Part 1 (2/2)

All eyes turned to her, all cars tingled in antic.i.p.ation of her voice, all senses stretched toward her, involuntarily desiring to lap up every effusion of her softly gleaming carmine skin-with the exception of Rhinann and Dhur, whose physiologies, though humanoid. were too alien to respond to Duare's endocrine advantage. A good thing, too, judging by the besotted looks that came over Pavan and Haus. Rhinann even imagined for a moment that the droid's photoreceptors brightened a bit, though he knew that was nonsense.

Like all Zeltrons, Dejah Duare exuded a rich potion of pheromones that she could guide willfully to affect the mood of her target audience. Right now she had brought all her resources to bear on Pol Haus.

”Prefect,” she said in a voice like sun-washed synthsilk, ”surely my citizen file is an open book. Can you imagine that I'd a.s.sociate myself with beings whose scruples I distrusted in the least?”

If Rhinann didn't know better, he'd swear the Zabrak was blus.h.i.+ng to the roots of his unkempt, thinning fringe of hair.

”With all due respect,” the prefect said, ”this lot did ingratiate themselves with you during the investigation of your partner's death.”

Dejah uttered a cascade of warm sultry laughter that, if visible, would have been the same dark crimson as her hair. ”Ingratiated themselves! Now, Prefect, isn't that understating the case? Jax and his team,” she added, turning a smiling gaze to the Jedi, ”solved Ves Volette's murder. And that is why I've chosen to ally myself with them. Each one of them is highly skilled at what he does. If Haninum Tyk Rhinann provides you with information, you can be certain it is both accurate and worthwhile.”

The prefect looked bemused and not a little befuddled. ”Well, I suppose ... that is, of course the information is worthwhile. I've never doubted it. And I honestly don't care about the holes in your personal files as long as you continue to provide that information.” This last was directed at Jax, who nodded his a.s.surance.

”We're happy to provide it, Prefect. In this case I think the intel points to Rado's Hutt friend. I suspect what happened was that Wabbin had his own spice source and simply cut Rado out, making a separate deal with his buyer.”

As Jax continued, wrapping up the package neatly, Rhinann returned to his speculations about I-Five. Droids, he knew, were not supposed to have such capacities and capabilities as this one exemplified. Nor was it simply a matter of disabling a few limitations or reprogramming the synaptic grid processor with clever learning algorithms. Ves Volette, as it happened, had been slain by a ”modified” 3PO unit that had retaliated against the Caamasi sculptor for causing distress to the Vindalian mistress he had served for decades. Plainly put, with some sophisticated modifications to its protective programming, the 3PO unit had developed an attachment to its owner.

I-Five had developed far more than that. And he-it, Rhinann reminded himself with irritation-had somehow developed it in the hands of a man who made his living as a black-market dealer in rare commodities. From everything Rhinann knew, the droid's erstwhile ”partner,” Lorn Pavan, had been many things, but a sophisticated programmer was not one of them.

Which begged the question: how had the protocol droid known as I-5YQ transcended its programming?

And why?

Haninum Tyk Rhinann, much as he hated to admit it, agreed with Den Dhur about one thing: some events were too much a coincidence to be coincidental, and just about every event to which he could now connect I-Five seemed to fall into that category.

The droid would bear watching. Very close watching.

Part I

Sins of the father

Chapter One.

The library was his favorite place in the entirety of the immense Jedi Temple complex. He went there to absorb data as much through the pores of his skin as through any study of the copious amount of information stored there. He frequently went there to think-but just as often he went there to not think.

He was (here now-not thinking-and almost as soon as he recognized the place. Jax Pavan also realized that this was a dream. The Temple, he knew, was no more than a chaotic pile of rubble, charred stone, and ashy dust. Order 66 had mandated it, and the horrifying bloodbath that the few remaining Jedi referred to as Flame Night had ensured it.

Yet here he was in one of the many reading rooms within the vast library wing, just as it had been the last time he had seen it-the softly lit shelves that contained books, scrolls, data cubes, and other vessels of knowledge from a thousand worlds; the tables-each in its own pool of illumination-at which Jedi and Padawans studied in silence; the tall, narrow windows that looked out into the central courtyard; the vaulted ceiling that seemed to fly away into eternity. Even as his dreaming gaze took in these things, he felt the pain of their loss ... and something else-puzzlement.

This was clearly a Force dream. It had that lucent, almost s.h.i.+mmering quality to it, the utter clarity of presence and sense, the equally clear knowledge that it was a dream. But it was about the past, not the future, for Jax Pavan knew he would never savor the atmosphere of the Jedi library again. His Force dreams had, without exception, been visions of future events... and they had never been this lucid.

He was sitting at one of the tables with a book and a data cube before him. The book was a compilation of philosophical essays by Masters of the Tython Jedi who had first proposed that the Force had a dual nature: Ashla, the creative element, and Bogan, the destructive-light and dark aspects of the same Essence. The data cube contained a treatise of Master Asli Krimsan on the Potentium Perspective, a ”heresy” propagated by Jedi Leor Hal that contended-as many had before and since-that there was no dark side to the Force, that the darkness existed within the individual.

Yes, he had studied these two volumes-among others. He supposed that all Padawans studied them at some point in their training, because all entertained questions about the nature of the Force and desired to understand it. Some, he knew, hoped to understand it completely and ultimately; to settle once and for all the millennia-long debate over whether it had one face or two and where the potential for darkness lay-in the Force itself or in the wielder of the Force.

When had he studied these last? What moment had he been returned to in his dream?

Even as he wondered these things, a shadow fell across the objects on the table before him. Someone had come to stand beside him, blocking the light from the windows.

He glanced up.

It was his fellow Padawan and friend Anakin Skywalker. At least he had called Anakin ”friend” readily enough, but the truth was that Anakin held himself aloof from the other Padawans. Even in moments of camaraderie he seemed a nun apart, as if he had a Force s.h.i.+eld around him. Brooding. Jax had called him that once to his face and had drawn laughter that he, through his connection to the Force, had known to be false.

Now Anakin stood above him, his back to the windows, his face in shadow.

”Hey, you're blocking my light.” The words popped out of Jax's mouth without his having intended to say them. But he had said them that day, and he knew what was coming next.

Anakin didn't answer. He simply held out his hand as if to drop something to the tabletop. Jax put out his own hand palm-up to receive it.

”It” was a pyronium nugget the size of the first joint of his thumb. Even in the half-light it pulsed with an opalescence that seemed to arise from deep within, cycling from white through the entire visible spectrum to black, then back again. Somewhere-Jax just couldn't remember where-he had heard that pyronium was a source of immense power, of almost unlimited power. He had thought that apocryphal and absurd. Power was a vague word and meant many things to many people.

”What's this for?” he asked now as he had then, looking up into his friend's face.

”For safekeeping while I'm on Tatooine,” Anakin said. His mouth cursed wryly. ”Or maybe it's a gift.”

”Well, which is it?” Jax asked.

The answer then had been a shrug. Now it was a cryptic phrase uttered in a deep, rumbling voice nor at all like the Padawan s own: ”With this, journey beyond the Force.”

Jax laughed. ”The Force is the beginning, middle, and end of all things. How does one go beyond the infinite?”

Instead of replying, the Anakin of his dream began to laugh. To Jax's horror. Anakin's flesh blackened, crisping and shriveling as if from intense heat; peeling away from the muscle and bone beneath. His grin twisted horribly, becoming a skull's rictus. Worst of all, laughter still tumbled from the seared lips.

Jax woke suddenly and completely, bathed in cold sweat.

With this, journey beyond the Force?

That was impossible. It made no sense-and what was with the burning? He s.h.i.+vered, his skin creeping beneath its clammy film of sweat as he recalled one of the rumors of where and how Anakin was supposed to have died on Mustafar-thrown into the magma stream by ... no one knew who.

”Is something wrong, Jax?”

Jax glanced over from his sweat-soaked bed mat to where I-Five stood sentry, his photoreceptors gleaming with muted light.

Jax hesitated for only a moment. It might seem a futile monologue to discuss a dream with a droid, but I-5 YQ was no ordinary droid, and even if he were, there was value to talking out the puzzling dream even with a supposedly nonsentient being. If nothing else, Jax reasoned that sorting through the images, actions, and words aloud would help him understand them.

He sat up, leaning against the wall of his small room in the Poloda Place conapr he shared with the rest of his motley team. ”I dreamed.”

”I've read that all living things do,” I-Five observed blandly.

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