Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [151]
A nice personal touch, thought Leia, observing the approval on the faces of Lady Vandron and Lord Picutorion. Irek suppressed a wicked grin and said, “Certainly, Mother.”
There was a soft murmur at the back of the group about how well brought up and malleable he was as the slender boy strode from the room. Leia followed, uncertain but not quite liking the look in his eyes.
The R-10 unit was trundling up the corridor, small and square, about a meter tall and rimmed around its flat top with a decorative brass railing. The top itself was black marble electronically charged to grip drinks, glasses, and anything else set on it; Leia had watched almost without consciously noticing the slight rotation with which everyone in the room took up his or her glass from it—she barely noticed herself when she did it back home. It was second nature to anyone with a modern R-10.
It bore on its surface now the appointed bottle—a twelve-year-old Algarine dry, suitably dusty—and a frosted glass, solitary tribute to the importance of Lady Vandron, as Roganda intended.
Irek folded his arms and stood in the middle of the corridor with that same evil grin. “Stop,” he said.
The R-10 whirred to a halt.
“Pick up the glass.”
It extruded one of its long, multijointed arms with their slightly sticky velvet pads and obligingly picked up the chilled wineglass.
“Throw it on the floor.”
The droid froze in midmotion. Breaking glasses—breaking any sort of dish or utensil—was part of the black-box code hardwired into any household droid.
Irek’s grin widened and he fastened his gaze on the R-10. Leia felt the shiver of the Force in the air, reaching into, digging at, the droid’s programming, forcing it synapse by synapse to rearrange its actions in spite of multi-layered restraints against it.
The droid reacted with great distress. It backed, rocked, turned in a circle …
“Come on,” said Irek softly. “Throw it on the floor.”
While his mind, as Roganda had instructed no doubt—as Magrody had taught him—formed the subelectronic commands necessary for the implementation of the act.
Jerkily, with a flailing movement, the droid hurled the glass down. Then it immediately extruded a brush-tipped arm from its base and a vacuum hose to clean up the broken glass.
“Not yet.”
The implements stopped.
“Now take the bottle and pour it out.”
The droid rocked with wretchedness, fighting the most absolute of its programming not to ever, ever, ever spill anything … Irek was clearly reveling in its confusion. His blue eyes did not waver, bending his concentration on the Force, channeling it through the implanted chip in its mind …
Then his head turned, suddenly, and Leia felt his concentration leave the droid as if the boy had simply dropped a toy he’d been playing with. The droid replaced the wine bottle on its top and bolted for the party as fast as its wheels would carry it, but Irek did not even notice.
He was turning his head slowly, scanning the corridor. Listening. Sniffing.
“You’re here,” he said softly. “You’re here somewhere. I can feel you.”
She felt him gather the strength of the Force around him, like a terrible shadow; saw him with changed eyes, like a wraith of mist and coals.
“I’ll find you …”
Leia turned and fled. Behind her she was aware of him striding two paces to one of the small red wall buttons that were mounted at intervals on the dark stone of the corridor walls, heard him slap it, and then heard the stride of heavy boots, and Garonnin’s voice, “What is it, my lord?”
“Get my mother. And fetch the smallest steel ball from the toy room to the Princess’s prison …”
Leia bolted down the corridors, twisting, weaving through the maze. She felt Irek’s mind invading them, searching for her, reaching like vast wings of smoke to fill the ill-lit passageways with shadows she knew could not be real but which terrified her anyway. It was hard to sense in which direction her body lay, hard to hear the distant heartbeat she followed …
She skidded to a stop in horror as the floating black ball of the interrogator droid