• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 294 0

crowd. Talk about a stacked deck: out of seven players, three of them were extremely adept at reading others. He was pretty certain that the Padawan would not use the Force to give herself an edge, but he wasn’t so sure about Tolk and Merit. The minder might be able to sense feelings in the others that would betray their emotional state, and so gain an edge, but Tolk would have a harder time of it. Even though this group wasn’t exactly at the same level of ex-pertise as a bunch of card shooks working the Corus-cant Crown Casino, they’d all, Den included, mastered fairly well the art of the "sabacc mask"-the com-pletely expressionless face that did not betray by so much as an eyelash flicker any clues whatsoever. Not even a Lorrdian could read body language if the body in question was being utterly uncommunicative.

"Nobody calls? Great," Yant said. "Draw two." Bar-riss, the new dealer, handed him his cards.

From the camp’s hypersound speakers, the voice of one of Filba’s subordinates made an announcement, the focused sound beams making it seem as if he were speaking to each individual alone. "Attention," the voice said hesitantly, obviously reading unfamiliar copy. "At, uh, zero-six-hundred hours the scheduled in-spection by Admiral Bleyd will take place. Let’s make sure we give him a big welcome."

"Ah, yes," Jos said. "The visitation from on high. Think I’ll start saluting now and avoid the rush."

A new round of betting began, starting this time with I-Five. Den had been watching the droid play with some interest. I-Five’s cognitive module was no doubt capable of calculating all or nearly all of the myriad combina-tions possible in the seventy-six-chip-card deck, but not even the most advanced synaptic grid processor could anticipate the random order in which they might occur in any given hand. Still, the droid was an excellent player, calm and cool. "Raise three," he said.

Jos raised an eyebrow. "Maybe it’s just the heat," he said, "but I could swear that durasteel skin of yours is starting to sweat."

"Must be a leaky lube node," I-Five replied imper-turbably. "I might note, however, that my olfactory sen-sor is picking up a distinct whiff of fear pheromone with your genetic tag, Captain Vondar."

"How’d you get to be so good at cards, I-Five?" Den asked the droid.

"My partner taught me," the droid replied. "He could usually walk out of a game with more credits than he went in with. He’s held more idiot’s arrays than an asylum nurse."

"Do you consider yourself to be a sentient organic, like a human?" Jos asked abruptly.

"Only when I’m particularly depressed," the droid replied.

Jos made a wry face. Before he could reply I-Five con-tinued, "Knowing what I do of organics, however, and of humans in particular, I must assume that your ques-tion is sincere, Captain Vondar. I can only answer that, due to a cognitive module superior to most droids of my category, as well as the lack of a creativity damper, I am more sentient than most of my colleagues. Does this mean that I qualify as a ’living’ being? I suppose that depends on one’s point of view. But most philosophers take the position that to be able to ask the question is to have already answered it."

Den saw a quick glance pass between the captain and the minder, saw the latter smile slightly. Something sub-surface was definitely going on there.

"In the twelve years that I have ricocheted around this galaxy like the legendary Roon Comet," I-Five contin-ued, "I have encountered a great many interesting per-sonalities.

Some of them have been droids. I still have gaps in my memory that seem to be connected to some kind of trauma occurring not long after my leaving Cor-uscant. My self-repair systems are processing these gaps, assembling the missing data from interior holo-grammics, but my internal logic circuits won’t allow synaptic linkage to proceed with less than seventy-five percent certainty."

Den glanced at Jos. It was his hand, but the surgeon seemed deep in thought, unaware of his turn.

"Jos," Barriss said gently after a moment.

Jos looked up. "I call,"