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"I really do wish I could get drunk."

"Maybe you’re lucky you can’t. If you’ve been this forthcoming to everyone you’ve met,"

Den said, "It’s a wonder you haven’t been reprogrammed. Most folks have little patience with an uppity droid."

"Do tell. No, I’ve kept my sparkling wit and efferves-cent personality firmly in check until now, rest assured. It’s been somewhat lonely, I must say."

"So why tell me all this? Do I just have that kind of face?"

"I’m tired of the charade," I-Five replied. "I’m tired of playing a meek little automaton to humans and their ilk, especially after watching the brutal results of or-ganic sentients’ inability or unwillingness to coexist. The more I see of all this carnage, the more convinced I am that a CZ-Three maintenance droid could do a bet-ter job of running the Republic."

Den couldn’t resist a grin. "That’s sedition, you know."

"Who, me?" The droid’s photoreceptors projected innocence. "I am but a humble droid, built to serve." He sighed again. "Perhaps I just need my disgust damper recharged."

"Or maybe you just need to get drunk."

"That, too."

"Of course, in order to accomplish that, you’d have to be organic."

I-Five actually shuddered. "Perish the thought." He stood. "Excuse me. I have duties to perform; most of them involve changing dressings and administering spray hypos. Thoroughly fulfilling tasks for a being of my capabilities, I must say. Perhaps I’ll occupy the ninety-nine percent of my cognitive module not en-gaged by my chores by solving Chun’s Theory of Re-ductional Infinity. Or composing a light opera."

Den watched I-Five leave the cantina. A few moments later Zan Yant began to play, a slow, soulful melody. It seemed the perfect accompaniment to Den’s bemused mood.

A droid that had been accorded equal status by his sentient owner? Den had heard of such things before, but always before they had been fiction. For a droid to actually be emancipated, even informally, was some-what revolutionary. He wondered why he wasn’t more shocked by the idea.

It did seem a good reason to have another drink, however.

18

Usually, whenever he had a few moments in which to try cutting through some of the caked sweat, spores, and grime that Drongar so liberally provided, Jos used the sonic shower, which was faster and more efficient than chem-wipe or water. Step in, click the foot switch on, and the dirt was vibrated right off-no muss, no fuss. At least the base had that basic level of technology working, most of the time.

Today, however, he stood under the pulsing beat of a fluid nozzle, and the water, piped and filtered from a deep aquifer, was cold. Cold enough to cause chil-blains, cold enough to make breathing harder than usual.

The water was not cold enough, however, to chill his thoughts-and the problem of Tolk.

Tolk, who had cer-tainly discerned his interest in her. And who had appar-ently decided to have some fun with it.

The water thrummed against his head, sending icy trickles and rivulets into his eyes and ears, but it was not cold enough to drive the memory of what had happened just that morning from his too-warm thoughts...

He had stepped into the dressing room to change his surgical suit, the one he’d been wearing having become soaked from a bleeder that popped in the middle of a vein graft. The room was unisex, but there was an in use indicator on the door to keep people from being surprised. Jos had palmed the door switch and stepped briskly into the room, having seen that the in use diode was dark.

And there was Tolk, halfway through changing her own surgical suit. Which was to say, not entirely clothed. Or, to put it another way, mostly naked. Bare. Gloriously so...

As a surgeon, Jos had seen plenty of flesh in his ca-reer, male, female, and other. It was simply part of the job-you didn’t have friendly thoughts about some-body whose liver you were resecting. But to step into a room and see your recently noticed and decidedly beautiful assistant nearly nude was an entirely different