Star Wars_ Coruscant Nights II Streets of Shadows - Michael Reaves [28]
Laranth had never been deliberately unkind to him. But even though she had saved his life on more than one occasion, Den still at times felt a small knot of uneasiness in his gut whenever he had to deal with her. She was so unremittingly gloomy. Not once could he recall seeing her smile.
Probably a good thing, he thought. Might crack that scar tissue wide open.
In any event, now was not the time to be wondering about Laranth’s past. Jax had given them an assignment, which was to check the availability of possible UML routes and determine the quickest and safest way to get the Caamasi and his girlfriend offworld. For unavoidable security reasons this had to be done in person and not via electronic means of communication that could be intercepted or traced.
There were a number of Whiplash outpost agents in this sector. Each of these operatives was assigned to a certain section of a route. None knew any of the others. All operated on a strict need-to-know basis, and the order in which they were approached was chosen at random.
“So who’s up in rotation this time?” he asked Laranth.
She hesitated a moment, then said, “The Cephalon.”
Den smacked a hand to his forehead. “Sweet Sookie’s maiden aunt,” he groaned. “Do we have to deal with that thing again? He—it—they—I don’t even know what pronoun to use, but it gives me the creeps.”
“I sympathize,” Laranth replied, “but that’s who we’re seeing. Come on—let’s get it over with.” She increased her pace, striding swiftly down the litter-strewn street that was becoming more crowded as the day progressed.
Den groaned again and hurried after. “I don’t suppose it would do any good to say that I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“Consider it indigestion,” she replied curtly, “and deal with it.”
eight
There were in the galaxy two main types of intelligence: chordate and ganglionic. Evolution, by panspermic and convergent means, had mandated that the vast majority of sentient beings be of the former design: creatures with a rod of cartilage or bone running the length of their bodies from which a skeleton could be hung and atop which a lump of cortical tissue could, in some cases, eventually grow into a self-aware brain. There were exceptions, of course. The Hutts, for example, were essentially giant invertebrate mollusks, their decentralized brains composed of billions of concatenated subneural chains integrated into their flesh. For the most part, however, intelligence had evolved through building notochords and parking gray matter atop them. This generally resulted in one consciousness per body, which seemed to Den a sensible way to arrange things.
Ganglionic intelligence was quite different. Most thought the term referred to a collective sentience, or hive-mind: the sum of many individual brains working in concert toward a common end, such as the bafforr trees of Iffor or the bivalves of Mon Calamari’s Knowledge Bank. Den had thought so as well, until I-Five had set him straight:
“What you’re thinking of is symbiotic intelligence. Aggregated consciousness. Ganglionic intelligence is another thing entirely. Almost the opposite, in fact. It’s compartmentalized consciousness. Try to envision your arms and legs having minds of their own, as the saying goes.”
Den tried to imagine such a thing, and failed utterly. “It makes no sense,” he argued. “Actually, it’s even worse than that. It makes anti-sense.”
I-Five sighed. He was capable of giving the sound a remarkably human resonance, given that he didn’t breathe and had to synthesize