Jos moved through the medical section, on his way to see a postop patient who had recently developed a noso-comial infection. The patient was a human male officer, not a clone, and one upon whom both he and Zan had worked for several hours to replace a shrapnel-riddled heart. They had been lucky; five minutes more and they would have lost the man. After such a brilliant surgical triumph, losing him to some waste-hopper secondary bug was simply unacceptable. Even though the Rimsoo was state-of-the-art in sterile procedure and environ-ment, nosocomial infections-contagions picked up while one was hospitalized-still happened now and then. This particular one had been very stubborn, not re-sponding to the usual broad-spectrum antibiotics, and so far they had been unable to culture out and identify it.

The prognosis was dire. Unless they could ID the cause, the officer wasn't going to survive.

When Jos arrived at the isolation chamber, he saw that Zan was already inside the airflow "walls" and sterile zap field that kept pathogens from entering or es-caping. Next to the bed, just outside the field, stood a hooded figure, one of The Silent.

Jos had never put much credence in the mute sibling-hood's supposed efficacy in aiding patients' recovery rates, but at this point he was not one to turn down any-thing that might help. And, whether it was some kind of placebo effect, spontaneous healing or remission, or something completely outside Jos's medical experience, the fact was that a Silent's presence at or near a patient's side seemed to speed recuperation. So he nodded at the figure, whose face was hidden in the cowl, as he pa.s.sed. The Silent nodded back.

Jos stepped into the field, which crackled slightly. Zan started, as if somebody had poked a finger into his back. He looked around, saw Jos, and relaxed. "Oh, it's you."

"Nice to see you, too." Jos noticed that Zan was holding an empty skinpopper.

"Sorry. Just a little on edge."

"I can't imagine why. These days everybody's adren-als are stuck on full throttle." Jos looked down at the unconscious form in the bed. "How's our latest poster boy for the horrors of war doing?"

The patient, one N'do Maetrecis, a major in the army, looked somewhat better than the last time Jos had seen him. His skin had been pale and anhidrotic, but now it was taking on a normal, healthy glow. The flatscreen chart hung on the bed's foot, and Jos picked it up and scanned the stats. Blood pressure normal, heart rate normal, white cell blood count...

h.e.l.lo? Look at this. The elevated white count that in-dicated the infection was way down.

And the differen-tials-the spread and proportion of specialized white cells, segs, polys, eos, and so forth-were all within normal limits.

The patient had turned around.

"Well, well," Jos said. "Looks like somebody has the healing hands of a Jedi. Or the fingers, at least."

The skin around Zan's horns mottled a bit-the Zabrakian equivalent of a human's blush. He dropped the empty skinpopper into the pocket of his one-piece.

Jos frowned. "You develop a sudden sentimental at-tachment to instruments? Going to have it anodized and put it on the mantel?"

"Excuse me?"

"Since when do empty poppers not go into the trash?" Jos waved at the waste hopper next to the bed.

"Oh. Sorry-guess my brain's gone on leave." Zan pulled the skinpopper out and tossed it into the bin.

As it arced past him, Jos got a good look at the pneu-matic injector. The clear plastoid cover was just that - clear. Blank. No identification denoting what kind of medication it had held. No batch number, either. Nothing.

That simply wasn't done.

The patient, who was now awake, mumbled that he was indeed feeling much better. Jos made polite doctor noises, automatically checked the man's vitals, then raised an eyebrow at Zan. "Doctor Yant, if I might speak with you in private?"

Outside the building, Jos steered Zan into a patch of shade and relative coolness. "All right. What's going on here?"

"Going on? What are you talking about?" Zan didn't meet Jos's eyes.

"I'm talking about a patient who comes out of a life-threatening secondary infection so fast he leaves ion burns on his chart. I'm also talking about treatment with unmarked skinpoppers."

Zan hesitated for a moment, then sighed in resigna-tion.

In that short pause, Jos suddenly knew what had tran-spired. "You didn't, " he said.

Zan said, "I did."

"Zan, have you got an ingrown horn or something? You know what the risks are. If they catch you, you'll be court-martialed!"

"If you see a fellow sentient drowning and there's a rope lying right next to your foot, are you going to worry about being accused of stealing the rope?"

"If there's a good chance they'll hang me with it, yeah. This is not the same thing."

"It isn't? We're on a planet with the biggest supply of a flat-out miracle drug in the galaxy-you can walk to a huge field of it in five minutes. We tried everything else on this guy, Jos-macromolecular regeneration, nanocell implants, maser cauterization-nothing worked. The man was dying. You've read the SGJ literature touting bota-an adaptogen that can cure everything but a rainy day in most humanoid phenotypes. We've had patients who died from infections we could probably have cured with one scale of it." Zan raised his hands, a gesture of inevitability. "I couldn't just watch him die. Not when there was the slightest chance..."

Jos opened his mouth, but said nothing. What was there to say? Bota was valuable-so much so that the Republic deemed theft of it a crime to be severely pun-ished. The plant was, ultimately, why both they and the Separatists were on Drongar. And, ironically, the local Rimsoos were forbidden to use it because of its poten-tial offworld value.

Before Jos could speak again, Zan said, "n.o.body will miss a few plants. There are little pockets of bota all over the lowlands that n.o.body even knows about. Pluck a couple of scales, stick them in your pocket, hand-process them later... who's to know?"

"Zan..."

"Come on, Jos, you know a lot of the xenos around here sneak out and harvest the stuff for recreational use. Filba used to bliss out with a hookah full of it most every night.

Everybody knows what it can do for them, and everybody looks the other way, as long as no one gets greedy. At least I'm using it to save lives-which is what the Republic says it's doing, too. Is the life of some-one a hundred pa.r.s.ecs from here more valuable than one in the next room? Can I stand by and let people die without doing everything in my power to save them?"

"You didn't start this war, Zan. You're not responsi-ble for everybody who gets hurt in it."

"Oh, that's good. This from the guy who once kicked a hole in a wall when he lost a patient to Draknahr Syn-drome-something that all of Coruscant Med and a room full of Jedi and Silents couldn't treat."

At a total loss for words, Jos looked at his friend, and saw nothing in front of him but a doctor who took his job as seriously as he himself did. He sighed. "Okay. But you've got to be more careful-there are a lot sharper eyes than mine around here who could notice a blank skinpopper."

"Point made. I'll make sure they're marked from now on," Zan said. "I can even use dye to color the serum so it looks like polybiotic or spectacillin. n.o.body will no-tice, Jos."

"I hope not," Jos said. " 'Cause if someone does, your career could be smashed flatter than a mynock in a black hole."

Zan grinned and clapped a hand on his friend's shoul-der, and the two turned and reentered the building.

31.

Den Dhur was not a being to sit idle for long. Despite his facade of being supremely bored and cynical, of do-ing his job solely because it paid his drink tab, the thing in which he took the most pleasure in his life was his work. Even with the admiral hunting him, he could not simply camp in his quarters-in fact, he couldn't do that precisely because the admiral was hunting him. The first question to answer during an investigation, an old police officer had once told him, is: what looks dif-ferent now than it did before? Any change in the behav-ior of a criminal suspect was cause for suspicion. If a bank is robbed and the guard on duty at the time sud-denly decides to take an unscheduled vacation or begins driving a new and expensive speeder to work... well, unless his rich uncle just pa.s.sed away suddenly and left him a bundle of credits, or a winning ticket in the daux-cat races, he's going to have company, to be sure. Com-pany in uniform, carrying sonic pistols and stun batons.

Den Dhur the reporter did not usually spend his days alone in his quarters, and he surely wasn't going to start doing so now. So it was that he found himself out in the blistering hot day, shadowing the Rimsoo's combat in-structor. Discreetly. Very discreetly. It wasn't a real good idea to come to the attention of a being who could, if he wished, exterminate you without even raising his heart rate. A being who had demonstrated his ability and his willingness to snuff out lives and who had been recorded doing it. A being who glorified in the hunt and the kill.

A being like Phow Ji.

Den slipped into the shade of an outbuilding, happy for the relative coolness there, and watched his quarry. He focused a tiny recording cam upon the scene and triggered it. A little more background material never hurt. Better to have too much and have to cut it than too little and have to stretch it. This device wasn't nearly as sophisticated as the moon moth, but it would get the job done.

Phow Ji had a.s.sembled a cla.s.s of combat students, maybe a dozen or so, mostly humans, and they were limbering up their bodies on a patch of pink shortgra.s.s behind the cantina.

Broad-leaved trees offered the mar-tial arts trainees partial shade, but their exertions still had those who shed heat by perspiring sweating pro-fusely, while those who used other means of cooling themselves were panting, waving their limbs, or ex-panding rills and bulbae-whatever it took to bleed off excess warmth.

"What is the First Rule?" Ji said. His voice was oddly soft, but carried well enough in the damp morning air.

"Always be ready!" the cla.s.s chorused in unison.

"Exactly. You don't hang your fighting mind-set on the hat hook when you enter your cube.

You don't leave it on the counter when you shower, you don't set it on the bedside table when you sleep. If it is not part of you, it is useless and-"

Without a hint of what he was going to do, Ji took a quick step to his left, swung his fist in a short arc, and punched a tall, thin human amidships.

The human went "Oof!" and staggered back a step, hands coming up in a belated defensive posture.

"Too late!" Ji roared, loud enough to put a cold finger on Den's spine, thirty meters away and hidden.

The human had sagged to one knee, his face con-gested in pain. When he saw Phow Ji watching him, he hastily rose to his feet.

"Duels are fun," Ji said. "Duels come when you and your opponent both know what's about to happen, at least in general terms. Duels are neat, clean, and have rules. A match in the ring might kill you, but you are prepared for it. You know who your enemy is, you know where he is, and you aren't surprised when he comes at you.

"In real life, you don't have those luxuries. You could be sitting in the 'fresher when someone comes for you. Showering, sleeping, or taking a cla.s.s like this one. Now. What is the First Rule?"

"Always be ready!" they shouted in unison.

Ji took a step toward the group. The group, as one, took a step backward. Some of them raised their hands. One of them pulled a knife partway from a sheath.

Ji grinned. "Better. Now. First Posture!"

The students took a stance, one foot forward, one hand high, one low. Ji walked around them, touching an arm or leg here and there, correcting the poses. Every-body in the group watched him with what Den could see, even from his hiding place, was a tense wariness.

Den shook his head. This Phow Ji was a bad man, no doubt about that. He already had enough to file a story, but he allowed the cam to continue running. He knew what his slant was going to be: Phow Ji, a murderous thug who, in peacetime, would likely be locked away to protect the citizenry, instead was indulging his violent tendencies on the field of battle, allowed to kill and be thought a hero and not a villain. How did the public feel about that? Knowing that someone who was mentally deranged and violent, an a.s.sa.s.sin, a monster, was out there, and ostensibly on their side?

Den knew he could twirl it so that they would be hor-rified. A few more sequences showing the human's cru-elty and violence, and civilized beings would turn away in disgust and revulsion.

He smiled. This was what he did, and he was good at it. Of course, one could never be sure what the public would do, but he knew a good story when he saw one, and whatever else he might lack in, he could tell that story well.

32.

Tolk, Jos decided, was deliberately torturing him.

She knew how she affected him-it was in her nature and training, both as a species and as a female-and she was doing everything but giving him a handwritten in-vitation to join her in whatever his heart might desire.

In the preop surgical scrub room, Jos washed his hands, taking the customary ten minutes to do so, lath-ering, cleaning under the short nails, then repeating the process, even though the need for such had been unnec-essary since long before he'd been born. With sterile fields and gloves, there was not much of a chance any pathogens were going to be transferred into a patient because he washed his hands for nine minutes instead of ten, but he'd been taught by traditionalists who valued the old customs. So he washed, and he watched the chrono, and he brooded.

Old customs. On his world it was acceptable - barely-that a young unmarried person might go forth into the galaxy and sample the pleasures of ekster com-pany. It wasn't spoken of in polite circles, but it was done. Then the young, having gotten it out of their sys-tems, were to return home, find a spouse from a proper enster family, and settle down.

But even in his younger and wilder days, Jos had never been comfortable with the idea of brief liaisons. He'd done it, of course, but the essentially meaningless en-counters had weighed heavily upon him. At the core of his being, Jos knew that there would only be one love in his life, and that he should not be unfaithful to her - even if he did so before he ever met her.

But now, here was Tolk. Beautiful. s.e.xy. Adept. Car-ing. Intelligent and, Jos knew, all too perceptive. She called to him. He wanted to get to know her, to explore her emotional depths, to find out if what he saw within was real. And, were he from another background, he would have broken landspeeder records to pursue her, to see if she was indeed the One.

But she could not be the One for him; his family, his culture, and a lifetime of duty to both forbade it out of hand. She was not of his people. She was ekster. There was no sacrament, no cer-emony, no ritual, that could change this. She could not become one of them.

Jos was indeed a man torn.

Tolk knew about his cultural background, of course. She could have politely backed away from any possible entanglements. But she hadn't.

And why is that, Jos, you simpleton? Hmmm?

Jos scrubbed hard at the backs of his fingers. How pink the skin was getting there. Clean.

Very clean.

Tolk hadn't made herself scarce for a simple reason: he wanted her, and not just physically. And she knew it. And apparently, she was of like enough mind so as not to be offended by the idea. And therein lay the real problem-"I wouldn't recommend scrubbing the skin off en-tirely, Jos. Get serous fluid inside the gloves and all."

Speak of temptation, and lo! there did she appear!

He mumbled something.

"Pardon? I didn't catch that."

Jos continued to meticulously wash his hands, like that character in the old holodrama who believed that, no matter how hard he scrubbed, he would never be clean of his father's blood. What was his name again...?

He took a deep breath. Might as well get to it.

"Listen, Tolk. I... uh, I mean... uh..." Blast, this was hard! The term mixed emotions didn't begin to cover how he felt. It was more like pureed emotions.

She smiled sweetly at him, pretending, he knew, that she didn't have a clue as to how he felt. "Yes?"

He straightened, stuck his hands under the dryer. "Why are you making this so hard?"

"Me? I'm sorry, am I making something hard, Doctor Vondar?" The finest strands of spun Yyeger sugar would not have melted upon her tongue.

"You know my culture," he said, determined to see it through.

"Yes. And this knowledge disturbs you...?"

"Blast it, Tolk. You know very well what I'm talking about!"

She looked at him with an innocent gaze, her eyes so wide they made a Sull.u.s.tan look squint-eyed. "My tal-ents aren't perfect, Jos. I'm not a mind reader; I can only see what's obvious to anybody who looks closely enough. Maybe you should just say what you mean so there won't be any confusion." She smiled again.

He wanted to scream and break things.