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Lens said nothing.

Kaird continued, "There will always be vices that need to be fed. Wars come, wars go, but business continues. Political systems change; people don’t. Ten thousand years ago, people drank or inhaled or ate intoxicants, gambled, and dealt in matters of the black market.

Ten thousand years from now, they will still do these things, no matter who rules. Even if Black Sun founders, there will always be somebody who will arise to fulfill these desires."

"And to make a fat profit."

"Of course. You know the works of the philosopher Burdock?"

Lens did not and said so.

"Burdock said, ’Face it-if crime did not pay, there would be very few criminals.’"

"Most criminals wind up in prison," Lens said. "Be-cause most are not very bright."

"True. Which makes the smart ones all the richer. Black Sun does not suffer the stupid."

Kaird smiled again. "You have the new information encoded? "

"Yes. It’s on an implant chip." Lens removed a dome-shaped nub the size of a man’s fingernail from a drawer and held it up. Inside the clear plastoid nub, the chip was the size of a small, sharp-tipped eyelash. "Put the flat end against your skin and twist the other end for a subcutaneous injection. Remember where, because it is undetectable by anything short of a doppraymagno scanner."

"Always a pleasure doing business with a profes-sional," Kaird said. He stood. "We won’t speak again while I am here. Perhaps someday we will meet in an-other time and place, Lens. Until then, live well."

Lens nodded. "Fly free, fly straight, Brother of the Air."

That surprised the Nediji, as Lens knew it would. He raised a feathery eyebrow. "You know the Nest Bless-ing. I’m impressed."

Lens gave him a slow, military nod, a small bow. "Knowledge is power."

"Indeed it is."

After he was gone, Lens sat for a moment, thinking. Why Bleyd had claimed Filba’s death as his doing was, as Kaird had said, interesting, but the Nediji would sort that out, and Lens need not worry over it. The admiral’s fate was of no real concern. Lens had much bigger quarry to bring down. What, after all, did a single ad-miral matter when you were after the entire Republic?

29

As Barriss entered the main medical facility to make her rounds, she noticed that the droid on duty was the same one that had aided her during triage-the same droid that had been in the sabacc game a few nights ago. I- Five. The droid with which Jos had discussed the essentials of being human.

She watched him for a moment. He was changing the bacta fluid in a tank. He moved with the economical precision of a droid, and yet, something was subtly dif-ferent. She’d noticed the same thing about his face-it seemed almost capable of expression at times. Curious, she reached out to him with the Force. Ethereal tendrils, unseen and insubstantial, but no less effective for that, enveloped the droid’s form, seeking knowledge and re-laying it back to her. There was no sensory analog to describe how she received and processed the Force’s data-those who were not sensitive to it could no more comprehend it than one blind from birth could compre-hend sight. But to Barriss it spoke loud and clear.

Initially there seemed to be nothing unusual about I-Five. She could sense the almost undetectable susurrus of countless quarks and bosuns shifting spin and polar-ity, providing the synaptic grid with nearly unlimited potential connections. She could feel the hum of circuitry, the smooth pulse of hydraulic fluid, and the restrained power of the servos. The droid was well made, even though some of his parts were old.

But there did seem to be something else... some-thing too subtle even to be called an aura. The merest hint that somehow, in a way unexplainable by scientific methods, the sum of I-Five was greater than his parts.

"May I be of assistance, Padawan Offee?"

He had asked the question without turning around. He had sensed her somehow; the most probable way was with his olfactory sensor, which was many times more sensitive than most organics’. He had smelled her.

"Merely here