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"How long were you unconscious?"

"Thirteen seconds."

The confidence in his voice surprised her. "And how do you know this?"

"There’s a chrono on the wall behind you."

Barriss looked over her shoulder. So there was. Feeling slightly foolish, she said, "I’m a Jedi healer, CT-Nine-one-four. I have certain abilities that might be helpful. I will, with your permission, try to help you."

A small smile appeared on his face. "Is there another choice for me, Jedi Offee?"

That brought a smile to her face, as well. A joke. The first one she’d ever heard a clone make; not that she’d conversed with all that many.

She exhaled, pushing as much air out of her lungs as she could, then relaxed, letting them fill again. She re-peated the action. Tidal breathing, her mentor had called it. It always worked; she felt herself relaxing, moving into a state of mind more receptive to the Force. A clear, calm place, unburdened with recollections and anticipations. A place where she was no longer Padawan Barriss Offee, no longer anyone at all; merely a conduit for the living Force.

It was there for her, as it always was. She reached out with it and into the trooper’s energy field, seeking the wrongness.

Ah. There it was. A disturbance in his neural net, cen-tered in the hypothalamus. There did not seem to be any pathogenic cause-she sensed no forms of micro-scopic life except those that should be there. Yet some-how, the man’s hindbrain had been injured. She could

"see" a glowing red malignancy, and, using the Force, she soothed the injury, "stroked" it with etheric ripples until the glow faded.

Then she withdrew. Returning was always slightly disorienting. She centered herself, then opened her eyes. CT-914 was watching her.

She said, "Sit up, please."

The patient did so. After a few seconds, he was still conscious.

"Let’s see if you can stand."

He swung his legs over the edge of the hardfoam bed, put his feet on the floor, and stood.

"Do you feel faint?" she asked.

"No. I feel optimal." He bent, knees locked, put his hands flat on the floor, raised up on the balls of his bare feet, stretched his arms wide. "No dizziness or disorien-tation whatsoever," he reported.

"Good. Please get back in the bed. Someone will check on you in a little while. If the affliction doesn’t come back, you’ll be released."

He got back into the bed. "Thank you, Jedi Offee. It’ll be good to get back to my unit and my mission."

"You’re welcome."

As Barriss turned and started toward the next patient, she noticed the chrono on the wall.

Its reading sur-prised her; a little more than an hour had passed since she had first spoken to CT-914. She had stood there for an hour, immersed in the Force, and yet it had felt as if only a few seconds had passed.

Such things still amazed her.

The Indigo Bed was next...

The call had come much sooner than even Bleyd had anticipated. In fact, it had come in person.

Seated across the desk from Bleyd, Black Sun’s representative was more than simply self-confident-he was obnoxiously smug. And why shouldn’t he be? He was a career criminal, a delegate of the biggest gangster syndicate in the galaxy. In addition to that, Mathal, as he called himself, was large and very muscular, with a blaster strapped low on his right leg and a vibroblade sheathed on his left hip. And he looks like he knows how to use them, Bleyd thought. Good.

Mathal had just delivered Black Sun’s offer. It was more like an ultimatum. They didn’t want more bota.

They wanted it all.

"We can get top price for as much as you can deliver," he said.

Bleyd would have raised an eyebrow, had he one. As it was, he smiled and nodded, all the while thinking that the human was a fool. Did he think that there were no safeguards on the planet at all? Even for the commander of the Republic med units here, there were steps too risky to take, and bleeding off any more of the precious crop than he and Filba were currently doing would surely be noticed.

Mathal and his bosses