Star Wars_ Coruscant Nights II Streets of Shadows - Michael Reaves [63]
Nearby, Den was relaxing with a priviewer. It was a visor and earphones melded into a single unit that wrapped around his head like a too-large high-tech crown that had slipped down over his eyes. Occasionally he would let out a hoot of appreciation or a chuckle of laughter as whatever he was viewing tickled his fancy. Settled on the other side of the central work center, Laranth was cleaning one of her two blasters. The Gray Paladins did not carry their weapons for show; nevertheless, they took pride in having clean and functional ordnance.
In the far corner of the room, Rhinann was dozing, arms folded across his reedy chest. All the walking, talking, and endless negotiations he had engaged in on behalf of Jax had tired him out. He deserved a rest, he had told them, and he was of no mind to aid either the Jedi or the Paladin in their menial pursuits. Verbal as opposed to manual dexterity was his strength. He would save his energy and his efforts for more dignified pursuits, thank you very much.
I-Five stood nearby. He was outwardly immobile, but Jax knew that the droid’s mind was humming away as it perused multiple matters simultaneously. It was something few organics were capable of, because most organic brains couldn’t self-partition.
Jax wondered what topics occupied the droid. By this time he knew better than to ask; he had no desire to grant the metal man any more opportunities to flaunt his maximized self-awareness. The truth of the matter was he was still getting used to the idea himself. The concept of a droid being fully conscious was something he had accepted only reluctantly. It still made him uncomfortable at times to muse upon the ramifications of a truly sentient machine. Before he’d met I-Five, his feelings about a droid’s place in organic society had been the same as everyone else’s: droids were tools, convenient ambulatory mechanisms to be used or discarded as necessity dictated. He would not have thought twice about ordering one to jump into a vat of acid or carving it up for parts if doing so served his purpose on a mission. Droids were expendable and an infinitely renewable resource: if one became defective or was otherwise compromised in any way, it was simply recycled for parts and a new one ordered, at the Temple’s expense. There was never a shortage; to be the head of a production company such as Trang Robotics or Cybot Galactica was like having a license to print credits.
While it was true that some sentients developed feelings of attachment, even affection, for their droids—Master Obi-Wan, he recalled, had been adamant about his astromech accompanying him on missions during the Clone Wars—for the most part people viewed the automatas the same way they might view a more sophisticated version of a bread crisper. Jax certainly hadn’t had occasion to wonder about any inner lives they might have been hiding.
That attitude had changed when he’d met I-Five. He’d been forced to change his opinion not just about the droid, but also about I-Five’s “partner,” Lorn Pavan—the father he had never known.
The droid had told him much about his father’s life, but had been maddeningly vague about the specifics of his death. All Jax had been able to glean was that his father’s fate had been ordained by someone highly echeloned in the Republic—someone who might even have had access to Palpatine himself, back when he had been Supreme Chancellor. I-Five would be no more specific than that, and Jax couldn’t tell if the droid knew nothing more or wouldn’t say anything more, or both. He suspected the last possibility, however. Whatever his father had done must have reverberated considerably through the halls of power back in the waning years of the Republic for the droid to be so closemouthed about it more than two decades later. He had hinted darkly that Lorn and himself, along with a Jedi Padawan named Darsha