Star Wars_ MedStar 02_ Jedi Healer - Michael Reaves [68]
“Hey, I’m just feeling a little friendly. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” he told the droid. “Speaking of which, we still got to get you into the club.”
“And what club might that be?”
Den wagged a finger at him. “Don’t tell me you’re backing out. You must experience the joys of intoxication. It’ll be good for your silicon soul.”
“Ah, yes. As a matter of fact, I believe I’ve come up with an absurdly simple way to do it. I’m embarrassed I didn’t think of it before.”
“Do tell, then.”
“I am, as I was just reminding Doctor Vandar, a machine, essentially. My synaptic grid processor is heuristic—I extrapolate new data from known data. But I also have an algorithmic subprocessor that serves my autonomic needs.”
“Okay…”
“You didn’t understand a word of that, did you?”
“I believe I got also, and my.”
“It’s like your parasympathetic nervous system, which controls your breathing, heartbeat, and so forth— functions your body needs that aren’t under conscious control. While I don’t need to breathe, I do need constant monitoring of things like balance, lubrication, powerbus functioning…”
“Right, got it,” Den said. “But what’s this got to do with tying one on?”
“Simple. My subprocessor is programmable. I can encode it to simulate a state of inebriation.”
Den stopped and stared at him. “You can program yourself to get drunk? I thought you couldn’t mess around with your systems.”
“The hardware is protected. I have some leeway with the software, now that my full memories have returned.”
“How long would it take you?”
There was a slight but unmistakable hint of snobbery in I-Five’s voice as he answered. “I have a SyntheTech AA-One nanoprocessor, operating at seven petahertz, with a five-exabyte capacity. I wrote the program just after I mentioned it to you. It took me six-point-one picoseconds to encode the basic algorithm and calculate its functional parameters.”
“Wow. That’s…fast.”
They stopped to let a small flock of R4 astromechs roll by, beeping and whistling at each other. “So, when are you going to implement the program? Or get mopakfaced, as we organics say.”
“No time like the present. As you organics say.”
Den considered. “Okay. I guess you could do it anywhere. But there’s custom to be observed, trust me on this. Besides, I’d like to join you. I’ve got a nice little buzz on, and I don’t mind keeping it going. And it’s getting close to sabacc time. Everyone’ll be there.”
“Wonderful. Nothing like an audience.”
Den made an after-you gesture toward the cantina, then fell in behind I-Five.
There was an old saying on Nedij—you are never more than seven wings away from the Great Raptor. Stretched to fit the entire galaxy, that number went up considerably, of course, but the principle was the same: talk to somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody else, and so on, until, in what was always an amazingly short list, you found that you were able to link up with just about anybody.
Kaird, now comfortably and gratefully back in the robes of The Silent, stood in the gathering shade of a building thunderstorm, watching the food service tech leave the main chow hall kitchens and head for her communal kiosk. The proverb’s truth was even simpler here, on a world peopled entirely by occupying forces, with no indigenes of its own. With this female, he was but two sets of hands away from the pilot of the ship he intended to steal.
The female, a Twi’lek named Ord Vorra, had a relationship with Biggs Bogan, a human pilot, who was one of a trio of such in the rotation to fly the admiral’s personal ship. This Twi’lek–human relationship was noteworthy for an unusual—at least here on this world— reason: Vorra and Bogan were both Strag players, and both of them were ranked