The Black Fleet Crisis_ Tyrant's Test Part 20

Chewbacca showed a toothy grimace, all the more ominous for the hint of a smile it contained.

e'Naso quickly countered his own best offer, cutting the total by twenty percent. When that did not change Chewbacca's expression, he let the Wookiee name his price.

[And you deliver it all to my s.h.i.+p,] he added.

"Of course. Of course."

Outside, Chewbacca paid the Kiffu his third of the savings.

Dealing with Formayj was another matter altogether.

The long-lived Yao had not only seen all the tricks, he had gotten in early enough to invent several of them. Besides that, Formayj did not haggle. His memories and his connections, both carefully built up over more than a century of brokering, were his stock in trade. He carefully appraised the worth of each before parting with it.

"Koornacht Cl.u.s.ter," Formayj said, nodding.

"Maps, inhabitants, hypers.p.a.ce routes, s.h.i.+p designs, planetary defenses, sensor grids--very rare. Expensive."

[I will pay your price.] "Come back two days. Will know more then."

So Chewbacca and the others waited, staying close to the Falcon and watching the neighboring s.h.i.+ps in the berth line come and go. The arrival of e'Naso's delivery.sled brought a welcome interruption to the waiting, and several hours' work studying, testing, and stowing the gear took the edge off their impatience. But by the next morning, Lumpawarrump was bouncing off the bulkheads as though the Falcon were a cage.

[How much longer, Father?] [Long enough for you to take five falls with Jowdrrl in the forward cargo hold.] [She is busy with the dorsal gun turret again.] [She is making herself busy--she will make the time if you ask.] [Could I take some falls with you instead?] [You already know how to lose--and I must go see other brokers and old friends,] Chewbacca said, ruffling his son's fur roughly. [Stay here. Study the s.h.i.+p, practice your skills of defense and attack--you will need them soon enough.] A day of drinking in the slava bar, listening to smugglers'

bragging and tall tales, ground Chewbacca's own patience thin. When the third fight of the afternoon broke out, he roared to his feet, seized both adversaries, and flung them into opposite corners--for no reason other than that he needed to release the restless tension building up inside.

He returned to Formayj's brokerage the next morning, but the visit claimed little of his day.

"Difficult," said Formayj. "Come back two days."

Two days later, he said the same thing.

On their fifth day in Esau's Ridge, Chewbacca yielded to Lumpawarrump's endless pleading looks and took his son into the sanctuary.

The excursion almost ended as quickly as it began, when Lumpawarrump took too close an interest in a parked slaver for the liking of its Trandoshan owner.

"Mind your own business!" the owner shouted from atop the s.h.i.+p. An instant later, a blaster bolt singed the flowing fur on Lumpawarrump's right shoulder.

"Move along!"

Chewbacca seized his son by the scruff and dragged him away toward the tunnels, waving his bowcaster and exchanging threat-growls and insults with the owner as he did so.

[Did you not listen to me? Curiosity is not rewarded on Esau's Ridge,] he chided Lumpawarrump when they were alone inside. [Watch, but do not be caught looking; listen, but do not be caught overhearing; ask no questions, and question no lies--that is the code honored here.] Seven days after their arrival, Formayj called Chewbacca to his brokerage.

"I show you price first, you decide," he said.

[You would not cheat me,] Chewbacca said. [Show me what you have.]

The price was almost unspeakably high, but the value was there. A smuggler's annotated copy of a Yevethan navigational map--six years old, but priceless even so. An even older Imperial autopsy report on three Yevethan corpses. A recording of Nil Spaar's address to the Senate. A still of a spherical stars.h.i.+p with the entryways and gun emplacements overmarked. And the capper: the data and holo files of a New Republic recon pa.s.s over Wakiza, complete with an NRI seal.

"So new you can still smell Imperial City on it," said the broker, pointing. "You like?"

[You are the best, Formayj.] "Of course. That is why they come here."

Smiling, he took Chewbacca's payment, then disarmed the erase-bot and other daemons that would otherwise have been unleashed by a trigger in the brokerage door. "Now, the other matter."

Chewbacca was already rising to leave at that point, and rumbled questioningly.

"You asked all around the Ridge about Han Solo.

Did not ask me, as if I did not know he is a prisoner in Koornacht," said Formayj. "I know where everyone has come from and where everyone is going when they leave. I know why customer wants the information before I sell it to them. At times must even disappoint them because of what I know. You plan a rescue, yes?"

Chewbacca growled his a.s.sent.

"You ask where he must be held. Even though you do not come to me, I inquire on my own." Formayj shook his head. "Discouraging. No one knows. There is no prison. His name is not spoken by any who would know, on Coruscant or N'zoth." He reached up and handed Chewbacca another holo card. "Perhaps this helps you. Free--my cost nothing."

He gestured toward the viewer. "Go on--see."

It was a recording of Nil Spaar speaking to the members of the New Republic via Channel 81. Time-stamped forty hours ago, it began, "I address the strong, proud leaders of the va.s.sal worlds--" Formayj pressed another object on Chewbacca, this one a datacard. "Old Imperial Star Destroyer s.h.i.+eld codes, sensor jam frequencies, defensive fire patterns--these are readily at hand. No demand. Historical value only," he said.

"My service charge will cover." Standing, Formayj offered his hand.

"Still like Han, old trickster.

Smuggler made good. Deliver greetings to him, if you see him."

Chewbacca hurried back to the s.h.i.+p and played the recording for the others. [My honor brother is Nil Spaar's prize,] he said, and pointed at the blue-black hull of the great stars.h.i.+p visible behind the viceroy.

[Wherever this enemy is, Han will be.] Then Chewbacca pointed at the planet beyond. [They are there now.] Twenty minutes later, the Millennium Falcon lifted off from Esau's Ridge. Immediately on making orbit, it turned toward Koornacht Cl.u.s.ter and jumped into hypers.p.a.ce, continuing its solitary journey to N'zoth.

Derelict With Artoo guiding him, Lobot had penetrated deep into a realm the structure and purpose of which he was still struggling to understand.

The vagabond's core pa.s.sages were more akin to the great acc.u.mulator conduit in which they had spent their first hours aboard the vessel than they were like the network of chambers in which they had spent the last many days. But the core pa.s.sages were much narrower than the acc.u.mulator conduit. Their cross section was never greater than Lobot's armspan, and often less-- especially at the junctions.

And there were many junctions. The pa.s.sages were cross-connected in a complex web that had not yet revealed its pattern. This web promised to link all parts of the vagabond as a transport or communications system might, but nothing was moving through or along the pa.s.sages save for Lobot and the droids. None of the ready biological metaphors--vascular tubules, alimentary ca.n.a.ls, respiratory ducts, neurological pathways--seemed appropriate.

Lobot wondered if the lack of activity was a symptom Of the damage the vagabond had sustained or a sign that he still did not understand the nature of the vessel.

He had to keep reminding himself that though the s.h.i.+p was the product of bioengineering, it was not an organism.

It was a biological machine, which was still an unfamiliar paradigm.

Three hundred meters in from chamber 228, the pa.s.sage had narrowed to the point where Lobot found it necessary to shed his contact suit in order to continue.

"Master Lobot, are you certain that you wish to do this?" Threepio asked in a familiarly anxious tone. "Are you confident that the risk is justified? Given our present circ.u.mstances, and the alarming frequency with which wars.h.i.+ps seem to attack this vessel--" "I'm certain," Lobot said. "The deeper we go into the core, the more it feels like an obstacle standing between me and the s.h.i.+p. When my shoulders brushed both sides at the same time, it felt like the s.h.i.+p was inviting me to shed the suit. I can't explain this in acceptable terms, but I think I must do this to find what I am looking for."

"I see, sir," said Threepio. "Artoo, are you still monitoring the air in this pa.s.sage?"

"The air is fine, Threepio," Lobot said, patting the droid on the top of his head. "I am fine. I am simply following a hunch."

"Oh, dear," Threepio fretted.

"What's the matter?"

"Very well, Master Lobot--since you asked, I shall tell you," said Threepio. "If you'll pardon my saying so, sir, Master Lando's influence on your habits of thought is becoming manifest at the worst possible time."

"What influence would that be?"

"Why, his unhealthy psychological dependence on the teleological self- deceptions of a gambler, sir--hunches, lucky streaks, wish fulfillment, feelings of ent.i.tlement, and the other trappings of magical thinking," Threepio said. "I have come to regard you as an unusually practical and rational individual--for a human being."

"Thank you," Lobot said. "But what makes you think that Lando ever really gambles?"

"Sir, I have heard Master Han speak of it many times. I believe that Master Lando even considered himself a professional gambler during one period of his life."

"That's true," said Lobot. "And no one hates trusting to chance and fate more than a professional gambler. You've misread Lando all along, Threepio."

"Sir, I do not understand."

"Think about this, then--maybe it'will help," said Lobot, discarding the last piece of his contact suit.

"When a human being--a sentient being--faces a question for which there is no known right answer, a decision for which there's no obvious right choice, he will almost always end up following what feels right.

The logician will construct one kind of justification, the magician another, but at the moment of choosing, the two are more alike than they are different."

"I see, sir. Thank you. But I do not believe a droid is capable of truly understanding a process that' is so fundamentally subjective."

"No?" asked Lobot, raising an eyebrow. "Then tell me, what was going through your circuits when you grabbed that beckon call away from Lando and signaled Lady Luck? Were you doing the logical thing, or what you felt was the right thing?"

"I am not entirely certain, sir."

"Good," said Lobot approvingly. "I suggest you think on that a while, too. You may find it has something to do with the questions you asked me in chamber twenty-one. Now, let's get going."

A few hundred twisting meters further, the pa.s.sages narrowed still tighter, to the point where Lobot could barely wriggle through, and Artoo could not.

"Go back to where we dropped off the grid and my suit and wait for me there," Lobot said. "Artoo, the link I've been using to access your event log and memory registers--can you make it bidirectional, so Lando will know what happened to me if I don't come back?

Maybe you could isolate one of my transmit channels."

Artoo chirped rea.s.suringly and relayed his a.s.sent over the link.

"Master Lobot, may I say something before you leave?"

"Quickly."

"It is possible that there is no command center as you envision it," "I don't have anything 'envisioned."" "I mean to say that rule-based logic can be encoded very compactly. My own language processors contain the equivalent of more than eight times ten to the twelfth decision trees, all within a s.p.a.ce of approximately five cubic centimeters."

"And the giant dewback lizards of Tatooine have a neural cl.u.s.ter smaller than the brain of a newborn human.

Yes, I understand your point," Lobot said, looking back at the droids.

"But I am not looking' for the vagabond's bridge, or its brain. I could easily miss those, or fail to recognize them. I am looking for its threshold of awareness, and it will know when I have found it."

Lando lingered in the auditorium as long as the question of whether the vagabond could heal its great wounds hung in the balance.

In the beginning, a thin band of new material appeared around the edges of each opening in the hull.

The smaller opening forward continued to close, just as Lando had seen demonstrated at the airlock. But for a long time, it seemed as though nothing was happening at the larger wound, as if the process had somehow stalled.

Before giving up, Lando moved to a portal on the other side of the chamber. From there, the beam from his chest lamp revealed that the entire opening had skinned over with what looked like the same sort of transparent material he was peering through.

That discovery held him there, even though it again seemed for the longest time as if nothing was happening.

He remembered how when they had first boarded the vagabond, he had been able to see Lady Luck's floodlights through the wall of the airlock.

That should have told me something, he thought. Like s.h.i.+ning a lantern through your hand. I should have been thinking organic right from the first. But we thought the genetic sequence was just some engineer's idea of a clever little code.

His eyes kept expecting the gossamer transparency to be momentarily transformed into solid bulkhead, just as the transparency in the auditorium went from one state to the other in a matter of seconds.

But instead, a lattice of opaque material appeared first, echoing the crisscross pattern he had. seen in the stringers in the inters.p.a.ce.

Then, finally, each individual section of the lattice began to close over.

That was when Lando tried to leave, feeling as though he had witnessed an exhibition of Qella ingenuity more impressive than the. lost orrery.

"Lobot, where are you now?" he called over the suit's comlink, to no reply. "The hull breaches are nearly repaired I'm heading back.

Lobot?" He switched to the secondary comm channel and repeated the call, with the same result.

Returning to the primary channel, he heard a voice he did not expect to hear: "--I would be glad to relay a message to him."

"Threepio, what are you doing on Lobot's comlink?

What's going on there?"

"Pardon me, Master Lando, but Master Lobot left his contact suit in our keeping."

"You mean he's gone off by himself? Where is he?

Where did he go?"

"He said he was seeking the threshold of awareness," said Threepio.

"I'm quite sure I don't know what that means."

"Where are you, then? Is Artoo with you?"

"We are somewhere in the vagabond's inner core," said Threepio.

"Artoo says that if you return to chamber two-twenty-nine, he can direct you to us from there," "I'll be there in three minutes."