Star Wars_ MedStar 02_ Jedi Healer - Michael Reaves [20]
Similarly, I-Five, with his enhanced cognitive module functions and deactivated creativity dampers, had impressed them all repeatedly with his “humanity.” Though initially his world had been turned upside down by all this, Jos now was grateful, because this wider definition of what was human had led directly to his being able to embrace—literally and figuratively—Tolk as a potential life mate, even though she was a non-permes esker.
He loved Tolk, he now knew. No matter the consequences of espousing an outworlder, he was determined to follow his heart in this matter. But he could not help but wonder what the new commander, Great-Uncle Erel, would think of this.
It wasn’t long before he found out. As the casino droid set up for another game, a Bothan corporal approached the table. “Admiral Kersos requests your presence, Captain Vondar. Please come with me.”
8
Ohleyz Sumteh Kersos Vingdah,” the admiral said. “Than donya sinyin.”
“Sumteh Vondar Ohleyz… dohn donya,” Jos responded, hesitating just a bit. It had been well over a standard decade since he had spoken in the High Tongue. Everyone spoke Basic nowadays. As a boy, he’d only spoken the older, ceremonial language during Purging Days.
His great-uncle looked tired. His face was about half a day shy of depilation, and his uniform had one of the front tunic flaps unbuttoned. Without the man’s surgical mask, Jos could see a distinct family resemblance. Somewhere during his boyhood, he and a cousin had discovered in the family archives fragments of broken holograms—shattered images of, among others, the young man who had thrown away his heritage and been disowned by the family he chose to abandon. They’d peered through the fragments as if they were windows open on the past, providing glimpses of that young man, who was also apparent in this older man’s features.
By all that was strict and proper, Jos knew he ought not to be speaking to Erel Kersos at all, save as a military subordinate replying to a superior officer. Great-Uncle Erel was still non-permes—the social and personal invisibility did not diminish with time, or even with death. But then again, given Jos’s current status with an esker female and his determination to keep it that way, the prohibition against speaking to a shunned relative didn’t seem quite such a major infraction.
Plus, there was nobody from the homeworld around to see it. And the reason Erel Kersos had been expunged from the clans was of compelling interest to Jos: the man had married an esker.
They were in Vaetes’s office, just the two of them. Jos had a hundred questions he wanted to ask his great-uncle, and at the top of his list was one in particular. Standing there uncomfortably, wondering if he should be the first to speak, he suddenly remembered the first time his father had talked to him about outsiders…
At six years of age, Jos had never been offworld, and the only sightings of aliens he’d had were at a distance. So when the subject of outlanders came up in the school rec-dome, it had been puzzling to him. He had asked his father about it, on one of the rare evenings when his father had been home and not working at the clinic.
It had taken him some time to work up the courage to approach him. His father was never violent, and Jos had no doubt that the man loved him. But he was big; when he stood, he towered over Jos. And he could be loud, very loud, though never when he was talking to his son.
In retrospect, it was clear that his father had not been ready for this conversation. What Jos recalled of the time was that, once he had approached and told him about his schoolmates’ talk, his father had stopped whatever he was doing—reading the evening newsdisc was what Jos remembered—and looked at his son in mild surprise. “Well, son, aside from being of different stock—that’s like the difference between