“Charmed,” the girl snarled.
Far away in third class, Taupe Corridor, Level 17A, the door of Cabin 524, registered to the Pho family, slid most of the way into the floor. The Verpine usually built their doors to slide downward, so that a room's occupant could see outside and if necessary converse with whoever was on the doorstep without embarrassment, even if wearing only a bathrobe. This door opened only
most
of the way, however, leaving a jutting lintel that any reasonably active five-year-old could have jumped over, because under the standing orders of the witty ship's engineer, maintenance cycles were only to be expended on third class if something was broken “beyond all Reasonable Doubt.”
For a bipedal human, stepping over a lintel only fifteen centimeters high was no great challenge. To a squat, garbage-can-shaped R2 unit on wheels, however, the challenge was somewhat greater.
Routine security in the public spaces of
Reasonable Doubt
was handled by bottom-of-the-line Carbanti surveillance monads. Each monad was essentially a small cam and microphone slaved to a very dim little artificial intelligence. The making of efficient AIs was as much an art as a science, and the AIs assigned to surveillance monads were by and large the slowest kids in the class. Even by these standards, the mechanical consciousness monitoring the corridor in front of Cabin 524, Level 17A, was notably dim-witted. The whole range of criminal behavior, its patterns and motivations, was entirely beyond it. Several spectacular thefts and one rather amusing con game featuring a fish, a diamond, and two deaf-mutes had taken place directly under its cam without provoking the slightest urge to pass a Questionable Activity Report up to the larger and more intelligent AI that reported to ship security. The truth was, this particular monad had only one idea in what passed for its brain, and that idea was
Fire!
It had been waiting its entire existence, some seventy-three trillion processor cycles, for something to register on its infrared or smoke detectors. Then it would finally be able to break its eternal silence with a scream of lights and klaxons.
To say that the security monad on Taupe Corridor, Level 17A,
longed
for an event of fire would not be too strong a word. The never-flashed alarm lights and the never-rung klaxons were like seventy-three trillion processor cycles of a sneeze that wouldn't quite come. By this time, the little security monad would quite willingly have melted its own processors down to sand if only it could sound the alarm of
Fire!
first.
The sight of an R2 unit rolling up to the stuck door in Cabin 524, however, gave it no pause whateverâeven when said R2 thumped painfully into the barrier and emitted a surprisingly unmetallic yelp, followed by a snuff of frustration. The sight of the little droid reaching out with one jerking mechanical arm to whap the stuck door repeatedly in what was, for a machine, a markedly petulant manner might have provoked some curiosity in an AI of greater intellectual accomplishments. In strict point of fact, the engineers at Carbanti would have said that even their least gifted security monad would surely have been struck by the sight of the same R2 unit rising slowly into the air
without the aid of any visible boosters or rockets.
When the droid settled back down into the corridor with a clang and rolled off with a decidedly puckish, questing air, it would not have been too much to expect a security monad with even minimal intiative to flag the little droid for linked follow-up observation.
But the monad in Taupe Corridor did nothing of the kind. The sad truth was, the only circumstance in which it would have paid the slightest iota of attention to this hungry, flying, bad-tempered R2 was if some helpful passenger had doused the little droid in lighter fluid and set it on fire.
Back in the cafeteria, long lines of bored passengers were still queued up for food. Children dabbled designs on the plastic cafeteria tables with bits of dipping sauce, or tried to convince their parents they had eaten their vegetables by hiding them under overturned cups. On the other side of the room, opposite the food service area, a giant holovid display was running endless coverage of the latest tragedies of the Clone Wars.
In short, there was nothing to show that the world as Whie knew it had slipped over some terrible event horizon, never to be seen again.
“You were born Whie Malreaux,” the red-and-ivory droid said in its fussy, precise manner. “You came into this life on the planet of Vjun, after a difficult labor that lasted two standard nights and a day in early spring. You were a good-natured child, unlike your unfortunate brother, quick to walk and quick to talk. The one thing he did better than you was sleep,” the droid said, still speaking quietly but holding Whie's eyes with his own. “For even as a very young child, you were troubled by your dreams.”
“How do you know all this?” Whie whispered.
“I was there.”
“Butâ”
The droid touched his livery of metal paint. “These are the colors of the House Malreaux, crimson and cream; blood and ivory, if you prefer. And I am a servant of that house.”
Whie felt as if his mind had just made the jump to hyperspace. Into it leapt the image from his most recent visionary dreamâhimself and Scout and the evil woman standing in a rich house, the rich carpet under his feet, and under it, stretching away from the woven edges, a checkered floor of red and ivory tiles.
Home.
The word a certainty in his heart.
He was going home.
“When the Jedi stole you from your homeâ”
“Stole! The Jedi don't steal!”
The droid brushed him aside with a brisk wave of his hand. “They found your mother in a weak moment, shocked by the death of her husband and so drunk she was half insensible. I urged her to reconsider, but nobody listens to a droid's advice.” He sniffed. “The point is, the thing was done, and could not be undone. But within days your mother realized the Jedi had kidnapped the heir of a noble house. She sent me to Coruscant to watch over you, and wait.”
“Ten years? Eleven?” Whie said, incredulous.
The droid shrugged. He was extremely well programmedâwhile still clearly a machine, his movements were fluid, natural, and precise.
“My name is Fidelis,” the droid said. “I am programmed for absolute loyalty to the House Malreaux, which I have served through madness and war for twelve generations. Now I serve you.”
“But, butâ¦I don't wantâ” Whie stammered. “I am Jedi. I have no other family. I can't accept your service.”
“Beg pardon, Master, but my service is mine to give. Whether you choose to accept it or not is outside the parameters of my programming.”
“Then I order you to leave me alone!”
“Your mother is currently the head of House Malreaux, and while I respect your wishes, you do not currently have the authority to countermand her instructions. Beyond which,” Fidelis said, “my ultimate loyalty is to the House Malreaux itself, and I am programmed with wide discretionary powers in deciding which actions best serve the family. In this case, I am very comfortable looking out for you, whether you wish me to or not. I can offer you some choices about what form that service would take,” he went on soothingly. “I am most comfortable in my preferred role as your gentleman's personal gentlething, but if you would prefer a wordless bodyguard, or even a discreet assassin who simply haunts your travels, I am fully equipped to fill those roles.”
“You don't understand,” Whie said plaintively. “There's no such thing as a Jedi who runs around the galaxy with a, a,
gentleman's personal gentlething
!”
“There is now. Master Whie, consider your familial obligations. At this very moment you have a mother who waits for you in Château Malreaux, daily insulted and degraded by the odious Count Dooku.”
“Dooku!” Whie said. “Dooku is at my house
right now
?” He sprang up from the table and loped toward the lift tube banks. “I've got to tell YâI've got to tell the others right away.”
Fidelis, humming to himself and turning over Whie's use of the phrase
my house,
gathered up the trays of food and drink and followed. He didn't have the Force to aid him, but he had waited table at the Château Malreaux for twelve generations, and in the matter of moving quickly while carrying vast amounts of food, it came to pretty much the same thing.
Across the cafeteria from Whie and Fidelis, the ship's holobroadcast was interrupted for a special news bulletin.
Meanwhile, in a turbolift moving briskly toward the Taupe Corridor of Level 17A, Scout and Solis were debating the conduct of the Republic and the Confederacy in the current conflict. “Honestly,” Scout said with some heat, “do you really want to live in a world run by battle droids?”
Had Solis's manufacturer seen fit to equip him with eyebrows, he would have raised them.
“Oh,” Scout said, looking at her own dim reflection in the scuffed metal plate of the droid's chest. “Well, I guess that would look different, from your point ofâ”
She stopped suddenly, her attention caught by the words
“Master Yoda”
echoing tinnily from the little holoscreen above the lift tube buttons.
“â¦this video, shot from a defense installation at the edge of the Ithorian system, clearly shows the attacker destroying all but one of the Jedi Master's guard ships. The attacker's ship, a modified version of Count Dooku's notorious sailer, has been identified as
Last Call,
registered to the notorious pirate and saboteur Asajj Ventress, who is wanted on eight worlds in connection with the deaths of eleven Jedi Knights.”
“Seventeen!” Asajj growled, shaking her head. “Can you believe that? And they call themselves journalists.”
Palleus Chuff, lashed firmly into the copilot's seat of
Last Call,
assumed that this was a rhetorical question. Just as well. He was normally as glib as kiss-your-hand Palleus Chuff; considered quite witty in the better circles of the Coruscant actors' fraternity, which was saying a lot. But between the gag in his mouth and the unfortunate tendency to faint that had been coming over him at regular intervals since Ventress's tractor beams first gripped on to his ship, holding a conversation was more than he could currently manage.
“â¦while a second clip released by Ithorian officials clearly shows a debris field now positively identified as the remains of Master Yoda's ship. Chancellor Palpatine's office has declined to comment before a thorough investigation into the ambush has been completed, but privately, faces in the capital are grim, as the Republic must prepare for new Confederacy offensives without the Jedi who was not only her chief military strategist, but, in a very important way, her heart and soul.”
“But that's not right,” Scout blurted. “That's impossible.” She looked blankly at Solis. “We have to tell them!”
“Tell them what?” he asked blandly.
“Umânothing,” she said, collecting her wits. “Nothing. Tell my friends, is what I meant. I have to get back to the room and tell my friends
right away.
”
“Certainly,” Solis said. “We're almost there.”
In the Kidz Arkade, Donni Bratz was watching his brother Chuck play his fourth consecutive game of Wookiee Warpath. “Is it my turn now?” he asked timidly. He tried to say it quietly, so as not to interrupt.
“Donni, shut it. I'm in the middle of the Gozar level, here.” Chuck was playing hard now, using a little footwork and all the advantages his four thumbs could give him.
Donni thought Chuck was a god when it came to Wookiee Warpath.
Chuck had put his StarFries and Fizzy-Bip down next to the machine. Some very bad part of Donni considered tipping the Fizzy-Bip over, but he would certainly never do such a thing. Chuck, as Mom never stopped telling him, was the best big brother a guy could have. Besides, the last time he did something like that, Chuck had tied him to the old zink-sled with the missing right rear gimble and set it going until he threw up all over Mom's newly upholstered lounge chair.
Donni watched Chuck play, trying to be content with admiring his brother's skill, but after the Flying Knives and the Swamp level, and when Chuck had completely exploded all the Floating Toads of Doom, Donni couldn't help saying, “You
said
I could have a turn after you. You
said.
And that was four credits ago,” he added under his breath.
“Don't be a pest, Meatface.”
Donni's antennae slumped over. “Mom said you weren't supposed to call me that.”
Chuck tore the arm off a green Wookiee with a smartly executed Twister Grab. “Well, Meatface, Mom isn't here, is she?”
Unnoticed by Chuck, who was in tense hand-to-hand with four berserk Wookiees, a short R2 unit lurched somewhat erratically into the Arkade and then stopped dead with its central video sensor locked in on the Fizzy-Bip. Donni watched, puzzled, as the little droid sidled up to Wookiee Warpath and reached for the Bip with one jerky mechanical claw. The claw snapped, missed, grabbed again.
“Hey,” Donni said.
“Shut up, Meatface! It's not your
turn
yet!”
“Butâ” Donni gulped as the top of the little R2 swiveled around and locked on to his eyes. A queer, almost glassy feeling came over him, and then, as if by magic, two ideas popped vividly into his head, one after another. The first was that actually, when you got right down to it, Chuck was kind of a creep, and it would serve him right if some R2 unit stole his drink.
The second was:
What drink
?
On its way out of the Arkade, the little R2 paused, orienting to a small holoscreen by the door, where a carefully groomed news holoanchor, nearly inaudible over the simulated blasterfire, was saying,
“For a commentary on today's shocking news, we go to correspondent Zorug Briefly, who asks the question of the hourâWhat now, Jedi Knights?”