Yoda (15 page)

Three days later she and Whie were lost, again, trudging through the labyrinth of corridors that were all slightly too narrow for human comfort. Master Yoda, who loathed being trapped in the R2 shell but was still trying to maintain his disguise, had sent them out to get food well over an hour ago. (Kut-Rate Kruise Lines had no time for frills such as room service.) Other luxury services—bedding, for instance—were also conspicuous by their absence. Scout had spent literally all her life dreaming of the day she would fly offplanet, escaping the Jedi Temple and crowded Coruscant for the wonders of the galaxy. But there had been some kind of mix-up in customs that kept them sitting at spacedock for hours, so that she had actually been asleep for the moment of liftoff, dozing fitfully on what was more like a plank than a bed, still dressed and wrapped in her cloak, aware of the great moment only because a sudden lurch had dumped her onto the floor. It had been a bit anticlimactic, and she had been grumpy ever since.

Plus she was now quite certain that Jai Maruk, her Jedi Master, didn't like her at all. But she wasn't going to let herself think about that just now.

As for the food…Scout shuddered. Master Yoda ate it without complaint, but then, perhaps he had evolved beyond ordinary mortal concerns.

Like smell.

Anyway, the last time she had seen the old Jedi with a bowl of food in the Temple rectory, there had been a tail hanging over the edge.

“I'm telling you, we're too low,” Scout said. “We should have taken the lift tube to Level Fourteen. That's what the sign said.”

“That wasn't a sign. It was a scuff mark on the lift tube wall.”

“Sign.”

“Scuff.”

“Sign!”

Whie took a breath. “Perhaps it
was
a sign, and I am mistaken. Let's try Level Fourteen.”

Scout stalked along the narrow corridor. “You know, the way you do that takes all the fun out of being right.”

“The way I do what?”

“Give in. It's like even though I'm right and you're wrong, somehow you're just humoring me. Jedi serenity is all very well, but in a thirteen-year-old boy it's sort of creepy.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Argue! Fight! Don't be this…this
pretend Jedi,
” Scout said. “Can't you just be human, for once?”

Whie's mouth quirked in a little smile. “No,” he said.

The truth was, Whie was preoccupied. Master Leem had hinted they were going to Vjun to meet with someone very important—maybe Count Dooku himself, and possibly the famous Jedi-killer Asajj Ventress. Whie had done a computer look-up on her, and found himself staring at the woman from his dream.

Ventress would be waiting for them on Vjun. In a few days, a week at most, he would be standing in a room with a ticking detonator. Ventress would be smiling. Scout would turn to him with blood trickling down her shirt. “Kiss her,” Ventress would say.

He wished he knew what he was going to answer.

They were standing in the cooked-food line—the lines for raw were far too long—when someone tapped Scout politely on the shoulder. “Passenger Pho?”

“What? I mean, Yes?” Scout said, belatedly remembering that she, Whie, and Jai Maruk were traveling as the Pho family, en route to a cousin's wedding on Corphelion.

She found herself looking up at a tall humanoid-shaped droid that had seen better days. If it had ever featured any markings—paint, interface instructions, or even a brand name—they had long since been worn away, so its whole body had a dull, scuffed, scratched look, as if it had been sanded down and never refinished. “The ship's purser asked me to fetch you,” the droid said. “It seems one of your belongings has been turned in to the Lost and Found.”

Scout blanched. It had become depressingly clear over their first few days together that Jai Maruk didn't think much of her. She could just imagine the expression on his lean, closed face if he heard she'd had to bail her lightsaber out of
Reasonable Doubt
's Lost and Found. “What did I lose?”

“The purser neglected to mention,” the droid said politely. “Will you come this way?”

She looked at Whie, who nodded. “Go ahead. I can manage.” Still Scout hesitated. “Don't worry,” Whie said. “I won't
tell.
”

He isn't
trying
to humiliate me,
Scout told herself.
It just works out that way.

The scuffed droid turned and headed for the lift tube. Scout trudged after him. “Your finish is pretty worn,” she said, making conversation.

“I am not a regular part of
Reasonable Doubt
's crew,” he explained. “I offered to work for them in exchange for my passage. Regrettably, my owner is dead,” the droid went on. “I am responsible for my own upkeep.”

The lift tube door opened. “I never thought of that,” Scout said. “What would happen to a droid with no owner, I mean.”

“I hadn't, either,” her companion remarked dryly, “until it happened to me.”

“What do you do about maintenance?” Scout asked. “Go back to the factory? Find a repair tech? But how would you pay for repairs?”

“Your grasp of the problem is admirable,” the droid said. “As it happens, I was part of a rather small production run, now very obsolete. I am programmed to perform a good many repairs on myself, but spare parts are hard to come by, and correspondingly expensive, as they must be either bought as antiques or custom-built from my specifications. The challenge is considerable, as you surmised.”

“Wouldn't cost you much for a couple of cans of metal paint, though,” Scout said, glancing at her guide's scuffed bare metal surfaces.

“Ornamentation is not logically a high priority.”

“Easier to get a job if you look smart, though. Think of it as a business expense.”

The droid shrugged, a strangely human gesture. “There is some truth in what you say…and yet, there is something honest about this,” he said, touching the bare metal surface of his cheek. “It seems to me that most sentients live in a…cocoon of illusions and expectations. We are full of assumptions: we think we know ourselves and those around us; we think we know what each day will bring. We are confident we understand the arc and trajectory of our lives. Then Fate intervenes, strips us down to bare metal, and we see we are little more than debris, floating in darkness.”

Scout looked at him. “Whoa. You must have been a philosopher droid off the assembly line.”

“Quite the opposite,” he said, with a sharp inward expression. “Philosophy has come rather late to me.” The lift tube arrived at Level 34, and the doors slid open. “After you, Mistress Pho,” he said.

“My friends call me Scout.” She stuck out her hand.

Gravely the droid accepted it. “I don't think I can count myself as a friend, yet. Just a droid with a job to do.”

“Now you tell me your name,” Scout prompted. “That's how this works.”

“Certainly not. However trusting
you
are, I certainly don't know enough about you to give you
my
real name.” Relenting, he added, “For now, you may call me Solis, if you prefer.”

“It beats ‘Hey, Scuffy!'” Scout had the distinct impression that if the droid's factory programming had included an eye-roll function, he would have deployed it. She grinned. “Solis it is.”

The line in the cafeteria was interminable, even for cooked food, but after what felt like a galactic age Whie had finally placed his orders and paid for them. Now he stood looking uneasily over his haul. One large bubble-and-squirt; five orders of vacuum flowers; half a dozen of what the menu called
Blasteroids!
and appeared to be double-fried chili dumplings; a bucket of crispy feet; and a sloshing half bucket of rank (extra gummy), along with five drinks and a handful of napkins. That ought to be enough, Whie thought. But how was he going to get it back to the cabin?

Would Asajj be the one who left Scout bleeding? Or would they be captured by guards and taken before her already hurt?

If he kissed her, would he taste the blood on the edge of her mouth?

Stop! Don't think about it.

Don't think. Don't think.

Whie's immediate instinct was to pile the food in a stack and trust to balance and a little judicious application of the Force to keep it from toppling over, but that seemed a bit conspicuous. How would an ordinary person handle this?
Awkwardly,
he decided, glancing around the cafeteria and watching a hefty female shouldering between tables with a tray on each hand and a sniveling toddler attached to each leg. Maybe he could grab one of the
Doubt
's little service droids and get it to help carry trays down to their rooms.

“May I help you, sir?” said a tall droid painted with immaculate cream-and-crimson livery, appearing at his elbow as if conjured by his thoughts.

The Force is with me,
Whie thought with an inward smile. “No, that's all right. I don't want to take you from your owner's duties. If you could help me find a ship's droid, though…”

The droid picked up the Blasteroids and the bucket of rank. “I insist, Master Whie.”

“That's very k—” Whie froze. “I'm sorry. What did you call me?”

“Master Whie,” the droid said, in a low, pleasant voice.

“My name is Pho—”

The droid shook its head. “It won't do, Master Whie—it really won't. I know a very great deal about you. It's possible I know more about you than you know about yourself.”

Whie set the food on an empty table. His hand was light and tingling, ready to dive beneath his robes and draw his lightsaber. “Who are you? What are you? Who do you belong to?”

“I suggest,” the droid said—and his voice was in deadly earnest now—“you ask yourself those exact questions.”

Down in the ship's exercise room, Jai Maruk was working out in anticipation of his second meeting with Count Dooku, honing his body as another person might sharpen a knife.

Maks Leem was meditating in what had once been a storage closet, but was now officially listed on
Reasonable Doubt
's directory as Cabin 523. Master Leem had her own room, next door to the others. Partly this was because she liked to meditate for several hours every day, preferably surrounded, as now, by a choking cloud of Gran incense that smelled, to the human olfactory system, like burning thicklube. But the chief reason the others had encouraged her to take a room of her own was that the Gran's four ruminant stomachs worked loudly and continuously all night long in a way that humans found impossible to sleep through.

Being at heart a social creature, Master Leem regretted being secluded from her human comrades, and in fact spent most of the waking hours with them. But now, with Jai exercising and the Padawans dispatched to the cafeteria, she had gone next door to her little snuggery. Surrounded by smoke thick enough to drop a small mammal, she was happily reestablishing her connection to the living Force that bound all things.

Next door, in Cabin 524, Grand Master Yoda was wondering what in space was keeping the Padawans. He wasn't worried for their safety. He was
starving.

The whole point of travel, Scout reflected, was to learn about oneself. In that sense, this trip was going really well. She had learned all sorts of things. She had learned that being chosen to be a Padawan did not necessarily bring every happiness with it, as she had thought it would, if one's Master obviously viewed you as excess baggage. She had learned that her body was entirely too used to the comfortable and familiar food served at the Jedi Temple, and that the galaxy was large, and full of people who willingly ate the most disgusting stuff imaginable. And she had learned that she had absolutely no sense of direction at all, because it seemed as if her interminable trek with the droid Solis—whom she couldn't stop thinking of as Scuffy—must have taken her through the whole ship about three times. “Look, this is ridiculous,” she finally said. “Have the purser send whatever it is to my cabin. If I can ever find my cabin again,” she added.

“Here we are,” Solis said imperturbably; and indeed, they had turned a last corner and stood before a small door marked
PURSER'S OFFICE: SHIP'S PERSONNEL ONLY
in Verpine signage, which was to say, so faint that Scout's nose was touching the door in her attempt to make out the letters. “Wait here one moment,” the droid said, and he disappeared inside.

Scout waited.

And waited.

And waited.

“That's it,” she growled. But at exactly the moment she was about to stomp away, the door hissed open and Solis returned.

“Good news,” the droid said politely. “The missing item didn't belong to you. It has already been claimed.”

“What?”

“It seems it was a handbag belonging to another Mistress Pho. A simple case of mistaken identity,” the droid explained. “So sorry for the inconvenience.”

The Jedi,
Scout reminded herself,
is serene. She is not pushed lightly about by life's little whimsicalities. A true Jedi would not be imagining how this droid would look disassembled into three buckets of bolts and a heap of scrap metal.

The droid's head tilted to one side. “Is there something amiss, mistress?”

“No,” Scout grated. “Nothing at all. I'll just be getting back to my room now.” She stalked away from the purser's office and turned a corner into the labyrinth of ship's corridors. Solis—whose hearing was based on the legendary Chiang/Xi audiofilament tech—listened to her footsteps recede for quite some time; stop; and slowly return.

“All right,” she growled, turning the same corner several minutes later. “How in the name of crushing black holes do I even find my cabin?”

“Allow me to help,” the droid said suavely.