The idea of leaving it all behind was tempting, oh, yes. He was capable of it, if it came to that. He knew just where a slight nick with a vibroscalpel would bleed the most. Take a little anticoagulant, open a major blood vessel, then slowly fall asleep—and not wake up. Death would be painless that way, or with any of a dozen drugs he could take off the shelf that would do the trick just as well. A final salute, and then the Big Jump…
Suicide was rare among his people—few Corellians took that route, and none of Jos’s family had ever done so, as far as he knew.
At the moment, it didn’t feel like the worst thing that could happen to him. He could easily make it look like an accident, thus sparing his family the shame, and at least some of the grief.
Jos shook his head again. How had he come here? This was a place he had never dreamed he could be, thinking in detail about how to end his own life.
He remembered what he had been trained to tell those patients who had fallen so low: wait. Don’t do something that can’t be reversed. Life is long; things change. A month, a year, five years from now, your situation could reverse—look at how many people came from nothing, grew rich, lost it all, and then rebuilt their fortunes. Look at those who were afflicted with a debilitating or even fatal illness, who stayed around long enough for a cure. Even those who lost a spouse, or a child or a parent, and later found happiness. The bottom line was: alive, you have a chance. There are no possibilities for the dead.
Jos sighed, a deep and ragged breath. Yes. Those were the things he told his patients, and they were all true.
An old memory rose up from his days at Coruscant Med. The instructor, a grizzled and gray human named Leig Duwan, who must have been well over a hundred standard years old, had spoken of his days on Alderaan. The old man smiled a lot, and he was grinning as he told the story.
There had been a bad time in Duwan’s life—his father had died, his mother had been hospitalized, and his sister had gone missing on a frontier expedition. Duwan had failed an exam, and it looked as if he might be dropped from medical school. He had, he’d told the class, seriously considered suicide. Instead, he’d muddled through somehow, and eventually things did get better.
One day, he met a man on the street. The man stopped him and said, “I want to thank you, Doctor Duwan, for saving my life.”
Duwan had heard this many times, of course, and he had deflected the praise with practiced ease: “It’s my job, citizen. No thanks are—”
“No,” the man interrupted. “I wasn’t your patient. I was undergoing a period of deep depression and was suicidal. I had decided to end it—I’d already obtained the means—and was on my way to a private place where I would do it. But I gave myself one out: if, on my journey, any person I passed was to smile at me—just one—I would not go through with it.
“I was on the street, outside the hospital, and you were on your way in. You smiled and nodded at me. And here I am.”
The point of his story, Duwan said, was not whether his medical expertise had saved someone. The point was that, because he had gone through his own darkness, and had kept going long enough to be able to smile at a stranger, he had saved that man’s life. There were thousands more over the years whom he had, with some skill and much luck, also managed to keep alive. Being useful to others was not an unworthy thing, even if you had nothing else.
Jos looked at the chrono. He had rounds to make, postop patients to check. If he killed himself, somebody else would have to take over his rounds. That would be an imposition, causing somebody to have to cover for him.
It would be… impolite.
He could manage to face another hour. That’s all you have to do, he told himself. Just an hour, the next hour. Do your rounds, make your reports.
He could get through another hour. And after that…
Well. Time enough to worry about that when he got there. For now, this hour was all that mattered.
28
Jos finished his rounds. He knew about the farewell party for the HNE troupe, and normally there would be little reluctance on his part to join them. But now…
What if Tolk was there?
Seeing her in the OT was bad enough; he wasn’t sure he could handle seeing her in a social setting. What if she was there with someone else?
He shook his head. At least in the cantina he wouldn’t be drinking alone. Sooner or later he would run into her again. It just wasn’t that big a base.
To deep with it. Jos marched out of the OT, feeling much like a man walking to his own execution.
It was crowded in the cantina. Also hot, noisy, and smelly. Maybe Jos wouldn’t encounter Tolk after all in this crowd.
That hope didn’t last long. It was, in fact, Tolk who found him, before he could get his first drink. He turned around and there she was, right there, her gaze fixed on his face, searching it for—what?
He didn’t know what to say. He knew he should say something, but she was so lovely, even just in her scrubs, with her hair up and exhaustion evident in her face, that she stole the breath from his lungs.
“Tolk…,” he managed. “I—”
“I’ve been thinking a lot, Jos. There’s more to all this than just how we feel about each other. There’s more to this war than just here, what we do—who we are to each other. I need some time to process it, on my own.” She took a breath. “I’m requesting a transfer to Rimsoo Three.”
His mouth was dry. Rimsoo Three was over a thousand klicks north, across the Sea of Sponges. “What are you saying? Can’t we at least talk about it?”
“No, not yet.”
Jos blew out a big breath. He didn’t want to say it, but it had to be said: “Does this mean we’re through?”
She hesitated. “It means we’re apart for a while.”
There was no way to dissuade her, he saw. But if she transferred out, he’d never see her again. Of that he was sure.
“I have to go,” she said. And with that, she was gone.
Jos made his way to the bar. He was numb. What had happened? What had gone wrong? What had he said or done?
He still couldn’t believe it. Done. Gone. Just like that.
His mind scrambled frantically for some purchase, something to hold on to. As chief surgeon, he could refuse to let her transfer out, could say she was too valuable here—but what good would that do? How could they work together? Play sabacc together? How could they—
Questions swirled around in his head like dust motes, like a swarm of fire gnats.
He needed a drink.
He reached the bar, but before he could order anything, he heard a deep growl. He turned to look.
Now there’s something you don’t see every day, he thought. A droid and a Wookiee playing hologames.
The game was called dejarik; although Jos didn’t play, he was familiar with it. I-Five and the Wookiee sat at a small corner table amid all the commotion. The Wookiee was covered with coal-black shaggy fur, save for a star-shaped white patch high on the left quadrant of his chest. And at the moment, he seemed really upset, even for a Wookiee—and that was saying something.
“Never a boring minute, eh?”
Jos looked down and saw Den Dhur standing beside him. Den gestured toward the dejarik table and sighed. “You might remember my mentioning once or twice before that I was trying to help I-Five get drunk?”
“Yeah?”
“Well…”
Kaird was, after a fashion, enjoying himself, even though he was of necessity wearing the Kubaz suit. He didn’t mind seeing people have a good time, and the fact that he knew—and would do—something that would ruin their high spirits did not diminish his enjoyment. When news of the change in the bota became widespread, chaos would most likely ensue. The misfortunes of war.
Too bad. While he wasn’t sentimentally attached to anyone here—sentimentality being a luxury he could ill afford—he admired a great many of the doctors and soldiers and techs who populated this place. They were, for the most part, honorabl
e folk. Honor, as most people seemed to think of it, was a code that limited one’s options severely and, even worse, was a good way to return to the Great Egg at hyperspeed. Kaird was a practical being—he couldn’t afford to have honor. But he surely did admire it in others. If nothing else, it made it far easier to predict their actions.
It was harder dealing with scalawags in some ways, easier in others. Take Thula and Squa Tront, for example. Kaird would be quite surprised—almost disappointed, in fact—if those two hadn’t thought of ways to shortchange him and Black Sun on the upcoming transaction. Not that he really minded if they found a way to skim a little for themselves—that was the nature of business, and to be expected. But he wasn’t overly concerned. Rogues they might be, but they also seemed smart enough to realize the lunacy of attempting any major deception on Black Sun.
He dipped the mask’s snout into his drink—one reason he liked the Kubaz identity was because he could drink while in it. Pity he couldn’t just let go and enjoy the party to the fullest, but he was also here for a practical reason. As it turned out, the human pilot Bogan had taken a double shift recently, and as a result he would not be on standby for the admiral’s ship when Kaird needed him. This was easily remedied, however. There were another two pilots in the rotation, and one of them was here in this cantina, right now. This pilot, also a human—a lot of those around the galaxy, Kaird had noticed—was behaving in a responsible manner: since he was on standby, he was not drinking, smoking, or sniffing anything intoxicating. Sebairns, his name was, and while he seemed to be having a good time, smiling and laughing, he had restricted himself to some kind of steeped brew made from a local plant.
Because Kaird had access to all kinds of information, including medical records, he had learned that Sebairns had an allergic condition for which there was no cure or preventive treatment. If exposed to a certain common legume, the human would develop a fairly severe anaphylactic reaction, the symptoms of which might include urticaria and syncope secondary to ascites. Kaird had gotten this information translated via the HoloNet. It meant that the human could break out in a serious, itchy rash that could include large hives; he could faint and, if left untreated, might even choke to death as his windpipe closed. Not that it would get that bad in the middle of a Rimsoo full of doctors—he’d be whisked off to a ward in a hurry, and all his symptoms could be treated easily. But he wouldn’t be able to work for a day or two, which was more than enough for Kaird’s purposes.
Kaird had watched the servers with care, and his moment came. He stood and started away from his single-unit table, as if to answer a call of nature. The droid server bearing a tray for Sebairns’s table started in that direction as well. Their paths would intersect, as Kaird had planned.
As Kaird neared the server, he said, “Pardon me, could you point out the ’fresher?”
Even though the refresher was clearly marked in half a dozen languages and graphic images, the droid had no doubt heard the question more than a few times from inebriated patrons. It swiveled its head slightly and pointed with its free appendage. “That way, sir. The door under the glowing sign.”
While the droid was thus engaged, Kaird brought his hand around, as if to scratch his snout, and in so doing allowed a small pinch of legume powder to fall into the man’s drink.
He then headed toward the ’fresher. He would return to his table in a moment to make sure his target drank from the doctored cup and reacted appropriately. Once that was done, his objective for tonight would be accomplished.
It was unlikely that anyone would suspect the man’s drink had been tampered with—it wasn’t poison, after all, and the attending medics would recognize the reaction for what it was. Even if they did suspect it had been deliberate, it wouldn’t matter. There was no way to tie Kaird to the deed. Even if the serving droid was questioned, and happened to recall a Kubaz asking directions to the ’fresher, the Kubaz in question didn’t exist. After tonight, Kaird would have no more need for this particular costume, and it would be rendered down to its molecular level by a recycling unit. Can’t find what doesn’t exist.
He had, in one of his fat human disguises, obtained from one of the entertainment group’s members a copy of the most recent recording of Galactic Sports Update. Upon this GSU recording was a recent Strag Sector Match Championship. If you were not a skilled player, watching a game of Strag was less interesting than watching mold grow; if you were ranked, however, such matches were fascinating. Neither the Twi’lek Vorra, nor the human pilot Bogan, would have seen this particular match; it hadn’t been holocast this far out yet. The corpulent human, whom Kaird had named Mont Shomu, would arrange soon to be heard talking about this match, which he happened to have a recording of, within Vorra’s hearing. She would fall all over herself to obtain it from him. The fat man would be loath to part with it, however, being a fan of the game himself. Of course, he would be willing to share a viewing of the match with her. And, naturally, she could bring a friend…
Kaird smiled as he exited the ’fresher and returned to his table amid the noise and heat of the busy cantina. There was a real joy in watching a carefully made plan unfold.
“Let me get this straight,” Jos said. “I-Five is drunk?”
“I’ve been watching him for hours,” Den said, “and believe me, he’s soused. If that’s the proper term for a droid.”
“From a program.”
“Yeah.”
“Which he wrote.”
“Right.”
Jos looked over at the game table, where the various transparent holocreatures that were the pieces of the game shifted and scratched restlessly on their squares. I-Five didn’t look any different from here, save for a slightly increased luminosity in his photoreceptors and more exaggerated movement. Jos shook his head. “It just keeps getting weirder.” He turned back to the bar and hoisted his drink.
“Ha!” I-Five said loudly. “My molator takes your houjix! I win!”
The Wookiee roared with rage. Jos looked back at the game just in time to see the Wookiee stand, grab I-Five’s right arm, and wrench it from the droid’s shoulder. Circuitry and servomotor couplings broke free in a shower of sparks and sprays of lubricating fluid.
My, my.
“Bad loser,” Den said.
“Looks like,” Jos agreed.
They both leapt forward, grabbed the droid, and pulled him away from the game board as the furious Wookiee harned and moaned in his own language and waved the mechanical arm over his head. Jos glimpsed several of the showfolk, including a burly Trandoshan, moving in quickly to calm down their colleague.
I-Five felt no pain, of course. He seemed more confused than anything else.
“I seem to be missing an arm,” he said to Jos. “I’m sure I had it when I came in.”
Jos pushed I-Five into an empty booth. “Your gamer friend borrowed it.”
“I-Five,” Den said, “I think maybe it’s time to sober up now.”
I-Five shrugged. Jos wouldn’t have thought the gesture possible for a drunken droid with only one arm. “If you say so.” His photoreceptors flickered for a moment, then resumed what Jos thought of as their normal glow.
The droid looked about him in mild surprise. “Interesting.”
“Wish sobering up was that easy for me,” Jos said.
A human female brought the arm over to them, handing it to Jos. “Here,” she said. “You might want to program your droid to avoid games with Wookiees in the future. They’re, uh, very competitive.”
I-Five looked at the arm. “So I have determined.”
Jos examined the arm’s exposed end. “I’m no cybertech,” he said, “but it looks like this can be reattached fairly easily.” He looked at the droid. “You’re lucky he didn’t pull your head off.”
“True,” I-Five agreed. “That would have been considerably harder to fix.”
“What were you thinking, challenging a Wookiee to a dejarik game?”
“I wasn’t thinking. That was the po
int. I was drunk— or at least as close to it as I could program.”
Jos shook his head in amazement. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s head over to the shop and see if anyone’s still there who can fix you up. Reattaching mechanical limbs is a bit beyond my expertise.”
The three left the cantina and walked through the hot night air, I-Five holding his dismembered arm. Den said, “I’d feel terrible if I was responsible for you getting drunk and into a bar fight—if it turned out not to be worth it.”
“I think it was,” I-Five said. “I think it was very worthwhile.” He looked at Jos. “Remember my mentioning that I seemed to be having an anxiety attack?”
Jos nodded.
“I believe it was born out of conflicting impulses based on new data garnered from regaining all of my memory files—including several regarding my erstwhile friend and partner, Lorn Pavan.
“I remembered that I have an obligation to fulfill—one that involves my returning to Coruscant as soon as possible. But to do so would be to abandon my responsibilities here. This was a problem that could not be solved by an application of logic. I needed intuition—the ability to sense what was right by mechanisms far older than logic and application of data.
“I needed, somehow, to jar my synaptic grid cortex into another mode—a totally nonlinear mode. Thus, the concept of altering my sensory input and perception of data.”
“Did it work?” Den asked.
“I believe so. I have decided on a course of action.”
“You leaving us, I-Five?” Jos asked.
“Not immediately.” The droid did not amplify his comment.
Jos couldn’t resist. “But,” he said, “you’re a machine, remember? Programmed to be an automaton, no more. So what does it matter how you reach a decision?”
Star Wars®: MedStar II: Jedi Healer Page 18
