swung up and over him and then snapped shut, cutting out the crowd noise and leaving Palleus Chuff feeling suddenly very alone.
The cockpit was supposed to be climate-controlled, but he felt hot. Hot and sweaty. The starfighter's engines rumbled to life, and he found himself thinking that this craft had been rushed through assembly on a wartime production schedule; every single piece of it, from the seat straps to the canopy rivets, had been built on contracts to the lowest bidder.
The ship lurched queasily and rose a meter into the air to hover over the landing platform. Palleus gave the crowd a grin and a wave.
Under his breath, he began to pray.
Meanwhile, back on the roof of a skyrise overlooking the Temple district, the two droids were finishing up another hologame match. Solis, the plain droid, watched his pieces get systematically run down and destroyed by those of his livery-painted companion, Fidelis. The two of them had played every conceivable variation on dejarik many, many times. Solis nearly held even, where chance and brutality were great equalizers, but they both preferred courtier, an entirely skill-based strategic variant. The difficulty was that Fidelis, having been continuously in service, had been routinely upgraded. Solis, on the other hand, had been fending for himself for a long, long time, and advanced hologame software had not been his highest priority.
As a result, he lost. Not inevitably, not every time: but steadily, in a trend that would never reverse. So it went: those in livery prospered. Those withoutâ¦didn't.
“Another game?” Fidelis inquired politely, resetting the board.
“I think not.”
“Are you sure? We could make it best nine hundred sixty-seven thousand four hundred and thirteen games out of one point nine million thirty-four thousand eight hundred and twenty-four.”
“I don't feel like it.”
“Don't
say
that. It doesn't even mean anything. You're very free with these organic expressions,” Fidelis said primly. “I'm certain your initial programming did not support this sort ofâ¦sociolinguistical slovenliness.”
“Yeah,” Solis said. “Whatever.”
Fidelis claimed that the range of emotions for which they had been programmed was very narrowâconsisting, of course, of loyalty, loyalty, and loyaltyâand that the semblance of organic states such as
annoyance
or
pique
was sheer affectation, and in dubious taste. Nonetheless, he played a game of solitaire dejarik with a markedly peevish air.
Solis wandered over to the edge of the roof and looked down, watching beings streaming like insects in their hovercars and pedways. A being lying flat on this rooftop and sighting down the barrel of a SoruSuub X45 sniper riflette would be able to pick off his or her choice of targets nearly invisibly. Death from above.
As if in answer to his thoughts, a spire falcon appeared overhead, drifting wide-winged on the column of warm air squeezing up between the ferrocrete towers. What people usually thought of as “Nature” had been banished from Coruscant long ago: to a casual eye, the planet had become one continuous city, with no room left for anything but urban sentients. But life was adaptableâhow well Solis knew it!âand even in so strange a habitat as the city-world, there were plenty of creatures that did not realize the streets and towers of the capital had not been built for their convenience. Small birds, mammals, and reptiles were brought to Coruscant all the time as pets, and as regularly escaped into the sewers, the streets, and the rooftops, as if the city were a ferrocrete jungle and they its natural denizens. Then, too, there were always vermin that thrived on the heat and waste of sentient life: gully rats, grate toads, ferro-worms, the blind snakes that nested inside buildings, and the clouds of trantor pigeons that roosted on their ledges. And above them all, at the top of this alternate food chain, the spire falcons.